Closed;
[ Characters ] Mireille Duroc/unreadability, Silver/annealoncemore and later Ray/assassinskeeper
[ Location ] Silver's and Ray's house in Jamorrow.
[ Date/Time ] Late afternoon, 17th of May.
[ Warning ] Kissing.
[ Content ] She gives him a book. He gives her an answer. They give each other so much more - and then it all starts from there...
_____
Mireille finds herself in front of their door again less than a week later, the basket on her arm heavy from its contents. Since her talk with Ray, the days have moved both at a slower and a faster pace. Jean Louis watches her from the sideline, she knows - following her with his eyes and questioning her ever so often, but for the first time since Father’s death, the answers come to her easily. When she looked at herself in the mirror this morning, the woman reflected back at her was someone she recognised; with her English literature, half-smiles and lingering glances at the world around her.
It’s become a natural thing; to think of Mireille Duroc in this context. She has avoided Alice’s missteps - as if she has kept walking towards herself, instead of leaving herself behind. How strange; that it can be such a foreign feeling, coming home.
Taking a deep breath, she reaches up one hand and knocks on the door, fixing a couple of wrinkles in the tea towel covering the basket while waiting for the answer.
Silver, on the other hand, has not had the benefit of a deep-and-meaning talk with Ray. (In fact, most of his conversations with Ray seem to end with alcohol.) He'd spent the morning sharpening his knives, then silently watching the interactions that come through on his looking-glass, observing everyone's conversations with a detached interest - an interest more strategic than curious. (And yes, he absolutely does need a hobby.)
Ray had left the house a few minutes prior to obtain 'groceries' - though Silver suspects and indeed hopes that most of these groceries will be alcoholic in nature. When the knock comes, he has gone back to his knives - polishing, now - and naturally expects that it's Ray coming back, having forgotten something.
Thus, when he opens the door, he is dressed in the sort of thing guys like him are dressed in when they're not expecting company - his usual white shirt, but untucked, with its bowtie left undone around his neck. The pants and belt are the norm, but he's not wearing shoes. Also, one of his socks has a hole in it - he's wearing it inside-out so that the hole is on the little-toe side, thus not being an annoyance. Since he hasn't had time to figure out where you're supposed to buy socks, and it's not like he or Ray knows how to sew, he's just planning to wear these until they fall apart.
"What did you forget?"
The words are halfway out of his mouth before he can see his visitor clearly. When he realises that it's someone shorter and... well, more female... than Ray, he stops rather abruptly, staring at her, looking her over without any hint of discretion. Contrary to what he might actually admit, seeing her outside his house doesn't constitute an annoyance or a chore at all. Rather... if anything, now that she's come to their house first, he gets to have her company without admitting to seeking it out. Win.
But more importantly... what is she doing here?
"What is it?"
Asked in his usual blunt, matter-of-fact sort of way - because she could only possibly be here on business, right?
Two questions at once, asked as if neither of them is really directed at her, but rather the speaker’s reaction to her presence. Looking slowly up from the tea cloth, the first thing Mireille spots is his miserable-looking socks, then the untucked shirt, the bowtie hanging around his neck like the useless piece of silk it is when not in proper use and last, but not least Silver’s never quite blank face, his eyes boring into hers. There’s a long moment where they simply look at each other; she can’t think of anything to say - because yes, what is it, indeed - that won’t encourage the urge she feels to step forward and tie his bowtie for him. Like she has done a thousand times before. Though, never like this. Never for him.
It occurs to her, as the seconds tick by, that the problem is how she doesn’t have an answer to what his question implies; at least to her, because she reads his words like poetry. Gripping the thin fabric of her skirt between the fingers of her free hand, she pushes the entangled web of thoughts away. They don’t belong here, all her impossible dreams. Silver has no use of them.
“Have I come at a bad time?” she asks instead of responding, raising her chin a little, just to make certain that the bowtie won’t distract her too much.
It's always a bad time when you're around Silver. For now, at least - he stares at her a bit blankly, because what, is he not usually this blunt? Then he looks down, at his shirt and socks. One supposes it might be considered a bad time, walking in on someone who is clearly not expecting company - but thankfully Silver wouldn't change his behaviour whether or not he were expecting company, except for tucking his shirt in maybe, so he doesn't feel even a little flustered.
"It's fine," he replies, gruff but in his own way warm. He chooses not to question the way he talks to her - the same way he might talk to Ray or Batista, the closest people he has to friends. It's just... when he's acknowledged that her words might be worth listening to, it seems incongruous to talk to her any other way.
A pause. It has been so long since Silver has had visitors of any sort - Simone and Sophie mostly just let themselves in, knowing that he will object but receive them nevertheless, even for all his insistence that they are loud and rarely say anything of substance. He can't remember the last time he's had a guest who is aware of her status as a guest, who looks at him as if he's supposed to be the not-guest and do something about this whole situation.
"Come in, then."
Even if he were expected to receive her as a guest, Silver would not change the way he speaks, determined that any false politeness on his part would be strange to her, and a lie to himself. He opens the door wider and steps back, plainly gesturing for her to proceed him into the house.
In every way he possibly could be, he is Jean Louis’ opposite. Not only the way he’s nothing close to polished, but also his direct, rough attitude. She’s too used to the polite speech of high society; so indirect that all emotions are hidden beneath the surface and no one has the time to dig deeper. With Jean Louis, she is always skating on thin ice, knowing that logically it should break beneath her, but also aware that if it did, she would be doomed. With Silver, there’s no such danger and she prefers it that way. Honest. Blunt, perhaps, but honest nonetheless.
“Thank you.”
Even if he would have been a horrible host, had this been one of the political dinner parties she had attended en masse back in Luxembourg, Mireille gives him a smile that says very clearly that she finds his approach as close to perfect as anything ever gets. Always short of, but it’s enough. Nodding her head, she follows him through the living room, heading by herself towards the kitchen and putting the basket on the small kitchen table.
The atmosphere is different from last time. With Ray. As she removes the cloth and unceremoniously begins putting the small packages of easily stored food (she doesn’t trust them to get anything rotten thrown out in time) away on the shelves, she savours the silence. There is nothing she needs to wait for here. Everything of importance has been placed out in the open. Glancing at him, pushing a pot of brawn onto the shelf beneath the top one, since that’s as far as she can reach, Mireille turns around to face him.
“It should last you a couple of weeks, if you are thrifty.”
Warmer, she thinks. The atmosphere is warmer.
It's funny because Silver feels the same way about Jean Louis - that he talks his way around an issue so craftily that one is forced to wonder whether he has actual opinions about anything at all. However, it's not his place to compare himself to Jean Louis or to anyone; he knows that all he can do, and in fact is interested in doing, is being himself. Whatever that entails.
