Two thousand word posts are scary.
Characters: Marik (darkreflected), Varon (aussie_biker), technically Yami (idonthaveityet)
Rating: PG-13 for language, worship of alcohol, and intent to maim kittens
Summary: Marik-mun and Varon-mun have a stunning pissing contest over post-length, which is interrupted by giant sparkle text. Ya rly. Varon laments drunkenly and converses with trees, Marik is bored, beatdown commences.
Psht. Vodka didn’t last long. And one beer? Just one beer in a lab room shared by four guys? No, wait. Five? Or four? …Guys. Just guys. One beer between a bunch if guys? Lunacy. Madness. And it was Budweiser. Why the hell would anyone drink Budweiser? Not even the frogs compensated. Bud - Wei - Ser. It wasn’t even a hard name to pronounce. Who said it was the king of beers, anyway? Some fat guy rolling in money from the sales figures? Pfft. Idiots. Wouldn’t know a good beer if it leapt down their throats, bottle intact.
So. A quest it was. A quest for Carlsberg, and ultimately, a quest for freedom. Freedom from the depravity of drinking Budweiser. And vodka that had gone stale months ago, probably. Disgusting. He’d have mixed it with the CHC, if the CHC mug hadn’t smashed against the floor somehow. He wasn’t entirely sure it was his fault, but more the fault of the rats who scuttled around in the cupboard. A secret sect of furry, long tailed masterminds, who would eventually rise up to kill them all in their sleep. Maybe it was they had been the ones to start the fire. Ha! They wouldn’t have anticipated having to share their headquarters with four … no, five, no, four, five, humans.
…Well. He used the term ‘humans’ loosely. One human (himself) and four … things. Or three things? Things, regardless. No human being was stupid enough to label a bottle of Vodka as fair game and leave it lying around. Only an inch out of it. Quarter litre. Gone in how many minutes? Dunno. No idea. Hadn’t kept count. Watched the thread and wanted to hurt Marik and wanted to comment, wanted to pretend nothing had happened to the Darkside and that everything was peachy.
And Yami didn’t have a crush on him, which was ridiculous, of course, because Yami was his best friend and didn’t get crushes on Varon because Varon was is straight. But he stumbled past the fountain and gave it a fleeting glance and knew and remembered and it wasn’t fair. It was the reason he was out here, anyway, at … glance at wrist, hazy eyes, blink, time, three a.m. Stumble on, had to get some decent beer in his system before all his blood cells died at the indecency.
Ow. That would be a tree, yes? Bullied by a tree. How tragic. Poor Varon. Poor tree. So misunderstood. Darkside tree, too. Love the tree, but not hug it, because there’s a difference between loving a tree for the memories of sending that first year skidding along the snow with just one well aimed snowball and hugging it. He may as well wear his hair down, grow it to his waist, adopt pants with legs wide enough to engulf the entire tree and rainbow coloured shirts.
…a little rest. Yes. To make the world stop going spinspinwhirl. Tree was solid against his back and memories solid in his mind and Darkside? Darkside was dead, laid to rest. Beer was god now. A Triad of Vodka, beer and … and … whisky! Jack Daniel’s. A Triad of Smirnoff, Carlsberg and Jack D’s. Ah. What a wonderful religion to follow.
And while Varon was creating his new Triad, Marik was relocating. Sulkily. Grouchily, even. He'd been peacefully typing away at his laptop, talking to Yami - for a given value of talking - perfectly innocently. For a given value of 'innocently'. And it had been raining. Stupid thuds of water hitting his tent rhythmically, and that idiot-pet-whore-slut-crazed-savior had been insisting it wasn't raining. And Marik had been perfectly sure that Yami was just crazy because well, Yami was crazy. Everyone knew that. Practically as crazy as that Ethics prof that ran around in a sheet going 'OOOoeeeeeeeeEEEEEOOOOOooooo' at people, except not quite that bad because at least Yami didn't dress up to do so.
Marik wasn't sure that would last too long. Yami probably wasn't all that far off from dressing himself in some sort of Button Boy outfit. Probably shaped like one of those football-like buttons you put on little kid's clothing, pointy at the top and bottom. Maybe someone could talk him into making it yellow so that Marik could call him Banana Boy and make suggestive remarks about why, exactly, Yami would be wearing a superhero outfit shaped like a banana. And then Yami would cover it in buttons. Stitch every single button on himself, by hand, and call himself a button refuge, where all buttons would know that they'd be welcome and safe. And if a button ever fell off, the Triad forbid, Yami would drop everything to save it. And then Marik could mock him about putting the fate of one button above the fate of the world because really, they were only buttons.
...Marik was sorely tempted to rip buttons off his own clothing and dunk them in acid, then send them to Yami. Along with a note saying that this was what Kaiba got up to when Yami wasn't there to slake his murderous lust with lots of sadomasochistic sex.
Except really, that would be a waste of buttons and then he'd have to fix his clothes or give them away. And since -- shockingly enough -- Marik wasn't dealing drugs, he really didn't have the funds to mutilate his clothing just to indulge his own whims. So instead, he stayed on his laptop during what felt like a storm, and mentally thanked the person that invented wireless Internet. Repeatedly.
Because otherwise, he'd have been stuck in a tent with nothing to do while it rained, which was, admittedly, less hazardous on being stuck in a tent while it was raining and risking electrocution. Not that Marik ever cared about a little danger. He'd rather be in danger than be bored, because at least danger ended in death while Marik knew it was impossible to die of boredom. Otherwise, the necro club would be well-acquainted with his corpse by now, and Bakura would be out one fuckbuddy.
Marik didn't really like the thought that Bakura could have others; he tried not to think about that. It wasn't like they'd ever defined their relationship or anything. It wasn't like Marik was still jealous of Kaiba (stupid anorexic sexbot, good thing that Bakura seemed over any interest he might have had in him) or anything. Kaiba had nothing on him. When had Kaiba ever driven anyone crazy to prove his love for Bakura?
It wasn't like Kaiba even wanted Bakura!
...And Marik wasn't thinking about that either.
Instead, he was walking around campus sulkily, soaking wet hair flat for a change, spiking down his back and flopping wetly over his eyes, golden strands obscuring the malevolent indigo of his eyes. Because, you see, it hadn't been raining. Yami had been right about that. However, Marik hadn't been hallucinating the rain either. It had just turned out instead that the sprinkler system had somehow turned itself on at random, for the first time since the fire.
