konstantya (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
konstantya) wrote2021-12-15 03:10 pm
konstantya) wrote2021-12-15 03:10 pm
Entry tags:
[fic] The Love Pawn - "Black Knights' Tango"
Title: Black Knights’ Tango
Fandom: The Love Pawn (Short Story)
Genre: Drama, gen.
Characters: Red (Jack Delafield)
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 1,852
Summary: “Heard something interesting the other day,” Raymie said. “Thought you might want to know.” Jack took a drag from his cigarette and waited. “Rumor has it Eric Kendall is in love.” (Or, Mr. Jack Delafield, of the California Delafields, formally invites you to witness the start of his weird, stalkery descent into darkness. As before, the original short story can be found here.)
If you’d like to leave a comment, please do so on AO3!
Raymie was waiting near the fan palms like he said he’d be, in a light brown suit and a matching Panama. It had been a while since Jack had seen him, and he looked good—almost as lanky as the figure he’d cut when they were dorm-mates at university.
“Jack,” he said, turning at his approach. “Good to see you.” Generously, Jack chose not to question the sincerity of that statement.
“Raymie. Likewise.”
Raymie reached into his jacket and pulled out a cigarette case—gold-plated, where Jack’s had been solid, with platinum trim and adorable little diamonds studding the front. It had been a gift for his twenty-first birthday, and it was long gone now, pawned to help cover legal fees for a lawsuit that had maddeningly been thrown out before it could even get to trial.
A lack of evidence, the judge had said. Jack had nearly punched the man.
Raymie plucked a cigarette from the case, then held it open in a wordless offer. “Thanks,” Jack said, and let the other man light the slim cylinder, forcibly restraining himself from sighing in bliss at the now-all-too-rare taste of quality tobacco. It was a ridiculous, trifling thing to get hung up on, especially after all this time, but goddamn it, he missed expensive cigarettes. His remaining furniture was still good, and his bespoke suits were still holding, but so many day-to-day luxuries had fallen by the wayside. He’d taken a bus there, for chrissake.
“So to what do I owe the pleasure?” Jack finally asked. Raymie was one of the few friends who still kept in touch, but that didn’t mean he came calling often—friend or no, they moved in different circles now. It was one of the reasons they were meeting there, in Alameda Park, as opposed to either of their personal residences. It wouldn’t do for Raymond Bartholomew III to be seen slumming it around a small apartment building in a distinctly modest section of town, and it similarly wouldn’t do for him to be seen hosting the son of a disgraced, dead investor. Jack could have held it against him, but he knew it was merely a side-effect of how society worked, and anyway, he was well-aware of where his anger truly should have been directed.
“Heard something interesting the other day,” Raymie said. “Thought you might want to know.” Jack took a drag and waited. “Rumor has it Eric Kendall is in love.”
“What?” The word came out on a plume of smoke.
“I can hardly believe it, myself,” Raymie confessed. “Didn’t think men like him had the capacity for it. Nevertheless, it seems to be the truth. Some pert, young thing from the east coast, over here on vacation. Sounds like something out of a Hollywood farce, doesn’t it? A career crook falling for a society gal.
“Ingram’s her name,” he went on. “The family’s in shipping, I think. Pauline? Paulina? Something like that, at any rate. Anyway, Kendall’s apparently smitten with her. Wanted to marry her and everything. My understanding is that the feelings were returned, at least to some degree, but the girl went back home at the behest of her uncle. I guess she’s engaged to some rich businessman over there, now.” He shrugged.
Jack let all of that sink in. “And Kendall?” he asked.
“Nursing as broken a heart as you ever did see, or so I hear. It’s all gossip, mind. I never saw any of it for myself. Still, I figured you might like to know.”
“Indeed,” he said, with a slow, reflective lungful. There was something vaguely satisfying about the information—that one of the men responsible for his father’s demise was suffering a sort of grief—but more than that, it piqued his curiosity. Jack had quite reasonably assumed Eric Kendall was as cold as ice—a person would have to be, he argued, to do what he’d done and still sleep soundly at the end of the day—but perhaps he’d been wrong. Perhaps there was some sentimentality swirling around inside the man, after all. Honestly, who would have guessed? And then there was the girl—what about her? What kind of woman was capable of engendering romantic ardor in a hard-boiled, white-collar criminal?
