This was written on the request of iceblitz, who requested Xigbar/Luxord with perhaps a side of Setzer/Luxord or Setzer/Luxord/Xigbar.
Look what came of it. It started batshit and went downhill from there. I plead insanity. XD
Dead Man's Hand
The man was a ragged, dusty mess when he stumbled through the swinging, saloon-style casino doors, hair matted to itself and his face, the lingering sweat a glue for what seemed to be every grain of dust from here to Hollow Bastion. His clothing didn't fare any better – if he were a rich man once, certainly no one would be able to tell now from the tattered vest that barely hung by a few threads to his once-white shirt and the pants that were more hole than cloth, his pointy-toed boots now hardly more than ankle warmers. The cowboys and the prospectors and the wenches of good and ill repute all turned around to look at him as he dragged himself towards the bar, his voice reduced to a raspy cough by days, weeks, or God knew how long a time spent on the road.
"Water," he said, and the barman, a rough-shaven blond in a scuffed tuxedo with the permanent fixture of a cigarette dangling from his lips, paused in his polishing of a mug to eye the newcomer.
"You have any money on ya?" he growled.
"I said I wanted water." Being inches away from death would probably make anyone's temper a little short.
"I heard ya the first time," the barman replied. "I have to charge ya. Nothin's free 'round here except air, and I'm sure old Lux is tryin' to figure out a way to charge for that, too." He barked a laugh.
The travel-worn man sagged against the counter, considering his options. He had only a single coin left to his name, and if he spent it on water he would have nothing left at all. What he had to do now was take one coin and turn it into thirty. (At least thirty.)
Well, there was really only one option at a time like this. Licking his cracked and dry lips, he squinted at his surroundings for a while before his gaze landed on just the thing he was looking for. He lumbered over towards the chip exchange, hand digging into his pocket for that one last coin.
The man there – the boy, rather, he couldn't have been a day over eighteen – gave him a scrutinizing look with the one eye not hidden beneath a dark veil of hair and pushed over a single chip with one finger, not saying a word.
Chip in hand like it was his last connection to life itself (in truth, really it was), the man squeezed the last few steps out of his poor, aching body to take himself toward the poker table.
The dealer at the poker table, though he couldn't have been older than the boy at the chip exchange, was unfazed by the newcomer, the boy's hair as silver as the stranger's was under all the dirt of the road, only this boy's was clean and tied back in a low ponytail to reveal a bored expression as he dealt the next hand. (What a perfect expression for a dealer, the stranger thought.)
The stranger dropped his last hope on the table and picked up his hand of cards. The bets went round the table and there was a pause when the dealer looked at the stranger pointedly, obviously expecting him to raise, call, or fold.
"I raise," the stranger croaked, but he put nothing on the table.
"You raise what?" the dealer asked, impatient. "We've already had bets to five. Will you do six?"
"I'm not betting money," the stranger said.
"Then you fold."
"I'm betting my life."
All eyes that weren't already trained on the stranger now bent towards him at that statement. The silence, however, was brief.
"Why the hell would I, or anybody, want to kill you?" the dealer asked, scorn evident on his face and in his voice. "Your life isn't worth any money. Put down some chips or get out."
The stranger let out a harsh breath of exhaustion and desperation, but he didn't leave.
A voice cut in. "Let him do it, Riku."
"No." Riku said flatly. "I'm not getting paid for bullshit like this. Nobody cares if some nobody lives or dies."
"I said do it." Everyone at the table heard the sound of a gun cocking as, from the far side of the table, a wild-looking eyepatched man pointed a gun at the dealer. A lady screamed and the crowd edged away from the man.
"Luxord won't –" Riku began.
"Luxord can go fuck himself. Take the goddamn bet."
"I'm not going to give in to your tricks this time." Riku trembled, but seemed to be holding his ground.
The gun-wielding man rolled his eyes. "Look, bitch, I've got three very good reasons why you should do what I say. One, I've got a gun pointed at you point blank. Two, I'm gonna win this round, and I'm gonna kill this whacko myself. Three, I've got a gun pointed at you point blank."
