between a heart & a hard place
♛ 5x05: Teresa and James plan the heist (1.9k words; rating T; tags: missing scene, weaponized jazz music, angsty dancing)
➢ read on ao3 or below the cut:
The Van Gogh was beautiful. It was a shame they’d have to cut it from the frame, yet Teresa knew better than most that no beauty survived long in this world without collecting a few scars. So while it was a shame, it wasn't enough to stop her. Indeed, it’d be one of the only decisions she’d been forced to make lately that she wouldn’t lose any sleep over tonight.
Losing Kostya wasn’t an option. The pain of lost beauty was nothing compared to the pain of lost power.
They gathered in the hotel lobby, using the private concert by a semi-famous jazz pianist as cover for some recon. Kelly Anne gamely chatted up the hotel owner while Pote stifled a yawn and nursed his beer. James leaned casually against the bar, seemingly entranced by the music. It was only because she knew him so well that she could see the relaxed demeanor hid a man at work, busy formulating a plan. He hadn’t said much about his time away, but it was hard to believe any of it had involved art heists.
She felt a frisson of worry about putting him in unfamiliar, possibly dangerous territory but she knew better than to underestimate him. It was a lesson she’d learned the first day they’d met.
She followed his gaze to the piano, wondering what he was studying there. Teresa had never thought herself a jazz fan before moving to New Orleans, but it had become the soundtrack of her triumphs and heartaches over the past year. She found herself drawn to the melancholy of it, the soaring heights of a trombone, the plaintive pleas of a piano. Rising, falling, rising again. Even now, each soulful note plucked at her heartstrings with the simple strike of a key.
The song was beautiful, perhaps James was merely getting lost for a moment in the music. He’d said she’d changed and she had, but she wasn’t the only one. When he’d left, there’d been sharp edges, edges that should have been honed to lethal blades by his work with Devon and yet the James who had returned had a softness she was unprepared for. A sort of fragile vulnerability that made her want to shelter it from the wind like a flickering candle flame, to nurture and feed it until it was strong enough to warm her too. Her throat ached at the knowledge of how easily it could be snuffed out.
She’d almost done it herself this past week. It’d hurt to see the light in his eyes dim when he looked at her but that had been what she wanted, hadn't it? This distance between them. If it wasn’t easy, it was necessary. She’d rather let the sun set between them than watch the light in his eyes permanently go out because of her.
Emotional attachments equaled vulnerability. Romantic attachments could get you killed. She had needed someone once and his loss had nearly destroyed her. She felt in her bones she wouldn't be able to survive losing James. If she let him into her heart, his death would take that vital organ with him. For as much as she thought about the future these days, there was a part of her relentlessly certain in the knowledge that they’d never get there. Not in one piece.
That didn’t stop her from wanting to reach out to him though—for comfort, maybe, or reassurance. Perhaps it was the thought he no longer understood her that hurt the most, that made her want to seek communion with him skin to skin if not soul to soul. But that wouldn’t be fair to him, to push him away then pull him close just because she desperately needed someone—him—to tell her it’d be okay. That it was all worth it. She suspected his silence these last few days was answer enough.
It was for the best. The higher the climb, the longer the fall. She couldn’t afford weakness and neither could he. If he was no longer able to be as ruthless, then she would have to be ruthless enough for the both of them.
The song ended and she turned back to James to find that he wasn’t studying the room anymore. He was studying her, his expression inscrutable.
His gaze, like the silence between them, was heavy with unsaid words, words that might never be spoken at all but most certainly not here in public. Best to get back to business.
“You have a plan?” she asked, grateful that her voice remained steady.
He nodded.
“Walk me through it,” she murmured, eyes drawn back to the painting in question.
“Dance with me.”
Her attention snapped back to his face at his surprise counter offer. She’d expected a cool recitation of information—sight lines, security cameras, escape routes—not a softly uttered invitation to be close to him, to touch him for the first time since that night in New York.
“James,” she began, not sure if she meant it as the prelude to a warning or an apology.
A flash of emotion was quickly smoothed away by his normal mask of professionalism. “Relax,” he said, pushing off the bar. “I just need a reason to be in the northwest quadrant of the room.”
She shot him a questioning look and the corner of his mouth ticked up in muted amusement. “The dance floor,” he clarified, holding out a hand.
Right. Of course. The plan. Just business, just how she wanted it. She ignored Kelly Anne’s double take and took James’ hand, letting him lead her to the far side of the small dance floor.