And since it hadn't been on before, Marik hadn't realized that he'd parked his tent right in the way of it, magically picking the exact angle and distance to make the spray from it feel like rain.
Once he'd realized it, though, he'd promptly moved as much of his possessions as he could into the tree above his tent, safe from random sprinkler attacks, and covered it with his raincoat. And then trudged through the sprinkler spray, cold, wet and annoyed, intent on finding a place on campus where people didn't go frequently and setting himself down there. Because it wouldn't do to get settled down somewhere only to have people traipsing all over his new domain.
No, Marik needed somewhere private, somewhere safe. He needed-
He needed a stiff drink. And sex. Lots of it. Preferably in that order, but the opposite would do as well.
Where the fuck was Bakura when you wanted him?!
Tree, tree, pretty tree. He had a nice tree in his backyard back home. Big, leafy, green. He had a tree house, too, that he used to be able to stand up in. He wasn’t that short now He couldn’t anymore, and that was a sad thing, because he liked that tree house. His uncle was an idiot who got his hands on a rope ladder from somewhere and that gave Varon a means of escape from the aunts who arrived in pink perfume clouds, their purple-hued hair stacked on top of their heads and their heavy, plastic beads clacking together. It had been a wonderful, wonderful day when he’d emptied that jar of spiders on top of them. They had screeched and ran and Varon had almost fallen out of the tree house laughing.
Later that day, his father was banished from the sitting room for laughing too much and his mother had yelled at him and asked if he had anything to say. No, he didn’t. He had a spider in his hand, though! He’d been grounded for … how long? Two months? His uncle has bailed him out, though, as the second week was dawning and the days stretched on and on into the darkest black hole anyone had, and ever would, see. It was his summer vacation! And how was he spending it? Holed up in his room ’studying’.
But, God bless Uncle Eddy. Beer bless, really, because he was the first to give Varon a taste of the demon drink, a few years after the spider incident. Also the one to inspire a momentous love of motorcycles in Varon. Suddenly, he wanted to go ride his, but that was a very silly idea and best forgotten. But! The day of the drink! Yes. Varon had been thirteen and Uncle Eddy had taken him to a bar via motorcycle, which would be abandoned there overnight and picked up in the morning by a moaning, groaning, hung-over Uncle Eddy.
The bar-stools had been huge, to memory, but fun to climb up. His legs dangled and the woman serving was Uncle Eddy’s ‘lady woman’ - a monstrosity that closely resembled the spider aunts. He’d sniggered and choked on his Cola, before a Budweiser was slipping its way coyly along the bar.
Oh, how beautiful it had looked. Its red printed label and the froth at the top. A wink from Uncle Eddy’s woman and his hand had wrapped around the cool glass - God, it had tasted horrible. Half the bar erupted in laughter, having sat and watched the kid try his first beer. No one laughed at Varon Tibbles, though. But people tended to do it, for his name, mostly, for his height when he snarled that he’d pound them into the playground.
So, young Varon polished off the bottle without further grimace. It still tasted vile, and the world was spinning and the faces were spinning and he was falling back off the chair, wham, onto the floor. A nail protruding from the floor scored down his temple, leading to a visit to the local A&E, who Uncle Eddy managed to fob off with it being warm in the bar. The car journey and fall had sobered him up enough to pass it off, anyway, so no one expected the kid hadn’t been able to take his first beer.
But here he was, suitably drunk, aged nineteen and propped up against a tree, the raised line of the scar hidden behind his bangs. His mother was always complaining that he was far too young to drink, that he’d get liver failure, and if only he wasn’t so old now she’d ground him for the next five months. That, however, would have been a mere exercise in futility. He knew well enough now that the tree branches had grown to hold his weight, should he wish to sneak out via his bedroom window.
…he’d gotten another scar trying that for the first time, too. Was that the one on his leg, or something else? Damn, he had too many scars.
He paused, glancing up at the branches of the Darkside tree. He could remember the feeling of being up there, how childish it felt, but how amazing it was to be able to feel that way again. Throwing snowballs at passers-by, watching Yami fall from the tree and nearly falling out himself at that, because Yami wasn’t hurt, and the Triad was watching over him, anyway.
And Yami. They had been here when the branches were bare and the only protection they had were the fairy lights they’d hooked up. They’d vanished, eventually, to an unknown location. As had the lights looped around Professor Ishtar’s car. The leaves were here now, though, and they wouldn’t need fairy lights. But they didn’t have snow, so that made going up there pointless anyway. Could’ve made make-shift snow, though! Oatmeal, or something. Nothing like snow, of course, but he imagined it’d be easy to work into a ball and hurl.
Rice balls? They’d take time and effort to make, and Varon would be more inclined to eat them. Plus, he wanted something that would gloop and generally make a mess. Falling would hurt, though, and Yami would -
Not be there, of course, and it would be Varon up there on his tod flinging oatmeal balls at passers-by, barely concealed by the green foliage. Suddenly, the idea lost its shine and he dropped his gaze from the tree. Darkside was gone, remember? Hence the drinking and why wasn’t he walking again? He had to walk and get drink and get back before he froze to death. Hopefully get back before he was another statistic - teenage drinker found iced over in streets. Old ladies like his spider aunts would tut and say what a disgrace it was, young people these days.
But, nah. Not ready to cop it just yet. More drink first. Death later. Much later. What was it Yami had said? “I TEENAGER. ME INVINCIBLE.” Yeah. He only had a few months left for such a feeling, and he was going to make the most of it. He had had a fair shot already, but he was a selfish bastard people out there in the world better than him for Yami to like instead and he was going to steal as much of that feeling as he could.
Ooh. And look who was storming his way past now. Yes. Marik. Lanky git. Lanky bastard. What had Yami said before? Couldn’t remember details but he wasn’t supposed to touch Marik, be how many feet close to him? Ha. No more. Darkside was gone now, and so were all the inhibitions Varon had previously faced. Now was his time to kick that stupid bastard’s ass into oblivion. The Darkside may have been diminished, but he still had a loyalty there. A loyalty that dictated that, even in months or years to come, he’d jump in a fight to help Yami.
