A/N: Same deal as The Voice, if you've read that – 50 prompts, one sentence for each one. This is one is post-canon and bounceshipping (aka Ryou/Rebecca). Anzu ships it, she would so try and set Rebecca up to get her away from Yuugi. A lot of these got written when I was listening to The Hazards of Love by The Decemberists, so that's what the title ended up being. It seemed fairly fitting given what I wrote.

I should have the first chapter of Soul Release up either later tonight or some time tomorrow, God willing. This fits into that canon, so I guess you could think of it as a prequel, even though Ryou and Rebecca probably won't show up too often there. Please to enjoy.

The Hazards of Love

#1. Motion.
They were both changing incredibly fast - when Ryou finally noticed, he realized that growing up happened when you didn't even notice that your lease was up, that the agent in London was actually interested in your pitiful little manuscript, that your 4-years-younger girlfriend was a world-famous physicist, and that the puncture scars on your chest didn't even ache anymore on wet days.

#2. Cool.
"I think you're the first person that I've ever met who would describe Yuugi Mutou as cool," Ryou pointed out, and Rebecca 'hmph'ed, pushing her glasses up with a perfectly extended middle finger.

#3. Young.
Rebecca hated almost everyone when she was 12, which wasn't entirely unjustified – yes, she was 12 years old, yes, she was taking classes that were the equivalent of advanced high school senior classes, it was intensely irritating that people with half her intellect would talk down to her – and the only exceptions were two people: Yuugi Mutou and, later on, Ryou Bakura.

#4. Last.
"Listen, this is the last time I come to visit and you have a fridge full of creampuffs, okay, because we are gonna go shopping and I'm gonna teach you how to actually buy food that is good for you, and you are gonna stop being sad and start taking care of yourself – okay?"

#5. Wrong.
"This is really, really wrong, I don't want to take advantage of you, Rebecc –ah!" Ryou protested weakly as she firmly pushed him down onto the couch and started working on his shirt buttons purposefully.

#6. Gentle.
Everything about the poor guy was delicate and careful, like he was afraid that pushing anything too hard would make little spiderweb cracks thread down his fingers and down his entire body, like they'd both shatter if he was rough with anything – and she might have found it as annoying as she found it when her so-called peers treated her that way, if he weren't so earnest about it.

#7. One.
"Yuugi is the one for me, no question," Rebecca declared to him with no ounce of uncertainty during one of their Ridiculous Horror Movie Weekends, and his smile stretched unnaturally across his face, as it usually did.

#8. Thousand.
Sen meant thousand, sennen meant a millennium, and ring meant thousands of dollars he didn't have and bad memories that he was still getting over – so he bought her a necklace with a carved sapphire heart pendant, hoped it would be enough, and stashed it in his pocket until he could finally convince himself that he deserved her.

#9. King.
They met through a mutual friend – Yuugi Mutou, the Patron Saint of Friendship himself – and the first thing that Rebecca said to Ryou was, "So, if he's the Game King, does that make you the prince or the knight or the rook or something?"

#10. Learn.
One chilly, wet January, Rebecca couldn't get Ryou to talk to her – or anyone – for weeks, and then finally broke his door down to find him lying sick with flu on the floor, red, sweaty, and wearing three sweaters; books didn't teach you about what you say to your half-dead best friend when he woke up in the hospital, so she just winged it and ended up getting even more of the silent treatment after she yelled at him for not going to the doctor or at least telling someone that he had been so sick.

#11. Blur
Sometimes Rebecca got really energetic, and woe betide anyone who couldn't keep up with her frenetic movements or rapid train of thought; Ryou thought he did a rather good job of it – the secret was to just respond to things as they happened, and to not try to anticipate her movements, because there wasn't a single person alive who could possibly keep up with the mad scientist known as Rebecca Hawkins.

#12. Wait.
"Just wait, and he'll come around," Anzu told her with surprising sensitivity, and put her hand lightly on Rebecca's back in the hospital waiting room.

#13. Change.
She was surprised – and a little thrilled, in a weird way - when after she asked him if he was okay, he said, "I'm just feeling sort of depressed right now, Rebecca."

#14. Command.
After Rebecca learned a little more about the Spirit of the Millennium Ring, it made a lot of sense why Ryou never complained when she got overly bossy, so she tried to stop, but then he ended up accidentally dropping the neatly stacked, unstapled copies of her dissertation and scattering them all over her bedroom floor when she failed to tell him to keep his hands to himself.

#15. Hold.
Monster A Go-Go was one of his favorite movies, so it took him a few minutes to notice that he and Rebecca were suddenly holding hands – well, until she started stroking the inside of his hand with her thumb, and that got his attention pretty quickly.

#16. Need.
"Pay attention, 'cuz I don't say this without a hell of a lot of a reason, so don't give me this crap about not deserving it or the age difference or whatever…" Rebecca mumbled against his lips, and pulled away to look him straight in the eyes, "I want you, I need you, I love you."

