Hearts in Spades
Aug. 10th, 2011 09:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lb_leeTitle: Hearts in Spades
Prompt: Heart
Notes: Polyverse, taking place during Bodily Reconstruction. My family used to play round-robin spades like hosses. So yes, I wrote frickin' fic about my family's favorite card game. Hey, at least it wasn't Pokemon.
Raige and Thomas both knew better than to play cards with M.D.—or rather, they knew better than to play with any expectation of winning. M.D. cheated, and she was obviously an old hand at it, even before she picked up her crappy powers.
Besides. She was a sore loser.
Then one day, Biff showed up on M.D.’s doorstep with a couple of boxes and a face like he’d just lost a very bad bet. He completely ignored Thomas and Raige both, and started setting up shop.
M.D. had told Thomas that Biff was working for Ribbonblack, the eldritch horrorbeast on the night side of town, but when he’d pushed for details, she’d clammed up. So he asked Biff, “Dude, why’re you here?”
“Working.”
“Why?”
Biff just looked at M.D. “Why they here?”
“I do have a life, outside of you, you know.” She cast a questioning glance over her shoulder at both Thomas and Raige, asking their opinion.
Raige was the white boy’s Mother Teresa, so he shrugged with the, “turn away no one in need,” face. Thomas was less forgiving. He lived with M.D., he couldn’t claim a low annoyance tolerance… but Biff was a special kind of obnoxious. But he was already outvoted, and he didn’t want the fight, so he just crossed his arms and said, “Whatever.”
M.D. nodded, turned back to Biff and said, “One slur at my friends’ expense, one fight with anyone but me, and you’re out. Oh, and no smoking inside.”
“Yeah, yeah.” But it was muted. They all knew that if Biff was turning to M.D. for assistance, he was screwed.
“So where’s the rest of your stuff?” Raige asked.
“There ain’t no ‘rest;’ this is it,” Biff growled, and thus did they get stuck with him a couple days.
It wasn’t as horrific as Thomas feared. They all had their own schedules, and Biff seemed to spend as much time out of the house as possible. Except for the two boxes shoved in the corner, (and one seemed to be entirely filled with kitchen equipment) it was easy to forget the guy was around.
Until Thomas and Raige got home one afternoon and found Biff and M.D. playing cards.
Well, ‘playing’ wasn’t the right word. M.D. took cards serious, and Biff apparently did too. They looked to be playing some form of poker, and they were slapping down cards rapid-fire, glaring at each other across the table, all in dead silence—which from M.D. was downright rare. Thomas wasn’t sure how they were communicating the desire for more cards; to him, it just looked like grunting and gestures, but apparently it worked for them.
Thomas looked at Raige, who looked back. They shrugged. They watched.
It didn’t take a genius to assume that whatever Biff and M.D. were playing, they were both cheating. An illusionist and a telepath, two card sharks, what’d you expect? The odd thing was that despite the poker, neither of them was betting. That, and M.D. was undeniably getting her ass served to her.
Thomas had been whipped enough in cards that he could enjoy seeing the look of aggravation on M.D.’s face. She wasn’t used to losing. For his part, Biff didn’t show much reaction; either he was used to beating everyone at cards, or he had other things on his mind.
Every few hands, they’d pause, and talk it over, but it didn’t sound like they were lording or mourning over their cards. Biff looked like he was explaining something with uncharacteristic lack of bitchiness, while M.D. listened intently with a look of mixed incredulity, irritation, and determination.
Then Biff would take the deck, shuffle, and they’d start the whole thing over again.
After a few rounds of this, Raige laughed under his breath.
“What is it?” Thomas asked. “What are they doing?”
“He’s teaching her to play better,” Raige replied. Which, translated out of the habitual politeness, meant he was teaching her to cheat better.
“Seriously?” Thomas wasn’t sure which he found more incredible: that M.D. would need lessons, or that Biff would actually give them without being a royal ass about it.
“Sure. I don’t know who she used to play, but I’ll bet they handled losing better than Vaygans.”
