"Although I don't know whether anyone would use a change-purse to carry sex-supplies"

I totally do that. I liked the story, bit too sad to my likes but I think that was the idea of it.

I should probably tell you straight away, this wasn't the sort of story I was expecting from the summary and the 'angst/friendship' bit when I clicked on it. Not that that's a bad thing, but just so you know.

Ryou/Yugi isn't exactly my favourite pairing, but when it's done with these reasons and in this style, I like it because it often seem IC .

I would've liked for there to be more character focus, but the lemon was well written, especially for a twenty minute thing XD Well done!

Yay, heartshipping! The universe needs more heartshipping.

I liked how you kept the underlying theme of despair going throughout the entire fic, even in the sex scene - "sounds almost like sobs" was a very evocative phrase. And I also liked that you acknowledged the complexity of Ryou's relationship with Bakura, that sometimes Ryou took on a nurturing role and that he's falling into the same role with Yuugi. Having Ryou be the dominant partner fit in with the more powerful characterization you've crafted for him throughout all your fics.

You also do a good job capturing a lot of Yuugi's emotions- his loneliness, his desire to distract himself, his feeling of weakness now that his more dominant half was gone, his need to be nurtured, protected, maybe even dominated, to fill the hole Atem left behind.

However, while I like to see flawed/insecure Yuugi, here he was a little too weak for my taste (what with the squeezing his eyes shut when he talks, the sob-like thing during sex, the crying afterwards). That's not to say this characterization is unreasonable- I think I would've bought that level of weakness if you'd have delved more into his relationship with Atem and how that relationship contributed to his weakness. The problem was that, while we got almost two paragraphs on the Ryou/Bakhura relationship, all we got on the Yuugi/Atem relationship was 'Yuugi's shadow had been a protector.'

But considering that I've been reading your fics since July, and that's the only negative thing I've ever had to say in all that time, I think you should be quite proud of yourself. D Also, the last line was absolutely heartbreakingly beautiful. The whole last paragraph was really well done, an insightful take on how a sexual relationship doesn't have to be romantic to be meaningful. But there's also a bitterness there, like what they're doing isn't going to help either of them in the end, that they're going to be stuck in this sort of helpless neediness that, in the end, won't pull either of them out of their loneliness.

All in all, this was definitely a job well done!