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On a random Tuesday at 4:12pm, Graves shows up at Silver’s apartment. Silver answers the door in nothing but a wifebeater and gym shorts, because she’s at the edge of drunk and she figures she just ordered food and forgot. So when it’s a pale face with space buns that greets her in the shadow of the hallway, she’s at a bit of a loss.
“What the shit?” she says, because why is this lost emo kid at her doorstep? “How did you find my house?”
Graves shrugs. “Google.”
Silver is, like, ninety-nine percent sure her address isn’t on Google, because there would be a lot of people trying to kill her if that were the case, but she’s too sober to press that issue right now.
She claws a hand through her hair. “Okay, well, the fuck d’you want? Need me to kill someone or something?” Though, she has no idea what kind of person Graves even would want her to kill. The kid mildly dislikes just about everyone.
Graves grimaces. “I need— a place to hang out for a few hours after school on Tuesdays. My parents think I’m at study camp with Apollo. Which. Obviously. I’m not.”
Silver stares. “A babysitter?” she deadpans. Did she drink herself to unconsciousness or dig into one too many of Celeste’s edibles again? This has to be some weird, bourbon induced dream.
“Uh,” Graves says, which is as much of an answer as it is a non-answer.
Silver moves to shut the door. “Yeah. No.”
The little brat shoves her foot in the door before it can close fully.
“I’ll pay you,” she rushes out, reedy and just a little desperate. “Twenty dollars an hour. I’ll be quiet. You won’t even know I’m there.”
Silver grinds her teeth together. On one hand, she hates kids, and one would be hanging out at her place, with all her stuff, none of which is kid friendly. On the other hand, it’s clean, consistent money for absolutely no effort.
“Twenty-five,” she bites out eventually. “And if I catch you touching my stuff, I’m hanging you from the laundry line ‘til you turn into jerky, got it?”
“Got it,” Graves echoes. Her chunky black boot’s still stuck in the door, so Silver sighs and tugs it open to let this small, emo teenager into her apartment.
“You can keep your shoes on,” Silver says when Graves stoops to undo her laces. “I don’t care. Bathroom’s first door on the right. Fridge is off limits— water’s in the sink.”
Graves nods mutely, surveying the apartment with narrowed eyes. Silver’s rarely here, so she’s never bothered to decorate. All she has by way of furniture is an old sofa she’s had since forever, the uneven coffee table she found on the sidewalk, and the old box T.V. that sits on the floor.
“Your place sucks,” Graves says, tossing her backpack on the sofa. “It smells like a liquor store in here.”
“Thought you were gonna be quiet.”
Graves mimes zipping her lips shut. Silver grunts, taking up her corner of the sofa again and kicking up her feet.
“You can do whatever dark magic shit it is you do, so long as it doesn’t cause a fuss,” she says, aimlessly flicking through the channels to find the gritty cop show she likes. “Landlord’s already up my ass like a hemorrhoid.”
“Gross.”
“You’re telling me,” Silver says, and then she cranks the volume of her T.V. up and sinks into the sofa’s old, worn fabric.
Graves does her dark magic or homework or whatever for a bit in silence. Silver treats herself to a beer, and after about an hour and a half she realizes she’s not hearing the scratch of pen on paper anymore. Graves has seemingly given up on whatever she was doing in favor of watching the T.V., something like a frown twisting her lips. Maybe she’s been paying attention, which is a funny thought, because this show is terrible.
Silver rolls her eyes. “If you’ve got something to say, just say it.”
“The death effects are all wrong.”
“What?”
Graves gestures to the dead body on the autopsy table that the characters are discussing on screen. “The special effects. For the body. Rigor mortis doesn’t work like that. Also, that one cop flirting with his chief is a total HR violation.”
Silver shrugs. “The police chief is hot. Can you blame him?”
“Yes,” Graves says emphatically. It’s the most emotional Silver’s ever heard her get. “He has a wife at home.”
So Graves has been paying attention. Or maybe she’s just speaking from experience. Silver smirks.
