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Lord Byewill's ballroom reeked of new money. That extravagant display of wealth which typically accompanied men who didn't understand the money they had recently acquired. Byewill had purchased the land from Oskar eight months prior, and had clearly spent every penny trying to convince everyone else he'd been born into it.
Diamonds had been discovered beneath the land scarcely a month after the deal had been settled, a fact which Oskar had learned about after he had already sold the land for a fraction of what it was now worth. Had he known what lay beneath the soil, he never would have sold it for the price he'd accepted. Byewill, evidently, had understood it perfectly well and had spared no expense in displaying how much money it had made him. The ballroom was constructed of aquamarine walls occasionally interrupted by polished marble pillars. Dim lights cast the ballroom in a low glow. It was all very expensive, and all very new.
Oskar found the whole thing rather distasteful.
From his position near one of the marble podiums, he had an unobstructed view of the ballroom. He watched as his fellow guests twirled together in half circles to the music.
The evening had reached the point where conversation became softer and more intimate as the champagne loosened everyone up. The bottles had appeared sometime during the evening. Prohibition was an issue reserved for those without the means to circumvent it.
Lord Byewill's laugh rose loud above the music again. He stood along one of the walls surrounded by a cluster of men who were nodding along to everything he said. Oskar didn't need to hear the words to know what he was talking about: the land. He was undoubtedly talking about his own marvellous foresight and Oskar's ignorance. He wondered whether Lord Byewill even bothered to feel guilty about it.
He took a long sip of his champagne and looked away.
"You look awfully stiff."
He turned his head.
A blonde woman dressed in dark green silk stood beside him. Her hair was extravagantly pinned up by a green headpiece, a few loose curls falling to frame her face. She was Jophiel Armstrong.
"I'm merely listening."
She laughed, tilting her head towards the stage. "To the music? Or to Lord Byewill congratulating himself?"
"Is it that obvious?"
"Only to anyone who's spoken to him longer than a minute." She extended a gloved hand. "You haven't danced once."
"I haven't."
"Then dance with me."
Oskar looked towards her hand, then back towards the dance floor. Dancing had always struck him as ridiculously intimate. It required him to place his hands upon another person and lead them throughout the room while everyone else watched.
"I'm afraid I'm not much of a dancer."
She withdrew her hand, but remained smiling. "A pity. One day, Oskar Rex, someone will convince you."
"Mm," he hummed. "That'd be a remarkable achievement."
She laughed softly and shook her head before retreating, already drifting towards another potential dance partner.
Oskar watched her go before his eyes drifted across the ballroom, past Lord Byewill, past the performers; his attention found Silas.
Silas swayed slightly to the music, but he lacked a dance partner. Instead, he stood on the outskirts of the dance floor beside a marble pillar. He looked terribly awkward.
He had a glass of champagne in his hand, though it was hardly touched. Oskar knew Silas was more of a whiskey man. He preferred the liberties of drowning himself in a bottle instead of drinking socially.
Silas was like that, as Oskar had grown to learn over the last few years. He would endure a social gathering so long as he was permitted to flit around the edges of it rather than partaking in anything that would require him to actually participate. He was most comfortable observing rather than being observed. He had an extraordinary mind that had very little interest in convincing strangers of it.
As though sensing he was being watched, Silas turned his head.
Their eyes met across the room, and for a moment neither of them looked away.
Then Silas smiled.
Oskar found himself imagining what it would be like to cross the ballroom and ask him to dance.
He would approach Silas. Silas would narrow his eyes from behind his square wire glasses, and a small crease would appear between his brows. Then, Oskar would offer his hand. Silas would ask whether Oskar was being serious.
He was.
Oskar would take Silas to the floor. His hand would settle on Silas' waist. Silas' fingers would rest on his shoulder. And for the entire duration of the dance, Oskar wouldn't have to look across a room to meet Silas' eyes.
Oskar forcefully dragged his eyes away from Silas, staring down at his own glass of champagne.
The thought of dancing with Silas was entirely too pleasant. Which was precisely the problem.
Nothing about the gesture would be unusual if the waist beneath his hand belonged to a woman.
