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The first thing Kent notices is that Bitty still does the thing where he presses his drink against his cheek when he’s bored.
It’s reassuring— more than the fact that they can still communicate in this double speak across the poker table, more than how Bitty doesn’t abandon him immediately after Kent gets the shiny, teen popstar boys to drop a couple grand each. The ribbon of uncertainty that had wrapped around Kent’s lungs when he’d walked out of New Jersey State Correctional Facility and gotten on a plane to LA unwinds itself a little, seeping out of his body with the last of the California heat. And afterwards, in the taxi:
“Did you get my cookies?” Bitty finally says. The lights of the Boulevard are casting strange shadows on his face through the window, neon colours making him look pale, drawn.
“’Course,” Kent says. “Delicious as always.”
He thumbs through the wad of cash— ten thou, not bad—and peels off half to hand to Bitty.
Bitty doesn’t move to take it. “You have something planned.”
Years ago, Kent would have bristled at how easily Bitty saw through his façade. Now, it only sends a thrill through him. The ribbon loosens itself even further. “Who, me?”
Bitty doesn’t reply. Kent hadn’t expected him to— it’s been a long time since he’s fallen for Kent’s all American boy charade. To be honest, Kent doesn’t think he ever has. Which is fine, but he’s been in prison for five years, and Kent doesn’t like how Bitty is sitting less than arm’s length away from him looking like he doesn’t care about the distance between them at all. It brings out all the nastiest parts of him— the person he was when he first met Bitty, who just wanted his attention: teasing, poking, tripping over insults, the boy on the school yard. Bitty had physically toppled over with laughter when Kent had finally spat out why he’d acted like that.
He’s not laughing now when Kent asks, “See Jack much?”
“Kent.” Bitty’s voice goes sharp.
There you are. Kent barely bites back a grin. I’ve missed you.
They lapse into silence, Kent smugly wallowing in his satisfaction. Two blocks go by before he speaks again. “Wanna break into a building to look over some blueprints?”
Bitty sighs. “Give me a reason,” he says, and there it is, that twitch of his eyebrow. Kent knows he’s got Bitty hooked, but just for good measure, he slouches a little further down in his seat, spreads his legs a little before he speaks.
“Bits,” he says. “Aren’t you bored?”
“I happen to like boring.”
Kent doesn’t bother to hold back a laugh this time, loud enough that he can see the cabbie looking at them through the rear-view mirror.
“Give me a reason,” Bitty repeats.
Kent shrugs. “I’ve been out of prison less than 24 hours, and I’ve already broken parole to come see you. Might as well go all the way.” He pauses. “And you’re bored.”
Another long silence, but Kent doesn’t feel the same itch under his skin as he did last time. The cab turns a sharp left, leaving the Boulevard behind, and taking them down a series of backroads.
“You’re forgetting something,” Bitty says suddenly.
Because he’s a professional, Kent does not tense up. “Oh?”
Bitty’s face falls into a pout, his body relaxing out of its stiff clench. “You’ve been out of prison for nearly a whole day, and we’ve been sitting in this car for twenty minutes and you haven’t kissed me yet.”
Ah. “Well,” Kent grins to cover up his nervousness, “I didn’t realise that was on the table.”
“Kent,” Bitty’s eyes are soft. He turns his body sideways, looking like a completely different person. Kent had forgotten that— how good he was at putting on different versions of himself, guarding the truth like a vicious dog at the door. Now that his hackles are down, and he’s looking at Kent all relaxed and crinkle-eyed. Kent feels the need to touch him like an ache in his joints, feel the soft skin of his wrists and under his jaw.
“You’re my best friend, Bits,” Kent says softly. It’s the truth, but it’s also a warning. A caution. For all that Bitty is familiar to him, there were so many things left unsaid, and Kent doesn’t know if he could bear it if they all spilled out the wrong way now.
But Bitty doesn’t look away. Doesn’t flinch. “I know.”
That’s all the confirmation that Kent needs. He unbuckles his seatbelt and slides across until they’re pressed together hip to thigh, and Bitty reaches over and drags his fingers through Kent’s stubble, rasping his fingers across the short hair. He tilts his head, and Kent obligingly leans down and slots their lips together. It’s exactly as it was before, before everything. For a second, they’re just two boys in the back of a taxi, any two boys on the Boulevard.
Bitty dives in for another peck once they part, and Kent chuckles. He’d missed this, too, the sweet side of Bitty.
“Ready to quit your day job and begin a life of crime?”
“Not many other options. You did just chase away all of my clients,” Bitty points out, his lips still mouthing at Kent’s cheek.
“Sorry,” Kent says, completely unrepentant.
Bitty laughs, truthfully, freely, and a loose piece of Kent’s heart slides into place.
Breaking into the building is easy, copying the blueprints is even easier— seriously, you would think the five years Kent was in jail, security would have gotten more advanced, not less. He’s not about to look a gift horse in the mouth, though, so thirty-six hours later, they’re on a flight to Las Vegas.
As soon as they’re buckled in— and first-class seats too, not bad for someone with no possessions besides the clothes he’s wearing, he leans over until he can whisper in Bitty’s ear. “Ever think about joining the mile high club?”
The only indication that Bitty has heard him is that there’s a sudden flush around his collarbones. Ha, Kent thinks with vicious satisfaction. I can still get under your skin.
