the smoke of the lights (is that all you've got?), a vocaloid fanfic

This is the second time I'm writing this you don't understand.

The first time didn't go the way I wanted it to at all, so I'm restarting. Why is writing so hard.

Please rate and review!

Title: the smoke of the lights (is that all you've got?)

Summary:We're putting our all on this. –– Rin/Len. Ikasama Casino AU.

They sat across from each other in front of the Couple's Table, legs crossed, eyes steady, palms folded. In the whiskey-smooth amber of the dimming casino lights their faces were smoky, unreadable, dark shadows pooling across their shoulders and their fingers, gathering in the hollows of her collarbone, in the rims of his fedora. It was past closing time.

Outside, the neon signs glowed sickly as she uncrossed her legs and rested her elbows against the table, and smiled serenely in his direction. Her skirts rustled, all short black lace and breezy yellow chiffon, and she was honey-deadly grace, the muffled sound of a mercy gunshot. Her inky feather boa brushed against the varnished wood paneling of the table, and she pressed her elegantly gloved hands together; Rin Kagamine looks at the man sitting right across from her dead in the eye, and does not look away.

She would not show weakness, here.

Across from her Len dips his fedora and chuckles. "What is tonight's game then, Rin?" He asks, voice low and smooth, and he sounds as easygoing and as confident as a master gambler could ever be. Rin feels her own lips curve up into a sweet-sly smile without her own meaning to; Len was confident of his success, tonight, she could tell.

Rin wouldn't be so sure.

"A game full of trickery," she replies, because there was no point in them playing a game in the pretense of being honest. Not when the both of them made their livings off conning people who came into their casino out of their money; they'd been doing it for years, under the smoky-glitz and mirrors that was their under-city casino, where rich heiresses and twitchy middle-class men all came alike.

Heiresses because they had money to burn, and middle-class men because they didn't. They were all the same to Rin; in the end they all lost to her, anyway.

Rin thinks of the look of horror that had adorned the middle-class man's face when she had cheated him out of his card game, and a sickly sweet feeling of pleasure curled itself up in her gut.

It always felt good to be the best.

Well, not best yet, anyway, Rin thinks distantly, staring at Len out of the corner of her eyes as he sets up the table for their game of dice rolls that would be happening later. The light of the lamp above shined slick-golden off of Len's hair and fell down onto his casually-on-purpose rumpled yellow pinstriped shirt and vest; his fedora concealed most of his face from view as he tipped his head forward to look at the table, and Rin could only see the slight hint of a smirk peeking out from underneath his hat.

Rin continued smiling sweetly even as she felt the tendril of hatred flare up at the bottom of her stomach.

Bastard.

"An odds of bet of three," Rin said slowly, carefully, calculating, watching as Len looked up from the setting up of the game, "is too boring, is it not?" Rin stood up carefully and rested one hand on the table, the other curled up in front of her chest; she smiled at Len, the picture of gentleness and lady-like grace, her half-intent of slaughter-kill hidden carefully behind the backs of her lips.

Rin's feather boa trailed along the table, and she was illuminated like a precious doll-mannequin on display, pale and haunting in the fluorescent light.

Len swallows in the sight like a starving man.

"What do you propose then?" He asks, sitting casual in his seat, all loose limbs and easy grace, and his grin was almost-dangerous in the half-light. He peers up at Rin from underneath his fedora, water-crystal blue eyes shining and challenging, and he stares, meeting Rin's eyes straight on. The buttons on his vest do not shine, even under the polish of the light; they remained stark dark on his chest.

Rin thinks she hates him. She really does.

"Something higher should be at stake here." She finally decides, settling back down on her seat with the dignity and grace of some darkly beautiful queen, long legs crossing over each other as she rearranged her skirts. Her long yellow teardrop pendant bumps against the hollow of her throat, and it glimmers like cat's eyes in the dark. "We are both master gamblers; simply money would not do."

Len tilts his head. "What do you think we should bet on then?"

Rin smiles like danger, like honey, and thinks of throttling this bastard by his stupid skinny white tie until his lungs are cut off from air. (Or even by his scarf; it didn't matter which garment she used, really.) She thinks for a while, fingers pressed against her jaw in a carefully thought-out move of faux deliberation, before her eyes glimmer and she throws out her ace.

"Whoever loses belongs to the winner, body and soul."

Len wiggles his eyebrows, and Rin really does punch him one, then.

Rubbing the back of his head where he was sure a bruise was forming, Len asks, "Do you mean that literally?

"Literally, body and soul?"

And Len saw Rin's face grow into a sharp dark thing, twisted almost ugly from the wild joy that suddenly blossomed across her pale gentle features. She leaned forward, blue eyes wide and doll eyed-glassy, and her hair fell down on one side of her face in a tangle-arc of yellow. "Yes.

"The person who loses belongs to the other person irrevocably. He becomes almost like a possession, not a person."

"Woah, woah," Len said, "'he'. Confident of your success, aren't you?" Len laughed casually, before he stopped and his own eyes darkened with confidence and strategy. "I wouldn't count your chickens before they've hatched, Rin."

Rin laughs without humour. "Enough with the small talk. Is the bet on?" With long elegant gloved fingers, Rin pulls out a poker card from within the folds of her dress and flicks it across the table at Len; it bounces harmlessly off his vest before landing on the table, face-up and staring Len in the eye.

A joker.

So Rin was challenging him, eh?

Len picks up the card and slides it into his pocket; he adjusts his sleeves, straightens out his tie, and pulls at the scarf hanging casually around his neck. He holds out his hand, and drops two shiny red plastic dice into Rin's outstretched fingers.

"Let's start."

–

They play.

