fic: Three Card Monte [1/2]
Title: Three Card Monte
Rating: PG-13/R
Warnings: Non-graphic sex, very brief and non-graphic mentions of rape, drugs, and underage sex.
Genre(s): Horror/Adventure
Word Count: approx. 13000
Summary: In which you can’t cheat an honest man, or, in which Remus and Sirius steal a piano.
Notes: Ocean’s 11/Heist film inspired AU written for the rs_games 2010. Here is the prompt: (No. 20 -- Lyrics from ‘Feeling Good’ by Nina Simone)
---
Three Card Monte
---
Beep.
“Hey, it’s Lily and James Planter--”
“And Harry!”
“And Harry. Anyway, we’re not here to take your call right now. Leave your name and number and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible. Bye…”
Beep.
“It’s me - I mean, it’s Remus. Sirius is...he’s out. Okay. Bye. I’ll call - I mean, we’ll call. Bye.”
Beep.
---
Beep.
“The number you have reached is not available at the moment. Please leave a message after the tone.”
Beep.
“Hey, McGonagall, it’s James. I just wanted to give you a heads up. I’ve heard from Remus - Sirius got parole. If you could pass on the info to Dumbledore, that’d be much appreciated. I’m sure - I mean, I know we’ll be talking soon.”
Beep.
---
Beep.
“You’ve got the Prewett brothers. Press one for Fab, two for Gid, and three if you’re trying to hire us for your shady, ill-conceived revenge plots. Which we assume is the reason you called this number because people don’t call this number unless that’s what they’re after - or maybe they were trying to call that pizza place, or maybe you’re trying to get into Gid’s pants, which isn’t unlikely considering all--”
Beep.
“Hey Fab, it’s Caradoc. I heard from Emmeline who was talking to Shacklebolt who was talking to Arthur who was talking to Ted Tonks whose wife just got a call from Sirius: he’s been sprung. I expect we’ll get a call from Remus soon; and when we do…well, I’m in if you are. I suppose you can bring your brother. Also, are you and I still going to see that film tomorrow night? I’m not having Chinese before again. We always have Chinese.”
Beep.
---
The sky is grey and sleepy and Remus Lupin turns up the collar of his coat to fend off a non-existent wind. It makes him look shifty-and, more importantly, vulnerable. In front of him is a folding table. On the table there are three cards. Between the grey of the day, the black of Remus’ coat, and the wet chalk colour of the pavement, the red-printed cards look vulgar, cheap.
There is a crowd gathered around the table, and Remus glances up and catches the eye of a rake thin man in his late forties, greying hair and a cheap business suit. Remus flashes him a shy kind of smile, and as the man’s gaze catches on Remus’, glued to that mesmerising liquid-honey-gold, Remus’ hands briefly caress the cards.
“So,” he asks, turning to the girl in the front of the crowd, “Queen of my heart, can you follow the queen of hearts?”
This gets him a low murmur of laughter. Remus picks up the cards. They feel slick and cool in his hands like the scales of a snake. His hands fit around them well -- they were made to cup the painted faces of kings.
“Here she is,” he says, showing the Queen, “And here are the other cards. Can you confirm I have here a Queen and two black aces?”
“Yes,” she giggles.
He sets them down and then flips them up, showing their positions on the table. Then he begins to shuffle their places on the table; he doesn’t throw the Queen, and he lets the girl win. It’s easier to play Three Card Monte with a few shills, he supposes, but he likes the challenge of pitting marks against each other -- greed feeding greed. He’s only playing because he’s bored, anyway. Maybe some people get thrills repelling down cliff faces - Remus gets his from a slight of hand.
The girl picks the right card, and Remus lets her take her five-dollar bet. She plays a part as well as anyone in on the game could have. Remus’ true mark shuffles a little closer to the table.
“Okay, lets have some real money now. Anyone? You look like a man with quick eyes,” Remus says to the mark. The man hesitates, and then he nods.
Lily always tells Remus that she’s never seen anyone who can get people to fall for a game as quickly as Remus can. Remus doesn’t know why it surprises her -- he’s a details man. He’s always been a details man. Other men would have kept the collar of their coat down-and that’s where they broke their game; the second his mark thought Remus could get a chill, he thought he could beat him.
Any failings Remus has as a con man don’t come from a lack of finesse. What Remus doesn’t do well is have the big ideas. And how useful is a details man if he doesn’t have an ideas man anyway? Then the only place his train of thought has to go is straight to Sirius. Remus closes his eyes as if hiding from his own thoughts. Sometimes, when he starts missing Sirius, he gets an ache beneath his breastbone that hurts so much it makes his eyes sting with tears.
“Follow the lady,” Remus says softly, rubbing absently at the phantom pain in his chest. Giving the mark a last little sideways grin, Remus slides the cards over top of each other on the table, just fast enough that the man is sure he knows exactly where every card is. He throws the queen right at the end, slipping one hand over the other and tossing the top card to the middle of the table instead of the bottom card.
The man puts his money on the middle card.
Remus shakes his head sadly as he flips the card. “Sorry,” he says, “I’m afraid that’s not the one.”
“Damn,” the man grumbles. He folds his hands into his pockets protectively. Remus is sure he won’t get another bet out of the man, so he scans the small gathering of on-lookers for someone looking a little too eager. He glances away a moment, shuffling and reshuffling the three cards in his hand.
When he looks up, there is a new man at the front of the table, appearing out of nowhere to sling his arm companionably around the mark. All the breath rushes out of Remus’s lungs in a whoosh. He has to clench his jaw to keep from madly grinning.
It’s Sirius.
It’s Sirius.
What he wants to do is throw his arms around Sirius and bury his face into his shoulder - suddenly safe in a way no other thing on earth can make him feel. He wants Sirius’s soft mouth pressed under his jaw just like he did for that last fleeting moment they touched, before Sirius’s wry sharp smile was lost to him behind a mirrored police car door.
Sirius tilts his head just to the side, and Remus forcefully sucks air into his lungs. He knows that expression almost too well. With Sirius, he has to remember that everything is an opportunity for a game.
Sirius murmurs something into the man’s ear, and Remus already knows what he’s saying, like how he knows everything Sirius says and thinks and does when they’re pulling a con. The sudden comfort of having a partner rushes down Remus’ spine like a shot of morphine, a warm, sweet slide of weightlessness.
Remus studies Sirius as he talks the mark into betting again; Sirius is wearing a suit and tie; they look new or crisply ironed. The bag slung over his shoulder is the one he had with him when he was arrested, and Remus is sure that the clothes he was arrested in - one of Remus’ oversized random folk band t-shirts and a his favourite worn jeans -- are shoved haphazardly in the bottom of the bag. He looks just a little bit too thin and though Sirius is naturally pale, his skin is more sallow than ivory. There are tiny lines around his eyes and mouth that Remus doesn’t remember. His hair is to too long. Trust Sirius to convince the prison guards not to cut it. It’s not that Sirius likes his hair long or short, necessarily, but Remus is sure Sirius made an effort to control anything he could while on the inside.
On the surface, there is nothing wrong with Sirius that can’t be fixed with a few months of sleep in a decent bed, and real food. He’d never thought Sirius was the kind of man who would be broken by prison so easily. Now Remus isn’t sure. After all, a lot more went wrong four years back than just Sirius getting thrown into jail.
“I’ll bet first, how ‘bout that?” Sirius declares. He pauses, “Okay, okay, how much should I put down?”
Remus shuffles the bills he’s collected in his hand until the tens are on top and then spreads them across the table. The mark’s eyes catch on the one and the zero. Oh, how Remus loves the power of suggestion.
“If you bet a hundred and win,” says the man, “I’ll match it.”
