Work Text:
The final game isn’t all that close, when it comes down to it: Rowl knows it’s over even as his pearl tunnels atop the endstone terrain.
He plays it out like going through the motions. Y94 side-setup on front tower, bow readied, explosives on hand; the standard sort of End Silverr would relax seeing, assured in a clean victory. Silverr, surely in the fountain by now, reflected with scattered jewelled lights as he counts the ticks knowing he won’t have to.
It ends before Rowl gets the first explosive off.
Match over flashes over their vision in red. Weightless sensation chases the stab of defeat, then dimensions crumple and fold in around them until their feet find stable flooring in the tournament lobby. The cameras have cut back to the commentary booth, for the best: Rowl feels suspended, one foot still in the last seed.
Their headset pops with static. The commentators’ voices crackle in; Rowl hears their name, and cave spider and stronghold, and they tug the earpiece out with irritation prickling beneath their skin.
Silverr follows them in the next tick. Materialises with cape awhirl about him and running on the fumes of his cool poise, no time to breathe before he’s ushered away with a rushed congratulations for interview prep. Rowl watches him disappear backstage, gone like a dream; a step, blink, and out of reach.
He’s jolted back to the moment in Silverr’s wake—acutely aware, suddenly, of his heart in his ears and the drag of his breath. The lobby is silent at the cusp of the third match. A quiet sort of tension taut through the air without the passing-by from production crew to relax it.
The crowd’s distant noise swells, bleeds through the walls separating them. Rowl catches sight of a screen projecting the main broadcast. Before the house lights go down, there’s a flash of the audience’s glowing excitement.
Silverr has just crossed the stage, settling onto his seat opposite Fein and Nerdi. His hair is pinned back neat; a few locks pull free of the tie and even that lends him an air of effortless disregard. He’s thrown his cardigan over his running gear: a triumph of bright colour beneath the spotlights, in sharp relief against the shadowed backdrop of the stalls.
Fatigue slips off him like shrugging off a jacket. Everything comes to him with uncurbed enthusiasm, easy confidence. His hands are splayed out in front of him, wild movement to each word that spills from him like a current downstream.
Rowl humours the thought of being in Silverr’s place, tastes that satisfaction bitter on their tongue. They could’ve done it, they’re sure, thinking back to the first seed. Movements in lockstep, exhilaration searing bright-hot through their blood. The third, fourth. First in stronghold, before it came apart. They wish they would have pushed it another game.
At once they want out and can’t take their eyes off Silverr, fixed on the silent exchange with earpiece dangling uselessly down their back. Want to know what’s sparked the glimmer in his eyes; but couldn’t bear the thought of the what-if had they not been the one to misstep, again and again, hadn't given Silverr the chance to veer ahead.
In the cool light of the aftermath, the adrenaline in his veins has congealed into a flat disappointment. Rowl takes a final sweep of the lobby. Beef and Jay turned carefully to opposite ends of the lobby—and Silverr onscreen, head thrown back in a faraway pantomime of laughter. He makes for the door.
Messages buzz on Rowl’s comm that he doesn’t look at yet. He’d agreed with Mongey and Hax to find them after, but he’d said that yesterday.
A drafty stairwell is tucked in a dim corner of the tournament building. Rowl pushes open the heavy door with head ducked–he takes it today because no one else does.
Then he spots someone with the same line of thought. Registers white-knit wool and fiery colours that send his mind spinning with the gleam of sunsets.
“Silverr?”
The way Silverr looks up sends a disconcerting jab through him. “Close the door,” Silverr mutters, sounding winded. “Please.”
Rowl obliges; the door swings shut in a rush of chilly air. Discomfort grows in the pit of his stomach the closer he gets. It’s how Silverr slumps into the wall yet tension coils in his muscles like he’s poised to run. The wild tumble of his hair loose over his shoulders. His mask is pulled down and Rowl notes how his fingers fly up to its hem instinctively before faltering.
“You played well today,” Silverr offers, finally. “I didn’t get to say, before.”
“You too.” Rowl can’t take the compliment in stride. That Silverr means well, that he looks intensely like he wants to distract from how he’s coming apart at the seams, doesn’t change it. “Why are you hiding out here?”
