Chapter Text
"I’m sorry, Sasha. You don't like to be touched."
It was a statement, not a question. Sasha, her back still stiff, still a little defensively hunched in on herself, didn't look at Wilde. She grunted a surly non-response and resumed flipping her daggers one by one out of their various sheaths and into the opposite wall.
Wilde watched this with a mild expression. The brush of his hand against hers had been truly accidental, a result of distraction and misjudged distance as he was passing between her and the nearby table, but her reaction had been arresting. Sasha had curled inward like a touch-me-not fern, the dagger in her hand reversed and pointed at his throat in a startling instant.
He didn’t interrupt now, just watched her bury her blades with unerring accuracy into the dark wood of the wall. The common room of their lodgings wasn’t exactly the palace at Versailles in any case, but Sasha was doing an excellent job of transforming it from ‘uncomfortable quarters’ to ‘seedy dive’ without much apparent effort. The far wall now sported a variety of knife-hole patterns, testament to several evenings spent as target practice.
“-neh,” Sasha finally muttered. Thunk. Wssh-thunk. Two more daggers flew home into the wood. Wilde stayed silent, maintained the carefully neutral expression he was wearing. He had learned, over the last little while, that Sasha was not as reticent as an early impression might suggest. Like luring close a skittish stray cat, if you were patient and still and nonthreatening, eventually, she would talk. Wilde had found that he quite appreciated what the young thief had to say, when she did.
“‘s not a big deal.” Wssh-thunk . Sasha still didn’t look at him, but the angle of her stance had changed, turned toward him just a little. This was encouraging.
Wilde hesitated, then took a gamble and responded.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Sasha shook her head and whipped another dagger across the room, once more falling mute. Wilde watched for another moment or two, and then withdrew, leaving her to her solitude.
Wilde glared at the pile of reports in front of him, which did not seem in any way perturbed by his annoyance, and decided that enough was enough for one day. Day? He glanced out the small window and winced. Evening, then.
“Been at it a while -d,” said a voice in the doorway, and Wilde carefully did not let out a startled scream. Sasha was grinning when he turned around, leaning with practiced insouciance against the doorframe, proud of her pun. “That was a good one.”
“It was ,” he replied, weary enough that even summoning a pun in riposte was too much effort and settling for positive reinforcement alone. Wilde stood and stretched, arching backwards until his spine popped, and he let out a sigh of relief.
When he straightened, Sasha was fidgeting. “I do, actually,” she said. She glanced up and, correctly interpreting the concussed-rabbit expression Wilde wore, elaborated, “...want to talk about it. That is. If you still- I mean, it’s not, like, important , it’s just-”
Wilde waved a hand in a delicate, negating gesture. “No,” he said, cutting her off, “it is important. And I do. Still want to listen. That is.” A tiny smile chased his words, softening his mimicry of her.
“Not here.” Sasha straightened, tension riding her frame. She shoved her hands into her pockets. “I mean. I like Grizzop ‘n Hamid ‘n Azu but I don’t… there’s some things you don’t want your friends to know about, right? Like, they rely on me, yeah, to be good at things, and not be like. Weak.”
‘...you don’t want your friends to know.’ Wilde was certain Sasha hadn’t intended anything by it, but he was surprised by the slight sting her phrasing brought. He was not a friend.
But that, of course, was no surprise. The party had made it clear that Wilde was an employer, or at least a representative of their employers, and an annoyance, and an occasional help, but nothing truly friendly , and that was as it should be. He’d carefully cultivated that exact relationship with the London And Other London Outstanding Mercenary Group. Carefully and deliberately. There was nothing to be gained in getting attached.
Still. Sasha wanted to talk- needed to talk, it seemed, and Wilde knew well enough that this window would not open twice. Why it was important to take advantage of it he did not examine.
“Where shall we go? Lady’s choice.” He bowed to her, a deliberately over-the-top, courtly gesture that garnered, as intended, a slightly embarrassed snort from the thief lurking in his doorway.
“How are you at climbing?”
