Hostshipping (Bakura Ryo/Mazaki Anzu)

. . .

"I mean just—god."

She hiccuped once, holding the bottle in both hands as she rocked back and forth slowly on her seat, eyes out of focus.

"Can you just—even imagine. How things would have gone without those fricking Egyptian jewelry shits falling into our lives."

He shook his head in response, his eyes unfocused at the ceiling as though the meaning of life might be there. He leaned against the back of the couch with his own empty glass dangling from one hand. Her knee dug up into his from where she sat beside him but neither was really sure if the other was aware. They sat alone in the corner of the dimly lit living room. Anzu, perched on the edge of her seat with her drink clutched against her chest, Ryo with his head rolled back and his thoughts scattered all over the shag carpeted floor. The Hopkins' house was like something out of the American 70's—Rebecca had been complaining loudly about it about a half hour earlier, waving her hands around with her cheeks flushed and Jonouchi snickering absently at her disgust with her grandpa's old-ass house.

Yugi had cut Rebecca off several hours ago, though, insisting that just because it was her twenty-first birthday didn't mean she hadto get completely plastered. She was probably asleep upstairs by now. Yugi, the ever present mother hen, had left several minutes ago to drive some of the boys back to their hotel. Anzu had heard him muttering about how crazy everyone got after a tournament while he tried to haul Jonouchi in one arm and Honda in the other. Kaiba had left the party hours before, with a twisty look on his face that made him look like he was going to throw up. Odd, since, like Yugi, he hadn't touched a glass of alcohol.

Anzu really hadn't meant to drink as much as she had, but after a few she had just started to feel like crying and thought that maybe another one would make the feeling stop. Ryo hadplanned on drinking quite a bit, as after watching the tournament he had had another panic attack—the worst one out of the five he'd had this month—and thought it would calm him down.

Somehow they had found each other at the back of the room, alone but for the soupy hiss of faraway voices still chatting in the kitchen, echoing and swirling through the air like fog around them.

Anzu took another swig, but it didn't stop the feeling of the tears prickling in her eyes.

"Just—god."

Ryo hmmmed in agreement, and then seemed to think better of it. He mumbled something she couldn't hear.

"What?"

He tried again.

"God had nothing to do with it," he said, his words rolling together.

Anzu couldn't find anything at all at fault with that statement, so she just stared at the wall for a moment to think it over. Then she nodded, and took another sip.

"We wouldn't even fucking be here," she mumbled. "Wouldn't even be here."

Ryo nodded. He closed his eyes for a moment, thinking for half a second that not being here might not have been so bad. Without the Ring, his family would still be alive. He wouldn't be having panic attacks every other day.

"So much shit happened," Anzu said. "Almost got molested like a billion times. I dunno maybe that would have happened anyway. Men are shit."

"Mmm," Ryo said in agreement.

"Got turned into stone," said Anzu in between another sip. "Got sealed in a figurine. Thrown into ancient Egypt and almost died there. Milestones I didn't think I was gonna check off."

Ryo actually felt a chuckle bubble up in his chest at that, and then both of them were giggling softly. She started to rock a little bit more until the giggles threw her off balance and she collapsed next to him. She laid there for a moment, her shoulder digging into his.

"Was it all bad though?" she murmured. "Do you think it would be better if it had all never happened?"

Ryo wanted to say yes. It was his first thought, at least. He thought about his panic attacks. About the car accident, the gravestones with his mother's and sister's names, the distant father that never came home, the hopping from school to school trying to find someplace safe for once in his life, somewhere he could live.

Anzu looked into the kitchen. She could barely see them from here with her blurred vision and the weird angle, but she could see the outline of him, at least, the silhouette of his spiked hair and the glint from the reading glasses he had forgotten to take off again. The girl with the long red hair pulled into a bun behind her head, smiling as she swapped some sort of story with him, the boy with the messy black hair finally cut short after years of being almost as long as he was, the tall woman in the cropped jacket with her makeup wiped off for the night, her eyelashes still looking so long and dark, the dark haired woman with the soft smile and the azure blue eyes who laughed at something that the blond had said. She could name all of them without even thinking about it, even the ones who weren't there.

He could name them too, as he saw her gaze, and followed it into the kitchen.

Yugi. Jonouchi. Honda. Otogi. Shizuka. Ishizu. Marik. Rishid. Mai. Mokuba. Kaiba. Rebecca.

The list could go on, forever and ever. People they never would have met. A life they never would have had.

"No," Ryo finally whispered, as he dropped his free arm over her shoulders in an attempt to quell the shaking that had started there. He could feel her tears staining into his shirt as she pressed her eyes against his shoulder. "No, it wouldn't have been better. It wasn't all bad."

"Good," she whispered back. "That's...good."

. . .

A/N: Not gonna lie, kinda ship this a little. Next is Hopeshipping (Anzu x Ryo x Shizuka)