"Fine." Riku fumed, but did as he was told. Besides the first and third very good reasons that Xigbar had given him, everybody in town knew that Xigbar and the casino owner were tight. God knew why, but Luxord let Xigbar run wild in the casino and in town, paying all his bills and covering his ass whenever a body or two would mysteriously show up.
At any rate, the hand was dealt, the bets were done (nobody wanted to raise on a life), and when it was the stranger's turn to show his cards he put them down with a flourish a little too practiced for a crazy man just in from the desert. Ace, king, queen, jack, ten, all in hearts.
Riku stared. Xigbar laughed.
"Th-this isn't possible," Riku sputtered.
The stranger grinned fit to split his face in two, pulling all the chips towards him with both arms before keeling over on the table, passed out cold.
xxx
Setzer woke to cigar smoke and a glass of cold water being pressed to his lips, water sliding down his throat and his chin. He coughed as he sat up, scrubbing grime from his eyes with an equally grubby hand as he took a look at his surroundings. He was lying in a bed far too fancy for a dirty traveler in what seemed to be a private bedroom. A scarred, eyepatched man with a black cowboy hat tucked over a ponytail streaked with gray sat by his bedside, a simply massive cigar pressed between his teeth. He had an empty glass in one hand.
"More water," Setzer rasped, and he chugged the new proffered glass before wiping his mouth, streaking mud across his chin in the process. "Where am I?"
"Luxord's casino and saloon, better known as the Dead Man's Hand," the eyepatched man replied. "The swankiest joint – the only joint within a hundred miles."
"Why am I here?" Setzer gestured to the terribly posh room that he and the other man currently occupied. "Where's my money? And who are you?"
The man leaned back in his chair, taking a drag from his cigar as he propped his black-and-shiny-as-death cowboy boots up on the bed (it really made his colour scheme more obvious. Hat, shirt, vest, guns and holsters, pants, chaps, boots, all of it was black). "Xigbar. It would do ya good to remember the name. Your money's right here," he reached down and picked a small bag off the floor, tossing it onto Setzer's bed, "and as for why you're here – well, you're here 'cause you just impressed the shit outta me."
"Excuse me?"
"Don't try to fool me," Xigbar snorted. "Nobody walks into a casino and scores a royal flush on the first hand – and nobody walks into this casino and scores a royal flush on any hand. I dunno how you slid that one by Riku, but –" he leaned in so that he was almost nose-to-nose with Setzer, cigar in one hand as he blew smoke rings in Setzer's face. "You're my kind of man, Mr. Nobody."
Something about the man's tone prompted Setzer to look down and makes sure he still had all his clothes on. Being undressed in his sleep by a man was not at the top of Setzer's list of fantasies. "How forward of you."
Xigbar leaned back again, sticking his cigar in his mouth in a way that would have made Freud, had he seen it, swear off cigars for life. "Nobody gets nowhere by beating around the bush. And I always get what I want."
At around this point Setzer decided that if he was going to be mentally undressed by a scary-looking man with an eyepatch and two guns it would be in a room that didn't have a bed in it. Hastily extricating himself from the blankets, Setzer took that moment to grab the money and wave as he walked out the door. The man didn't follow, for which Setzer was extremely grateful.
xxx
The next day Setzer felt entirely like a new man. A bath and a set of new clothes later, he walked into the casino with a swaggering step, this time heads turning at his appearance for an entirely different set of reasons. His shoes shone so hard he could see his reflection when he looked down and the folds in his suit were so sharp you could cut a hair on them. His head was bare, exposing that stunning mass of silver that had women swooning at first sight... and swoon they did. He had hardly been in the casino for half an hour before he had managed to gather a crowd of beautiful and buxom hangers-on.
"Your hair's so shiny." A beauty with short black hair wearing a scandalously exotic Chinese dress fair threw herself at him, draping her body over the arm that wasn't full of cards and giggling at every flirtatious comment he made.