Today, it involves standing as if a stranger in his own living room. It's not that he minds her being here like this - unlike Ray, he pays no attention to the state of the room or even the slight state of dishevel he himself is in. Still... it's been a long time since he's had to send a message of "yes, you're welcome here" to anyone in his home. He does not openly acknowledge that she is welcome and he is glad she has come, but he thinks just far enough for it to be significant. Even the sheer fact that he is wondering how to not drive her away... some would consider it polite, but for Silver, it comes close almost to caring. It's practically a catastrophe.
Thankfully, she's given him something to talk about. And it's food, again! Hasn't she learnt by now that he doesn't eat? He pauses and considers her as she puts the food away, wondering if one of them has married her by accident or something and that's why she's being so nice.
"Ray shouldn't ask you to make food for us."
To him, it's the logical reason why she'd be bringing so much food - because god forbid someone actually shows she cares about him and wants to do things for him voluntarily. Silver is so used to taking care of himself, except when he, Ray, and Batista are taking care of each other - and he is so used to his own conviction that nobody else is a part of that bromance, so used to shutting the world outside his comfortably angsty walls. It's not that he thinks of her as a stranger, so much as that he hasn't had a reason or chance to correct his automatic assumption that everyone is a stranger. It'll take him a while to even humour the idea that Mireille can do something like this - and it'd still be okay.
It takes her by surprise that he thinks it’s something she has been asked to do. Staring at him speechlessly for a moment, her eyes run over his face as if to make sure that it isn’t some sort of sarcastic joke, but his features are as genuine as ever. Straight-forward with nothing lying underneath, waiting for later, when she is unprepared. As always everything is put on display with Silver. Even though Mireille does like this about him, it is too ingrown in her to not fully believe it simply as it is presented to her. Too many years in the presence of her husband; though it is not only Jean Louis who has taught her this. When you tread your maiden shoes in the political circles, directness doesn’t become your mother tongue.
Thus, what he says, he is saying in a language that is not her first and foremost and translating it takes her a couple of seconds where she feels as bared as he is by default. Then Mireille finds herself smiling, slightly, walking over to the kitchen table again and emptying the basket of its last treasure. She leaves the book on the table without drawing any particular attention to it and shrugs off her cloak, folding it three times so that it fits nicely in the basket. In their sober practicality, they are quite alike, if in nothing else.
“He didn’t,” she tells Silver simply, sitting down on the nearest stool. Looking around the kitchen, she notes that the banal touch of stored provisions adds a sense of care to the entire house.
Sober practicality - perhaps more sober on her part than his, but yes. It's difficult to see the world any other way, for him - to employ logic that's not already his own. Silver watches her sit, then walks over to the shelves she has recently left, running his fingers over the provisions and picking some up at random to examine them. How... elaborate, even for so practical an arrangement. As if care has gone into it, as if care has existed where there should be none, and still he has only one question.
"Then why?"
A genuine question, point-blank. Unfortunately we cannot all be like Silver, who has very simple reasons for doing everything he does, and is willing to share them often and loudly. More unfortunately, Silver's particular way of seeing the world makes it very hard for him to practice empathy, should he even try - and so this question is delivered with all his usual bluntness, without even a care for whether it would make her uncomfortable to answer it. He would tell you that you need to become more comfortable with your own way of living, if you can shy from justifying your actions.
Finally, he reaches the end of the food, his fingers now resting on the book. He doesn't ask yet - but he does pick it up as he turns to face her, one eye on her, and one on the front cover.
She looks away, then. From his face. To ponder this other question. Perhaps it’s the nature of honesty, but it leaves her with so much to answer and justify - and although she has been brought up with the acknowledgement of exactly how necessary it is to always bear the consequences of one’s actions, it is a difficult step to take, now. This step from bearing to embracing; standing up for. Protecting. Especially when what she has to embrace and protect is something as frail as this; this emotion he awakes in her, this sense of trust. So new that it feels brittle and on the verge of breaking between her fingers.
“I thought,” Mireille begins, but stops herself as he picks up the book. Wetting her lips, she folds her hands in her lap docilely. Her voice is soft; oh, she could be defensive, tell him that surely there is nothing wrong with helping them out when she has nothing but time at her disposal and is cooking for a household anyway. But she doesn’t. Instead she says: “I wanted to give you something.”
In return for everything you have done for me.
Probably she should specify, let the “you” be in the plural and not the singular, but in her mind it’s not even about the food anymore. It’s about how he is holding that book (Father’s favourite) between his hands, studying it with something that could be suspicion or curiosity. She can’t tell.
She doesn’t actually know him that well, does she?
She knows him about as well as he is comfortable being known, and then a great deal better too - so for him, at least, she knows him more than well enough. The truth is that they know nothing about each other, and also everything that is important. He does not know her favourite food and where she vacations in the summer and, as it proved, her dress size; he does know she has a frankly unrealistic shining sense of hope, a capacity to see beyond the decay of the world, in a way he can hardly even humour but can equally not dismiss. He knows enough about her that he could conclude, if he chose to, that she is anything but a stranger. It's enough - or at least, would be enough if he'd just let himself have a few more feelings.
He turns back again, glancing at the food one last time, before re-settling his gaze at her face over the top of the book he is still holding. Having never been the sentimental sort, either as Silver or as Michel (though that much is not relevant in and of itself), he cannot say he sympathizes with the feeling - though surely he can accept it, at least for now. Even he is not so oblivious to normal social relations.
However, he does seem to be oblivious enough that he has to pause a little to know what to say next. It's not like the many times Simone had dropped by with food (never without some alcohol to go with it - she does know him that much, at least). It's not like Mireille is trying to get him to admit to or take anything from her. She's just giving - and it's so out of the norm of anything with which he comes into regular contact that even his own honest reaction is hard to gauge, much less the words to express it.
"Mn. That's very practical," he finally says, in his stilted sort of way - about as much approval as one can get with a gift for Silver, and about as close to a 'thank you' as he'll get. (He really isn't that rude, by nature - but not being consciously polite, either, all his honest and logical statements come out rudely anyway. Ah well.)
He returns to studying the book with a still-unreadable expression. It's not a book he's read, though he knows of it - had pegged it as something that might be intriguing, but overall not his type of book, not that he reads very much anyway.
"This is for us, too?"
He uses 'us' without consciously choosing it - because he has no reason to suspect she's only doing it for him, after all. Not yet.
Mireille sighs and smiles at the same time, the sound coming out all too amused, but she doesn’t mind too much. The gesture is partly aimed at him, but mostly at herself, as she remembers sitting on the couch with a cup of tea, watching her father step back from his position as politician for just an hour to read this book and let himself be reminded why he kept (keeps, in the present tense - through her) on fighting. Sometimes decency and the concept of rightness come in the ugliest of packages, but it is worth the world, even when it takes so long to be recognized and will maybe always be misunderstood.