“You know…” Raymie hesitantly said, interrupting his train of thought, “I could still talk to my granddad if you wanted. See if he could find you a position.”
“I’m not a charity case yet, thank you very much,” Jack snapped, conveniently ignoring how readily he’d accepted a cigarette. He threw the remains of it down onto the ground, deliberately grinding it out with the toe of his shoe as if to prove some point, though whether he was trying to prove it to Raymie or himself, he wasn’t sure. “I’m managing just fine,” he said. ‘Surviving, if not thriving,’ was the phrase that came to mind.
Just last week, Yugi-san had taught him how to crimp the dough around dumplings, fairly berating him with that no-nonsense tone of hers, saying she needed to be confident he wouldn’t starve to death in the event something befell her or her husband. The reminder that they, too, could die from any number of things, leaving him well and truly alone in the world, made him feel younger and more vulnerable than he cared to admit. Sometimes he still dreamt of single, reverberating gunshots, of running through hallways in an anxious blur, of seeing his father’s bloody body slumped behind his desk while his mother sob-screamed somewhere in the background.
He itched for another cigarette, belatedly wished he hadn’t thrown the rest of Raymie’s into the grass, and was too proud in that moment to pull out his own. Instead, Jack stuck his hands into his pockets and stared across the insolently sunny expanse of the park.
“Actually…” he said at length, “there is something you could do for me, if you don’t mind.” It was a long shot, admittedly, but the idea that Eric Kendall—that anyone from that group of thieves—had a genuine weak spot was too good to pass up.
Raymie looked over at him, his eyebrow quirked in a way that could almost pass for casual. “Name it, old boy,” he said, and Jack smirked rather perversely, imagining the inevitable shock at what he was about to request.
“Let me shadow your butler for a couple of weeks?”
---
Jerome Ingram, the presumed uncle, was indeed in shipping as it turned out. The Crash had seen his finances take a bit of a hit, but not—ultimately—an unrecoverable one. He was a serious man, a sensible man, stout around the middle and greying at more than just his temples. He was, it occurred to Jack, probably about the same age his father had been at the time of his death, and he tried to keep the comparison from aching.
“All the way from California?” Mr. Ingram was saying. They were in his home office for the interview, a room decorated with books and ships in bottles and—perhaps most intriguingly—a handful of plants. “Dare I ask what brings you over to the east coast?”
A scandal, was what he probably feared, and Jack had prepared for that, instead keeping a fabricated sob story about a broken engagement in his metaphorical back pocket—something he would only release with great reluctance, so as to make it more believable. (It wasn’t entirely a lie; Letty Hargrove had been sweet on him, and he even a little sweet on her, but she’d distanced herself after the bulk of his family’s fortune had gone, and thoroughly dropped the association when his father committed suicide. Last he heard, she was married to some Viennese banker twice her age and was living in Switzerland. He didn’t really miss her, but he could have, had things been different.)
“A change of scenery, sir,” Jack said. “I was tiring of the west coast.” The truth, if he was being honest with himself; it was a relief, he now realized, to get away from the California social scene—particularly as he was no longer a part of it. “And I’d never been to the east,” he added, and that was definitely a lie; he’d been to New York multiple times, though never to Delaware, for whatever that was worth.
“Well,” Ingram said, looking over his forged credentials, “you certainly do come well-recommended. And I am in need of a steady substitute. Considering how my last one went and got married,” he groused. “You don’t have a sweetheart, do you, Benson?” It was more of a demand than a question, but Jack answered accordingly.
“No, sir.”
“And you aren’t in the market for one?”
“Not at present, sir.” Again, the truth. There would be time enough for women later, time enough for flirting and kissing and all those other lovely things he had once indulged in, but not until later. At present, he needed to focus.
“Hm. Well. I can’t think of a reason not to hire you, which is as good an endorsement as any, I suppose.” Ingram looked back up from the papers. “How early can you start?”
