Driveshipping (Marik Ishtar/Kujaku Mai)
. . .
He almost didn't react quickly enough when she flung the helmet at him, but he just barely managed to catch it against his chest, oofing at the brief impact.
"You. Me. Now."
Marik hesitated for a moment, feeling almost frozen to the spot in the face of her glaring eyes. Kujaku Mai already sat astride her own bike, parked next to Marik's. Her exhaust curled upwards from the pipe, her eyes flashing underneath the visor on her helmet.
For just the briefest of seconds, Marik was almost positive that she was going to take him to a bridge and run him off of it. She looked close to having murder in her eyes, and he hadn't forgotten what his other self had done to her. It was one of the ghosts that haunted him in the nights.
But, well...he supposed whatever happened, he probably deserved it.
He thought he might have heard Yugi or one of the others protest behind him, but he just sent them a helpless shrug, put his helmet on, and hopped onto his motorcycle. He'd catch up with them later—but when someone from your past that you hurt badly skidded to a stop on her motorcycle in the middle of an outing with her friends and demanded that you go someplace with them, there wasn't much else you could do. Or at least, he personally didn't think so.
Mai tore off first, and Marik swore softly as he revved his engine. He had to skid around almost in a perfect 180 to be able to get after her, but after that, it didn't take him much to come up beside her. He thought he should probably ask—where are we going? But he didn't. She probably wouldn't hear him over the wind and the roar of their twin engines, anyway.
As soon as Marik caught up to her, Mai accelerated. Her hair whipped behind her like a golden comet tail as she shot forward. Marik swore again and buckled down—was she tryingto lose him, after calling him out like this? What exactly was she up to?
The wind screamed past his ears, blotting out any other sound. Overhead, the sky was the perfect clear blue of early spring, just a handful of clouds dotting its surface. They zipped out on to the bridge, and Mai began to weave between lanes to get ahead of cars. Marik heard at least one person honk at them, but he was too far lost to the wind to care or even really notice.
This was something he loved, more than anything else in the entire world—the wind screaming in his face, cutting through him like cool blades of air. The ground humming underneath him as he gave himself completely over to the feeling of absolute freedom. There was nowhere he couldn't go, not with speed like this, not with the sun shining down on him—
He almost didn't notice that Mai was slowing down, but he caught on just in time. He carefully applied his own brakes as they came off of the bridge and Mai zipped off into the first exit, taking them off the highway and towards the park. Mai eased off her own speed and Marik followed, until they both came to a stop at the edge of Domino City park.
Mai dropped both feet to the ground on either side of the bike, yanking her helmet off of her head. Her cheeks were red with the exertion of driving, her hair mussed and her eyes alight. She was breathing about as hard as Marik was, and he wondered if her heart hammered like his did when she really got into the feeling of freedom. He wiggled his own helmet free, feeling his hair get frizzed at the back. He ran a hand through it, but it didn't do much to save him from helmet hair.
He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. She still hadn't said anything—why had she taken him all the way out here? He didn't think she was going to slap him or anything, like he had almost thought before. She could do that in front of Yugi and the others if she wanted. And this wasn't exactly a secluded area if she wanted to scream him out, as he almost wished she would. There were a lot of people in the park today, taking advantage of the first warm day of the year.
Finally, after heaving a few more breaths, Mai blew out loudly, collapsing across her handlebars.
"Whew!" she said, smiling broadly. "So I wasn't wrong—you can keep up."
"Huh?" That wasn't exactly what he had been expecting to hear.
Mai twisted her head against the handlebars to look at him, smirking.
"From the look on your face, you look surprised that I'm not going to kill you," she said with a soft chuckle.
Marik felt his cheeks heat up in spite of himself.
"I wouldn't blame you if you wanted to," he said.
Mai shrugged.
"I had a lot of time to think about what happened," she said. "And I decided, after all, it wasn't youthat did that shit to me."
She eyed him briefly.
"I do still have nightmares, though."
Marik shuddered, ducking his gaze from hers.
"...So do I," he whispered.
He heard her heels hit the pavement as she swung her leg back over the bike, and when he looked up, she was standing in front of him. She clapped him once on the shoulder.
"I just wanted to get a feel for you," she said. "This you. Not the other one. Maybe he can't haunt me if I know the real one more."
"That's all?" Marik said.
Mai shrugged.
"I also saw your bike. It looked nice. Wanted to see if it could keep up—I haven't raced anyone in a while."
Marik just stared at her for a long, long minute. And then he couldn't hold it back—a laugh rolled out of him. He clapped a hand over his mouth to stop, but he couldn't, his shoulder shook and he had to hug his chest with his other hand to try and still it.
Mai didn't even ask him why he was laughing. She just started laughing too, and it sounded as though some kind of weight had lifted out of her—maybe the same weight that had lifted out of him.
"I don't think we've ever been officially introduced," Marik said when he finally stopped laughing. "I'm Marik Ishtar."
She sent him a dazzling smile, and Marik felt, for one moment, like maybe he hadn't completely ruined at least one thing in the world.
"Kujaku Mai," she said, accepting his hand. "Now, we should probably go back to the others...I'm pretty sure theystill think I'm about to kill you."
Marik laughed.
"I'll race you," he said.
. . .
A/N: I actually loved that one a lot more than I thought I would? It was the easiest one to write in a long while, it didn't feel like pulling teeth. I'd definitely ship this as a broship. Next is Dripshipping (Ryota x Anzu).
