Chapter Text
Cedric is just about to take tea, a cheerful if not impressive spread of scones and jam, when he hears the bustle in the corridor, heading rapidly in the direction of his infirmary.
“Really, boys, I’m perfectly—”
“Oh, no, Sir!”
“Have to be careful, Sir!”
“Dreadful accident, Sir, ought to be safe…”
The children have found another soft target, Cedric thinks with a smile. We’ll see how long this one lasts. Halfway into the spring term, the stern music instructor, a veteran with a short temper and a distasteful reliance on the cane, abruptly quit after an escalating series of pranks left him with damage to more than just his pride. The boys have clearly already discovered they can get away with far more with his replacement as, judging by the class schedule on the wall, they’ve managed to find an excuse to escape their lessons barely a quarter hour in.
“Honestly, you needn’t—”
Cedric opens the door and freezes dead as he finds himself nearly nose-to-nose with the most beautiful man he’s ever seen in his life.
“G...good morning…” he stammers after a foolish silence. One of the boys in the back of the group bunched behind the teacher snickers a little. “Er. What seems to be the trouble?” he continues, standing aside so the music teacher can enter the infirmary.
“Nothing worth mentioning, really, but the children…” the music teacher turns to the boys bunched outside the doorway. “I’ll be fine, I promise. Now go back to the music room and work on memorizing the Handel lyrics until dinner. Lewis, you can take roll afterwards.”
“Yes, Sir!” the boys chorus with a brazen display of false enthusiasm, before taking off down the corridor.
“They’re surely off to play in the field,” Cedric remarks as he closes the door on the boys’ laughter.
The music teacher shrugs a little. “What else was I to do? They seemed so concerned…”
Cedric turns, then takes a quick step back as he realizes the motion would put his arm nearly around the music teacher’s waist. Hoping he hadn’t noticed, he gestures towards one of the infirmary beds from a more decorous distance. “Er. Well, you hardly need that. Just a moment.” He hurries over to pull out the other chair from the tea table. “There.”
He knows he must look like quite the idiot, but the music teacher only smiles a little as he sits down. “Thank you. We haven’t been introduced, I think.” He has a slight accent—French, Cedric thinks. He’s never met anyone from France before. Are they all so beautiful?
“You started today, didn’t you? I missed the morning assembly, fetching the post from town.” He extends a hand. “Cedric Willoughby.”
“Maurice Leblanc.”
As Maurice reaches out in return Cedric can see what the reason for his visit is at once. “What happened here?” He can feel Maurice’s pulse jump a little as he takes his wrist gently in hand to examine the bruising, peeling back the torn cuff a little with his other hand.
“One of the piano lids slipped. It’s fine, really, I’ve had—far worse…” his breath hitches a little and the last words come out very faint.
Cedric makes a quick exploration. “Well, it’s not broken, but it’s clearly not nothing,” he says after a few moments of gentle probing cause a wince or two but no more alarming reactions. “Wait there, I’ll see what I can do for you.”
“You are very kind.”
Once he’s at his desk, looking through his medical things, Cedric is distracted by the realization that this vantage point gives him the perfect view of Maurice in profile. The new music teacher is astonishingly beautiful, with a delicate grace that brings to mind one of the girl Hamlets of the stage. He’s dressed in a white ruffled shirt and soft blue waistcoat and trousers, with his shoulder-length blond hair caught back by a matching blue ribbon. Altogether, he looks like some Pre-Raphaelite muse of music.
Cedric finally gathers his thoughts enough to find some cooling balms and bandages. “Fix you right up,” he says in the brisk cheerful voice he uses on the students, as he lays the things on the tea table.
It takes some effort to keep up the professional bearing once he’s rubbing the balm into Maurice’s delicate wrist. He has slender, skillful fingers—in another life he could easily have been a doctor, and far more suited to the work than Cedric. But the idea of him sitting at a keyboard, or wielding the bow of a violin, is entirely enchanting.
Cedric ties off the wrapping with some reluctance. “There,” he says. “I’m sure you’ll be right as rain in a few days, but I can have a look at it again if it bothers you.”
“Thank you.” Maurice smiles again, though it doesn’t alter the air of gentle sadness about him.
“Tea?” Cedric says abruptly as Maurice starts to rise. His voice cracks a little and he coughs to disguise it. Maurice blinks up at him from behind his small frameless spectacles; his brows and lashes are nearly transparent, like tiny ice particles. “Er. You’ll need to keep up your strength to corral those boys, anyway.”
“Indeed.”
Eager to show himself a good host, Cedric lays out some scones on plates and sets the small tub of lemon jam in front of Maurice. After filling Maurice’s teacup, he’s halfway through pouring his own when he remembers that, not expecting company or patients today, he spiced the tea with medicinal sherry. It’s too late to do anything and Maurice takes a delicate sip, blinks, then downs the rest of the cup at once.
