#me coopting mimi's characters again

[idealistsinc]

23 // shuffle

wc: 739

When Yesugen had gone, Charlotte reclined in her chair, crossed her arms, and mustered her best accusatory pout. “You let her win,” she said.

It was nearly surreal to see Khenbish—Khaizo, now, she supposed—under the garish and glimmering lights of the Manderville Gold Saucer. Against the monochromatic backdrop of Coerthas, Khaizo had always seemed a man etched from stone, as cold and distant as Dravania’s mountain peaks. But here, warmed from drink, with tinny music whining in their ears and the glare from the game machines bleaching his hair more gray than black, Charlotte could hardly reconcile the person in her memory with the one before her.

After all, Khenbish of the Vengeful Lance never smiled.

Khaizo began to reshuffle the deck, his face utterly blank. “No, I didn’t.”

“I was watching the discard pile. You could have won, like, three turns ago.” Thancred had taught her that particular trick, although she often found herself too…preoccupied to pay attention to counting cards. “Not that I blame you. She’s adorable.”

Charlotte hadn’t been sure what to think when Yesugen had opened the door, a serious and robust girl with a slow smile and a broken horn. Young. Perhaps a little too serious. It had taken a few drinks for her to seem to enjoy herself; she had grinned like a child when she’d put down her winning hand, and Khaizo, whom Charlotte had also managed to coax (read: browbeat) into having a drink or two, had smiled with her like he had no idea he was doing it.

He didn’t contradict her, she noticed, although his brow had started to furrow. Maybe now that he’d been plied with alcohol, Charlotte could get some more information out of him. “Where did you even find this girl?”

“Ask her,” said Khaizo, clipped.

Charlotte groaned. “Come on. You have to tell me something. She’s from Othard, isn’t she? Is that Doman you’re speaking with her? How old is she?”

Khaizo put the deck, shuffled, down on the table with more force than was strictly necessary. “Yes, she is from Othard,” he said. “She speaks Xaelan. And…”

He didn’t continue. After a few moments, Charlotte realized it wasn’t his usual “freeze people out until they stopped asking” tactic. She gaped. “You don’t even know!? And she’s been living with you for, what, six months—”

“Two,” said Khaizo, in a tone like Charlotte had leapt over the table with a wrench to pull out his teeth.

“—and you haven’t even bothered to ask how old—Matron’s tits, you’re hopeless.”  Charlotte craned her neck to see if Yesugen had come back and saw her lingering at the edge of the room, talking with great focus to a white-haired Miqo’te woman in the Gold Saucer uniform. She flagged Yesugen down, and she at last returned to the table. “Gen, how old are you?”

Yesugen blinked, then said, with enough confidence that Charlotte doubted she had misremembered the Eorzean number, “Sixteen. Why?”

“Just—wondering.” Charlotte desperately tried to remember how many drinks she’d ordered for a sixteen-year-old girl; Khaizo, dealing a new round of cards like his life depended on it, was not doing much better. Yesugen wandered back to her seat in apparent confusion.

“So…we play again?”

Perhaps Yesugen would be more receptive. Charlotte leaned her elbows onto the table, testing the waters. “How did you meet Khaizo? I don’t think either of you have said. Was it at the stables?”

“No,” said Yesugen. “We meet in Ul’dah on the street. He help me with having work—he work there already, so then we work together.”

Did she have nowhere else to go? “And you stay with him?”

She tilted her head. “You know that.”

Gods, Yesugen was nearly as bad as Khaizo. At least she had the excuse of a language barrier. “I mean, do you like it?” Charlotte leaned farther forward, shielding her mouth conspiratorially. “You might not have noticed, but he’s kind of grumpy.”

She thought maybe she heard Khaizo sigh, just a little. Yesugen looked at her carefully, though, and said, with long pauses between as if she was weighing her words, “Ul’dah is different. I learn things, still, but—I guess I like it.”

This wasn’t getting anywhere. Charlotte settled back and checked her hand for the new round.

“Khaizo,” she said, trying hard not to smile. “Where’s your head, old man? One too many on the cards.”

Khaizo snatched it out of her hands, scowling profusely.

charlotte & khaizo belong to @mimiorzea

#ffxivwrite2020 #ffxiv khaizo erebos #ffxiv charlotte leroux #ffxiv cheyesugen oryokuln #my writing #me coopting mimi's characters again #they're just so fun #i kind of got lost in this one halfway through but i'd already committed so #here we are