So, this is for PinkyAndNoBrain, Mushu, ACdance and Curtis Evans who wanted a Kadam goes to Vegas and blows Ren's money AU fic, possibly with a Raymond Chandler/bitter edge. Well this fic is certainly bitter, and a lot more serious than it was originally going to be... Title's from the song "Over the Love" by Florence + the Machine, it may have influenced the tone. A lot. Houck owns the characters!

Over the Love of You

Las Vegas. It's the city where gaudy, hollowed out dreams come to gasp their last. Demons haunt me from every goddamn fluorescent light and stare back at me from the bottom of every obscenely expensive glass of scotch. I've been the perfect version of what someone else wants me to be for over three-hundred fucking years. Maybe more. I've been a perfect son. A dutiful husband. An efficient general. A loving father. I've cleaned up after Ren for God knows how long, taking care of his finances, doing his shopping, finding his great, special, chosen one, being his personal goddamn encyclopaedia – only stopping short of wiping his fucking ass. I've given the little shit hundreds of the best years of my life out of nothing more than duty. No more. I'm done with this shit.

He's marrying her in a couple of days. The sweet, beautiful girl from Oregon with hair the colour of burnt sugar. She was innocent, pure and strong when I first knew her. These days she parrots whatever her master tells her to, says all the right words, sings all the right songs, but her eyes are as hollow as the promises he gave her. She's lost herself to the game we brought her into, and I wonder how far? Innocence never lasts, and purity is over-rated, but I can't forgive Dhiren for sapping her of her vitality. For making her believe it was true love. Fate. But he used her, and her girlish dreams have left her hollow. I don't know why they're getting married. Status? Delusions of destiny? Maybe she can still fool herself into thinking she can change him, but I know better. I also know that they said that they don't need me any more.

Yes, apparently the kids can look after their own affairs now. Shame they forgot that all "his" wealth is actually all "my" wealth. It's all in my name, and it's all my investments. Let the enchanted tigerman get a job. It will do him good. I even let them keep the mansion, because I'm generous like that. But I thought to myself: "It's my money, and I'm going to Vegas!" I got the first ticket out.

I took the Spa Suite at Caesar's Palace and lived the so-called "good life." First, I changed my entire wardrobe. I'm now the proud owner of several 20's and 30's style suits in all the colours if the rainbow. Then four days ago, I hit the town – and I haven't let up since. I live at night, prowling the streets for all the pleasures and vices that I missed out on for the last few hundred years as I carefully guarded the legacy of a family that never look upon me as anything more than the help. As long as you fan enough money in this town, any door is open to you and everyone will be bending over backwards to help you redistribute your money. Even a foreigner like me can find his way to the most exclusive tables if he has enough money to lose. Blackjack's my game. Poker's not. I won and lost a helluva lot of money. And a man who buys everyone in the room a shot or three is always welcomed back fondly.

I've met no shortage of women willing to blow on the hand of a big spender before he rolls his dice at the crap table. And a lot more besides. There was one, her hair was the colour of burnt sugar – but her eyes were the wrong colour – that I took back to my suite. She said all the right things. Nice complimentary things about me, about age and experience, but we both knew that love wasn't why she was there. She and her blue eyes were here on a purely business basis. So different from a pair of near onyx eyes that had stared so languorously at me from under dark lashes on a plane journey so long ago... The woman with blue eyes left the next morning; she left me empty and a few hundred dollars lighter. I didn't look for a woman with burnt sugar hair again.

Now I'm stumbling along the cracked pavement of the boulevard, and it's all flashing coloured lights, happy drunks and people looking to make money from them. I take a turn down an alley and end up in a surprisingly dark square. There's a fountain there and it's there I sit. I know if I look for this place again I'll never find it. So I look up at the sky that Las Vegas' bright lights have made starless, - because who needs the stars in the sky when Vegas has all of them on stage in a casino somewhere, right?

One peacock blue light over a restaurant across the square catches my eye. I can't read it from where I am, and frankly I don't care to. It's the colour that has me by the throat and won't let go. It seems like millennia since a beautiful young woman with skin like the moon descended down the stairs with a hypnotic sway to her hips in a dark blue sari, dripping with pearls and gold beads. Out of the corner of my eye I watched her dark toffee curls sway into my eyeline. I was lost before she ever tried to clumsily catch my attention. I wonder if I can come to this place every night. Gatsby had his green light, I can have my blue one. In a moment of madness I consider forcing the restaurant to sell me their sign. I sigh and get up to walk away. Back among the bright lights and carnival noises of the boulevard, I feel more sober than ever. My mini-bar can do something about that. I head back to Caesar's.

The boy at the front desk gives me a curious smile as I pick up my key. I ignore him. I have ignoring down to a fine art, Fitzgerald himself taught me how when Zelda kept making a scene at the French Riviera. Idiot took some convincing before he'd believe that I was Indian and not Jewish. I open my door and the smell of jasmine wafts enticingly over to me.

"Close the door," a voice tells me throatily from the window. I voice I thought to never hear again. I obey.

My suite has a window which covers almost a wall, which gives you a perfect view of all Vegas from your sunken bathtub. Next to the window she stands in a golden gown so stunning that it would make Jean Harlow proud, the lights from the city shining through her burnt sugar hair. I walk over a path of jasmine flowers to stand behind her. Flowers are floating in the tub too.

"Kelsey," I say eventually. "What about -"

She raises a hand to silence me without looking away from the window.

"Dead." She said. "Lokesh and Ren both. I put an end to it." The look on her face in the reflection tells me that's not what she wants to talk about. Not now. A smile plays over her red lips and she looks at me. No. Those sparkling dark eyes want nothing of curses and death. Quite the opposite, I'd say. I wrapped my arms around her from behind and placed kisses all along her perfect, white neck, down to her shoulder.

She gasps softly and clings to me, squeezing me and wordlessly asking for more. I clamp my mouth down on her neck and feel her pulse quicken in my mouth as she gasps again. She turns me around and kisses me. Passionately. Ravenously. And it's my turn to gasp. When she pulls away, I study her face in the light. Pale and flushing feverishly, her eyes sparkling, her hair messed up and faded lipstick smeared over mouth, she looked divine.

"You truly are a goddess," I murmured to her.

"No. I'm not." She said firmly. "I don't want to be worshipped. I don't need a pedestal."

"Then," I whispered in her ear. "What do you need?"

She locked eyes with me and without hesitation said:

"You."

I don't care if she wants the money. I don't care if it's a dream. Just let me pretend.