Thomas didn’t have much trouble believing that. There was a reason ‘Vaygan-style’ meant, ‘whoever cheats the best wins.’ No wonder M.D. looked so annoyed.
But Raige was already coming in. “Hey, can I play?”
Thomas would’ve had to be blind not to see the identical expressions on M.D. and Biff’s face: fresh meat.
“I’m in too,” he said, pulling up a chair. “No bets, and—”
“No illusion,” Raige said.
“No cheating,” Thomas corrected. He knew M.D. way too well to assume she only cheated with powers, and if she was bad, Biff could only be worse.
Biff shuffled and looked at M.D. “How they play?”
She shrugged. “I beat ‘em regularly. Here, how’s about bridge?”
“Bridge?” Biff sounded incredulous.
“I don’t know it,” Raige said immediately.
“Isn’t that what old people play?” Thomas asked.
M.D. looked indignant. “Oh man, if my old playing buddies heard you say that, they would’ve killed you.”
“Yeah… with their walkers,” Thomas retorted.
“The number of years they spent walking—or rolling—the earth is irrelevant,” she said firmly, ignoring Biff’s snort. “The fact is, bridge is intense. Forget poker, you want to see a card game with strategy, you play bridge. You ever wondered why bridge was the only card game important enough to have newspaper puzzles devoted to it? Because it’s that’s hardcore.”
“Why,” Biff said, shoving the deck to her, “you learn bridge?”
She cut it and shrugged. “I was working for an old guy who owned a bookshop as a bike messenger. He and his bookshop buddies played bridge, and one day one of them got the flu, and I’d already whipped them all at poker so they decided I deserved some back and asked if I wanted to play. They had me hooked within the week.”
“Bridge,” Thomas said. “Unbelievable. Just when I thought you couldn’t be any less cool.”
“I think my great aunt plays bridge…” Raige said doubtfully.
“Is this the one with the ferrets? Because if so, she ain’t cool, man,” Thomas replied.
“Lies. Your great aunt is more hardcore than you ever gave her credit for,” M.D. said firmly. “Get off my lawn, you punks.”
“Biff’s older than you. I’m older than you. Does anyone here besides you actually know anything about bridge?” Thomas asked.
“No,” Biff replied. “’Cept it takes fucking forever to learn.”
“I’ve never played,” Raige added.
“And neither have I. You’re outvoted, babe.”
“Fine, fine, no bridge. Ya lightweights.”
“Go fish?” Raige asked, but he was immediately shouted down.
Biff shrugged. “Always spades…”
“That I know,” Thomas said.
M.D. scoffed a little about the superiority of bridge, but she knew spades too, and three out of the four was the best they were likely to get. Raige still didn’t know it (apparently his family didn’t believe in card games) so M.D. ran a trial hand laying out the rules.
Raige was smart… but even Thomas could tell he was rotten at cards. He had no conception of the psychological component of the game, and seemed to think it was entirely a matter of the cards you got. It wasn’t entirely a surprise when Biff said flatly, “I ain’t playing with him.”
Thomas grimaced. If he’d known not sucking at spades would’ve stuck him with Biff as a playing partner, he would’ve tried to act dumber.
“That’s fine,” M.D. said. “We’ll clean your clock.”
Raige looked delighted. “Hey, you didn’t call me Fagboy.”
Biff just switched chairs with M.D. “Who’s dealing?”
“Not you,” M.D. said firmly, swiping the deck from him. Biff tried to look wounded, but didn’t put much effort into it.
“Oh, like you’re so much better,” Thomas said.
She did pull off looking wounded. “Hey, I’m not going to cheat on Raige’s first hand. Give me some credit.”
She dealt. Glanced at her hand, frowned, then kicked Biff under the table.
“Ow!”
“You’re not playing just with rubes,” she snapped. “Knock it off.”
He sneered at her. “You got a shitty hand, thazz your own fault. I don’t need to cheat to beat you.” But a couple of the cards in Thomas’s hand changed quietly when he wasn’t looking directly at him.