Because… In the end it will count for everything. She knows. She knows.
Standing up, she walks over to him, stopping close enough to read the title upside down if she cranes her neck a little. She keeps her eyes on the copper nuanced lettering. It shines more red than orange in the sunlight falling through the window. “Father called this book the tale of the century when it came out,” she says, reaching up her hand to let her fingers slide gently over its worn edges. “He always found it… hopeful.” The word is easy to say, and it reminds her of their most recent conversation over the looking glass.
Perhaps… she really is too optimistic; hoping for too much. Perhaps it is inevitable that she will end up disappointed, though Mireille can’t imagine being any more disappointed than…
Raising her gaze, the smile fades from her lips. She isn’t alone, though - Silver has lost everything too. And now they are both fighting their own battles.
“It’s for you.” She pushes at it lightly, pressing the book further into his grip, to indicate that this time ‘you’ is very much in the singular.
He stares at her.
For him, in particular? He supposes there's no point in asking why - she might be compelled to be honest and then he'd have to think about it. He can't remember the last time he'd received so personal a gift. Ray had done his fair share of shopping for him, but it had been practical things - nothing like a fictional book, the enjoyment of which would require him to first have feelings and the capacity to have fun. He can't imagine why she would give him a gift like this - and he turns back to the cover of the book, to what he knows of its contents, for his answer.
"A book won't change my views on anything."
The words are blunt, but they're not aggressive. He does not so much suspect that she is hoping he will change his views, knowing that she's perfectly happy to tell him when she thinks he is wrong, without the aid of books and whatnot. It just seems a fair warning to give. Book of the century or not... he doesn't want her to give him something that is meaningful to her if she's expecting anything from him.
Because... he doesn't have the energy to deal with her disappointment. Yes. That's it. Not because it's his problem if she wants to expect the impossible - he just doesn't want to deal with it.
Have you noticed yet that Silver is sometimes very good at avoiding what's obvious?
“I know,” she says. And she does. It’s strange to think that she hasn’t known him for longer than a month (and a day, a horrible day that is barely a memory anymore), because some of the things he does, the things he says… even when she can’t entirely agree - after all she used to read books mostly to have her horizon broadened, if not her views changed - it reflects onto her and she absorbs it. As if they are very similar, even when she can look at him like this, their hands connected by the worn leather of an old book, and see that they are nothing alike.
Mireille has decided that it must have to do with him. The way he accepts so many things and changes it at his own pace, and only for his own reasons, building on justifications he has formed by himself. Not like her, who… heeds the orders of society, of institutions not of her own choosing, listening to a voice that died out a long time ago… Her lips tighten, quiver. She might not be a lesser person than him, but he is definitely a better person than her, despite his rawness and too-simple logic. It’s still to prefer.
Stepping back, she turns to look out the kitchen window. “Please accept it,” she continues, voice soft, “I want you to have it, even so.” She can’t insist. Silver does things his own way. If he doesn’t think he has a need for the Hunchback of Notre Dame, she won’t force it on him, but… she hopes…
Hope only gets her so far, of course, but until she is given something better or worse, it’s all she has and by now she has got used to the pliable substance of that kind of life.
Oh sweet, silly Mireille. There are no such things as better or worse people. There are people who keep themselves alive because being alive excuses everything, and there are people who do what's right, or at least less wrong. There are people who are unaware of the true nature of the world, who can sing and laugh in the spring breeze - but Silver and Mireille can never be one of those, and he at least could not wish such a life on either an enemy or a pitied friend. Don't ever try and tell Silver he is better - even when he is doing what's least wrong, he has too much angst to ever think himself 'better' in any sense than anyone else
For now... there is something about the softness of her voice - so contrary to the way Simone had insisted that he eat, though she too had been worrying for him in her own way. No - Mireille wants him to have this, finds it something separate from necessity, is doing it because it gives her some feeling of...
Of what, exactly? Silver is not used to warm feelings like this, except when he is drinking - and, perhaps, when he is with her. It's a lot to take in.
"I'm too idle here," he says by way of response, still holding the book just as firmly as before. "I'll read it if it keeps my interest."
There: a perfectly honest answer. He realises with a start - a realisation that had snuck up on him so craftily that he did not have time to refuse it - that he does not want to refuse her. That if she is so insistent on it, that if this book can give him insight on how she finds light even in this world, that even if the book leads him to think thoughts that are entirely unnatural to him and contrary to his beliefs...
Well, then he doesn't have to believe it. It doesn't mean he wants to say no, right here and now.
Dammit. And here he'd been so determined his heart would never be touched by anything again.
Fingers grabbing the edge of the kitchen table so tightly that her knuckles go white, she keeps staring out the window as his words wash over her. He gives her so much of his time; teaching her how to defend herself, indulging her little visits, accepting what she tries handing him, even when she doesn’t quite know what it is. What it is she wants him to have from her. Of her. Closing her eyes and breathing in deeply, she sees Father put the book away, get up slowly, turning the lights off and leaving her on the couch to finish her tea while he goes back to work. The Hunchbak of Notre Dame lies innocently on the chair, its cover beckoning at her.
“Even if it doesn’t,” she says, words stumbling slightly over one another as they leave her mouth, as if she is picking them up as she goes, “you’ll have read so far and it will be something.” Instead of nothing. It’ll be enough. A small step closer to…
Turning her head enough to be able to look at him, the book still in his grip just like when she’d given it to him, Mireille watches him for a long moment. In the beginning, all she could think of when she saw him was how he had worked over Father’s broken body, his wife standing next to him, handing him terrifyingly delicate-looking tools and little vials of extracts Mireille had no understanding or patience for. Now she can’t recall the woman’s face anymore; she’s just a blurry figure next to him. Whereas he… his features have become sharper.
Except… she knows he didn’t look like this four years ago and this, this, is all she can call forth in her mind. Her lips tighten. Her hands release the tabletop. His bowtie is still undone and it’s prickling in her fingertips to fix it. Or perhaps remove it altogether. There’s no point in him wearing something unfinished; useless without the purpose it only gains when tied.
But she leaves it be. Somehow it fits him. Like this.
Unfinished. Get me started on the things that are unfinished about Silver and I'll write you a book. If anything is proof that Ray picks out his clothes, it's the fact that Silver is almost always dressed better than he feels.
Moving, now, he crosses the room and places the book on a counter, carefully - in the way he is precise and careful in all his movements that matter, for all that he is sometimes abrupt. Letting his gaze linger on the book for just a moment longer, he finally does turn away to face Mireille again, his own eyes unreadable - but warm. In their own way.
