A/N: Okay so this is the second update of the week! I think I'm going to try to update on Monday's and Thursday until the chapters get longer ;) That being said, this is the longest chapter yet! I hope you all like it! And don't worry, the 'canon' details I've been talking about come in next chapter…I promise!

Disclaimer: The characters are not mine but the story is!

I remember how I used to think that Ishizu cared too much about me and how Rishid didn't care enough.

She was always so bossy and he was always so quiet. I sometimes thought he didn't notice me at all. I was wrong about that, of course.

I found that out about a month after I discovered my first crush.

It had been quite distracting. It was increasingly difficult to concentrate on games when all I wanted to do was watch Yuugi laugh and smile. I also found myself getting really jealous of sharing his attention with his other friends.

Especially the stupid girls. I had to stop hanging out with him at the game shop after school, because sometimes there were girls there, and didn't he know that girls were dumb? Boys were way better.

Sometimes the other boys in school looked at me funny when I butted in and tried to regain his attention, but Yuugi never minded. He was always happy to spend time with me.

Still…I didn't like feeling jealous. It wasn't a nice feeling. There had to be a way to cure myself of it.

It was about the time that I was feeling particularly unsettled by my own jealousy and anger at the other people in Yuugi's life that my siblings started to notice the changes in me as well.

Looking back, it wasn't hard to tell. I never was very good at hiding my feelings. Some days I'd walk in the door, glowing like, well, like a school boy with a crush, and others I'd sulk around no matter what anyone said or did to cheer me up.

On one such day, my sulking had reached inconsolable heights. I refused to even take off my shoes at the door, purposefully tracking mud across the floor, because if I couldn't make Yuugi pay for ignoring me, I'd make someone pay.

It only took a few minutes of sulking on my bed for someone to follow the muddy footsteps to my room. The surprising part was that it wasn't Ishizu but Rishid who approached me.

"Marik…"

"I'm not cleaning that up. I don't care if you tell father. I don't care about anything."

"Marik, what's wrong? Did something happen at school?"

"I hate school."

"You hate school or you hate the people at school?"

This gave me pause, which was saying something when I was in one of my moods. I hadn't really thought when I'd said that I hated school. But Rishid was right.

I didn't hate school. It was better than home. Especially when Yuugi paid attention to me.

"Just the people, I guess…"

"Are you being bullied, brother?"

Bullied? What would give him that idea?

I suddenly felt guilty about my recent behavior. I didn't want my siblings to be troubled by my problems. It wasn't their fault I couldn't control my feelings. I didn't know how to, though…

"Rishid…how do you know if you're being bullied? What if it's maybe just your own fault for not fitting in?"

"Well…I guess if people are purposefully hurting your feelings, that's bullying. If you won't talk to them at all though, it's not their fault. Are people being mean to you at school?"

"No. I'm being mean to them. Because they won't leave me and…my friend alone. I just want to hang out with my friend but my friend and the other kids don't get that."

"Marik…is this 'friend' of yours someone you having…different feelings for? Romantic feelings?"

"…"

"Marik…"

"…Maybe."

"Did you ever think maybe your 'friend' feels the same way as you? You don't know how to tell your friend how you feel and they don't know how to tell you. Maybe you should just tell them. If you talked to the other kids, I'm sure they'd understand as well."

Suddenly, with those words, everything seemed so much clearer.

How had I not thought of that?

It was a scary idea, but me and Yuugi talked a lot. It wouldn't be hard to just say that I liked him.

If he didn't like me it would be no big deal, right?

I'd seen Jounouchi-kun get slapped by lots of girls when he talked to them (and he talked to like, all of them, because it was kind of a big deal to see a girl seeing as we went to an all boy's school) but no one ever seemed really upset. And if I told Yuugi in front of the other kids, they'd all understand.

"What if…what if my friend doesn't like me back?"

"If he doesn't like you back, and he's a good person, he'll just tell you so. He won't embarrass you. And if he's a really good person, he'll still be your friend."

The advice cheered me up for the first time. That is, until I realized something important.

"Rishid…you called my friend a he. I never said" –

"Brother, it doesn't matter if your friend is a he or a she. All that matters to me is your happiness."

It was there in that moment that I knew I had the coolest, smartest big brother in the whole world.

A/N: *Cough* *Cough* I'm sorry; I'm just being smothered by this thick cloud of foreshadowing…also, I just wanted to say that sadly as much as I love Rishid's character he won't have as big a part in this story. He always seems to be the one protecting and taking care of Marik while Ishizu's off just doing her thing. I thought it would be cool to develop Marik and Ishizu's relationship in this story. With that said, I hope you enjoyed and I will have the next chapter up (explaining my supposed YuugixMarik canon) on Monday!