“Trouble in paradise at the Graves estate?” she asks. She expects the kid to bristle at the comment, but something shadows her expressions, shoulders tucking in closer to her chest.
“Something like that,” Graves mutters.
Silver’s phone chimes. She has almost no contacts in her phone, so the only notifications she ever gets are for jobs or booty calls.
Unknown number has sent a text. An address, and a price. That’s it. Blood money’s still money, though.
“Hey, I gotta go,” Silver says, getting to her feet and kicking back the rest of her beer. “You can hang ‘til whenever. Don’t bother locking up when you leave.”
Graves gets this big, concerned look on her face, brows furrowed into a deep line. “That’s super unsafe, you know.”
Silver gestures at the empty apartment around her. “I’ve got nothin’ to steal. Besides, my neighbors avoid me like the plague.”
“If you’re sure,” Graves says uneasily, before blinking, as if remembering something. “Oh, um, before you go.” She digs through her backpack and forks out a crisp, bank-fresh fifty.
Silver takes it and holds it up to the dim overhead light. It’s real money, it’s just… weird. This whole situation’s fucking weird. But that’s none of her business.
“Cool,” she says, stuffing it into her jacket pocket. “Same time next week?”
Graves shrugs. “Probably.”
“‘Kay.” Silver throws her a two-fingered salute as she leaves. Graves doesn’t even wave back— she just rolls her eyes.
She’s gone when Silver gets back six hours later. Twenty-five dollars sits on her coffee table, paper-clipped onto the torn corner of a page with a phone number scrawled on it.
Against her better judgment, Silver thumbs the number into her phone as brat and passes out on the sofa to the distant hum of her heater trying and failing to start.
Next Tuesday, Graves arrives at 4:33pm and rings the doorbell until Silver groans and peels herself off the sofa to answer. She is, at least, dressed this time. Small victories.
“I told you I don’t lock my door,” she says by way of greeting, hauling the door open with a squint. There’s a headache burning between her eyelids. She also got shot twice chasing a mark last night, which has her kind of crabby. “Also, text next time, the fuck?”
“I can’t. I gave you my number, but I don’t have yours. You’ll have to text first,” Graves says, pushing past her. She’s reading something on her phone and leaves her backpack by the door. Must not be planning on doing any homework this time, then.
Silver rolls her eyes and closes the door behind her. “What would I even text you about?”
“I dunno. Maybe when you’re drunk and need me to peel you off the sidewalk?”
“Ha ha,” Silver says pointedly, returning to her spot on the sofa.
They don’t talk for a while, Graves just idly scrolling through her phone while Silver surfs channels aimlessly. Eventually, Silver comes to the conclusion that she isn’t going to find anything worthwhile, so she stands, stretching out her arms, grimacing at the way her elbows pop and the pull of fresh-healed wounds in her torso.
“Want something to eat?” she asks, turning to Graves. “I haven’t had breakfast yet.”
The kid doesn’t look up from her phone. “It’s five.”
“Okay, and? I got home late as shit,” Silver says. “You want food or not?”
Graves sighs, finally meeting her eyes as she slouches off the sofa. “Who shat in your bed this morning?” she mutters, more under her breath than anything.
Silver pushes the side of her head gently. “I got shot twice last night. Puts me in a mood.”
Graves swats her hand away. “You must get shot a lot then. You’re always in a mood.”
“Brat,” Silver retorts, smiling.
She takes Graves to the 7-Eleven down the street. It’s dingy as all hell, and the worker at the counter definitely isn’t getting paid enough for his trouble. Graves wanders the isles with a baffled look about her, and Silver wonders if this uppity goth kid has ever even seen the inside of a convenience store.
“Grab whatever you want,” she says, tucking a wrapped pack of glazed donuts under her arm to join the sports drink and family-size bag of beef jerky there already.
Graves looks at her, and then at her selection, and her nose wrinkles. “This isn’t dinner,” she says.
“This is poor people dinner,” Silver says, arching a brow, because food is still food even when you don’t have a private chef or a subscription to the local Michelin list. “Normal people food. Try it. Might make you feel like a normal person.”