It has been quite a month. Quite a month, to be here in this world. Quite a month, to be here in this world with her standing at his kitchen counter, to be staring at this book that does not belong to him and yet has been given to him, anyway. If asked how they got here he would have no idea what to answer - how to even define 'here', in the first place. All he knows is that... she is unlike anyone he has ever known. And he has never felt such a unique mix of feelings as she can bring out in him.
It's incredibly irritating. How's a man supposed to try and hammer his way through life without having his heart touched by feelings when there are people like her constantly challenging his ideas?
Nevertheless, his tone is its usual flat, direct pitch when he speaks. "Yes," he replies simply, mulling over her words. It'll be something. And substance... whether good, or bad... one supposes it's better than having nothing at all.
"Why this book?"
The words come out a little absently - almost not enough to be noticeable, but perhaps just noticeable enough for her to see that he's spoken without calculating. Without even thinking about what he wants in response. Just... wondering. The sort of wondering that might require caring, but don't tell him that.
Face to face, with a good few meters between them - the distance they always seem to have, because Silver finds it comfortable - they stand in silence. It’s not awkward, as one might have thought. Mireille lets the question float in the air between them, looking at him without really seeing him. Quasimodo, the ugly incarnation of everything not quite right, but as right as anything ever gets. La Esmeralda who refused to give up on herself, who would rather die than… than marry…
Folding her hands in front of herself, Mireille hesitates, trying to remember the time she had borrowed Father’s copy and read it, just to find out why he found it so interesting that he would return to it time and again. “Nothing about Notre Dame is beautiful,” she explains, imagining the dark, Gothic feel of the cathedral, “but even so, the lack of beauty gains its own worth in the end. That’s… the feeling of it. The book.” She nods towards it lightly, raising her eyes to meet his. It’s not happiness, the tenseness in the pit of her stomach, so she can’t make herself force a smile to go with her words, but her gaze is tender.
And she doesn’t mind giving Silver that tenderness. That hope. Rather, she wants to. Perhaps it is what makes her feel so drawn to him, that she wants him to have… that.
Silver listens to her speak without interruption, his features blank but attentive. All he knows about the book is its setting and plot; it had been quite popular at the time it came out, but he'd never been one for books, especially not tales that are so... hopeful. That, with such determination, attempt to find goodness in a world like this. And with a thought like that - it suddenly occurs to him exactly why Mireille would like it.
He looks out the window - at the sun that is just beginning to set over the still-slightly-surreal horizon of Wonderland, at the singing flowers still resolutely cheerful every time they see him. There are probably those who would find Wonderland beautiful in its own way. If anything... he is glad Mireille knows that not everything is beautiful. That she is not one of those girls determined to paint the world in shining colours where there is only grey.
And he is not so much glad as highly confused that - even for someone so honest about the lack of beauty wherever beauty is lacked - she is capable of seeing so much light, nevertheless. It's certainly something he's never learned to do.
"I'll read it," he says, once again - but it's nothing like the dismissive tone he might have taken with some. Instead, it's... something genuine. Something he says, because he wants to.
If she can give him this out of want, then surely... surely he can at least reply and say what he means. Not that he's ever had trouble with that, per se; it's just that being open and honest like this, potentially letting himself be touched by the tenderness she has to offer...
Everything in his logic says no, and yet he's doing it with every passing minute.
Mireille can’t think of anything to say then. To that. To him. She could thank him, but it would be so horribly out of place. She could agree, but they are here, in this moment, because she already has. A couple of inhalations, followed by an equal amount of exhalations. The light grows softer as the sun begins to set, and she really should be getting home, because there’s a long walk ahead of her and she has left no note informing Jean Louis that she would be staying out late. At the thought of Jean Louis, her focus returns to Silver’s bowtie.
How many times hasn’t she tied her husband’s bowtie? Untied it, too, but for now it’s the initiating movements of tying it correctly, folding it on the middle, twisting the silk into the correct folds, tugging until the knot is tight. It’s even hanging skewed around his neck, one end hanging vastly lower than the other, as if it is slowly slipping off.
It dawns on her that she doesn’t want to tie it, not really, not anymore. Silver takes full responsibility for his own appearance and there’s nothing about it that she would want to change… that she doesn’t want to… doesn’t want… Yet, perhaps if she could simply touch it, let it run through her fingers and know that she has left some kind of impression. Like he has on her.
The first step is unconscious, the next less so and at the third, Mireille glances up at Silver’s face, stopping in front of him. His features are as expressionless as ever. Not coldly so. Not like porcelain. Not at all. Porcelain is for her to wear, to cut herself off from all those schemes and plans that reflect on her, but don’t reflect her. Absent-mindedly, she imagines Quasimodo lying down next to La Esmeralda, giving himself up to just that… to just being, until he is no more…
When she presses her lips to his, it’s a surprising sensation. Of course, she has moved her body at will, stretched up to be able to reach, resting her hands against his chest for balance, closing her eyes automatically… Even so, she hadn’t expected… this. To happen. This feeling.
Warm.
Not surprisingly, he tastes like brandy.
If asked to describe it, he could never tell you what he noticed at that moment. The way the sunlight had sunk softly into her skin, bathing it in a warm orange glow, the way the tablecloth had stirred in the very slight breeze drifting in from the window, the way his own legs and feet had felt strange and alien beneath him. The way she had looked at him - as if all she needed from him was what he was willing to give. What he is willing to give, in this moment, now. She expects nothing from him - and yet, somehow, without trying and sometimes whilst trying not to, he's managed to give her something, anyway. Just as he's managed to take from her something he had not expected to take, had not wanted, had not asked for - but had not minded having, either.
And he has nothing to fear from it. No reason to shy from it. Here like this, the warmth of her intruding on his space... the words he'd said time and again, that he has no space in his heart for these feelings, that he will kill before he is killed... they are no less true, but they feel so far away.
For now, all that's important is that she feels no less like the essence of her, here and now. No less like the things he has never openly acknowledged but has never failed to notice. For all it is a kiss in the strictest of terms it is a touch, first and foremost - the contact of human skin with human skin, the reaching out of one to another. She needs never explain this movement - isn't it what she has been doing all along, reaching out to him, reaching out in her kindness even when he is unresponsive?
More real than this world, more overwhelming than the need for vengeance that had brought him to her in the first place... she is something worth holding on to. Worth protecting. He cannot, in good faith, complain of lacking substance or a path when she is here like this, with him. For whatever it's worth.
Against her lips, he smiles. A subconscious smile - the only kind of which he is capable, the smiles that express his true meaning rather than any need to be polite. A smile so miniscule and so soft that it cannot be seen, only felt. And he reaches out with one arm to rest his hand on her shoulder, too - firmly. Reassuringly.
