Chapter Text
As the light falls across the bed, Silver murmurs against Rey’s chest in his sleep, one of his hands tracing drowsily through Rey’s hair. Rey reaches up to interlace his fingers with Silver’s, kissing Silver’s knuckles and the back of his hand until he sighs softly and squeezes Rey's hand in return.
Rey loves waking up next to Silver, holding each other as if they are two ordinary men who happen to love each other enough to unite like this. Silver always looks so much more peaceful and relaxed when he sleeps, his bright white hair the only sign of what Rey has put him through.
Sometimes, in those few drowsy moments before Silver remembers the cruelty of the world, Rey can even make him smile.
He has no right to enjoy it this much, he knows. Silver would have never wanted him if Rey had not destroyed him first. No whole man could ever love someone like Rey, and yet Silver tries so yearningly to please him, as if he isn’t far more than Rey could ever deserve already.
It’s a warm night in late spring, but no matter the temperature, Silver always presses up against him, clinging as if he’s trying to ward off freezing to death in the Antarctic. Once, on a baking hot summer night in Algiers, Rey pulled Silver’s arms away and tried to gently push him out of bed, but the look of unguarded horror Silver was too sleepy to hide made him quickly relent. Rey has never rejected Silver since then—it’s the least he can do, after the nightmares he caused.
What kind of monster is he, to find so much pleasure in these nights?
Any other day, Rey would have let Silver sleep, rather than forcing him back into a reality even worse than his nightmares, but in their line of work timing is everything.
Rey pulls his hand loose and shakes Silver’s shoulder gently.
Silver pushes his hand away, the movement achingly ordinary. “‘Nother minute…”
“Come on, Silver…” Rey pulls Silver into a half-sitting position and tilts his chin up, brushing his sleep-tousled white hair out of his face and kissing between his eyebrows.
Finally Silver yawns and stretches, reaching up to rub his eyes. Rey leans in to kiss his lips lightly as Silver’s blue eyes open, but there are no smiles today—Rey watches as the sleepy warmth slowly fades from Silver’s face.
“Good morning,” Rey says, wincing internally at the cruelty even that simple phrase contains. “Busy day today.”
Silver nods, running his hands through his hair to smooth it as Rey buttons his shirt.
“Silver…” Rey hesitates. “Silver, you know if you don’t like the job, there are other ways we could—”
“I’m fine,” Silver says quickly, glancing down at Rey’s hands.
They both know it’s not true, but Rey can’t bring himself to confront him over it.
“Rey, about yesterday.” Silver catches one of Rey’s hands in his. “I, I’m so—”
“No!”
Silver flinches at the shout, his eyes going wide and hurt the way they had when Rey hit him. Rey feels sick. He didn't mean to hit him—he never wants to hurt Silver. But it seems he's incapable of doing anything else.
Rey knows he doesn’t have any real right to stop Silver drinking, not after driving him to it in the first place. But Silver is already so small, and with how much he drinks and how little he eats, Rey feels like he’s watching him slowly dissolve from the inside out, until not even the shell of the man Rey killed remains.
Silver is still staring at him nervously.
“It's fine,” Rey says with a sigh, reaching out to pat Silver’s shoulder as he gets up. Then he remembers the one thing that might work on him. “It’s fine. As long as you can do the job.”
Silver’s two main drives are his desire to perform well enough for Rey, and his desperation for relief from the hell he lives in. Rey isn’t sure which will win out, in the end—for Rey, every day that he wakes up with Silver still alive beside him is a good day, but for Silver, the situation is very different.
“I’ll get ready.” Silver slips out of bed and any brief pretense of normalcy is over.
Silver and Battista leave first, after putting on their disguises. Silver gives Rey a quick nod as he adjusts the short dark wig. It makes him look much younger than he actually is.
Rey picks up the hat and settles it on the wig. “Looks good on you.”
Silver blinks and shrugs. He never seems to believe it when Rey compliments him—no matter what Rey says, even when they're in bed together, Silver only takes it as evidence of how strange Rey's tastes are for wanting him.
“See you,” Rey says. “Don't get hurt.”
Battista makes a soft scoffing noise as he follows Silver out the door, ignoring Rey's glare. Rey always worries when Silver and Battista are left alone together, but he can't trust Battista to work solo either. Silver himself is proof enough of that.