He pushed himself off the tree, and that smug smirk was already there, hands having some problems finding their way into the pockets of his jeans, but he had a fairly straight stride or, not, but it’d do.
“Oi. Y’lanky git,” he yelled, “What’s wrong with ya? Someone out there being happy and you’re going to stop that right away?” Snorted, stumbled, no, didn’t stumble, made the enemy think there was weakness. No weakness, of course, just a bottle of Vodka and a Budweiser. Damn, where was that bottle? Could’ve done with smashing it over Marik’s head.
"No, you drunken, feckless idiot." Marik snorted, used to Diabound's drinking habits and - sad to say - Bakura's. It wasn't that hard to tell when someone was drunk. He'd been drunk himself. He didn't get drunk all that easily though, didn't like it much. Could have something to do with Isis, his lovely crazy sister. Poor Isis, drinking even on Lavendar Day.
The woman had no sense of pride.
But still, she was his sister, and that meant he brought her flowers and chocolate and watched Dogma with her because Dogma had lots of violence and Marik liked violence. He liked it almost as much as he liked sex, except sex was better than violence. Because see, violence left bruises and broken bones and lost hairs and teethmarks everywhere, and sex did kind of the same thing but everything exploded at the end. And explosions were good. Explosions were very, very good.
Dogma had explosions as well. Maybe that was another reason to like it.
Maybe Varon would explode if Marik glared at him hard enough. He certainly looked close to apoloplexic, a little red in the face though that could just be the alcohol. Alcohol was flammable, though, and Marik wished for a second or two that he was Bakura and smoked, because then he could fucking set Varon on fire. Watch him burn and crisp and maybe that would dry Marik up.
You see, Marik was wet. Very wet. Soaked clothes-clinging-to-body, hair-stuck-to-face wet. Pissed off lion in the rain wet. Or, well, not lions because surely lions got wet when they lived in the wild, but hardly a kitten either, because that was Varon. Tiny little ineffective kitten that someone had let sip from a bowl of beer on the floor.
Marik had never kicked a kitten in his life, despite his cruel slaughter of the idiot squirrel.
Right now, he felt like doing so.
A very particular blue-eyed, brown-eyed kitten.
Everyone knew that blue-eyed kittens were blind anyway, which could explain why Varon had called him a 'lanky git' when it was so clearly Kaiba that deserved that title. Had that boy had growth hormones forced down his throat as a kid and nothing else?
Marik really didn't care. About that, or anything else.
He was wet, he was cold, his home was gone, his sister was an alcolohic, his brother was probably getting more sex than he was (and now he was thinking of that stupid Flash animation), and Varon looked like a really good target just about now. After all, Varon had accousted him first. Varon was the idiot trying to pull a smug smirk on him when everyone knew that Marik had the cruellest smirk around.
It pulled at his lips now, twisting the edges of them upwards, sharp like a knife straight to the heart and colder than an icicle (if you murder someone with an icicle, the weapon melts away), and Marik stopped on the path, let Varon come to him. His stance shifted as well, the lights of the campus a dim yellow glow (how was it possible that some of the lights worked when they still didn't have steady supplies of water and heat and why was Marik living in a tent instead of moving into his sister's apartment?), and Marik tilted his head just a little upwards, looking down at Varon from half-lidded eyelids. Crescents of indigo were barely visible under his thick eyelashes (it would have looked girlish on a less masculine face), but they were lit with a sick, sadistic glow, the sort of anger that had finally found a target.
Because hell, how was Bakura going to get on his case about this? This wasn't Yami who was crazy, this wasn't Noa who was crazy, this was Varon.
...Marik briefly hoped that Varon didn't come down with some sort of mental disorder, otherwise he'd get sex cut off again and that would just be peachy considering everything else, but didn't let that thought distract him for long. Instead, he shifted into a stable, strong stance, feet braced apart, one foot ahead of the other. Unbudgeable and flexible, easy to fight from.
Though, since he had the superior musculature and probably much, much more experience fighting (Marik was far too used to pissing people off, they were all so stupid anyway, was it his fault that he was smarter than they were and got bored so easily?), Marik didn't expect this fight to last long at all.
Unless he toyed with Varon a little. Let him get in a few punches, make a fool of himself, then knocked him out and strung him up from a tree. Maybe stripped him as well and hung fairy lights from his body for the irony value. Blue ones, to match his eyes. And shoved a button in his mouth - hopefully, he wouldn't choke on it when he woke up. Maybe it should be wedged into his navel instead? That is, assuming that Varon was an innie and not an outie.
Well, there were other places to shove buttons, but Marik wasn't interested in any of those, not from Varon. Though putting a pair in his eyes sounded like it would work as well.
Marik was willing to sacrifice a button or two for a cause this good (bad).
One tanned hand came up to brush the wet locks of hair away from his face, the harsh golden strands trying to stick to his skin, and Marik sleeked them back, kept them away from his eyes so that he could better watch his opponent. His other hand remained at his side, seemingly relaxed unless you looked carefully at his arm, at the slight, ready, watchful tension that slithered through every vein in his body, a pleasant pre-fight buzz.
Marik loved fighting. He liked mindfucks more, liked to twist and poke at people's ideas, to make them look at their reality as it crumbled all around them. To make them bring it all down around themselves, to have them be the ones to bend over and pull the ground out from underneath themselves, then let go as they started to free fall, so that it would crash down on them as they tumbled through an endless nothingness. He loved, loved, loved that, loved being smarter, harder, more ruthless and more clever.
Because he knew he was better than all of them, knew he could take them all for a ride, leave them shocked and helpless in his wake. He knew he could, and he usually didn't but sometimes - sometimes, he did. Because he could, and did he really need a better reason than that? The strong survived, and if you weren't strong enough, well, it sucked to be you, then.
A harsh, merciless way of looking at the world, perhaps, but Marik had very little mercy in him. He'd received little enough; why try to share it with others when he didn't have enough for himself?
He was every bit as hard on his own failures as he was on other people, after all. It wasn't like being Marik meant that he'd give himself a free ride either. If he wasn't living up to his own ideals, why excuse himself?
Except.
He didn't really have any ideals.
Not beyond protecting those that were important to him, Bakura and Isis and Malik and Diabound and possibly the youngest of the Bakurae just by assocation. And even then, he trusted to them to protect themselves, just like they trusted him to take care of himself. So it wasn't even so much protect as just keep an eye out for, watch over.