“A hundred!” Sirius asks, eyes going wide. He pauses and bites his lip as he examines Remus’ hands cradling the three cards. His looks hungry -- gambling men always are -- and something dark and hot unfolds in Remus’ stomach. Their eyes glance across each other for a moment. It makes Remus glad that life has led him to a point where it’s harder for him to accidentally show emotions than to drop his carefully constructed mask of indifference.
“Come on,” the mark eggs Sirius on. “You said you’d bet…. You said it’s a one in three chance no matter what.”
“I want to see the cards,” Sirius says. “Maybe he cheats.”
The man’s eyes darken suddenly, and Remus has to remind himself that Sirius knows what he is doing.
“I am deeply offended, sir. I do not cheat. Cheating is for men who have no skill,” Remus says. His holds the cards for one more moment, and then he nods sharply. He looks at the mark when he says: “I hope you two know this is not something I’d do for just anyone.”
When Sirius takes his cards from Remus, their fingers brush briefly and the shock of pleasure that rushes up Remus’ arm stands all his hair on end. He swallows shallowly. Four years, he thinks, I’ve forgotten what desire feels like.
Sirius and the man examine the cards for a moment and Sirius leans close enough to whisper into Remus’ ear when gives them back. He smells good and dangerous, like leather or maybe lightning in the desert. He doesn’t say anything but Remus knows the kinds of things he would murmur and it’s enough.
Remus lays the cards out reverently and taps the Queen, “The lady is here. Can you follow her?”
He’s quicker this time - a lot quicker. In Three Card Monte, the eyes are always faster than hands, but Remus knows that people get nervous when he goes too fast, and they stop believing they can follow the card. In a confidence trick, the mark has to have confidence in themselves as much as in the operator. He doesn’t worry about this with Sirius, though. The harder he makes it look for Sirius, the more likely it is for the mark to believe he can win, when Sirius inevitably does.
He’s about to lay the cards our flat when, impulsively, he throws the Queen. It’s a good throw. There’s no possible way Sirius could tell from watching that the top card from his hand is now on the right and the Queen on the left. He feels stupid the second he’s done it, but he doesn’t want to give it away by looking down. He’s too curious.
Sirius studies the cards for a moment, “Were you paying attention?” Sirius asks the mark.
The man shakes his head, “It’s your bet, man.”
Sirius unfolds a single hundred-dollar bill from his pocket. The small crowd leans in - anticipation thick in the air.
He puts the bill on the Queen. “I think that’s it.”
“No way,” someone from the crowd mutters. “Come on, it’s there on the right.”
“Are you sure?” Remus says, quietly.
“I’m sure I want this one,” Sirius replies. His voice has some level of seriousness beyond the words. Remus desperately wants to reach out and touch him; his chest feels tight and full of awe. Sirius knows him this well. Well enough to guess he’d switch the cards when even Remus hadn’t known until he’d been halfway through the motions.
Remus flips the card, and the crowd murmurs excitedly.
When the mark puts down his hundred dollars, he looses it. That’s the game, after all. Most of the crowd wanders away, leaving only the man grumbling angrily down at the cards; Sirius pats his arm consolingly.
“I want to check the cards again,” Sirius says. “There’s no way that wasn’t right.”
Remus raises an eyebrow, wondering what Sirius is up too now. His eyes are dove grey in the faded afternoon light. They capture Remus as surely as a moth in a glass jar.
Sirius lets his fingers rest briefly against the pulse point at Remus’ wrist as he takes the cards this time. His lips look dry and full and Remus want to lick them open. He fans the cards. No cheat is revealed. Remus’ mark shrugs.
Sirius isn’t done though, he leans impossibly close to Remus and, gently, he slips his hand into the collar of Remus’ coat, brushing his hand against the tender skin of Remus’ neck. Remus feels his carefully schooled expression of confusion waver into want, for just a second.
“Well, well, well...” Sirius says, husky and low against the shell of Remus' ear. The fine hairs at his temple brush across Sirius's mouth as he breathes in. “What have we here?”
He holds up two fingers. The Ace of Hearts is between them.
“Hey,” the mark says. “Hey, man, you must have been cheating with that.”
Remus ignores him, enthralled by Sirius as he is. “That isn't mine,” he whispers to Sirius.
Sirius smiles at him, a slow curve of red lips, “Well that depends on what you mean by yours. If you’re asking if this is yours, then yes. But if you’re asking if it belongs to me…then the answer to that is also yes.”
Remus slides backwards a little, so that Sirius becomes a whole face, instead of magnified pieces (mouth, cheekbones, eyelashes). He looks him sharply, and suddenly they're laughing at each other. “What a line, Sirius.”
“It was a good one, huh?” He replies, as he collects the deck of cards off the table and shifts them into his pockets.
“Shall we?” Remus asks, seeing that the table is now bare. The mark is still watching them with an expression halfway between irate and baffled.
“Let's,” Sirius replies.
They disperse into the bustling crowds like smoke, and the mark is left, hands tightening and clutching at nothing, with a naked table and one-hundred and fifty dollars less to his name.
---
The night is dark like black coffee when Remus slides his key into his apartment door and tugs Sirius in after him; Sirius slams it shut so he can shove Remus against it. His mouth is hot and soft against Remus neck, kissing the places he whispered against hours before. When he pulls away for a second, Remus makes a hurt sound in the back of his throat and tugs back quickly with shaking hands, pushing their mouths together again.
“Hey, hey, Moony,” Sirius murmurs, soothingly. “I'm just undoing your coat.”
“Sorry,” Remus says. “I know, I just...I just...”
Sirius holds his gaze. In the twilight of the flat, their features are smoothed out and cast only in shades of silver and black. Remus is sure that the night is their colour. He feels as close to beautiful as he ever could, with Sirius watching him so intently. They both know what he is trying to say. He hates and loves Sirius for making him voice it.
“I missed you Sirius. It was too much. I really, really missed you.”
Sirius folds Remus into his arms, holding him tightly, chastely. Remus always feels smaller than Sirius when he is held this way. He likes it.
“Okay,” he says gently, “I missed you too. Just…just…it’s okay…”
They lean against the door there for a long time, breathing the same slow breaths until Remus is smiling at the edges of his mouth again.
“Do you remember the third job we pulled together?” Sirius says quietly. He tugs Remus into the bedroom. It smells the same -- it's not even the same house, but it still smells the same, like any bedroom Remus has ever occupied does. He sits on the bed and unlaces his shoes.
“Of course,” Remus replies. He removes his coat lazily, fingers catching on each button. “The Citibank job, out on Long Island. James, Andromeda, the Prewetts-Frank, before he left the business.”
“Remember how you got Frank’s girlfriend, Alice, to pretend to be your wife, in order to get the security code for the vaults?”
“Sure...” Remus says. He remembers how small and awkward it felt to tuck Alice's petite body under his arm, wishing for someone else to be there instead. He remembers the liquid heat of adrenaline as he spun a story for the bank manager. He remembers marvelling at how people treated him, dressed carefully in an ironed linen suit and dark glasses - it was shocking; scruffy, all of nineteen-practically still living on the street and suddenly he knew he had every opportunity - it was only a con away.
He remembers the party after the job: splayed out on the fire escape outside Fabian Prewett’s crap apartment, sharing a glass of the most expensive champagne Remus had ever been in the same room with. He hadn't known Sirius back then, not like he does now anyway. He had only known he wanted him.
“I knew I was in love with you right then. I saw you tuck Alice under your arm, and I was so suddenly jealous -- I could barely breath. You cupped your hand under her elbow like you did with me sometimes, and I wanted that gesture to only be mine.”
Remus smiles. “Do you remember what you said to me, that night, on the fire escape?”
“I said...that you were good at pretending to be with Alice, like that - I said we were all half convinced, how easy you were with her, and I said maybe I was a little jealous.”
“Do you remember what I said back?”
“You said, 'It's easy if I pretend she's you.' And you wouldn't look at me in the eye, so I kissed you. That was the first time, wasn't it?”
