the shadow is mine; so is the valley.

       a simple question, really – asking where castle is. simple and yet her charmingly scathing response lingers in the air between them. his smile is disjointed, torn up at the edges and jagged. too bright, too sharp, too scarred. she’s pretty and pristine and it – no, he – tilts his head in mock appreciation. it twitches inside of him and settles beneath his silver tongue. too early to be out of the hospital, but here he is. pulled and stitched together in a semblance of a man. they don’t know.

      no one knows.

              “spoken like a proud hypocrite,” he starts, stopping himself when his reflection catches in the glass just behind her. he sees fragments and pieces and a face lost to the past. glimpses and flashes and pain – all that pain – cause his fist to curl in on itself, his shoulders pulling tight with tension before another twitch relaxes him entirely. “or do you claim you get all your intel through moral means –?”

        billy doesn’t wait for an answer, he adjusts the strap of the bag hanging heavy across his left shoulder. 

              “a discussion for another time, i suppose. you let him know we’ll be in touch, won’t you?” the smokescreen of his smile is useless with her, but the familiarity of the stretch and pull of it anchors him in further. 

         he leaves with the taste of ash in his mouth.

         alone. like he’s always been, like he’ll always be. alone except for the whispers and screams and the unending nails-on-chalkboard sound that rattles at the back of his mind and drives him to another drink. at least when he’s awake, there’s a sliver more control of where his thoughts drift to next. sometimes. sometimes it’s all inky black and bottomless and it drapes across his shoulders like the night he sits under.

                        “whiskey ain’t no good on an empty stomach,” castle says, slipping in beside him with some sort of food. it smells great, but it makes billy’s stomach twist in on itself and he feels the bile rise up and sour the back of his throat.

                      “on the contrary, my friend, it’s exactly what the doctor ordered,” he counters, tone colored by gunmetal and copper; like he can’t quite get the taste of it to go down with the whiskey. there’s some shakespeare line about not being able to get blood off of hands – out damned spot, out i say –  and it drives the killer mad, but poetry wasn’t spun for a gutter-rat and his knuckles bleach white with the truth of it. “i’m not hungry,” he adds on, smile slicing wide and high.

                   “who says it’s for you?”

              russo doesn’t answer and neither does castle. they sit, quiet and too observant and too malleable to the other’s every move. they sit in silence, and when billy reaches over to tear a piece of sandwich off for himself, frank pretends he doesn’t notice. their shoulders touch, an act of solidarity, and billy’s tension releases -- not wholly, never completely, but enough.

             two birds of black in a sea of death. 

              looking close, they’d almost appear the same breed.

         the silence bleeds out between and before them like many things have. ( many people. blood on blood on blood and it’s such a bitch to get out. )  it bleeds until it’s dead; gone, faded from existence. it bleeds and russo smiles, the smallest twitch of a smile. 

                “apparently, killing is frowned upon,” he states, deadpan and no shift in his expression either which way. ward doesn’t move, doesn’t have a tell. “even when it’s called for.” 129 confirmed kills, but that doesn’t count everybody outside of the war. it doesn’t count the people he’s had strings on and the ones he’s plucked until they screamed. it doesn’t count the castle family because that’s on him, even when his finger wasn’t on the trigger. “you’d think it –” 

      it doesn’t count –

               “no, makes me feel less.” ward answers, like he knows what billy was thinking, and maybe he does. because a killer is still a killer, no matter the shade you wear or the shadows you hide behind. justified or not. you drop a man, you’re not the same. 

                “mm,” he hums. feel less, he says, and billy can’t relate, not quite -- not really; see, because when was the last time he felt anything at all? “funny how that works, hm?”

       close, close, closer. look at it him go. close enough to smell, to taste, to consume. russo licks his lips; he’s feeling parched, rather ravenous. it’s like desire – such an ugly, human thing – has taken the sharp-edged look in rafe adler’s eyes and blown his pupils wide. it’s an easier target. billy aims carefully. 

              callused hands slide up the long trek of his chest. slow, deliberate; he picks and chooses where to stop, where to apply pressure. slow – and then suddenly not, one hand wraps around the back of rafe’s neck, pulling him close and the other – oh, the other, it takes hold of his chin. later, pretty little bruises will blossom in billy’s wake. mementos. tokens. promises of a pain deeper than skin. he smiles, leaning in just enough to let the snap of his teeth catch the bottom of rafe’s lip. someone hisses. maybe they both do.

        “is that something you think you could handle?” their breath mingles, a note of something chasing from one to the other. smells like kerosene; no, but it’ll ignite just as fast. then darker, lower, the glint of it blacking out billy’s eyes completely, he whispers and his lip curls into a teasing snarl, “or even deserve.”

     everyone has secrets.  they always think,  somehow,  that they’re the exception;  that they can  keep  their secrets without exposure or reproach.  they’re wrong.  even ward himself was never an exception  —  he harbors no such delusions.  but there’s cunning here,  sharp as a blade.  it lingers,  behind russo’s calculated mirth and contrived charm,  recognizable because he knows how to read it.  what to look for.

     another mask.  and another,  and another.

     “can’t say.  i’ve never been in your position.  but,  hypothetically  —  ?  yeah.  i can appreciate why it wouldn’t sit right.”  with someone like you  hangs idle,  subtext that won’t escape notice.  “and i don’t know about that.  you haven’t asked me for answers yet.”

        well, that decides that, doesn’t it? he likes him, or the bits and pieces of real and unreal, because it’s not a whole man he’s speaking to; he likes him in the way the queen on a chessboard devours those that oppose her. he likes that there’s something electric beneath the current, because it’s not who you know, it’s what you know about them. he likes him in the only way he understands how. 

                  russo’s smile splinters at the edges, fragments of glass slivers.