here's the first of those rewrites i've been wanting to start for years. it's an old fic from dA and i've found it helpful for writer's block to rewrite an old fic and update it. (it also helps because we're going to start moving shit over to FF and ao3 and i'll be arsed to move over my 3-odd year old writing without giving it a face-lift.)

warnings for self-harm and drug/alcohol abuse and as always in our fics Yami Marik is Marik, and Marik/Malik Ishtar is Malik.

ash

"I would never have figured you, of all people, to have a thing for knives."

The knife clatters to the floor as Malik flinches, startled. His hands are still shaking and he can hear his own pulse hammering in his ears but he snaps, "Shut up. I don't." Even to his own ears, he sounds like a sulking child, caught doing something he shouldn't.

"I'm sure." Above him, Bakura snorts and puts out his cigarette on the countertop. "Which is why you're sitting on the kitchen floor, knife in hand, shaking like Ryou when he—" Bakura pauses, scowling, and gestures instead to the smattering of scars littering Malik's torso. "Those would all be happy accidents then, I suppose?"

They both know well enough that those were brought to Malik in part by generous contributions from a stolen shaving kit, the kitchen scissors, and Ryou's collection of school supplies, most notably the paper clips. "Never knives," Malik elaborates anyway. He picks the knife up from where it's gouged up a piece of linoleum and offers it hilt-first to Bakura. "Do it for me."

Bakura drops down to crouch in front of him, enveloping Malik in a shroud of smoke—just tobacco, anything stronger is Ryou's purvey—that makes his eyes water. Slim fingers rip the knife from his hand and Malik jerks as cold steel slides up his neck to rest point-first against his pulse. "Do what for you? Cut you?" The knife trails across his neck, slides down the hollow of his throat to his chest. "Kill you? Get this over with?"

Malik grits his teeth in lieu of an answer, steadfastly doesn't tell Bakura that scars are all he has left, that blood clots and knives rust but scars didn't fade, that he wonders sometimes if they would smooth them over when he died—sand his skin down and replace it with plastic, all shiny and clean in death. Instead, Marik snarls in reply and wraps his hand around Bakura's wrist to push the knife down. He watches Bakura watch the knife press into his skin, feels the blade cross the line between pressure and slice. Blood oozes from around the metal and he does it again. Bakura loosens his grip and Malik takes the hilt from him, running the knife down his arm on his own, watching the blood bead up in its wake.

Bakura chuckles. "Careful there, sweetheart, don't punch through a vein." He plucks the knife from Malik's hand to toss it into the sink, and squeezes Malik's arm until he hisses at the sting of it. "Wouldn't want to see you to an early grave, would we?"

Coming from Bakura, that was a riot. Malik shoots him a dry look conveying the sentiment, and Bakura just laughs again.

/

"Mm, smells like lung cancer out here, doesn't it?"

"Fuck you." Bakura scowls and blows a mouthful of smoke in Marik's face as he steps onto the balcony. Taking another drag, he holds it until his vision starts to fuzz around the edges and his lungs are more full of nicotine than oxygen. He finally gasps for air and dissolves into coughing when clean air clashes with smoke in his mouth.

Marik arches an eyebrow but doesn't comment on Bakura unorthodox smoking habits, sliding the balcony door shut behind him. "Since when do you smoke out here?"

"Since Malik complains and throws my packs out the window, the little ingrate." Burning ember singes his finger and Bakura winces, flicks the end of the filter over the railing. They both watch it arc in the air and plummet four stories down, where hassled swearing erupts up to greet them. Marik grins, although Bakura isn't sure if it's the littering or the grievous injury to second parties that he finds funny. He tries not to dwell on the deep inner workings of Marik's psyche if he can help it. Instead, Bakura fishes the pack out of his jacket pocket and offers Marik a cigarette. Marik makes a face and Bakura makes an equally heinous one back before shrugging and lighting it for himself. Marik leans against the railing with him and Bakura smokes for a while before murmuring, "You know how my village was destroyed, right?"