It is not love. But it could be worse.
[ Location ] Silver's and Ray's house in Jamorrow.
[ Date/Time ] Late afternoon, 17th of May.
[ Warning ] Kissing.
[ Content ] She gives him a book. He gives her an answer. They give each other so much more - and then it all starts from there...
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Mireille finds herself in front of their door again less than a week later, the basket on her arm heavy from its contents. Since her talk with Ray, the days have moved both at a slower and a faster pace. Jean Louis watches her from the sideline, she knows - following her with his eyes and questioning her ever so often, but for the first time since Father’s death, the answers come to her easily. When she looked at herself in the mirror this morning, the woman reflected back at her was someone she recognised; with her English literature, half-smiles and lingering glances at the world around her.
It’s become a natural thing; to think of Mireille Duroc in this context. She has avoided Alice’s missteps - as if she has kept walking towards herself, instead of leaving herself behind. How strange; that it can be such a foreign feeling, coming home.
Taking a deep breath, she reaches up one hand and knocks on the door, fixing a couple of wrinkles in the tea towel covering the basket while waiting for the answer.
Silver, on the other hand, has not had the benefit of a deep-and-meaning talk with Ray. (In fact, most of his conversations with Ray seem to end with alcohol.) He'd spent the morning sharpening his knives, then silently watching the interactions that come through on his looking-glass, observing everyone's conversations with a detached interest - an interest more strategic than curious. (And yes, he absolutely does need a hobby.)
Ray had left the house a few minutes prior to obtain 'groceries' - though Silver suspects and indeed hopes that most of these groceries will be alcoholic in nature. When the knock comes, he has gone back to his knives - polishing, now - and naturally expects that it's Ray coming back, having forgotten something.
Thus, when he opens the door, he is dressed in the sort of thing guys like him are dressed in when they're not expecting company - his usual white shirt, but untucked, with its bowtie left undone around his neck. The pants and belt are the norm, but he's not wearing shoes. Also, one of his socks has a hole in it - he's wearing it inside-out so that the hole is on the little-toe side, thus not being an annoyance. Since he hasn't had time to figure out where you're supposed to buy socks, and it's not like he or Ray knows how to sew, he's just planning to wear these until they fall apart.
"What did you forget?"
The words are halfway out of his mouth before he can see his visitor clearly. When he realises that it's someone shorter and... well, more female... than Ray, he stops rather abruptly, staring at her, looking her over without any hint of discretion. Contrary to what he might actually admit, seeing her outside his house doesn't constitute an annoyance or a chore at all. Rather... if anything, now that she's come to their house first, he gets to have her company without admitting to seeking it out. Win.
But more importantly... what is she doing here?
"What is it?"
Asked in his usual blunt, matter-of-fact sort of way - because she could only possibly be here on business, right?
Two questions at once, asked as if neither of them is really directed at her, but rather the speaker’s reaction to her presence. Looking slowly up from the tea cloth, the first thing Mireille spots is his miserable-looking socks, then the untucked shirt, the bowtie hanging around his neck like the useless piece of silk it is when not in proper use and last, but not least Silver’s never quite blank face, his eyes boring into hers. There’s a long moment where they simply look at each other; she can’t think of anything to say - because yes, what is it, indeed - that won’t encourage the urge she feels to step forward and tie his bowtie for him. Like she has done a thousand times before. Though, never like this. Never for him.
It occurs to her, as the seconds tick by, that the problem is how she doesn’t have an answer to what his question implies; at least to her, because she reads his words like poetry. Gripping the thin fabric of her skirt between the fingers of her free hand, she pushes the entangled web of thoughts away. They don’t belong here, all her impossible dreams. Silver has no use of them.
“Have I come at a bad time?” she asks instead of responding, raising her chin a little, just to make certain that the bowtie won’t distract her too much.
It's always a bad time when you're around Silver. For now, at least - he stares at her a bit blankly, because what, is he not usually this blunt? Then he looks down, at his shirt and socks. One supposes it might be considered a bad time, walking in on someone who is clearly not expecting company - but thankfully Silver wouldn't change his behaviour whether or not he were expecting company, except for tucking his shirt in maybe, so he doesn't feel even a little flustered.
"It's fine," he replies, gruff but in his own way warm. He chooses not to question the way he talks to her - the same way he might talk to Ray or Batista, the closest people he has to friends. It's just... when he's acknowledged that her words might be worth listening to, it seems incongruous to talk to her any other way.
A pause. It has been so long since Silver has had visitors of any sort - Simone and Sophie mostly just let themselves in, knowing that he will object but receive them nevertheless, even for all his insistence that they are loud and rarely say anything of substance. He can't remember the last time he's had a guest who is aware of her status as a guest, who looks at him as if he's supposed to be the not-guest and do something about this whole situation.
"Come in, then."
Even if he were expected to receive her as a guest, Silver would not change the way he speaks, determined that any false politeness on his part would be strange to her, and a lie to himself. He opens the door wider and steps back, plainly gesturing for her to proceed him into the house.
In every way he possibly could be, he is Jean Louis’ opposite. Not only the way he’s nothing close to polished, but also his direct, rough attitude. She’s too used to the polite speech of high society; so indirect that all emotions are hidden beneath the surface and no one has the time to dig deeper. With Jean Louis, she is always skating on thin ice, knowing that logically it should break beneath her, but also aware that if it did, she would be doomed. With Silver, there’s no such danger and she prefers it that way. Honest. Blunt, perhaps, but honest nonetheless.
“Thank you.”
Even if he would have been a horrible host, had this been one of the political dinner parties she had attended en masse back in Luxembourg, Mireille gives him a smile that says very clearly that she finds his approach as close to perfect as anything ever gets. Always short of, but it’s enough. Nodding her head, she follows him through the living room, heading by herself towards the kitchen and putting the basket on the small kitchen table.
The atmosphere is different from last time. With Ray. As she removes the cloth and unceremoniously begins putting the small packages of easily stored food (she doesn’t trust them to get anything rotten thrown out in time) away on the shelves, she savours the silence. There is nothing she needs to wait for here. Everything of importance has been placed out in the open. Glancing at him, pushing a pot of brawn onto the shelf beneath the top one, since that’s as far as she can reach, Mireille turns around to face him.
“It should last you a couple of weeks, if you are thrifty.”
Warmer, she thinks. The atmosphere is warmer.
It's funny because Silver feels the same way about Jean Louis - that he talks his way around an issue so craftily that one is forced to wonder whether he has actual opinions about anything at all. However, it's not his place to compare himself to Jean Louis or to anyone; he knows that all he can do, and in fact is interested in doing, is being himself. Whatever that entails.