“What do you mean think?” Bitty says primly.
What. “Eric Bittle!” Kent splutters, scandalised. He can feel a hot flush working its way up his neck. Fuck. He was supposed to be doing the seducing here, not the other way around. Now all he can think about is Bitty, a faceless stranger, the cramped plane toilet, or maybe not even the toilet—
He undoes another button on his shirt before he blusters, “What adventures have you been up to these last five years?”
And it’s the wrong thing to say, of course, because it was only a matter of time before Kent put his foot in his mouth. It’s like a shutter goes down behind Bitty’s eyes. His face falls, he sits up from where he was slouched on the armrest towards Kent.
“A lot,” he says. “It’s been a long five years.”
And well. There’s nothing Kent can say to that, is there? There goes his fantasy of sucking Bitty off in the spacious first-class toilet.
He’s not ready to apologise yet. He’s not ready to talk about it, full stop. He doesn’t know if he ever will be, and honestly, if this job goes off the way he should, there shouldn’t be any reason he’ll ever have to think about it again. There’s a space between him and Bitty now, shaped like somebody they both used to know, and he doesn’t know how to bridge it.
So he just sits up too, leans against the window, and watches LA get smaller and smaller in the distance. He can count the days. It’s only a matter of time before it all disappears again.
“Eric Bitty Bittle!” Shitty bellows as soon as he catches sight of the butler showing them out to the back patio. He’s naked, as per usual, except for a floral-patterned silk robe, standing with his feet planted firmly apart like a bronze sculpture of a god. Kent politely averts his eyes, but Bitty breaks out into a grin. He bounds forward uncaring of Shitty’s state of dress, throwing his arms around his neck, and laughing as he’s swung off his feet and round in a circle.
“Finally got sick of conning rookies?” Shitty asks, still at the same booming volume as before.
“Something like that.” Bitty’s eyes skitter towards Kent, and Kent watches Shitty’s smile dim slightly as he follows his gaze.
“Parson.”
“Knight,” Kent nods.
He expected this. After all, Shitty was always Jack’s friend first. But he still ushers both of them forward to the poolside table he was sitting at before, and produces three beers from the cooler at his feet. So that’s something. Kent remembers laughing with Shitty over how atrocious he was at beer pong. He hopes that one day, maybe even soon, they can get to that stage again. Even if he has to be defeated six games in a row again.
Kent shakes himself out of the memory. Prison has made him maudlin. What’s important here: Shitty has money, and Shitty adores Bitty almost as much as he adores Jack— everybody does, to be honest, it’s the goddamned Southern charm, so Kent lets him do most of the talking.
“It’s a big one,” Shitty says when Bitty’s finished. He’s leaning back in his chair, tipping precariously on the back legs, and he’s cracked open another beer, even though Bitty and Kent aren’t even halfway through their first ones. He doesn’t say outright that they’re out of their minds though, although to be fair, from what Kent remembers Shitty has a pretty high threshold for what he counts as out of your mind. And well. It’s Bitty asking.
“We know,” Bitty says. He looks perfectly relaxed despite the Las Vegas heat pushing a hundred degrees. He hasn’t even taken off his suit jacket. Kent can’t believe he thought for a second that Bitty wouldn’t be jumping back into the game at the first opportunity.
“You’re gonna need a pretty big team.”
“We know.”
“Got some people in mind?”
“Some.” Bitty glances at Kent, and Kent tips his head in agreement. The tension from the flight hasn’t quite dissipated, but it doesn’t matter. They’ve never had to be friends to be able to work together like a well-oiled machine.
(It was, however, the icing on the cake, when they figured out how to work together and be friends. The first time Bitty had given Kent one of his laughs that was more yell than laughter, him baking Kent a pie, watching his wide eyes as Kit Purrson settled down for a nap on his thigh. Some guys smuggled momentos into the clink, to remember the people they used to be. Kent replayed the memories of those first blossoming days of friendship on repeat in his head.)
“Swawesome.” Shitty tips his chair forward into all four legs again with a crash, and chugs the remainder of his beer. He slams the bottle onto the table, grinning, his moustache still full of foam and twitching in excitement. “When do we start?”
A week later, there are eight new faces lounging around Shitty’s pool, eating the disgustingly fancy hors d'oeuvres Shitty insisted on. Kent inspects the skewer Bitty shoved into his hand. He’s pretty sure it’s some sort of shrimp or prawn, except it’s a colour he’s never seen on food before.
Most of them know each other, he thinks. There are a couple of fresh faces— Nurse, Chow, Poindexter, but all the others seem to know either Bitty or Shitty, and that’s good enough for Kent.
“Parson.” Lardo sidles up to him. It’s amazing how much her drawl sounds exactly like Shitty’s. “Whatcha got there?”
Kent squints. “Shrimp,” he decides. Shrimp can be candy blue, right?
“Yum.” She sips on her drink, a dark liquid in a crystal glass that smells strongly of rum, but no doubt has at least three other liquors in it as well. “Have you gotten any better at flip cup?”
“Not many chances to practice in the clink.”
She scoffs. “Opportunist like you? Would’ve found a way.”
Kent laughs. He likes Lardo, genuinely, the way she takes no shit and isn’t afraid to give as good as she gets. He’s glad that hasn’t changed since he’s been locked up.
