Chapter Text
Maurice Leblanc climbs the stairs of Amber House, to make a last check on the children before bed. He was given control of the small dormitory after his abrupt appointment as the school’s new music teacher, and is now responsible for the wellbeing of sixteen children between the ages of ten and fifteen. Though he’s little able to judge success on this front, after three days, they’re all at least still alive.
“Sir?”
“Oh!” Maurice nearly stumbles over Amber House’s youngest resident, reaching for his vest pocket before he recognizes him. “Lewis! What are you doing up?”
Lewis Martins, though only ten, has already been at the school for two years; his parents recognized early on that his intelligence was far beyond the local grammar schools, and indeed it is nearly beyond the school’s own curriculum, though the maths teacher gives Lewis private instruction in advanced topics.
“Couldn’t…” Lewis yawns. “Couldn’t sleep, Sir.”
“You might be able to sleep better if you were in bed?” Maurice suggests hopefully.
“I don’t feel so well. I don’t think I’ll be able to go to lessons tomorrow.”
“You were fine at dinner…” Maurice puts the back of his unbandaged hand to Lewis’ forehead briefly. Lewis makes a few theatrical coughs. “No fever...if you’re still feeling poorly tomorrow you can skip Chapel in the morning and see Dr. Willoughby in the infirmary. Now off to bed with you.”
“Yes, Sir…” Lewis doesn’t seem satisfied with his partial victory, but obediently returns to his room at the far end of the corridor under Maurice’s watchful eye.
With all his charges accounted for, Maurice can finally go to bed himself. He makes a last check down the hall as he blows out the lamps, then pushes open the door to his room at the head of the stairs with a tired sigh.
As soon as he steps into the dark room, someone grabs him around the waist and roughly drags him close. Maurice gasps as his hair is pulled out of the way and a hot kiss is pressed against his neck.
“How is it going?”
“Rey!” Silver sighs, putting his hand over the arm around his waist as Rey guides him towards the bed. “I thought you would never turn up.”
“Groundskeepers work nights,” Rey says. “Couldn’t get a free moment all weekend.” Silver tugs his leather jacket off as they sit on the edge of the bed: it smells like fresh grass and earth. Rey reaches for the blond wig and Silver tugs it off eagerly so that Rey can run his hands through his white hair underneath. “How are things with the students?”
“None of them suspect...class went alright, well, until I had to go to the infirmary. But…” Silver throws his arms around Rey’s neck, burying his face in his sturdy wool vest. “Children die so easily—the whole time in class, all I could think of was how many ways I could—how many ways they could—”
Rey grabs his hair again and pulls him down against the bed, kissing and stroking until Silver can barely remember what passes for his own name, let alone the stresses of the day.
“It’s only a few weeks,” Rey says between kisses along his collarbone. “You’ll be alright that long, won’t you?”
“Of course,” Silver says. How could he say anything else? They can’t very well back out of the scheme now, and all of it relies on Silver playing his role properly. The only time he was able to forget the potential for disaster was when he was with Dr. Willoughby in the infirmary.
Their target on this English ‘vacation’, Lord Bertram Carleton, is a reclusive financier who made his fortune turning impoverished tenants out of their homes and using the land for hunting preserves. Over the decades he’s collected scores of enemies, and in his old age rarely ventures outside his opulent mansion grounds without a troupe of bodyguards. One of the few public events he attends without this entourage is the annual spring concert at his alma mater, St. Daniel’s School For Boys, located in Kent.
After scrapping plans to waylay him on the road, Rey decided that the best plan of action would be to quietly lay a trap for him at the concert, and thus, after bribing an elderly but impoverished noblewoman for letters of reference and arranging for a humiliating accident for the music teacher, Maurice Leblanc and Raymond Michaels were installed at St. Daniel’s.
Though the first weekend is harrowing—Silver has rarely been surrounded by so many people he’s not going to kill for such a long time, and at times the violent overlay of his imagination starts to make him sick, forcing the thought of drownings and tiny slashed throats and falls down stairs—once he becomes accustomed to the environment, he slowly begins to relax. If he doesn’t think about their plans, the school is peaceful: ivy-draped brick walls echoing with the boys’ chatter and laughter, classrooms with warm maple panels and comfortingly full bookshelves, and the surprisingly pleasant, sunny infirmary.
Silver soon finds himself drifting there regularly, and not merely because it’s the only place in the school where he can get any alcohol. Dr. Willoughby is always friendly in a briskly comforting way, and the tidy infirmary with its faintly antiseptic scent is a welcome relief from the constant noise of the children.
