prompt: white lie, by Dotdotdot. My first thought was con artists, so yeah. Here. Have a 1920s con artist AU.
"So?" he asks, and she nods. She's beautiful right now, her hair done up in an elaborate tousle, her lips blood-red from make-up. She gleams in the starlight as they walk, arm in arm, and the silk of her long gloves feels like snakeskin against his palm. He wants to kiss her. He wants to pull her away, into the rose garden, where the crafted bushes are a foot taller than him, and he wants to touch her, run his fingers over her skin the way he hasn't in weeks. Months. She looks at him, a knowing look, and shakes her head a little. No, her eyes say. Not yet. Wait. And they will, because he knows her, and she knows him, and they've never had to go over plans or tactics or targets. They've always just understood.
"He's twenty-two," she tells him in a low voice. He hopes they look like what they are supposed to be, brother and sister, and not curled together, closer, deeper, like lovers. "Orphaned when he was six. He'll be wary. He's already suspicious. I think I unsettle him."
You unsettle me, he thinks, looking at her, but it's the best kind of unsettlement, the kind he never wants to get away from. He says, "You'll be fine. He's an easier mark than you might think. He's not as smart as we are."
"Not as smart as you are," she says, and he taps her under the chin.
"As we are, Lan Fan. You have him eating out of your palm already. Just give it time."
She looks at him, and licks her lips. "How long this time, Ling?"
"A few months, maybe."
"Can we afford that?"
"Yes," he says, and when she opens her mouth, he squeezes her fingers. "Listen to me. We'll be fine. All right?"
"I'm the one who manages the accounts," she says. "Not you. I know—"
"I'm not going to be sitting back and letting you do all the work," he says. "I have a mark of my own." He presses his lips to her cheek, and then pushes her away, because he has to. "Go. We have a con to run."
She nods, and, fixing a smile on her face, slinks off to their first mark. Ling watches for a moment or two, hands in his pockets, before tipping his fedora and whistling off down the lane. There are rich women aplenty in Montecarlo, and they're all practically begging for his hands in their wallets.