How To Do Nothing At All
'Oddballing'
Luxord drove a Saab, and he loved his Saab in much the same way any boy of normal disposition would love a puppy. He bathed the Saab, fed the Saab, walked the Saab, and certainly, were it a socially acceptable practice, Luxord would have slept with the Saab at the foot of his bed as well. He never cared that Saabs were supposed to be girly cars. Whenever a passenger of his Saab-baby would harass him about it, he would simply turn on his smooth stereo system, roll back the tinted sunroof, and caress the leather interior with whatever free hand was available. Ninety-nine percent of the time, it was enough to shut up any pesky Saab hater that might burden Luxord with their presence.
The one percent of the time it didn't shut someone up, it was because that someone was Xigbar. And Xigbar drove his mother's old '97 Honda Civic that smelled strangely of week-old artichokes and shoe polish—a smell for which he never could devise a crafty, proper excuse. Though it probably goes without saying, Xigbar greatly resented Luxord and his beloved Saab. He didn't understand how—being the wealthier of the two of them—he somehow ended up with the crap-mobile and Luxord ended up with the babe-mobile. It just didn't make sense—up until Xigbar discovered that Larxene drove a Thunderbird and her hubby drove a Jag.
Such discoveries were the decisive factors in determining why Xigbar viewed the world as horribly unfair and unjust, but all of this is just meaningless fact in a world of subjective notion.
Luxord was pondering one such notion rather deeply during their drive to the supposed wreckage of the old warehouse. Xigbar could tell his friend was deep in the land of Ponder because the radio's volume was a decent notch or two below the max safety level and the sunroof was firmly in place.
"What's on your mind, Lux?" Xigbar asked this, not because he particularly cared what Luxord was so torn up about—he would talk about it when he would talk about it, after all—but simply because it seemed like the polite thing to do. …That was a lie. In actuality, Luxord seemed to actually have been willing Xigbar to ask on some telepathic level, for no sooner had the words left Xigbar's mouth was Luxord already responding.
"It's just that—well—now see, Xigbar." It was obviously something important. Luxord's hand moved to turn the volume down even more and Xigbar's mind actually perked into a state of semi-consciousness and concern. "It's like this," Luxord said. "We haven't been real regular about rummaging for some time, I guess."
"Yeah," Xigbar said. And he knew why.
"And you know why."
"Yep." 'Why' was also knows as Small, Dark, and Busty—who was also, also known as Luxord's Girlfriend. Xigbar had seen her all of two times in his life, though she and Lux had supposedly been together for somewhere around, oh, say, twenty-eight months. She was a supporter of the plaid mini-skirt trend, coupled with black knee highs, platform boots, and a smooth layer of lip gloss that seemed perpetually present and also seemed to have a strange scent of caramel covered peaches, of all things. She was also beautiful, but that was beside the point. Especially because the next words out of Luxord's mouth were:
"Well, we split."
"Oh."
"Random, right?"
"Well, I guess, man. Uh. Sure?"
"Yeah. Well. About it, see. I just figure…" And this must have been what Luxord was laboring over thought-wise, because his glib gabbing mouth seemed all caught up in itself, like even the mouth was still trying to think things through. …Weird, but possible, Xigbar supposed.
"I just figure," Luxord was saying, "that, you know, I mean. It's like this. We've got maybe four, five—I don't really know how many, I'm guessing here, you can tell and all—four, five months left in each other's grand old company." At this, Xigbar couldn't help but smile and kind of snort into his hand. "And what I'm thinking," Luxord continued, "is that we should just—" his lips puckered together in a series of 'pop' noises while he looked for the right word and phrase… "We should just go and—and have a good old time and… and screw ladies."
Xigbar promptly blinked, squinted his one visible eye, and went, "Huh?"
"No, no, I meant, screw ladies, like, as in, forget them. Not sex them." Luxord threw a sideways look at Xigbar, who was still kind of ogle-eyed. "Perverted piece of work."
"Not half as much as you. And anyway. Hang on. Don't tell me you broke up with that chick just because you're… what, nostalgic or something, Lux?" The way Xigbar asked it made Luxord feel guilty, though he couldn't figure out how, why, or from where the feeling came from.
"No, no, it's not just that!" Luxord snapped, probably with more force than was really necessary. He sighed at the silence, said, "No, not that, Xig. I just. You know. Girls aren't all their cracked up to be."
"You can say that again."
"Girls aren't all their cracked up to be?"
"Uh, yeah."