Today, it involves standing as if a stranger in his own living room. It's not that he minds her being here like this - unlike Ray, he pays no attention to the state of the room or even the slight state of dishevel he himself is in. Still... it's been a long time since he's had to send a message of "yes, you're welcome here" to anyone in his home. He does not openly acknowledge that she is welcome and he is glad she has come, but he thinks just far enough for it to be significant. Even the sheer fact that he is wondering how to not drive her away... some would consider it polite, but for Silver, it comes close almost to caring. It's practically a catastrophe.
Thankfully, she's given him something to talk about. And it's food, again! Hasn't she learnt by now that he doesn't eat? He pauses and considers her as she puts the food away, wondering if one of them has married her by accident or something and that's why she's being so nice.
"Ray shouldn't ask you to make food for us."
To him, it's the logical reason why she'd be bringing so much food - because god forbid someone actually shows she cares about him and wants to do things for him voluntarily. Silver is so used to taking care of himself, except when he, Ray, and Batista are taking care of each other - and he is so used to his own conviction that nobody else is a part of that bromance, so used to shutting the world outside his comfortably angsty walls. It's not that he thinks of her as a stranger, so much as that he hasn't had a reason or chance to correct his automatic assumption that everyone is a stranger. It'll take him a while to even humour the idea that Mireille can do something like this - and it'd still be okay.
It takes her by surprise that he thinks it’s something she has been asked to do. Staring at him speechlessly for a moment, her eyes run over his face as if to make sure that it isn’t some sort of sarcastic joke, but his features are as genuine as ever. Straight-forward with nothing lying underneath, waiting for later, when she is unprepared. As always everything is put on display with Silver. Even though Mireille does like this about him, it is too ingrown in her to not fully believe it simply as it is presented to her. Too many years in the presence of her husband; though it is not only Jean Louis who has taught her this. When you tread your maiden shoes in the political circles, directness doesn’t become your mother tongue.
Thus, what he says, he is saying in a language that is not her first and foremost and translating it takes her a couple of seconds where she feels as bared as he is by default. Then Mireille finds herself smiling, slightly, walking over to the kitchen table again and emptying the basket of its last treasure. She leaves the book on the table without drawing any particular attention to it and shrugs off her cloak, folding it three times so that it fits nicely in the basket. In their sober practicality, they are quite alike, if in nothing else.
“He didn’t,” she tells Silver simply, sitting down on the nearest stool. Looking around the kitchen, she notes that the banal touch of stored provisions adds a sense of care to the entire house.
Sober practicality - perhaps more sober on her part than his, but yes. It's difficult to see the world any other way, for him - to employ logic that's not already his own. Silver watches her sit, then walks over to the shelves she has recently left, running his fingers over the provisions and picking some up at random to examine them. How... elaborate, even for so practical an arrangement. As if care has gone into it, as if care has existed where there should be none, and still he has only one question.
"Then why?"
A genuine question, point-blank. Unfortunately we cannot all be like Silver, who has very simple reasons for doing everything he does, and is willing to share them often and loudly. More unfortunately, Silver's particular way of seeing the world makes it very hard for him to practice empathy, should he even try - and so this question is delivered with all his usual bluntness, without even a care for whether it would make her uncomfortable to answer it. He would tell you that you need to become more comfortable with your own way of living, if you can shy from justifying your actions.
Finally, he reaches the end of the food, his fingers now resting on the book. He doesn't ask yet - but he does pick it up as he turns to face her, one eye on her, and one on the front cover.
She looks away, then. From his face. To ponder this other question. Perhaps it’s the nature of honesty, but it leaves her with so much to answer and justify - and although she has been brought up with the acknowledgement of exactly how necessary it is to always bear the consequences of one’s actions, it is a difficult step to take, now. This step from bearing to embracing; standing up for. Protecting. Especially when what she has to embrace and protect is something as frail as this; this emotion he awakes in her, this sense of trust. So new that it feels brittle and on the verge of breaking between her fingers.
“I thought,” Mireille begins, but stops herself as he picks up the book. Wetting her lips, she folds her hands in her lap docilely. Her voice is soft; oh, she could be defensive, tell him that surely there is nothing wrong with helping them out when she has nothing but time at her disposal and is cooking for a household anyway. But she doesn’t. Instead she says: “I wanted to give you something.”
In return for everything you have done for me.
Probably she should specify, let the “you” be in the plural and not the singular, but in her mind it’s not even about the food anymore. It’s about how he is holding that book (Father’s favourite) between his hands, studying it with something that could be suspicion or curiosity. She can’t tell.
She doesn’t actually know him that well, does she?
She knows him about as well as he is comfortable being known, and then a great deal better too - so for him, at least, she knows him more than well enough. The truth is that they know nothing about each other, and also everything that is important. He does not know her favourite food and where she vacations in the summer and, as it proved, her dress size; he does know she has a frankly unrealistic shining sense of hope, a capacity to see beyond the decay of the world, in a way he can hardly even humour but can equally not dismiss. He knows enough about her that he could conclude, if he chose to, that she is anything but a stranger. It's enough - or at least, would be enough if he'd just let himself have a few more feelings.
He turns back again, glancing at the food one last time, before re-settling his gaze at her face over the top of the book he is still holding. Having never been the sentimental sort, either as Silver or as Michel (though that much is not relevant in and of itself), he cannot say he sympathizes with the feeling - though surely he can accept it, at least for now. Even he is not so oblivious to normal social relations.
However, he does seem to be oblivious enough that he has to pause a little to know what to say next. It's not like the many times Simone had dropped by with food (never without some alcohol to go with it - she does know him that much, at least). It's not like Mireille is trying to get him to admit to or take anything from her. She's just giving - and it's so out of the norm of anything with which he comes into regular contact that even his own honest reaction is hard to gauge, much less the words to express it.
"Mn. That's very practical," he finally says, in his stilted sort of way - about as much approval as one can get with a gift for Silver, and about as close to a 'thank you' as he'll get. (He really isn't that rude, by nature - but not being consciously polite, either, all his honest and logical statements come out rudely anyway. Ah well.)
He returns to studying the book with a still-unreadable expression. It's not a book he's read, though he knows of it - had pegged it as something that might be intriguing, but overall not his type of book, not that he reads very much anyway.
"This is for us, too?"
He uses 'us' without consciously choosing it - because he has no reason to suspect she's only doing it for him, after all. Not yet.
Mireille sighs and smiles at the same time, the sound coming out all too amused, but she doesn’t mind too much. The gesture is partly aimed at him, but mostly at herself, as she remembers sitting on the couch with a cup of tea, watching her father step back from his position as politician for just an hour to read this book and let himself be reminded why he kept (keeps, in the present tense - through her) on fighting. Sometimes decency and the concept of rightness come in the ugliest of packages, but it is worth the world, even when it takes so long to be recognized and will maybe always be misunderstood.