And it wasn't that hard to understand Kaiba trying to protect Noa by sending Marik to jail (it had to be either Kaiba or Noa that faked the records, who else besides that pink Barbie bitch would have the skills) but Marik just didn't care. There was Marik, and then there was the rest of the world.
And the rest of the world was stupid and pathetic and looked like targets and Marik had a loaded gun, locked and ready to fire. And Bakura could distract him, kiss him and pet him and draw him back to their bed (it was Bakura's room but it was their bed), but in the end, Marik just went back to being bored when Bakura wasn't there, and it was something of a miracle that he hadn't grown bored of Bakura yet.
Maybe it was because Bakura had something in him that recognized the rage in Marik (Marik still remembered the feel of Bakura's fingers around his throat, the painful squeeze that him seeing black even as arousal stung at him), and maybe it was because somewhere inside him, Bakura still had the same potential for rage that Marik had. Bakura just bled it out into cigarettes and Philosophy and numerous games of Flash the Copter or whatever that game was while Marik - while Marik-
...While Marik did nothing, or next to it, except wait on edge for every meeting with Bakura, skin feeling like it was made of mouths, going stir-crazy from being in such a small tent and having absolutely nothing to do.
Needling Yami, annoying Noa, bickering with Kaiba, Varon, anyone was preferable to how bored Marik got. It just felt like the entire world went dry and dull and there was absolutely no point in not doing anything that would relieve the boredom and why should Marik care if it meant Noa's inbox got flooded or Yami had a little cringe-whimpering fit?
Marik deliberately didn't think about Yami being in an asylum, being exploited, being raped - he had to admit that was more than he wanted. Even the idea of Kaiba actually being molested by that art teacher hadn't been one that he'd particularly liked. Because he didn't want to be bored, yeah, but there were lines he wouldn't cross. Sending Yami off to that on purpose hadn't been part of his plan, but neither had been driving him crazy.
Except Yami had proven to be entertaining when crazy, so Marik hadn't minded making that miscalculation (much) until he found out about what else had happened.
That had been enough to make him back off and leave Yami alone, because, well, fuck. Not intended. Even Marik knew that getting someone raped because he was bored was too extreme.
And then Bakura had disappeared, and Marik had known Bakura for what felt like forever, and Marik had just stopped at that point.
Stopped everything. Stopped caring about living in a tent, stopped missing everything he'd lost, stopped feeding his snake, stopped anything and everything and just thrown all of himself into searching for Bakura, trying to find him. And now Bakura was back, and when he wasn't with Marik, Marik had nothing to do (there wasn't even homework) for him to keep himself busy with), and Varon was right here and ready for a fight.
All it would take would be the right words to set him off.
The smirk twisted into something challenging, and Marik licked over his lips from reflex, tone shifting from exasperated to smoky and low, half-come on, half-dare. "I'm thinking of going to find Yami and see if he still cries when he's being fucked."
And he was thinking of it now when he hadn't been before, so it wasn't a lie. Even though he wouldn't do it. He just needed to make Varon attack him.
And he was thinking of it now when he hadn't been before, so it wasn't a lie. Even though he wouldn't do it. He just needed to make Varon attack him. Throw the first punch. Throw up on him, even, though Marik wasn’t fond of fighting in wet, vomit-soaked clothing, but that would still count as an attack of sorts. He just needed some sort of justification so that when Bakura heard about him beating the crap out of a drunk ‘Kitten’, Marik would be able to honestly say that Varon started it.
Honesty was so important in relationships. Along with sex, but that was a given for them.
Bastard. Bastard. Utter bastard. His smirk dropped to a scowl and the world was still fuzzy but he heard the words and read that bastard’s smirk and bastard. He couldn’t think of a word that could accurately describe Marik, but bastard was close. Nowhere near close enough, but with any luck “bloody, pulverised pile on the ground” might soon apply. And that would be nice, more than nice, and that was the eventual goal.
Inventory check - in his pockets he had his wallet, key for his motorcycle … and that was all. Damn. He should’ve started carrying a penknife around. A glance around the immediate area - some rocks, some sticks, no convenient glass bottles - damn. Sticks and stones. Sticks and stones may break his bones but names will never hurt him? Well, bone breaking sounded like a pretty good option. Grab a rock and smash it into his face, see how well he smirked while he was choking on his teeth and his cheek bones were splintering.
Get him on the ground, at least, because that took away his height advantage. It also meant Varon wouldn’t have to dodge punches when there was every chance he was going to stumble and fall over. Easy to kick Marik then - he’d at least gotten into the habit of wearing steel-toed boots, if not carrying the penknife.
He bent down, snatching a rock from the ground. Wrap his hand over one side of it and keep the other side for smashing into Marik’s face, being careful not to catch his fingers between stone and Marik’s bone.
Marik stood waiting to be hurt first, naturally. Varon didn’t mind that, didn’t mind having to make the first move at all. He could wholly accept responsibility and always did. He never wailed that the other guy started it. Maybe point out if he was being provoked, like in this case, but if he threw the first punch then he wouldn’t waste time trying to deny it. And in this situation? It’d be worth it if he got the blame. It’d be worth it if he came off worse. Just getting the chance to give Marik some payback was worth it.
The Darkside may be gone, and Yami may not be his friend anymore, but he still gave a damn and he’d still spent months wishing pain upon Marik. This was the perfect opportunity, and this would not be wasted.
“Hate to tell you this, mate, but you’re not gonna get near ‘im tonight.” His Japanese slurred, naturally, but that wasn’t too important. Marik was waiting for Varon to make the first move, and who was Varon to disappoint? Get Marik on the ground - that was his eventual goal. He’d heard Bakura’s warning before, after all. Just get Marik on the ground, and the best way to do it?
He judged distance, shifted slightly. Time to make use of these good boots. The shift allowed him to plant his left foot firmly in the ground - he should be a walking advertisement of shoes, check the amazing grip on these beauties. One, two, three, and steel-toe met Marik’s groin.
HOMG WTF FIGHT SCENE !1!!/1
Bang, pow, Glesga Kiss, etc. Varon's head go smacksmacksmack but good on the concrete, whee concussion! Varon lose consciousness, blood go gushgushgush, Marik ring Yami ("Pet? I've got a present for you. One bleeding little homeless kitten."), Yami flail run-on and rescue. THE END.