“Not the last though.” Remus laughs against Sirius's lips, small, and he can feel Sirius's eyelashes catching against his own.
“Come on,” Sirius says, gently, sliding across the covers like the feel of clean cotton is sinfully good. Remus smiles moves across him. In each other, they find themselves again - those missing parts the years of separation stole away from them. Small things like the light in their eyes, but also big, necessary things, like an untouchable confidence (the kind men like Remus and Sirius really can't do without). They are against each other or with each other, skin and skin, and hands and hands, and mouth and mouth. They come apart against each other.
In the early hours of the morning, Remus wakes. Sirius is watching him. Already, he looks different than when he found Remus on the street the day before - closer to the man he was before he left.
“Alright,” Remus says, as Sirius brushes a few strands of hair from his face. “First we need some French toast, and then I want to know what your plan is, because if there is one thing Sirius Black always has, it's a plan.”
“What?” Sirius says, slow and coy. “No pillow talk?”
Remus laughs at him as he rolls out of the bed. “For you, that is pillow talk.”
---
The warehouse is dark and silent until Remus flicks the lights on and Sirius comes through the doors tugging a chalkboard behind him, and pushing a case of cheap wine in front of him with one foot.
Remus lugs the folding chairs from the van inside and watches the line of Sirius’ back change as he scrawls messily across the board Good Morning Class. Remus sets up the chairs in a loose circle and then crosses to Sirius, catching his wrists and turning him gently till his back touches the green slate, smudging letters slightly. Sirius leans into his kiss, meeting him halfway. A cough echoes from the other side of the workshop and Remus separates from Sirius lingeringly.
“Black,” James says, covering the yards of dusty concrete towards them in lengthening strides. “Black, it’s fucking good to see you again.”
“James!” Sirius crows, brushing past Remus gently, and cracking a grin Remus remembers well. The same expression is on James’ face. They hug each other one-armed but tight and affectionate, all big and gangly and not so different from the seventeen year old lost souls Remus first knew them as.
“Potter, how’s the wife? How’s my godson? Haven’t corrupted them too far yet, I hope.”
“Lily was corrupted before I ever got to her, and you know it,” he replies laughing. “And it’s Planter now. Can’t let that one slip. Hagrid will kill me if I ask him to do us another lot of birth certificates. He says I use up twice as much ink as any of the rest of his clients.”
“I expect you’ll soon exhaust the list of vocational careers beginning with the letter ‘P’, anyway,” Sirius adds. Remus sees Lily come in through the door. Harry is settled against her hip, yawning sleepily, and Remus goes to take him from her so she can press a kiss to Sirius’s cheek and hug him tightly, fitting her peace into all Sirius’s ragged corners like a sister.
“How was prison?” James asks.
Sirius smiles wryly. “Lonely,” he answers, and they all hear that terrible seed of truth. Remus crosses to Sirius, still holding Harry and swipes his thumb over Sirius’ hip. Harry squirms in Remus’ arms as Sirius meets his eyes gratefully.
“I’m afraid I don’t recognize you anymore, sir,” Sirius says, leaning towards Harry. “How old are you now, hmmm? Fifteen? Twenty-seven? Eighty?”
“I’m five,” Harry announces with grave importance. “And mommy says that you’re like my uncle and that when I was a baby you took me to the zoo three times, and daddy says you’ll buy me ice cream but that I can’t tell mommy because she’ll say I can’t have so much sugar.”
“All of these things and more are true, Harry,” Sirius says, standing next to Remus so he can shift Harry from Remus’ hips to Sirius’.
There’s more commotion at the door to the warehouse as three more people appear. Two have matching grins and hair exactly the same shade of auburn hair, though one of them is whippet thin and the other is as broad as a railroad worker across the shoulders. Trailing behind them like a put-upon nanny is a tall pale man with a sweep of dark hair and a red mouth.
“Black, Lupin, and the Planters!” the broad one announces upon spotting them, “Oh the gang’s all here. It’s excellent to see you again, I must say--”
“Gideon and I were absolutely bored out of our minds without you. Smuggling frankincense and myrrh across the Egyptian border just isn’t what it used to be. We need a real job.” The thin one finishes.
“Still hanging around with these oafs, Caradoc?” Remus asks pleasantly.
“Unfortunately,” the pale man replies, “I seem to be stuck with them. You know how it is with those two. Fab says I keep his toes warm at night, and Gid says he needs someone to side with him in arguments. I vouch for the boredom. They’ve been a nightmare since you got locked up. I’ve twelve more passports than I did the last time I saw you.”
“That’s exactly as it should be,” Sirius cut in imperiously. “Now we’re only waiting on three.”
“Three?” Remus asked, “It’s only McGonagall and Mad-Eye.”
“No,” Sirius said, looking a little sour. “I’ve gotta do something for Andromeda. Her daughter wants in on the business. I told her a long time ago that I’d break her in and she’s calling the favour in now.”
“Who is the kid? Is she good?” James asked.
“She’s only twenty-one. Were we good when we were twenty-one?”
“Sure,” James said.
“No we weren’t,” Remus says. “What we had was potential.”
“That’s what she has,” Sirius said, smiling wryly. “She has potential.”
---
Tonks counts cards. Plus two. She holds the number in her thoughts carefully. It’s hot in the casino and she pulls at the silk of her dress. The man beside her sees her touch her bra strap and he picks up his glass, clinking the two ice cubes together. She sees the way he blinks at her long legs and forgets where he is for just a moment. Plus two she thinks.
“Hello!” says a man, out of nowhere suddenly crashing into the card table and draping himself between Tonks and the man beside her. His hair is raven black. It’s a good haircut. His suit also looks expensive, but it’s rumpled, and his collar is messy. His tie pin flashes gold in the corner of her vision and before she can help herself, her fingers reach out and pluck it off, secreting it into the dark of her pocket. He smells like gin.
“Oh, this looks nice,” the man says, slumping forward onto the table.
“Sir,” says the Dealer sharply. He jolts back up. “Sorry, sorry,” he says, “I said I was only going to have one glass of wine, and then, well, you know how it goes.” He laughs uproariously, and Tonks shifts away from him, feeling the grime of the man’s sweat under her fingernails.
“Sir,” the Dealer repeats, with a serious threat now lingering on the edge of her voice.
“Oh, I was just going, sorry, sorry.” Just as the man extracts his arm from her shoulders he turns his head slightly, and their gazes catch. His eyes are sharp and grey and magnetic, almost familiar for some strange reason. Something about it makes her feel as if a bucket of water has been upended over her head. She breathes in sharply.
Feeling a little shaken, she leans down to grab her purse from the ground. It’s gone. Instead there is only a folding square of paper. She stands up glancing after the man, but he’s disappeared, just absolutely absent from the crowds.
“Oh my god,” she says to the man next to her, “That jerk just stole my purse.”
But of course they’ll never catch him, she thinks, remembering that shocking intelligence in his gaze.
Later, when she’s in the bathroom staring at her reflection and angry at her ignorance, she unfolds the piece of paper. One side says You lost the count. It wasn’t plus two anymore. The other side gives an address and a time and beneath that, in tiny lettering, Bring my tie pin with you. It’s my favourite one.
---
James is telling the story of the Fenton Job when the new girl shows up. She doesn’t look nervous but she does look like she’s trying too hard. Sirius has just gone out to the van to lug the blueprints inside, and so there’s nothing tell her she’s in the right place. Remus half smiles, taking pity on her.
“You’re Andromeda’s daughter, right?” he says, standing from his chair and offering it to her. “I’m Remus.”
She looks up at him with widening eyes, “Does that mean the guy in the casino was Black? Is this…is he pulling me in on a job?”
Remus brings the other half of his mouth up into a full grin. Anyone who’s anyone in the business knows that if Remus gives you a call, you’re a shoe in with Black, and there isn’t anything like being on one of his jobs. Remus is glad that Sirius’ reputation hasn’t dulled too much in four years.