They both cheat of course, but that had already been a given, so there was really no surprise there.

The dice is rolled, repeatedly, over and over. The game goes on.

In the span of the game, Rin gets plenty of time to recollect herself, and as she watches Len roll the dice in between his fingers and prepare himself to throw them, Rin is harshly reminded of the times when the both of them were children and she had been in love; they had been friends when they were kids, once, before tragedy tore them apart and their families fell out with each other and Len had moved to some big city that had been too far out of her reach for her to catch. It still stung like an old wound, sometimes, when she looks at him and he looks like this, all casual danger in filthy casino lights and like the personifications of all the things that wasn't good for her, but that had been a long long time ago, and Rin wasn't that girl anymore.

Rin wasn't that dull little girl stupidly in love with the boy-next-door anymore.

Besides, Rin somehow suspects that Len doesn't know that she is the same wide-eyed little girl that had been his best friend from his childhood; when they had met up again more than ten years later it had been nothing more than glances at the other out of the corners of their eyes, but whilst Rin recognised Len immediately there had been nothing but the eyes of a hunter when Len had stared at her. And when he had walked up to her and introduced himself, all cocky-eyed and confident-smiling, Rin had seen no trace of recognition in his clear blue eyes.

Rin had smiled bitterly back then, and accepted his invitation of drinking.

(Whatever.)

And later, when he had proposed they set up a casino together to con people out of their money and put their gambling cheating skills to good use, Rin had went along with the idea without hesitation.

(Whatever.

Whatever.

Because a small part of Rin had still hoped that Len had asked her out for a drink maybe because he had recognised her, after all, but it seems that Rin hadn't been a big enough part of his life when they were young for him to remember her even after they'd grown up. Not that Rin cared. Not that Rin cared at all. He'd only approached her because he'd recognised a professional gambler when he saw one; the look in their eyes were all the same, passionless and calculating, and what he had saw in her was only a business prospect. And he had taken it. Whatever.

Rin honestly, really didn't care at all.)

"Your turn, Rin," Len grins, handing over the dice with an easygoing smile, slick as the Cheshire's, and Rin hesitates only for a brief moment before elegantly accepting the dice into her fingers. She sits and stares at the plastic dice for a long while, holding them between her gloved fingers. She moves them around; the dice knock against each other with a quiet clack sound.

Len watches the movement with starving-hungry eyes. His eyes traced down over the hollows of Rin's collarbones where smoky shadows have pooled, all the way down from the chalky arc of her throat where her pendant lay to the inward curve of her breasts within her short, short dress. One of the string-thin straps holding her dress in place had slid down Rin's pale smooth shoulder; and as Len watched Rin used one hand to absentmindedly hitch it back up, and the string sliding smoothly along her skin, whispery like a kiss. Len felt something catch in his throat, and felt the hunger sing along his bones.

Rin was a dark shimmering witchery, and oh god, how Len ached for it.

"…Do you want to take a break?" Rin asked, still rattling the dice around in her hands, the sounds of the dice hitting together again and again the only sound in the entire room. Her face was perfectly poker again; schooled into the polite impassiveness that Len had seen in her the first time that he had met her, the same expression that had tipped Len off that ah, she's just like me.

Because behind her serene expression and gentle patient smiles lurked a kind of poison that Len knew only ever came from working in the under-city. Rin could shoot you in the face whilst smiling in your direction, and then quietly leave without saying a word in order to respectfully arrange for your funeral. That was just how she is. Rin was a disaster in silken grace, the whisper of a sweetly-sin on a quiet dark night, and Len just knew that he was never going to get away.

"A break? Why, scared?" Len laughs, pulling out the joker card that Rin had thrown in his direction just before the game started out of his pocket, waving it around tauntingly as he held his scarf out for emphasis. Dramatic bastard, Rin thought bitterly.

"You were the one who started this particular bet, mind you; and you're asking for a break?" His voice was slicked-back oil, smooth in all the right places and in all the wrong ways as it slithered up and down Rin's spine like thick, thick tar, mocking and conceited and confident as Rin said nothing; she fixed her eyes onto the dice rolling around in her palms as they knocked together again and again and again, the dull red plastic gleaming in the light as the clack clack sound of them was the only sound echoing in the room.

Len fixed his eyes on it; the silence in between them hung like smoke, whiskey-thick and heavy-lidded, and Len almost jumped when Rin snapped up the dice in her fist in a one sudden movement.

He looked up just to see her hovering over him, thick and slow like a line of music, the casino lights from above illuminating her skin as she hovered forward with the dice in her tightly closed fist. She was smiling, sweet like marzipan and bitter like cyanide, and Len saw her reflected in his own eyes and saw the tumbling of hair down one side of her face and her high high ponytail and her feathery black boa, and suddenly her face swims into focus and they are both ten years younger and oh, I know her, I knew her, I know her and she's just like me and I remember everything now I know her I know her I know her–

And suddenly he was standing up and leaning forwards, and Rin was half up on the table and tugging him forward by his scarf; her thigh was white and pale, her skirts frothing around them like flowers, and Len barely heard the sound of dice clacking as Rin threw them carelessly onto the floor and away.

"Rin–" he whispered, hoarse.

The dice fell to the floor with a plastic clack sound; they bounced once, twice, and rolled away.

"Shut up," Rin said breathlessly, and tugged him forward until they were almost eye-to-eye. "Shut up."

This would've probably been better if I was a bit more inspired but eh. Here you go.

I honestly did not mean for Rin to go so psychotic in the middle but that's what happened so oh well. I feel like I've deviated a bit from the song's original portrayal of this scene. What do you guys think?

Also note: The title and summary are a bit random.

Please rate and review! (It would make my day guys, I'm not joking.)