Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

If Ruby’s honest, she’s not sure what she expected.

Like, they rob a grocery store, and they were supposed to get in and get out, that was the promise (granted, one made by Annie), only there’s more money than they expected, and it feels too good to be true because it is, and the next thing they know they have a couple of inner city gangbangers in Beth’s kitchen, holding a gun on them with one hand and a debt out to them with the other.

And of course, in hindsight, that is a very Rio move.

He might not look it, not that first time, but he’s almost a weapon in and of himself, something lethal in skinny jeans, boots, and a black hoodie, and Ruby’s not sure if it’s Beth and Annie’s whiteness or if they’re really just that naïve, but they do not take it as seriously as the circumstances demand.

Of course, Rio doesn’t help. Lapping up Beth’s monologue and inviting them all further and further down his rabbit warren of crime, and look. Ruby has a family. Ruby has Stan. She has Lil Money and she has Sara.

God.

Sara.

So okay.

Maybe she’s as much That Bitch as Beth and Annie. She needs this, because the bills are piling up and the thought of not paying them and losing her daughter is unimaginable, and so she does it all, job after job after job, every time Beth is there, slipping them in a little deeper.

Every time, Ruby’s there, letting it happen.

And she sees it, she does, because how couldn’t she? This bubbling tension that has nothing to do with guns or money or business that simmers between the two of them, her best friend and this literal crime lord, and Ruby has no idea what to do, and she thinks if nothing else, she’ll talk to Beth about it, but then they get fired, and then they set him up, and then everything goes to shit.

Or it doesn’t.

Or, well, it totally does – if nothing else, Stan finds out and Dean gets shot, but otherwise it’s almost business as usual. It’s them, newly, freshly indebted to this guy, and pulling jobs that are slipping deeper and deeper into Shit They Don’t Want To Do. Still, Ruby can see the look on Beth’s face, the put upon resignation, and the thrill just beneath it, and Ruby’ll do it because post-transplant bills don’t disappear, and neither do those on a house that’s been mortgaged three times, nor the legal fees on a felony drug charge, and hell. They’d do it for her.

Still, Rio’s kind of a dick.

Not that she doesn’t get it.

They did get him arrested.

“Yeah, I’m gonna need 200G,” he tells them now, and it feels unnecessary, to do this here, at the elementary school bake sale. Ruby and Beth are elbow deep in cake mix and they’ve checked multiple times to make sure Rio’s kid doesn’t go here, which means he’s gone out of his way to find their kids, to know when the sale was, to know that they’d signed up, which, look, Ruby shouldn’t be shocked.

“Well, maybe talk to your financial planner, not us,” Beth says beside her, her teeth gritted as she whisks a few eggs, before pouring them into the flour mix, and Ruby could almost roll her eyes.

“Oh, you think this is a negotiation, sweetheart?” and he leans bodily across the canteen counter, eyes visibly dropping to where Beth’s chest moves as she aggressively stirs the egg mix into the dry mix, and Ruby doesn’t even try to resist rolling her eyes now.

“Why?” Ruby asks, and Rio’s eyes shift to her (not without a few flickbacks).

“Because I need it,” he replies bluntly. “And you owe me.”

“We’ve paid you back.”

“You turned me in.”

Ruby just stares at him, and then he shakes his head, gaze finding Beth again.

“200Gs,” he repeats, sliding off the counter. “You got three days.”

And so they do that job, and a few others, and they’re getting back in the swing of things when Stan tells her, hushed and earnest, that one of Rio’s other boys has been compromised. And so Ruby tells Beth, who tells Rio, who laps Beth’s living room once, twice, three times, before stopping back in front of Beth.

“How’d you find out?” he asks her, voice tight and somehow electric all at once – like lightning caught in sound, and Ruby’s eyes skirt Beth’s face, sees it soften, tighten, sees her don that mask.

“You don’t need to know how I know,” Beth says, taut, and he looks so furious, ready to explode that Ruby steps in.

“My husband told us. He’s a cop.”

That’s all it takes for Rio to stop. He lets out a shaky breath, slowly tearing his gaze off Beth and redirecting at Ruby.

“Your husband’s a mall cop,” he tells her, like he’s certain, and Ruby shakes her head.