Wilde was pretty good at climbing, it turned out. Sasha beat him to the roof, of course, but he was not far behind her, and didn’t need the hand up that she didn’t offer him anyway. This wasn’t his first rooftop, she was sure, although why some poncy git in expensive clothes would be scrambling around among shingles and chimneys was beyond her.
Still, the roof was safe from prying eyes and listening ears - not that any of the party would deliberately eavesdrop, but you know, old habits and all that - and he’d got up here without falling to his death, so on balance Sasha figured it was a good thing he knew his way around guttering and eaves.
She folded herself up against the rough brick of a chimney, hugging her knees to her chest. After a moment, Wilde sat down beside her - not too close, she was privately grateful to note. They sat there in silence for a little while. The sun had long since gone down, and its last sunset sliver of pink-grey gilded the horizon while above them stars brightened in the deep, blue-black night sky. The city wasn’t quiet - no city ever was, no matter the time of day or night - but the noise of people and carts and distant music from some pub or party was muted, up here. Sasha gave herself the time to focus on the noises, to sift through them and identify them all, pinpointing their sources, populating the ever-evolving map of the city in her mind. Wilde, to his credit, stayed silent, giving her that time uninterrupted.
Finally, he shifted, trying to find a more comfortable position on the awkward angle of the roof, and Sasha reluctantly refocused her attention on here .
“So like.” A dagger had already found its way to her hand, one of the small ones tucked snugly in their slim sheaths at her wrists. Sasha spun it expertly through her fingers, trying to wrap words around the muddy, inexpressible mess in her head. “I didn’t… have a great time, growin’ up. I’m sure you know that already. Your kind, you don’t do anything without findin’ out everything there is to find about people first.”
Sasha didn’t miss the swift flicker of expression across Wilde’s face when she said this, but left it alone. He wouldn’t like it being pointed out, she knew. It was something they had in common. You had the face that you showed to everybody around you, and whatever was going on underneath it never got to the surface. Not where anybody else could see.
It was, in fact, one of the reasons Sasha had decided she could talk to Wilde, when she couldn’t bring herself to talk to the rest of her companions. They cared too much. They felt too much. And more than that, they showed it. To Sasha’s mind, it was inexplicable and incredibly discomfiting.
But Wilde… Wilde, she suspected, got it .
“I guess I didn’t get to be a kid for long,” Sasha continued, staring at the knife as it flipped over her knuckles to land hilt-first against her palm. “And there wasn’t a lot of-- it just wasn’t great,” she repeated lamely. Sasha risked a glance up at Wilde, pleading silently to prove her suspicion correct.
He was looking at her. Directly at her, intently at her. Sasha froze, staring back. She wasn’t used to being looked at , not like this. Sasha was easy to miss, part of the background; nothing to see here, move along. She was proud of it. And now here was Wilde, looking right at her like he could see straight through to the back of her head, and Sasha couldn’t decide whether or not she wanted to look away.
Because it was frightening- but it was also, in some alien way, a relief. To be seen. To have somebody actually, really… see her .
“I know,” Wilde said quietly. He was smiling, maybe - it was hard to tell, with so little light up here above the street lamps and uncurtained windows and doors. Most of his face was in shadow, but the shadows had definition and gradients, and part of them seemed to be angled slightly upward in what Sasha thought was probably the wry expression he got when he was forced to be direct about something for once.
“I won’t ask you to tell me more,” he continued, “if you don’t wish to. I understand.”
Sasha turned her head to look out over the staggered peaks of city roofs, warm lamplight from below blurring together at the edges of her vision with cool starlight from above. She hated the sharp heat of tears, and dragged a savage sleeve over her eyes to banish the first hint of treacherous damp.
When she turned back to Wilde, he was holding out a hand toward her, palm up. An offer, rather than a request, but Sasha went instantly, utterly still, staring at it as though waiting for it to strike. Wilde only curled his fingers a little, a tiny wave pinky to pointer.
“I do understand,” Wilde said again, softly. “I promise I do. I took those same lessons and went the other way. Too much touching, rather than not enough. Touch that means nothing, instead of touch that means too much at once.”