“KENT VICTOR PARSON,” Holster hollers as he swings an arm around Kent’s neck, the other hand holding a tiny cocktail glass full of pink alcohol, and a matching umbrella. It looks two seconds from shattering in Holster’s huge palm. “The free man himself! How have ya been?”
“Hi Adam,” Kent manages, trying not to buckle under Holster’s sudden weight. “Good to see you.”
Holster knocks his forehead against Kent’s in a bro-y, jovial kind of way, which— that is a surprise. He thought Holster had firmly been Team Jack, back in the day. But, just as Bitty said, it’s been a long five years. Hell, for all Kent knew, Jack has spent the time torturing puppies or something, and none of them were friends with him now.
(That’s a lie, of course. Kent knows exactly what Jack is up to, because Kent makes it his business to know. And he’s nothing if not good at what he does.)
“Bitty convince you to come out of retirement?” he asks instead.
Holster grins crookedly, and removes his arm from around Kent’s shoulders to push up the glasses that are slipping down his face. “My knees are just as shitty as ever, but you can probably squeeze a couple more jobs out of me. Who could say no to Bitty?”
And here, Kent’s laugh is real, because Holster’s right. Who could say no to Bitty?
“What’s the job?” Dex asks. He’s fresh, definitely, leg jiggling and eyes constantly shifting. Kent wants to grab him by the shoulders and tell him to relax, but he knows it’s not that easy. When you start off, you don’t know how to tell who your allies are. Sometimes, it’s a lesson that can only be learnt the hard way.
Nurse seems just as fresh, for all of his nonchalance. “Chillax, Dexy,” he says, swinging an arm over his shoulder. Dex tenses, almost imperceptible, which impresses Kent. It’s not easy to train yourself out of the automatic responses of the body, but the fact that the kid can hide it so well already isn’t something to be looked over.
“We’re still shooting the shit,” Nurse continues. “Getting to know each other. Eating Shitty’s canapes.”
“Which are fuckin’ swawesome,” Ollie (or Wicks) says, with his mouth full. Wicks (or Ollie) comes up to stand next to him with his hands piled high with mini pies.
“Swawesome,” he agrees, and Kent hides a smile.
“Bitty made the pies,” he says, and he can’t keep the note of pride out of his voice.
“Really?” Chow pops up. His mouth is also full, but unlike Ollie, he has the decency to cover while he chews and swallows, before speaking again. “They’re so good. I’ll have to ask him the recipe.”
Kent opens his mouth to warn Chow that he may get the recipe, but it will be at least four pages long, double sided, single spaced, size 10 font, when at that moment Bitty comes out to the back patio with Shitty at his side, and catches Kent’s eye. Kent takes it as his cue to stand and they all fall silent as he gestures towards the main house.
“Gentlemen. Shall we?”
They all obediently troop inside, and no sooner has everybody settled into the parlour couches is Lardo clapping her hands. “Alright, out with it Parson. What’s the job?”
No beating around the bush then. And Kent had a whole PowerPoint lined up. With transitions.
Still, there are things to say before he pushes them all in the deep end. “Hold your horses, Lardo, we got some housekeeping to do before we start.”
He looks around the group. “What I'm about to propose is both highly lucrative and highly dangerous. If that doesn't sound like your particular slice of pie, help yourself to as much food as you like, and safe journey out. No hard feelings.”
He pauses. Chow’s untying and retying the strings of his hoodies, and Ransom is ripping up a napkin into neat squares. Those are the most obvious tells, but it’s not like anybody else looks ecstatic either. But at the same time, nobody looks like they’re intending to leave.
He lets the silence stretch out for just a moment longer, in case anybody decides to change their mind, but when no one makes to get up, he slowly lets out a breath. Okay. Good. First step done.
He presses a button on the remote, and the TV behind him flickers to life. The blueprint him and Bitty have spent the last week poring over lights up the screen as he says, with great relish, “We’re going to rob the Bellagio.”
“Oh fuck yeah,” Lardo says.
“How much we talking?” Dex asks.
“150 million cash, split up between the eleven of us. You do the maths.”
A low whistle. It’s a big number, even for the line of work that they’re in, where they regularly deal in numbers with more than five zeros at the end. Nothing to be scoffed at. But at the same time, they all know what that big numbers means. Bigger risks. Bigger consequences.
“When?” Ransom asks. He’s moved on from ripping up the napkin to chewing at his fingernails. When they’d scoped out the team, Bitty had pointed at his hunched shoulders from the balcony café they were sitting in, and murmured, “He gets the nerves sometimes, but it’s not so bad that you’d notice.”
Kent notices now. Bitty better be right.
“Two weeks,” he replies in answer to his question. “Fight night.”
Holster raises his eyebrows. “Gonna be a lot of people there, then.”
“The casino is required by state law to hold enough cash to pay out everybody on the floor at any given moment,” Bitty interjects. “Two Saturdays from now, that’ll be 150 million.”
He shrugs, still half leaning on the back of one of the couches. “If you guys want to play it safer, we can go on a weekday night. But it’s only 60 million.”
For all intents and purposes, he looks like he’s genuinely giving the group an option to choose. Bitty has that air around him— the way he rounds out his vowels, widens his eyes a little, the perfect slouch that says easy going. Trust me, pitch me your idea. Kent knows better, and he already knows before he takes a sweep of the room that nobody is going to go for it. 60 million between the eleven of them is small potatoes, too big of a risk for too little reward in their line of business.