“He got accepted into the academy six months ago. He’s been working as a cop for a while. You took your tabs off me and mine too early.” She squares her shoulders, feeling suddenly defensive, suddenly righteous. “He’s the guy who cuffed your little friend. That rotten egg you dumped in Beth’s daughter’s bed. The one who you killed.”

And Rio glowers at her then, exhales a hoarse breath that could almost be a laugh.

“You suburban bitches are somethin’ else,” he says when he finds his words again, and Ruby feels something inside her snap.

“We suburban bitches almost put your street ass in prison,” she says, running hot, stepping forwards, closer to him, and ignoring Beth and Annie’s desperate looks behind her. “I’m not playing this game with you.” She gestures vaguely back to Beth. “She might be, but not me. You don’t get my husband. He’s not involved in this, and if you try to drag him in, we’re going to have a problem, and believe me, I am not someone you want to have a problem with.”

He stares at her, firmly, his jaw rocking backwards and then forwards, and Ruby stares right back, until Beth is pushing herself between them, standing defensively in front of Ruby, her gaze set on Rio.

“Look, that doesn’t matter right now,” she says, reaching out to put a placating hand on Rio’s chest, visibly diffusing him, which Ruby doesn’t think goes unnoticed by a single person in the room. “We need to focus.”

And so they do.

And Ruby never really knows what the outcome of that night is, but judging by Beth’s ashen face and the hard line of Rio’s mouth, a few nights later, she doesn’t think she wants to.

So it’s like this.

Beth can’t do a drop because the old bullet hole in Dean’s chest gets infected, and she has to don her perfect wife shoes and walk that walk through hospital halls, and Annie picks up a late shift at Fine’N’Frugal, and fuck it, right? They need to offload the cash. Ruby can do it.

Not that she really wants to. Her and Stan are still treading unsteady water, and if she were honest, Rio still makes her nervous. He’s a skinny guy, but she’s seen enough of what he can do to know he’s not somebody to underestimate, and she also knows she’s not Beth. Hell, she’s not even Annie. She hasn’t wriggled her way into anybody’s softspots, and she gets no passes for being somebody’s tiny, overly jokey little sister. She fixes her cardigan, adjusts her grip on the strap of the bag and walks into the bar.

Rio’s already there at a corner booth, a few of his boys hovering around him like an ugly shadow, and Ruby drops him the cash and stays standing.

“Where’re your girls?” Rio asks, not even looking up from his phone, and Ruby rolls her shoulders, makes eye contact, briefly, with the guy she thinks is named Demon, before dropping her gaze back to Rio.

“They’re busy.”

He does look at her again then, his eyes big and dark, his lips pursed, and he doesn’t look away as he passes the bag back to his boys and lets them count the cash. He gestures for her to sit down, opposite him in the booth, and it takes her a few unsteady breaths to actually do it.

She doesn’t watch him or his boys count, she doesn’t order a drink, and when he seems happy, she says, “You done?” and tries to get up, but he shakes his head, gestures for her to sit down again and Ruby tries to ignore the dread settling like a stone in her gut.

With little more than a tilt of his head and some other, wordless communication, all of his boys leave, taking the money with them, and then it’s just them – Rio and Ruby, alone in some almost empty suburban bar on a Wednesday night. She’s about to say something, what, she’s not sure, when Rio opens his mouth to speak.

“You got a problem with me?” he asks, and Ruby could almost laugh.

“Are you joking?”

And he just shrugs, but there’s a tug at his lips where she thinks maybe he is, which is really not that funny to her at all. She huffs, folding back in her seat.

“Do you want me to have a problem with you?” she asks, and Rio shrugs.

“I don’t really care one way or the other.”

Ruby arches an eyebrow.

“Then why do you want me to stay?”

“Figured we could talk shit out, if you wanted.”

Ruby leans forwards, squinting, but Rio doesn’t so much as blink.

“Why? Because my husband’s a cop, or because you got a thing for my best friend?”

Rio doesn’t answer that, and she’s thinking of probing deeper when a drink arrives in front of her – a white wine, chilled. She looks up at him and he just shrugs as the waiter offers him a beer of his own.