“Your mom suggested we bring you in,” he says. “You know how Black family outcasts stick together, I’m sure.”
“Oh,” she says, the light in her eyes fading a little, “Just a family connection, then?”
Remus puts his hand on her shoulder and she ducks her head at the touch, “Sirius doesn’t take people he thinks are useless, Nymphadora.”
“Please,” she says, glancing at him through the fringe of her eyelashes. “You can call me Tonks.”
---
“So what’s the plan, then,” Mad-Eye growls, chewing on the blackening end of a toothpick with angry ferocity.
“It’s ambitious,” Sirius precludes, “But…it’s also beautiful,”
“Eh, eh…” Mad-Eye says, probably sensing the monologue Sirius is about to work himself into. Remus can already see the resigned flat gazes of the other seven people assembled in a circle on their folding chairs. They’re all set to watch a half-hour show of typical Sirius rambling poetically about the art of thievery. Remus himself is in leaning against an over turned crate next to the chalkboard, which now reads Good Morning Minions. Sirius stands in the middle of the group, as though the warehouse is an amphitheatre. “Cut the crap,” Mad-Eye finishes.
“Fine, fine,” Sirius says. He looks over-exposed around his edges, more alive than even before he went to prison and a little painfully excited. Remus wonders if these things are only visible to him, or if they’re also visible to people like James, who has known Sirius as his brother as long as Remus has known him as the love of his life, or if everyone sees that Sirius is running on something more vibrant and electric than whatever flesh and blood the rest of them contain.
“The plan is simple,” Sirius says. “We take down Hotel Voldemort. We’re going to break Tom Riddle. We’ll be rich with his downfall.”
---
Sirius has been in prison for three months before Remus goes to visit him. Sirius always said he didn’t want Remus to visit him while he ‘acclimated’ to prison. He understands why when he sees Sirius on the other side of that Plexiglas wall. He looks blurry, but it’s not the inches of bulletproof glass between them that make him so. He’s washed out and tired and the vivacity that draws Remus to him and pins Remus at Sirius’ side is all but gone.
Remus loves him with a surge of throat-aching panic anyway. Remus has never been violent, but he can imagine punching the guard in the corner of the room and kicking at the door he stands in front of until it springs open with perfect detail. Sirius doesn’t fit here. Remus wants him out. He can imagine how much more it would hurt to watch the slow descent of Sirius to ghost, instead of only seeing the finished product.
The first thing Sirius says when Remus picks up the phone connecting their voices is “I love you.”
He’s never said it before. It was always there between them of course. The kind of thing you know the same way you know you can always visit Florida next year because it’s not going anywhere, or that you should really take back those overdue library books.
“You aren’t thinking of killing yourself are you?” Remus asks. It’s not the right thing to say, but he can’t think of any other reason Sirius would say it now, just like that.
Sirius laughs a little anyway, gruff “No,” he says, “But I spend the greater majority of my time laying alone and thinking, and one thing I thought about was that I should tell you I love you.”
“I love you, too,” Remus replies.
Sirius sighs into the phone. “I’d like to kiss you right now,” he says.
Remus looks down at Sirius hands. There are two new small scars. The kind you’d get from punching someone in the face very hard. Remus thinks about all the bruises Sirius might have now and has to stop for fear he might not be able to breath. “I’d like to take you home,” Remus says.
“When I’m out of here, I’m taking Riddle down, Moony,” Sirius says, voice suddenly fixed carefully flat.
“We can’t go after Riddle. Peter will have told him exactly how we work, they’ll know all our tricks, and they’ll be expecting it.”
“I can’t let it go. I can’t. The man…” Sirius squeezes his eyes shut, “He tore apart my family and he tried to ruin my reputation as an honourable con and he gave us up to the law and he fucking killed my brother, Remus. He killed Regulus. I have to ruin him.”
Remus leans on his elbows and sets his forehead against the window. He drops the phone, and Sirius mimics him, so they lean together, separated only by a few inches of glass.
“So what do you propose to do?” Remus mouths.
“Like I said,” Sirius mouths back, “I’ve got a lot of time for thinking these days.”
---
“Riddle will recognize me, and probably Remus, James and Lily, and he knows I just got sprung and that I want revenge. We’re going to use it to our advantage. We’re running two games side by side. The first con will be pulled just by the four of us - we’ll do it well enough that he can’t arrest us, but predictably enough that he can follow it all. It’s gotta be showy. We want him watching.”
“The second takes all of us. That one is the real con. That’s the one we make money on, and that’s the one that will ruin him.”
Mr Riddle wakes up at exactly seven thirty every morning. This morning is no different. He collects his paper from the coffee table where it appears silently with a coffee. He reads the front-page articles, and whatever items in the business section have been circled in red pen as of a particular interest to him. He eats half a grapefruit, a bowl of muesli and runs on a treadmill for sixteen minutes.
At eight thirty he showers and puts on one of twenty-three bespoke suits. He smokes a cigarette on the bedroom balcony. By nine o’clock he’s at the front desk to smile falsely at the head receptionist. She tells him if any high rollers have either booked in or just arrived. Sometimes, the receptionist recommends that he read a particular novel she’s just finished. Mr Riddle does try, but he can’t always keep the disdainful sneer from his face.
At nine-thirty the head of security briefs him on the walk down to check on the vaults. He would like to count his money personally every day, but Mr Riddle simply has too much of it. The head statistician then ensures that the casino is making the amount of money it should be. Chance is still in their favour. He then retires to his office where he looks around for Bellatrix, whom he usually fucks across the back of the desk at this time of day. He likes to touch her wedding band to remind her of her husband. She shifts underneath him as he does it and he knows there is still a little guilt pumping up her veins. It makes him feel good to twist and pick at the hurt. Today, she isn’t waiting for him, and never appears, which makes him distantly annoyed.
At noon Pettigrew comes in with some business, whatever he has to take care of for the day. Pettigrew is such an idiot it takes longer than it should, but he’s a useful idiot because he’s loyal. Depending on when this has finished, Mr Riddle goes to sit in the Overlord Bar and look down on the casino. When someone wins, he grinds his teeth together. His dentist says he’ll have to wear something at night if he keeps doing it. Mr Riddle doesn’t mind; if he uses these teeth up he’ll just buy some better ones.
He is very busy grinding his teeth when there is a whisper of silk as someone takes their coat off and drops it over the back of the other chair at Mr Riddle’s table. The lining of the jacket is rich indigo.
“Tom,” says the man as he sits down at the table. Mr Riddle raises his eyes slowly.
“Sirius Black,” he says, slowly. “I hope it’s not too much of a disappointment if I tell you that I’m not at all surprised.”
“No, no,” Sirius says, grinning sweetly, “You could never disappoint me, Tom.”
“What can I do for you, Mr Black,” Mr Riddle says, steepling his fingers over his glass of wine.
“The real issue here, Tom,” Sirius says as he stands, “Is what I intend to do for you.”
Mr Riddle’s jaw aches. Sirius takes his jacket and walks away. Mr Riddle means to watch him as he leaves, to call in and tell security to throw him out of the hotel, but he can’t remember what Black was wearing and as the crowds shift, Mr Riddle looses sight of him.
It’s almost six o’clock now. Saturday night in the middle of August. It’s the kind of night that usually makes him millions. There’s something that Riddle can taste in the, air, though. He’d like to retire to his rooms. On the floor below there is a flash of dark violet, and Mr Riddle tracks the spray of colour before losing it again. Something on the air. It’s the kind of night that can make or break a man.
His secretary is sorting through papers on her desk when he walks past later. She’s worked for him for fifteen years, but he can’t remember her name. He points to her instead, to get her attention. “Sir?” she asks.
“Bring up anything we have on Sirius Black. Send it to my office. And while you’re at it send me my files on Remus Lupin and James and Lily Potter.”