Silverr, standing alone in the stairwell beneath a slit of a window spilling reflected sun, says, “I’m not hiding.”
Rowl crowds in another step, so they’re a breath from touching.
“You’re shaking,” they say, pointedly. Slip a palm over the tense interlock of Silverr’s fingers, dry-cold to the touch. He jolts like he’s been burned.
“Just restless,” he admits. He doesn’t pull his hands back. “It’ll be fine.”
The tremble beneath Rowl’s hold feels like a trapped potential, like electricity pitching to arc through a gap of air; fingers press white-knuckled into the backs of his hands, leaving red fingernail crescents.
“Right.” Rowl considers him flatly, draws away. Then, emboldened by a flash of almost-frustration, they hook a hand into the crook of Silverr’s elbow. “Sorry. You’re not spending day one of playoffs like this.”
To his credit, Silverr doesn’t resist when Rowl tugs him down the staircase and into the open sun.
It’s a short walk from the tournament venue to their living quarters. All eyes on the day’s last match means no one to spot their trip across the grounds. Probably keeps Silverr trailing beside them, hand not so much holding as resting against his forearm, when he’s glancing around like an animal poised to bolt.
Rowl leads them into a paved path sweeping between two buildings. It’s shaded with an ivy canopy, vines winding up and over a wooden frame, flecking dappled sunlight onto the muted red bricks. A low fence picks its way along one side of the path, little pockets of garden space for the rooms on the ground floor.
There’s Rowl’s place approaching on their left: a hum of life to it in the height of spring, blue and sunny yellow dotting the garden beds. Cornflowers, which he planted—and dandelions, which he did not, but the seeds rooted in the earth anyway, carried in on a stray breeze.
Tucked out of sight behind a hedge, he has Silverr sit with a firm nudge to his shoulders. Facing him, he settles on the other bench.
“You need something to do,” Rowl says decisively. “Help me trim these.” They reach over for a basket of flowers, fresh-cut before they left, and a small pair of clippers. Silverr allows both to be placed in his hands without a word.
Silverr pulls a cornflower from the basket, crops the leaves close to their base then the stem in a neat diagonal with practiced ease. He finally speaks, stilted, only to fill the quiet. “What are you doing with these?”
Rowl shrugs. “Whatever.”
He twists the flower between his fingers as though in thought, spinning its petals until they blur into a spot of deep blue. Sets it down on the bench, then takes another.
Silently, Rowl studies him. The carefully neutral set of his brow, but his mouth pressed in a tight line. Tension runs deep in the curl of his shoulders inward. He has his cardigan pulled close like a shield.
Rowl tries to impose this moment onto the faraway stage with its spotlights and victory; the assured momentum this weekend coming off his commanding qualifiers performance. He’s met with the mirage of distance between larger-than-life and flagrantly human.
Silverr's keyed up on a self-sustaining rush of anxious adrenaline, expression unbridled and drained at once. Nothing graceful about it, and Rowl feels the incessant need to do something rise like panic. ”Does this—” he tries, feeling as though the spur that pulled them here has drained. He gestures vaguely around— “Does it always happen?”
Silverr expels a frustrated breath, a scoff through his teeth. “I don’t know what’s wrong today. I mean, I should be happy—“ He glances up at Rowl, cuts himself off. Then drags his hair out of his face, restless. “Sorry you have to be the one to do this.”
Rowl smiles, a little dry. “I didn’t pick you ‘cause I thought it would be an easy game.”
He’d said as much, last week, wholly ready to choose Hax. Knows it’s decidedly different in his position—strange, even—to go in already considering the outcome where he doesn’t come out on top.
“I know you were playing to win, though." A half-hearted twist of his mouth. “Sorry," he says again. "Thinking about next week, I guess.”
“Well,” Rowl says airily, “that’s still a whole week until you have to stress about playing Lowkey, right?”
“I don’t think it’ll matter,” Silverr mutters. Digs the heel of his palms against his eyes.
Silverr, who’d carved himself a place in the top ranks of their players the moment he took the first season. There has, since then, been a quiet anticipation—growing on impatience—closing in on him.
