[Oh boy, Shuichi's given Dixon a serious, possibly insurmountable challenge: explaining how to do something. A crinkle works its way into the middle of his brow. He takes a deep breath and steels himself to feel pretty incompetent.
But there's nothing you can do but try. His momma taught him that. She taught him math, too, when it became clear at a young age that he wasn't going to keep up in school, and games of war, and then blackjack with both parents, and then gin, and then it became a pastime into his adulthood, a skill set brought up to par through hundreds of hours of Momma shuffling and dealing cards on the front porch until the sun set.
Whatever the Dementors got, he's glad they didn't get that.
He tries to waterfall and nearly drops the cards, thinking how tired he is, how foggy, how that seems to leak down into muscle memory too. Trance's magic fixed up most of the damage from the hiking and the magic binge, but he just feels deep fatigue, and it seems to radiate out of the wound and his back on down.]
Seven cards each. [He deals to each of them, then lays out draw pile, takes a card off the top and flips it over to create the discard.] Let's do the straightforward version, no counting, just sets and runs. You're looking for three-of-a-kind, four-of-a-kind and straight flushes. You know what those are?
[He gathers up his hand and taps it idly against the ground, still watching Shuichi, starting to chew the inside of his mouth in concern. Playing a card game is a good sign, right?
All he can really see is Shuichi collapsing under that wraith touch. It replays in his head over and over, alongside a clutter of other ugly things from the battlefield. It all weighs heavier and heavier, sinking from his heart to his stomach, from worry to regret.]
no subject
[Oh boy, Shuichi's given Dixon a serious, possibly insurmountable challenge: explaining how to do something. A crinkle works its way into the middle of his brow. He takes a deep breath and steels himself to feel pretty incompetent.
But there's nothing you can do but try. His momma taught him that. She taught him math, too, when it became clear at a young age that he wasn't going to keep up in school, and games of war, and then blackjack with both parents, and then gin, and then it became a pastime into his adulthood, a skill set brought up to par through hundreds of hours of Momma shuffling and dealing cards on the front porch until the sun set.
Whatever the Dementors got, he's glad they didn't get that.
He tries to waterfall and nearly drops the cards, thinking how tired he is, how foggy, how that seems to leak down into muscle memory too. Trance's magic fixed up most of the damage from the hiking and the magic binge, but he just feels deep fatigue, and it seems to radiate out of the wound and his back on down.]
Seven cards each. [He deals to each of them, then lays out draw pile, takes a card off the top and flips it over to create the discard.] Let's do the straightforward version, no counting, just sets and runs. You're looking for three-of-a-kind, four-of-a-kind and straight flushes. You know what those are?
[He gathers up his hand and taps it idly against the ground, still watching Shuichi, starting to chew the inside of his mouth in concern. Playing a card game is a good sign, right?
All he can really see is Shuichi collapsing under that wraith touch. It replays in his head over and over, alongside a clutter of other ugly things from the battlefield. It all weighs heavier and heavier, sinking from his heart to his stomach, from worry to regret.]