Rating: Still PG-13, it might change depending on the type of relationship that we decide on.

Disclaimer: Yui-gi-Oh is not mine, I'm making no money from this, never have.

Thanks lilmatchgirl007, I hope I don't disappoint you, about the angst... this was originally intended to be much darker, so some angst may reappear I'll try not to make it cliché though.

The fragments and repeats are (supposedly) intentional.

Things open up for Ryou when they shouldn't. People begin to recognize him again, step aside to let him pass, push him, pull him, dance inside their street foxtrot circle.

Try not to step on their black polish shoes.

He has always lived in those back alley out of the way spaces. The places people don't stand, don't look, don't watch or hear. But suddenly he's been pushed out into the sunlight. It hits his face; warm, utterly warm.

Almost as warm as the little room at the back of Hou Chinn's where he plays poker with Honda on Friday night. Honda's brought someone with him this time, her powdered arm around his neck; pale. Ryou thinks she'd be smoother than powdered flowers, the fine chalk dust leaking off the blackboard. She's at odds with Honda, mussed hair, coat collar turned up. Smoke furls up from him and ashes falling in the hem of clothing. The men across the table smoke, Ryou does after an afterthought, after remembering the fine angled hands of Bakura, and that was his name.

He saw it flashing gold on a little plaque on the door. When he worked up the courage, desperation, to climb into the office of hard cut edges, of papers and words ready to slit his throat.

Barbarism and business go together he thinks.

The workers stared and even their perfectly pressed shirts and glinting gold cuffs laughed softly at him. But they smiled a little. Assumed he was a poor brother, a cousin, some lone family relation wandering in with that pale pale hair.

He looked at him. He looked at him. He has eyes bluer than the dress of the secretary outside, and sharper than all the little pointed ink teeth embedded in all the papers downstairs. Under him. Over him. Beside him. So he kissed him across the desk and thought.

And thought of Honda's girl in the lamp-heat poker room, with her powdered arms and powdered cheeks. Her spring flower lips when she leaned out from her perch and kissed him with her fingers under his chin, tilting up. He thought of the breath that slipped through her lips and stole through his. It became a tiny ache inside him, like swallowing the wind.

Slam, blam, wham! Three royals on the table flickering up to him in blues and reds, yellow swords fading in with the dinghy room. It's so hot he's sweating. And he's deathly afraid he'll smear the powder on her forearm, on her wrist where it's bent under his face.

So hot.

But there had been a time, after that, in the cool stone house. There, Bakura had opened his mouth to the inside of Ryou's bare knee; moved upwards. He thought his bones would melt in the furnace of his body. He'd thought he'd crumble and break apart.

He thinks of all this in that brief heartbreaking moment of lips on lips.

He thinks of Honda's spun flower lady and her light kiss that asked nothing from him.

He thinks of Bakura's which asks for everything.

A/N: Can you tell I was spacing happy? Yeah anyways... don't worry Ryou's not going to have an affair, can't say the same for Bakura though... if you catch any stray "you"s instead of "he"s it's because octavius thinks in "you"s and then changes them to "he"s later, and that she was tired/ being lazy...erm well...please review!