He knew she was only after his money, but hell if he didn't give a damn. "Yuffie, my darling, it's nothing compared to the shine in your eyes."
A tall, sophisticated, and slightly dangerous-looking woman in the highest heels he'd ever seen glared daggers at Yuffie while a cute little brunette gave the girl a not-so-subtle elbow in the side. Yuffie didn't even wince as she continued to cling to Setzer's arm like a very sexy barnacle.
Women. How I love them.
xxx
Luxord was, in a word, pissed.
I leave for one day, one day, and what do I get for it?
Luxord was used to having things his way. Things tended to go your way when you were the richest man in town and could buy out the petty local sheriff with one swipe of the pen on the chequebook. The casino was his baby and his playground – every time he walked into the room heads would turn and women would rush to his side, petting and oohing and ahhing as the men stewed in their jealousy of his wealth, power, charisma, and incredible good looks.
But Luxord, as incredibly awesome and sexy as he was, was still just a man at heart. It was lonely at the top, and he had basic human needs to be fulfilled. That was where Xigbar came in.
Xigbar was the baddest gunslinger around. He knew it, Luxord knew it, and everyone else had better fucking know it too if they wanted to avoid a few bullet holes in the neck. Xigbar had done it all in his time – cattle hustling, train jacking, bank robbing, nothing was too big for the One-Eyed Gunman. He'd stolen it all, he'd shot it all, and he'd fucked it all, and Luxord had the man that made grown men tremble in their boots in his back pocket and his bed every night.
But this – this little upstart had simply walked in and started taking things that weren't his. Luxord was supposed to be the center of attention, not this little bad-pickup-line-using, hairgel-overdosing little prick. And Luxord could see Xigbar's little wandering eye as it ambled on down to the region of Setzer's ass. That – well. That was simply unforgivable.
xxx
Setzer was at the blackjack table when Luxord walked into the room. He wouldn't have even noticed the other man if the little brunette – he was fairly sure Olette was her name – hadn't quietly got up and left Setzer to go hang all over Luxord.
Imagine. A woman, a woman had left Setzer and gone towards another man.
Now, Setzer had heard the name Luxord thrown around more than a few times in his brief time at the casino. Luxord was apparently the man around here, and well – Setzer didn't really have that much respect for 'the man'. But when Luxord strode into the room, exuding an aura of supreme confidence as two women immediately lighted on his outstretched arms, Setzer could see that there was a man who lived for the cards, there was a man who had it all in his pocket.
He's exactly like me, Setzer thought, and in that moment everything he had ever known about his sexuality was thrown out the window as he spent the next five minutes fantasizing about the man walking up to him, whipping his pants down and pounding Setzer into the wall. Hard. With everyone watching.
Setzer was roused from his reverie by Yuffie's pert breasts pressing into his back as she gave him an enthusiastic hug for luck. (It was so nice to have your heterosexuality re-affirmed.) The blackjack dealer, a cheery brunette with a perpetual grin on his face, was tapping the table, waiting for Setzer.
"Uhhhh, hit me." Fuck yes, hit me, hit me.
xxx
Xigbar had made a habit of – not stalking, per se, Xigbar didn't stalk – rather keeping an eye on the new silver-haired wonder of the casino. Occasionally that eye was accompanied by a surreptitious grope of Setzer's tight, tuxedo-clad ass. These things did not escape Luxord's notice.
When he had been a bit younger, Luxord would have enjoyed a little pissing contest or two. Perhaps it was just Xigbar's straightforwardness rubbing off on him, but this time he would rather cut to the chase. He wanted Setzer out of his casino and out of his town as quietly and neatly as possible. Setzer was winning too much money, too many women, and too much of Xigbar's attention for Luxord to let this go on any longer.
A private meeting was in order. Before Setzer could have the time to refuse, he found himself in a private room at a table across from Luxord, martini in hand and trying his best to hold his composure.
"I'm sure you know why you're here," Luxord began. Jesus, that man had a sexy voice. None of that lower-class drawl for him, no, his faint accent held a hint of the same refinement that Setzer had been trying to fake for years.
