![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chirurgiqueTitle: Drive My Own Car, I Don’t Like the Valet
Fandom: Kingdom Hearts
Relationship: Xigbar & Luxord
Rating: PG
Content notes: vehicular peril, threatened kidnapping
Words: 1,495
Summary: The city on the Other Side has been a great place to get some work done on the Master’s grand plan without having to worry about dealing with prying eyes. So great, in fact, that Xigbar has started to let his guard down. But all it takes is getting in the wrong cab once to remind him that he should really know better than to drop his poker face before the hand is called.
“Shinjuku Prince Hotel,” Xigbar offered, a little more gruffly than he would usually like, as he bent his head to enter the backseat of the cab. Normally he wasn’t above all kinds of schmoozing and small talk, but it was already a long night that only promised to get longer. Hanging out in the big city had its perks, but enough time spent standing in the rain, catching weird looks for the coat, was enough to make you miss fantasyland more than was probably reasonable.
Luckily the cab driver was a good sport, and took his payment without taking his passenger’s attitude personally. That was the life of the rank-and-file, wasn’t it. Keeping your head down and not letting the sour grapes of the unwashed masses get to you. Xigbar silently offered a prayer to the long-suffering working stiffs of the world.
He wearily opened his phone and started to scroll through his texts. It was kind of an aspirational motion, since none of his companions had really taken to the technology of the Other Side. Never mind that phones were apparently also a thing on the main side these days, anyway — those guys weren’t from “these days” and weren’t about to change. He was getting pretty sick of communicating only in visions and portents. And they wondered why the plan was so far behind schedule.
“Not finding what you had hoped?”
Ah, so the cab driver was gonna be a small talker after all. Well, far be it from Xigbar to stick it to the little guy. He suppressed a sigh, summoned his best roguish grin, and looked up.
“Nope! Guess Lady Luck’s already hit the hay for tonight.”
The driver chuckled, and pulled up at a stoplight. The light of passing cars caught his earrings as he did. The guy had quite a few piercings, blonde hair cropped close, and an impressive widow’s peak that Xigbar could see reflected in the rearview mirror. It was quite a look all told. It kind of reminded Xigbar of... reminded him of...
“Ah. Whoops.”
Luxord chuckled, and, as the light went green in front of them, started slowly accelerating into the intersection. Xigbar very briefly considered opening the door and risking a tuck-and-roll.
Instead he just locked his phone. “You’re getting the drop on me a lot lately! Guess I’m out of practice.”
“Indeed. So much time in the shadows, have you forgotten what it’s like to step into the spotlight?”
Things had been so busy lately that Xigbar had almost completely forgotten about this particular headache. But now that he was back, it was like he had never left. His infuriating cordial tone, for example, was the same as ever.
“As if. I’m not trying out for the lead role, here.”
“Are you not?” Luxord prompted lightly. Small talk, huh.
“Nah, I like the backseat. It’s got the best view.” He leaned back, arm across the headrests, and cast his gaze out the window. The neon of the passing city was distorted beyond all recognition by the rain and condensation.
“I see. So your predilection for the life of a passenger is what led you here tonight?”
“Eh, I’m not gonna pretend that you didn’t get my goat on this one. Call it an unlucky mistake.”
Luxord switched on the turn signal. “Well, that’s understandable,” he commented with a sympathy that Xigbar struggled to peg as sarcastic. “It’s quite easy to lose track of things these days. Why, just recently I happened to misplace a very important letter.”
“That so?”
“Indeed... Next time I receive something of such import, I’ve half a mind to tie it around my neck so as not to lose it.”
“Sounds like a good way to choke.”
Luxord chucked, and pulled the wheel from one hand to another like he was spinning silk.
Xigbar raised his hand and rubbed the underside of his jaw absentmindedly. “So what’s the angle?”
“Angle?”
“I’m guessing you didn’t go to all the trouble of getting your enemy in the car for no reason.”
Luxord hummed. “That remains to be seen, I suppose. Do you consider us enemies?”
