Chapter Text
It’s getting harder and harder to climb out of the void every morning, cold shadows and unintelligible scraps of voices clinging to him, dragging him back as he struggles to reach the surface. What Silver fears most is waking up as an empty shell again, not even remembering this half-life. Sometimes it feels like Rey is the only thing connecting him to this world—when they’re in bed together Silver clings to him like a warm beacon, trying not to be swept away.
The veil of alcohol helps to dampen the beckoning cries of the void, but every day it seems to take more and more to drown it out.
“How many of those have you had?” Rey says.
Silver looks down at the glass sitting on the map and tries to remember filling it. Isn’t this something he should remember?
“Silver?”
Silver shrugs, not wanting to admit to Rey how broken he’s become. “A few.”
Silver hates the concern Rey looks at him with at times like this, the strange cautious gentleness as if he’s a doomed wolf cub with his back broken by some hunter’s trap. He can still cut throats well enough. He can still pay off the debt he owes Rey.
Rey makes a grab for the glass and Silver slides it out of the way, smearing a trail of brandy across the map. (He prefers absinthe, when he can get it, but after Rey and Sophie’s screaming row as Silver lay on a couch in an unresponsive haze Casa Sophie no longer carries absinthe.)
“Jesus, Silver, how long have you been up? Two hours? You can’t keep on like this.”
“Lay off,” Silver says into the glass as he takes another drink.
Battista has gone very quiet—not that he ever talks much around Silver. He sinks down in his chair, looking back and forth between Silver and Rey.
“At least eat something.” Rey pushes the plate of toast at him and Silver winces, his stomach turning at the smell of the hot butter. “Can’t very well kill anyone if you’re starving to death, can you.”
Silver’s been starving ever since he woke up in Rey’s bed, consuming himself in his efforts to stay afloat amid the void. “I’m fine.” Searching for a chance to change the subject, he points at a random section of the map. “We’ll have to do something about the dogs.”
For a moment Rey is silent, and Silver raises the glass again to drain it.
“Damn it…” Rey lunges from his chair suddenly, reaching for the glass, and Silver jumps back, his own chair toppling over behind him. Rey’s hand closes on his wrist instead, his other hand gripping the front of his coat.
“Let go!” Silver protests. “Why should you care how much I’m drinking? I need—let go!” He flings the last few fingers of brandy in Rey’s face.
They stand frozen for a moment, Silver watching the brandy drip down Rey’s face into his open collar, onto his cross necklace. He hears the slap, but he’s almost on the floor before it feels it, a sharp humiliation spreading across his cheek.
Rey stares down at him, his hand still raised. His eyes are wide, and Silver tries to read the expression on his face. Disappointment, he thinks.
The cracked glass rolls under the table.
Somehow Silver can’t make himself move, even when Rey turns with a wordless growl and leaves, slamming the door behind him. He stays there on the floor, feeling stupid and worthless, until finally Battista moves to help him up.
Still, no matter the tension between them, there's still a Cardinal who has to die. They gather around the map again an hour later with an unspoken agreement not to say anything about the events of the morning.
“I don't like this,” Battista says, once Rey has finished his explanation and laid out the roles each of them would play in the assassination.
“You're here to drive, not to make commentary,” Rey snaps, not even glancing in his direction.
Sometimes, Silver wishes Rey would treat him more like Battista. Perhaps if Rey only used him, he wouldn’t feel so desperate to please him, so agonized when he failed. But without Rey’s affections, without that anchor amid the void, he would have been swept away into the darkness long ago.
Rey turns towards him and Silver immediately feels the pull of yearning to be good enough for the effort Rey put into saving him. “Are you sure you’re up for this, Silver?”
“Of course,” Silver replies, his fingers tightening around his now water-filled glass. (Rey certainly knows how much scotch Silver went through before they reconvened, but he mercifully doesn’t mention it.) “It’s not Voltaire. We’ll be in and out before they get a chance to see through our act.”
Silver is used to acting, after all. He’s been playing at being alive for three years, and well enough that nearly everyone is convinced. All except Silver himself—and Rey.
Rey keeps looking at him, as if expecting Silver to shatter into a thousand pieces before his eyes like the broken brandy glass. Silver, in turn, stares steadfastly at the map, because if he meets Rey’s eyes and sees pity in them he truly will collapse.
“Alright,” Rey says finally. “We're settled on the plan, then. Battista and I will go out to get everything we need for tomorrow. Silver, you wait here and try not to...you just wait for us to come back.”
Silver nods, not looking up.
As soon as the door closes behind Rey and Battista he all but runs to the cabinet to open a new bottle of Scotch.
That night, Silver hesitates for several minutes outside the door to Rey’s room before knocking. The thought of Rey rejecting him for his failure, throwing him out into the dark to face the void alone, is paralyzing.
But the thought of spending all night with nothing to connect him to reality is worse.
Silver knocks softly. “Rey?”
Rey puts a bottle of wine down on the nightstand with a wry smile as Silver opens the door. He’ll destroy his liver one of these days, Silver thinks idly, with a vague sense of dread. What would happen to him, with Rey gone?
“Can’t sleep?” Rey says, forcing a light tone.
Bracing himself for Rey to shout at him again, demanding to be left alone, Silver nods.
“That makes two of us.”
“Please…” Please hold me, please touch me, I need to know it matters to someone that I still exist… It would sound so pathetic to put into words, so broken, but Rey doesn’t mock him, only moves over on the bed so there’s room enough for Silver, putting an arm around his waist as he sits down.
Ray runs his fingers through Silver’s hair as he pulls him close, making him shiver at the sensation. “So beautiful…” Rey whispers, pressing a kiss to the white hair at his temple.
Someone less broken might be happy, at being called beautiful. Silver doesn’t remember ever feeling happy. But at least, if Rey wants him, if Rey finds him beautiful, he won’t have to face the void alone.
He can feel real, at least for another night.
Silver puts his arms around Rey’s neck and kisses him, tasting the wine as he pulls him down.
This pattern between the two of them has gone on nearly as long as Silver’s memory extends. Rey feels like a great star that Silver orbits, hoping to catch some of his warmth and light—however little he deserves it.
Silver starts to unbutton his shirt, but Rey catches his hand, kissing the inside of his wrist softly, then the tips of his fingers. Rey loves his hands for some reason that Silver doesn’t quite understand. They’re serviceable enough for killing, he supposes. He prefers Rey’s hands, how they seem large and strong enough to hold him to this world even when the void tries to drag him away.
Rey finally loses interest in Silver’s hands and starts kissing along his collarbone, then lower.
“More…” Silver begs. “Please, Rey…”
Nights like this, when Rey holds him tight and roughly whispers gentle things in four different languages—when Rey makes him feel so much that he can almost forget the void lying in wait for him—Silver wonders if this is what it is like, to love someone.
If this is what it is like to be happy.