“I assume you have a plan?” Lardo asks.
“No,” Kent deadpans. “Thought we’d wing it this time. Keep us all on our toes.”
“Okay funny guy,” Lardo snorts. She’s migrated into Shitty’s lap, and he hasn’t even blinked an eye. “What’s the plan then?”
Kent grins, broad, sure of himself. It’s the one he knew Bitty couldn't deny earlier and these guys won't deny now.
“Pick whatever bedrooms you like and get some sleep,” he says, instead of answering Lardo directly. It’s testament to how hooked everybody already is to the plan that they nobody even protests about the non-sequitur. “If you’re all in, we’ll start in earnest tomorrow. It’s going to be a hard two weeks, but you’ll all walk away with an eight-figure boost in your bank accounts.”
“Breakfast’ll be at 7 if you like!” Bitty chirps. His voice is sweet, but brooks no argument at their early start tomorrow, and doubly serves as a firm dismissal for the night, perfect to temper the impatience fizzing through everybody right now that will be put to much better use in the morning. Kent loves him more and more by the second.
He stands, and the rest of the group follows his example, collecting their bags as Shitty leads the way through his house with loud commentary on the pros and cons of each room. Soon enough, the sounds of their little parade fade down the corridor, leaving only Bitty and Kent in the parlour. Bitty hooks a chin over his shoulder from behind.
“That went well,” he says. He’s wobbling a little, balancing on his tiptoes to reach Kent’s shoulder.
Kent turns his face to kiss Bitty on the cheek. “It’s all you.”
“Charmer,” Bitty accuses him, but he’s grinning, the same exhilaration on his face that Kent is feeling right now that they’re doing this again, they have a team, they’re back in the game. And there’s no resistance at all from him as Kent spins around to reel him in by the waist, and drags him by the hand into his bedroom.
Falling into the old rhythms of working together again is like riding a bike, and Kent feels relieved every time something clicks back into place, the sense memory that he knows what Bitty will do next, what way he will turn, that has him catching the wrench thrown in his direction before he’s turned his head to look. There’s still a phantom— something missing, and Kent would be lying to himself if he said it wasn’t noticeable (he carefully doesn’t think about how he’s already lying to himself by calling it a something, when he knows perfectly well what, who is missing).
But more than the knowledge that him and Bitty still know the little idiosyncrasies of one another, it reassures him because if they’re on their best game, it means the team can be on their best game. Because the Bellagio vault is no joke, and Kent would be surprised and suspicious if it was. Three of the biggest casinos in Las Vegas hold their cash there, two hundred feet underground, with sensors monitoring the ground for a hundred yards in every direction. Beyond the casino cages, there are doors with codes that change every twelve hours, an elevator that won’t move without authorised fingerprint identifications and vocal confirmations from both the person at the entrance of the vault, and someone at the security control room, shafts rigged with motion detectors, armed guards. Cameras covering every inch of the place. And that’s before they even get to the vault door itself.
All of Bitty’s soft parts disappear when they begin to prepare in earnest, and it’s really sexy, if Kent’s honest. He has to furiously wank in the showers like a teenager going through puberty for a couple mornings before he gets used to the steely look in Bitty’s eye, the commanding tone he takes on during planning sessions, and how he reassures the team through his quiet confidence as much as he does through bright compliments and affirmations.
(“Say we do all that,” Ransom had said over pancakes that first morning, after they'd outlined the plan to everybody. “We break into the vault, we get past the guards, the cameras, the motion detectors. We're just supposed to walk outta there with a hundred million dollars in cash on us without getting stopped?”
Bitty had dished another pancake onto Ransom’s plate and plopped the maple syrup down as well. His hair was a little rumpled, his apron patterned with little teacups. His smile was so sunny, and there was no pause in his movements as he'd said, “Yeah.”
“Oh. ‘Swawesome.”)
So they build the vault replica. They send in the team for reconnaissance. They drop Lardo underground to figure out the Vegas powergrid. Kent checks his own business when he’s in the bathroom— maybe the only place he can be sure there’ll be privacy from a house of eleven heist artists. It’s all going great, both the main gig and Kent’s side gig. All falling together perfectly.
Five days in, Bitty storms into the training room with a face looking like thunder, and Kent knows he’s in deep shit.
“Out,” Bitty says, and the rest of the guys scatter, the bastards, leaving Kent with the half-marked blueprints and his suddenly sweaty palms. It’s just the two of them in this enormous warehouse. Kent feels like the air has been sucked out.
“I was just out on reconnaissance with Dex,” Bitty says. He doesn’t bother with the fake sweetness, so Kent doesn’t even get the luxury of being lulled into a false sense of security.
“Oh?” he manages. He cringes when Bitty’s glare only gets more venomous.
“Guess who I saw?”
He doesn’t ask if Kent knew. He knows Kent better than that, and anyway, in their line of work, there are no coincidences.
“Why?” he says instead, when Kent lets his silence answer for itself. His voice sounds like splintering ice. Kent was a fool to think that he wouldn’t figure it out eventually.
“Because I know the two of you had a good thing going. And I fucked it up.”
“No,” Bitty says, steely. “Try again.”