(PART TWO)
Rating: PG-13/R
Warnings: Non-graphic sex, very brief and non-graphic mentions of rape, drugs, and underage sex.
Genre(s): Horror/Adventure
Word Count: approx. 13000
Summary: In which you can’t cheat an honest man, or, in which Remus and Sirius steal a piano.
Notes: Ocean’s 11/Heist film inspired AU written for the rs_games 2010. Here is the prompt: (No. 20 -- Lyrics from ‘Feeling Good’ by Nina Simone)
---
Three Card Monte
---
Beep.
“Hey, it’s Lily and James Planter--”
“And Harry!”
“And Harry. Anyway, we’re not here to take your call right now. Leave your name and number and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible. Bye…”
Beep.
“It’s me - I mean, it’s Remus. Sirius is...he’s out. Okay. Bye. I’ll call - I mean, we’ll call. Bye.”
Beep.
---
Beep.
“The number you have reached is not available at the moment. Please leave a message after the tone.”
Beep.
“Hey, McGonagall, it’s James. I just wanted to give you a heads up. I’ve heard from Remus - Sirius got parole. If you could pass on the info to Dumbledore, that’d be much appreciated. I’m sure - I mean, I know we’ll be talking soon.”
Beep.
---
Beep.
“You’ve got the Prewett brothers. Press one for Fab, two for Gid, and three if you’re trying to hire us for your shady, ill-conceived revenge plots. Which we assume is the reason you called this number because people don’t call this number unless that’s what they’re after - or maybe they were trying to call that pizza place, or maybe you’re trying to get into Gid’s pants, which isn’t unlikely considering all--”
Beep.
“Hey Fab, it’s Caradoc. I heard from Emmeline who was talking to Shacklebolt who was talking to Arthur who was talking to Ted Tonks whose wife just got a call from Sirius: he’s been sprung. I expect we’ll get a call from Remus soon; and when we do…well, I’m in if you are. I suppose you can bring your brother. Also, are you and I still going to see that film tomorrow night? I’m not having Chinese before again. We always have Chinese.”
Beep.
---
The sky is grey and sleepy and Remus Lupin turns up the collar of his coat to fend off a non-existent wind. It makes him look shifty-and, more importantly, vulnerable. In front of him is a folding table. On the table there are three cards. Between the grey of the day, the black of Remus’ coat, and the wet chalk colour of the pavement, the red-printed cards look vulgar, cheap.
There is a crowd gathered around the table, and Remus glances up and catches the eye of a rake thin man in his late forties, greying hair and a cheap business suit. Remus flashes him a shy kind of smile, and as the man’s gaze catches on Remus’, glued to that mesmerising liquid-honey-gold, Remus’ hands briefly caress the cards.
“So,” he asks, turning to the girl in the front of the crowd, “Queen of my heart, can you follow the queen of hearts?”
This gets him a low murmur of laughter. Remus picks up the cards. They feel slick and cool in his hands like the scales of a snake. His hands fit around them well -- they were made to cup the painted faces of kings.
“Here she is,” he says, showing the Queen, “And here are the other cards. Can you confirm I have here a Queen and two black aces?”
“Yes,” she giggles.
He sets them down and then flips them up, showing their positions on the table. Then he begins to shuffle their places on the table; he doesn’t throw the Queen, and he lets the girl win. It’s easier to play Three Card Monte with a few shills, he supposes, but he likes the challenge of pitting marks against each other -- greed feeding greed. He’s only playing because he’s bored, anyway. Maybe some people get thrills repelling down cliff faces - Remus gets his from a slight of hand.
The girl picks the right card, and Remus lets her take her five-dollar bet. She plays a part as well as anyone in on the game could have. Remus’ true mark shuffles a little closer to the table.
“Okay, lets have some real money now. Anyone? You look like a man with quick eyes,” Remus says to the mark. The man hesitates, and then he nods.
Lily always tells Remus that she’s never seen anyone who can get people to fall for a game as quickly as Remus can. Remus doesn’t know why it surprises her -- he’s a details man. He’s always been a details man. Other men would have kept the collar of their coat down-and that’s where they broke their game; the second his mark thought Remus could get a chill, he thought he could beat him.
Any failings Remus has as a con man don’t come from a lack of finesse. What Remus doesn’t do well is have the big ideas. And how useful is a details man if he doesn’t have an ideas man anyway? Then the only place his train of thought has to go is straight to Sirius. Remus closes his eyes as if hiding from his own thoughts. Sometimes, when he starts missing Sirius, he gets an ache beneath his breastbone that hurts so much it makes his eyes sting with tears.
“Follow the lady,” Remus says softly, rubbing absently at the phantom pain in his chest. Giving the mark a last little sideways grin, Remus slides the cards over top of each other on the table, just fast enough that the man is sure he knows exactly where every card is. He throws the queen right at the end, slipping one hand over the other and tossing the top card to the middle of the table instead of the bottom card.
The man puts his money on the middle card.
Remus shakes his head sadly as he flips the card. “Sorry,” he says, “I’m afraid that’s not the one.”
“Damn,” the man grumbles. He folds his hands into his pockets protectively. Remus is sure he won’t get another bet out of the man, so he scans the small gathering of on-lookers for someone looking a little too eager. He glances away a moment, shuffling and reshuffling the three cards in his hand.
When he looks up, there is a new man at the front of the table, appearing out of nowhere to sling his arm companionably around the mark. All the breath rushes out of Remus’s lungs in a whoosh. He has to clench his jaw to keep from madly grinning.
It’s Sirius.
It’s Sirius.
What he wants to do is throw his arms around Sirius and bury his face into his shoulder - suddenly safe in a way no other thing on earth can make him feel. He wants Sirius’s soft mouth pressed under his jaw just like he did for that last fleeting moment they touched, before Sirius’s wry sharp smile was lost to him behind a mirrored police car door.
Sirius tilts his head just to the side, and Remus forcefully sucks air into his lungs. He knows that expression almost too well. With Sirius, he has to remember that everything is an opportunity for a game.
Sirius murmurs something into the man’s ear, and Remus already knows what he’s saying, like how he knows everything Sirius says and thinks and does when they’re pulling a con. The sudden comfort of having a partner rushes down Remus’ spine like a shot of morphine, a warm, sweet slide of weightlessness.
Remus studies Sirius as he talks the mark into betting again; Sirius is wearing a suit and tie; they look new or crisply ironed. The bag slung over his shoulder is the one he had with him when he was arrested, and Remus is sure that the clothes he was arrested in - one of Remus’ oversized random folk band t-shirts and a his favourite worn jeans -- are shoved haphazardly in the bottom of the bag. He looks just a little bit too thin and though Sirius is naturally pale, his skin is more sallow than ivory. There are tiny lines around his eyes and mouth that Remus doesn’t remember. His hair is to too long. Trust Sirius to convince the prison guards not to cut it. It’s not that Sirius likes his hair long or short, necessarily, but Remus is sure Sirius made an effort to control anything he could while on the inside.
On the surface, there is nothing wrong with Sirius that can’t be fixed with a few months of sleep in a decent bed, and real food. He’d never thought Sirius was the kind of man who would be broken by prison so easily. Now Remus isn’t sure. After all, a lot more went wrong four years back than just Sirius getting thrown into jail.
“I’ll bet first, how ‘bout that?” Sirius declares. He pauses, “Okay, okay, how much should I put down?”
Remus shuffles the bills he’s collected in his hand until the tens are on top and then spreads them across the table. The mark’s eyes catch on the one and the zero. Oh, how Remus loves the power of suggestion.
“If you bet a hundred and win,” says the man, “I’ll match it.”
“A hundred!” Sirius asks, eyes going wide. He pauses and bites his lip as he examines Remus’ hands cradling the three cards. His looks hungry -- gambling men always are -- and something dark and hot unfolds in Remus’ stomach. Their eyes glance across each other for a moment. It makes Remus glad that life has led him to a point where it’s harder for him to accidentally show emotions than to drop his carefully constructed mask of indifference.