Rating: PG-13 for language, worship of alcohol, and intent to maim kittens
Summary: Marik-mun and Varon-mun have a stunning pissing contest over post-length, which is interrupted by giant sparkle text. Ya rly. Varon laments drunkenly and converses with trees, Marik is bored, beatdown commences.
Psht. Vodka didn’t last long. And one beer? Just one beer in a lab room shared by four guys? No, wait. Five? Or four? …Guys. Just guys. One beer between a bunch if guys? Lunacy. Madness. And it was Budweiser. Why the hell would anyone drink Budweiser? Not even the frogs compensated. Bud - Wei - Ser. It wasn’t even a hard name to pronounce. Who said it was the king of beers, anyway? Some fat guy rolling in money from the sales figures? Pfft. Idiots. Wouldn’t know a good beer if it leapt down their throats, bottle intact.
So. A quest it was. A quest for Carlsberg, and ultimately, a quest for freedom. Freedom from the depravity of drinking Budweiser. And vodka that had gone stale months ago, probably. Disgusting. He’d have mixed it with the CHC, if the CHC mug hadn’t smashed against the floor somehow. He wasn’t entirely sure it was his fault, but more the fault of the rats who scuttled around in the cupboard. A secret sect of furry, long tailed masterminds, who would eventually rise up to kill them all in their sleep. Maybe it was they had been the ones to start the fire. Ha! They wouldn’t have anticipated having to share their headquarters with four … no, five, no, four, five, humans.
…Well. He used the term ‘humans’ loosely. One human (himself) and four … things. Or three things? Things, regardless. No human being was stupid enough to label a bottle of Vodka as fair game and leave it lying around. Only an inch out of it. Quarter litre. Gone in how many minutes? Dunno. No idea. Hadn’t kept count. Watched the thread and wanted to hurt Marik and wanted to comment, wanted to pretend nothing had happened to the Darkside and that everything was peachy.
And Yami didn’t have a crush on him, which was ridiculous, of course, because Yami was his best friend and didn’t get crushes on Varon because Varon was is straight. But he stumbled past the fountain and gave it a fleeting glance and knew and remembered and it wasn’t fair. It was the reason he was out here, anyway, at … glance at wrist, hazy eyes, blink, time, three a.m. Stumble on, had to get some decent beer in his system before all his blood cells died at the indecency.
Ow. That would be a tree, yes? Bullied by a tree. How tragic. Poor Varon. Poor tree. So misunderstood. Darkside tree, too. Love the tree, but not hug it, because there’s a difference between loving a tree for the memories of sending that first year skidding along the snow with just one well aimed snowball and hugging it. He may as well wear his hair down, grow it to his waist, adopt pants with legs wide enough to engulf the entire tree and rainbow coloured shirts.
…a little rest. Yes. To make the world stop going spinspinwhirl. Tree was solid against his back and memories solid in his mind and Darkside? Darkside was dead, laid to rest. Beer was god now. A Triad of Vodka, beer and … and … whisky! Jack Daniel’s. A Triad of Smirnoff, Carlsberg and Jack D’s. Ah. What a wonderful religion to follow.
And while Varon was creating his new Triad, Marik was relocating. Sulkily. Grouchily, even. He'd been peacefully typing away at his laptop, talking to Yami - for a given value of talking - perfectly innocently. For a given value of 'innocently'. And it had been raining. Stupid thuds of water hitting his tent rhythmically, and that idiot-pet-whore-slut-crazed-savior had been insisting it wasn't raining. And Marik had been perfectly sure that Yami was just crazy because well, Yami was crazy. Everyone knew that. Practically as crazy as that Ethics prof that ran around in a sheet going 'OOOoeeeeeeeeEEEEEOOOOOooooo' at people, except not quite that bad because at least Yami didn't dress up to do so.
Marik wasn't sure that would last too long. Yami probably wasn't all that far off from dressing himself in some sort of Button Boy outfit. Probably shaped like one of those football-like buttons you put on little kid's clothing, pointy at the top and bottom. Maybe someone could talk him into making it yellow so that Marik could call him Banana Boy and make suggestive remarks about why, exactly, Yami would be wearing a superhero outfit shaped like a banana. And then Yami would cover it in buttons. Stitch every single button on himself, by hand, and call himself a button refuge, where all buttons would know that they'd be welcome and safe. And if a button ever fell off, the Triad forbid, Yami would drop everything to save it. And then Marik could mock him about putting the fate of one button above the fate of the world because really, they were only buttons.
...Marik was sorely tempted to rip buttons off his own clothing and dunk them in acid, then send them to Yami. Along with a note saying that this was what Kaiba got up to when Yami wasn't there to slake his murderous lust with lots of sadomasochistic sex.
Except really, that would be a waste of buttons and then he'd have to fix his clothes or give them away. And since -- shockingly enough -- Marik wasn't dealing drugs, he really didn't have the funds to mutilate his clothing just to indulge his own whims. So instead, he stayed on his laptop during what felt like a storm, and mentally thanked the person that invented wireless Internet. Repeatedly.
Because otherwise, he'd have been stuck in a tent with nothing to do while it rained, which was, admittedly, less hazardous on being stuck in a tent while it was raining and risking electrocution. Not that Marik ever cared about a little danger. He'd rather be in danger than be bored, because at least danger ended in death while Marik knew it was impossible to die of boredom. Otherwise, the necro club would be well-acquainted with his corpse by now, and Bakura would be out one fuckbuddy.
Marik didn't really like the thought that Bakura could have others; he tried not to think about that. It wasn't like they'd ever defined their relationship or anything. It wasn't like Marik was still jealous of Kaiba (stupid anorexic sexbot, good thing that Bakura seemed over any interest he might have had in him) or anything. Kaiba had nothing on him. When had Kaiba ever driven anyone crazy to prove his love for Bakura?
It wasn't like Kaiba even wanted Bakura!
...And Marik wasn't thinking about that either.
Instead, he was walking around campus sulkily, soaking wet hair flat for a change, spiking down his back and flopping wetly over his eyes, golden strands obscuring the malevolent indigo of his eyes. Because, you see, it hadn't been raining. Yami had been right about that. However, Marik hadn't been hallucinating the rain either. It had just turned out instead that the sprinkler system had somehow turned itself on at random, for the first time since the fire.