“Jack and I were just starting to patch things up,” Kent steamrollers over him. It’s like now he’s started he can’t stop; all the reasons he’d been going over and over in his head the last few months spilling out. “You guys were so happy. And I fucked it up.”
“I’m trying to fix it,” he adds. He’s out of breath. His words bounce off the warehouse’s high ceilings, and the silence between them that follows seems to collapse onto itself. Bitty’s deflated somewhat— the corners of his mouth are still turned down, but the two spots of red on his cheeks aren’t as flushed, and the line of his jaw is clenched in resignation now, rather than anger. Kent calculates the probability of him getting punched, and takes his chances with a cautious step forward.
“It’s not your job to fix things that don’t involve you,” Bitty says, finally, when they’re in arm’s distance of each other.
Kent bristles. “Like hell it didn’t involve me.”
“The world doesn’t revolve around you, Kent Parson. You went to jail. Jack and I broke up. Two completely separate things.”
Kent laughs so he doesn’t scream. “C’mon Bits, there’s no way you really believe that.”
“Believe what you want. It’s the truth.”
Kent had forgotten this part; how Bitty could match him toe to toe, and how, sometimes, how they could go around in circles until Kent saw red. In his more bitter moments, in jail, he sometimes thought about how he loved Bitty so much that the only way it could spill out way the wrong way. Like the wrong words are spilling out of his mouth now: “So the fact that I’d kissed you didn’t make a difference?”
He wants to take it back as soon as it says it, but Bitty has never let him off the hook that easily. “No,” he says, all fired up again, “But the fact that you kissed me, and instead of talking about it to both me and Jack like a normal person, you decided to rob a bank without any backup and then got yourself thrown in jail. That made a difference.”
Kent’s been in his business for a long time, so he doesn’t freeze, but oh god oh fuck, they were talking about it. Kent had been quite happy to keep kissing Bitty throughout this gig without talking about it until this heist was finished.
The first thing you learn when pulling off a heist: when you don’t know what do to, the answer isn’t to stall, because stalling raises suspicions. It’s to redirect, cast attention sideways. So he redirects, refracts the conversation away from himself. “Why did you break up?” he asks softly. “If it wasn’t because of me.”
Bitty says nothing, but he tilts his chin up and Kent stalks closer. His eyes are glittering.
“He made you choose, didn’t he,” Kent says, even softer. He’s so close to Bitty now that he can see his hair moving with every breath.
“Why did you choose me?” he whispers.
Bitty says nothing.
“Bits?”
“Because you wouldn’t have made me choose,” he says finally.
Kent feels all the fight leave his body. Bitty’s right. And really, Kent’s not even mad— not at Bitty, not at Jack. It’s just all so messy, what had last happened between the three of them, and the silence of the years between. And then even further back— the potholed road of Jack and Kent’s history, way back from when they were kids learning how to pick locks together. None of which has been made easier by Kent gladly ignoring it all as he’s held Bitty in his arms every night since they’ve come to Shitty’s.
“It’s not Jack’s fault,” Kent says. “He wasn’t making you choose between me and him. It was the whole jail thing. Would’ve freaked him out.”
“I know,” Bitty says. “But I don’t appreciate being given ultimatums.”
Kent closes the distance between them, tugs at Bitty’s body until he comes crashing against his own. Bitty’s hands come up to fist the back of Kent’s shirt, wrinkling the material.
“You should’ve told me,” Bitty says, muffled. “I don’t appreciate being hustled.”
“Sorry.”
They stand there, clutching one another, for a good few minutes. Kent can feel Bitty’s heartbeat thudding against his chest.
“What about the job?” Bitty asks.
“Two in one,” Kent says, and he feels Bitty smile, and Kent knows they’ll be okay.
Kent still remembers the first time he saw Jack, sixteen, chubby cheeks and gorgeous blue eyes and Kent had immediately thought, mine.
And after— after everything had gone to complete shit, after Kent had gotten a text from Jack asking to meet up, after all the work they did to become friends again— after Jack had introduced him to Bitty, the core of it all had never changed through all of that, whether they were talking or fighting or tense or silent. Kent’s always been in love with Jack. Somewhere, he’s still sixteen years old, begging for attention, wanting so desperately to be loved that he’d take the crumbs of it and call himself full.
Really, he doesn’t mean to be here. But he’d been finishing off some reconnaissance at one of the casinos, when he’d seen the familiar mop of black hair, and then next thing he knew, he was sliding into the opposite seat at a table in the hotel’s restaurant.
The smile falls off Jack’s face when he looks up. “Parse?”
“Jack.”
It’s just like the last time they reunited— except they’re not twenty-four anymore, they’re almost thirty and the gap between them isn’t just unspoken words and the ashes of a childhood friendship too intense for either of them to really understand. The gap now consists of jail. A bank robbery gone wrong. And Bitty. Always Bitty.
“You’re out of prison.”
“Sure am.”
A pause. Kent takes the opportunity to drink in his full at the sight of Jack. He looks good, if tired, the lines of his suit cut sharply against his broad shoulders. Kent wishes he could allow himself to get hot and bothered at the image, because it sure is a damn picture, but he’s too full of jitters and guilty elation to really appreciate it.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Jack says.
Kent spreads his hands, pretending like this is normal and he’s got his emotions perfectly under control. “Yet here I am.”