"I know, you're dying for my company, aren't you." Setzer took a sip of his drink, a schooled expression of amusement on his face.
Luxord resisted the urge to grit his teeth and ignored Setzer's flagrant display of egotism. "You're a very lucky man, Mr. Gabbiani. Too lucky. It is only my respect for you ability that has kept you alive thus far."
Setzer grinned. "Now, whatever could you be talking about?"
"Don't be coy with me. I don't know if you're hiding cards or counting them, but I won't stand for another moment of it. But I'm a giving man, Mr. Gabbiani, and I'll make you a deal instead of running you out of town."
Setzer leaned back and downed the rest of his martini. This had better be good.
Luxord produced a fine leather bag and opened it on the table in front of Setzer, revealing bundled wads of cash within. "Take this and leave town."
Setzer pretended to ponder for a moment. "Hmmm... no."
Luxord's eye twitched. "What do you want, Mr. Gabbiani? I have many things at my disposal. But be wary of asking for too much. Deals can always be withdrawn."
Setzer picked up his empty martini glass, plucking the toothpicked olive out with a thumb and a forefinger. Placing the olive to his lips, he consumed it in a way that put Xigbar's cigar-tonguing to shame.
Well. Luxord hadn't been expecting that. But this, like everything else in the world, could easily be worked to his advantage.
Moving straight to the climax of the scene – Luxord soon found that Setzer, though obviously not quite used to, well, shooting with the boys, was indeed as good in the sack as he claimed. At the end of it all Luxord left the other man lying naked by the overturned coffee table, a quivering, exhausted mess of spent pleasure as Luxord went to get a cigarette.
He came back wearing a smoking jacket and nothing else, a lit cigarette in one hand as he took a seat on the battered armchair that was pushed up against one wall. Luxord was fairly sure they hadn't fucked on it. It was probably clean. Setzer was still on the floor.
"You'll be a good boy and leave town."
"...Yeah. Sure."
"And you won't be needing that bag of money, either."
"Whatever you say. ...Hey, wait a –"
Whether Setzer would have ever fully regained higher brain functions at that moment will never be known, because right at that moment was when Xigbar walked in.
"Oh, shit." Today had been full of many surprises. Luxord had had quite enough of surprises.
Now, to understand Xigbar's mental processes at that moment, one would have to understand a little bit about Xigbar himself. He was free as a bird, the wind, and any other number of pretty similes. He didn't tie himself down. He was bad, badder, the baddest that any county had ever seen and he didn't go for petty little emotions like 'love' or 'jealousy'.
At that moment, there were really only two thoughts running through Xigbar's head: One, That little bitch got to him first and two, If there ever was a God I will get a threesome. "You cheating cow-fucker" is just what ended up coming out of his mouth.
"You were thinking it." Luxord said calmly, legs crossed as he held his cigarette in that incorrigibly faggy way of his.
"I'm allowed to fuck him. You're not."
Luxord took a drag. "How hypocritical of you."
Setzer, quickly becoming aware that he was the third wheel in a lovers' spat (not something he was unfamiliar with, but it was notably different when all parties involved had cocks) and that he was naked on the floor, quietly started gathering his clothing and inching his way towards the exit.
Xigbar could feel a headache building behind his eyepatch. "You're just jealous because he's basically a younger, more daring and more excitin' version of you. You're scared of being upstaged."
"Turning this into an insult match: how mature, Xiggy."
Nobody called Xigbar the One-Eyed Gunslinger of Death by cute, diminutive nicknames. Nobody. "You'd better remember who you're talkin' to before my gun and me –"
"Your gun? If I do recall correctly, five nights this week I've had my gun up your –"
Setzer bolted for the door.
xxx
Setzer considered himself to be a very good liar. You had to be a liar to be a gambler, when it came right down to it. He told two kinds of lies: the pretty lies he told to women and the testosterone-induced lies he told to men. The pretty lies were all fun and games, but with the other kind of lies he tended to tread on that fine line between having a head attached to his shoulders and being completely head-free.
