Hello, you lot, I'm back again with something a bit different. I don't usually write in a format like this, but I saw it in a livejournal fic and I wanted to give it a try myself. I'm still not sure if I like the end result, but please give it a looksie and tell me what you think. And please, don't be deterred by the ship, which I know is quite random but I did have my reasons. I usually ship Ryou/Bakura, but it wouldn't have worked for this fic, because I wanted the sheer contrast of Ryou/Anzu. Hopefully that will make itself more obvious as it goes.

But enough of my blathering. On with the fic, I say!

(For Sara)

…

1.

Anzu is outgoing and caring and lovely, and all the boys want her.

She pretends not to notice, flipping her little pink skirt as she walks away, waving with twinkling fingers. The boys trip over themselves to follow her, but she makes excuses, accepting their friendship but not their undying love or revving sex drives. Instead she spends time with Ryou, though he cannot fathom why.

He is quiet and timid and prone to sudden mood swings, holing up in his apartment for days at a time, while she is the sort of person who would befriend the world if she could.

He cannot understand what she sees in him, though he glows in her company.

2.

The music is too loud, the people are drunken and wild, and Ryou certainly doesn't dance, but somehow or another he has found himself here.

He has spent most of the night standing with his back to the wall, watching the people move around him in a writhing, sweating mass. Anzu is somewhere in the middle of it all, dancing sinuously with anyone who offers, her body curving easily to the rhythm of the music. Ryou finds himself wishing he could move like that, so effortlessly, shaking off his natural timidity-induced clumsiness and simply moving.

Once she tries to pull him into the dance, but he blanches, snapping at her, and she slinks away from him once more. The reaction is purely defensive, but he feels badly afterwards, apologizing profusely before excusing himself on the pretense of tiredness. And he is tired, tired of hurting people with the vestiges of Bakura woven into his personality, tired of standing against the wall when he really wants to dance with his friends.

Tired of wanting to be alone when he wants to dance with her.

3.

Anzu says she loves him, and he wonders if he's dreaming.

He thinks he loves her too, though he hasn't yet decided if he is actually capable of the sentiment.

Ryou knows that he is messed up, his isolation born of childhood scars and resultant doubts, and he wonders if he will ever be able to let anyone through his carefully constructed wall.

He wonders, seeing Anzu's innocent smile, how badly she will be hurt if he fails.

4.

Ryou sighs, has been sighing for a week, has been consistently hating himself and the worming doubt at the back of his mind.

He is beginning to feel as if love was never meant for him. He does not doubt its existence, no, for he sees it all around him—who could doubt love when Yugi walks down the street with Yami, or when Mokuba shyly kisses Rebecca on the cheek?—but he does not know if it is meant for him. His walls are mental, physical, emotional, and though he sincerely tries, they continue to stand between him and the world. He can break them no more than he could break Bakura's hold on his soul.

And he knows that Anzu wants to touch, to play, to kiss, but he can't, and he does not know when (if?) he will ever be able to. The very thought terrifies him beyond sane reasoning. He thinks about it sometimes, but thinking is very different from doing, or even from thinking about doing.

Ryou sighs and looks around his apartment, his self-made solitary confinement. He wants to be alone. He wants to be with her. He wants Bakura to be alive again, to take over his body and boot his soul to the shadows, so he doesn't have to agonize over his own stupidity.

Why isn't it raining outside?

5.

Anzu is awfully quiet.

Ryou hopes it is not something he's done, though it could by all means be just that. The curse of his introversion is that it can be taken personally, even though it isn't meant that way, and he never knows how to say the words, it's not you, it's me, without sounding clichéd or overdramatic.

Then again, he never knows if there actually is something wrong, or if he's merely being paranoid. The paranoia is a complex that has affected him for years, since before Bakura, though his presence probably did nothing to help his mental state.

Ryou does not know how to say that he's sorry when he does not know if he's done anything. He does not know how to say he loves her when his defenses remain standing against the world in its entirety. He does not know how to crumble his defenses, either, or if he would be able to live with the exposure after years of partial detachment. He does not know if he can blame his past for the way he is, or if it was a genetic inevitability. He does not know if he really knows anything at all.

He walks with Anzu, maintaining innocuous chatter and hoping she will soon snap back to herself.

Hoping he has not hurt her already.

…

(You know the drill; there's nothing to it: if you read it, you review it!)