Get Lucky

by Jedishampoo

Title: Get Lucky
Author: jedishampoo
Rating: PG
Pairing: 585 implied
Summary: Gojyo knew all about luck.
Author’s Notes: Happy birthday, inksheddings! I’m only sorry that it is not porn, which I received around my own birthday. I’m hanging my head in shame, I swear it. Just sweetness, at least about as sweet as I ever write. Thanks to sharpeslass, as always, for the beta. About 1000 words.



Gojyo knew all about luck. Sometimes it was good, sometimes it was bad. That was just the way it was.

“Oh. It appears I’ve won again,” Hakkai said. He laid his hand on the table, not quite atop Gojyo’s suddenly worthless three-of-a-kind: a straight, all diamonds and hearts, all red.

Not a flush but all that red looked pretty, for some reason, there on the dark, scratched wood. Happy and bright. Gojyo grinned. He’d gotten used to losing at cards. “Nothin’ new. Your deal.”

Hakkai smiled back and collected the cards.

It was a nice, quiet night. Sanzo and Goku had gone upstairs, already; just he and Hakkai and the innkeeper were hanging around in the tiny tavern, and the innkeeper was over behind his bar, scratching pen on paper and mumbling to himself about accounts.

They had peace and quiet and beer and cards and themselves and there wasn’t much better than that.

Hakkai sighed as he shuffled and dealt. “It’s a lovely evening,” he said.

“Readin’ my mind.” Gojyo had gotten used to that, too. He took a sip of his beer and picked up his new hand. A four, a six and a seven of diamonds: with any luck he might turn that one into a straight flush.

People always said, you make your own luck. It wasn’t true, though. You could only control your circumstances. Gojyo knew how to do that. He could hold the right cards, the four, the six and the seven of diamonds; it was luck that decided whether or not he’d get that five and an eight or a three. Luck just happened, whether you were thinking about it or not.

Straight flush: a one in about seventy-two thousand chance. If he remembered correctly.

Years ago, Gojyo had played poker against some guy who’d come in the bar one night, some dude just travelin’ through. He’d cleaned Gojyo out. Then he’d bought Gojyo dinner and shared his ‘secrets.’

The guy’d said that poker was all formulas. He’d had a head full of numbers, had told Gojyo there were upwards of two-and-a-half million possible hand combinations in five-card poker-- shit like that. Of these, only four could be royal flushes. He’d told Gojyo the calculated odds against it: six hundred thousand something to one.

Gojyo didn’t like math. He could count money and he could count cards, and all that higher-math shit was useless in the real world, wasn’t it? It was for smart guys. Guys like Hakkai.

Hakkai handed him two cards, took two. Gojyo looked at his newly-arrived three of diamonds and an ace of spades.

He looked at Hakkai. Hakkai’s good eye was scanning his new hand, the other eye following the leader.

Hakkai was a smart guy, and a crafty guy. Sometimes Gojyo couldn’t read him. At the moment he could, though, and he knew by Hakkai’s absolutely straight face that he, Gojyo, had just lost another hand.

“Call,” Gojyo said, and threw down his not-quite-straight, not-quite-flush. Then, he looked at Hakkai’s flush. Hearts. Red again. “Y’oughta buy stock in red.”

“Hah. Maybe I have.”

“Heh. They sipped their beers. Gojyo shuffled, dealt. His belly felt a little warm, his chest tight. A good, soft tight. He’d never liked math but he had a good memory for some things. Flush: a one in about thirty-seven hundred chance.

The guy-- Hurio? something foreign-- had gone on and on about the numbers and the probability functions. Probabilites had sounded a hell of a lot like “luck” to Gojyo, but when you made your living off playing cards, then you listened to anything that might help.

Gojyo remembered some of the numbers. He remembered the guy more. He’d kinda looked like Jien, especially from the side and behind. Last time Gojyo had seen Jien, it had been from behind. He’d tended to see a lot of people that way-- visual reminders of his bad-luck times.

Fifty-two was the number of cards, and higher numbers were useless in the game. Gojyo preferred speculation on events, getting into the flow, more than speculation on too-big numbers. Like, back in his poker-table-to-mouth days, it had taken a certain amount of effort to get laid on any particular evening. If he was lucky at cards on that given particular evening, then the amount of effort it took to finagle one of the regular bar-chicks back to his house and into his bed was just about nonexistent. Circumstances and luck: what it took to win.

That night, the one he’d met-- sorta met-- Hakkai, Gojyo’d had four aces. He’d been guaranteed to get lucky with one or more lovelies offa that: out of two-and-a-half million combinations of cards in five-card poker, there was only one set of four aces.

Hurio had said, no, there are more combinations, different numbers than the one, because of the kicker. But Gojyo wondered, what the hell did a kicker matter, when you had four aces? The kickers were just one of the forty-eight remaining cards.

Gojyo squared the stack of remnants face-down on the table, lit a smoke, sipped his beer, looked at Hakkai. Whatever Hakkai was holding this time, Gojyo couldn’t read his face. Maybe he stood a chance, then.

Gojyo picked up his own cards. Son of a-- He had four aces. Four goddamned aces, and he’d dealt them to himself without even meaning to. A one in something-odd-hundred-thousand chance, but to Gojyo, there was only one four aces.

He gave Hakkai three cards and took only one for himself, and couldn’t help grinning smugly at his best buddy, the best guy in the world-- hell, the best person in the world, at least to him. Hakkai’s eyebrow rose.

Gojyo didn’t even hardly glance at his kicker. It was a done deal. There was no way he could lose. Hakkai only looked at him with that calm, half-smiling expression. Gojyo realized that Hakkai looked happy. Gojyo called.

“Very nice, Gojyo,” Hakkai said when he saw Gojyo’s hand, triumphantly and perfectly flourished on the dark, scarred, wood.

“Maybe I’m gettin’ lucky,” Gojyo said, and blew a satisfied cloud of smoke at the ceiling.

“At last.”

“You wanna deal again?” Gojyo asked. Somewhere in the distance, where there wasn’t themselves, the innkeeper rubbed at his paper and laughed quietly.

“Of course. I’m not going anywhere,” Hakkai said.

“I know,” Gojyo said.

End. Thanks for reading, not sure if I accomplished what I set out to do, but there it is, hope you enjoy! Lots of love from me, inksheddings!! Now back to my 15 sentences of Japanese, hee! And then back to writing a 53, argh!

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