"Well. It's. They're not. It's very rare." Somewhere, Luxord had a point. He was sure of it. "It's hard to find them and not find an annoying one. I mean. The pretty ones are everywhere. But they're either dumb, squeaky, bubbly, giddy, globby, whoreish, slutty, skanky, whiney, shallow, needy, grabby, touchy, feely, or gay."
Xigbar blinked. "Go back to 'globby'," he said, "I'm still hung up on that one. What the hell's it mean to be goddamn globby?"
"Never mind it! The point is: it's hard!"
Xigbar considered all this for a moment. "And by 'gay' I'm assuming you don't mean they're just so darned happy to see you all the time."
"No, Xigbar, by gay I mean they crave women's breasts more than I do."
"Well that's a bold and questionable statement to make, Luxord. You sure you don't want to retract that?"
"Fine, I retract it. You're absolutely impossible and are striking me as a complete and total bastard at this moment and yet for some crazed, half-assed reason, I just can't see myself kicking you out of my car and into the dirt. And that both disgusts and disturbs me."
But Xigbar wouldn't let it rest—couldn't possibly let it rest because what Luxord had essentially done was take the bad habits and broken Thursdays of the past twenty-eight months and turned them on their heads, little metaphorical feet dangling and waving in the air. It didn't make sense. Where'd little Busty go wrong? Xigbar had to know. He said, "So let's see if I've got it straight here. You wanted to leave your girl so you could… what? Like, spend quality time with me or something?"
Luxord didn't say anything, and Xig actually sort of found himself wishing he wasn't such an ass and hadn't actually phrased that like quality time was the making of a felony.
"What's so wrong with that, huh?"
"Well. Nothing. I mean." Xigbar shrugged. "Last year of high school. Little late to be rekindling childhood friendships, is all."
"It's hardly rekindling!" Luxord was torn between wanting to focus on traffic and wanting to pay attention to Xigbar. It was rather hard, he was discovering, to make a point while staring obsessively into the taillights of the car in front of you. "There's no rekindling involved!" He said it again for emphasis as he nearly rear-ended his fellow driver. The truck ahead honked—the Saab squeaked back.
"Goddamn bastards," hissed Luxord. Clearing his throat, he started again. "There's nooo rekindling required, Xig. We never stopped being friends!"
"It's called stagnation."
"It's called pessimism, you great big buffoon, and if you'd cease it for maybe five minutes, you might have a chance at a more positive outlook on life without any of this rekindling bullshit you speak of."
Xigbar blinked.
"And anyway," muttered Luxord, "I see you as much as I can. Are you comatose on Thursdays, or does one seventh of the every week just casually slip through your mind like curdled yogurt?"
"Need I remind you, buddy," Xigbar interjected, emphasis on the 'buddy' and strain on the seatbelt as he leaned forward. He had the benefit of not needing his attention directed elsewhere, so while Luxord fumbled with the turn signal and rearview mirror, Xigbar obliterated his argument with a verbal hand grenade. "We haven't rummaged, dined, lazed, or blabbed our dumbass mouths off in the past three weeks, thanks to Busty."
"Why do you always call her that?"
"Because. Her tits. They're like. Fuckin'…" Xigbar's hands rolled outwards. He searched for a word. And the word came to him. "Fuckin'… two-ton marshmallows."
Ignoring the fact that Xigbar's description was painfully honest and partially true, Luxord promptly triple-parked the Saab and needlessly announced: "WELL, HERE WE ARE."
"That's a subject change if I ever saw one."
"Now listen, Xig, you know I've been busy. We've all been busy! College applications! Football games! Corndog stands! School fundraisers! Earning a letter for a jacket! Writing papers in desperate attempts to excel to the level that your instructor actually knows your name and doesn't call you anything all that humiliating, like Zelda, Zimbob, Zoe, or Zach."
"Ignoring the fact that Zach is a perfectly common name, Lux, yeah, you're totally right." Xigbar slid out of the car and closed the door behind him. Luxord was still fumbling with his seatbelt and cursing an apparently off day. Where was that damned charisma of his?
It might very well—in answer to Luxord's question of mental anguish and strife—have been hiding in a corner of his subconscious, because Luxord rarely witnessed Xigbar as annoyed, wound-up, fixated, or driven towards any conversation they'd had in a long, long while. The last time he'd been that involved, it had been over criticizing Busty's posture while surfing, during the first, last, and only trip the three of them—Xigbar, Busts, and Lux—would ever take to the beach.
And that was years ago.
During such times of peculiar confrontation, Luxord had discovered that Xigbar was actually capable of heckling, nagging, and ceaselessly pursuing a topic until his views and points were so driven into your head, you actually wound up convinced they'd been your own all along and you couldn't help but agree with Xig. It was a very peculiar skill, and the world was really just rather lucky that Xigbar—in spite of such gift—was, ultimately, a rather laid-back person ninety days out of a hundred.