Rey waits ten minutes before getting his own disguise on—a worn leather jacket over a rough suit—and leaving through the back door of the bar.
As they thought, getting into the Cardinal's estate is a relatively simple matter, with the overgrown garden obscuring the view of the wall as he climbs over. But it's getting out that will be difficult, with the tangle of hallways inside the mansion.
Rey slips quietly along a statue lined corridor. The door to the cardinal’s office is framed by twin statues of Saint Michael and the demon Lucifer; Rey hides behind Lucifer as a guard passes by on his rounds. Precisely at half-past eleven, as dictated by the Cardinal’s demanding schedule, a maid came bringing a tray of coffee and small cakes. Rey slips inside the office as the door starts to fall closed behind her, and though the light is so dim it’s hardly necessary, a short column bearing a large vase filled with heavy-scented lilies provides the perfect concealment to crouch behind until she leaves.
Silver and Battista are scheduled for eleven forty-five, as the cardinal devotes himself to his letters at his fine leather-covered writing desk. The entire study is full of luxurious furniture, paid for by the cardinal’s still at embezzlement and blackmail.
The clock behind the cardinal’s desk ticks past eleven forty-five, approaching eleven fifty. Rey stays in his crouch behind the vase, resisting the urge to move and relieve the cramping in his legs.
What happened to Silver? He never should have left him alone with Battista. He wouldn’t even have known to suspect—
Rey’s helplessly escalating concern is interrupted by a distant pounding at the mansion’s entrance. “Police!” someone shouts.
Recognizing Silver’s voice, Rey catches a sigh of relief before it can escape.
“Police! Open up!”
As presumed, the cardinal rushes for the entrance to his secret panic room behind a bookshelf—the one an architect had been bribed tens of thousands to create without leaving evidence on the building plans (and then bribed considerably less to reveal). Rey waits until the door is open before stepping out of his hiding place. The cardinal drops silently as Rey plunges the knife into his back. Rey kicks an obstructing leg out of the way and slams the door of the panic room on his dying gasps.
By this point, the activity at the mansion’s entry is moving up the stairs to the wing where the office is. Rey looks around and begins flinging open cabinets, scattering anything that looks valuable across the floor and the desk.
He can guess the hurried explanation Silver is giving the startled maids and butler escorting him up the stairs. An art thief, after managing a lucky escape from a police wagon taking him to prison, was sighted near the Cardinal’s mansion. Rey grabs a painting of the Annunciation off the wall for verisimilitude as the door opens.
No matter how much they talked it over beforehand, Rey can’t help a brief flash of fear as Silver levels the police revolver at him. “Drop the painting, thief!” Silver shouts.
Rey lays the painting on the desk and raises his hands slowly. As Silver steps closer, Rey tries not to be distracted by how well the police uniform fits him—the sharply tailored blue jacket with its silver braid displays the clean lines of his body and the predatory poise he carries himself with, without exposing how worryingly thin he feels under the loose silk shirts he usually prefers.
The butler, standing safely out of the way just outside the doorway, takes a brief, discreet glance around, then nods in satisfaction that his employer must be safely tucked away in the panic room.
This is no time to get carried away, Rey knows. They need to get out of the building as fast as possible, without calling more attention to themselves than necessary. He can’t afford to enjoy this.
“Turn around and put your hands behind your back,” Silver orders. His voice is stern, but there’s a soft shadow of concern in his eyes, something of the doctor’s bedside manner emerging.
As Rey turns, he catches a glimpse of a small smear of blood on one of the leather-bound books just as the butler starts to move towards the panic room. Once one of the cuffs closes around his wrists Rey spins away, pulling to the full length of the chain.
“Don’t move!” Silver’s free hand hovers over the holstered gun but his eyes are wide and confused.
This isn’t enough, Rey thinks, pulling on the chain again. “Screw you! He’d never have even missed it!”
Silver blinks a few times and Rey wonders if he’s pushed things too far—if Silver freezes up now their cover will be blown.
The only warning he gets is Silver’s eyes going cold, then his legs are swept out from under him. Rey can only admire the efficient grace of Silver’s movements, even as his knees hit the marble floor with bruising force. Silver flips the gun out of its holster and strikes Rey across the temple with the butt before levelling it at his head again.