And since it hadn't been on before, Marik hadn't realized that he'd parked his tent right in the way of it, magically picking the exact angle and distance to make the spray from it feel like rain.
Once he'd realized it, though, he'd promptly moved as much of his possessions as he could into the tree above his tent, safe from random sprinkler attacks, and covered it with his raincoat. And then trudged through the sprinkler spray, cold, wet and annoyed, intent on finding a place on campus where people didn't go frequently and setting himself down there. Because it wouldn't do to get settled down somewhere only to have people traipsing all over his new domain.
No, Marik needed somewhere private, somewhere safe. He needed-
He needed a stiff drink. And sex. Lots of it. Preferably in that order, but the opposite would do as well.
Where the fuck was Bakura when you wanted him?!
Tree, tree, pretty tree. He had a nice tree in his backyard back home. Big, leafy, green. He had a tree house, too, that he used to be able to stand up in. He wasn’t that short now He couldn’t anymore, and that was a sad thing, because he liked that tree house. His uncle was an idiot who got his hands on a rope ladder from somewhere and that gave Varon a means of escape from the aunts who arrived in pink perfume clouds, their purple-hued hair stacked on top of their heads and their heavy, plastic beads clacking together. It had been a wonderful, wonderful day when he’d emptied that jar of spiders on top of them. They had screeched and ran and Varon had almost fallen out of the tree house laughing.
Later that day, his father was banished from the sitting room for laughing too much and his mother had yelled at him and asked if he had anything to say. No, he didn’t. He had a spider in his hand, though! He’d been grounded for … how long? Two months? His uncle has bailed him out, though, as the second week was dawning and the days stretched on and on into the darkest black hole anyone had, and ever would, see. It was his summer vacation! And how was he spending it? Holed up in his room ’studying’.
But, God bless Uncle Eddy. Beer bless, really, because he was the first to give Varon a taste of the demon drink, a few years after the spider incident. Also the one to inspire a momentous love of motorcycles in Varon. Suddenly, he wanted to go ride his, but that was a very silly idea and best forgotten. But! The day of the drink! Yes. Varon had been thirteen and Uncle Eddy had taken him to a bar via motorcycle, which would be abandoned there overnight and picked up in the morning by a moaning, groaning, hung-over Uncle Eddy.
The bar-stools had been huge, to memory, but fun to climb up. His legs dangled and the woman serving was Uncle Eddy’s ‘lady woman’ - a monstrosity that closely resembled the spider aunts. He’d sniggered and choked on his Cola, before a Budweiser was slipping its way coyly along the bar.
Oh, how beautiful it had looked. Its red printed label and the froth at the top. A wink from Uncle Eddy’s woman and his hand had wrapped around the cool glass - God, it had tasted horrible. Half the bar erupted in laughter, having sat and watched the kid try his first beer. No one laughed at Varon Tibbles, though. But people tended to do it, for his name, mostly, for his height when he snarled that he’d pound them into the playground.
So, young Varon polished off the bottle without further grimace. It still tasted vile, and the world was spinning and the faces were spinning and he was falling back off the chair, wham, onto the floor. A nail protruding from the floor scored down his temple, leading to a visit to the local A&E, who Uncle Eddy managed to fob off with it being warm in the bar. The car journey and fall had sobered him up enough to pass it off, anyway, so no one expected the kid hadn’t been able to take his first beer.
But here he was, suitably drunk, aged nineteen and propped up against a tree, the raised line of the scar hidden behind his bangs. His mother was always complaining that he was far too young to drink, that he’d get liver failure, and if only he wasn’t so old now she’d ground him for the next five months. That, however, would have been a mere exercise in futility. He knew well enough now that the tree branches had grown to hold his weight, should he wish to sneak out via his bedroom window.
…he’d gotten another scar trying that for the first time, too. Was that the one on his leg, or something else? Damn, he had too many scars.
He paused, glancing up at the branches of the Darkside tree. He could remember the feeling of being up there, how childish it felt, but how amazing it was to be able to feel that way again. Throwing snowballs at passers-by, watching Yami fall from the tree and nearly falling out himself at that, because Yami wasn’t hurt, and the Triad was watching over him, anyway.
And Yami. They had been here when the branches were bare and the only protection they had were the fairy lights they’d hooked up. They’d vanished, eventually, to an unknown location. As had the lights looped around Professor Ishtar’s car. The leaves were here now, though, and they wouldn’t need fairy lights. But they didn’t have snow, so that made going up there pointless anyway. Could’ve made make-shift snow, though! Oatmeal, or something. Nothing like snow, of course, but he imagined it’d be easy to work into a ball and hurl.
Rice balls? They’d take time and effort to make, and Varon would be more inclined to eat them. Plus, he wanted something that would gloop and generally make a mess. Falling would hurt, though, and Yami would -
Not be there, of course, and it would be Varon up there on his tod flinging oatmeal balls at passers-by, barely concealed by the green foliage. Suddenly, the idea lost its shine and he dropped his gaze from the tree. Darkside was gone, remember? Hence the drinking and why wasn’t he walking again? He had to walk and get drink and get back before he froze to death. Hopefully get back before he was another statistic - teenage drinker found iced over in streets. Old ladies like his spider aunts would tut and say what a disgrace it was, young people these days.
But, nah. Not ready to cop it just yet. More drink first. Death later. Much later. What was it Yami had said? “I TEENAGER. ME INVINCIBLE.” Yeah. He only had a few months left for such a feeling, and he was going to make the most of it. He had had a fair shot already, but he was a selfish bastard people out there in the world better than him for Yami to like instead and he was going to steal as much of that feeling as he could.
Ooh. And look who was storming his way past now. Yes. Marik. Lanky git. Lanky bastard. What had Yami said before? Couldn’t remember details but he wasn’t supposed to touch Marik, be how many feet close to him? Ha. No more. Darkside was gone now, and so were all the inhibitions Varon had previously faced. Now was his time to kick that stupid bastard’s ass into oblivion. The Darkside may have been diminished, but he still had a loyalty there. A loyalty that dictated that, even in months or years to come, he’d jump in a fight to help Yami.
He pushed himself off the tree, and that smug smirk was already there, hands having some problems finding their way into the pockets of his jeans, but he had a fairly straight stride or, not, but it’d do.
