Anzu never did like liars so it's okay when Otogi never mentions a thing about love.

There are a lot of things she's starting to see; shadows curled around her ribs in flutters and rotting flesh brushed against her skin at night. Jounouchi even looks like a talking corpse and Honda decays right before her eyes. Sometimes she thinks she sees a blurry Yuugi but he's always going, going gone (or was that the other Yuugi?)

She thinks, "I'm a little crazy." Which kind of makes sense since she has been through a lot of crazy shit lately.

---

She cried when he left because he didn't even spare her a glance. She'd never met someone like the other Yuugi before- oh wait, wrong name. She'd never met someone like Atemu before. But she tells herself it's a useless dead-end love anyways.

Was. She meant was.

After he left with a smile for Yuugi and a nod for Honda and a thumbs-up for Jounouchi, and nothing for Anzu, she goes to the arcade the day she comes back to Domino and dances on the DDR machine. Dances until sweat spins off in little droplets, and the shirt sticks to the small of her back to the insides of her thighs. Life is short and unfair and sometimes you were born only to die, but right now she is alive- right now, he is dead and she is alive.

She dances until she runs out of coins and notices Otogi among the crowd watching her.

"You're pretty good." He says.

She comes back to dance again the next day and the day after and the day after that. It was dumb wasting so much money on some game but she's wasted her time on dumber things and this is where she danced for him on that date so long ago.

Otogi comes to watch as well. Standing exactly where he had stood. She wonders idly what she looks like looking at him looking at her dance.

"So, how about dinner?" He asks her on the fifth day.

---

His hair is out of its usual ponytail and it tickles her face.

Anzu wants him. She kisses him wanting, wanting, always wanting. Lips soft, slightly chapped, tongue tracing the inside of her dry mouth and she can't breathe. He's dragging his teeth down her neck and she can't think.

She's crushing herself into his lean, hard body and wants more, more, pretty please?

---

"He's a total player, Anzu!" Jounouchi disapproves. Big surprise.

Honda stares at her like she's grown an extra head.

Yuugi says nothing at all and it hurts more than it should.

---

Otogi is the biggest flirt Anzu has ever known and she hates it and thrills in it at the same time. He makes her feel good enough.

And he is fond of her. He really is.

While she stumbles through stories she weaves inside her head, he's usually the one catching her over and over again. "Stories are nice but that's all they are," he chides and pushes her against the wall to show her how real they were.

But she forgets not too longer after and it becomes an endless cycle. Not that he minds of course.

"Call me Ryuuji." He says, but she hasn't gotten the hang of it yet.

---

"Why put up with me?"

"I like seeing you dance." And he'll kiss her questions away until they shrivel up in her mouth.

---

Anzu looks like a pretty doll next to Otogi at business parties.

"Try not to get lost." He jokes because she often wanders at these boring, stifling parties (she feels like a thirty year old, even though she's only eighteen). It's Seto Kaiba's mansion, so she thinks she probably will get lost. Half an hour later, she catches Otogi kissing another woman in one of the unoccupied rooms. It takes two long strides to get in front of him and one hard slap across his face for her to realize, with a sudden shock that keeps her immobile, that she is jealous.

---

"Do you hate me?" He asks when he goes to visit her, dragging on a cigarette dangling from his mouth. He isn't going to apologize because he never does anything he regrets.

She swallows. "No."

"Good." He nods almost to himself and he's bending down to where she is curled up on an armchair, touching his forehead to hers. "You don't need me."

He turns to go, leaving behind cigarette smoke for her to remember him by.

---

It wasn't love but it was something. And Anzu is glad because something was better than nothing at all.

---

xxx

There really should be more stories about this pairing. Well-written ones I mean. Even Yami Malik/Anzu is more popular (seriously, wtf?). Review and I will love you forever.