Because… In the end it will count for everything. She knows. She knows.
Standing up, she walks over to him, stopping close enough to read the title upside down if she cranes her neck a little. She keeps her eyes on the copper nuanced lettering. It shines more red than orange in the sunlight falling through the window. “Father called this book the tale of the century when it came out,” she says, reaching up her hand to let her fingers slide gently over its worn edges. “He always found it… hopeful.” The word is easy to say, and it reminds her of their most recent conversation over the looking glass.
Perhaps… she really is too optimistic; hoping for too much. Perhaps it is inevitable that she will end up disappointed, though Mireille can’t imagine being any more disappointed than…
Raising her gaze, the smile fades from her lips. She isn’t alone, though - Silver has lost everything too. And now they are both fighting their own battles.
“It’s for you.” She pushes at it lightly, pressing the book further into his grip, to indicate that this time ‘you’ is very much in the singular.
He stares at her.
For him, in particular? He supposes there's no point in asking why - she might be compelled to be honest and then he'd have to think about it. He can't remember the last time he'd received so personal a gift. Ray had done his fair share of shopping for him, but it had been practical things - nothing like a fictional book, the enjoyment of which would require him to first have feelings and the capacity to have fun. He can't imagine why she would give him a gift like this - and he turns back to the cover of the book, to what he knows of its contents, for his answer.
"A book won't change my views on anything."
The words are blunt, but they're not aggressive. He does not so much suspect that she is hoping he will change his views, knowing that she's perfectly happy to tell him when she thinks he is wrong, without the aid of books and whatnot. It just seems a fair warning to give. Book of the century or not... he doesn't want her to give him something that is meaningful to her if she's expecting anything from him.
Because... he doesn't have the energy to deal with her disappointment. Yes. That's it. Not because it's his problem if she wants to expect the impossible - he just doesn't want to deal with it.
Have you noticed yet that Silver is sometimes very good at avoiding what's obvious?
“I know,” she says. And she does. It’s strange to think that she hasn’t known him for longer than a month (and a day, a horrible day that is barely a memory anymore), because some of the things he does, the things he says… even when she can’t entirely agree - after all she used to read books mostly to have her horizon broadened, if not her views changed - it reflects onto her and she absorbs it. As if they are very similar, even when she can look at him like this, their hands connected by the worn leather of an old book, and see that they are nothing alike.
Mireille has decided that it must have to do with him. The way he accepts so many things and changes it at his own pace, and only for his own reasons, building on justifications he has formed by himself. Not like her, who… heeds the orders of society, of institutions not of her own choosing, listening to a voice that died out a long time ago… Her lips tighten, quiver. She might not be a lesser person than him, but he is definitely a better person than her, despite his rawness and too-simple logic. It’s still to prefer.
Stepping back, she turns to look out the kitchen window. “Please accept it,” she continues, voice soft, “I want you to have it, even so.” She can’t insist. Silver does things his own way. If he doesn’t think he has a need for the Hunchback of Notre Dame, she won’t force it on him, but… she hopes…
Hope only gets her so far, of course, but until she is given something better or worse, it’s all she has and by now she has got used to the pliable substance of that kind of life.
Oh sweet, silly Mireille. There are no such things as better or worse people. There are people who keep themselves alive because being alive excuses everything, and there are people who do what's right, or at least less wrong. There are people who are unaware of the true nature of the world, who can sing and laugh in the spring breeze - but Silver and Mireille can never be one of those, and he at least could not wish such a life on either an enemy or a pitied friend. Don't ever try and tell Silver he is better - even when he is doing what's least wrong, he has too much angst to ever think himself 'better' in any sense than anyone else
For now... there is something about the softness of her voice - so contrary to the way Simone had insisted that he eat, though she too had been worrying for him in her own way. No - Mireille wants him to have this, finds it something separate from necessity, is doing it because it gives her some feeling of...
Of what, exactly? Silver is not used to warm feelings like this, except when he is drinking - and, perhaps, when he is with her. It's a lot to take in.
"I'm too idle here," he says by way of response, still holding the book just as firmly as before. "I'll read it if it keeps my interest."
There: a perfectly honest answer. He realises with a start - a realisation that had snuck up on him so craftily that he did not have time to refuse it - that he does not want to refuse her. That if she is so insistent on it, that if this book can give him insight on how she finds light even in this world, that even if the book leads him to think thoughts that are entirely unnatural to him and contrary to his beliefs...
Well, then he doesn't have to believe it. It doesn't mean he wants to say no, right here and now.
Dammit. And here he'd been so determined his heart would never be touched by anything again.
Fingers grabbing the edge of the kitchen table so tightly that her knuckles go white, she keeps staring out the window as his words wash over her. He gives her so much of his time; teaching her how to defend herself, indulging her little visits, accepting what she tries handing him, even when she doesn’t quite know what it is. What it is she wants him to have from her. Of her. Closing her eyes and breathing in deeply, she sees Father put the book away, get up slowly, turning the lights off and leaving her on the couch to finish her tea while he goes back to work. The Hunchbak of Notre Dame lies innocently on the chair, its cover beckoning at her.
“Even if it doesn’t,” she says, words stumbling slightly over one another as they leave her mouth, as if she is picking them up as she goes, “you’ll have read so far and it will be something.” Instead of nothing. It’ll be enough. A small step closer to…
Turning her head enough to be able to look at him, the book still in his grip just like when she’d given it to him, Mireille watches him for a long moment. In the beginning, all she could think of when she saw him was how he had worked over Father’s broken body, his wife standing next to him, handing him terrifyingly delicate-looking tools and little vials of extracts Mireille had no understanding or patience for. Now she can’t recall the woman’s face anymore; she’s just a blurry figure next to him. Whereas he… his features have become sharper.
Except… she knows he didn’t look like this four years ago and this, this, is all she can call forth in her mind. Her lips tighten. Her hands release the tabletop. His bowtie is still undone and it’s prickling in her fingertips to fix it. Or perhaps remove it altogether. There’s no point in him wearing something unfinished; useless without the purpose it only gains when tied.
But she leaves it be. Somehow it fits him. Like this.
Unfinished. Get me started on the things that are unfinished about Silver and I'll write you a book. If anything is proof that Ray picks out his clothes, it's the fact that Silver is almost always dressed better than he feels.
Moving, now, he crosses the room and places the book on a counter, carefully - in the way he is precise and careful in all his movements that matter, for all that he is sometimes abrupt. Letting his gaze linger on the book for just a moment longer, he finally does turn away to face Mireille again, his own eyes unreadable - but warm. In their own way.