“...More?”
“Please.”
Perhaps it’s the sherry, or the homey scones made by the chaplain’s wife, but Maurice soon warms enough to give more than his previous distant single-phrase responses, though only the tiniest bit of color suffuses his snowy-pale complexion.
“So you’ve never been to England before now?” Cedric asks as he watches Maurice spread butter on one of the scones. “You speak the language so well.”
“My grandmother was English,” Maurice explains. “But I never lived here. We always travelled…” Over the course of several scones, Cedric gathers that after a sudden downturn in the family fortunes meant he could no longer pursue his career as a concert pianist, a great-aunt on the English side offered Maurice references to the school.
A gentle aesthete of Maurice’s type is surely less than well suited to the strict environment of a British boarding school. Cedric decides to look out for him in the future—his professional duty calls for it, after all.
“Thank you very much for the tea,” Maurice says finally, making a small bow as he rises.
“Don’t mention it,” Cedric says. “I’m happy to share any time, if you need an escape from the boys.”
Maurice covers a tiny laugh as Cedric holds the door open for him. “Perhaps I shall. Good day, Dr. Willoughby.”
Cedric stares as Maurice slowly vanishes down the long corridor, watching the way his blond hair rustles gently with his graceful steps, the blue ribbon rippling down his back.
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.”
Chapter Text
Cedric knows he ought to be happy that Maurice has started visiting the infirmary more and more often. That’s exactly what he wanted, after all, to be able to spend more time with the beautiful foreigner, stare at him smiling as Cedric pours the tea, listen to him laugh at his jokes.
Cedric was thrilled, at first, to see Maurice smile and laugh more, after being so quiet and withdrawn during his first few visits. He’s eating more, as well, rather than merely taking a few polite bites of a muffin or biscuit.
Still, something seems just a little off. Maurice’s smile doesn’t always seem to extend to his blue eyes, and the few times Cedric has gone to get something and then been able to look at him without Maurice realizing he’s being looked at, his face goes entirely flat and blank.
Cedric can’t think what he might have done wrong. Was it the flower? Cedric didn’t mean anything by it, nothing that he could put into words, in any case. He had given it to Maurice without even thinking, moved by some strange desire he can’t exactly name.
He wanted to show Maurice that there could be beauty in England too, he supposes.
But he must have taken it the wrong way, and as the most junior instructor at St. Daniel’s, perhaps Maurice felt it would be inappropriate to turn down Cedric’s standing invitation, even if Cedric was the most junior member of the staff after him.
“How are the children treating you?” Cedric asks, trying to find his way back to wherever they had been before he put things wrong.
“Fine,” Maurice says brightly, but his eyes stay cold. “The preparations for the concert are going well. They’re a very talented group of boys.”
“Well, now they finally have someone they look up to enough to try,” Cedric says.
Maurice blushes a little, with a small but more genuine smile. “I...I’m not…” he says faintly, looking down at his hands.
“Nonsense,” Cedric says firmly, setting another biscuit on Maurice’s plate—Maurice reaches out a split second too early and their fingers brush. Cedric pulls his hand away quickly. “I know they take advantage when they can,” he continues, hoping what he’s feeling doesn’t show in his voice. Most inappropriate, the things he’s thinking, and about a colleague! He shoves the images down. “They’re only excited since they know they won’t get caned for it, but they really do love you.”
Brushing a few stray strands of hair back behind his ear, Maurice reaches for his teacup, still without looking up at Cedric. “I try,” he says.
He seems to have shifted closer to the way he was when they first met. Cedric feels like this must be an improvement, that he’s willing to show his natural shyness rather than force a vivacity he doesn’t actually feel. Hopefully, this means Cedric still has a chance to deepen their friendship.
“I...I wonder,” Cedric begins cautiously, hoping he isn’t pressing his luck too much. “Er. The Latin master is sending the boys with the top marks to see a cricket match, next weekend. He asked me to chaperone them for him, but there really ought to be two. Would you like to go? The weather should be nice.”
Maurice blinks as he takes a dainty bite of the biscuit. “Oh.”
His eyebrows tilt a little and Cedric’s heart sinks. He thought this was the most proper kind of outing he could ask Maurice on, without giving him any wrong ideas, but perhaps even that was a little bit much.
“Certainly,” Maurice says finally.
“Oh! Wonderful, I’m sure you’ll love it,” Cedric says in a rush. “The train tickets and all that are already sorted, you just need to meet us at the gate. Saturday morning at eight. I’ll pack a lunch for the two of us,” he adds, emboldened by the way Maurice is looking at him.
“That sounds delightful,” Maurice smiles. “Tea was lovely but I must get back to class. Thank you so much.”
“Any time,” Cedric says, holding the door open for him as he leaves.
“Cricket?” Cedric hears through the door once he closes it. “Que diable est cricket?”