“Come on,” the mark eggs Sirius on. “You said you’d bet…. You said it’s a one in three chance no matter what.”
“I want to see the cards,” Sirius says. “Maybe he cheats.”
The man’s eyes darken suddenly, and Remus has to remind himself that Sirius knows what he is doing.
“I am deeply offended, sir. I do not cheat. Cheating is for men who have no skill,” Remus says. His holds the cards for one more moment, and then he nods sharply. He looks at the mark when he says: “I hope you two know this is not something I’d do for just anyone.”
When Sirius takes his cards from Remus, their fingers brush briefly and the shock of pleasure that rushes up Remus’ arm stands all his hair on end. He swallows shallowly. Four years, he thinks, I’ve forgotten what desire feels like.
Sirius and the man examine the cards for a moment and Sirius leans close enough to whisper into Remus’ ear when gives them back. He smells good and dangerous, like leather or maybe lightning in the desert. He doesn’t say anything but Remus knows the kinds of things he would murmur and it’s enough.
Remus lays the cards out reverently and taps the Queen, “The lady is here. Can you follow her?”
He’s quicker this time - a lot quicker. In Three Card Monte, the eyes are always faster than hands, but Remus knows that people get nervous when he goes too fast, and they stop believing they can follow the card. In a confidence trick, the mark has to have confidence in themselves as much as in the operator. He doesn’t worry about this with Sirius, though. The harder he makes it look for Sirius, the more likely it is for the mark to believe he can win, when Sirius inevitably does.
He’s about to lay the cards our flat when, impulsively, he throws the Queen. It’s a good throw. There’s no possible way Sirius could tell from watching that the top card from his hand is now on the right and the Queen on the left. He feels stupid the second he’s done it, but he doesn’t want to give it away by looking down. He’s too curious.
Sirius studies the cards for a moment, “Were you paying attention?” Sirius asks the mark.
The man shakes his head, “It’s your bet, man.”
Sirius unfolds a single hundred-dollar bill from his pocket. The small crowd leans in - anticipation thick in the air.
He puts the bill on the Queen. “I think that’s it.”
“No way,” someone from the crowd mutters. “Come on, it’s there on the right.”
“Are you sure?” Remus says, quietly.
“I’m sure I want this one,” Sirius replies. His voice has some level of seriousness beyond the words. Remus desperately wants to reach out and touch him; his chest feels tight and full of awe. Sirius knows him this well. Well enough to guess he’d switch the cards when even Remus hadn’t known until he’d been halfway through the motions.
Remus flips the card, and the crowd murmurs excitedly.
When the mark puts down his hundred dollars, he looses it. That’s the game, after all. Most of the crowd wanders away, leaving only the man grumbling angrily down at the cards; Sirius pats his arm consolingly.
“I want to check the cards again,” Sirius says. “There’s no way that wasn’t right.”
Remus raises an eyebrow, wondering what Sirius is up too now. His eyes are dove grey in the faded afternoon light. They capture Remus as surely as a moth in a glass jar.
Sirius lets his fingers rest briefly against the pulse point at Remus’ wrist as he takes the cards this time. His lips look dry and full and Remus want to lick them open. He fans the cards. No cheat is revealed. Remus’ mark shrugs.
Sirius isn’t done though, he leans impossibly close to Remus and, gently, he slips his hand into the collar of Remus’ coat, brushing his hand against the tender skin of Remus’ neck. Remus feels his carefully schooled expression of confusion waver into want, for just a second.
“Well, well, well...” Sirius says, husky and low against the shell of Remus' ear. The fine hairs at his temple brush across Sirius's mouth as he breathes in. “What have we here?”
He holds up two fingers. The Ace of Hearts is between them.
“Hey,” the mark says. “Hey, man, you must have been cheating with that.”
Remus ignores him, enthralled by Sirius as he is. “That isn't mine,” he whispers to Sirius.
Sirius smiles at him, a slow curve of red lips, “Well that depends on what you mean by yours. If you’re asking if this is yours, then yes. But if you’re asking if it belongs to me…then the answer to that is also yes.”
Remus slides backwards a little, so that Sirius becomes a whole face, instead of magnified pieces (mouth, cheekbones, eyelashes). He looks him sharply, and suddenly they're laughing at each other. “What a line, Sirius.”
“It was a good one, huh?” He replies, as he collects the deck of cards off the table and shifts them into his pockets.
“Shall we?” Remus asks, seeing that the table is now bare. The mark is still watching them with an expression halfway between irate and baffled.
“Let's,” Sirius replies.
They disperse into the bustling crowds like smoke, and the mark is left, hands tightening and clutching at nothing, with a naked table and one-hundred and fifty dollars less to his name.
---
The night is dark like black coffee when Remus slides his key into his apartment door and tugs Sirius in after him; Sirius slams it shut so he can shove Remus against it. His mouth is hot and soft against Remus neck, kissing the places he whispered against hours before. When he pulls away for a second, Remus makes a hurt sound in the back of his throat and tugs back quickly with shaking hands, pushing their mouths together again.
“Hey, hey, Moony,” Sirius murmurs, soothingly. “I'm just undoing your coat.”
“Sorry,” Remus says. “I know, I just...I just...”
Sirius holds his gaze. In the twilight of the flat, their features are smoothed out and cast only in shades of silver and black. Remus is sure that the night is their colour. He feels as close to beautiful as he ever could, with Sirius watching him so intently. They both know what he is trying to say. He hates and loves Sirius for making him voice it.
“I missed you Sirius. It was too much. I really, really missed you.”
Sirius folds Remus into his arms, holding him tightly, chastely. Remus always feels smaller than Sirius when he is held this way. He likes it.
“Okay,” he says gently, “I missed you too. Just…just…it’s okay…”
They lean against the door there for a long time, breathing the same slow breaths until Remus is smiling at the edges of his mouth again.
“Do you remember the third job we pulled together?” Sirius says quietly. He tugs Remus into the bedroom. It smells the same -- it's not even the same house, but it still smells the same, like any bedroom Remus has ever occupied does. He sits on the bed and unlaces his shoes.
“Of course,” Remus replies. He removes his coat lazily, fingers catching on each button. “The Citibank job, out on Long Island. James, Andromeda, the Prewetts-Frank, before he left the business.”
“Remember how you got Frank’s girlfriend, Alice, to pretend to be your wife, in order to get the security code for the vaults?”
“Sure...” Remus says. He remembers how small and awkward it felt to tuck Alice's petite body under his arm, wishing for someone else to be there instead. He remembers the liquid heat of adrenaline as he spun a story for the bank manager. He remembers marvelling at how people treated him, dressed carefully in an ironed linen suit and dark glasses - it was shocking; scruffy, all of nineteen-practically still living on the street and suddenly he knew he had every opportunity - it was only a con away.
He remembers the party after the job: splayed out on the fire escape outside Fabian Prewett’s crap apartment, sharing a glass of the most expensive champagne Remus had ever been in the same room with. He hadn't known Sirius back then, not like he does now anyway. He had only known he wanted him.
“I knew I was in love with you right then. I saw you tuck Alice under your arm, and I was so suddenly jealous -- I could barely breath. You cupped your hand under her elbow like you did with me sometimes, and I wanted that gesture to only be mine.”
Remus smiles. “Do you remember what you said to me, that night, on the fire escape?”
“I said...that you were good at pretending to be with Alice, like that - I said we were all half convinced, how easy you were with her, and I said maybe I was a little jealous.”
“Do you remember what I said back?”
“You said, 'It's easy if I pretend she's you.' And you wouldn't look at me in the eye, so I kissed you. That was the first time, wasn't it?”