“I don’t think either of us constitutes as normal,” Graves sniffs. But, after a moment of deliberation, she grabs a pack of sour candies and a grape soda, all hunchy and embarrassed like she’ll get in trouble for buying snacks at 7-Eleven.
Silver hands the cashier a wrinkled twenty for their goods, then walks the two of them to one of her spots. She doesn’t have many, and it’s hard to have spots in a city like this, but she has a few. This one is the cramped stairway with the broken lock that leads to the roof of her apartment building. Silver takes her seat at the edge, legs dangling over the ten story drop. After a moment’s hesitation, Graves joins her, legs safely crossed.
There’s not much of a view. They’re surrounded on all sides by buildings both darker and taller, but at the right time of day, the red sun cuts through the labyrinth of the city and fragments against the glass. It’s the only real beauty she can find in the cutthroat life she’s carved for herself.
Silver rips open her bag of jerky with her teeth. Graves was quiet the whole walk over, and she’s got this ruminative look on her face now. A quiet emotion, with something more hiding under the surface of her expression.
Silver doesn’t ask. It’s not in her nature. But she does notice.
Graves pays her seventy-five dollars at the end of the evening. Silver wrinkles them into her pocket and watches the kid disappear back down the fire exit into the shadow of the evening, and tells herself that the knot in her chest isn’t from concern. When she gets back to her apartment, she buries herself in bourbon to drink the feeling away, and come morning, she barely remembers what she even has to be worried about.
“I brought you something,” Graves says the next Tuesday.
Silver is just pushing into the apartment, a twelve pack of beer dangling from each hand, the strap of her bag of groceries clamped between her teeth.
Silver grunts and moves to the kitchenette to deposit her goodies. It’s nothing fancy— just a few packs of raw beef for when she’s feeling lazy, and a bag of the sour candies she saw Graves get before.
“And what’s that?” she asks.
Graves just points at the wall, and Silver follows the line of her finger from the sofa to a poster taped crookedly in the middle of the living room wall. It’s some dark band Silver’s never heard of; five edgy girls with horns and bleached hair.
“What the fuck is that?” she says. “I’ve never seen these people.”
“I’ve seen them” Graves snips. “And I like them. And your wall was ugly as shit.”
“Maybe I like my ugly wall.” Silver grabs the bag of sour candy and tosses them at Graves’ head. It makes a satisfying noise when the kid’s too slow to dodge. “Here.”
Graves stares at the bag like it’s a foreign, alien thing. Silver drums her claws against her countertop.
“Those are the ones you like, right?” she says, feigning nonchalance while she tries to pick up on whatever vibe Graves is putting down. “Promise they’re not poisoned or anything.”
Graves looks up at her. There’s a wet sheen to her eyes that makes something in Silver’s chest twitch, so she busies herself with grabbing a can of beer from her twelve pack.
“I think you’re secretly nice,” Graves says. “I think you pretend to be mean because you think it’s the only thing you can be, but inside, you’re all mush.”
“Thank you for your astute observation, Dr. Graves,” Silver says, opening the tab of the beer with her teeth. “Anything else you want to share with the class?”
Graves leans forward, incensed. “I think if you weren't a bounty hunter you'd be a bartender.”
Silver almost snorts at the idea if not for the mouthful of beer in her mouth. She swallows, then props her hip against the counter. “Oh yeah?” she says.
“Haven't you ever wanted to be anything else?” Graves asks.
Silver thinks it’s not so much about the wanting as it is the bitter truth. Nobody wants this much blood on their hands. But the fact is that it pays well, and she’s good at it, and she’s known death for almost as long as she’s known herself. Some part of it will always exist in her; it’s in her nature. The wolf has a hunger that never quiets and never sates until someone’s tendons rest between her teeth. She’s never wanted to be anything else because there is nothing else for her to be.
“Some people are just made for violence,” she says. It’s the short version of the story, anyway. “I’m one of them.”