It has been quite a month. Quite a month, to be here in this world. Quite a month, to be here in this world with her standing at his kitchen counter, to be staring at this book that does not belong to him and yet has been given to him, anyway. If asked how they got here he would have no idea what to answer - how to even define 'here', in the first place. All he knows is that... she is unlike anyone he has ever known. And he has never felt such a unique mix of feelings as she can bring out in him.
It's incredibly irritating. How's a man supposed to try and hammer his way through life without having his heart touched by feelings when there are people like her constantly challenging his ideas?
Nevertheless, his tone is its usual flat, direct pitch when he speaks. "Yes," he replies simply, mulling over her words. It'll be something. And substance... whether good, or bad... one supposes it's better than having nothing at all.
"Why this book?"
The words come out a little absently - almost not enough to be noticeable, but perhaps just noticeable enough for her to see that he's spoken without calculating. Without even thinking about what he wants in response. Just... wondering. The sort of wondering that might require caring, but don't tell him that.
Face to face, with a good few meters between them - the distance they always seem to have, because Silver finds it comfortable - they stand in silence. It’s not awkward, as one might have thought. Mireille lets the question float in the air between them, looking at him without really seeing him. Quasimodo, the ugly incarnation of everything not quite right, but as right as anything ever gets. La Esmeralda who refused to give up on herself, who would rather die than… than marry…
Folding her hands in front of herself, Mireille hesitates, trying to remember the time she had borrowed Father’s copy and read it, just to find out why he found it so interesting that he would return to it time and again. “Nothing about Notre Dame is beautiful,” she explains, imagining the dark, Gothic feel of the cathedral, “but even so, the lack of beauty gains its own worth in the end. That’s… the feeling of it. The book.” She nods towards it lightly, raising her eyes to meet his. It’s not happiness, the tenseness in the pit of her stomach, so she can’t make herself force a smile to go with her words, but her gaze is tender.
And she doesn’t mind giving Silver that tenderness. That hope. Rather, she wants to. Perhaps it is what makes her feel so drawn to him, that she wants him to have… that.
Silver listens to her speak without interruption, his features blank but attentive. All he knows about the book is its setting and plot; it had been quite popular at the time it came out, but he'd never been one for books, especially not tales that are so... hopeful. That, with such determination, attempt to find goodness in a world like this. And with a thought like that - it suddenly occurs to him exactly why Mireille would like it.
He looks out the window - at the sun that is just beginning to set over the still-slightly-surreal horizon of Wonderland, at the singing flowers still resolutely cheerful every time they see him. There are probably those who would find Wonderland beautiful in its own way. If anything... he is glad Mireille knows that not everything is beautiful. That she is not one of those girls determined to paint the world in shining colours where there is only grey.
And he is not so much glad as highly confused that - even for someone so honest about the lack of beauty wherever beauty is lacked - she is capable of seeing so much light, nevertheless. It's certainly something he's never learned to do.
"I'll read it," he says, once again - but it's nothing like the dismissive tone he might have taken with some. Instead, it's... something genuine. Something he says, because he wants to.
If she can give him this out of want, then surely... surely he can at least reply and say what he means. Not that he's ever had trouble with that, per se; it's just that being open and honest like this, potentially letting himself be touched by the tenderness she has to offer...
Everything in his logic says no, and yet he's doing it with every passing minute.
Mireille can’t think of anything to say then. To that. To him. She could thank him, but it would be so horribly out of place. She could agree, but they are here, in this moment, because she already has. A couple of inhalations, followed by an equal amount of exhalations. The light grows softer as the sun begins to set, and she really should be getting home, because there’s a long walk ahead of her and she has left no note informing Jean Louis that she would be staying out late. At the thought of Jean Louis, her focus returns to Silver’s bowtie.
How many times hasn’t she tied her husband’s bowtie? Untied it, too, but for now it’s the initiating movements of tying it correctly, folding it on the middle, twisting the silk into the correct folds, tugging until the knot is tight. It’s even hanging skewed around his neck, one end hanging vastly lower than the other, as if it is slowly slipping off.
It dawns on her that she doesn’t want to tie it, not really, not anymore. Silver takes full responsibility for his own appearance and there’s nothing about it that she would want to change… that she doesn’t want to… doesn’t want… Yet, perhaps if she could simply touch it, let it run through her fingers and know that she has left some kind of impression. Like he has on her.
The first step is unconscious, the next less so and at the third, Mireille glances up at Silver’s face, stopping in front of him. His features are as expressionless as ever. Not coldly so. Not like porcelain. Not at all. Porcelain is for her to wear, to cut herself off from all those schemes and plans that reflect on her, but don’t reflect her. Absent-mindedly, she imagines Quasimodo lying down next to La Esmeralda, giving himself up to just that… to just being, until he is no more…
When she presses her lips to his, it’s a surprising sensation. Of course, she has moved her body at will, stretched up to be able to reach, resting her hands against his chest for balance, closing her eyes automatically… Even so, she hadn’t expected… this. To happen. This feeling.
Warm.
Not surprisingly, he tastes like brandy.
If asked to describe it, he could never tell you what he noticed at that moment. The way the sunlight had sunk softly into her skin, bathing it in a warm orange glow, the way the tablecloth had stirred in the very slight breeze drifting in from the window, the way his own legs and feet had felt strange and alien beneath him. The way she had looked at him - as if all she needed from him was what he was willing to give. What he is willing to give, in this moment, now. She expects nothing from him - and yet, somehow, without trying and sometimes whilst trying not to, he's managed to give her something, anyway. Just as he's managed to take from her something he had not expected to take, had not wanted, had not asked for - but had not minded having, either.
And he has nothing to fear from it. No reason to shy from it. Here like this, the warmth of her intruding on his space... the words he'd said time and again, that he has no space in his heart for these feelings, that he will kill before he is killed... they are no less true, but they feel so far away.
For now, all that's important is that she feels no less like the essence of her, here and now. No less like the things he has never openly acknowledged but has never failed to notice. For all it is a kiss in the strictest of terms it is a touch, first and foremost - the contact of human skin with human skin, the reaching out of one to another. She needs never explain this movement - isn't it what she has been doing all along, reaching out to him, reaching out in her kindness even when he is unresponsive?
More real than this world, more overwhelming than the need for vengeance that had brought him to her in the first place... she is something worth holding on to. Worth protecting. He cannot, in good faith, complain of lacking substance or a path when she is here like this, with him. For whatever it's worth.
Against her lips, he smiles. A subconscious smile - the only kind of which he is capable, the smiles that express his true meaning rather than any need to be polite. A smile so miniscule and so soft that it cannot be seen, only felt. And he reaches out with one arm to rest his hand on her shoulder, too - firmly. Reassuringly.
It is not love. But it could be worse.