The Victorian drawing room, rickety and shabby compared to the neighbors of Silvercrest manor, was filled with two sounds - the constant ticking of a faithful clock, and the long sobs of a newly-made widower. There was no rain despite the way the clouds hung heavy in the sky, making the air thick with an electric desire. Those from the English country could smell the rain coming, coming, but it did not come. It was as though the world were halted, waiting in anticipation for something to snap under the tension.
And it was Artemy Silvercrest who felt that pressure on his shoulders, as if he were Atlas himself slumped down over the unlit fireplace, his knees so close to the ground that he might as well have been sitting on the floor. The plush velvet seat he had been leaning out of smelled of a flowery perfume, choked from the years of a certain blonde man draping himself across it after dressing. That man was gone now, leaving only the faint wisps of scent that Artemy could not stand.
It all smelled like him, and from that scent of feminine perfume - one that Cassius Silvercrest had long faced ridicule for - Artemy could almost see him still. He could see his husband walking down the grand staircase or even sliding down the rail, not caring about propriety when they had already broken so many rules already. It came easy to Cassius - rebellion. It was in his veins, a half-Frenchman that had lived in France for a time, grew sick of the rich, and then later became one of the rich in England.
That flowery scent would soon settle in with the rest of the dust, and it would perhaps only linger on the left side of the master bedroom, where Artemy did not think he would ever have the strength to clean out.
He shivered in the drafty room, too large a room for one man and a servant or two. They had not had kids. They had only each other, against the world, since they were in University. It was the beginnings of winter in the upper country of London, not yet cold enough for snow nor a fire - and Artemy was determined not to bring life to the house any more. Not without him.
A young butler named Dante shuffled into the room sheepishly, against the master’s orders that he wished to be alone. The young boy did not yet have the cold professionalism of others in his position, and so he furrowed his brows at the weeping Artemy with that of pity, of longing for friendship.
“My lord-“
Artemy flinched like someone who had been hit, turning so quickly that the chair squeaked a bit. His curly black hair was wild with grief, completely unkempt - more than usual. Dante could not help but stare at the bloodshot blue eyes under the wisps of black curls, the dark circles under his eyes already forming, wet with tears. Artemy did not need to speak to show that he was running low on patience, and so Dante swallowed back his nerves, his Adam’s apple bobbing against his too-tight collar.
“Are you - Forgive me, but are you alright?” He tried again immediately, knowing the question was foolish. “I - I understand he was someone important to you-“
“You know damn well what he was, Dante,” Artemy snapped, using his birth name for the first time, though it was not out of friendliness but rather a reminder of their difference. He had, in the past, always called him ‘Mr. Morvell’, refusing to treat him as poorly as the wealthy always treated their servants.
Now, Dante was nothing to him but an intruder in a moment of grief.
He winced, not uncomfortable with the idea of two men being - well, in love, but petrified of the sheer legality of it. He understood the moment he was hired that he could be jailed for his silence - or ran through by Cassius’s rapier for his treachery. He licked his chapped lips to attempt to mend the situation, though it was clear that Artemy was no longer aware of his presence - or perhaps he just didn’t care.
“My Lord, I know he was your husband in everything but the law. I - I can only imagine how hard this is, with how suddenly Cassius was-“
The unthinkable happened, or rather, the unthinkable happened when paired with the fact that it was Artemy, so calm, so collected, whom hurled a teacup of cold, discarded tea at the doorway. It was nowhere near Dante, but he flinched all the same as the tea left a darkened splotch on the wallpaper, the shards of ceramic sliding off unceremoniously.
“He could have been someone who lived!” Artemy cried out, his left hand dripping from some of the tea having spilled on him. He did not seem to notice how it dripped onto his fine leather shoes, spots of brown on the polished black. “Why did he die? Why did he have to choose such a monstrous, idiotic thing to do? He could have stayed. He could have-“
“He volunteered in the hospital, sir,” Dante found himself saying with a quiver, desperately trying to ground Artemy before he delved into hysteria. “It was a noble thing to do, and he enjoyed helping the patients. Is it so idiotic if he spent until his last hour making them happy?”
Artemy let out a sob that sounded like the howl of an injured dog, pacing in a frantic circle around the room, fiddling with the silver ring on his finger. “We could have been happy! He could have been - he was taken from me.”
“He was killed, sir.”
The words hit him like the gunshot that had been fired into Cassius’s back for no reason other than the fact that he was him - rich, unarmed, and in love with a man perhaps too openly. Artemy staggered and he grasped the mantle of the fireplace with white knuckles, his vision blurred as he looked at what could have been the shape of Dante or a ghost. “Get out,” he snarled.