“Didn’t think you’d cut to the chase so quickly,” he says, and Ruby arches her other eyebrow.

“You want to small talk?” She knows he doesn’t, but she can’t resist. “You know we had no idea you had a kid?”

“No shit,” then he looks at her properly, takes a sip of his beer. “You got any?”

The question surprises her. She’s sure he knows more than he lets on – if nothing else, he’d seen her holding Sara at Kenny’s birthday party, seen both her and Harry at the park playing with Beth’s kids and Sadie that day he’d brought his son around, but then again, she knows he has tunnel vision when it comes to Beth, and right now he seems genuinely interested, and the focus on her so suddenly and so fully makes her realise why Beth is so pulled in by it.

“Two,” she says finally. “Harry’s just a little younger than yours, I’m guessing. Sara’s almost twelve though. I am dreading adolescence, let me tell you.”

Rio laughs at that, sitting back in his seat.

“Can’t say I’ve highlighted it in my calendar.”

The candour surprises her.

“Like you keep a calendar,” Ruby says, and Rio arches an eyebrow at her, surprised. “You seem like a schedule guy.”

And that, weirdly, makes him huff out a laugh.

“Well, I’m a busy guy,” he says, oddly smug, and Ruby rolls her eyes.

“I’m sure. And, y’know, the rest of us do nothing with our time. We all just sit at home, what, knitting? Watching Real Housewives until you appear in our doorway to offload a task?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“No, but you’ve thought it.”

He tilts his beer bottle up at her like an acknowledgement, and she rolls her eyes again, sitting back on her ass as she watches him drink and finally thinks, screw it.

“Why’d you bring your son to the park?” she asks, and Rio just looks at her.

“Why do you think?”

“Well, you either think of that as our weak spot or you think of us as that little a threat,” she says, leaning forwards, and then she frowns. “Or both. Although I don’t know why you’d go to the effort if it wasn’t for the latter.”

His jaw rocks backwards and then forwards again, and he huffs a little, as Ruby takes a sip of her wine.

“You said it yourself,” Rio says, surprising her. “You almost put me away. Others have tried, but nobody’s got that far.”

It’s quiet then, and Ruby just watches him. He really is very handsome. Not her type, obviously, but still. She gets it, and she’s not sure why, but after a moment, she finds herself talking.

“You’d be right. I mean, with the kid thing. It’s a weak spot. Hell, it’s one of the reasons we did it. The grocery store, I mean. My daughter was dying. She had –” and she cuts herself off. Shakes her head. “She needed a kidney transplant. Urgently. I couldn’t afford the medical bills. Those first few jobs with you, and a couple of jobs since – Beth and Annie, they gave me the full cut. They didn’t even blink, and, you know, they needed that money too. Like, they really needed it… but we had, I mean we knew we had you... I guess what I mean is that I owe you, for real owe you. Them too, but also you. Not in the money way, but in that cosmic, karmic way. My daughter’s alive because of your money. Because of you, taking a chance on us.”

He just stares at her, and she thinks he’s surprised.

“Okay,” he says, then, “Okay,” again, softer, finishing his drink. He gestures to her glass. “You want another? My shout.”

And she looks at him, and suddenly he doesn’t look like this gangbanger, this nightjar, a shadow, creeping through her nightmares, he just looks like a guy. An, admittedly, pretty hot guy.

“Chardonnay. With ice? I gotta drive home.”

“Chardonnay with ice,” he repeats back to her, a grin tugging at his lips, and right, Ruby thinks, leaning back in her seat. Okay.

So she doesn’t do the drops solo often, but they happen enough now that she gets used to ordering a glass of white wine on arrival and Rio sliding opposite her in whatever bar or diner they agree upon with an expensive looking beer that she’s never even heard of. He usually has a drink waiting for her too, but she never likes to assume – if nothing else, she doesn’t want to establish that he knows her that well.

But still, they always end up talking about the kids.

“How’s your girl?” he asks this time, tilting his beer towards her. “She still killin’ it in English?”

“Still killin’ it,” Ruby agrees, resisting the urge to cheers and taking a drink instead. “She’s first speaker now on the debate team.”

“Huh. Smart kid.”

“And Marcus?”

