#vindictes

Picking up the placed alcohol, Lucia saucily took a sip from the opposite side of where his lips had touched. No indirect kisses in this house, but she knew she was one of the few people in the world who could so blatantly do something like this. Not every day someone sipped from the same cup as Giovanni.

[ yearly dad-son meeting going well ]

His first instinct is to roll his eyes. The second is to do what he's ordered, moving hair from his face to, indeed, lift his head and look up at Giovanni.

"You know what I mean."

Appearing out of nowhere, bothering him, maybe order him around just like he just did and then leave again, hidden in plain sight as usual. Frowning, Silver kept eye contact as much as he could, shaking his head slightly.

Still more tired than angry, for once.

"You'll have to explain to me why you keep on pushing me around. I thought I wasn't your problem anymore, we... discussed about this. And yet every single time I think I'm doing okay, that you're finally gone, you just-- reappear.

" i suppose we have no further use for him, " the words are faint and calm, and the injured man's frantic pleas for his life go unheard. giovanni turns his back on him, remaining standing beside archer before lifting a hand to place it on his shoulder. it's a silent permission.

" would you get rid of him for me, executive? "

That was the thing about pain; inflicting it with progressive intensity, fastidiously dismantling even the most impenetrable of facades, all of it returned to this pervasive weakness. Initially his insistence had been irksome, an authoritative tirade which eventually subsided into plaintive whimpers. Archer’s infallible indifference persists no matter how desperately he pleads, his one-sided attempts at negotiation destined to achieve little else than sharpening the disdain in his eyes. It was futile, Archer’s intentions had been laid bare from the beginning. With surgical precision he tortured the pittance of information he stubbornly withheld out of him, disappointing, considering how worthless it ended up being. How shameful to posture at confidence, boldly proclaiming he would tell them nothing, only to yield with such urgency that it felt as if he had wanted to be compliant all along. Answer when first asked, avoid the initial incision. The blood that bloomed across his skin terrified him, that much was evident in the way his eyes widened, tensing against that invasive, glinting silver. Pain followed in fierce undulations, perspiration beading on his forehead in thick, tremulous droplets. He had resisted all but four minutes and thirty seven seconds before he dissolved into imploring him to stop, shaking so violently it verged upon convulsing. He wouldn’t die, the wound was deliberately shallow. It was more about the pain, about the blood, about the ice cold dread that towed him under. Thus his hand retreated, hovering just close enough to remain a threat. The next time he opened his mouth he began regurgitating every piece of intel he had ever been exposed to whether heard in passing or being shared explicitly. Archer’s expression doesn’t falter, casting a minatory shadow across his pale skin, a tacit promise of the penalty that awaited him should he choose to lie.

"How can I find you, Silver? Its not as though you are publically in a relationship with the Champion of Johto and live in his house."