“Not the last though.” Remus laughs against Sirius's lips, small, and he can feel Sirius's eyelashes catching against his own.
“Come on,” Sirius says, gently, sliding across the covers like the feel of clean cotton is sinfully good. Remus smiles moves across him. In each other, they find themselves again - those missing parts the years of separation stole away from them. Small things like the light in their eyes, but also big, necessary things, like an untouchable confidence (the kind men like Remus and Sirius really can't do without). They are against each other or with each other, skin and skin, and hands and hands, and mouth and mouth. They come apart against each other.
In the early hours of the morning, Remus wakes. Sirius is watching him. Already, he looks different than when he found Remus on the street the day before - closer to the man he was before he left.
“Alright,” Remus says, as Sirius brushes a few strands of hair from his face. “First we need some French toast, and then I want to know what your plan is, because if there is one thing Sirius Black always has, it's a plan.”
“What?” Sirius says, slow and coy. “No pillow talk?”
Remus laughs at him as he rolls out of the bed. “For you, that is pillow talk.”
---
The warehouse is dark and silent until Remus flicks the lights on and Sirius comes through the doors tugging a chalkboard behind him, and pushing a case of cheap wine in front of him with one foot.
Remus lugs the folding chairs from the van inside and watches the line of Sirius’ back change as he scrawls messily across the board Good Morning Class. Remus sets up the chairs in a loose circle and then crosses to Sirius, catching his wrists and turning him gently till his back touches the green slate, smudging letters slightly. Sirius leans into his kiss, meeting him halfway. A cough echoes from the other side of the workshop and Remus separates from Sirius lingeringly.
“Black,” James says, covering the yards of dusty concrete towards them in lengthening strides. “Black, it’s fucking good to see you again.”
“James!” Sirius crows, brushing past Remus gently, and cracking a grin Remus remembers well. The same expression is on James’ face. They hug each other one-armed but tight and affectionate, all big and gangly and not so different from the seventeen year old lost souls Remus first knew them as.
“Potter, how’s the wife? How’s my godson? Haven’t corrupted them too far yet, I hope.”
“Lily was corrupted before I ever got to her, and you know it,” he replies laughing. “And it’s Planter now. Can’t let that one slip. Hagrid will kill me if I ask him to do us another lot of birth certificates. He says I use up twice as much ink as any of the rest of his clients.”
“I expect you’ll soon exhaust the list of vocational careers beginning with the letter ‘P’, anyway,” Sirius adds. Remus sees Lily come in through the door. Harry is settled against her hip, yawning sleepily, and Remus goes to take him from her so she can press a kiss to Sirius’s cheek and hug him tightly, fitting her peace into all Sirius’s ragged corners like a sister.
“How was prison?” James asks.
Sirius smiles wryly. “Lonely,” he answers, and they all hear that terrible seed of truth. Remus crosses to Sirius, still holding Harry and swipes his thumb over Sirius’ hip. Harry squirms in Remus’ arms as Sirius meets his eyes gratefully.
“I’m afraid I don’t recognize you anymore, sir,” Sirius says, leaning towards Harry. “How old are you now, hmmm? Fifteen? Twenty-seven? Eighty?”
“I’m five,” Harry announces with grave importance. “And mommy says that you’re like my uncle and that when I was a baby you took me to the zoo three times, and daddy says you’ll buy me ice cream but that I can’t tell mommy because she’ll say I can’t have so much sugar.”
“All of these things and more are true, Harry,” Sirius says, standing next to Remus so he can shift Harry from Remus’ hips to Sirius’.
There’s more commotion at the door to the warehouse as three more people appear. Two have matching grins and hair exactly the same shade of auburn hair, though one of them is whippet thin and the other is as broad as a railroad worker across the shoulders. Trailing behind them like a put-upon nanny is a tall pale man with a sweep of dark hair and a red mouth.
“Black, Lupin, and the Planters!” the broad one announces upon spotting them, “Oh the gang’s all here. It’s excellent to see you again, I must say--”
“Gideon and I were absolutely bored out of our minds without you. Smuggling frankincense and myrrh across the Egyptian border just isn’t what it used to be. We need a real job.” The thin one finishes.
“Still hanging around with these oafs, Caradoc?” Remus asks pleasantly.
“Unfortunately,” the pale man replies, “I seem to be stuck with them. You know how it is with those two. Fab says I keep his toes warm at night, and Gid says he needs someone to side with him in arguments. I vouch for the boredom. They’ve been a nightmare since you got locked up. I’ve twelve more passports than I did the last time I saw you.”
“That’s exactly as it should be,” Sirius cut in imperiously. “Now we’re only waiting on three.”
“Three?” Remus asked, “It’s only McGonagall and Mad-Eye.”
“No,” Sirius said, looking a little sour. “I’ve gotta do something for Andromeda. Her daughter wants in on the business. I told her a long time ago that I’d break her in and she’s calling the favour in now.”
“Who is the kid? Is she good?” James asked.
“She’s only twenty-one. Were we good when we were twenty-one?”
“Sure,” James said.
“No we weren’t,” Remus says. “What we had was potential.”
“That’s what she has,” Sirius said, smiling wryly. “She has potential.”
---
Tonks counts cards. Plus two. She holds the number in her thoughts carefully. It’s hot in the casino and she pulls at the silk of her dress. The man beside her sees her touch her bra strap and he picks up his glass, clinking the two ice cubes together. She sees the way he blinks at her long legs and forgets where he is for just a moment. Plus two she thinks.
“Hello!” says a man, out of nowhere suddenly crashing into the card table and draping himself between Tonks and the man beside her. His hair is raven black. It’s a good haircut. His suit also looks expensive, but it’s rumpled, and his collar is messy. His tie pin flashes gold in the corner of her vision and before she can help herself, her fingers reach out and pluck it off, secreting it into the dark of her pocket. He smells like gin.
“Oh, this looks nice,” the man says, slumping forward onto the table.
“Sir,” says the Dealer sharply. He jolts back up. “Sorry, sorry,” he says, “I said I was only going to have one glass of wine, and then, well, you know how it goes.” He laughs uproariously, and Tonks shifts away from him, feeling the grime of the man’s sweat under her fingernails.
“Sir,” the Dealer repeats, with a serious threat now lingering on the edge of her voice.
“Oh, I was just going, sorry, sorry.” Just as the man extracts his arm from her shoulders he turns his head slightly, and their gazes catch. His eyes are sharp and grey and magnetic, almost familiar for some strange reason. Something about it makes her feel as if a bucket of water has been upended over her head. She breathes in sharply.
Feeling a little shaken, she leans down to grab her purse from the ground. It’s gone. Instead there is only a folding square of paper. She stands up glancing after the man, but he’s disappeared, just absolutely absent from the crowds.
“Oh my god,” she says to the man next to her, “That jerk just stole my purse.”
But of course they’ll never catch him, she thinks, remembering that shocking intelligence in his gaze.
Later, when she’s in the bathroom staring at her reflection and angry at her ignorance, she unfolds the piece of paper. One side says You lost the count. It wasn’t plus two anymore. The other side gives an address and a time and beneath that, in tiny lettering, Bring my tie pin with you. It’s my favourite one.
---
James is telling the story of the Fenton Job when the new girl shows up. She doesn’t look nervous but she does look like she’s trying too hard. Sirius has just gone out to the van to lug the blueprints inside, and so there’s nothing tell her she’s in the right place. Remus half smiles, taking pity on her.
“You’re Andromeda’s daughter, right?” he says, standing from his chair and offering it to her. “I’m Remus.”
She looks up at him with widening eyes, “Does that mean the guy in the casino was Black? Is this…is he pulling me in on a job?”
Remus brings the other half of his mouth up into a full grin. Anyone who’s anyone in the business knows that if Remus gives you a call, you’re a shoe in with Black, and there isn’t anything like being on one of his jobs. Remus is glad that Sirius’ reputation hasn’t dulled too much in four years.
