#shiv! he never took you seriously because you were a woman! he screwed you over so your husband could get a leg up in the company!

[kenzie-ann27]

trying to explain to my friends why brian cox shouldn't have been nominated for an emmy for succession feels like navigating a mine field when they aren't caught up on the show yet

[livingmybestfictionallife]

The Gun

Summary:  In 1929, the Nevin-Klaff Gang, a collection of bootlegging cousins from the farmlands of Texas find themselves on the run and in need of help.The gang finds their way to St. Paul, Minnesota where the make the acquaintance of notorious, underground, bootlegger smuggling gang, The EST. Immediately, the leaders of these two gangs, Siobhan (Shiv-on) “Shiv” Nevin, and Colson “The Gun” Baker, can’t stand one another. When their subordinates go behind their backs to agree to work together, Shiv realizes how dangerous it can be to be a knife in a gun fight.

Previous Chapters --scroll to Knife in a Gun Fight

A/N: I lost my tag list for MGK stuff, so please message me if you want to be on it. Below is just some people I figured would want to read this. I’m hoping to start writing and posting some stuff on the weekends. I DO have some requests I’m still getting through. :)

Tag List: @lilliannrojas, @chanandlersstuff, @famousobservationfan​, @machine-gun-casie​

The morning came with a pillow to the face and angry grumblings from hungover men. Reluctantly, Siobhan peeled herself to a seated position on the cot she slept on the night before and groaned in anger at George for waking her so abruptly. With her feet placed on the floor and her head drooped down in exhaustion, Shiv pushed herself from the cot and moved around the room to find her where she placed her clean clothes.

“You hardly even stayed at the speakeasy more than half an hour. You don’t get to be grumbling,” George groaned as he pulled a homemade knitted sweater over his head.

“You would be grumbling too if you had to deal with such an insufferable man,” Shiv huffed as she found a soft, comfortable, white blouse, along with a pair of dark grey, hand-me-down riding knickers and matching overcoat.

“Come on, Shiv,” Eddy sighed as he dropped his weight against his sister and grasped onto her shoulders in order to pester her. “He was looking at you like you’re a real Sheba!” With a huff, Shiv shifted her weight out from beneath her brother and scoffed at his words.

“I wanted to be alone and it was obvious,” she insisted as she combed through her hair with her fingers and allowed the leftover curls from the night before to fall around her shoulders.

“How are we supposed to expect your sister to become friends with anyone?” George huffed at Arthur and Eddy as he shrugged his shoulders into his sport coat and glared in Shiv’s direction. “She won’t allow anyone within ten feet of her if they’re not blood.”

“I’m not going to give some cake-eater the time of day,” Shiv hissed at George with her eyes narrowed and jaw clenched, “especially not when I’m the last woman he attempts to approach!” Frustrated, Shiv slammed the door to the bathroom and locked herself inside. With an angry huff of her breath, she pressed her back against the door and tried her hardest to bury the fury threatening to burst from her chest. Slowly, between deep breaths and tilting back her head to keep her tears of anger from slipping, Shiv began to change.

“Ease off, her,” Eddy snapped at George the moment his sister had disappeared behind the bathroom door.

“She’s going to rub everyone the wrong way and then no one will want to help us,” George retorted as he bent over to pull on his boots without giving Eddy an ounce of his attention.

“She didn’t want this,” Arthur quickly intervened to remind his older cousin of his place. “Her plan was to be upright and honest in our intentions with EST, not to try and befriend them and convince them of a favor! She’s going along with your plan to make you feel important.”

“You’re full of shit, Art,” George hissed and stomped the floor once each of his boots were secured around his feet. “I’m the oldest. I’m the leader. Siobhan is just some girl who got mixed up in this.”

“Shiv is our cousin,” Walter quickly reminded his brother even though the words fell from his mouth like vapor in the wind.

“What women do you see running the scene or calling the shots? Shiv having even the smallest amount of control is what got us here, hiding from coppers in every other state and sharing a small bedroom in shitty motels.

“Shiv being in control of our every move is what helped Mom and Pa, Aunt Liz and George Senior keep the farm. Shiv being in control of everything we’ve done has helped countless family farmers across the country keep their land and business. Just because she’s not another bim like the ones you chase doesn’t mean you get to treat her like garbage,” Art stated in a stern voice.

“I trust her judgement more than I trust you,” Edmund stated in defense of his sister as he stood toe to toe with George, “so I’m going to follow her lead. If she goes along with your plan, fine, but the second she thinks something is going south, I’m listening to every word she says. She’s kept us safe, alive, and together for this long, and I know I’m not as smart as her, but I’m not dumb enough to question whether or not she can get us out of the country safely.” George took a step forward and peered down his nose at Edmund with his hands balled tightly into fists.

“Are you threatening me, kid?” he asked as he lowered his voice to sound more intimidating to the twenty-three-year-old before him.