“Oi. Y’lanky git,” he yelled, “What’s wrong with ya? Someone out there being happy and you’re going to stop that right away?” Snorted, stumbled, no, didn’t stumble, made the enemy think there was weakness. No weakness, of course, just a bottle of Vodka and a Budweiser. Damn, where was that bottle? Could’ve done with smashing it over Marik’s head.
"No, you drunken, feckless idiot." Marik snorted, used to Diabound's drinking habits and - sad to say - Bakura's. It wasn't that hard to tell when someone was drunk. He'd been drunk himself. He didn't get drunk all that easily though, didn't like it much. Could have something to do with Isis, his lovely crazy sister. Poor Isis, drinking even on Lavendar Day.
The woman had no sense of pride.
But still, she was his sister, and that meant he brought her flowers and chocolate and watched Dogma with her because Dogma had lots of violence and Marik liked violence. He liked it almost as much as he liked sex, except sex was better than violence. Because see, violence left bruises and broken bones and lost hairs and teethmarks everywhere, and sex did kind of the same thing but everything exploded at the end. And explosions were good. Explosions were very, very good.
Dogma had explosions as well. Maybe that was another reason to like it.
Maybe Varon would explode if Marik glared at him hard enough. He certainly looked close to apoloplexic, a little red in the face though that could just be the alcohol. Alcohol was flammable, though, and Marik wished for a second or two that he was Bakura and smoked, because then he could fucking set Varon on fire. Watch him burn and crisp and maybe that would dry Marik up.
You see, Marik was wet. Very wet. Soaked clothes-clinging-to-body, hair-stuck-to-face wet. Pissed off lion in the rain wet. Or, well, not lions because surely lions got wet when they lived in the wild, but hardly a kitten either, because that was Varon. Tiny little ineffective kitten that someone had let sip from a bowl of beer on the floor.
Marik had never kicked a kitten in his life, despite his cruel slaughter of the idiot squirrel.
Right now, he felt like doing so.
A very particular blue-eyed, brown-eyed kitten.
Everyone knew that blue-eyed kittens were blind anyway, which could explain why Varon had called him a 'lanky git' when it was so clearly Kaiba that deserved that title. Had that boy had growth hormones forced down his throat as a kid and nothing else?
Marik really didn't care. About that, or anything else.
He was wet, he was cold, his home was gone, his sister was an alcolohic, his brother was probably getting more sex than he was (and now he was thinking of that stupid Flash animation), and Varon looked like a really good target just about now. After all, Varon had accousted him first. Varon was the idiot trying to pull a smug smirk on him when everyone knew that Marik had the cruellest smirk around.
It pulled at his lips now, twisting the edges of them upwards, sharp like a knife straight to the heart and colder than an icicle (if you murder someone with an icicle, the weapon melts away), and Marik stopped on the path, let Varon come to him. His stance shifted as well, the lights of the campus a dim yellow glow (how was it possible that some of the lights worked when they still didn't have steady supplies of water and heat and why was Marik living in a tent instead of moving into his sister's apartment?), and Marik tilted his head just a little upwards, looking down at Varon from half-lidded eyelids. Crescents of indigo were barely visible under his thick eyelashes (it would have looked girlish on a less masculine face), but they were lit with a sick, sadistic glow, the sort of anger that had finally found a target.
Because hell, how was Bakura going to get on his case about this? This wasn't Yami who was crazy, this wasn't Noa who was crazy, this was Varon.
...Marik briefly hoped that Varon didn't come down with some sort of mental disorder, otherwise he'd get sex cut off again and that would just be peachy considering everything else, but didn't let that thought distract him for long. Instead, he shifted into a stable, strong stance, feet braced apart, one foot ahead of the other. Unbudgeable and flexible, easy to fight from.
Though, since he had the superior musculature and probably much, much more experience fighting (Marik was far too used to pissing people off, they were all so stupid anyway, was it his fault that he was smarter than they were and got bored so easily?), Marik didn't expect this fight to last long at all.
Unless he toyed with Varon a little. Let him get in a few punches, make a fool of himself, then knocked him out and strung him up from a tree. Maybe stripped him as well and hung fairy lights from his body for the irony value. Blue ones, to match his eyes. And shoved a button in his mouth - hopefully, he wouldn't choke on it when he woke up. Maybe it should be wedged into his navel instead? That is, assuming that Varon was an innie and not an outie.
Well, there were other places to shove buttons, but Marik wasn't interested in any of those, not from Varon. Though putting a pair in his eyes sounded like it would work as well.
Marik was willing to sacrifice a button or two for a cause this good (bad).
One tanned hand came up to brush the wet locks of hair away from his face, the harsh golden strands trying to stick to his skin, and Marik sleeked them back, kept them away from his eyes so that he could better watch his opponent. His other hand remained at his side, seemingly relaxed unless you looked carefully at his arm, at the slight, ready, watchful tension that slithered through every vein in his body, a pleasant pre-fight buzz.
Marik loved fighting. He liked mindfucks more, liked to twist and poke at people's ideas, to make them look at their reality as it crumbled all around them. To make them bring it all down around themselves, to have them be the ones to bend over and pull the ground out from underneath themselves, then let go as they started to free fall, so that it would crash down on them as they tumbled through an endless nothingness. He loved, loved, loved that, loved being smarter, harder, more ruthless and more clever.
Because he knew he was better than all of them, knew he could take them all for a ride, leave them shocked and helpless in his wake. He knew he could, and he usually didn't but sometimes - sometimes, he did. Because he could, and did he really need a better reason than that? The strong survived, and if you weren't strong enough, well, it sucked to be you, then.
A harsh, merciless way of looking at the world, perhaps, but Marik had very little mercy in him. He'd received little enough; why try to share it with others when he didn't have enough for himself?
He was every bit as hard on his own failures as he was on other people, after all. It wasn't like being Marik meant that he'd give himself a free ride either. If he wasn't living up to his own ideals, why excuse himself?
Except.
He didn't really have any ideals.
Not beyond protecting those that were important to him, Bakura and Isis and Malik and Diabound and possibly the youngest of the Bakurae just by assocation. And even then, he trusted to them to protect themselves, just like they trusted him to take care of himself. So it wasn't even so much protect as just keep an eye out for, watch over.