Maybe it’s coming off the sting of an early loss the last time around. Maybe he sees the changing faces and feels the shift in the lobbies. Maybe it’s the same taste of bitter potential that he can only chase down with a win. It’ll drive him in circles, whatever it is.
“Come on,” Rowl pushes, “why are you talking like you’ve already lost?” He feels a smile grow unwittingly, teasing edge creeping into his tone. “Look at today. Or was it too easy? Should I be offended?”
That, at least, startles a laugh from Silverr; a rough, punched-out exhale. It’s a pretty sound. Of course he’s heard Silverr laugh before. It’s different when it’s cast for Rowl in the floodlights of achievement, tucked away in his home like a secret.
“Did you see how close the games were?” A little of the tightness bleeding away, the hints of a smile. “You know you’re good, Rowl.”
Sunray warmth seeps into him, pools hot against the bridge of his nose, his cheeks. The way Silverr says his name, soft and sincere. Words caught in his throat, Rowl sits back with eyes ducked and pretends no colour is spreading atop his cheekbones.
There is something riveting in watching Silverr work. Trimming is long forgotten: his fingers are deft as they twist and twine stems together, an echo of the ruthless precision in his running mechanics. Then the artist’s elegance, running a fingertip over the lay of the petals and fixing the space between flowers, something wholly him.
A slight dip is pushed between his brows, narrowed eyes. His lip is caught between his teeth in his focus, worried red. Rowl’s fixed on the sight. Catches himself.
“Let me fix your hair,” he says. A distraction, and because Silverr looks taken apart, and the sight of that—the curl of flyaway strands, bangs falling finger-tousled over his eyes—still feels like something he’s not allowed.
Silverr nods without glancing up, quietly absorbed in the pattern of his work. Rowl settles in the spot next to him.
The white of his hair gleams like the fractal patterns of sunlight on snow; they run their hands through its length experimentally and metallic greys shift under their fingertips. The runs have left it clinging with ash and dirt and ocean spray, wavy at the ends from being tied back all day.
They run through the tangles with their fingers, pull the knots apart one at a time. Silverr exhales, slow and satisfied, leaning into their touch. His eyes slip closed. The hum in his breath hangs in the air, shivers through where Rowl’s fingers ghost his nape. He bows his head and Rowl counts the neat notches of his spine trailing off up at the base of his neck, dipping beneath his collar.
His hair falls just below his collarbone like Rowl’s, feels like it’d be down-soft clean. They pull it back into the same low ponytail but wonder how he’d look with braids tracing behind his ears, mirroring their own.
They lure time out like the cloying flow of syrup. It takes longer than they should to gather the locks back and smooth in the loose hairs, settling subconsciously into a sedated pace. After they tie it off with an elastic, it’s with reluctance that they pull away.
Silverr shifts into an upright position like he’s pulling himself awake. He blinks with slow grace; wordlessly holds up his handiwork.
The flowers are twisted into a circlet, blooming the shades of the garden they’re ensconced in. Coaxed up under Rowl’s hand, something of Rowl in the colours and the life of it. Silverr nestles the circlet against his hair—tilts his head towards Rowl, expectant.
Heated satisfaction stirs in the cage of Rowl’s chest. The flowers are electric against a blank canvas of white.
”You look good in blue,” Rowl says.
Silverr flashes a sun-gold look up at Rowl beneath a tangle of leaves, coy grin settling on his lips. “Do I?”
Rowl holds his gaze like a challenge; scoffs, “Don’t even.” The catch in his breath, though, tells it all.
The intensity in the way Silverr considers him, bird-bright eyes. Something delicate is suspended over this stilled moment, like a gleaming flash of insect wings. They both know it, Rowl thinks. How possibility has embedded between them.
With time it will unfurl to peer into the open air. Today, Silverr will thank him and shut the gate on his way out and disappear off-world crowned in cornflowers and weeds; and Rowl will pretend he’s just noticed his messages and find his friends caught in the anticipation of tomorrow.
Silverr goes and practices and talks and laughs with Rowl tangled in his thoughts like pollen in his hair. Rowl sinks, glowing, into the thought of that.