Cinderella

"Hey you, with the eye!" Everyone in the crowd had at least one eye, but there was only
one person who he could be addressing.

Xigbar mimed a hand in his own direction, confused.

"I bet you have really good focus. Come here, I'll show you a card trick." He grinned,
aces.

"I don't have any money." It was kind of a desperate attempt to get the sudden attention
he'd received from the crowd off of him. To an extent, it worked. They all turned back to the
charismatic man behind the card table, the one who hadn't drawn them in with a loud sales pitch,
but rather the simple magic of street performers. Put down a table, shuffle out some cards, and
people appear to see what you're doing. It was the legacy of performers past, those that worked
to bedazzle, leaving impressions in the minds of their audiences so that they became curiously
attracted toward having another taste.

"Magic does not wait for nor depend on monetary matters."

Cards appeared in his hands, so natural that his fingers seemed clumsy without their
presence. Cards seemed to fly from left to right, guided by his will alone. Though he'd have long
ago denounced himself as having outgrown such tricks, the man did them with such a mastery
that it hypnotized even Xigbar. There was no real magic here, of course, just long practiced
movements - the Organization member would have been able to taste the magic in the air, feel it
drawn out from the atmosphere to create illusion or reality. The inhabitants of this world had, so
far, seemed immune to the magic in their midst. In fact, they downright denied and ignored it. It
was fascinating to see them gather in around for false magic, believing only for a few short
moments before they bustled on their way. He pushed his way forward, and rested his knuckles
on the green felt of the table while the magician shuffled.

"Aren't you going to let me pick a card?" Xigbar asked, focusing on the cards that
seemed to almost float in formations before the man's chest.

"Patience is the key to magic." The man said. Xigbar looked up, took in the rest of the
man's appearance, the close-trimmed beard, hair that almost matched it's length. Earrings swung
from each lobe as he moved, glinting almost in synch with his grin. "What's your name?"

Xigbar answered automatically. The magician exchanged his real name for Xigbar's code,
spreading fifty two cards into two arcs on the table. The jokers sat out to the side, separated in a
move that Xigbar could not remember if he tried.

Xigbar pulled a card from the spread on the table, careful to keep it flat on the surface
until he had it safely in his gloved hands. He flipped it carefully in his fingers, noting the suit first
- inverted hearts with tails. Spades. The two. The image overlapped the two icons at the edges of
their curves, diagonal, barely touching, but there it was. The second realized he was staring at the
card overlong in his memorization.
When he glanced up, he met the dealer's gaze over the edge of the card. Confidence
radiated forward. Xigbar began to put the card down, and the man's mouth shaped the words
‘two of spades' before it hit the table, eyes tracking Xigbar's expression, rather than the card's
revealing descent to the tabletop.

"I don't have time for this." Xigbar made his best approximation of a flippant, dismissive
gesture, though he didn't really care, he had the distinct feeling he had somehow been led to pick
exactly the card the man wanted him to. That there was some kind of symbol in it, a meaning for
him to read himself. He moved on, leaving the crowd to gather in behind and try their hands at
the magician's tricks.

If he bothered to measure time, it was only hours later that the ravenous shadows tore
themselves free, hungry for the hearts they could no longer possess. They smacked their lips at
the prospects of the easy pray, scuttling into action and throwing the world into chaos. They
skated carefully around the nobody, forms wobbling.

He was surprised - or rather, not surprised really, but he did not expect to find Xemnas
crouched amidst the scattered remains of a table, pulling the wreckage of a being from the
wreckage of dice and cards.

Xigbar pretended not to see.

Even after he forgot most everything else, his hands remembered card tricks, long turned
to instinct. They practiced tricks endlessly, as if the instincts could conjure up a real counterpart
to their phantom emotions. Luxord could still smile and remember how it felt to dazzle and wow
spectators. Even now that he had real magic, he'd have given it all up to go back to cheap
illusions created with sleight of hand.

Luxord could juggle. Xigbar could, too, but he had to manipulate gravity in his favor to
compensate for the hand speed he could not match. It ruined half the fun of it. The rest of the fun
was ruined by the fact that no one cared. The other nobodies would never comment, impassive to
the known factors of juggling. There was nothing undiscovered in it - not scientifically. Nor was
there the childish wonder at something that could not be mastered without enough practice to
make the motions into familiarities.

They encountered each other rarely, Xigbar suspecting the other remembered nothing of
him before the Organization - indeed, he doubted that even had the man retained his heart and
they had met again, that he would be remembered. It was a magician's duty to call in strangers,
the more the better, and luckier if they never saw you again to ask how.