A pause. Jack's eyes are bluer than Kent remembers. If he were less good at this, he'd have allowed himself to get distracted.
“It’s good to see you,” Jack says, finally.
Kent smiles. He can’t help it. Under the heartthrob hunk in front of him, it’s his childhood best friend. What else is there to do? “You look well.”
The barest of a smile flickers on Jack’s face, before he schools it back into neutral. “You can’t stay.”
Redirect. Distract. “Your latest photography collection is amazing.”
“Kent,” Jack says warningly.
“Okay, okay, no small talk then.” Kent leans forward. He hadn’t meant to do this tonight, but he’s here now, and fuck it. Jack had always made him want to be brave.
“Come with me,” he says.
Jack sits back. The shutter that’s gone done behind his eyes makes him look so much like Bitty that Kent has to blink several times. “No.”
“C’mon Zimms. We were just getting somewhere good.” He’s not above begging, and Jack knows it.
“That was years ago. Things have changed.”
“I was in jail. They haven’t changed for me.”
“I know you were in jail. The world moved on.”
Ouch. But, fair, okay. Redirect. Distract. “What about Bitty?”
Jack flinches. Imperceptible, but Kent has known him for so long now. “What about Bitty?”
“He misses you. Won’t admit it, but he does.”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
Jack frowns. It’s probably the extent of emotion he’ll allow to show in his face today. Kent desperately wants to reach across the table and muss up his hair. “Don’t rub it in.”
“I’m not,” he says, because really, truthfully, he’s not. “I’m trying to show you what you could have.”
“I have someone who loves me. Someone normal.”
“There’s no fun in normal. As for someone who loves you…” Kent shrugs as he stands up, rebuttoning his jacket. “You could have two.”
It’s supposed to feel good, leaving the restaurant after a one liner like that. But Kent doesn’t feel good— he feels sick. He knows about the life Jack has built, because of course he does, what kind of thief would he be if he didn’t do his due diligence on the background checks. But when he’d sorted all the photos, the data, the information and the dates into a neat little folder, it’d sunk in clinically. Here: a photo of Jack at dinner. Here: the price of the engagement ring. Here: the address of the apartment Jack shares with his— fiancé. God.
It doesn’t feel clinical now. Kent is a little stunned at the intensity of everything welling up inside of him. And what’s worse, he knows it’s not the fact that Jack has moved on— if Kent had looked him up from the New Jersey airport lounge and found that him and Bitty, or even him and literally anybody else had gotten married and adopted a dog and now spent every Sunday having people over at their suburban bungalow for a barbeque, Kent could’ve very well left all of this alone. But he remembers— there was a tabloid photo and Jack had looked— had looked just as he’d done in the months after his overdose. The same, awful, drawn in cheekbones, the bright flash of a paparazzi camera light, his lips pressed together so tightly it had looked like gash. Kent had stared at the photo on his phone screen, zoomed in until it was pixelated past recognition, and gotten up to reroute himself to LA. It was Jack. Kent doesn’t think if he had a thousand years he’d be able to say no to Jack.
God, Kent thinks as he leaves the hotel. I hope he knows that.
And later, in bed, with Bitty fast asleep next to him:
I’ll tell him next time. He stares at the ceiling, the conviction grabbing at him so fiercely that he has half a mind to get up right now and find Jack to do so. The only thing that stops him is Bitty’s arm slung across his chest. They have a job to do. It can all wait until afterwards.
Three days before fight night, Ransom says, “We have a problem.”
Shitty sits up. “A I’d-like-a-burrito problem, or a we-need-to-rob-CalTech-again problem?”
Chow waves his bandaged hand sadly from where he’s sitting nearby. Kent winces. Bad luck had meant they were left with very few choices in pulling off the job within a job so that Lardo could do what she needed to do with the grid, but the thing about Chow’s hand was just sloppy on his behalf, even if they’d gotten the pinch out with no issues in the end. This is his team, and he needs them working to their best abilities. Not only for the whole thing to go off seamlessly, but because, well. They were his team. Bitty had always accused him of getting attached to his teammates too fast, too recklessly.
“A problem.” Ransom’s hands start flying across the keyboard, and Holster, who’s currently flirting with the waitress in the hotel pool under his alias of Lymen the Scandinavian arms’ dealer, hears this through his earpiece. Kent watches him jerk upright abruptly on the camera.
“Rans,” he says, his voice tinny. The waitress looks at him confusedly for a moment before she shrugs and walks out of sight of that camera. “Are you okay?”
“Everybody in Kent’s, now,” Bitty cuts in. Holster scrambles out of the pool. Kent watches the screens with a growing sense of dread as, across the hotel, his team make excuses and escape their covers.
“How bad?” he asks Ransom as soon as they’re all gathered.
Rans chews at a hangnail. If he had been tense before, enough that Holster had recognised it by the tone of his voice alone, he’s a fuckin’ mess of nerves now. “Pretty bad. You've been red flagged. They’ll be watching you the moment you step on the casino floor.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah.”
There’s a beat of silence as they all digest. Nurse is the first person to speak. “How did that happen?”
“Kent talked to a guy the other night.” Dex speaks up suddenly, and everybody swivels to look at him. He shrinks a little under the attention, but plows on. “Afterwards the casino head of security pulled that guy aside.” He shrugs at Kent’s gaping face. “I was tailing you.”