“George,” Walter’s firm voice cut through the thick tension of the room as he watched his older brother peer down at Edmund with a fiercely dangerous gaze dancing on his face. “We’re doing this your way! We’re on the way to meet EST. Stop picking fights.” At the sound of his younger brother’s pleading voice, George took a step back and cracked his knuckles before dismissing his cousins and turning his attention out the dingy window of their terrible motel room.

Just as the tension began to die down in the room, Shiv emerged feeling more confident in her trousers and blouse than she had in the evening gown she had worn the night before. Her eyes caught the frustration that Edmund’s face held as well as the strain crossing Art’s chest, and she did her best to shield her gaze from Walter’s rosy cheeks. Shiv sighed as she dropped onto her cot to lace her short heeled Victorian boots around her stocking clad feet. She wasn’t going to be the first to apologize between she and George, and maybe it was that stubbornness that had him angry with her to begin with, but Shiv was stronger than him in more ways than one. Sooner or later, he’d realize he needed her more than she needed him, and then he’d be crawling to her and his apologies would spill from his mouth for all of the grievances he caused her.

“While you came home early, Eddy and Walt were able to get one of EST’s members to reveal his identity to them,” Art stated as he held out a scarf for his sister to take.

“We hit it off easily,” Walter said with a kind smile as he looked over to Siobhan in hopes that her anger towards George no longer resonated on her face. “Rook, or JP was the one we met. The only other person from EST there besides him was Slim, his real name is Brandon. The Gun and Baze were there, but left before we could meet them.”

“Rook and Slim told us we can meet up with them at a diner across town for breakfast as long as we don’t bring any weapons,” Eddy said with a stern voice.

“What if they’re just trying to ambush you? Meet some drunk people and set up a time to screw them over the next day?” Siobhan asked as she knitted her eyebrows together curiously.

“Well,” Art sighed disapprovingly at his sister before offering her a blade that balanced on his fingertips, “there’s a reason we call you Shiv.”

A wicked smirk fell over the woman’s face as she felt the cool metal between her fingers. Ever since she was a little girl, Shiv was fascinated by throwing knives. She excelled in archery and was a clean shot with a rifle, but her mother kept her from going on family hunting trips with her brothers and father. It’s impolite for a lady to do such things a man should do for her, her mother would say; unfortunately, that same sentence was never a good enough when she used it as an attempt to get out of doing farm work. Ever curious, while her father and brothers were away on their hunting trips, Siobhan would steal her mother’s kitchen knives, retreat a safe distance from the house further back on their property, and throw the blades into tree trunks. After a while, Shiv became just as good at handling a blade as she was at archery and shooting.

Siobhan took the knife from her brother’s fingertips and slipped it into a small holster wrapped around her ankle beneath the flow of her trousers. Immediately, she noticed the rather unpleasant look George was giving her. His straight nose was pointed up in the air and pinched as he watched his cousin try to hide the only protection the group would have other than their fists.

“It would be less conspicuous if you wore a skirt,” he commented with a snide glance over his shoulder towards Shiv. She narrowed her eyes at him and bit her tongue as she watched him continue to wag his. “We’re seriously putting our only chance of survival if something goes wrong in the hands of your little sister?” he commented to Arthur.

“No, you’re putting your chance of survival incase anything goes wrong in my original plan—approach them straightforward without this deceitful, ‘let’s be friends’ bullshit,” Shiv snapped as she grabbed her coat, threw it over her shoulders, and bundled her hands into mittens to keep herself from punching her cousin.

“Let’s just go,” Walter sighed as he and Art eagerly left the room and made their way into the cold morning air of Minnesota. George followed his brother and cousin while Edmund and Siobhan locked the door and paced along behind the group.

The walk was rather refreshing for Shiv. She stayed with Eddy most of the time and the pair simply examined the city—the buildings they passed, the people who nodded and kindly said hello, the children who played in the snow outside of their homes. Both found themselves falling victim to the undeniable jealousy of the strangers they passed, and in an unspoken manner, the pair empathized with the other by remembering the phrase they’d often shared with one another on their journey north: Maybe in Canada. As Shiv lost herself in the one question she had regarding her plan, what happens when we get to Canada? her family was quickly approaching the diner that had come into sight. As Eddy realized they were closing in on the place he, Art, and Shiv viewed to be a target—a place that held the potential of a dangerous interaction—he hastened his pace to get ahead of the group.

As the group of five entered the restaurant, Eddy and Walter positioned themselves at the front of the group and spoke in kind, gentlemanly tones. “We’re meeting some friends here, Johnny and Brandon. They wouldn’t happen to be here already, would they?” With a small smile on her face, the young woman at the hostess stand escorted the group to a corner of the restaurant that was sparce of patrons other than a small group of four huddled into one side of a rather long booth. George placed himself at the far, right side of the table opposite of a man with a full, long beard and a broad, stout build, and Shiv rolled her eyes at the fact that although they were doing this his way, he was still the one to size up EST and place himself accordingly. Art slid in beside George, followed by Shiv, and then Eddy and Walter, who chose to sit opposite of the man they met at the speakeasy last night.