They met alone at breakfast, both late. Luxord may have been on time, but he sat with his
food picked over and deep in thought, feet propped on the chair that number eight usually
slouched in. Xigbar had been kept late, distracted by Xaldin - the man had ambushed him with a
request for a spar, tempering his fine control over wind. It had really been an excuse to talk -
exchange words, worries really, over Xemnas. Xaldin had little to say when he weighed ten times
his normal amount and his spears dragged their tips heavily in the mud, though he could not be
angry. Xigbar was at as much of a loss over what to do about the Superior as the third, and
Xaldin related better to the man. Recently, all that Xigbar had wanted to do - and it was far
harder to resist without fear reminding him of the man's ability to shoot lasers from his palms -
was grab Xemnas by the lapels and shake him. Often the desire was accompanied by one to
proclaim the man's insanity over and over, to his face.

In Luxord's hand, the deck of cards divided, folded over, and rejoined halves into a
whole. The motion repeated hypnotically while he thought, as reflexive as breathing, more like
the beat of the heart in it's undeniable motion. One could think not to breathe, but the cards
moved in Luxord's hand like a pulse, slow and steady. Unceasing.

"I'll make you a bet." His lowered lashes made his blue eyes appear smoky, and sly.

"You'll fix the cards." Xigbar protested, pushing his breakfast around on it's plate more
than eating it.

"If you catch me cheating, you'll win."

"What will I win?"

Luxord smiled, wild and almost flippant. Cards moved in a graceful arc between his
fingers, shuffling together with sharp, suggestive whispers. His attention did not waver from
Xigbar, focused.

Xigbar felt his eyebrows raise, the corner of his mouth turned up in the old memory of a
sarcastic sneer that might once have protected him from a stranger's advance. Now, he realized,
he did not particularly care to deny his interest.

"And if you win?"

"There really aren't going to be any losers, here." Luxord promised. He put the stack of
cards on the table, pushed it toward Xigbar. "Guess what I'm thinking of."

When he picked them up, the Second found the cards warm from wherever they'd been
hidden in Luxord's coat.

He glanced the cards over, pushing the deck slowly from his right hand to his left, then he
looked up. There were two cards set at careful inversion to each other, one the ace of spades, the
other the jack of the same suit.

"This is a trick." Xigbar guessed.

Luxord just grinned. "Do you accept the bet or not?"


Weeks later, he caught Xaldin grumbling away at mopping the floor when it should have been
Luxord's shift. The other man averted his eyes when Xigbar approached, mopping with extra
determination at some imagined persisting stain.

"Lost a bet." He growled, glancing up at Xigbar accusingly.

Xigbar grinned it off.

His eyes were dark for a moment, contemplating. Xigbar felt distinctly like his odds were
being weighed. Luxord was guessing at his chances of success, which didn't surprise Xigbar but
made him wonder at his own appearance of availability. Maybe the fact that he spent so much
time with Xaldin made him seem less approachable.

Luxord's hands described a deck of cards in the naked air, and one came into his gloves
like a tame bird. Weather this was a magician's sleight or real magic was up to speculation.

He handed them over for inspection. The deck was composed entirely of hearts, four
perfect sets. Xigbar checked the backs carefully at Luxord's urging. The back of the deck
featured a man balancing on a unicycle, a mirror image of himself in a pond below. Xigbar could
not see any marks.

Xigbar held the cards to his chest. "What's the trick?" He asked suspiciously. Luxord
smiled, sharkish. Suspicion raising, Xigbar pressed. "You can't expect me to bet without
knowing the terms or the game."

"I think you're the sort to take a gamble."

Luxord was right.

The breakfast table was long cleared, and the lights left low. The others had abandoned
the one communal area and gone off to lose themselves in diversions of research or false
aggression. Pretend politics, in some cases. Xigbar and Luxord sat across from each other at one
end of the table, the deck of cards having somewhere in the interim returned to a normal array of
suits. Luxord fanned them out to reveal hearts, spades, clubs and diamonds. He pushed them all
back together again.

Then they were in his hands again, an endless motion of the cards, ebbing like the sea
between his hands. The tide came in, in the form of two hands dealt on the table.

Luxord set the remainder of the deck of cards on the table. Xigbar caught his hand as it
was retreating, turning the palm up to the light. The cardmaster's palm was empty.

"I'm not cheating." He grinned, retrieving his hand from Xigbar's grip. "There's no
need."

"Unless you get a bad hand."

"There's no such thing." Luxord picked up his cards. "Just a shortage of confidence."