“Are you more inclined to behave now?”
A strange delight wells up in Rey as he blinks a trickle of blood out of his eyes and stares past the barrel of the gun up at Silver’s icy eyes. This is what Silver should do to him, after all. If only things could all end like this...but there’s too many things left to do.
But—if it was an accident—
Silver’s finger is on the trigger.
Is it loaded?
If it is loaded, does Silver know?
It would all be so easy, and far kinder than Rey deserves. He could tug away again...it would be so easy for Silver’s finger to slip…
But there’s Battista to think about, waiting expectantly in the car outside.
And though it would be easy enough for Rey to die, Silver would be left alive, and what would happen to him? The real police would shoot him like a mad dog, not caring that it’s Rey who made him this way, Rey who tore away his natural instincts of kindness and generosity, Rey who forced him to climb this pile of corpses together.
The ice slowly fades from Silver’s eyes as Rey lets the moment pass.
Silver pulls him to his feet by the chain, turning him around and fastening the other cuff before shoving him towards the door. “Move!”
Rey stumbles in the doorway and would have fallen if not for Silver’s inconspicuous steadying hand at his elbow.
What seems like only moments later they’re at the entry to the mansion. Silver gives a few parting lies to the butler about court dates as he pushes Rey towards the police wagon that Battista is holding open.
“If you suspect anything else missing, our detectives can—”
“Oh no, thank you, you’ve been most helpful, officer,” the butler says quickly.
“Very well. Get in!”
With his hands chained, Rey slips clumsily on the steps into the police wagon, landing in an awkward heap on the rough wooden floor. The strange joyful feeling returns—though in a just world, this wouldn’t be mere playacting.
Silver climbs in after him and Battista slams the door. They wait in motionless silence until the engine starts and the wagon rattles into the street.
“Oh, my god...my god, I’m sorry…” Silver grabs Rey’s arm to help him onto the bench, then feels around his uniform for the handcuff keys. “God, why would you make me...you’re bleeding, oh god…” Giving up on the keys, Silver pulls out one of the small hairpins fastening his wig and kneels on the floor next to Rey. “I didn’t think...there was so little time...does it hurt much? I never should have—”
As soon as the cuffs fall free, Rey bends over Silver, catching his chin in both hands and kissing away the undeserved apologies. Silver goes stiff for a moment, then relaxes, opening his mouth for Rey and nipping at his bottom lip delicately.
“I’m fine,” Rey says as he pulls away. “You didn’t hurt me...not much, anyway.” Far less than Silver should have done, in any case. “I know what I’m doing.” Silver never even had the chance to know. “In fact...in fact you could even...we could…” Rey trails off. He has no right to take away even those cruelly blissful nights together that serve as a brief reprieve from Silver’s life of violence.
Silver stares up at him with a small furrow between his brows, darkened from their usual white with Sophie’s kohl pencil.
“Never mind all that,” Rey says quickly, pulling Silver up beside him and putting an arm around his waist. Silver wraps an arm around him as well, and takes the police cap off so he can rest his head on Rey’s shoulder with a soft sigh.
Rey squeezes him gently as the vibrations of the automobile flow through them, soothing the aches and stiffness of today’s adventure. With the uniform, wig, and makeup, Silver looks like someone else entirely. Not Silver, but not Michel, either. Someone Rey could love properly, without having to ruin first.
“We’ll have to move again, after this,” Rey says. “We’re safe for now, but they’re going to check that room soon enough.” He reaches up to rest his hand in the dark wig as Silver presses closer. “I was getting tired of Italy anyway, weren’t you?”
“Mm,” Silver affirms tiredly—Rey remembers suddenly how much he felt him shaking last night.
“Geneva might be nice...or Budapest...what do you think?”
“Oh, anywhere…” Silver’s eyes start to drift shut. “’s long as we’re together…”
“Could go to Paris. Wouldn’t you like to see that mad tower they built for the last World’s Fair?” Rey says, feeling an odd sort of desperation for Silver to actually want something.
“Paris…” Silver murmurs as Rey strokes the wig gently. “Might be nice…”
Rey tries to hear it as Silver’s own wishes, not just an exhausted echo of what he thinks Rey wants to hear. That’s another lie, just like everything else about their lives, but he can nearly convince himself. “Paris it is, then.”