Graves frowns. “I call bullshit.”
“Call it whatever you like,” Silver says, resigned to the fact. “It's the truth.”
“You got me my favorite candy on a whim after seeing me buy it one time.”
Silver pinches the bridge of her nose, trying to stifle the burgeoning headache there. “Drop it, kid.”
Graves stands from the sofa, hands fisted at her side. She looks— upset, almost. At this conversation, or the way it’s going. “No.”
Silver’s jaw ticks. Graves may not be done with this conversation, but she is. She shifts into her wolf form and curls up on the floor of her kitchenette, resting her head on her paws.
Graves stares at her, stunned into momentary silence. “I can’t believe you,” she says eventually. Aghast and frustrated, like a child stamping their foot when they don’t get their way. “This is childish. And dumb. I know you can still understand me like this.”
Silver flicks an ear and doesn't deign to respond.
“You’re so frustrating, sometimes,” Graves says. “I can’t believe I used to think you were cool.”
Silver chuffs in response and closes her eyes. She’s still cool, but she’ll take frustrating as an adjective over mush.
Graves paces across the apartment for a few minutes, saying nothing but still upset. Eventually, the steps get closer, and then a small body is dropping against her, into the hollow of Silver’s stomach where she’s curled on the cool tile floor.
Thin, cold fingers start to card through the thick texture of her fur. She chuffs again, cracking open an eye. Graves is sitting with her back resting against her, staunchly looking away. She doesn’t look upset anymore. She looks young.
“Thank you, for the candy,” she says quietly. “I haven’t— people don’t usually remember things. About me. So, thanks.” She pauses, reaching to scratch the soft spot behind Silver’s ear. “I still think you’re annoying, though. Wolfing your way out of conversations is lame.”
Silver has no idea who taught her the ear trick, but she leans into it with a low rumble in her chest. She closes her eyes and falls asleep just like that, laying on her kitchen floor.
She doesn’t dream often. Usually, the wolf takes over, and renders her night hours vain and restless. Today, she dreams about a different image of herself. Softer, unscarred. Shaking a martini at Jezebel’s.
It’s the chime of her phone, calling with a new job that wakes her later. Graves is already gone, but a hundred dollar bill lays flat on the coffee table. Silver stares at it for long enough that her eyes start to burn, and then she goes to get her gun from her bedroom, determined not to think about it.
brat texts at 1:45am Monday morning. Silver’s just getting home from a three day long job when her phone lights up.
can i come over?
Silver squints at her screen, poking out a reply with one hand before going back to sipping at her milkshake. She stopped for fast food on the way home, because there was no way in hell she was going to cook anything at this hour. So now she's enjoying her hard-won earnings by eating fast food and laying on her floor to alleviate her broken rib.
its like 2am
The response comes quickly. i’ll pay double
suit yourself
Five minutes later, the door to the apartment swings open. Silver lolls her head along the floor to look up at her.
“D’you live around the corner or some shit?” she asks.
“I was already on my way,” Graves says defensively. “It’s not a far walk.”
“Don’t you have any other weird little friends to hang out with?” Silver grouses. Graves flinches at the statement, which Silver takes to mean as a resounding no.
She’s shit at comforting people. Always has been, and she’s rarely ever had people to comfort. She finds all the comfort she needs at the bottom of a bottle, but she thinks that would be distinctly unhelpful here. Bribery, however, is a universal concept. Universally successful, too.
When Graves sits down on her corner of the sofa, Silver lifts what remains of her milkshake up to her. A peace offering. “Want my milkshake?” she asks.
Graves eyes the cup warily. “What flavor?”
“Peanut butter.”
Graves’ cautionary look sours. “That’s disgusting. You’re like a dog. A human dog.”
“I am a human dog,” Silver points out smugly, taking a long drink to emphasize her point. “And it’s delicious.”
“Ugh,” Graves says, slouching deeper into the sofa. Her baggy jacket makes her look bigger, but she’s really very small, Silver thinks. Smaller, now, beneath the weight of whatever’s got her down.