“Your mom suggested we bring you in,” he says. “You know how Black family outcasts stick together, I’m sure.”
“Oh,” she says, the light in her eyes fading a little, “Just a family connection, then?”
Remus puts his hand on her shoulder and she ducks her head at the touch, “Sirius doesn’t take people he thinks are useless, Nymphadora.”
“Please,” she says, glancing at him through the fringe of her eyelashes. “You can call me Tonks.”
---
“So what’s the plan, then,” Mad-Eye growls, chewing on the blackening end of a toothpick with angry ferocity.
“It’s ambitious,” Sirius precludes, “But…it’s also beautiful,”
“Eh, eh…” Mad-Eye says, probably sensing the monologue Sirius is about to work himself into. Remus can already see the resigned flat gazes of the other seven people assembled in a circle on their folding chairs. They’re all set to watch a half-hour show of typical Sirius rambling poetically about the art of thievery. Remus himself is in leaning against an over turned crate next to the chalkboard, which now reads Good Morning Minions. Sirius stands in the middle of the group, as though the warehouse is an amphitheatre. “Cut the crap,” Mad-Eye finishes.
“Fine, fine,” Sirius says. He looks over-exposed around his edges, more alive than even before he went to prison and a little painfully excited. Remus wonders if these things are only visible to him, or if they’re also visible to people like James, who has known Sirius as his brother as long as Remus has known him as the love of his life, or if everyone sees that Sirius is running on something more vibrant and electric than whatever flesh and blood the rest of them contain.
“The plan is simple,” Sirius says. “We take down Hotel Voldemort. We’re going to break Tom Riddle. We’ll be rich with his downfall.”
---
Sirius has been in prison for three months before Remus goes to visit him. Sirius always said he didn’t want Remus to visit him while he ‘acclimated’ to prison. He understands why when he sees Sirius on the other side of that Plexiglas wall. He looks blurry, but it’s not the inches of bulletproof glass between them that make him so. He’s washed out and tired and the vivacity that draws Remus to him and pins Remus at Sirius’ side is all but gone.
Remus loves him with a surge of throat-aching panic anyway. Remus has never been violent, but he can imagine punching the guard in the corner of the room and kicking at the door he stands in front of until it springs open with perfect detail. Sirius doesn’t fit here. Remus wants him out. He can imagine how much more it would hurt to watch the slow descent of Sirius to ghost, instead of only seeing the finished product.
The first thing Sirius says when Remus picks up the phone connecting their voices is “I love you.”
He’s never said it before. It was always there between them of course. The kind of thing you know the same way you know you can always visit Florida next year because it’s not going anywhere, or that you should really take back those overdue library books.
“You aren’t thinking of killing yourself are you?” Remus asks. It’s not the right thing to say, but he can’t think of any other reason Sirius would say it now, just like that.
Sirius laughs a little anyway, gruff “No,” he says, “But I spend the greater majority of my time laying alone and thinking, and one thing I thought about was that I should tell you I love you.”
“I love you, too,” Remus replies.
Sirius sighs into the phone. “I’d like to kiss you right now,” he says.
Remus looks down at Sirius hands. There are two new small scars. The kind you’d get from punching someone in the face very hard. Remus thinks about all the bruises Sirius might have now and has to stop for fear he might not be able to breath. “I’d like to take you home,” Remus says.
“When I’m out of here, I’m taking Riddle down, Moony,” Sirius says, voice suddenly fixed carefully flat.
“We can’t go after Riddle. Peter will have told him exactly how we work, they’ll know all our tricks, and they’ll be expecting it.”
“I can’t let it go. I can’t. The man…” Sirius squeezes his eyes shut, “He tore apart my family and he tried to ruin my reputation as an honourable con and he gave us up to the law and he fucking killed my brother, Remus. He killed Regulus. I have to ruin him.”
Remus leans on his elbows and sets his forehead against the window. He drops the phone, and Sirius mimics him, so they lean together, separated only by a few inches of glass.
“So what do you propose to do?” Remus mouths.
“Like I said,” Sirius mouths back, “I’ve got a lot of time for thinking these days.”
---
“Riddle will recognize me, and probably Remus, James and Lily, and he knows I just got sprung and that I want revenge. We’re going to use it to our advantage. We’re running two games side by side. The first con will be pulled just by the four of us - we’ll do it well enough that he can’t arrest us, but predictably enough that he can follow it all. It’s gotta be showy. We want him watching.”
“The second takes all of us. That one is the real con. That’s the one we make money on, and that’s the one that will ruin him.”
Mr Riddle wakes up at exactly seven thirty every morning. This morning is no different. He collects his paper from the coffee table where it appears silently with a coffee. He reads the front-page articles, and whatever items in the business section have been circled in red pen as of a particular interest to him. He eats half a grapefruit, a bowl of muesli and runs on a treadmill for sixteen minutes.
At eight thirty he showers and puts on one of twenty-three bespoke suits. He smokes a cigarette on the bedroom balcony. By nine o’clock he’s at the front desk to smile falsely at the head receptionist. She tells him if any high rollers have either booked in or just arrived. Sometimes, the receptionist recommends that he read a particular novel she’s just finished. Mr Riddle does try, but he can’t always keep the disdainful sneer from his face.
At nine-thirty the head of security briefs him on the walk down to check on the vaults. He would like to count his money personally every day, but Mr Riddle simply has too much of it. The head statistician then ensures that the casino is making the amount of money it should be. Chance is still in their favour. He then retires to his office where he looks around for Bellatrix, whom he usually fucks across the back of the desk at this time of day. He likes to touch her wedding band to remind her of her husband. She shifts underneath him as he does it and he knows there is still a little guilt pumping up her veins. It makes him feel good to twist and pick at the hurt. Today, she isn’t waiting for him, and never appears, which makes him distantly annoyed.
At noon Pettigrew comes in with some business, whatever he has to take care of for the day. Pettigrew is such an idiot it takes longer than it should, but he’s a useful idiot because he’s loyal. Depending on when this has finished, Mr Riddle goes to sit in the Overlord Bar and look down on the casino. When someone wins, he grinds his teeth together. His dentist says he’ll have to wear something at night if he keeps doing it. Mr Riddle doesn’t mind; if he uses these teeth up he’ll just buy some better ones.
He is very busy grinding his teeth when there is a whisper of silk as someone takes their coat off and drops it over the back of the other chair at Mr Riddle’s table. The lining of the jacket is rich indigo.
“Tom,” says the man as he sits down at the table. Mr Riddle raises his eyes slowly.
“Sirius Black,” he says, slowly. “I hope it’s not too much of a disappointment if I tell you that I’m not at all surprised.”
“No, no,” Sirius says, grinning sweetly, “You could never disappoint me, Tom.”
“What can I do for you, Mr Black,” Mr Riddle says, steepling his fingers over his glass of wine.
“The real issue here, Tom,” Sirius says as he stands, “Is what I intend to do for you.”
Mr Riddle’s jaw aches. Sirius takes his jacket and walks away. Mr Riddle means to watch him as he leaves, to call in and tell security to throw him out of the hotel, but he can’t remember what Black was wearing and as the crowds shift, Mr Riddle looses sight of him.
It’s almost six o’clock now. Saturday night in the middle of August. It’s the kind of night that usually makes him millions. There’s something that Riddle can taste in the, air, though. He’d like to retire to his rooms. On the floor below there is a flash of dark violet, and Mr Riddle tracks the spray of colour before losing it again. Something on the air. It’s the kind of night that can make or break a man.
His secretary is sorting through papers on her desk when he walks past later. She’s worked for him for fifteen years, but he can’t remember her name. He points to her instead, to get her attention. “Sir?” she asks.
“Bring up anything we have on Sirius Black. Send it to my office. And while you’re at it send me my files on Remus Lupin and James and Lily Potter.”
(PART TWO)