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Yes, I’ve got this, Rhys thinks when he peeks at the cards in front of him. Pocket aces, I’ve so got this.
“Your bet,” Vaughn says from his seat across the table. He squares up his towering stacks of chips and folds his arms, his face impassive.
Rhys does his best to seem equally bored. “Check,” he says. It’s not the play he’d normally make with bullets, but this is heads-up and the stakes are high: he needs to look weak, lure Vaughn in.
Keep his ass covered. Literally.
Vaughn shrugs. “The president checks,” he says like a commentator, even though they’re alone and have been for a while. Fiona and Sasha had been fine with regular poker, but they bolted the second Rhys even breathed the words ‘strip hold-em.’ Their loss, Rhys figures, eyeing Vaughn’s bare forearms.
“Dealer also checks,” Vaughn continues, knocking once on the table, “so I guess we get the flop for free.”
When Vaughn flips three cards face-up on the table between them, it’s all Rhys can do to suppress the excited yelp that leaps into his throat. Nine, jack, ace—he couldn’t have asked for better. It’s tempting to run the odds with his ECHO, but even without cheating, he knows they’re good. Incredibly good. Bet-the-farm good. He makes himself wait until Vaughn tips his head though, prompting, before he lays down a bet.
“Twenty,” he says, tossing the chips into the pot. It’s not huge, not nearly enough to scare Vaughn off the hand, but they can both see that it’s a decent chunk of what Rhys has left.
“Twenty, huh.” Vaughn blinks, his face a perfect mask. “Okay, sure. Twenty.” He throws four red chips of his own toward Rhys’s and then reaches for the deck again. “Let’s see what the turn has in store.”
Rhys holds his breath as Vaughn slides one card to the side, burning it, and then adds a fourth, the three of diamonds, to the neat row of three between them.
It’s—not an ace. Rhys really wanted that last ace, he wanted to be absolutely sure beyond all doubt that this hand was his to mount his big comeback, but a three isn’t that terrible. It doesn’t help him, but it can’t possibly help Vaughn that much either, so. He can live with a three.
“Well, what do you think? Like that one, too?” Vaughn’s back to his neutral pose, arms folded and blinking evenly. He looks so… so fully clothed, Rhys notes, annoyed, and sets his jaw stubbornly. He’s going to win this hand if it kills him, damn it.
“Oh, I suppose,” Rhys says. He tosses down some more chips. “How about forty?”
Vaughn doesn’t even hesitate. “Forty.” Chips clatter into the center, chasing Rhys’s, three red and a green this time. “Ready for the river?”
“Sail away, captain.”
Vaughn’s hands are deft on the cards as he burns another off the top and then flips the one beneath it, snapping it showily between his thumb and forefinger. “Four of spades,” he intones, lining it up with the others.
Four of spades. Rhys curls his bare toes under the table in frustration but keeps his face blank. Not what he wanted, but that’s okay; he’s still ahead here. He’s still rolling trip aces and that is an objectively great hand, so everything’s fine. All he has to do now is get Vaughn to call: Vaughn will call, and then lose, and then the hand—and Vaughn’s tattered vest, how is he still wearing so much when Rhys is almost naked, seriously—will be his.
“Let’s just do forty again,” Rhys says with a shrug. “Keep it simple.”
Vaughn doles out the chips and—smiles at him. For the first time all night, Vaughn fucking smiles at him. “I see your forty,” he says, voice sweet as Rhys has ever heard it, “and I raise you… what do you have left there, another fifty? I raise you fifty.”
Rhys gapes. “You raise me?” That wasn’t supposed to happen. “You raise me?”
“Fifty,” Vaughn says, nodding at Rhys’s chips. His smile shifts into something terrifying and that’s when, like a sizzling zap from a stun baton, Rhys knows.
“Oh no,” he says.
“Rhys.”
“No. This isn’t happening.”
“Come on, Rhys.” Vaughn’s tone is mild, but he also sounds like he’s dangerously close to exploding with laughter. “I’ll get them next round anyway, you know I will, so just put the chips in, okay? It’s over.”
Rhys thunks his head down on the table, pushing the last of his chips away with his elbow. “This is robbery! You know that? This is actual, literal theft. I had pocket aces, you dick.”
“I know, babe,” Vaughn says patiently, but he pulls all the chips toward himself and then plucks Rhys’s two cards away from him, turning them face up. “So pretty,” he says. “Who’d have ever thought they would fall to this ugliness?”
Rhys makes himself look up at Vaughn’s cards, the only two that can beat his. “A five and a fucking two,” he moans. “You’re evil. You never should have played that.”
Vaughn rolls his eyes. “Excuse me for trying to let you win one,” he says. “Listen, are you going to settle up and get over here, or what?”
“Settle up?” Rhys frowns. “Get o… oh,” he says, hurrying to his feet, his wounded pride forgotten. “Well, if I must.” He hooks his thumbs into the waistband of his underwear and shucks them off, dropping them onto Vaughn’s pile of chips. He spreads his arms as if to say ta-da and smiles cheekily.
Vaughn grins in answer and sprawls back in his chair. His gaze roves over Rhys’s body. “Bless your shitty poker skills,” he says.
Rhys tries to be offended, but feels himself go hot instead. “I’ll win one day, you know,” he says, stepping toward Vaughn.
Vaughn pulls Rhys into his lap. “You’re welcome to keep trying,” he says, and yeah, Rhys thinks he’ll do just that.