Title: The Dating Game

Summary: The first time it happened, Tokio was surprised and a little amused. By the time it happened for the twentieth time, Tokio was getting worried.

Word Count: 530

The first time it happened, Tokio was surprised and a little amused.

She was on a date with a man Teruhime had introduced her to, and about five minutes into it, Tokio had known this was not going to work, but she figured that at the very least, she could get a nice dinner out of it.

It was during the main course that her thoughts drifted to Saitou, in an absent sort of way. She'd wondered if he'd like the restaurant her date had brought her to:

"This is some pansy-ass crap." the Saitou-in-her-head sneered, and she laughed because it sounded like something he might say, and then had to assure her poor date that she had not been laughing about the recent demise of his beloved lizard, Godzilla.

The second time it happened, she was at a social function with Yuichi-san, and bored out of her mind. And Saitou suddenly came to mind while she was standing next to Yuichi-san and nursing a Cosmopolitan in polite silence while he made conversation. She smiled to herself when she imagined what he might say if he were there with her:

"Oh to hell with this—I'm going to a bar and getting a beer. Come on Chiisai, let's blow this joint."

By the time it happened for the twentieth time, Tokio was getting worried, because she tended to spend most of her dates these days comparing Saitou to whoever she was with, and the poor man never had a chance in hell of winning that competition.

One man almost won because he sort of reminded her of Saitou, just a smarmier version that occasionally made her want to whack him really, really hard. Not that Saitou didn't have that effect on her, but it didn't usually come out of nowhere, sudden and overpowering, the way it did with this guy; with Saitou, there was usually a build-up, a gradual progression in the urge to do him violence. So she was sort of glad, when he ran out of his own apartment screaming at the top of his lungs the night he found out who her father was. Maybe her only regret was that she had sex with him before their relationship ended, but even that wasn't a complete loss, as far as she was concerned—at least she wasn't going to die a virgin now.

It also helped that Saitou-in-her-head scoffed:

"What a fucking pussy."

But she still wasn't entirely comfortable with this weird penchant she had for thinking of Saitou at wildly inappropriate or random times. It seemed a little obsessive and sad to her, that she was reduced to escaping into her head.

Not that she ever shared this tendency with him, of course—he teased her enough as it was. If he heard she was thinking of him when she was with other men, she'd never live it down.

So Tokio resigned herself to a life of dating men who weren't Saitou and then subconsciously punishing them for it.

And if that was a little twisted, well, it shouldn't really come as much of a surprise—the object of her affections was one twisted guy, after all.