“You don’t?”
“Opponents, perhaps, but not enemies. I don’t wish you ill.”
“A lucky break for me, huh.” Xigbar drummed his fingernails on the plastic under the car’s window.
“And you?”
Xigbar could feel Luxord’s eyes on him from the rearview, so he kept his own on his hand.
“What I wish doesn’t really factor into it.”
He would be shocked if this sort of cheap sedan was really Luxord’s taste, so it must not be his own ride. It really was a cab. It mollified Xigbar a little to know that he hadn’t lost the plot so much as to mess that one up, at least.
“I should like to hear the story, one day.”
Xigbar snorted. “I mean, ditto.”
Luxord took another corner. His handling really was butter-soft.
“Man, not that I want you to be jumping curbs or anything, but you’d think that the designated Time Guy would have ways of getting through traffic,” Xigbar decided to complain. “At this rate it’s gonna be stupid o’clock in the morning by the time I get some shuteye. Can’t even start moving to my secondary location ’til this leg’s done, y’know?” Was it a dereliction of duty to not have a secondary location? Was it sloppy? No, under normal circumstances there should be nothing wrong with getting a cab straight to his hotel. He was just having a bad night, was all. Cards hadn’t been in his favour.
“It would certainly be convenient to attempt to slow the river of time in order to reach our destination quickly. But by that logic, would it not also behove you to simply teleport?”
“Well, y’know. Gotta keep a low profile.”
“Of course. But who is the profiler, I wonder?”
Xigbar let it hang, and Luxord didn’t push. Guess it was a rhetorical question.
Even then, had he already said too much? How to even tell? The state of play was hard to discern, impossible to grasp. Forget poker, they were playing fifty-two pickup.
The rain streaked down the window, lashing into view out of the darkness. The car slowed once again to a stop.
“Shinjuku Prince,” Luxord said lightly.
It took Xigbar a second to get his brain back to a dimension where he could recognize that that was his hotel. He sat up, rubbing the back of his head cheekily, and went to unclip his seatbelt, only to find that he had apparently never done it up.
“Thank you for your patronage. I do hope you’ll have a good rest of your evening.” With a thunk, the car’s doors all unlocked, the locking of which in the first place Xigbar also hadn’t noticed. Great work tonight, Luxu.
“It can only get better from here,” he drawled as he lazily opened the door, taking his time to step out. Luxord rolled the driver’s window down, and Xigbar obligingly slouched over to it, ready to grin down daggers at him.
Luxord greeted his approach by snapping his wrist up through the open window, something held between his index and middle fingers. Xigbar almost flinched as if it were a weapon, one of Luxord’s arcana. He was only half-wrong.
“My card,” said Luxord. “If you’d like.”
Xigbar took it, making a show of pinching it between a thumb and a finger like he was expecting it to bite. Luxord offered him a sly smile, and a nod. Then, he rolled up the window, smoothly pulled the car away from the curb, and drove off into the night.
Xigbar watched him go, an unassuming cab rejoining the flow of traffic, and made sure to take note of the license plate, so that that particular cab would never catch him assuming again. And then he turned his attention to the card.
For some reason he had expected it to be a business card. You know, with contact information? To keep in touch? But instead the Jack of Hearts stared up at him with one baleful eye. Xigbar huffed a quiet laugh. The art on the card had no answers for him. The jack’s stout body reflected into a fractal, his fretful hand on his spear. The white pelt of an animal, an ermine or something, coiled morbidly around his neck. Shaking his head, Xigbar flipped the card over.
The back had an ordinary playing card pattern, and words written across it in an insouciant ballpoint scrawl.
Nothing for it but to write a letter right back
I’m sorry, what was it that your letter said?
He flipped the card back over.
There was no way that the art had changed, so he just must not have been looking closely enough before. It wasn’t a pelt around the jack’s neck, it was a live animal. And it wasn’t an ermine, either.
It was a fox.
Title taken from this white boy rap song because I thought it would be funny. Forgive me. Thanks for reading!