To make a long story short, Setzer was a bluffer and a chicken. When he made promises to women they were always empty, and when he carried guns they were never loaded. And as much as he had enjoyed his few short days in Dead Man's Hand up 'till now, he figured it might be a good idea to skip town before the richest man in town and the most dangerous man in town came looking for his ass (be it the naked kind of ass or the shot kind of ass, this was getting too complicated for Setzer's liking).
This is why he sat in a saloon on the far end of town from the casino, as far from those two crazy lunatics as he could possibly get, enjoying his last glass of whiskey before he moved on his way.
Unfortunately, luck was not with him.
When Xigbar walked into the saloon, the entire room went quiet and Setzer sobbed inwardly. Why? Why me?
Xigbar ignored the other patrons as he strolled over to where Setzer was seated at the bar, pulling the poor sot beside the gambler out of his seat and taking the stool for himself. "Setzer, old boy."
Setzer smothered a groan. "Fancy meeting you here."
"Glad to see you're ready and rarin' to go."
Setzer took a healthy gulp of his whiskey.
Xigbar gave a toothy smile as he ordered a whiskey for himself. Chatter in the saloon started up once more. "Chin up. I'm not gonna rape you on the floor here and now. I've come to make a deal."
Setzer had had quite enough of deals. "What kind of deal, pray tell?"
"I'm not too friendly with Lux no more, and I want to make our parting really sting, but I need your help to pull it off. I'll make it worth your while." Xigbar grinned.
Setzer didn't like hearing that phrase come out of anyone's mouth but his own. "How do you plan on doing that?"
Xigbar took a swig of whiskey. Jesus, the man chugged it like it was milk. "I've got doubles of all his keys. I know where he keeps his cash. You and me, we're gonna rob the bastard blind."
While this was sounding incredibly appealing, Setzer was more than a bit skeptical. "Why are you asking me?"
There was a wicked gleam in Xigbar's eye. Setzer wasn't sure whether he would like this plan or not, but anything with money involved caught his attention.
xxx
Luxord, like many enterprising young white men, had offended the Indians. Like many enterprising young white men, he hadn't just offended them, he'd actually had a lot of them killed. Suffice to say that Luxord and the Indians weren't all that friendly with one another.
Flurry of Dancing Flames had many reasons not to be fond of cowboys. Cowboys were a fact of life he had to deal with, trading with the ignorant white savages as he did, but he tried to avoid encountering or pissing off too many of them, as a general rule.
So when he was approached by the famed One Eyed Gunman, it was really no surprise that he pretended his English was a little worse than it actually was. Or a lot worse.
"White man no buy, white man leave." Flurry sat cross-legged on the ground by the roadside with a blanket covered mostly with furs, arms folded.
"Look, you little redskin," Xigbar growled, grabbing Flurry by the tassels on the front of his jacket. "I know you're Flurry of the Dancing Flames and that your hair is dyed red with the blood of your slain enemies and all that bullshit. I know your tribe was massacred when Luxord came down to build his casino here. I'll give you all the booze you can drink for the next friggin' moon if you help me get revenge on that little bastard. You understand me?"
Flurry was not amused. "Only those of my tribe can call me by my true name. You can call me Axel."
"Fine, whatever. You in? Remember: booze. Fire-water."
Axel didn't really appreciate the white barbarian dragging out the word as if he were an idiot, nor did he appreciate the implication that he was an alcoholic. Nevertheless, he was being offered an opportunity to knock off possibly the number one person on his revenge list (it was a very long revenge list filled with a lot of asshole white men), and he could take a little offense if it meant getting what he wanted.
Oh, whatever had happened to honour. How low had Flurry of the Dancing Flames sunk. ...He blamed the white bastards for it.
xxx
Setzer's life had been, up until now, a very colourful and exciting one. He was also a very 'ends justifies the means' sort of fellow, and had done any number of humiliating and low things in order to get what he wanted (mostly money). So shady hotels of the sort he now occupied were not unfamiliar to him.