Kent stares at him, a little impressed, but mostly incredulous. “Who told you to do that?”
Bitty says, “I did.”
Kent turns to stare at him, and he stares right back. “I knew you couldn't leave Jack alone,” he says quietly, and suddenly, the room is chaos.
“Jack?”
“Jack’s here?”
“Zimmermann? The fuck—"
Chris whispers, “Who’s Jack?” and Nursey and Dex shrug helplessly back at him. Everybody else ignores them in favour of yelling.
“What do you mean, Jack is here?”
“Wait, so Jack is here?”
“Complete coincidence.” Bitty doesn’t look away from Kent. He doesn’t even flinch as the lie leaves his mouth.
And he doesn’t flinch as he says, “You're out, Kenny.”
Holster yelps. “What do you mean he’s out?”
Bitty’s mouth is pressed together in a tight, unhappy line. “It's that or we shut down right now.”
It should hurt Kent how nobody refutes it; after all, it’s not like Jack is a stranger to them either. In theory, that should jeopardise this whole gig to kingdom come and back. But he knows that he’s different. Everybody else can treat Jack and the job separately, and for all they know, they are two separate things. Bitty, who knows better, has always been able to keep a level enough head to keep going. Kent’s never been like that.
“I’m trying to do this for us,” Kent hisses. He doesn’t bother trying to be subtle. Everybody else is staring already anyways.
“So am I,” Bitty says. He’s not trying to hide it either. His eyes are glinting.
“You said two in one,” he continues. “So if you screw up one, you screw up both.”
I won’t let you screw up one, let alone both, goes unsaid. Kent shuts his mouth, works his jaw.
“Fine,” he bites out, and he doesn’t bother with being quiet as he slams the door behind him when he leaves.
They put Nursey into his place. The kid is still pretty green, but holds up well enough under Bitty’s barrage of instructions. (“Don't use three words when one will do, don't shift your eyes, look always at your mark but don't stare, be specific but not memorable, funny but don't make him laugh, he's gotta like you then forget you the moment you've left his sight, and for heaven’s sake whatever you do, don't under any circumstances—” “Okay Bits, I think he’s got the point.”) They send him off, briefcase in his hand, and boom, that’s another member of the team clicking into place, another step closer to them pulling all of this off. It feels good, everything coming together, the motions of it all slipping over Kent like an old skin.
“You look absolutely dashing,” he says as he watches Bitty get dressed in the bathroom.
It’s the truth. Bitty’s silver suit lines the cut of his hips so sharply Kent can feel his mouth start to water. His shirt has four buttons undone, enough to be suggestive without being trashy. Two days before fight night already has half of the team out in the field, and Kent’s feeling a little bold with the near empty house.
“Compliments aren’t going to put you back on the job,” Bitty replies smoothly, running a brush through his hair.
“I would never try to charm my way back onto a job,” Kent says, indignant.
Bitty snorts at that. He’s still mad. Fair enough. Kent’s still a little sulky himself, but he knew that 150 million out of three casinos and Jack was a pretty big ask, especially when he was running one of those cons on his own. If the positions were reversed, he’d be pretty pissed too.
He only waits another few seconds before he gives into temptation and makes his way over to Bitty, wrapping his arms around him from behind him. The two of them look at each other in the dingy bathroom mirror.
“Do you think they bought it?” Kent asks.
“Sweetheart,” Bitty says. “I think Shitty bought it and he knew we were screwing around.” He pauses, wrapping his fingers around Kent’s from where they’re dangling in front of his heart. “You should have told me,” he says quietly.
Kent buries his nose in Bitty’s hair, so he doesn’t have to meet his gaze in the mirror. They haven’t talked about it yet. “I know.”
He feels, rather than hears, Bitty sigh.
“We’re a team. Which means you have to tell me when you do things that jeopardise what we’re doing. Like talking to Jack. Even,” he cuts in as Kent opens his mouth to protest. “Even if it all ends up neat and nice. Talk to me, Kent.”
Kent knows. He’s working on it, because— because it’s Bitty. And Bitty makes him want to try.
“This suit really does look excellent on you,” he says instead of any of that, and he noses at Bitty’s cheek, leaving a trail of kisses down to his neck. “How long have ya got?”
Bitty’s laugh is a little breathless as he tilts his head to give Kent better access. “Plenty of time.”
He slides a hand under Bitty’s shirt and spins him around to back against the counter, revelling in the vibrations of Bitty’s giggles as he kisses his way further down until his knees hit the floor.
Kent knows that it’s part of the plan, to go see Jack again, but it still hurts a little when he looks at his face once he’s dropped down next to him at the hotel bar, and Jack looks straight through him, apocalyptic.
“You’re running a job, aren’t you?”
For someone who has never run a job in his life, Jack is very good at reading faces and cutting through the bullshit. Kent supposes it comes from a lifetime of growing up with Kent, and then all those years with Bitty. Jack Laurent Zimmermann certainly has a type.
“I just came to say goodbye,” Kent says, and he’s surprised when it’s this out of everything, that makes Jack pause.
“Oh.” He seems to be fighting between surprise and sadness, and Kent feels pinned under that blue gaze. He could write a thesis about his study on Jack, but could Jack do the same to him?