But apparently it was the hundredth day, and apparently Xigbar had it in for Luxord, of all people, and his petty notion that they were merry as clams, happy as oysters, and just as close as two friendly, wrinkly, strange-tasting peas in a chipper little pod.
"And why," Xigbar continued—Luxord winced, "are we always rummaging anyway? Why can't we ever go to KFC or, hell, fuck, damn, I don't know, something public, ordinary, and mundane?"
"Oh, I dunno, Xiggy. Rummaging is sometimes mundane."
"You know what I mean."
"I know what you mean."
"This is a burnt down store. We can't even shop at this store because it is burnt down. And yet here we are." Xigbar's face pulled a strange move, twisting and tugging itself into a frown, his random right dimple on the downside. "What," he asked, "do you do on all Thursdays when I don't see you?"
"Come on, Xig."
So Xigbar did come on. He followed right along beside Luxord out of habit as the two of them ventured forth over neon Caution! tape and into the wreckage. Around them was the smell of burnt plastic, charred metal, and coals, but that seemed to nothing to deter Luxord, who had at least planned accordingly and donned a pair of black, grungy jeans for the occasion. Xigbar's own denims were, of course, bound for ruin, but he didn't really care. What he did care about, though, was the fact that Luxord was still oblivious, still eager and still positive. How on earth someone could pull off that attitude constantly was completely beyond Xigbar. He could barely bring himself to be openly optimistic when forced into it by Luxord. How the hell could you do it on a routine basis?
Xigbar shuddered at the thought.
It wasn't, might I add, that he was a pessimist, as Luxord so wrongly thought, judged, and assumed. Rather, it was just that Xigbar was not the sort to assume much of anything about a given situation—be it a good or bad outcome. He knew, from years of experiencing the world as it was, that most situations had outcomes. …And that was, really, about all he knew. He might have been cursed, he might very well have had the worst luck in the world, but he would never have known. And the reason he would never have known is because he would simply never think enough to observe a pattern of reactions dumped upon his existence by whatever hand it was controlling such things.
Things happened, period. That was the sum of it all.
His complaint about always rummaging as a source of interaction between himself and Luxord was the only strange attitude Xigbar was exhibiting that day. The rest? That was normal. Xigbar was always picking on Busty, Xigbar was always ridiculing the Saab, and Xigbar was always mocking Luxord just as Luxord was always mocking Xigbar. But for Xigbar to express the slightest dislike towards rummaging—that was new. And for Luxord, that was frightening.
Luxord had been given enough time to regain his bearings and come up with a thought and a couple words that seemed to tie nicely into this thought of his. He said, "Now look here, it might just seem like a mattress warehouse that burned down… and really, that's exactly what it is… but. Think of what the flurry of dancing flames left behind. Isn't that why we do it anyway? Climbing through the ruins, picking up the pieces, sorting through the shit for the gold. Tell me, Xig—isn't that it?"
"Why are you such a goddamn fruit?" Xigbar asked instead.
With a tsk, a twist, and a flip of the wrist, Luxord shot him down. "Down boy," he said, "let's not get feisty. You'll be warm and asleep in your bed in just about, oh, say, one hour and forty-three minutes, providing for moderate traffic and a large order of fries from McDonald's on the trip back." The sun was bright, even in winter like they were, and it caught Luxord's hair so the mass of the thing lit up like a light bulb, glowing and burning and strolling across the wreckage site on a magic pair of legs and body. "You with me, Xig?"
Xigbar blinked, wondered some wonders about light bulbs, and nodded. He nodded not because he was necessarily 'with' Luxord, but simply because he wasn't quite sure what else to do. He'd lost whatever drive he had in his pursuit of the argument against the guy and, frankly, he couldn't quite remember what had gotten him so riled up to begin with. He should have been bouncing with joy at the prospect of a single, companionable Luxord now free whenever he was free—now able to bond and chill and hang whenever he was able. The idea was, at the end of it all, an appealing one.
So why had it bothered him so much?
Oh. That's right. Because Luxord is being a dipshit and not paying attention to the fact that things have been sucking and our friendship ain't quite what it used to be and I am—really—okay with that. Xigbar called to mind Demyx, Axel, Roxas, Zexion, and Kairi. He had more than enough friends. Luxord had become a shadow of a thing, and it could only be thought of as annoying when he assumed he was still the point around which all Xigbar's life swung and spun in place.
Xigbar sighed and drew to a halt. Luxord was some ways up ahead, already pulling this, that, and the other aside, to see what lay beneath. But he noticed Xigbar's pause and he lifted his head, shot the guy a look, a frown.