This is the first time Silver has ever interacted so long with anyone he wasn’t in the assassination business with, for reasons that weren’t about infiltrating somewhere to access a target. The first few times he’s sure Cedric is about to notice something and Silver will be forced to kill him. He can barely follow Cedric’s one-sided conversation over all the different ways he keeps picturing him dead: strangled with the bandages from his medical chest, smothered on the infirmary bed, his throat cut with the small pocketknife Silver keeps in his vest.
But, to his continuing confusion, Cedric treats him entirely normally, without seeming to notice the blood staining his hands at all. Once or twice he remarks on ‘Maurice’ being ‘foreign’ but politely leaves the matter alone.
Silver had always thought it was too obvious what he was to make any attempt at passing for a real human.
The situation is so baffling that on most visits he just lets Cedric talk, afraid that if he speaks more than a few words the mask he wears will shatter and Cedric will see who he really is: the idea of Cedric recoiling from him in horror is almost worse than the idea of killing him to protect his and Rey’s secrets.
“You would have thought Father’s head was going to explode when I told him I wasn’t going into the navy,” Cedric laughs, setting another small muffin onto Silver’s plate. Cedric always pushes food at him, perhaps his quiet way of being welcoming, and though Silver never feels particularly hungry he tries not to refuse him. “There are doctors in the navy, he tried to tell me, but I didn’t much see the point of fixing boys up after they were shot up so they could be sent out to get themselves shot up again, you know? Bloody pointless. Er, sorry for my French. Er. Well. He didn’t speak to me for a week, after that, but Mother brought him round eventually. Was your family never against you going into music?”
Silver blinks as he tries to remember the story he had settled on. “My mother was in the opera in Paris for a while,” he says as he butters half the muffin. “Never primadonna, of course, but better than the chorus. But she had to retire early, and marry one of her patrons for...propriety.” He hopes that such a scandalous story would keep someone of British sensibilities from investigating further. “I think both of them were quite gratified when I showed talent.”
He isn’t sure whether he made up that part of the story because it was a useful explanation, or if it’s because he wishes that was what he actually had. If Silver ever had anything of a family, they must have already been gone, or never bothered with caring about him in the first place; there’s never been any sign anyone missed him. But someone must have cared for him at some point, enough to give him the musical training Rey had discovered... He can almost imagine Maurice Leblanc’s mother; she would have resembled her son very much, but with darker golden hair, worn up regally except when she could be persuaded to perform.
Silver shakes off the pathetic fantasy. “What’s this?” he asks, picking up a piece of paper sitting next to the tea tray. “Did you draw it?”
“Oh? Oh no!” Cedric snatches the paper away, but not before Silver has time to recognize himself in the picture of a young man at a piano. “I...I didn’t, I’m bloody rubbish at art, you ought to have seen what I would draw on my desk at grammar school...got laughed at by everybody...Lewis drew it this morning. I mean to put it away afterwards.”
“Lewis?”
“He said you told him he could skip his private maths lessons. Didn’t you?”
“Not that I remember...I’m sure I didn’t. I would have remembered. I’ll have to talk to him.”
“Don’t be too hard on him,” Cedric says. “You’re his favorite housemaster so far, I think. He doesn’t really belong here, but his parents are rich enough that the school doesn’t care…”
“Still, I can’t have him running off. Though I’m sure he wouldn’t come to any harm if he’s with you.”
“I try,” Cedric says, though he smiles as if Silver had just handed him a medal. “I usually take a bit of a stroll after tea. Can I walk you back to Amber House?”
“You’re too kind.”
Silver flinches a little as Cedric takes his arm, though Cedric doesn’t seem to notice. He has to get used to real people touching him if he’s going to keep up this charade, but he still feels about to jump out of his skin as they walk down the corridor.
Once they’re outside in the warm sun, things feel a little better. Cedric says pleasant things, though Silver’s senses are too on edge from his touch to respond properly. As they pass one of the flower beds outside the chapel, tucked in the shadow of Amber House, Cedric snaps off a white daisy and hands it to him.
“Merci,” Silver says, startled out of his English, and stares down at the flower in confusion until Cedric laughs and tucks it into the ribbon tying his wig back. “G...good day,” Silver stammers in a rush before ducking through the door and bolting up the stairs.
“You should try to get closer to that doctor,” Rey says as they watch Cedric walk back across the grounds. “He might be useful.”
“Closer?” Silver repeats, confused.
“He wants you,” Rey whispers in Silver’s ear before kissing his neck. “Can’t you tell?”
“Oh…?”
“Why else would he be spending so much time with you?”
“Oh.” Silver feels as if he’s fallen into a cold lake. Of course, that’s the most sensible explanation: there’s nothing else he’s good for, not among real people. It would be too much to hope for anything else. “Yes. You’re right.”