Apparently M.D. had something similar going on in her own hand, because she snorted.
The bidding for tricks went around; Thomas’s hand was decent, a couple kings and a queen, but no aces, so he bid an average three.
When Raige came up, he asked, “Uh, what if you can’t take anything?”
By the looks of things, M.D was in pain and trying not to show it. Biff smirked.
“You bid nil,” he said. “You pull it off, you get a hundred; you take anything, you lose a hundred.”
“Cool!”
“Keep in mind that it also completely changes the game mechanics,” M.D. added in a restrained voice. “Normally, if you make more tricks than you bid, it adds points to your score, but if you bid nil and get more, you’re sunk. Plus your partner has to get their tricks, and cover you so you don’t take any by mistake. If you bid nil, you can’t take anything.”
“Neat!” Raige said, apparently completely oblivious to M.D.’s expression. “I’ll do that then; it’ll be great. Put me down for zero.”
Thomas suspected that M.D. would’ve strangled him, except that would’ve counted as unfair communication to her partner. Biff immediately bid low with the intention of cracking the newbie, and M.D. bid low so she could focus on covering Raige—though Thomas suspected her hand was pretty crappy too.
“Okay, who’s got the two of clubs?”
And off they went.
Thomas was no beast at cards, but he’d played spades enough times to know his way around. If his hand wasn’t great, and Raige’s was nil-worthy, and M.D.’s look had said her hand sucked, that meant Biff must’ve had the holy roller of hands. And at first, Thomas seemed to be right; Biff took the first hand with the ace of clubs, the second with the ace of diamonds—and Raige shed the ace of hearts.
The game screeched to a halt. Everyone else froze, then leaned over the table to scrutinize the hand with looks ranging from mild curiosity (from Biff) to oh-god-what-did-you-just-do (from M.D.). For someone who apparently swindled old people out of their pension money, she sure wasn’t keeping a straight face for this one.
“Uh, suit was diamonds, dude,” Thomas reminded.
Raige blinked. “Yeah, I know. If you don’t have diamonds, you can play anything, right? Did I do something wrong?”
M.D. made a sound like a hamster being hit with a basketball. Biff gave Raige a suspicious look.
“Y’sure you never played this before?” He asked, pulling the trick in.
Raige looked completely oblivious.
The game became a fiasco soon after. Biff apparently had half the spades, all of them high, and Raige seemed to own practically every heart in the deck. Thomas, with his average hand, ended up snagging tricks with eights and nines, while M.D. struggled to keep up. Her hand, as suspected, was abysmal; the highest card she showed was the queen of clubs, which Thomas took with the king straight after.
It quickly became obvious that Raige might’ve been a rotten card player, but he flew blind like a champ. He cheerfully played on, clueless to the fact that his ‘nil’ hand was actually pretty good, while M.D. sweated and lost trick after trick covering him.
For his part, Biff looked steadily more and more aggravated that Raige was doing so well, but couldn’t do much about it. His hand was just too spade-heavy and heart-light to go under Raige, half the time, and finally, he focused on setting M.D. instead, since she was the one with the crappier hand. Thomas grabbed his tricks, tried to play low, but mostly just watched the whole thing with growing entertainment. Biff and M.D. were both used to pounding everyone; this was driving them nuts.
Soon there were only a few hands left, and M.D. still hadn’t managed to pull a single trick. Biff’s spades simply hadn’t let him lose hands, even on purpose. Thomas had the start. He tossed the four of spades down. Raige probably would just play hearts, but—
Raige put down the queen of spades.
By this point, nothing Raige did in the game could surprise Thomas anymore, because it was obvious the guy had no idea what he was doing. Biff’s eyes lit up, and he happily tossed down the eight of spades then folded his arms behind his head, looking at M.D. with a beat that expression. He’d already shed the ace earlier in the game.
M.D. stared at Raige. “You bid nil with the queen of spades.” She said. Her voice was expressionless.
Raige blinked and shrugged. “The ace or the king would’ve beat it.”
“You bid nil. On the queen of spades.”