And it wasn't that hard to understand Kaiba trying to protect Noa by sending Marik to jail (it had to be either Kaiba or Noa that faked the records, who else besides that pink Barbie bitch would have the skills) but Marik just didn't care. There was Marik, and then there was the rest of the world.
And the rest of the world was stupid and pathetic and looked like targets and Marik had a loaded gun, locked and ready to fire. And Bakura could distract him, kiss him and pet him and draw him back to their bed (it was Bakura's room but it was their bed), but in the end, Marik just went back to being bored when Bakura wasn't there, and it was something of a miracle that he hadn't grown bored of Bakura yet.
Maybe it was because Bakura had something in him that recognized the rage in Marik (Marik still remembered the feel of Bakura's fingers around his throat, the painful squeeze that him seeing black even as arousal stung at him), and maybe it was because somewhere inside him, Bakura still had the same potential for rage that Marik had. Bakura just bled it out into cigarettes and Philosophy and numerous games of Flash the Copter or whatever that game was while Marik - while Marik-
...While Marik did nothing, or next to it, except wait on edge for every meeting with Bakura, skin feeling like it was made of mouths, going stir-crazy from being in such a small tent and having absolutely nothing to do.
Needling Yami, annoying Noa, bickering with Kaiba, Varon, anyone was preferable to how bored Marik got. It just felt like the entire world went dry and dull and there was absolutely no point in not doing anything that would relieve the boredom and why should Marik care if it meant Noa's inbox got flooded or Yami had a little cringe-whimpering fit?
Marik deliberately didn't think about Yami being in an asylum, being exploited, being raped - he had to admit that was more than he wanted. Even the idea of Kaiba actually being molested by that art teacher hadn't been one that he'd particularly liked. Because he didn't want to be bored, yeah, but there were lines he wouldn't cross. Sending Yami off to that on purpose hadn't been part of his plan, but neither had been driving him crazy.
Except Yami had proven to be entertaining when crazy, so Marik hadn't minded making that miscalculation (much) until he found out about what else had happened.
That had been enough to make him back off and leave Yami alone, because, well, fuck. Not intended. Even Marik knew that getting someone raped because he was bored was too extreme.
And then Bakura had disappeared, and Marik had known Bakura for what felt like forever, and Marik had just stopped at that point.
Stopped everything. Stopped caring about living in a tent, stopped missing everything he'd lost, stopped feeding his snake, stopped anything and everything and just thrown all of himself into searching for Bakura, trying to find him. And now Bakura was back, and when he wasn't with Marik, Marik had nothing to do (there wasn't even homework) for him to keep himself busy with), and Varon was right here and ready for a fight.
All it would take would be the right words to set him off.
The smirk twisted into something challenging, and Marik licked over his lips from reflex, tone shifting from exasperated to smoky and low, half-come on, half-dare. "I'm thinking of going to find Yami and see if he still cries when he's being fucked."
And he was thinking of it now when he hadn't been before, so it wasn't a lie. Even though he wouldn't do it. He just needed to make Varon attack him.
And he was thinking of it now when he hadn't been before, so it wasn't a lie. Even though he wouldn't do it. He just needed to make Varon attack him. Throw the first punch. Throw up on him, even, though Marik wasn’t fond of fighting in wet, vomit-soaked clothing, but that would still count as an attack of sorts. He just needed some sort of justification so that when Bakura heard about him beating the crap out of a drunk ‘Kitten’, Marik would be able to honestly say that Varon started it.
Honesty was so important in relationships. Along with sex, but that was a given for them.
Bastard. Bastard. Utter bastard. His smirk dropped to a scowl and the world was still fuzzy but he heard the words and read that bastard’s smirk and bastard. He couldn’t think of a word that could accurately describe Marik, but bastard was close. Nowhere near close enough, but with any luck “bloody, pulverised pile on the ground” might soon apply. And that would be nice, more than nice, and that was the eventual goal.
Inventory check - in his pockets he had his wallet, key for his motorcycle … and that was all. Damn. He should’ve started carrying a penknife around. A glance around the immediate area - some rocks, some sticks, no convenient glass bottles - damn. Sticks and stones. Sticks and stones may break his bones but names will never hurt him? Well, bone breaking sounded like a pretty good option. Grab a rock and smash it into his face, see how well he smirked while he was choking on his teeth and his cheek bones were splintering.
Get him on the ground, at least, because that took away his height advantage. It also meant Varon wouldn’t have to dodge punches when there was every chance he was going to stumble and fall over. Easy to kick Marik then - he’d at least gotten into the habit of wearing steel-toed boots, if not carrying the penknife.
He bent down, snatching a rock from the ground. Wrap his hand over one side of it and keep the other side for smashing into Marik’s face, being careful not to catch his fingers between stone and Marik’s bone.
Marik stood waiting to be hurt first, naturally. Varon didn’t mind that, didn’t mind having to make the first move at all. He could wholly accept responsibility and always did. He never wailed that the other guy started it. Maybe point out if he was being provoked, like in this case, but if he threw the first punch then he wouldn’t waste time trying to deny it. And in this situation? It’d be worth it if he got the blame. It’d be worth it if he came off worse. Just getting the chance to give Marik some payback was worth it.
The Darkside may be gone, and Yami may not be his friend anymore, but he still gave a damn and he’d still spent months wishing pain upon Marik. This was the perfect opportunity, and this would not be wasted.
“Hate to tell you this, mate, but you’re not gonna get near ‘im tonight.” His Japanese slurred, naturally, but that wasn’t too important. Marik was waiting for Varon to make the first move, and who was Varon to disappoint? Get Marik on the ground - that was his eventual goal. He’d heard Bakura’s warning before, after all. Just get Marik on the ground, and the best way to do it?
He judged distance, shifted slightly. Time to make use of these good boots. The shift allowed him to plant his left foot firmly in the ground - he should be a walking advertisement of shoes, check the amazing grip on these beauties. One, two, three, and steel-toe met Marik’s groin.
HOMG WTF FIGHT SCENE !1!!/1
Bang, pow, Glesga Kiss, etc. Varon's head go smacksmacksmack but good on the concrete, whee concussion! Varon lose consciousness, blood go gushgushgush, Marik ring Yami ("Pet? I've got a present for you. One bleeding little homeless kitten."), Yami flail run-on and rescue. THE END.