But despite all of this, Setzer had definitely never expected to be straddling a really buttfuck-ugly man wearing only leather chaps and nothing else. Oh, and the chaps were also purple.
"Didn't you say you weren't planning to rape me?"
Xigbar grinned and grabbed Setzer's hips, lifting his own as he did so. Setzer suppressed the urge to vomit and jerked backward, only Xigbar's grasp on his hips preventing him from falling over. "This's lookin' pretty consensual to me, baby."
"Oh, shut up. This so-called plan had better work. I'm feeling a bit ill."
Setzer may had been ill, but Xigbar was most definitely enjoying himself. "Whaddaya talkin' about? You can't pretend you're only a ladies' man now."
Setzer squeezed his eyes shut. It didn't help. "It's not men. It's you."
Xigbar laughed, a deep and belly-rumbling one, and finally Luxord showed up at the door, just like Xigbar had said he would.
Luxord, walking in on the scene, could tell from the first glance that it was a setup. Setzer had made his dislike of the One Eyed Gunman very clear, and Luxord couldn't ever see Setzer caving to Xigbar, no matter how persistent the cowboy was. But those chaps – that Xigbar would let anyone else wear those chaps –
Luxord would never let the bastard know how much that hurt. "So this is payback, is it?"
Xigbar's head bent backwards as he looked at the casino-owner upside-down, his smirk not any less vicious for the inversion. "Part of it."
"FIRE!" Voices and footsteps could be heard below them.
Luxord frowned. "I don't smell any smoke." Then his eyes widened and he ran to the window, throwing open the shutters.
From the hotel room he got a brilliant, front-row view of his beloved castle, his casino, the Dead Man's Hand covered in blazing flames. Panicked gamblers poured out of the building and some civilians were trying desperately to form something resembling a bucket chain. In a city made of wood, nothing was more terrifying than fire.
Luxord's hand trembled as he reached into his jacket, hands clasping the grip of the gun there. He really had nothing left to lose, now.
A shot rang through the air and Xigbar stood with gun in hand, the barrel smoking as Luxord folded, sliding to the floor. Blood began to seep out of the hole at his back where he was shot right through the heart. "You... fucking..."
At least Luxord had gotten one thing he wanted – Xigbar never did see his face.
"Well, that's that," Setzer's words were decidedly awkward. "So, we split the money and run?"
"We're not splitting anything." Xigbar turned around to face Setzer, a wild look in his eyes.
Setzer didn't even have time to get scared before he found himself with a bullet hole in the middle of the forehead. I never thought I'd die in purple chaps was most likely his last thought before he died.
xxx
It was a job well done, if he did say so himself. Flurry of the Dancing Flames had always been good at setting things on fire. Now all he had left to do was to collect his pay from the white barbarian. He waited at their designated meeting spot just out of town, leaning against a tree just out of view of the road.
At the sound of footsteps his bow was in his hands, arrow pulled back and ready to fire. His paranoia was not without base, as the one-eyed cowboy only a few feet away from him had his gun out as well, pointed straight at him.
Axel didn't waver. "Drop all the money on the ground and start running."
Xigbar spat. "Like hell I am."
Axel adjusted his aim and loosed his arrow. It zoomed past Xigbar, nicking the man's arm as it went past.
"You wasted an arrow, redskin." Xigbar cocked back the hammer.
"Or did I?"
Pain shot up from his wound and Xigbar began to feel a bit light-headed. He stumbled, clasping the grazed arm. "You – little bastard."
Axel moved out of the trees, pulling a leather bottle out of his pocket. "Antidote for the cash, what do you say?"
Xigbar cursed Axel, his mother (who was apparently now a goat), his people, his clothing, and his hair while reaching ineffectually for the antidote. The Indian danced out of the way, taunting as Xigbar's steps became more and more erratic.
Damn you, bastard, damn you and you... and you to hell. I'll be seeing you soon, motherfucker.