"You know, for someone who does absolutely nothing in their spare time, you most certainly do have… uh. No energy. At all."
Xigbar shrugged, stooped down, and picked something up, holding it out to Luxord.
"This cool?" He had, in his hands, the melted remnants of a plastic cup. If you held it at a forty-two degree angle, it looked rather like a profile of a seventy-four year old Shirley Temple in drag.
Obviously failing to recognize the beauty of aged Hollywood glitz, Luxord gave his response quick and succinct. "No," he said. "Not really. It's not." So Xigbar tossed the cup over his shoulder and went back to thinking and talking and kicking burnt crap around.
"Yeah. I dunno… Trouble sleeping, I guess," he was saying distractedly.
"Nightmares?" Luxord asked. He was kicking around the ruins of a bathroom and came upon a warped plastic container, which he curiously prodded at for a few seconds before realizing it was designed for feminine waste disposal. Although 'EW' is not at all what he said, what he actually said was not, is not, and never will be very appropriate or politically correct. So for the sake of appropriateness and political correction, Luxord conveniently enough said a perfectly PG-rated "Ew" before dropping the thing to the ground and twitching his hands around madly, wiping them against his pants until the skin felt good, raw, and clean again.
But about nightmares.
"No, not nightmares, man," Xigbar said. "More like… like sleeping is kinda… boring."
"Boring? I would think that sleep would be a regular rollercoaster ride for someone like you."
"You would think wrong…"
If there was one thing Luxord had retained over the years—aside from his very yellow hair, very British accent, and very flirty, scathing, creepy wit (which assumed all three forms at the same time, mind you), it must have been his tendency—his urgency—to jump from one topic to the next, much in the same way sugar-gliders go about their daily business. Sugar gliding. From sugar tree to sugar tree, never mind that sugar does not, in fact, grow on trees.
"Heeere we go. See this?" Luxord was then wielding half of the innards of a spring box, safe, good metal twisted and blackened from the dead fire and completely free of feminine hygiene products. Oddly enough, Xigbar couldn't remember the last time he'd seen Luxord look so damn pleased with his little self.
"Mmhm," came Xigbar's grunt. He hoped it sounded like one of approval. Frankly, it didn't even convince him.
Still mucking through the rubble, Luxord jumped back (glided, really) onto the topic at hand. "So maybe if you took sleep meds, huh?" He threw out the suggestion like he threw a warped piece of plastic from his hand and into the surrounding piles. "Eight hours a night every night," he trailed on. "Not a bad way to waste the time."
Mulling over sleeping aids and possible endless nights of repose, Xigbar plopped down onto a mattress, resting his chin on a fist and taking on a position that he hoped conveyed his thoughts—beat, down, and drilled to the bone. It was then, with something of a start, that Xigbar realized that he was, in fact, sitting on a near pristine mattress, relatively intact and almost untouched amidst the sea of wreckage and charred treasures that only Luxord could see. Kicking the mattress with his heel, testing its reality just once more, Xigbar cleared his throat. "It didn't burn this one," he said.
"Hm? Oh. Guess they put it out before it could wreck that. Still kinda crispy looking. Won't find anyone sleeping in it, I'll gather." There was silence for a good moment or two before Luxord let out some warbley noise of victory (though he would deny it as a warble later) and declared, "Here we are! A grade-A bonefied…"
Xigbar looked up. Luxord held some kind of metal mash of various things that had probably once had some sort of function. "A… a bonefied thingy." Properly labeled and described. Really, as far as Xigbar was concerned, what it looked like was the upper half of a one-breasted woman with a toilet bowl for a head. Perhaps it was an abstract sculpture—or at least, perhaps it could pass as one now that the fire had had its merry way with it.
Maybe it was Luxord's discovery of the abstract art. Maybe the thing was not art, but some sort of alien totem of good fortune and fertility. Or maybe it was a simple chance twist of fate as Xigbar bent his knee just so to tie his shoe, dragging his foot just so up the side of mattress, and thus catching and flicking the very small, revealed corner of a folded piece of paper—just so neatly tucked between the mattress and box-spring on which Xigbar sat.
Xigbar tilted his head to one side, furrowed his brows, and assumed the classic position of one confused. Grasping the paper between his index and middle finger, he freed it from its mattress tomb and held it up. "Luxord?"
Luxord turned, blinked, and made a face of some sort. He said, as though stating the obvious, "Paper's not worth keeping." And then, "Hey, wait, how come that didn't burn?"
"It was in the corner here," Xigbar said.
"Well, let's see it then! Come on, Xigbar!"