Thomas smothered his laughter behind his hand. He’d been trying to control himself the whole time, but this was just too good.
Biff was grinning outright. “Toldja I wasn’t playing with him,” He said.
Raige shrugged. “I mean, I could’ve gotten trumped…”
“Dude,” Thomas said. “Spades are trump.”
“Oh. Right.”
M.D. wasn’t done. “You. Bid nil. On the queen. Of spades.” Her voice was steadily growing in pitch and volume.
Raige just beamed at her angelically. “But you have the king, right?”
M.D. threw it down. “Yes, you frogging houseplant, but what is wrong with you?”
Biff howled with indignation. “The fuck you draw that out for, thought I had you—”
But M.D. wasn’t paying attention. She was shaking her head and looking like it was taking all her focus not to throttle Raige, who looked apologetic. Thomas just collapsed on the table laughing.
Needless to say, Raige and M.D. won the match with flying colors. M.D. didn’t even gloat; she’d been uncharacteristically subdued the rest of the match, shaking her head and staring at Raige like she had something incredibly unpleasant planned in his near future.
After they cleaned up and headed out, Thomas pulled Raige aside. “Okay man, cough it up, where’d you learn?”
Raige looked completely innocent. “I’ve never played spades before in my life.” Then, at Thomas’s continued look, he smiled and added, “But I’ve played hearts at every family function for as long as I can remember, and the rules are pretty similar.”
Thomas laughed. “I knew it. Did you see that look on M.D.’s face? She is going to kill you.”
“I was still pretty clueless half the time,” Raige protested. “I forgot the queen of spades was a good thing to have…”
“How’d you know you were going to win?”
“Are you kidding? I didn’t! I figured I’d lose no matter what, against Biff and having never played before, so I might as well go nuts.” Raige shrugged. “Just beginner’s luck, I guess.”
Thomas clapped an arm on his shoulder and said, “You’re a genius.”
Biff was gone again in a couple of days, but in that time, M.D. never tried to drag them into a game of poker again. Biff either. But they played some pretty good hands of round-robin spades.
Prompt: Heart
Notes: Polyverse, taking place during Bodily Reconstruction. My family used to play round-robin spades like hosses. So yes, I wrote frickin' fic about my family's favorite card game. Hey, at least it wasn't Pokemon.
Raige and Thomas both knew better than to play cards with M.D.—or rather, they knew better than to play with any expectation of winning. M.D. cheated, and she was obviously an old hand at it, even before she picked up her crappy powers.
Besides. She was a sore loser.
Then one day, Biff showed up on M.D.’s doorstep with a couple of boxes and a face like he’d just lost a very bad bet. He completely ignored Thomas and Raige both, and started setting up shop.
M.D. had told Thomas that Biff was working for Ribbonblack, the eldritch horrorbeast on the night side of town, but when he’d pushed for details, she’d clammed up. So he asked Biff, “Dude, why’re you here?”
“Working.”
“Why?”
Biff just looked at M.D. “Why they here?”
“I do have a life, outside of you, you know.” She cast a questioning glance over her shoulder at both Thomas and Raige, asking their opinion.
Raige was the white boy’s Mother Teresa, so he shrugged with the, “turn away no one in need,” face. Thomas was less forgiving. He lived with M.D., he couldn’t claim a low annoyance tolerance… but Biff was a special kind of obnoxious. But he was already outvoted, and he didn’t want the fight, so he just crossed his arms and said, “Whatever.”
M.D. nodded, turned back to Biff and said, “One slur at my friends’ expense, one fight with anyone but me, and you’re out. Oh, and no smoking inside.”
“Yeah, yeah.” But it was muted. They all knew that if Biff was turning to M.D. for assistance, he was screwed.
“So where’s the rest of your stuff?” Raige asked.
“There ain’t no ‘rest;’ this is it,” Biff growled, and thus did they get stuck with him a couple days.