#17. Vision.
Sometimes, he'd keep writing until the sun was squinting at him through the study window, and Ryou would remember that he'd told Rebecca that he just needed to make a note of something before he forgot it over nine hours ago – then, with a frustrated groan, all the images of horrifying, decaying zombies and ghosts who sewed their victims' mouths shut would disappear, and Ryou would crawl back into bed with Rebecca, who had gone to sleep as soon as he'd run out of the bedroom.

#18. Attention.
They were completely, fundamentally different, and it was never clearer to Rebecca than when she tried to explain one of the simpler theories of intermediate physics to her friend – his eyes got glassy, his smile got vacant, and his expression didn't change by even a single muscle twitch when she claimed that when an atom was split, tiny unicorns jumped out and then exploded into rainbows, and then they went to Unicorn Heaven - and then he asked (completely seriously) if it was only unicorns that jumped out, or if pegasii or centaurs could jump out too, and if they also went to Unicorn Heaven.

#19. Soul.
Sometimes, Rebecca wondered what it must be like to have to share wherever your soul went with a separate one (could they hear your thoughts, could they watch you when you shower, why did they only take over when card games were involved), but she knew better than to ask either Yuugi or Ryou – especially Ryou, because that would be incredibly heartless and cruel.

#20. Picture.
"Hey, you two, get close so I can take a picture!" Anzu cried, and Rebecca complied, grabbing Ryou by the shoulders without self-consciousness; Ryou didn't even pretend to resist, and when she got the picture from Anzu, his smile in front of the Ferris wheel was completely genuine – and that was when she knew for certain that something had changed between them.

#21. Fool.
She felt like such an idiot when she finally realized that not only did she barely know the guy that she'd been calling her boyfriend for a year and a half, but that her best friend was sending her some very obvious signals – and she liked it.

#22. Mad.
He knew he was crazy for still thinking the Spirit might come back, but it was better that he be diligent and keep Rebecca at arm's length than for her to get hurt at his hands – after all, the monster had come back over and over and over and over.

#23. Child.
Ryou felt like a sick freak when he began to look at Rebecca differently (yes, one of the first times they spent any amount of time together was technically a date, but that had been Anzu's idea to begin with, and she had this weird idea that everyone needed to pair up), because she was more than 4 years younger than he was, and it was so illegal and immoral and disgusting that he noticed that she had really fantastic legs.

#24. Now.
"So… what now?" Ryou asked, unsure of what one said after sex (getting The Talk, school presentations, and certain… videos left that part out), but Rebecca just grinned at him, and asked, "Wanna go out?"

#25. Shadow.
Even after the Spirit had been destroyed, Ryou couldn't look at his shadow without wanting to throw up – he actually started to hyperventilate once (their first Ridiculous Horror Movie Weekend, when she'd tried to dim the lights), which was probably Rebecca's first clue that he was damaged goods.

#26. Goodbye.
It was actually kind of hard to say goodbye to Ryou when the summer came to a close – even harder when he showed up at the airport to see her off, when not even Yuugi had; they embraced outside the terminal before she had to board, and she almost didn't because she started thinking stupid things about staying in Japan for a friend who she'd only known for a few months.

#27. Hide.
Rebecca had asked him why he was hiding a necklace in his pocket (it was her turn to do laundry), and his proposal ended up being a wholly unromantic and shaky "Hey, uh… wanna get married?"

#28. Fortune.
"Inheritance is gone," Rebecca said quietly (apparently, her grandfather's will had been successfully contested by the rest of her family, and all the money he'd left to Rebecca had been split amongst much older, much greedier people whose children already had trust funds), and after a long silence, Ryou got up, put Bela Lugosi Meets A Brooklyn Gorilla in the DVD player, and they curled up on the couch without saying anything more.

#29. Safe.
Rebecca might have been four years younger and a great deal smaller, but she was tough – she wasn't easily frightened, she regularly faced down (and won against) hostile colleagues three times her age who questioned her work without even a pause to form an argument and several creatively phrased insults, and she said what she thought – it was really embarrassing that he felt so safe with her, but he was almost certain that she could have faced Zorc by herself, and won without an ounce of Ancient Egyptian magic, spiritual guidance, or even a weapon beyond her own two fists and a vicious character attack.

#30. Ghost.
That thing is here, it's watching me, it's trying to get back in, he had screamed at Rebecca before she called Yuugi in terror, not knowing what else to do, you have to get away before it makes me kill you!

#31. Book.
"I did it," Ryou said breathlessly, almost not daring to believe the email from his agent that told him his manuscript had finally – finally!!! – been picked up by a publisher, and Rebecca only smiled, and responded to his quiet declaration with a squeeze of his shoulder – "You did it."

#32. Eye.
It wasn't the first time they had sex that she noticed (that time had been rather too distracting), but the second, and she'd have to be an idiot to miss the five puncture marks in a half-circle on his chest, surrounding the faint red impression of an stylized eye like the one on Yuugi's puzzle, and an even bigger one to bring them up.

