A/N: So sorry for not making this clearer, but this is not intended to be a yaoi fic. I rode very close to it, but Luxord and Marly are just reaaaaally good friends. Nothing more. Sorry it has taken so long (again) to upload, but I think you're almost a third through :D Enjoy and please review?

XI. Wild Card

I had lost count how many times I had talked to Liam. I took him on a grand tour of the casino, taught him about the games that I myself hadn't even touched. I explained how to keep a level head whilst gambling, how to analyse a man whilst he shuffled the cards and did their job in distracting any sort of attention from idle chatter to off-putting moustaches.

It wasn't long until I took him into one of the VIP rooms, which were more commonly reserved for more superior guests and people in dire need to be away from the noise.

And it wasn't long until I had forgotten that Joker was more or less always on my back, even when he was elsewhere.

I had covered him up as being the silent bodyguard of mine, and Liam bought it with surprising amicability. Joker wasn't quite so convinced.

"Master Ludor, 1400 draws nearer. I suggest we pick up the pace."

I grinned as I outstretched on the sofa. "I am aware of that, and I stand by what I've said before. He can wait."

Liam looked between us both. "If you are needed elsewhere, then I don't see what's holding you back. I do know where the door is."

"Don't concern yourself," I reassured him, eying the chess board that mocked me. Liam had made a particularly bold move in advancing the queen a little too far. "There's still plenty of time for us to finish the game. How about it?" I kept one hand on my chin as I brought forward a bishop, picking up my wineglass as I withdrew my hand.

"If you insist," Liam said, giving the board a fleeting look as he tried to come up with the best move. "Although, the way you're constantly in meetings and you don't seem bothered…it worries me. You must be earning good money to rent out a room like this, that's all I can say."

I could almost feel Joker stare at me intently as he too awaited my take on the problem. "Comes with the job description." I couldn't say much for Liam, but considering he always came in during his lunch breaks and in the evening, his workplace was lenient in comparison to mine. He often sported jeans of some sort and often accessorised his appearance by wearing bold shirts.

Me, I was the same almost every day. Uptight suit, plain old ties, or the occasional cravat if I felt like it. It was standard procedure to look presentable to the ladies and the important clients. But most of all I dressed to please my father, who detested anything other than the tailor-made merchandise. And he would know if my sleeves were even a centimetre too short.

"Well boy, I would hate to be you." Liam gestured for me to decide my move, which I did after sipping from my glass and replacing it on the table. "Meetings and that have never been my strong point. I like getting down to business, if you know what I mean. Practical things."

I smiled nonchalantly. "It's fairly easy once you know the right words and how to deliver the information you want," I explained. "It just takes a lot of time to perfect it."

"Sounds like it's been drilled into your head so much you're talking in the same language even out of the workplace." He let out an exasperated sigh as he leaned forwards in his armchair slightly. "Can't you lighten up a bit and complain about work colleagues, or complain when you're forced overtime?"

Even though it was tiny, Joker snickered in the background at Liam's comments. True, my life revolved around the casino and ergo meant I was working overtime constantly, but it had all become a way of life for me. It didn't bother me that I never really ventured out or that I saw the same things every day – I had either gotten used to it or the newspapers gave me all the information I wanted to know.

"I don't see the point in consoling to other people about your own problems. I'm quite satisfied of where I am at this point in life."

Liam laughed. "Yet you're here just as much as I am. Tell me, what draws you here?"

If I had the time to think about it, I would have told Liam all about my heritage. We had known each other for more than a few months now, and I would have been able to entrust him with my secret. Perhaps it would have been a rash decision, but the way I saw things, there was nothing wrong with a little too much risk.

But I heard Joker take out a pocket watch with as much noise as he could make out of it. He was trying to tell me that time was running short, but I pretended not to take notice of it.

Regardless, I chose to talk of myself under an elaborate lie. "Family matters make things pretty complex." On one side, my father wanted me to absorb everything about the casino my brain could manage. And on the opposite side, maybe I was trying to stimulate myself so I didn't spend those idle hours thinking about the other side of the family.

"I know what you mean," Liam was quick to agree. "What is it – rowdy children? Your wife wearing the trousers? Or is it that catastrophic phase where your parents or her parents don't like the idea of you getting married, and they only find pleasure in making your life hell? You can go ahead and let off some steam."

I shook my head as I took up a glass chess piece. The horse's neck arched perfectly with the two fingers that I was holding it with, the blueness tantalising as the light hit it. So deep that it was how I imagined a frozen lake to be. "It's the sort of thing where an outsider's opinion isn't called for."

The thin layer of ice separated us. Our worlds were completely different, and there was no point in making the two collide. We both wanted to know each other, but we had to reveal as little about ourselves as well.

That was what made our encounters worthwhile. We could never touch, just see each other through the ice and laugh as we spent our conversations deciphering which one of us was drowning.

Liam gave a small smile as he pried the horse from my fingers and put it back on its original square. "You're cheating on her, that's got to be it."

I almost groaned in despair. I hadn't had any sort of physical contact with women, much less have a relationship with one. He could come out with the most absurd things, but the sound of impatient tapping put me back on track.

"Joker, I really don't want to repeat myself."

He gave me a cold look, but replaced the pocket watch back into the depths of his blazer.

"Liam, it's more a parent problem. Bad income, red numbers." I smiled. It was a rather impressive lie, and one that wasn't entirely false. The casino did have a particularly bad customer rate around summer, and red numbers was what it flourished on.