Fandom: Kingdom Hearts
Relationship: Xigbar & Luxord
Rating: PG
Content notes: vehicular peril, threatened kidnapping
Words: 1,495
Summary: The city on the Other Side has been a great place to get some work done on the Master’s grand plan without having to worry about dealing with prying eyes. So great, in fact, that Xigbar has started to let his guard down. But all it takes is getting in the wrong cab once to remind him that he should really know better than to drop his poker face before the hand is called.
“Shinjuku Prince Hotel,” Xigbar offered, a little more gruffly than he would usually like, as he bent his head to enter the backseat of the cab. Normally he wasn’t above all kinds of schmoozing and small talk, but it was already a long night that only promised to get longer. Hanging out in the big city had its perks, but enough time spent standing in the rain, catching weird looks for the coat, was enough to make you miss fantasyland more than was probably reasonable.
Luckily the cab driver was a good sport, and took his payment without taking his passenger’s attitude personally. That was the life of the rank-and-file, wasn’t it. Keeping your head down and not letting the sour grapes of the unwashed masses get to you. Xigbar silently offered a prayer to the long-suffering working stiffs of the world.
He wearily opened his phone and started to scroll through his texts. It was kind of an aspirational motion, since none of his companions had really taken to the technology of the Other Side. Never mind that phones were apparently also a thing on the main side these days, anyway — those guys weren’t from “these days” and weren’t about to change. He was getting pretty sick of communicating only in visions and portents. And they wondered why the plan was so far behind schedule.
“Not finding what you had hoped?”
Ah, so the cab driver was gonna be a small talker after all. Well, far be it from Xigbar to stick it to the little guy. He suppressed a sigh, summoned his best roguish grin, and looked up.
“Nope! Guess Lady Luck’s already hit the hay for tonight.”
The driver chuckled, and pulled up at a stoplight. The light of passing cars caught his earrings as he did. The guy had quite a few piercings, blonde hair cropped close, and an impressive widow’s peak that Xigbar could see reflected in the rearview mirror. It was quite a look all told. It kind of reminded Xigbar of... reminded him of...
“Ah. Whoops.”
Luxord chuckled, and, as the light went green in front of them, started slowly accelerating into the intersection. Xigbar very briefly considered opening the door and risking a tuck-and-roll.
Instead he just locked his phone. “You’re getting the drop on me a lot lately! Guess I’m out of practice.”
“Indeed. So much time in the shadows, have you forgotten what it’s like to step into the spotlight?”
Things had been so busy lately that Xigbar had almost completely forgotten about this particular headache. But now that he was back, it was like he had never left. His infuriating cordial tone, for example, was the same as ever.
“As if. I’m not trying out for the lead role, here.”
“Are you not?” Luxord prompted lightly. Small talk, huh.
“Nah, I like the backseat. It’s got the best view.” He leaned back, arm across the headrests, and cast his gaze out the window. The neon of the passing city was distorted beyond all recognition by the rain and condensation.
“I see. So your predilection for the life of a passenger is what led you here tonight?”
“Eh, I’m not gonna pretend that you didn’t get my goat on this one. Call it an unlucky mistake.”
Luxord switched on the turn signal. “Well, that’s understandable,” he commented with a sympathy that Xigbar struggled to peg as sarcastic. “It’s quite easy to lose track of things these days. Why, just recently I happened to misplace a very important letter.”
“That so?”
“Indeed... Next time I receive something of such import, I’ve half a mind to tie it around my neck so as not to lose it.”
“Sounds like a good way to choke.”
Luxord chucked, and pulled the wheel from one hand to another like he was spinning silk.
Xigbar raised his hand and rubbed the underside of his jaw absentmindedly. “So what’s the angle?”
“Angle?”
“I’m guessing you didn’t go to all the trouble of getting your enemy in the car for no reason.”
Luxord hummed. “That remains to be seen, I suppose. Do you consider us enemies?”
“You don’t?”