Xigbar followed the motion, glancing at his array. His hand had four spades, non-
sequential, and the ten of clubs. Garbage. He looked closer, raking his memories for how the
game worked. Two of spades, ace of spades, ten of clubs, jack of spades, queen of spades. It was
a garbage hand, ace-queen high.

"Poker is all about taking what you get and turning it into something you can win with."

"Cinderella." Xigbar said, surveying his cards almost owlishly, trying to keep a frown
from his features.

"You got it." Luxord openly grinned at the cards he held.

Uncertain weather it was a bluff or genuine, Xigbar weighed his options. He could fold,
and risk nor gain nothing but another chance. He could try to feel Luxord out, see if there was a
bluff behind his smile. He could bluff for himself, if he hadn't already fatally wounded his
ability. He doubted he had an honest win in his hand.

Luxord was measuring him, blue eyes fixed on him over his handheld wall of red and
white, unicyclists balancing upside-down over his finger tips. Xigbar guessed he'd already lost at
both parts of poker - bluff and truth. He went for it anyway, anteing up. Chips clattered to the
center of the table, and he only wondered for a second where Luxord had found real poker chips.
They probably came when he called.

Bets went up, and up. Chips that stood for nothing piled in the center of the table,
growing at the same rate that Luxord's smirk did. Finally, Xigbar called, laying out his hand on
the table. Luxord laughed, raked chips toward himself.

"I was bluffing." He admitted, but pushed forward a full house of threes and twos. It was
better than Xigbar's hand, but only just. He grinned, his pile of chips considerably larger.

"I still don't know what I lost."

"Care to play again? Double or nothing."

The cards folded themselves up into Luxord's hands, again fluttered to rest on the table in
two groups of five. Xigbar covered his hand, glanced up, measured. What the hell, he decided.
Just a game.

He glanced at his cards - better, a flush. He glanced at Luxord, who looked dead serious,
staring intently at his cards. There was no hint of his former levity, no smirk. Xigbar was again at
a loss - his bluff had been confidence - could this be the indication that he had a real hand to win
with? Or was it just another magic trick - reversing his reactions to his cards this time, to throw
Xigbar off. He scowled - how was he supposed to learn or win this game - though he supposed
with time and observation, he would learn how to read Luxord's poker face.

He threw his cards down on the table. "I fold."

He wasn't entirely certain the exact chain of events. Luxord revealed his hand, but Xigbar
barely had the time to process the fact that he would have had the superior card array before
Luxord was right there next to him, frowning fiercely, in direct violation of his personal space,
reaching around his shoulders to flip the tossed cards on the table upright. He snarled at their
revelation - the sound running straight down Xigbar's spine at it's proximity to his ear.

"Hey - what..." Xigbar heard himself talking, but at the same time he was twisting,
reaching up. His hand scrabbled for purchase at the back of a short-scruffed neck, while Luxord's
fingers slid right at the roots of Xigbar's hair, before it was gathered together in it's long tail.
Both gripped fiercely, pulling, mouths meeting in an empty hunger. Feral instinct took hold from
there, emotion having no space nor hold. Neither was sure that were it present, there would have
been much difference.

The slide of their bodies together made the chair creak protest, and unspoken, they agreed
to the trek to another room - a more private place, though where they ended up was questionably
a study. Things changed around sometimes, doors leading where people needed them to, in this
case an office with a desk and a couch, blank papers scattered in a mockery of the work one
might do here, in direct accordance with the blank books they were researched from.

"I had a good hand," Xigbar protested, hands covering Luxord's where they were swift
fingering his zipper loose.

"You didn't have enough confidence in it."

"You could have been cheating."

"I didn't need to." A push, and the backs of Xigbar's knees hit the couch. "Why are you
so confident at everything else, yet you falter in a game of cards?"

Clothes for both were half dealt to the floor, Xigbar's hands moving without his thought
to push the other's coat from his shoulders in almost the same motion as his own was roughly
yanked free, then tangled about his arms. Luxord grinned, and lifted his hands from Xigbar's
chest to up the ante, discarding his own pants. The Second wrestled his arms free.

"I can't read you."

"Nobodies can't be read." But the conversation - or at least the important part of it - was
over. The rest was cover-chatter, fueling their bluffs.

There was a soft rush of breath as their bodies folded together, skin sliding against bare
other. Luxord was smiling, but his eyes held a lusty tell, a spark of truth that was all feral instinct
- could not possibly be anything other than an emotion of the body.

"Why couldn't you call my bluff?" Luxord wondered in pants and sighs, bodies tangled
together on the couch. His manipulative fingers coiled firmly around Xigbar's length, coaxing
and cunning as he ever was.