“So Slim and I met Walt and Eddy last night, but who are the rest of you?” Rook asked as his eyes trailed the rest of the table and stopped when they reached the young woman who refused to look any of them in the face.

“George,” the eldest of the group said with authority. “I’m Walt’s older brother and the rest are our cousins. This is Art, and you’ve already met Eddy.”

“But who is she?” Rook asked George rather pointedly.

“Yes, who is she?” a rather smooth and low voice called out softly. Shiv could tell it came from whomever was sitting across from her, and in a moment of defiance, she pulled her eyes up and snapped.

“Who’s asking?” She could feel a hot ball of lead plummet into her stomach as soon as her eyes met those of the man across from her. Those blue-green orbs attached to a head of slicked back blonde hair teased her almost as much as the smirk on his face.

“The Gun.” With those two words, Shiv held her breath and tried to think of a world where she hadn’t screwed over their chances of getting out of the country by insulting some man coming onto her at a bar, but she was coming up short. “Founder and leader of the EST,” he said before introducing his counter parts as Rook, Slim, and Baze. “Now, care to give me your name, doll?”

“Shiv,” she said through tight gritted teeth.

“Why Shiv?” Rook asked as he tried to diffuse the unknown tension between Shive and The Gun.

“Would you like to find out?” she threatened only to have Arthur and Edmund each place a firm hand on either shoulder.

“Her name is Siobhan,” Walter explained, “Shiv is just a shortened version.” Without thinking twice, The Gun turned towards the men on either side of him and whispered something before he turned to face Shiv again with a smirk on his face.

“So,” he said as he turned to face the entire group before him. “What are we working with here?”

“What do you mean?” Arthur asked as he watched the men before him carefully eye over each of his family members.

“Rook and Slim said you wanted to do business? Is that wrong?” Shiv gave an I-told-you-so glance towards George, who grumbled and growled under his breath. “What are we working with? Who’s the leader of this operation? How did you get here? What do you want?”

“The leader of the operation is m—” George tried to assign himself the role of leader, only for his voice to be covered by Arthur and Eddy saying, “Shiv.”

“Seriously? Her?” Baze questioned as he looked between George, Shiv, and The Gun. “You’re not really going to entertain this, are you?” he asked The Gun as he watched his leader’s face. He wasn’t mulling over whether or not to seriously consider the people before him; he was intently watching the woman that sat in front of him—he’d already made up his mind and that was slowly becoming clear to Baze, Slim, and Rook.

“Tell us about your gang and we’ll find a place for you to fit in with us.” As The Gun spoke, it was clear he was only speaking to Shiv, which angered her based on their single interaction the night before, but also put her mind at ease, because now she wasn’t going to have to fight George on anything.

“Open any national paper and you’ll learn all you need to,” she said in an apathetic tone as she dismissed his curiosity.

“Papers lie. We know that much by now, so tell us, what really is the Nevin-Klaff gang?” Suddenly, Shiv could feel something touching her leg beneath the table. Out of sight of everyone before her, something had grazed her knee, and after subtle, reassuring raise of The Gun’s eyebrows, she pushed her hand along her thigh until her fingers met what felt like a small scrap of paper. Quickly, she pulled her hands back with the paper held between her fingers, and then she tucked it under her leg.

“George started out running moonshine for a few, family run farms to help them get the money needed to pay the bank do they can keep their land and continue to make a living. Art joined him after a short while, I forced them into letting me help, and then Eddy and Walt had joined up as well. We don’t hurt people; we transport spirits, take what’s been taken, and help the little people stay alive.”

“What about the train you supposedly robbed in Nebraska?” he probed with his eyes narrowed and his voice lowered.

“What about the shootout you supposedly had that killed a man?” she questioned back with an equally falsified newspaper account regarding EST as the one he was referring to about Nevin-Klaff. With a flash of her eyes in his direction, he realized he couldn’t wait any longer for her to open the piece of paper he’d given her.

“I want to speak with you privately,” he stated as he looked to his crew and stood. It was a standard step in the process of getting into business—The Gun talking to the leader of the gang he would be working with—but Baze, Slim, and Rook still didn’t know what exactly The Gun had planned. They knew they needed another gang of roughly their numbers to work a job with them, but they didn’t know the job, the location, or any details relative to his plan.

“She doesn’t go anywhere without us,” George stated firmly as his jealousy towards Shiv’s role began to overcome him.

“If that were true, you wouldn’t have been talking with some strumpet when your cousin was walking back to your motel alone.” His voice was even as he delivered his observation from the night before, and a realization clicked in Shiv’s head.

“I’ll be fine,” she said in a reassuring tone to her brothers as she rose from her seat and paced away from the gathering to follow a complete stranger to an unknown location just to prove that her realization was right.

Next Chapter: TBA