“Opponents, perhaps, but not enemies. I don’t wish you ill.”
“A lucky break for me, huh.” Xigbar drummed his fingernails on the plastic under the car’s window.
“And you?”
Xigbar could feel Luxord’s eyes on him from the rearview, so he kept his own on his hand.
“What I wish doesn’t really factor into it.”
He would be shocked if this sort of cheap sedan was really Luxord’s taste, so it must not be his own ride. It really was a cab. It mollified Xigbar a little to know that he hadn’t lost the plot so much as to mess that one up, at least.
“I should like to hear the story, one day.”
Xigbar snorted. “I mean, ditto.”
Luxord took another corner. His handling really was butter-soft.
“Man, not that I want you to be jumping curbs or anything, but you’d think that the designated Time Guy would have ways of getting through traffic,” Xigbar decided to complain. “At this rate it’s gonna be stupid o’clock in the morning by the time I get some shuteye. Can’t even start moving to my secondary location ’til this leg’s done, y’know?” Was it a dereliction of duty to not have a secondary location? Was it sloppy? No, under normal circumstances there should be nothing wrong with getting a cab straight to his hotel. He was just having a bad night, was all. Cards hadn’t been in his favour.
“It would certainly be convenient to attempt to slow the river of time in order to reach our destination quickly. But by that logic, would it not also behove you to simply teleport?”
“Well, y’know. Gotta keep a low profile.”
“Of course. But who is the profiler, I wonder?”
Xigbar let it hang, and Luxord didn’t push. Guess it was a rhetorical question.
Even then, had he already said too much? How to even tell? The state of play was hard to discern, impossible to grasp. Forget poker, they were playing fifty-two pickup.
The rain streaked down the window, lashing into view out of the darkness. The car slowed once again to a stop.
“Shinjuku Prince,” Luxord said lightly.
It took Xigbar a second to get his brain back to a dimension where he could recognize that that was his hotel. He sat up, rubbing the back of his head cheekily, and went to unclip his seatbelt, only to find that he had apparently never done it up.
“Thank you for your patronage. I do hope you’ll have a good rest of your evening.” With a thunk, the car’s doors all unlocked, the locking of which in the first place Xigbar also hadn’t noticed. Great work tonight, Luxu.
“It can only get better from here,” he drawled as he lazily opened the door, taking his time to step out. Luxord rolled the driver’s window down, and Xigbar obligingly slouched over to it, ready to grin down daggers at him.
Luxord greeted his approach by snapping his wrist up through the open window, something held between his index and middle fingers. Xigbar almost flinched as if it were a weapon, one of Luxord’s arcana. He was only half-wrong.
“My card,” said Luxord. “If you’d like.”
Xigbar took it, making a show of pinching it between a thumb and a finger like he was expecting it to bite. Luxord offered him a sly smile, and a nod. Then, he rolled up the window, smoothly pulled the car away from the curb, and drove off into the night.
Xigbar watched him go, an unassuming cab rejoining the flow of traffic, and made sure to take note of the license plate, so that that particular cab would never catch him assuming again. And then he turned his attention to the card.
For some reason he had expected it to be a business card. You know, with contact information? To keep in touch? But instead the Jack of Hearts stared up at him with one baleful eye. Xigbar huffed a quiet laugh. The art on the card had no answers for him. The jack’s stout body reflected into a fractal, his fretful hand on his spear. The white pelt of an animal, an ermine or something, coiled morbidly around his neck. Shaking his head, Xigbar flipped the card over.
The back had an ordinary playing card pattern, and words written across it in an insouciant ballpoint scrawl.
Nothing for it but to write a letter right back
I’m sorry, what was it that your letter said?
He flipped the card back over.
There was no way that the art had changed, so he just must not have been looking closely enough before. It wasn’t a pelt around the jack’s neck, it was a live animal. And it wasn’t an ermine, either.
It was a fox.
Title taken from this white boy rap song because I thought it would be funny. Forgive me. Thanks for reading!