It wasn’t as horrific as Thomas feared. They all had their own schedules, and Biff seemed to spend as much time out of the house as possible. Except for the two boxes shoved in the corner, (and one seemed to be entirely filled with kitchen equipment) it was easy to forget the guy was around.
Until Thomas and Raige got home one afternoon and found Biff and M.D. playing cards.
Well, ‘playing’ wasn’t the right word. M.D. took cards serious, and Biff apparently did too. They looked to be playing some form of poker, and they were slapping down cards rapid-fire, glaring at each other across the table, all in dead silence—which from M.D. was downright rare. Thomas wasn’t sure how they were communicating the desire for more cards; to him, it just looked like grunting and gestures, but apparently it worked for them.
Thomas looked at Raige, who looked back. They shrugged. They watched.
It didn’t take a genius to assume that whatever Biff and M.D. were playing, they were both cheating. An illusionist and a telepath, two card sharks, what’d you expect? The odd thing was that despite the poker, neither of them was betting. That, and M.D. was undeniably getting her ass served to her.
Thomas had been whipped enough in cards that he could enjoy seeing the look of aggravation on M.D.’s face. She wasn’t used to losing. For his part, Biff didn’t show much reaction; either he was used to beating everyone at cards, or he had other things on his mind.
Every few hands, they’d pause, and talk it over, but it didn’t sound like they were lording or mourning over their cards. Biff looked like he was explaining something with uncharacteristic lack of bitchiness, while M.D. listened intently with a look of mixed incredulity, irritation, and determination.
Then Biff would take the deck, shuffle, and they’d start the whole thing over again.
After a few rounds of this, Raige laughed under his breath.
“What is it?” Thomas asked. “What are they doing?”
“He’s teaching her to play better,” Raige replied. Which, translated out of the habitual politeness, meant he was teaching her to cheat better.
“Seriously?” Thomas wasn’t sure which he found more incredible: that M.D. would need lessons, or that Biff would actually give them without being a royal ass about it.
“Sure. I don’t know who she used to play, but I’ll bet they handled losing better than Vaygans.”
Thomas didn’t have much trouble believing that. There was a reason ‘Vaygan-style’ meant, ‘whoever cheats the best wins.’ No wonder M.D. looked so annoyed.
But Raige was already coming in. “Hey, can I play?”
Thomas would’ve had to be blind not to see the identical expressions on M.D. and Biff’s face: fresh meat.
“I’m in too,” he said, pulling up a chair. “No bets, and—”
“No illusion,” Raige said.
“No cheating,” Thomas corrected. He knew M.D. way too well to assume she only cheated with powers, and if she was bad, Biff could only be worse.
Biff shuffled and looked at M.D. “How they play?”
She shrugged. “I beat ‘em regularly. Here, how’s about bridge?”
“Bridge?” Biff sounded incredulous.
“I don’t know it,” Raige said immediately.
“Isn’t that what old people play?” Thomas asked.
M.D. looked indignant. “Oh man, if my old playing buddies heard you say that, they would’ve killed you.”
“Yeah… with their walkers,” Thomas retorted.
“The number of years they spent walking—or rolling—the earth is irrelevant,” she said firmly, ignoring Biff’s snort. “The fact is, bridge is intense. Forget poker, you want to see a card game with strategy, you play bridge. You ever wondered why bridge was the only card game important enough to have newspaper puzzles devoted to it? Because it’s that’s hardcore.”
“Why,” Biff said, shoving the deck to her, “you learn bridge?”
She cut it and shrugged. “I was working for an old guy who owned a bookshop as a bike messenger. He and his bookshop buddies played bridge, and one day one of them got the flu, and I’d already whipped them all at poker so they decided I deserved some back and asked if I wanted to play. They had me hooked within the week.”
“Bridge,” Thomas said. “Unbelievable. Just when I thought you couldn’t be any less cool.”
“I think my great aunt plays bridge…” Raige said doubtfully.
“Is this the one with the ferrets? Because if so, she ain’t cool, man,” Thomas replied.
“Lies. Your great aunt is more hardcore than you ever gave her credit for,” M.D. said firmly. “Get off my lawn, you punks.”