#33. Never.
"If I ever become a zombie, Rebecca, make sure to shoot me in the head, because anything else won't work," Ryou said casually over dinner in a nice restaurant, and all Rebecca could think, aside from What, you're never going to be a zombie, they aren't real, was that she'd rather hang out with Ryou as a fellow zombie than shoot him – she'd never be able to do that, even if he was all green and grossified.

#34. Sing.
"I'm…" He wheezed with laughter that wouldn't be surpressed, "I'm sorry, but… oh gosh… ha ha… Rebecca, I love you, but… you cannot sing, not even close... it's like a cat is trying to call another cat so that it can get the first cat out of a washing machine!"

#35. Sudden.
"So, I'm not in love with Yuugi anymore," Rebecca said casually, and Ryou accidentally swallowed tea into his lungs.

#36. Stop.
It was hard to tell when he stopped being afraid of the Spirit's return and started living again – but eventually, he was able to turn to Rebecca and say confidently, "I love you."

#37. Time.
Rebecca found that her relationship with Ryou involved quite a lot of waiting: waiting for him to tell her what was wrong, waiting for Saturday night so that they could watch Troll 2, waiting for him to get his act together and just ask her out already like everyone knew he wanted to, waiting for summer so that she could see him again when he came to England, waiting for him to propose – and now, waiting for visiting hours at the hospital to start so that she could see if he was awake yet after his breakdown the night before… when he had started screaming that the thing that had possessed him a few years ago had come back.

#38. Wash.
They might have been completely different (Ryou, when he wasn't brooding, was something of a blithe spirit with an illogical mind, and Rebecca was to-the-point and had a mind that could devastate much older people in the field), but they were both steadfastly neat – which was good, because if Ryou were a slob, then she'd probably have to kill him just on sheer principle, because some things just were NOT acceptable.

#39. Torn.
He knew what he saw earlier that night, lurking in the shadows of their apartment even after he got over his fear of the damn things, and he knew what was happening when he felt his consciousness being torn from his body – but he couldn't let this thing win, not again, he had to keep it away from Rebecca!

#40. History.
Rebecca knew he didn't want to talk about it right now, but if he did, she wanted to be ready to listen and understand - Yuugi was kind enough to loan her his textbooks from his freshman year about basic Ancient Egyptian history, so she studied them when she had a break between her lectures, and committed otherwise useless information to memory.

#41. Power.
He said he was scared that if the thing in the Millennium Ring came back, it would make him kill her, or maybe seal her away in something easily destroyed or lost – it was a somewhat absurd thought to her until he had to go to London for a publisher's meeting, and promised he'd call her when he got to the hotel, and she ended up waiting all night because of a plane delay – he had power over her, she realized with abject horror, and she would probably let him kill her.

#42. Bother.
"I'm too much of a bother, you should just leave me and go marry a physicist or something like that," Ryou joked lightly after Rebecca complained that she was trying to work on her presentation and he was interrupting her with his hideous cuteness, but all his joke earned him was a smack on the arm and an admonishment from his girlfriend to not "be a giant dumb box of idiot tools".

#43. God.
"D'you believe in God?" Rebecca asked Ryou dully – she obviously didn't expect an answer because she was focusing on her grandfather's grave, and normally she'd call him out if he didn't answer quick enough, but he answered in his head anyway – it couldn't be just a coincidence that he knew such an amazing, wonderful woman who let him see her vulnerable when she hadn't let anyone see her that way before.

#44. Wall.
"Are you really so blandly cheerful, or is there something going on with you that you think I won't understand, so you're trying to hide it under being as inoffensive and agreeable as possbile?" Rebecca asked bluntly and eloquently.

#45. Naked.
He was very easy to impress, boobs-wise – but hey, Rebecca wasn't complaining, you work with what you got.

#46. Drive.
The drive back to their apartment was long, awkward, full of unsaid fear – it was all so frustrating and she wished she could just break the tension with a wry, sarcastic comment, but she knew that it wouldn't work with him… so she remained silent, and just held his hand the entire way home.

#47. Harm.
"I never…wanted to hurt you…" Ryou mumbled, drifting out of the medication-induced sleep that the hospital had put him under, and Rebecca replied, half giggling and half sobbing, "It'd hurt a lot more if you left me or something, you chivalrous little idiot."

#48. Precious.
After they released him from the hospital the next day (there hadn't been anything physically wrong with him, after all) and he returned to the apartment that he and Rebecca shared, she presented him with a DVD of the honest-to-god original print of Manos: The Hands of Fate (probably the worst horror movie ever dreamed up by mankind) and all he could do was hold her as tightly as he could and try not to cry like a giant girl – she understood, she actually understood… and how could he have tried to get her to leave?

#49. Hunger.
Rebecca never forgot creampuffs when it was her turn to go grocery shopping – it'd be like forgetting to buy bread.

#50. Believe.
"Believe me, you'll like him," Anzu told Rebecca confidently, and she nodded and smiled, completely certain that Anzu had no idea what she was talking about.