[Oct 2nd] [Final Fantasy X] Fierce Midnight and Famishing Morrows

[yesthatnagia.livejournal.com]

Title: Fierce Midnights and Famishing Morrows
Day/Theme: October 2 / Fortuna
Series: Final Fantasy X
Character/Pairing: Auron and Rikku / Aurikku
Rating: R, for language.
Summary: "He had the worst damned luck in the world." Auron Dispada, a police officer in Las Vegas, runs into a certain thief.
Notes: Strange blending of real world and Spira. Here's to hoping it works. *One*

Auron Dispada stared at his cards. He kept his blank face on, watching the dealer negotiate with one of the other players.

Blackjack was his luckiest game. Or so he'd told himself as he stared at the stubble that had grown over his jaw in under four hours and pondered shaving again.

Besides, in blackjack, you could keep your bets low. Which he needed to do.

A hand of fifteen was the worst. As a dealer, he'd have had to hit if he had just one more card. As a player, though, he had to closely watch the cards dealt. You had to at least TRY to guess how likely you were to get a card higher than the one you wanted.

Guessing like that was almost impossible.

Good thing he was gambling chump change, and not actual wages or anything. He was a great cop and he knew it, but gambling was an entirely different matter.

He had the worst damned luck in the world. 

The dealer turned his attention to Auron.

"Hit me," Auron said.

The dealer laid a card flat on the table.

Fuck blackjack, Auron wanted to say. Fuck you long and fuck you hard and fuck you up the ass with a goddamn rusted cell phone tower and mustard and vinegar for lube.

On the table lay a jack of diamonds. Those red diamonds looked even redder against the white of the card and the green felt covering the table. They were fucking MOCKING him. Ha-ha, they whisper-screamed, ha-ha, we ARE money and now you've GOT NONE. Ha-ha!

His lips curled into a silent snarl, he handed over his money and left the table.

Stick to poker, he decided. I'll stick to poker.

He was good at poker. Better at it than blackjack. It was just that poker bets tended to get out of hand, and then poker GAMES got out of hand. And when a poker game got out of hand in the casinos he preferred, the poker table wound up somehow hanging from the ceiling by one leg and everybody who had been at the table when it had been on the ground was trying to strangle everybody else, and even though it was self-defence, he wound up getting a reprimand-that-was-officially-a-warning from the Captain and everybody snickered at him behind his back. They all thought he was a poker addict.

Maybe he was.

But before he could go anywhere, a young woman collided with a young man who had been moving in Auron's path. He watched as the young woman's hand snapped out, her hand lightly invading the man's jeans, nimble fingers working.

Within the span of three seconds, her hand had gone from being nowhere near the man's jeans, to inside the man's jeans, to inside her own pants, and then back to being completely innocuous. 

Auron blinked at the sight of the girl. She was wearing some sort of peach-coloured shirt and hiking shorts, but the crazy thing about her was her hair. A mass of blonde that gathered up a partial bun until it swirled and fell in braids with beads and feathers. Random portions of it streaked pink.

"I am so sorry!" She said to the young man.

The young man smiled vacantly. "It's a-okay, miss!"

"Well, I'm still sorry!"

And then the girl took off read: walked quickly away, but the pace looked natural and unhurried) through the crowd, towards the exit.

Auron felt his eyes narrow.

You're off duty, he reminded himself. You're off duty. You're off duty. You have no obligation to bring her in. But one look at Jecht's son, Jecht's clueless, whiny son, and Auron sighed.

If he called it in, they'd probably never find her, anyway. Skinny little blonde girls, even skinny little blonde girls with ridiculously attention-grabbing hair, tended to fade into the background in Las Vegas.

He followed her.

---

*Two*

Today was not Rikku's day. Today was a day where Rikku might have said she had the worst damned luck in the world. Except it wasn't actually day. It was night.

First there was that stupid fiasco of a football game. Read: stupid fiasco of a football game that didn't happen. It was supposed to be a night game, and those were even better than your average football game, because the fans had tired kids and too much coffee or not enough coffee and it was just freaking great.