“Biff’s older than you. I’m older than you. Does anyone here besides you actually know anything about bridge?” Thomas asked.
“No,” Biff replied. “’Cept it takes fucking forever to learn.”
“I’ve never played,” Raige added.
“And neither have I. You’re outvoted, babe.”
“Fine, fine, no bridge. Ya lightweights.”
“Go fish?” Raige asked, but he was immediately shouted down.
Biff shrugged. “Always spades…”
“That I know,” Thomas said.
M.D. scoffed a little about the superiority of bridge, but she knew spades too, and three out of the four was the best they were likely to get. Raige still didn’t know it (apparently his family didn’t believe in card games) so M.D. ran a trial hand laying out the rules.
Raige was smart… but even Thomas could tell he was rotten at cards. He had no conception of the psychological component of the game, and seemed to think it was entirely a matter of the cards you got. It wasn’t entirely a surprise when Biff said flatly, “I ain’t playing with him.”
Thomas grimaced. If he’d known not sucking at spades would’ve stuck him with Biff as a playing partner, he would’ve tried to act dumber.
“That’s fine,” M.D. said. “We’ll clean your clock.”
Raige looked delighted. “Hey, you didn’t call me Fagboy.”
Biff just switched chairs with M.D. “Who’s dealing?”
“Not you,” M.D. said firmly, swiping the deck from him. Biff tried to look wounded, but didn’t put much effort into it.
“Oh, like you’re so much better,” Thomas said.
She did pull off looking wounded. “Hey, I’m not going to cheat on Raige’s first hand. Give me some credit.”
She dealt. Glanced at her hand, frowned, then kicked Biff under the table.
“Ow!”
“You’re not playing just with rubes,” she snapped. “Knock it off.”
He sneered at her. “You got a shitty hand, thazz your own fault. I don’t need to cheat to beat you.” But a couple of the cards in Thomas’s hand changed quietly when he wasn’t looking directly at him.
Apparently M.D. had something similar going on in her own hand, because she snorted.
The bidding for tricks went around; Thomas’s hand was decent, a couple kings and a queen, but no aces, so he bid an average three.
When Raige came up, he asked, “Uh, what if you can’t take anything?”
By the looks of things, M.D was in pain and trying not to show it. Biff smirked.
“You bid nil,” he said. “You pull it off, you get a hundred; you take anything, you lose a hundred.”
“Cool!”
“Keep in mind that it also completely changes the game mechanics,” M.D. added in a restrained voice. “Normally, if you make more tricks than you bid, it adds points to your score, but if you bid nil and get more, you’re sunk. Plus your partner has to get their tricks, and cover you so you don’t take any by mistake. If you bid nil, you can’t take anything.”
“Neat!” Raige said, apparently completely oblivious to M.D.’s expression. “I’ll do that then; it’ll be great. Put me down for zero.”
Thomas suspected that M.D. would’ve strangled him, except that would’ve counted as unfair communication to her partner. Biff immediately bid low with the intention of cracking the newbie, and M.D. bid low so she could focus on covering Raige—though Thomas suspected her hand was pretty crappy too.
“Okay, who’s got the two of clubs?”
And off they went.
Thomas was no beast at cards, but he’d played spades enough times to know his way around. If his hand wasn’t great, and Raige’s was nil-worthy, and M.D.’s look had said her hand sucked, that meant Biff must’ve had the holy roller of hands. And at first, Thomas seemed to be right; Biff took the first hand with the ace of clubs, the second with the ace of diamonds—and Raige shed the ace of hearts.
The game screeched to a halt. Everyone else froze, then leaned over the table to scrutinize the hand with looks ranging from mild curiosity (from Biff) to oh-god-what-did-you-just-do (from M.D.). For someone who apparently swindled old people out of their pension money, she sure wasn’t keeping a straight face for this one.
“Uh, suit was diamonds, dude,” Thomas reminded.
Raige blinked. “Yeah, I know. If you don’t have diamonds, you can play anything, right? Did I do something wrong?”