The slender, delicate fingers curled again, repeating the same rippling invitation.
“There’s middle ground, though. I’ve been learning that lately.”
Wilde slid a tiny bit closer. Sasha didn’t move. She could feel the pressure of her pulse in her throat, rapid as a frightened rabbit.
Wilde gestured to her hand, and Sasha dropped her gaze to see what he was pointing at. Oh . Yes. She had a knife. She was safe; she had a knife and she controlled her own safety and that- that was good . Good.
“Let’s try this.” Wilde’s voice was still quiet, and gentler than she’d ever heard him speak. “You have your knife; keep that in one hand. You pick. Whichever one feels best to you, hold your knife in that hand. Give me the other one. Just your hand, Sasha. Just one hand.”
Sasha swallowed. Just… her hand. That was safe enough, right? She was up high, she had a knife in her hand, and she knew for a fact she was faster than Wilde, and maybe stronger, and anyway he needed her, needed the whole group of them, and if he hurt her the others would leave him to fix his own problems (if Grizzop didn’t murder him, that is, one kneecap at a time)-
She blinked, startled to see that her hand had somehow, apparently acting independently of orders from her, reached over to gingerly rest against Wilde’s. Sasha frowned at it. It stayed where it was. So did his. Wilde kept his hand open, careful not to hold her fast in any way. He was, Sasha realized, leaving every facet of this interaction under her complete control.
Sasha lifted her gaze to Wilde’s face. He was still watching her intently. Below them and across the street, someone opened a door, freeing a warm wash of light from within, and it caught in Wilde’s eyes, restoring a glimmer of color in the nighttime gloom. Green, Sasha noted. Or grey? Maybe blue, a little. Hard to say in the uncertain light.
Hesitantly, with aching slowness, Sasha curled her fingers around Wilde’s palm.
Just as slowly but with more surety, Wilde mirrored her until they were loosely holding each other’s hand.
“Thank you,” Wilde murmured. There was warmth in his voice. Sasha dropped her gaze from his face to their joined hands. It was… so strange, this feeling of someone else’s skin against hers for no other reason than to feel it there. Sure, she touched people- hard not to when most of your fighting was hand to hand- but not… like this.
Wilde’s hand was warm and dry. His palm was smooth, but Sasha was startled to notice calluses at his fingertips when they brushed against her skin. There was a moment of confusion before the penny dropped: they marked where a pen would sit, mutely betraying the countless hours he’d spent putting ink to paper. And she could feel the thrum of his pulse where one fingertip rested against Wilde’s wrist. It was strong and steady, and Sasha counted along with every beat. One… two… three… four… one… two… three… four…
Gradually, as though chasing his, her own pulse eased from frantic fight-or-flight to something approaching calm. As close as Sasha ever came to it, anyway. She drew in a long breath and looked up at Wilde’s face again.
He was singing, Sasha realized: very softly, almost too softly to hear. She likely would never have noticed if she hadn’t seen his lips moving. Intrigued, Sasha leaned forward a little, straining to catch the melody, but Wilde, seeing her move, shook his head with a tiny smile.
“Nope,” he said. “It ruins the magic.” The wink he gave her was impish. Delicately as a flower unfolding its petals to the morning sun, Wilde uncurled his hand from around Sasha’s, reaffirming her freedom. She slid her hand from his and tucked it immediately into her pocket. Something in her didn’t want the feeling of warmth and unexpected safety this had brought to somehow drain away without the strangely-comforting touch to hold it in place.
“Better?”
Sasha thought a moment, then nodded.
“Better.”
“Good.” Wilde got to his feet, braced a hand on the chimney against which he’d been propped, and yawned expansively. “I’ll leave you to your rooftops and gargoyles,” he told her, and grinned. “I’m a creature of comfort and I need my creature comforts after being out in the cold and dark for so long. Enjoy the evening.”
Sasha sat there alone for a long time after Wilde vanished back indoors. She stared over the rooftops, retraced the feeling of Wilde’s warm hand in hers, and thought about nothing at all.