And Xigbar was poking at the mattress, note in one hand, the other groping around inside the space between mattress and spring box, as though searching for an essay, tome, or other indispensable piece of script to tie into the piece of something in his hand. "There's nothing else in—"
Snaggity!, went Luxord, in some sense, and yanked the note from Xigbar's grasp with all too much ease. Before Xigbar could utter a phrase, a word, or a semi-coherent thought, Luxord had put a good ten-foot distance between them and was unfolding the letter and violating the thing with his eyes as they speed-raked over each curve and dip of each word and line.
If Xigbar had actually cared, he might have said something. Instead, he just waited with boredom or patience or a combination of the two—waited and waited for Luxord to declare his findings, which he knew he would. Sure enough, after a few seconds or so of careful observation, Luxord was grinning rather moronically.
"What's it say?" Xigbar asked, simply because the question was expected of him and without it, there would just be silence.
"Hah! Listen to this, listen to this!" went Luxord. And so he read:
"If I could write a love poem for you, boy, I would. And I'll tell you right now, it would be the love poem to trump all love poems—it would be that impressive. It would be just that amazing. But the way things are and the way I happen to be, I'm not a poet. You probably know this by now. So here's an I.O.U. of sorts. I.O.U. the world's greatest love poem—the world's greatest love poem that will make Shakespeare's bones twitter and shift and hang in shame. I hope you're expecting something magnificent by now, because you're going to get it. Meet me next week—the usual. Don't be late. Yours, X."
Xigbar, thoroughly unimpressed, just rolled his head towards one shoulder. It was cold. He was still mildly annoyed about nothing in particular. "…O-kaaay. So?"
"Sooo… This, Xigbar, is what certain types of people like to call: A Love Letter. Definitely worth keeping." Ever the triumphant, Luxord beamed, folded the thing neatly in fourths and tucked it in the pocket of his sweatshirt.
"It's not like it was written for you, man," said Xigbar.
"Doesn't matter. Mine now. I wonder what poor sap lost this thing."
"Who knows? Better question: Who cares? It's not yours."
"But obviously the leaver or receiver didn't care enough to come see if it'd been left here after the whole joint burnt down." Luxord smirked, pleased that he'd buillshitted his way into making a point. "And besides," he said. "No one's ever gonna find it here—they're bulldozing this lot tomorrow. Who's to say I won't be returning it to its rightful owner?"
"Well you've already desecrated the damn thing and read it without permission." Xigbar raised an eyebrow. "It seems kind of… yanno. Wrong. Or some shit. Haven't you ever heard of personal property?"
"You're just sore it's not you with the sexy secret love letter."
"Screw off."
Luxord picked up his abstract mound of strangeness and crossed the burnt land in calculated leaps and bounds, putting himself directly beside Xigbar as he moved to stand up. Notching his voice to a slightly higher pitch, Luxord crooned, "Poor baby Xiggles!" while examining the face of the metal and pondering love letters and the lot.
When Xigbar sighed and started heading back towards the car, he was only moderately surprised to find himself suddenly staggering under the added weight of Luxord and his metal monstrosity latched onto his back in some sort of lopsided piggyback fashion.
"Xiggles—what the—get off, dude!" Xigbar whined.
Blatantly ignoring the command, Luxord took a moment to admire Xigbar's healthy mane of hair—jet black where it wasn't white, smooth and fine all over. It was, after all, only a matter of inches from Luxord's nose. If anyone was going to judge Xig's hair, why, Luxord was in a proper position to do so. Xigbar couldn't hear his smile, but he damn well heard it in his words when Luxord announced: "Why, I wish I could do this to my hair."
"What? A ponytail?" Xigbar growled. "You'd look… weird."
"Why thank you, Xigbar. I assure you, your kindness is overwhelming me here. It's completely daunting. Overwhelming. How do you breath with all that kindness filling your body?"
"I'm just sayin' you look fine the way you are is all. 'Sides. You don't have enough hair for it anyway." Xigbar sighed, resigned to his pack mule position, hauling Luxord towards the car. For all that his friend was good and built, he was a more slender build than Xigbar, though why this was, Xigbar would never really know.
"I could grow it out," Luxord was saying, still fixated on hair-topics. "Be a head banger," he said. "Or I could, like, get some dreads and shit. The white Bob Marley revolution."
For some reason, unbeknownst to all, there was something just fundamentally wrong about picturing Luxord singing reggae. Luxord at the beach—that was fine. That was doable. He had been to the beach countless times with Xigbar, and each and every time he went, he almost managed to drown himself by some miraculous means of stupidity—including that time Busty had gone along. Regardless, it was just the vision of Luxord—beach-savvy with a floppy, multicolored beanie and bongos and cowbells and everything that just rubbed Luxord's character in such a wrong way.