“As early as necessary, sir.”
“Well,” he said, yet again, and stood. Jack respectfully followed, and Ingram stuck out his hand to formalize the arrangement. As they shook, Jack felt a dark stab of success at the fact that the ruse had actually worked. “Welcome aboard, Benson.”
---
The girl’s name was Paula (and Jack was very tempted to send Raymie a letter, correcting him on the matter—Paula Ingram), and it wasn’t until that Sunday, his first officially on the job, that he finally saw her in the flesh. Her fiancé was coming to dinner—a man named Montgomery Lewis, who had only recently turned thirty and was almost as wealthy as Jack’s family had been—and it was then, in the evening, as he held the gentleman’s coat, that she came gliding down the staircase to greet him.
She was attractive, to be sure—Jack probably would have gone so far as to call her stunning. A young woman of twenty-one or so, average in height and near-perfect in form, her gold-brown curls tamed into stylish finger waves against her head, her lips full and her tawny eyes bright. But all that said, he knew Eric Kendall was too smart—too cunning—to be swayed by simply a pretty face or even a pleasing figure, so just what was it about Paula Ingram that so enchanted him? What personality must have been hiding underneath that sweet, feminine exterior, such that she’d hooked a professional swindler? And more importantly, how could he use it to his advantage?
Time would tell, Jack vowed. He’d get something on that blond son of a bitch if it was the last thing he did. And so he dutifully held the door for Miss Ingram whenever she went out, took her coat from her shoulders upon her return, pushed her chair in at dinner, and otherwise seized every opportunity to ravenously study, study, study her.
-----
A/N: Fast-forward a few months, and he’s rifling through her underwear drawer for research. “Research,” he says! And what’s worse, he actually means it! Oh, Jack.
Anyway, between Jack and Hetalia’s Austria, it’s possible that I have a thing for impoverished dudes trying to find their place in the world after emotional and financial devastation. Possible. (Also, in some alternate universe out there, the whole story is indeed a screwball rom-com, all about how consummate con-artist Eric Kendall fell heart-eyes in love with high-society gal Paula Ingram, pfft.)
All other fics can be found here.
Fandom: The Love Pawn (Short Story)
Genre: Drama, gen.
Characters: Red (Jack Delafield)
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 1,852
Summary: “Heard something interesting the other day,” Raymie said. “Thought you might want to know.” Jack took a drag from his cigarette and waited. “Rumor has it Eric Kendall is in love.” (Or, Mr. Jack Delafield, of the California Delafields, formally invites you to witness the start of his weird, stalkery descent into darkness. As before, the original short story can be found here.)
If you’d like to leave a comment, please do so on AO3!
- Black Knights’ Tango -
Raymie was waiting near the fan palms like he said he’d be, in a light brown suit and a matching Panama. It had been a while since Jack had seen him, and he looked good—almost as lanky as the figure he’d cut when they were dorm-mates at university.
“Jack,” he said, turning at his approach. “Good to see you.” Generously, Jack chose not to question the sincerity of that statement.
“Raymie. Likewise.”
Raymie reached into his jacket and pulled out a cigarette case—gold-plated, where Jack’s had been solid, with platinum trim and adorable little diamonds studding the front. It had been a gift for his twenty-first birthday, and it was long gone now, pawned to help cover legal fees for a lawsuit that had maddeningly been thrown out before it could even get to trial.
A lack of evidence, the judge had said. Jack had nearly punched the man.
Raymie plucked a cigarette from the case, then held it open in a wordless offer. “Thanks,” Jack said, and let the other man light the slim cylinder, forcibly restraining himself from sighing in bliss at the now-all-too-rare taste of quality tobacco. It was a ridiculous, trifling thing to get hung up on, especially after all this time, but goddamn it, he missed expensive cigarettes. His remaining furniture was still good, and his bespoke suits were still holding, but so many day-to-day luxuries had fallen by the wayside. He’d taken a bus there, for chrissake.
