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Title: All Laid Out Thanks to fragilistikal for the great beta job ♥
Being a crook is not something Brendon sets out to do, exactly. It's more something he's just... fallen into over time. A place he's arrived at between doing one thing and another, traveling from this town to the next, abandoning belief for cynicism. Brendon likes to think that when he started, when he left home at eighteen with two extra pairs of jeans, five T-shirts, six pairs of socks, seven pairs of underwear, two sweaters, three hoodies, and a trunk full of Bibles, he still had some kind of belief. When he is truthful with himself, he admits that even as he pulled out of the driveway, waved goodbye to his mother standing on the porch, crying, he'd already started to doubt. When he is truthful with himself, he admits that the only thing he really had in any great abundance when he left home was optimism. A deep conviction that the journey would do something to renew and restore his lagging faith. The optimism, at least, has stuck with him even though he's managed to entirely lose the faith of his parents. Of course, he's found that it's rather difficult to believe in God's goodness in all things, etcetera, etcetera, when he sees people screw over their fellows on a daily basis. There actually isn't any one thing that he can pinpoint as the final catalyst in his slow slide from believer to skeptic. When he saw a banker foreclose on a family's mortgage, driving them from the home they'd lived in for generations, Brendon still believed. Six months later, when he helped a woman give birth to her fourth child, her first son, he didn't. "My faith in God isn't what it was when I started," Brendon explains to Jon, "but my faith in the human condition gets firmer every day." Jon grins and shuffles a deck of cards. The ace of spades appears, becomes three cards, collides back into one, becomes the seven of hearts. "The hardest thing to find in the world today is an honest man," Jon agrees. The deck disappears from his hands completely, apparently into thin air, though Brendon knows it's just gone up Jon's sleeve. If he wanted, if there was a call for it, Jon could definitely make his way as a professional magician, Brendon knows. Cards are not Jon's only skill; he's good at all sorts of sleight of hand. He can change water to wine, produce a silver dollar from a man's ear, saw a woman in half, pull the kitten that's normally on his shoulder from an empty hat. But no one has money to spend on amusements these days, so Jon mostly employs his talents on making things disappear. Namely wallets from pockets. In fact, it's how they ended up meeting when Brendon caught Jon trying to lift his wallet. The fact that Brendon caught him wasn't so much an indication of a lack of ability on Jon's part as a sign that Brendon was not your average mark. But then it's damned hard to con a con man. "Don't know what you'd want an honest man for," Brendon remarks as he palms and produces Jon's deck. He isn't as smooth as Jon would be with the same trick, but then Brendon's still learning. He weeds out the extra cards and starts dealing. "It's easier to fool the crooked ones." Besides, if he ever does manage to find an honest man, it would go against Brendon's principles to try and trick the poor guy. "Which is why it's a stroke of luck for us that the honest man's a myth," Jon says, and Brendon pretends to not notice as an extra card slips from Jon's sleeve into his hand. "Well. I don't know about that," Brendon says slowly as he frowns at his own hand. When Brendon's honest with himself (which isn't often these days), he grudgingly admits that, most probably, he was the most honest person in his acquaintance when he first left home, lo those many months ago. Back then Brendon didn't lie, didn't cheat, didn't steal. Now he tricks little old ladies into buying Bibles they can't afford, Bibles he's supposed to be handing out for free. Brendon doesn't like to think about his life before he left home much of at all these days. "You're the most honest-looking man I know," Jon says as they both lay out their cards (and Brendon laughs when he sees that between them both, they have duplicates of at least three cards, only two of which Jon's responsible for) "and you're wanted in three states." "Don't you know you can't judge a book by its cover, Jon Walker?" Brendon asks. He gathers up the cards and fishes out the extras for a second time. "And what are you going to do when you lose your boyish charm, Urie?" Jon counters, raising an eyebrow as he palms the extra cards. Shuffling the deck, Brendon lays the cards out face-down in a line on the table between them both. He slips a fingernail under the last card, lifting up one edge to turn it over. The cards overlap, and turning the one card flips over the rest as well. "Sell something other than Bibles, I suppose," Brendon says with a shrug. "At least this way I dig my own grave instead of having someone else dig it for me." Brendon leans back, allowing the pale orange glow of the lantern to illuminate the table once more, and Jon sees that all fifty-two cards are from the suit of spades.
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