M.D. made a sound like a hamster being hit with a basketball. Biff gave Raige a suspicious look.
“Y’sure you never played this before?” He asked, pulling the trick in.
Raige looked completely oblivious.
The game became a fiasco soon after. Biff apparently had half the spades, all of them high, and Raige seemed to own practically every heart in the deck. Thomas, with his average hand, ended up snagging tricks with eights and nines, while M.D. struggled to keep up. Her hand, as suspected, was abysmal; the highest card she showed was the queen of clubs, which Thomas took with the king straight after.
It quickly became obvious that Raige might’ve been a rotten card player, but he flew blind like a champ. He cheerfully played on, clueless to the fact that his ‘nil’ hand was actually pretty good, while M.D. sweated and lost trick after trick covering him.
For his part, Biff looked steadily more and more aggravated that Raige was doing so well, but couldn’t do much about it. His hand was just too spade-heavy and heart-light to go under Raige, half the time, and finally, he focused on setting M.D. instead, since she was the one with the crappier hand. Thomas grabbed his tricks, tried to play low, but mostly just watched the whole thing with growing entertainment. Biff and M.D. were both used to pounding everyone; this was driving them nuts.
Soon there were only a few hands left, and M.D. still hadn’t managed to pull a single trick. Biff’s spades simply hadn’t let him lose hands, even on purpose. Thomas had the start. He tossed the four of spades down. Raige probably would just play hearts, but—
Raige put down the queen of spades.
By this point, nothing Raige did in the game could surprise Thomas anymore, because it was obvious the guy had no idea what he was doing. Biff’s eyes lit up, and he happily tossed down the eight of spades then folded his arms behind his head, looking at M.D. with a beat that expression. He’d already shed the ace earlier in the game.
M.D. stared at Raige. “You bid nil with the queen of spades.” She said. Her voice was expressionless.
Raige blinked and shrugged. “The ace or the king would’ve beat it.”
“You bid nil. On the queen of spades.”
Thomas smothered his laughter behind his hand. He’d been trying to control himself the whole time, but this was just too good.
Biff was grinning outright. “Toldja I wasn’t playing with him,” He said.
Raige shrugged. “I mean, I could’ve gotten trumped…”
“Dude,” Thomas said. “Spades are trump.”
“Oh. Right.”
M.D. wasn’t done. “You. Bid nil. On the queen. Of spades.” Her voice was steadily growing in pitch and volume.
Raige just beamed at her angelically. “But you have the king, right?”
M.D. threw it down. “Yes, you frogging houseplant, but what is wrong with you?”
Biff howled with indignation. “The fuck you draw that out for, thought I had you—”
But M.D. wasn’t paying attention. She was shaking her head and looking like it was taking all her focus not to throttle Raige, who looked apologetic. Thomas just collapsed on the table laughing.
Needless to say, Raige and M.D. won the match with flying colors. M.D. didn’t even gloat; she’d been uncharacteristically subdued the rest of the match, shaking her head and staring at Raige like she had something incredibly unpleasant planned in his near future.
After they cleaned up and headed out, Thomas pulled Raige aside. “Okay man, cough it up, where’d you learn?”
Raige looked completely innocent. “I’ve never played spades before in my life.” Then, at Thomas’s continued look, he smiled and added, “But I’ve played hearts at every family function for as long as I can remember, and the rules are pretty similar.”
Thomas laughed. “I knew it. Did you see that look on M.D.’s face? She is going to kill you.”
“I was still pretty clueless half the time,” Raige protested. “I forgot the queen of spades was a good thing to have…”
“How’d you know you were going to win?”
“Are you kidding? I didn’t! I figured I’d lose no matter what, against Biff and having never played before, so I might as well go nuts.” Raige shrugged. “Just beginner’s luck, I guess.”
Thomas clapped an arm on his shoulder and said, “You’re a genius.”
Biff was gone again in a couple of days, but in that time, M.D. never tried to drag them into a game of poker again. Biff either. But they played some pretty good hands of round-robin spades.