“Made the soccer team. Top of his class in math.”

“Huh,” Ruby says with a grin and a roll of her eyes, tilting her wine glass in Rio’s general direction. “Smart kid.”

And then they both have another drink, and Ruby briefly loses herself to the sounds of the bar – the tremor of energy, just below the surface, and in the weird, oddly comforting energy that Rio just seems to exude. She’s so lost in it that it takes her a moment to process his next question.

”How’s your friend?”

Ruby blinks, head lolling back, unable to stop herself from giving him the side eye.

“Which friend?”

He just looks at her, and Ruby shakes her hair out, playing innocent, playing coy.

“Annie’s doing great actually. She finally quit Fine’N’Frugal, her kid’s doing well in the new school, she’s started dating people again who aren’t her ex-husband, so, y’know, that’s a step in the right direction.”

Rio does that little huff-breath-laugh-thing he does that Ruby thinks is mostly stupid, taking a drink of his beer and giving her a look over it that says touché, and fuck it, Ruby thinks.

She laughs.

“I mean, come on,” she says around her chortle. “You can say her name, surely.”

He has another drink, looking over the bar, skirting the crowd, before letting his gaze swing back around to Ruby.

“How’s Elizabeth doin’?” he asks finally, and Ruby laughs all over again.

“Elizabeth? God, I don’t think I’ve heard anyone call her that since highschool subs.”

Rio’s jaw rocks backwards and then forwards in irritation.

“It’s her name, isn’t it?”

“I mean, sure,” Ruby agrees, her tone light. “But no one calls her that.”

Rio takes a drink, and she can see it, the moment he starts to shut down in front of her, close off, and she finds herself unwilling to let that happen. Is this what Beth feels like all the time?

God.

Too stressful.

“She’s okay,” Ruby says. “I mean, it’s hard for her. I don’t know if you’ve met Dean outside of, y’know, shooting him,” her tone is loaded then, and Rio meets her gaze with a blank expression, and she barrels through – or, at least, she tries to. “But he’s kind of…” she fumbles for the word. Anything too insulting feels like a betrayal. She decides on, “They were very young when they got together. Like, highschool young. And Beth settled hard. It was…” she gestures vaguely. “There were a lot of external circumstances. But Dean made sense to date at fifteen, and to marry at twenty-one, but to still be married to? At forty?”

Ruby shakes her head, tosses her hands up in the air, and when she looks up, Rio is staring at her attentively, and she can feel her shoulders sag in submission.

“He’s done some nasty stuff to her,” she says, and she sees the way Rio’s jaw clenches. “That’s not for me to tell you though, and, to be fair, she did get him shot. By you, just in case you forgot. It’s not like she’s perfect by any stretch of the imagination. But still…”

Ruby sighs, leaning back into her seat, thumbing the stem of her wine glass. When she looks up again, Rio is looking out the window into the street, his gaze focused and his forehead creased in thought. Rolling her eyes, Ruby sits up a little straighter.

“You know if you hurt her, I’ll have to kill you,” Ruby tells him, and his head whips around to look at her. “It’s out of my hands. I don’t care what you’ve done, I don’t care that you’re, like, what, The Godfather of inner-city Detroit. You’re messing with something much more powerful. The best friend code. More than that. The Beth-and-Ruby Code.”

“Sounds serious,” Rio says, not without warmth, and Ruby just raises both eyebrows at him.

“It is, bruh,” and then, more seriously. “It’s gotten us both through more than I can say.”

And maybe she meant to keep talking, but she doesn’t want to now, because all she can think of is Beth – Beth and her blankets made of Sara’s baby clothes and favourite quotes and the pineapple upside down cake which she knew was Sara’s favourite and the bottle of scotch because she knew it was Ruby’s, and she shouldn’t be encouraging this, because Beth is playing at being hard, but she’s still Beth who is the kindest, most gentle person Ruby knows, and if she knows nothing else about Rio, it’s that he’s not gentle, even when he plays at being soft.

“You don’t gotta worry,” he says suddenly, opposite her, and Ruby looks at him as he slides up from the table, closing their tab, squeezing a hand at her shoulder before he leaves, and dammit she thinks, because for just a minute she believes him.