FIC: Love Game (Ray Levoi/Walter Crow Horse, PG-13) for myhappyface
TITLE: Love Game
RATING: PG-13
FANDOM: Thunderheart
PAIRING: Ray Levoi/Walter Crow Horse
SUMMARY: Further adventures of Walter Crow Horse’s making Ray into a real Indian campaign.
AUTHOR’S NOTES: From Mundane Bingo prompt cheating at card games.
Gambling is for suckers, Ray figures. He has always been careful; he looks before he leaps, and he weighs consequences before committing to action. He has spent his whole life being what Crow Horse calls a “smart kola” when he’s sober and even-tempered, and a “stuck up, tight wound, Statue of Liberty up the keister, Federal prude” when he isn’t. Even working rough jobs undercover, Ray never lived wild, but, as Crow Horse is fond of pointing out, that ain’t living, that’s just work.
There is nothing Crow Horse loves so much as getting Ray’s hackles up, and fucking up the starch in his suit, but Ray is tightly wound, not stupid, and even he can see that sometimes Crow Horse actually does these things for his own good.
Ray likes Crow Horse’s friends, he really does, but as the night drags on and bottles get empty and tongues get loose enough to speak their true languages, Ray gets nervy. The six of them are three six packs and two bottles of Jim Beam down, and playing, against Ray’s strenuous objections, Indian Poker. The game here is not to bet on the high card, but to fold before call if you are a black card-a card that isn’t red.
“Please don’t make me do this,” Ray whispered, cornering Crow Horse in the kitchen. Crow Horse just laughed, and shook his head, and left Ray alone, back pressed against the cold tile.
Ray has not been helping with the drinking, although that would probably help loosen his nerves enough to bet properly. He started folding every hand, losing every pot, but his cards have been coming up red every time.
Nicky, who is Crow Horse’s cousin, if Ray remembers correctly-there’s a lot of them to keep track of, and family is a broad concept on the rez-empties another bottle of Beam.
“Anyone else think it’s counterproductive to be drinking a bourbon named after a white guy?” he says.
Junior, who is somebody else’s cousin, and visiting from out of town, shrugs. “The real challenge is to find something ain’t named after a white guy.”
“Plus,” Isaac-Nicky’s cousin; does that make him Crow Horse’s second cousin?-says, “What are you, some Pueblo worked up over maize rights? Scrubbin’ the deck of the Titanic.”
This is what being drunk feels like, Ray imagines, though he hasn’t had a drop. He is, by this point, very lost, and his head feels a bit detached from his body, like it may float away on the next strong breeze.
Crow Horse nudges Ray. “Your bet, hoss.”
It’s the first bet, and everyone’s got a red card. Ray frowns and folds.
Three of diamonds.
“You’re shit at this, Ray,” Herman-Junior’s friend and some kind of distant cousin to Crow Horse, the kind measured in those superscript numbers-says. “How much you down?”
Ray does some more mental math. “Not much. Twenty something, I think.”
“Walter’s gonna have to bump up your pay,” Nicky says, then calls and raises.
Junior fingers his chips. “What’s that? He got you on the payroll, kola? Some kinda kept man, enit?”
“Nah,” Crow Horse says. “He ain’t that good in bed. Hired him on at the tribal PD, Fed liaison. It’s working out real good.”
“Eyah?” Junior says. “You lettin’ white guys on the police force now?”
“Nah,” Herman says, and folds, “he only got in cuz he’s Crow Horse’s boyfriend.”
Ray starts to say something, but Crow Horse holds up his hand, speaks in his stead. “He ain’t white. Ray’s a quarter Sioux, which means he still outranks you and your Navajo blood.”
Junior slides his irritated look from Crow Horse to Ray. “You got a whole quarter Indian, huh? How much Indian you gonna have in you when Crow Horse here takes you home?”
The boys laugh, and Ray feels himself flush, humiliated and angry. He starts to speak, but again Crow Horse speaks for him. “Helluva lot more than if he went home with you, Junior.”
The boys laugh harder, Crow Horse too, laughing like thunder echoing off the canyons, the deep laugh of a much larger man, slapping his knee.
Crow Horse takes the pot, and deals again. He’s been dealing all night-had insisted on it, in fact, even though his hands are getting looser with every beer, and Ray doesn’t drink and has real good hands, to boot. The boys start betting, and for a moment, Ray just places his fingers atop his card, facedown on the table, like there’s some answers written in Braille on its back. Crow Horse sticks his own card to his forehead-king of hearts-and leans in for a moment to kiss Ray, smelling like the bottle but tasting so familiar and sweet. Crow Horse rests his hand on Ray’s shoulder, and as they break apart Crow Horse winks at him. And Ray laughs-even drunk, Crow Horse is quicker than he is, and it has taken him all evening to get the joke. He sticks his card in place and counts out chips to call, knowing without looking that his card will be red.