Xigbar could see it then. A skin-tone anomaly of tanned Luxord and white hair, rocking it up with his Jamaican buddies of questionable drug-related persuasions.
Shaking his head violently and accidentally bashing Luxord's nose in the process, Xigbar tried, in vain, to free his mind of the idea.
"You're full of crap," he muttered.
"Probably." Once he was sure his nose wasn't about to gush all over the whole place, Luxord leaned forward a little more, causing a grumble from Xigbar that Luxord would later reassure himself was a Sound of Affection. A lovely, grumbley, affection-noise. "This is fun, wouldn't you say?" he asked his long-time buddyroo, arms about his neck and chin atop his head.
"What, carrying your fat ass around all over town? Fun? Yeah. I'll believe it," Xigbar said.
"Harsh. So harsh, Xigbar. So painfully harsh."
"Well I wouldn't have to be if you didn't have the goddamn metal thing gouging me in my ass, you shit."
"Now, now, do you kiss your mother with that mouth?"
"I don't kiss my mother at all, Oedipus."
"Touché."
There was a certain charm in using a Greek tragedy to throw a low blow at someone, and it was that certain charm that made Luxord grin a dopey grin and gave him the urge to pat himself on the back for a Thursday gone well. Only in his intention to pat himself on the back, he ended up patting Xigbar on the back instead. It's all too easy, apparently, to confuse one body for another in a moment of happiness. Xigbar, however, didn't even notice. He was still in Jamaica—heat of the summer, sun block and sand, oceans and bad beats backing up a boy who just should never, dear lord—never have dreadlocks.
x x x
Somewhere far, far away from Jamaica and submerged in the grey depths of coming winter season, Xigbar and Luxord were sprawled out on a blanket well after dark. Luxord's sister was somewhere—he could only assume her husband was somewhere with her. Luxord himself had felt obligated to milk the Thursday for all it was and all it possibly could be, but really, the truth of the matter is that it was no hard task, prying Xigbar from a night of boredom in his bedroom to relocate to a night of possible not-boredom in Luxord's backyard. The fact that the temperature hung somewhere at around forty-six degrees was a very, very minor one. Luxord had many blankets.
Once, once, once, long, long ago, back in the days of yore and nineteen-ninety four, Luxord and Xigbar had not known each other. In fact, so caught up were they in their five-year-old days, they could not even seem to comprehend the idea of a "world". A world, in their minds, was what you could see and touch in the immediate surroundings, and as most youth (and, on occasion, some very sad and unfortunate adults) tend to believe, the world revolved wholly and entirely around them. Each step in a new direction revealed a new space of world that hadn't existed until their baby feet had happened upon it.
So it was that when Xigbar and Luxord did know each other and when they did come to spend time with each other, there was no safer way to regard the sky than in the presence of the other. The idea that there was a system outside their bodies at work was a terrifying one. And that idea—unlike a great many ideas—remained terrifying. It was the sort of idea too daunting too approach on one's own. Company was absolutely required.
So though they never spoke of it and though they never addressed it in the slightest, both Xigbar and Luxord took some small sliver of pleasure in the idea of being able to stare into the inky blackness outside themselves—never mind the crutch of the best friend some three feet away. It was accomplishment, and accomplishment—especially for Xigbar—was a reason for rare pride and celebration.
On that one evening however, following the discovery of the letter, neither Xigbar not Luxord made it to thinking about the blackness beyond. They were stuck on more present issues of the here, the now, and the self-centered.
"It's too cold for this shit. Aren't they all supposed to be dead by now or something? I swear to God, if another mosquito bites me, the world is gonna see some hell unfold."
"We're practically surrounded by citronella candles, Xig. No, wait. They're torches, man. Citronella torches. Citronella Tiki torches. The bugs are at bay. Stop being such a girl."
Xigbar felt like sniffing, heaving a sigh, or giving a 'humph', but instantly jumped to the wise conclusion that such actions would only serve to prove Luxord's point. Instead he snorted—as deep and man-like as a snort could be, and executed a precise, if lacking, counterattack. "What's girly," he said, "are these stupid candles. Where'd they come from? Wal-Mart?"
"…No." Luxord waited a minute, frantically wracking his brain, trying desperately to reassure himself that yes, they hadn't really come from Wal-Mart. After a moment he said, "Ikea."
"Ikea, huh? Fuckin' Swiss, man," said Xigbar.
"You mean Swedish," went Luxord.
"No, it's Swiss."