Xigbar answered with the memory of a smile. His fingers uncoiled from his coat where it
had fallen on the cushions, then moved firmly to Luxord's shoulders. As smoothly as money
changing hands, he took control. His hands removed Luxord's touch, turned the situation around
in his favor. He applied the careful lever of strength and the pull of gravity, pushing Luxord's
back down into the couch, the man's grin answering, cheshire in nature.

His knee encountered, by chance, a lump in the pocket of Luxord's coat. He ignored it
presently, though with the hand not currently trailing the long way down Luxord's chest, he
explored it's definition. Cylindrical, with give - a bottle. It had something softer and smaller,
square, in company. He felt his mouth twist, and he left them be - they were in easy reach when
he needed them.

Luxord twisted slowly in place, perhaps impatient, or testing his restraint. Xigbar released
the pull enough to give Luxord's hands some liberty, as he went down on his elbows, one hand
curling about the gambler's thigh while the other took hold of his erection - an intake of breath,
the blonde's chest hitched up slowly against gravity. Hands tangled in his hair, pulling. Xigbar
heard the dull snap of elastic against flesh as Luxord transferred the holder from his hair onto his
own wrist, fingers pulling sharply now that they had good holds. Yanking fingers tried to turn the
advantage again, to salvage his bluff.

Xigbar sank his mouth down onto Luxord's length, and the fight went out of him, fingers
going lax. Instead of pulling, they stroked, encouraged. He went silent - a welcome change. None
of the thirteen were really chatty, but Luxord spoke more than most. Now he was silent except
for the occasional deep ‘mmm-mmm' in his chest, as Xigbar drew back in his rhythm. Actively,
his mind tried to overwhelm with rational thought, but he pushed it down, away. Whenever it
tried to make calculated observations, he pushed the thoughts down into the depths of instinct,
surrendering to the coaxing of blood rushing, fingers pulling and shifting.

Both lost organization to their thoughts, letting their bodies rush them on and pushing
aside everything but sensation. Emotion would have made it better, and it's ghost haunted, but
did not interrupt. Finally, the Second pulled back, pawed the contents of Luxord's pocket free, let
up on the hold he had on the gambler. They arrayed themselves, Luxord planting his knees
carefully on the narrow couch. It was a long, slow slide to completion, Xigbar's hands described
themselves in Luxord's hips, and Luxord pulled one of their coats - no sense trying to tell the
difference now - into two taut handfuls.

Then it became a game of holding, pushing back the inevitable, raising the stakes. They
both held, Xigbar pushing hard, his hands braced one on the back of the couch, the other over
Luxord's shoulder. For his part, Luxord had firm hold of himself in time - they both pushed
faster, daring the other to continue. The second could slowly feel his control fraying away, a
snapping cord one thread at a time. He was so focused on that, that it wasn't quite expected when
the last of it gave, his hips losing rhythm, pushing deep on instinct, locking.

Luxord made a noise too, not a second later, his motions stilling in the same instant, a
heartbeat later.

It didn't last long - the distraction. Xigbar had the presence of mind to pull away before it
was awkward, and from there, his rational mind swept in, ready to snatch up all the crumbs of
almost emotion, and lock them away. Luxord chuckled, shifting, resting on the couch easily. It
was a bluff. He raked one hand through his short hair, glanced up - deliberate, slowly. It drew
Xigbar's attention to the elastic that was still on the gambler's wrist. There was something about
it's presence that made him want to snatch it back, at the same time, it would reveal that this had
affected him. Xigbar worked a lazy smile into place on his features.

"Keep it." Xigbar said, gathering up his coat - more damp of the two. It could have been
just his imagination, but Luxord's blue eyes, for a moment, were almost confused. Then he
smiled, a game smile, ready for the next hand.

"My lucky day."


*Author's note: There's an explanation for Xigbar's hand. Luxord uses the two of clubs to
represent his interest in Xigbar - two inverted hearts. The suit is also black, so I thought it was
more fitting than hearts. Anyway, the two of spades represents them as a couple. Ace of spades is
Luxord, as it is often used as the wild card, and is the defining card of a deck, with it's elaborate
design often including the card manufacturer's logo. A 10 card is often referred to as a ‘chain'
card, having several rows of symbols chained together. I used clubs because spades would have
given him a decent hand, and again, it's a black suit. The jack of spades is Xigbar - it's a one-
eyed jack, black suit. Then there's the queen of spades, often referred to as the bedpost queen, for
the ‘scepter' she's holding - it rather does look like an ornate bedpost. Luxord expresses, with
the hand he deals Xigbar, a desire to chain the man up to a bedpost. :)