But the NFL had cancelled the game. For good reasons, of course, but she'd still been counting on that game. Football games were the best places to pick up easy marks. Sure, twelve players had been injured because of the anti-whatever picketers there were so many damn picketers these days that she didn't even read the signs anymore) rioting in front of the stadium. But come on, what were alternates for?

No football game. No easy-easy targets, damnit. So she'd headed to the clubs, the bars, and last casinos. The clubs were great. You had a built-in excuse for physical contact. You had people drinking, smoking, flirting. Hello, monies, here Rikku comes!

Except wait, that hadn't happened quite so great, either. Some stupid guy had noticed that her left hand wasn't quite in time with the music. Rather than be called a bad dancer to her face, she'd given him a quick kick to the shins and hightailed it.

Heh, she hadn't even stopped to pay her tab. Oh, well. Not like they knew her name or anything.

And then it was on to the bars. The bars had been okay. Not as fun as the clubs. Too easy. So she'd left. Gone to the casinos.

She'd raked in a hell of a lot, too, she thought. No time to count because some creep in a red leather jacket was following her— what, did he think she didn't see him? How dumb could a guy get? Rammu, you're wearing an imdny-jecepma lumun— and she needed to get back to Vydran and Brother as soon as possible.

"Cnyb," she mumbled. "Cnyb, cnyb, cnyb!" She found herself hissing lots of other nasty words "Vilg, cred, tysh!") as she twisted and turned through the streets of Las Vegas.

She knew how to move in a crowd. She understood the unique walking rhythm of each street. The problem was, so did this guy. And he was using that knowledge, melting in and out of sight just the way she had tried to.

All right, he's not going to take a hint. So let's give him a couple of spiffy bruises and give him an even better slip.

She ducked into an alley.

He paused at the entrance.

Smart little puo, isn't he? Come in, come in, meddma puo. It's all right, it's okay, meddma cecdan Rikku won't hurt you. She's too little. She fought back a smug little snort. Or so you think.

She pulled a cloth from her shorts and shoved it over her right arm. The cloth disguised the ratcheting and scraping metal sounds from when she pulled her claw out of her bag and slipped her right hand into it. Calmly, she attached it to the arm brace she'd hidden under her pink fingerless evening gloves.

The cloth landed on the ground. It covered a few grains of sand, making it look bumpy and wrinkly.

The man walked into the alley.

Within moments, she was flinging herself at him. Her left fist collided with his jaw. Her right leg kicked into his ribs, and she, well-trained, used his ribcage as a springboard, somersaulting backwards and landing on her feet. She brought the claw to bear, guarding her face with both fists, her right above her left.

He held his ribs for a moment, looked at her. After a moment of silence, he laughed. It wasn't a pretty laugh. It was bitter laugh, like something in him had gotten broken a long time ago and never healed up right, and he'd never cared enough to check it out. It was a harsh laugh, a raspy laugh, like there was a colander in his throat that strained all the happiness from his voice.

"Yb-Cid?" He asked. "Are you an Yb-Cid?"

He butchered the sounds, of course.

The c in Cid was closer to a Ch sound; the i was closer to a long English e. But he got the special way the Al Bhed angled d just perfect.

She didn't even want to think about the way he'd pronounced Yb. That just wasn't how you said things. Then again, he was a uidceta-punh. Better than being a vunaekhan, but not by much. The uidceta-punh understood some Al Bhed, and had become honorary Al Bhed, but they frequently had trouble with the pronunciation.

"Rikku Yb-Cid," she supplied. "Yht oui?"

He smirked. "Auron Dispada Yb-Cid."

"I have no brother named Auron."

"I am not your brother." He paused, smirking wider still. "E ys suna uv yh ihlma."

"Uncle? My dad doesn't have any brothers."

"Ah, but he had a sister. Dian."

"Don't you bring Aunt Dian into this! She's dead!"

"I know. I knew her husband, Braska."