“So to what do I owe the pleasure?” Jack finally asked. Raymie was one of the few friends who still kept in touch, but that didn’t mean he came calling often—friend or no, they moved in different circles now. It was one of the reasons they were meeting there, in Alameda Park, as opposed to either of their personal residences. It wouldn’t do for Raymond Bartholomew III to be seen slumming it around a small apartment building in a distinctly modest section of town, and it similarly wouldn’t do for him to be seen hosting the son of a disgraced, dead investor. Jack could have held it against him, but he knew it was merely a side-effect of how society worked, and anyway, he was well-aware of where his anger truly should have been directed.
“Heard something interesting the other day,” Raymie said. “Thought you might want to know.” Jack took a drag and waited. “Rumor has it Eric Kendall is in love.”
“What?” The word came out on a plume of smoke.
“I can hardly believe it, myself,” Raymie confessed. “Didn’t think men like him had the capacity for it. Nevertheless, it seems to be the truth. Some pert, young thing from the east coast, over here on vacation. Sounds like something out of a Hollywood farce, doesn’t it? A career crook falling for a society gal.
“Ingram’s her name,” he went on. “The family’s in shipping, I think. Pauline? Paulina? Something like that, at any rate. Anyway, Kendall’s apparently smitten with her. Wanted to marry her and everything. My understanding is that the feelings were returned, at least to some degree, but the girl went back home at the behest of her uncle. I guess she’s engaged to some rich businessman over there, now.” He shrugged.
Jack let all of that sink in. “And Kendall?” he asked.
“Nursing as broken a heart as you ever did see, or so I hear. It’s all gossip, mind. I never saw any of it for myself. Still, I figured you might like to know.”
“Indeed,” he said, with a slow, reflective lungful. There was something vaguely satisfying about the information—that one of the men responsible for his father’s demise was suffering a sort of grief—but more than that, it piqued his curiosity. Jack had quite reasonably assumed Eric Kendall was as cold as ice—a person would have to be, he argued, to do what he’d done and still sleep soundly at the end of the day—but perhaps he’d been wrong. Perhaps there was some sentimentality swirling around inside the man, after all. Honestly, who would have guessed? And then there was the girl—what about her? What kind of woman was capable of engendering romantic ardor in a hard-boiled, white-collar criminal?
“You know…” Raymie hesitantly said, interrupting his train of thought, “I could still talk to my granddad if you wanted. See if he could find you a position.”
“I’m not a charity case yet, thank you very much,” Jack snapped, conveniently ignoring how readily he’d accepted a cigarette. He threw the remains of it down onto the ground, deliberately grinding it out with the toe of his shoe as if to prove some point, though whether he was trying to prove it to Raymie or himself, he wasn’t sure. “I’m managing just fine,” he said. ‘Surviving, if not thriving,’ was the phrase that came to mind.
Just last week, Yugi-san had taught him how to crimp the dough around dumplings, fairly berating him with that no-nonsense tone of hers, saying she needed to be confident he wouldn’t starve to death in the event something befell her or her husband. The reminder that they, too, could die from any number of things, leaving him well and truly alone in the world, made him feel younger and more vulnerable than he cared to admit. Sometimes he still dreamt of single, reverberating gunshots, of running through hallways in an anxious blur, of seeing his father’s bloody body slumped behind his desk while his mother sob-screamed somewhere in the background.
He itched for another cigarette, belatedly wished he hadn’t thrown the rest of Raymie’s into the grass, and was too proud in that moment to pull out his own. Instead, Jack stuck his hands into his pockets and stared across the insolently sunny expanse of the park.
“Actually…” he said at length, “there is something you could do for me, if you don’t mind.” It was a long shot, admittedly, but the idea that Eric Kendall—that anyone from that group of thieves—had a genuine weak spot was too good to pass up.
Raymie looked over at him, his eyebrow quirked in a way that could almost pass for casual. “Name it, old boy,” he said, and Jack smirked rather perversely, imagining the inevitable shock at what he was about to request.
“Let me shadow your butler for a couple of weeks?”