“So,” she starts, keeping her voice nonchalant and even, “what’s got you angsting in my apartment tonight?”
“You don’t care,” Graves says glumly.
A few weeks ago, she probably wouldn’t have. But now, she sets her milkshake on the coffee table and props her head on her hand so she doesn’t have to crane her neck so far. “Humor me.”
“Do you think I’m gonna die young?”
Silver blinks. “What makes you say that?”
Graves shrugs. “Everyone keeps warning me about the hand, and the Ritual. Telling me I’m being— used, or groomed, I guess. Telling me I won’t live to see graduation, and stuff. Do you think that?”
Silver watches her a moment longer before letting her head drop back to the floor.
“Nah,” she says. “You’re a smart kid. You’ll figure it out. Besides, I wouldn’t let anything happen to you.”
Graves blinks. “You wouldn’t?”
“I’d be a pretty bad babysitter if I did.”
Graves prods at her broken rib. Silver whines and pushes her shoe away.
“See? All mush,” Graves says, sounding touched.
Silver closes her eyes. “You wish.”
They talk for a little while. Not long, given the hour and the paper-mache quality of Silver’s walls. Graves nods off mid sentence and Silver lets her, bumbling about her apartment until the sun starts to peek through her yellowed windows.
Graves jolts herself awake somewhere around six in the morning. By then, Silver has migrated to her side of the sofa, warring between exhaustion and unrest.
“What time is it?” the kid rasps, rubbing at her face.
Silver glances outside. “Six-ish.”
“Shit.”
Silver hums aptly.
Graves hurries to get her sparse things together, pulling a stack of bills out of the pocket of her skirt and starting to fork through it. It’s a touching gesture, that she remembered to bring money on short notice, but ultimately unnecessary.
Silver waves a hand. “Keep it. Not gonna make you pay me for sleeping.”
Graves hesitates, her desire to keep to their agreement and the unexpected kindness of the offer stalling the motion. “Are you sure?” she asks.
Silver throws an arm over her eyes. “Go to school,” she says, not wanting to confront her sudden soft spot for the kid right now. “Or you're gonna be late.”
“Since when do you know my school hours?” Graves asks, sounding more surprised than teasing. Either way, Silver doesn’t want to deal with it.
“School,” she says more pointedly. “You. Going.”
“Going,” Graves parrots.
The next Tuesday, Silver has a date with Celeste, so they postpone their little weekly babysitting-thing. It works out, though; Graves said she had some fancy family party, anyway.
But Silver’s not really thinking about Graves. Or much of anything, for that matter. She and Celeste are making out on the sofa. Celeste is straddling her hips, and both of their shirts have landed somewhere on the floor. The other woman is in the middle of unbuttoning Silver’s pants when Silver’s phone rings.
“Ignore that,” Silver mutters against Celeste’s lips, easing back onto the cushions because no job is more important than the next two hours of her life.
The phone rings again from under Silver’s pillow. She tries to drown out the noise with a pretty sound from Celeste’s throat. It rings a third time.
Silver growls, reaching back beneath her head to fish it out and answering without looking. “Jesus, what.”
“Can you come pick me up?”
Ice shoots down Silver’s spine. Graves should never sound like that. Shaky and quiet, laced with fear. Silver sits up so fast it dislodges Celeste from her lap.
“What happened?” she says urgently. “Are you safe?”
Graves hesitates, and there’s a shuffling noise; the phone moving from one shoulder to the other. “I am now. I think. I— I don’t know.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m, um. Corner of 51st and Eastwood.”
Silver runs the numbers in her head. She knows where that is. Fifteen minutes by foot. A yawning vacuum of time. It’ll be twelve if she shifts; she can feel the wolf rising in her blood, itching for violence. “Okay,” she says. “Okay. I’m coming to get you, alright? I am coming to get you.”
“Okay.”
Silver doesn’t like that wobble to her voice. The quiver that belies tears. “Are you hurt?”
Graves sniffs. Crying, then. “No, I don’t— I don’t think so.”