"Swiss, like, the Alps? Like Switzerland, right?"
"I said Swiss, didn't I?"
"So you mean Switzerland."
"No, I mean the goddamn Swiss."
"Ikea is Swedish."
"Whatever they are, man. They make crap furniture."
"They're candles, for God's sake, Xig!"
"At least they kinda work."
"God, forget this. Sorry I even suggested it."
It had been Luxord's suggestion. Crappy candles and cold nights aside, he hadn't quite been willing to give up Thursday and he knew it and he hated that he knew it. Tomorrow would be Friday. He would see The Small and Curvaceous One and she would probably start crying on him and get mascara all over his uniform—possibly causing a stain that would give him grief from all his instructors that day. Later, she would apologize for being emotional but only become more emotional through her apology, somehow managing to guilt Luxord about being a virginity-stealing, female-deceiving, disbelieving sinner who deserved a fairly powerful kick to the crotch.
In remorse or fear—the two were much in the same—Luxord would apologize as well.
If all shit possible really hit the fan, Busty would think that they were back together and Luxord wouldn't have the heart to tell her no.
Such were the events Luxord was sure Friday held for him. It was as though each and every day except Thursday was a trip to a foreign land or a different planet, and Thursday was the brief intermission between it all, the momentary stop at the watering hole of home.
No one, in their heart of hearts, could blame Luxord for dragging Thursday out. Not even Xigbar could blame him.
"Hey, come on," Xig said. Luxord had made to stand, made to tear down the Tiki torches and be done with the night, because clearly the night was done with him. But Xig flailed a long, combat-booted leg out and caught Luxord in the heel, caught Luxord's attention. "Sit down," he pleaded, in such a manner of pleading that it really didn't seem like pleading quite so much as it seem like a plaintive yet powerful command. And when Luxord didn't listen, Xigbar just repeated and elaborated. "Sit your scrawny ass down already, would ya?"
Luxord did, with a flourish and a plop, and Xigbar properly rewarded him with all the positive reinforcement glory they'd been drilled on as children. That is to say, Xigbar surrendered. "Swedish, yeah, whatever," he said. "Happy now?"
"Not especially, now that you mention it," Luxord drawled.
"So hey. What're we gonna do with that, uh, that thing?" Xigbar asked.
"The letter?" Luxord made a motion that was supposed to be a shrug, but it just ended up resembling a lopsided twitch a butterfly might give before being pinned to a board. He said, "I thought you were against it. Privacy of others, personal property, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Second thoughts on that one, mate?"
"No. And don't call me that." Something about the word 'mate' just brought to mind the all-too-repulsive reproduction rituals of questionable animals, such as the bird-eating spider and the praying mantis, to name just a very few. Xigbar shivered, though not at all from the cold. He insisted, "I'm just sayin' we should get the letter to whoever it was supposed to go to, is all. No meddling or any crap involved. Just a good honest deed. One for the record books."
"And since when has Xigbar been all about doing good and honest deeds, huh?"
"Karma, man. I do this," Xigbar's thumb tapped his chest, "I'll get laid within the next three months. You just watch."
"Xigbar, Xigbar, Xigbar. You, sir, are a twisted mind trapped in an even more twisted body."
"I'll kick your ass."
"You're absolutely beautiful."
"Shut the hell up."
"Charming, really. Without a doubt the most ravishingly gorgeous personality on the—whoop!" The 'whoop' was caused by some random beating Luxord found himself receiving on the side of his head. Rather than bitch or moan, he laughed it off. Such things were easy for boys to do. "Delivery boys, then?" he asked.
"For the time being. You were right when you said no one would find it if it stayed there."
"Wonderful idea, Xig. A true purpose with honor and dignity and only one tiny, slight, miniscule, little problem." Xigbar fixed him with the owl-eyed 'I'm going to pretend I know what you're getting at and wait for a follow-up explanation out of supposed sheer politeness, even though the reality of the situation is that I completely didn't register what you told me' expression, to which Luxord felt the urge to sigh and expand upon his thought. He said, "There are an awful lot of people in the world and, alas, there are but two of us and but one single, itty, bitty letter. Face it, Xig. Lost cause. It was an idle thought in passing and nothing more."
"We're not talking about searching the world, Lux. Look. The letter was left in a mattress store. Not many people just passing through town would pay a visit to a mattress store, let alone use it as some secret rendezvous point for some secret… lover… thing." Ever the master of eloquence, Xigbar did a mental calculation of how much of his reasoning and logic he could butcher into verbal communication in such a manner that it seemed at least mildly sensible. Having done this, he tactlessly blabbed out, "So whoever it is we're looking for lives nearby. We've got that much." He nodded. And was done.