The day of the school outing dawns clear and sunny, though there are clouds looming in the distance. Silver almost decides, at the last minute, to claim he’s ill and remain in Amber House. The excuse wouldn't even be far from reality; being on a full day’s outing alone, nearly unarmed, among real people, with no way for Rey to intervene if things go wrong...just thinking about it makes his chest tight with panic.
Rey isn’t there, having left Silver’s room long before dawn to continue his work. But it’s easy to predict what Rey would say if he was there, of course. “What’s the matter? It’s only a few hours. The more that doctor trusts you—” Silver knows he’s mentioned Cedric’s name before, but Rey never uses it. “—the more secure our position will be at the school.”
And the imaginary Rey is correct, naturally, so Silver forces himself to breathe evenly, makes sure his knife is comfortingly placed in his vest pocket, and heads to the gate.
“Maurice!” Cedric calls from the middle of the group of boys. “Bonjour!”
Silver laughs at how the word sounds in Cedric’s solid English accent as he runs to join them. “Good morning,” he replies, emphasizing his own French pronunciation in turn.
“So glad you’re here—Dennis! You are not bringing those marbles on the train! Give them here, I’ll hold them for you until we get back—So glad you’re here,” Cedric repeats, beaming. “I was afraid I’d scared you off. Jack! Edmond! We will not be shoving like that!” He sighs and pushes his hair back out of his face. “I’m sure they’ll settle down once we’re on the train,” he says with an apologetic shrug.
“Of course—oh!” Silver jumps as a pair of small arms are thrown around his waist from behind.
“Master LeBlanc!”
“Lewis?” Silver extricates himself and turns around to see Lewis beaming up at him.
“Young Martins is a regular Cicero—aren’t you?” Cedric says, laughing as Lewis ducks back behind Silver again. “Don’t trip him up, now.”
After a last headcount, they set off for the train station, with Cedric taking the lead, followed by the ten students, and Silver as rearguard. Lewis hangs towards the back of the group, chattering animatedly, and Silver tries not to sound too distracted even though he barely follows one word in ten.
Silver has never ridden a train before coming to England, not that he can remember, in any case. But he finds no difficulty in navigating the station or ushering the boys through the crowded train car to their compartment. He must have been someone who rode trains once, he concludes as he sits down across from Cedric.
Lewis immediately climbs into the seat next to him. Cedric looks a little annoyed, and Silver starts to push Lewis away towards the other boys across the corridor, then pauses. They’re all much older than Lewis, and Silver knows that he’s mostly ignored by the other students in music class and in Amber House.
They sit for perhaps ten minutes in silence, apart from the faint chatter of the other boys in the adjacent compartment. Silver watches the scenery go by, wondering where he picked up Latin, and why the vocabulary he has in it is so odd. Lewis draws in a small leatherbound sketchbook he takes out of his schoolbag. Cedric watches Silver look out the window, except when he realizes Silver notices him doing it.
“You actually like children, don’t you,” Cedric says after a while.
Silver looks away from the blurry fields. “Is that such a surprise?” he says, confused. “I work at a school.”
Cedric shrugs. “Most of the other teachers don’t. They're here for the money—the children are an unfortunate side effect.”
“Oh...what a shame,” he replies. More of a shame than Cedric can know—Silver is only pretending to like the boys, after all. Though, he realizes after thinking for a moment, somehow it’s become more than just a pretense. Or perhaps these feelings have been there the whole time, and Silver never had a chance to notice them before. He tries to think of the last time he had any interactions with a child. Sophie’s establishments—the bar in Italy, the can-can cabaret in Paris—naturally had only adult customers.
And if he likes children, is comfortable with them, what does that mean? Perhaps he really was a teacher once. Or...could the man Silver once was have had children? If so, what happened to them? He had been alone when Rey found him—a child could never have survived similar injuries—
“Maurice? Maurice, are you—ow!”
Silver snaps back into focus. He’s sitting in the train car. Cedric is staring at him from inches away, eyes wide.
Cedric’s wrist is gripped in his hand.
Silver stares at him for a moment, too frozen to even remember to let go. “...So sorry,” he says finally. His heart feels like it’s about to burst from his chest, and he suddenly feels frozen. God, he can’t be discovered at a time like this. There are too many people around: too many people would have to die, and in broad daylight.
And the children.
“That’s...that’s quite alright,” Cedric says, wringing his hand as Silver releases him. “You’re stronger than you look. Comes of practicing piano so much, I suppose.”
“Ah...yes,” Silver agrees. “Practicing.”
Cedric keeps staring at him once he sits back on the opposite bench, an odd look on his face. “Lewis, why don’t you go sit with the other boys for the rest of the trip?” he says, not looking away from Silver.
“But…”
“Go on, chum, there’s a good lad.”
The door of the compartment shuts, and Silver clutches the knife in his pocket as Cedric moves to sit beside him.