Marik frowns. "I'm aware."

"They were melted alive." Bakura chuckles darkly. "Not boiled, but melted." He takes a deep inhale of smoke and lets it sit, remembers molten gold and white-hot fire and oily smoke. After a moment, Bakura glares at the cigarette and puts it out on the shoulder of his jacket. He and Marik both watch a lazy trail of smoke crawl up from what's left of it. "Sometimes I can still taste them."

Marik, wisely, doesn't say anything at all.

/

"Now, I understand why Bakura smokes on the balcony, but why are you in the tub?"

Marik looks up at the trio of Ryous looking down at him as the room spins and gestures with his bottle in the vague direction of the toilet. "Beats r-runnin' 'cross the whole apartment." This time the vague gesture tips the bottle in the direction of his face and Marik grimaces as the whiskey—vodka, maybe?—spills down his chest instead.

The Ryous laugh and slowly solidify into just one. "I understand why you forgo a shirt when you drink, too." He perches on the sink in perfect view, and Marik is grateful he doesn't have to crane his neck or turn his head, given that all of his bones have decided to turn to paste. "How long have you been in here?"

Marik's laugh ends in a fit of hiccups and it sets him to laughing harder. "I-I've been—" He pauses and scowls at the clock on the wall, all of the numbers sliding together. "I dunno." Bracing his arms against the sides of the tub, he tries to push himself up. "Wha'sit matter, anyway?"

"If you die of alcohol poisoning, Malik will be pissed."

"Malik," Marik tells him, "'S too b-busy playing operat'n to care." He reaches over the edge of the tub to gesture emphatically at Ryou again, but the bottle slips from his fingers and shatters on the floor, scatting brown glass all over the tile. "Oops." Marik giggles and makes grabby-hands and after a moment Ryou obliges him, fishing the flask out from under the sink. He can feel Ryou's eyes on him as he uncaps it to take a gulp. "Something you wan-want to sh-say?"

The world spins and spins and turns Ryou's expression into a frown, but that can't be right. "You drink so much."

It's ambivalent enough that Marik's soused brain can't tell if it's a statement or a question, but he deigns to answer it anyway. "I like it. It takes me low." So terribly low, four stories down and an ocean away to a tomb beneath the sand, so low it takes him back, back to before he skewered a grown man to a wall for his whole family to watch him bleed to death. So low he doesn't even exist anymore, and if Marik had his way he'd never leave.

But as it stands, he's four stories and an ocean above and beyond that tomb in Egypt with blood on the wall and a neat set of bones tucked into the sand, so Marik smirks at Ryou and adds, "Not that you would know anything about being low."

/

"What's up, baby boy?"

Ryou flinches when Malik steps in unannounced, flopping onto Ryou's bed with dramatic flair. Ryou's hand slips and the knife digs into his flesh instead of the pill and he jerks back, sucking his finger. "Fuck, Malik! Learn to knock."

"Has anyone ever told you that you're a very sour person when you're not high?" Malik sits up with a smirk, teeth whiter than the brand-new gauze pads taped to his chest and arm. He peers at the desk over Ryou's shoulder, and Ryou shifts to block his view just to be spiteful. "Why're you cutting them, anyhow?"

Ryou glances back at the pills on his desk, at the stamped-on smiley faces. His hands are shaking and his mouth is dry. "I'm thinking I need to cut back."

"You're running out," Malik corrects. He reaches around Ryou for the knife and bears down on one of the little faces, snapping it clean in half. Ryou shoots him a dirty look in lieu of saying thanks, but lets Malik put one to his lips and push it onto his tongue. Almost immediately, his teeth clench and the world becomes too bright, too shiny—distantly, he can feel Malik guide him down onto the bed and maneuver him over to make room for two. Foggy and light, Ryou wraps his arms around Malik, tracing the divots between his ribs absently. Malik shudders and scowls. "I think I like you better when you shoot up. You're less touchy."