Once it would have been a simple thing to step into his arms, but as the first few notes of the next song began, she hesitated. He might not recognize the tune, but after being a bar owner in New Orleans for over a year, she sure did.
They’re writing songs of love, but not for me. A lucky star’s above, but not for me.
If he noticed any significance, he hid it well, guiding one of her hands to his shoulder and holding the other against his chest. His other hand found her waist and turned her smoothly in the direction he needed to surveil.
She didn’t speak, letting him work in silence. She tried to concentrate on the people around them, the sound of the piano, the lights of the city beyond the windows, anything but the warmth of his body, not under the usual leather jacket, but the expensive fabric of his suit, his scent of new cologne and old cigarettes as foreign as it was familiar.
After a moment, he pulled her closer, leaning down to murmur near her ear. “We’ll do a smoke bomb, smash and grab. Extract the painting, ditch the van. Travel by motorcycle to the drop-off.”
“We?” Teresa asked, a little breathless. Some not small part of her wished she could watch him in action, especially in the kind of situation when no one was shooting back at them.
“Me,” James corrected. “You’ll be at the rendezvous point with Pote. I’ll use a two-man team—”
“One of the men?” Teresa asked. She trusted the crew that had accompanied her to Berlin to handle security but wasn’t sure who she’d recommend for a job that required the finesse of art theft.
“I know a guy nearby,” James told her and she let out a breath of laughter. Of course he did.
“You know everyone.” She turned to smile up at him but was taken aback by the seriousness of his expression.
“Not everyone.”
His words, or maybe the weight behind them, had her wondering if he was thinking of her.
She had done her best to hide her inner turmoil over the events of the last week. Suppressing her guilt and remorse over turning in Marcel. Hiding any misgivings she had about ordering the hit on the crooked cop with defensiveness or dismissal. She was la Jefa, it would do no good for anyone to see her doubts. So she'd put on strong front but hadn’t realized until now how much she’d depended on James seeing through it. He always had before.
“You think we made a mistake,” she ventured, allowing space for his answer to clarify what was specifically bothering him the most. Perhaps it was vindictive of her to use “we” but distance or not they were still in this together.
James looked away. “It’s over now.”
“That’s not an answer,” she pressed.
He frowned, hesitating. “I did. I don’t know. You were right, the feds were ready to raid us. Bringing in Gamble would have been their next step.”
It was almost shameful, the intensity of the relief that washed over her at his words. But by James' grim expression, it seemed he grew even more troubled by the admission.
“But?”
He glanced at her, eyes bleak. “His wife was home. She found him while I was still there.”
Teresa’s heart dropped in her chest. She knew from the news reports that there’d only been one victim that night but looking into James’ eyes she saw that it haunted him. The future that might have been. He’d have killed the wife too if she’d caught him. He’d have killed her for them.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured, letting her hand find the tender skin of his neck and the staccato rhythm of his heart beat. “I’m sorry. But…”
His eyes briefly fluttered shut. “I know.”
If she couldn’t help herself from holding onto him a little tighter, it seemed he welcomed her momentary lapse. His hand sliding to the small of her back to draw her nearer until they were touching the entire lengths of their bodies, their only attempt at dancing a slight swaying from side to side.
“I just want to keep you safe,” he said, resting his cheek against her temple. She felt the old familiar panic at the implied even from yourself, but this wasn’t like Phoenix. He wasn’t trying to make decisions for her.
Couldn’t he see that she wished the same safety for him? That everything she did was in pursuit of this shared goal?
“I didn’t think I’d be back here,” he continued, slowing their sway until he was just holding her. “And now...hope is a dangerous thing. It draws your attention to the horizon instead of keeping it on the danger right in front of you.”
She wondered if he was feeling it too: the walls closing in from every angle, the same echoing dread that haunted her midnight hours. The ever narrowing window of daylight to that future someday.
But as the final notes of the song were played, even as the distance between them didn’t seem as vast anymore, even if for a moment she entertained the idea of not letting go, of leading him back up to the suite to finish repairing with their bodies what she’d bruised with her words, she knew that if they had any hope at all of that other life, they had work to do now.
James, as always, understood that better than anyone. He released her and smiled, eyes once again lit from within.
Many, many hours later while she waited in a safe location as he once again risked life and limb and freedom at her request, Teresa tried not to give too much credence to the sickening feeling in her stomach that the danger he’d mentioned earlier, the danger right in front of him that threatened their much dreamed about future…
....might end up being her.
(ao3)