Silver exhales slowly through her teeth. Searching for calm within herself and finding only stark, turbulent worry. “Okay. I have to put the phone down, but I’ll be there soon. I’ll find you.”
“Okay.”
The phone line dies. Silver turns to Celeste, ready to make some excuse to raincheck things, but Celeste is already pulling her shirt back on and wrangling her hair back into something low and loose.
“We can take my vespa,” she says. “Gets us there in seven.”
“I love you,” Silver says seriously.
Celeste smiles, leaning forward to kiss the corner of her mouth. “I’ll let you thank me properly later. Let’s go get your girl.”
The drive through the city passes in a blur. Celeste pilots her vespa fast and reckless, but Silver’s barely present for it. She isn't thinking straight. She knows she isn't thinking straight. It's taking a fucking Herculean amount of effort not to wolf out on the moped.
When they peel around the corner of Eastwood, Silver sees a small, pale form sitting on the curb in the lamplight. She's hopping off the vespa before it stops moving and crosses the distance in nine swift steps.
It speaks volumes that Graves doesn't react to her approach. She just sits, looking very small and distant. She's dressed in a scrappy little number, but it’s too cold outside to be without her jacket. She should be shivering, but she isn't. She's just staring.
Silver distantly registers Celeste pulling up along the nearby sidewalk to park. That information gets slotted into the peripheral as she squats down next to Graves and reaches out, dwarfing her tiny shoulder with a hand. The kid startles bodily, head whipping around to look at the hand on her shoulder, but not pulling away. There’s fear in every corner of her expression, thinly-veiled; the look of an imminent breakdown.
“It’s me,” Silver breathes. Trying to find her eyes and not having much luck. “Just me.”
Graves gawps at Silver’s hand for five seconds, and then ten. Her expression crumples, like wet paper crumbling inwards. Belatedly, her shoulders begin to shake as she hugs her arms around her chest.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers.
“Shut up,” Silver mutters, taking her chin and tilting Graves’ face into the lamplight. There’s a purpling bruise at her cheekbone and dark circles under her eyes, but otherwise, she looks unharmed. It’ll have to do for now.
Silver shrugs off her jacket and deposits it over Graves’ shoulders. Graves startles, but her hands come up to grab the edges of the leather automatically. There’s a perplexed furrow to her brow, an unspoken question.
“That top’s tiny,” Silver says. “You’ll freeze out here. C’mon.”
She helps Graves stand and keeps an arm around her just in case as she guides her back to Celeste and the vespa. Celeste is perched against it, the picture of friendly ease if Silver didn’t know the pinch of worry in her eyes. Graves staggers a step when she sees her there, casting her eyes up at Silver nervously before she settles, reassured by whatever she found there in the half-second she was looking.
“Everything okay?” Celeste asks, glancing between the two of them. She must determine that Graves is the one in more immediate need of calming, because she leans down a little to get on Graves’ level. “You’re looking fancy. Long night?”
Graves laughs, once. A strangled, singular noise, but it helps cut through the tension hiking across Silver’s shoulders.
“Something like that,” Graves rasps.
Celeste’s smile softens. Silver knows the two of them have a penchant for butting heads even more than she does with either of them, but there is something soft and somber hanging over this moment.
“Wanna get out of here?” Celeste asks.
“Please,” Graves says. Trying for the same amount of levity and landing closer to desperation.
Celeste’s eyes track back to Silver, and Silver realizes with a start that this is in her hands now. Celeste bought her all the time she could, but Graves is leaning her full weight into her, letting her guide her wherever. When was the last time someone trusted her so implicitly? The sudden weight of the responsibility makes her swallow.
“My place,” she says. Celeste nods, understanding immediately. Silver nods back, then turns to Graves and jostles her shoulder. “Want food? Celeste can make a pitstop on the way home.”
“I can,” Celeste says amiably.
Graves mulls over the offer quietly, head resting on Silver’s arm. “I want a milkshake,” she decides. “Mint chocolate.”