“Goodbye, then.” Jack sounds uncertain, and Kent can’t help himself when he leans in and brushes a kiss over Jack’s cheek. He doesn’t flinch, or move away at all, just looks at him with those sad, sad eyes of his.
“Be good,” Kent tells him, and then forces himself to get up before he does something that throws the whole job into jeopardy.
From then on, it’s smooth as silk— Kent bumps into the goons, just as planned, and they lock him into a room to get roughed up a bit, blah blah blah, Kent escapes, Kent drops in on Nursey from the elevator, Holster fakes his heart attack at the perfect moment, they stuff Chowder into an airtight container and he gets out in the nick of time to manoeuvre himself through the motion sensors. They’re uninterrupted on their walk through the hotel in the fake SWAT team outfits, Ollie and Wicks’ remote-controlled toy even serves as the perfect thing to fuck around with the goons just that little bit extra before they blow the decoy bags of money up to smithereens. The casino bodyguard that Kent has on his payroll beats the shit out of him. The whole thing goes off without a hitch. Which means—
“Kent,” Bitty’s voice is a little shrill, how it always goes when things don’t go according to plan. “What are you doing?”
His hands are currently being cuffed behind his back, so he can’t spread his arms in a what can ya do? gesture, but he tries his best to convey the same thing through his shoulders. “I broke parole.”
“You can’t go back to jail!”
“It’ll only be for six months or so.” He looks at Jack and Bitty, already firmly nestled next to one another. Kent doesn’t think he could break them apart if he tried. “Give you guys time to decide.” He aims for bratty, but from the look on both their faces, fails miserably at it.
He doesn’t want to go back to jail, but most of all, he doesn’t want to come back out with nobody waiting for him on the other side. But this was part of the plan, and anyways, Bitty and Jack look so right standing there together. It’s not up for him to decide anymore. His cards have always been on the table, and really, he did the most important job tonight before the sun had even fallen: dropped that phone into Jack’s pocket. Convinced Bitty to be the one to call it, to be the one to deliver the ultimatum. Get them to talk to one another, even if it was only for the heist.
And what do you know? It had worked.
“I’ll see you guys around,” he says, and the grin on his face isn’t faked, truthfully, as he gazes at the two of them looking back at him doubtfully. It’s the last image he has of them as the car drives away.
In September, Kent leaves New Jersey State Correctional Facility once again. The guard hands him his belongings, and he steps out into the humid air, stretching. There’s miles and miles of open sky on both sides of him, and not another living being in sight for just as far. He hovers there for a moment, on the precipice of freedom.
“Hey Bits,” he says, to nobody in particular, and Bitty’s blonde hair pops up from around the corner. Kent grins, cocky and sure, but the wave of relief that washes over him is so sudden than when Bitty wraps him up in a hug, he staggers a little.
“No cookies this time?” he asks, only a little shakily, with his lips still pressed against Bitty’s cheek. Bitty leans just far back enough to whack him lightly.
“I drove cross country to pick you up. Better start showing some gratitude, mister.”
Kent looks up. “In that?” He gestures at the car, dinged and scraped. “Thirteen million dollars, and no new car and no cookies?”
Bitty laughs at that, properly, one that bounces off the walls of the building behind them. “C’mon,” he says, dragging them towards the car. “Where do you want to go?”
“Away from here. You got a phone?”
“Sure do. I stopped by and picked up some of your stuff on the way. It’s in the backseat.”
“Huh?” Kent pulls open the passenger door and freezes.
“Hey Kenny.”
“Jack?”
Jack laughs, the way Kent hasn’t seen since they were sixteen, when he was truly comfortable and loved and knew that he was loved. Kent doesn’t even bother with closing the passenger door and opening the backseat door, instead opting to clamber over the seats and collapse straight into Jack’s lap, half sprawled over the centre console still. He can hear Bitty cackling at him, and feel Jack’s chuckles as he wraps his arms around him. Holy shit. Jack. Jack is here.
“Hey Kenny,” he says, again, and Kent jerks his head up to look at him proper, all dewy eyed and broad shoulders and chirping smirk.
“Bits!” he calls, not moving his gaze away. “Can we go to the nearest hotel?”
“On it.” Bitty’s head appears through the window, and he smacks a kiss to Jack and Kent’s lips in turn before sliding into the driver’s seat and turning on the ignition. Kent and Jack stare at each other for a moment longer, both startled, before breaking out into laughter. Bitty makes it so easy that it neither of them can be anything but happy right now. Kent rearranges himself proper in the backseat, hand still clasped possessively over Jack’s thigh. Jack’s blushing a deep pink from Bitty’s peck, and Kent’s sure that he looks much the same.
“Hey Bits,” he says, once he’s recovered somewhat. Bitty’s pulling out of the prison parking lot, and hums distractedly in answer. Jack’s running a thumb across the back of Kent’s hand, and he cocks his head too.
“Looks like we got the,” Kent pauses, for long enough that Bitty eases down on the brakes and turns to look at him questioningly, matching Jack’s raised eyebrows.
“We got the jackpot,” he finishes, a shit-eating grin breaking across his face, and Bitty groans, and Jack chuckles, and they’re all together again, properly, discussions yet to be had, but with no complications between the three of them. They leave New Jersey behind, with the world endless and wide both in front of them and behind them.