Somewhere in the night, the last cricket of autumn rubbed his two little wings together and died.
"You're a regular Sherlock, you know that?"
"Shut up."
"No, no, let's talk this one out. I'm thinking a real sleuth ensemble could be in order. Trench and magnifying glass and floppy hat and all. Maybe even one of those bubble-blowing pipes."
"Dude. Why are you, like, in a constant state of being high?"
Luxord made a sound that sounded like a laugh—a laugh that sounded like a scoff. And the reality of the matter was that all Luxord's laughs, on some plane, on some level, sounded like scoffs.
He said: "Hardly." Meaning he was hardly ever high and almost never ever high in the presence of his beloved amigo, the daring and dashing gent of the Squinty-Eyed Splendor.
And to this, Xigbar said: "Really." Meaning he was really quite positive he knew exactly what Luxord got up to in his spare time with Busty and the Prep School Pals, and it had all the makings of an after-school special on drug abuse and how it ruins lives.
So the discussion went.
"No, not really."
"No, really."
"And next you're going to start on my candles again."
"What the hell possessed you to buy them?"
"I didn't buy them! And that wasn't a cue to start on the candles!"
Somewhere in the night, the last Robin of Autumn swooped down from the sky and gobbled up the corpse of the last cricket of autumn without a second thought.
"How many more days like this?" Luxord asked. A sudden spell of sleepiness had rolled in, and he was only vaguely aware and grateful for the fact that no one died of hypothermia in forty-some-odd degree weather. He was also grateful for blankets, and though he would probably never admit it aloud, he was also, also grateful for body heat. Namely, Xigbar's body heat that seemed to rise up from his skin like liquid and drip down onto whatever surface and space he seemed to be occupying at the time.
Unaware of his heat or the gratitude of all things, Xigbar checked his watch, the face of it glowing green in the nighttime. He said, "One hundred and ninety three." One hundred and ninety three days. No. The digital numbers switched over to report the midnight hour. "Correction. One hundred and ninety two days, counting breaks and weekends."
"One-ninety-two…" Luxord said the number aloud once and silently once, committing it to memory. Beside him, Xigbar was warm, unfazed by the cold, and was considering turning his attention to the sky, where, perhaps, it should have been all along.
And that might have been how the evening had ended. A countdown of days left and a meek parting of ways until the next Thursday, when Luxord may or may not have made it around to seeing Xigbar, depending on how everything played out with Curvy on the morrow. But there's one little thing that you, I, and a great many of us fleshy, pulsing Earth-dwellers know well, and that is this: coincidence is responsible for all things. Granted, you could give coincidence any number of aliases—among the most commonly used might be fate, fortune, chance, luck, purpose, reason, or the ever-popular destiny. For the purpose of this tale, we shall call coincidence by her maiden name. Simply and perfectly coincidence—and left at that.
And as coincidence would have it, all matters were not laid to rest. The black void was before Xigbar and it was very alluring indeed. Had it not been for a slight gust of wind that caused the candles to waver, that caused their light to quiver, that caused Luxord's hair to glow and give the impression of movement—Xig probably wouldn't have made eye contact with Luxord at all. But such as things were, the wind did blow, the candle did shake, and the light did make it appear as though Luxord was a fire-prone disaster wrapped up in blankets that smelled of mothballs of plywood, and he was very much focused on Xigbar at that moment because he was very much occupied with the concept of aloneness and the one-ninety-two day countdown.
So it was that the eye contact, the void, the aloneness, the candles, the wind, the blankets, the hair, the countdown that all built up to the decision.
"Hey," Luxord said. "Let's do it, huh? We'll deliver this letter to whomever it was supposed to go to. We'll hunt 'em down. It'll be our last great deed."
"It'll be our only great deed, really," Xigbar jibed.
"It'll be a twisted, modern day adventure of whimsical proportions."
"It'll be our first and only modern day adventure of any proportions."
"The one that happens right before death."
"Um. Morbid."
"Very. I can see the headlines now proclaiming—Death: the next whimsical adventure."
"Don't be a fruit."
"Don't be a prick."
Luxord had to double take then—a classic expression of shock and confusion riddling his handsome face. He could have sworn he'd heard Xigbar chuckle, though it was not the chuckle that surprised him. What surprised Luxord, really, was the realization at that split second that he hadn't heard that chuckle in a long, long time. And it was good—so damn, indescribably good—to be hearing it again, like it was something right and regular and even to his off-kilter day.
Xigbar was still smiling all off and lopsidedly when he said, "Alright. Let's deliver the goddamn note. Why not?"
(x) (x) (x)