Ryou attempts to stick his tongue out, but just ends up licking Malik's shoulder for his trouble and dissolving into giggles.

Malik untangles one of his arms from Ryou's grasp and reaches over for the other half of the pill. "Can I have one? What is this?"

"No," Ryou shoves him half-heartedly, adds, "You're a lousy drunk and a wannabe brawler when you smoked with me that one time." Ryou giggles again, tracing the edges of Malik's new bandages, speckled through with blood. "Which is the exact opposite effect pot's supposed to have, mind you. I don't think I want to know what you'd be like on ecstasy."

Malik concedes the point and pulls his hand back. "I didn't know you took E."

"Everything else's stopped working," Ryou confesses. "I need it."

The way he says it cuts into the haze of post-cut endorphins, and Malik leans up on one arm. "Ryou, what are you talking about?" Even at its worst, Malik had only ever thought of Ryou's habit as recreational, not a problem.

Ryou smirks, an expression that doesn't mesh well with his features. "Marik is sacrificing his liver to the gods and Bakura has probably nearly completed the impossible task of becoming a being that pumps tar instead of blood, and you're one PE class dodgeball to the chest away from a call to Child Protective Services." He huffs, swinging from serious to silly with a breath that tickles against Malik's neck. I need to—" Ryou frowns, searching for the words. "I need to protect us."

I'm sorry we're so fucked up and you shouldn't have to deal with this, with us and this mess shouldn't be the only family you've got, you could overdose alone in this bed and we wouldn't even notice all brawl their way out of Malik's mouth in the form of, "That's not fair."

Ryou jerks and looks up at him through his bangs and, inexplicably, starts laughing. He doesn't stop until long after he's hiccupped his way into sobbing.

/

"This needs to stop."

None of them are entirely sure how Yugi got a key to their apartment, but by the time he makes his way over, they're usually too arsed to care. Unacknowledged even though he knows damn well that everyone is home, Yugi drops his backpack by the door. "You're all addicts."

The laughter comes from Bakura first—who, from across the room and through the closed balcony door, shouldn't have been able to hear him—then echoes from Marik's nest in the tub, bouncing off the bathroom tiles until it sounds like there's a legion of him. Ryou starts to laugh so hard he almost topples off the couch, and Malik just watches Yugi with a too-wide grin.

"You're a real piece of fucking work, aren't you?" Bakura asks, just to the left of him now, and Yugi flinches in surprise. A still-burning cigarette rests between lazy fingers an inch away from his neck. Marik is to his right a moment later, and between the tobacco and the bourbon, Yugi almost can't breathe, wonders how any of them can stand it. Ryou and Malik, not endowed with spectacular powers of teleportation, wander over as well. For a brief moment, Yugi regrets coming here.

It's a feeling that passes quickly, every time.

"It must be nice, looking down on us from that pedestal of yours," Bakura purrs as he puts out his cigarette on the front of Yugi's uniform and licks a hot stripe up his neck. "Does the pharaoh know what you get up to?" Yugi shudders, Ryou slipping a hand down the back of his uniform to squeeze his ass just as Malik cups him through the front of his pants. "What would he say if he knew? If we called him and told him what you do here?" Too-sharp teeth sink into the flesh between neck and shoulder and Yugi groans. "What we do to you?"

Marik's voice is low in his other ear, nails scraping down Yugi's chest in counterpoint to the mark Bakura is sucking into his collarbone—when did they get his shirt off? "I'm sure he'd just be jealous."

A pair of hands wrap around his hips and grip, hard. Yugi's hips stutter in the hold, and he leans back against Ryou. "You need help."

Malik looks up at him and he slides Yugi's pants down. "Oh darling," he says, as Marik's hand slip down Yugi's chest to dip into his underwear, "I don't think you're one to talk."