Dante ran.
Cassius could not have died. Artemy shook his head until he was dizzy and the blood was rushing in his ears. He would return at any moment from his volunteer work, his cheeks flushed pink from the biting winds nipping at his face. He would toss his elegant coat onto the floor, and before Artemy would be able to complain, would be pulling him close. They always embraced after parting, as if Cassius were going to war every day.
But he did not come home - would not. This was the battle that killed him, the Battle of Unfair Death, shot dead when he could have lived. Had the murderer fought with a knife or a sword, Cassius would have won. But he could not reflect bullets. He was holy to Artemy, godly even, but he could not perform miracles.
Artemy thought of the literature he had wasted his time reading, remembering at once Euripides’s masterful plea for help. He wanted Cassius to come back, too. He wanted him as a shadow, as a dream, as a man, as his lover again. Why was he not returning? Why was he not answering Artemy’s wails of misery, his cries for help louder than even those classical ghosts?
Something brought him back from his thoughts - a sharp, mechanical sound that alerted him instantly. It was a gun being loaded, pointed at his head. It was death armed with not a scythe but a pistol, it-
It happened again. The sound. Artemy looked around like a wild animal, tears falling in his terrified state. It was a ticking sound, occurring over and over, a million guns. No, Artemy realized that it was not a gun, and he laughed a little at how foolish it had been. It was footsteps, marching to the beat of an unheard drum, stomping towards the manor with confidence. Perhaps the guards were already in the manor, and were making a show of surrounding him.
They were to take him away, to the gallows, to be hung. They already killed Cassius, and now only one of the devils remained, charged with threatening the purity of a religious marriage. Only Artemy’s blood pooling from the center of London could cure it - a sacrifice made. The ropes they would use would tighten at his throat like the fist of an angry god.
He jumped to his feet, stuck between confession and running, unsure of which he preferred. He would only see Cassius in death, but was he ready to die?
A tick - a march of the generals searching, searching, ticking, ticking.
They had been so careful - twenty years together and no one had ever known of their love save for ones they had trusted with their lives. They had moved countries, had bought a house, had built the Silvercrest name from nothingness together. And now the world knew, and it was angry. Millions of people would wait in the streets for him, to stomp him to death, to spit on him, to melt his wedding ring into the bullet that killed Cassius.
There was only one way the authorities would have known, Artemy realized with a gasp. His legs shook and he tried to force himself out of his prison, but he did not have the strength to go up the stairs, for the ticking guards were somewhere, somewhere.
He and Cassius had written love letters to each other, despite living together. It was a way to surprise each other with declarations of adulation, their hearts written on decades of parchment. They would burn each letter at the end of the year, making a ceremony out of hiding their love from the chance of an intruder.
Had they burned this year’s letters? Artemy could not remember, racking his brain for the memory and yet only finding the moment that Cassius’s body had returned from the undertaker in a white sheet, already prepared for the funeral. Artemy hadn’t known. It had all happened so fast. A gunshot and then police on the scene and then the bullet extracted, the body dressed, delivered in a safe little package as if it hadn’t been the love of his life.
He knew where the letters must be for the guards to be coming. Perhaps he had buried them as they did once before. He had to find them.
Tick. He was finding his coat and found that it did not fit as it did before, but he didn’t care.
Tick. Something on the mantle was so loud, as if the guards were hiding in the fireplace.
Tick. Something big was happening to Artemy. God forgive him. God save him. He needed to repent, to beg, he-
He tripped before he could leave and he reached out to catch himself, instead grabbing the clock and hurling it into the wall. It did not matter if it was accidental, for the marching of the guards stopped. Perhaps he had killed them with the clock itself, beaten them all over the temples with it. There was no blood on the floor, though, just shattered glass and splintered wood and pieces of a broken heart that would never be mended.
It was finally quiet when he escaped, running through the maze-like manor as if he were wanting to be lost in the narrow halls. He came out into a crowded parlor, the air thick with quiet murmuring and soft weeping. All of the mourners stopped when he stumbled in wearing a coat that was not his, looking at him with a mix of emotions. The few who knew what he had been to Cassius only looked at him with pity, as if he had finally snapped.
A woman who had been conversing with the priest hardened her gaze at him, her black-rimmed eyes narrowed as if he disgusted her. It took him a moment to recognize Cordelia, the woman that Cassius had been engaged to twenty years ago, only to break it off in a moment of homosexual panic.
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