Rikku shook her head. "No way. That's just not possible. If you'd known Braska, you'd have visited! How come you've never come and seen Yunie, huh?"

He looked away. "I had somebody else to take care of."

"Really? Who? Who could be more important than—?"

"—Don't ask! You have no right to ask me that!" He took a deep, rattling breath. He pulled those dark sunglasses down and stared at her.

Ur so God, she found herself thinking, ra uhmo ryc uha aoa!

---

*Three*

He made eye contact with the girl. Her ridiculous pink-and-blonde hair clashed crazily with the eyes he could now see without them being ridiculously dimmed because of the sunglasses.

Good God, he found himself thinking, she has the greenest eyes I've ever seen.

"Give me back the boy's wallet. I don't care about what else you stole."

"The boy?"

"The clueless blond from the last casino."

Rikku Yb-Cid smirked. "Really? That boy? What's your attachment to him?"

"It doesn't concern you. Give me the wallet."

She smiled a maniac grin. Her eyes glinted with something that, were he less of a man, would have sent him screaming. "So, is he your boyfriend or something? Don't you think he's kind of young for you?"

He made a strangled sound. "What."

"I asked—"

He cut her off. "Just give me his wallet."

"Why should I?"

The hunting knife slid out of the place he'd made for it in the lining of his jacket.

Her eyes widened as she took in the thing's length. He knew it was a ridiculous length, barely functional, but it suited him.

"You were saying?" He smirked.

She was a fast little slip, he realized. She had crossed the alley within moments, her long legs carrying her faster than he had moved in his youth. Of course, like the contents of the canteen he kept with him at all times, he'd only gotten better with age.

If she hadn't been so wild, he might have been able to completely block her. But the actions of teenaged thieves who had been raised by some kind of technology-worshipping cult in the Nevada desert and were very likely inbred were as mysterious to him as they were to everybody else.

Her left foot hit his much-abused ribs. Her right foot connected with his hip. Suddenly she was scrambling, her right leg wrapping around his hips, her left leg wrapping around his torso.

He blinked. This wasn't quite the attack he had been expecting.

Her claw brushed up against his left arm as she ran her hand up and down his back. She bent her head, even as she arched her back, to kiss him lightly. Her tongue probed his mouth, light and inquisitive, and she tasted like motherfucking cotton candy, goddamnit, and he probably tasted like the bourbon he'd been nursing all night.

She broke the kiss. Her left leg slid up to his right shoulder, and then her right leg, and then she was gone, vaulting from his shoulders and disappearing into the night.

He stared after her. He wanted to chase after her, but he wasn't entirely sure what he would do if he caught her. Images of slamming her into a brick wall and teaching her a few lessons about kissing men twenty years her senior— things like how to use that adorable pink little tongue of hers— danced through his mind.

No. No. She was Cid's daughter. In a complex way that few outside-born would care about, she was his niece. And he wasn't one of those sick, sleazy outside-born who didn't give a damn about his ties to the Al Bhed. No, he cared. He cared. How couldn't he?

Her uncle had been his first partner, and he had been Braska's last. And Jecht had been Cid's partner, before Cid had gone back to the Al Bhed, before Braska married Dian, before Jecht married Eva, before he and Dian shared their last kiss and ages before Cid had even met Shera and conceived Vince.

He had been Braska's rookie, and Cid had been Jecht's rookie, before Braska had turned over his blood, and eventually his body, to the scientists looking for a cure for the Sin virus. Before Braska caught the virus, before he nearly transmitted the virus to Auron, before Dian had caught the virus in a hospital shortly after giving birth to Yuna.

And, good God, but that little slip of a pink-haired girl kissed like Dian. All feather-light lips and pink cotton candy tongue and her spider-finger hands wandering wherever the hell they wanted to go. He very firmly put his fists in his pockets and walked in the opposite direction Rikku had taken. His right hand absently moved to his back jeans pocket.

Oh, fuck.

Where the hell was his wallet?

I have the worst damned luck in the world, he growled to himself, spinning to go chasing after Rikku once more.