The look of realisation dawned on his face. "So you're in it for the money too? I would have thought that you were really well-off, looking at this room and the meeting stuff you have going on."

I frowned as I channelled all my concentration to the chess game. "Do we have a common goal?"

"Definitely," he said straight away. "Where I work at the moment gives me really bad wages, and I need to get out of here really soon. Casino's the perfect place to get a lot out without too much effort…Once you taught me the rules, of course."

"Where are you planning to go?" I asked. As far as I knew, there wasn't any sort of place far away where someone would insist on gambling so many days of the week. Were the travel expenses around here really that hefty?

He shrugged. "Someplace a little less dull. It was tolerable when I got here, but now it's bringing me closer to madness by the day. Why is it always so dark all the time? Why are the people here so…ordinary? I want to see other places – who knows how many worlds are out there, waiting to be discovered."

"Worlds?" I repeated. "It's Traverse Town all the way down the districts, and not much else."

Liam grinned slyly, leaning across the table to raise his wineglass between us. I knew for a fact that he hadn't taken a single sip in the full hour we were here. "I mean it. There are other places beyond this one, worlds where there's daylight and interesting people. I used to live in a place called Radiant Garden, but it was devoured by its own darkness."

I blinked. "You're not from around here?"

He rolled his eyes as though I had asked a stupid question. "Pink hair isn't common here, is it? It was considered normal in Radiant Garden. It was rife with colour. Not any more, of course."

"Why's that?" I asked incredulously. Did he really think I could so readily believe him? It all sounded farfetched to me.

"No one knows. Just that it went black, and only a handful of civilians escaped in a machine called a Gummi Ship. It ended up here, and you can imagine my excitement of stepping onto a brand new world." He spluttered almost immediately after gulping down a fair portion of the glass' contents. "How can you drink this stuff?"

"Wine is the blood of a noble man. Show it some respect." With an air of finality, I showed him how to do it properly. Slowly and leisurely.

Liam wrinkled his nose as he set the glass down. "Can't say it's really my sort of thing." He narrowed his eyes as he pushed the glass as far away as he could.

I couldn't help but laugh. Ever since I had been conceived, I was deemed a sinner. Part of my blood was that of a man who mastered the Art of temptation, dragging so many down after him. That was enough for me to have a reserved spot in hell.

I didn't drink wine because I respected that man. I devoured his very existence and desired his blood. I despised the man who found that punishing sinners was righteous. Our fate was sealed if we were born at the wrong time or if we made a bad choice. If he was to punish us, then we might as well defy him. It came as no surprise that wine was the most popular beverage in the casino. Here, there was no one to judge sinners.

A glorious formula of lust, greed and gluttony – that was the true nature of wine. And quite possibly a side of me that I wasn't eager to show Liam.

"So what are you doing with yourself now?" I demanded.

"It wasn't that long ago that I grew tired of the mundane lifestyle." Liam tossed his head as he glanced over his shoulder pensively. "I had that thrill, and now I want nothing more than to explore. There's absolutely nothing here that will keep me away from my goal, which is to get a Gummi Ship of my own and travel."

I shook my head as I took another sip. It was bitter against my tongue, but I didn't pull a face. Unlike tea, wine put me on edge. "The whole concept sounds ludicrous."

He laughed half-heartedly. "True, but I wasn't the only one rescued from Radiant Garden. If you were in town some months ago, you would have seen us land or at least heard of it. People spoke of it for weeks."

"I must have been very busy," I said swiftly. Perhaps at the back of my mind, I remembered reading something about it in one of those morning papers. I didn't know for certain, and it was hard for me to believe something which didn't have concrete proof.

"It was hard settling in, but my employer was nice enough to take me on. He said that he needed help in the shop, and that he wouldn't turn down an extra pair of hands."

I nodded. "Yet the wages clearly aren't satisfying if you're here so often."

"Yeah, Charles said business was bad, and that my pay would be better if I worked elsewhere. But no one else wanted help, so I had no choice in the end."

I bit my tongue. Hard.

It all made sense to me, why I had picked Liam out of the crowd. It was fate that he had the one connection of the outside world that I wanted to know about more than anything. I did my best to contain my sudden interest, especially since Joker's green eyes now bore into the back of my neck and was far from friendly.

"What kind of shop do you work at?" I demanded. I had to know, before Joker made his move.

Liam waved a hand lightly. "Nothing interesting. Just a standard item shop, with those big heavy boxes of potions and that."

I was hungry to know more. How was my family? Were they concerned about me in the slightest? And maybe on one of those days where Joker wasn't on my back, could I sneak out with him to see them personally?

How different did Charles look? Had his voice grown deeper? Had he matured over the years and moved on from the dependence that he had on me? The memories of our short childhood rushed back to me, so vivid that I could hear him next to me as we laughed and cried together. I could even smell the musty stench of rotting wood at the back of the store, where Charles and I often played boats with empty cardboard boxes.

A hand on my shoulder snapped me out of my trance. Joker's gaze was stern, and I knew that my time was up, and no further delays could be arranged.

I sighed as I got off the sofa. "Your king has been in check for some time now."

I made to gather the pieces, but Liam got there first and gave a small grin. "I've been holding this for a while too, and this may be the salesman side of me talking, but you'd look great with piercings. Anywhere really – it'll give a wild look about you."

Whether he had seen my father beforehand, I didn't want to know.