Jerome Ingram, the presumed uncle, was indeed in shipping as it turned out. The Crash had seen his finances take a bit of a hit, but not—ultimately—an unrecoverable one. He was a serious man, a sensible man, stout around the middle and greying at more than just his temples. He was, it occurred to Jack, probably about the same age his father had been at the time of his death, and he tried to keep the comparison from aching.
“All the way from California?” Mr. Ingram was saying. They were in his home office for the interview, a room decorated with books and ships in bottles and—perhaps most intriguingly—a handful of plants. “Dare I ask what brings you over to the east coast?”
A scandal, was what he probably feared, and Jack had prepared for that, instead keeping a fabricated sob story about a broken engagement in his metaphorical back pocket—something he would only release with great reluctance, so as to make it more believable. (It wasn’t entirely a lie; Letty Hargrove had been sweet on him, and he even a little sweet on her, but she’d distanced herself after the bulk of his family’s fortune had gone, and thoroughly dropped the association when his father committed suicide. Last he heard, she was married to some Viennese banker twice her age and was living in Switzerland. He didn’t really miss her, but he could have, had things been different.)
“A change of scenery, sir,” Jack said. “I was tiring of the west coast.” The truth, if he was being honest with himself; it was a relief, he now realized, to get away from the California social scene—particularly as he was no longer a part of it. “And I’d never been to the east,” he added, and that was definitely a lie; he’d been to New York multiple times, though never to Delaware, for whatever that was worth.
“Well,” Ingram said, looking over his forged credentials, “you certainly do come well-recommended. And I am in need of a steady substitute. Considering how my last one went and got married,” he groused. “You don’t have a sweetheart, do you, Benson?” It was more of a demand than a question, but Jack answered accordingly.
“No, sir.”
“And you aren’t in the market for one?”
“Not at present, sir.” Again, the truth. There would be time enough for women later, time enough for flirting and kissing and all those other lovely things he had once indulged in, but not until later. At present, he needed to focus.
“Hm. Well. I can’t think of a reason not to hire you, which is as good an endorsement as any, I suppose.” Ingram looked back up from the papers. “How early can you start?”
“As early as necessary, sir.”
“Well,” he said, yet again, and stood. Jack respectfully followed, and Ingram stuck out his hand to formalize the arrangement. As they shook, Jack felt a dark stab of success at the fact that the ruse had actually worked. “Welcome aboard, Benson.”
The girl’s name was Paula (and Jack was very tempted to send Raymie a letter, correcting him on the matter—Paula Ingram), and it wasn’t until that Sunday, his first officially on the job, that he finally saw her in the flesh. Her fiancé was coming to dinner—a man named Montgomery Lewis, who had only recently turned thirty and was almost as wealthy as Jack’s family had been—and it was then, in the evening, as he held the gentleman’s coat, that she came gliding down the staircase to greet him.
She was attractive, to be sure—Jack probably would have gone so far as to call her stunning. A young woman of twenty-one or so, average in height and near-perfect in form, her gold-brown curls tamed into stylish finger waves against her head, her lips full and her tawny eyes bright. But all that said, he knew Eric Kendall was too smart—too cunning—to be swayed by simply a pretty face or even a pleasing figure, so just what was it about Paula Ingram that so enchanted him? What personality must have been hiding underneath that sweet, feminine exterior, such that she’d hooked a professional swindler? And more importantly, how could he use it to his advantage?
Time would tell, Jack vowed. He’d get something on that blond son of a bitch if it was the last thing he did. And so he dutifully held the door for Miss Ingram whenever she went out, took her coat from her shoulders upon her return, pushed her chair in at dinner, and otherwise seized every opportunity to ravenously study, study, study her.
-----
A/N: Fast-forward a few months, and he’s rifling through her underwear drawer for research. “Research,” he says! And what’s worse, he actually means it! Oh, Jack.
Anyway, between Jack and Hetalia’s Austria, it’s possible that I have a thing for impoverished dudes trying to find their place in the world after emotional and financial devastation. Possible. (Also, in some alternate universe out there, the whole story is indeed a screwball rom-com, all about how consummate con-artist Eric Kendall fell heart-eyes in love with high-society gal Paula Ingram, pfft.)
All other fics can be found here.