#sorry this got so away from me LAKSJASKGA

[avcnturine]

[VINGT-ET-UN]

"I'll stand." Robin speaks with a steady tone, though her left wing twitches. She learned how to play Blackjack so long ago yet still chooses to keep things safe. In gambling? Seriously? 15 is a mediocre hand to play but she'd rather not risk busting—shall our all-or-nothing dealer capitalize on this?

IN BLACKJACK, HE PARTICULARLY ENJOYS the role of the ' dealer '. the player——he plays that in every game ; he's always played that. in that seat, there's freedom, there's choice, there's safety and self-determination. so by all accounts, it suits the likes of miss robin well.

she declares stand, and he smiles: thin-lipped, charming, crepuscular. the low bar lights gleam off the rim of rose-tinted shades the way they might off serpents' scales. his first card was a black six just like them too.

"my turn, then."

in the dealer's seat, he is bound and chained. a throttled doll, blood and veins to motion performed through and beyond him, a metaphor for lever and pulley. the strings of something most people call fate but which he knows is so, so much more arbitrary than that guides from the backs of his hands, and its threads are woven brilliant with color, blues, purples, golds, and pinks, hypnotic——downright erotic——in the beauty of their strangling end.

the second card is a black ten.

he thinks it's interesting that miss robin had opted to bank entirely on the chance of him busting, rather than playing up to seventeen. it might look too cautious to most, even a fool's play. but more than that to aventurine, it's bold, predatory, tightens those strings drawing stitches from his arms to the velvet rests in old scripture spelling out D-E-A-L-E-R. he enjoys it. he draws another card because he has to.

in the dealer's seat, there is no choice. no safety. no self-determination. by all accounts, it suits the likes of someone like him.

"i'll commend you for playing against me, miss robin. i don't usually find anyone who'll take me up on games of chance these days."

"maybe my reputation precedes me. it's a feeling we both share, isn't it."

those strings, they are his lifeline. those colors, his yesterday and tomorrow——vernal and beautiful, shedding endless chances at rebirth for the false soul, naked every time, pared down to its very core to dangle, perched on this very precipice. coming back to it again and again.

there really isn't much thrill to be found in an ordinary game of blackjack.

"a toast, to whatever happens here."

but sometimes, even the cheap wonders will do.

he turns over the third card: 　　　　　　　　　　　　　a red. . .