“Ew,” Silver says, but she pulls out her phone anyway and searches for the nearest burger place open this late.
The three of them must make quite the sight, moving back through the city crammed onto Celeste’s moped with their spoils, but Graves looks leagues better with her milkshake in her hand, poking fun at Celeste, so Silver will allow the ridiculousness of the whole scenario. Anything to banish the look on her face back on the curb.
Graves wheedles Silver into carrying her up the stairs to the apartment, and Silver makes a fuss about it but relents. Graves weighs basically nothing as she lets Celeste lead them back to her unit. Silver loses track of time a little. They eat, and they get Graves laughing again, and the three of them cram onto the shitty old sofa and watch the shitty cop show with the lights off until the channel moves on to the next program.
Something shifts, then. Silver mutes the T.V. and silence fills the empty space between her walls. She’s used to it, living here, but not like this.
Celeste clears her throat.
Something in Graves’ face changes, just a little. Silver opens her mouth to ask, but Graves moves before she can. She wraps her thin arms around her and hides her face in Silver’s shoulder. Silver stalls at the motion, sending a bewildered glance at Celeste over her shoulder. Celeste, catching the hint, tips her head and excuses herself to the bathroom. Only when she’s gone does Silver carefully hug Graves back.
“Hey,” she says, lowering her voice to something calm and gentle. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t want to go home,” Graves chokes out, spitting out the words like it hurts to hold onto them. “I hate this part. I hate going home to my parents who forget I exist, and my younger sister who gets the little time they have to spare. I’m nobody in that house. But here, I’m—” she cuts herself off before that thought finishes, eyes wet, cheeks flushed red. Embarrassed and sad. Embarrassed about being sad, as if that’s something she can control.
Silver’s brow furrows. She pulls back just a little to rest her hands on Graves’ shoulders. Making sure she is looking and hearing what she’s saying. “Jesus, it’s not like I’m gonna kick you out, kid. If you want to stay, just say so. I’m way cooler than dead people, anyway.”
Graves sniffs and wipes at her eyes. “You’re alright. I guess.” And then, quieter, “I can stay?”
“Long as it doesn't get either of us in trouble, you can stay as long as you want,” Silver confirms.
Graves hugs her again. Holds her tightly, like it matters, and she stays right there until she nods off, breathing quietly against Silver’s collarbone. Celeste reemerges from down the hall and props her hip against the doorframe, eyes soft as she watches them. Silver watches her back evenly, playing with the baby hairs at the nape of Graves’ neck.
“She gonna be alright?” Celeste asks, crossing the living room to bend close to Silver’s ear, speaking quietly.
Silver hums, turning head to the sweet smell of her perfume. “Think so. She’s a tough kid.”
“You’re good with her,” Celeste says.
Silver takes that compliment. Folds it delicately, tucks it into the inside pocket of her jacket, close to her heart.
“She pays me,” she says, but the words ring lame and hollow and not even close to the truth.
Celeste smiles knowingly, but she doesn't press. She just kisses her cheek and bids her goodnight, slipping out of her apartment with the promise to text later.
Silver relaxes back into her sofa and shifts her hold on Graves, staring at her ceiling. Thinking about a lot of things she’d endeavored to shove aside the last few weeks. All those distant possibilities of being anything other than poor and bloody and lonely, suddenly within her grasp.
Haven’t you ever wanted to be anything else?
Graves shifts against her, snoring quietly. Silver sucks in a breath. Holds it. Releases it in time with the kid’s next exhale. They won’t talk about this in the morning. She knows that. It’s not in their nature. But maybe the important part is that Graves knows she has someone in her corner— someone she trusted enough to text at an impossible hour, knowing she would come get her. And she would, Silver thinks. Any time. Any place.
Somewhere, impossibly, in the last few weeks, Graves has become someone of importance to her. Family, maybe, though she’s not exactly competing for space in that department, Silver thinks. She’s never been someone’s first call. That means something, doesn’t it?
Silver closes her eyes and lets sleep drag her under. She’s never been an overthinker.