A man could dance with another man, technically, at parties of lesser importance and status. If two men made a spectacle of themselves after too much liquor in a club, they could dance as a joke, and no one would give it a second thought.
That's not what it would mean for Oskar though.
His name carried weight in areas where Silas' did not. His estates, business dealings, land, it was all public knowledge, people knew of them and openly discussed them. He couldn't afford to become an object of speculation.
There was a peculiar leniency granted towards wealthy men and their appetites, provided it remained an appetite. A private indulgence could be ignored, a romantic endeavour was an entirely different subject. A man of his standing could take a lover of either sex to bed on any given night and lose nothing so long as it remained a discreet matter. Society would forgive men of any grievance if they had the money for it.
Oskar didn't want that though, and he had stopped pretending to lie to himself about it many years ago. He didn't want Silas for an evening. He wanted him for the ordinary, everyday boring version of it.
Oskar had never been ashamed of what he wanted. However, the world wasn't particularly concerned about whether he was ashamed; it was entirely concerned about whether he remained respectable.
He had enough money and friends in the right places he suspected he could survive a great deal.
Silas lacked that affluence.
His reputation had been entirely built from the ground up, none of it had been inherited. He had earned every part of it. His professorship, his academic standing among scholars, the honors he received for his work during the war— it was all acquired from his pure intelligence. Oskar wasn't entirely what Silas had been before the war, but during it, he had been a brilliant asset to the government. He spent years working through cipher sheets and reports.
His eyes wandered towards Silas again.
Silas raised his glass in a teasing toast. Oskar returned it.
He tucked the thought away. He had become very good at that.
The manor had fallen quiet, most of the guests having retreated to their rooms for the night, when Oskar found him again.
He had gone out to the terrace for air and found Silas already there, sitting on a low stone wall. His red waistcoat had been shed at some point, and that bowtie of his was nowhere to be seen. A cigarette rested between his fingers.
"Can't sleep," Silas said, not even turning around and somehow recognizing Oskar through his footsteps.
"You never can." He leaned against the stone wall, staring out at the dark lawn.
"Side effect of the profession."
"The war, or the dead things you dig up?" he asked dryly.
"Either. Both." Silas took a drag of the cigarette and let the smoke curl out into the darkness. "Depends on the night."
Oskar wrinkled his nose at the cigarette smoke, genuine distaste crossing his expression. He found the whole habit unhygienic, the smell of it clinging to curtains and staining men's fingers yellow.
"I don't suppose that's meant to be dinner," Oskar said. Neither of them had managed a plate before the host had ushered the whole party off to bed following some commotion Oskar hadn't fully caught.
Silas finally turned to look at him, holding the cigarette out towards him.
Oskar should've said no, he always said no. But he took it from Silas' pale hand anyway and brought it towards his mouth. He traitorously thought that this was the closest the two of them would ever get to a kiss. His mouth where Silas' had just been.
He breathed in deeply and coughed as the smoke hit the back of his throat. Silas laughed.
"You're terrible at this."
"I'm aware," he replied once the coughing had subsided. He handed it back, and their fingers brushed just briefly, and Oskar felt the sensation travel up his arm in small tingles. He thought of those same slender fingers threading through his hair. Against his jaw. Sliding unhurried along his bare chest. He tore his gaze off Silas and looked out at the dark lawn ahead, forcing himself to breathe normally.
Silas noticed. Oskar could tell by the way his mouth curled up slowly, before he took another drag, and with no warning, tilted his head and blew the smoke directly at Oskar's face.
Oskar coughed immediately, swearing as he fanned at the air in front of him. Silas laughed loudly, the kind Oskar so rarely heard come from him.
"God, Silas," he hissed, eyes stinging.
"Wanted to do that for a while."
"Have you wanted to get all your funding cut as well?"
Silas shrugged, unbothered by the teethless threat, and Oskar was suddenly very aware of how close together they were. His forearm was barely a hair away from brushing against Silas' thigh where he sat on the wall. A reasonable man would've moved his arm.
Silas took another drag of the cigarette, watching Oskar as the ember warmly illuminated his face. It highlighted the purple beneath his eyes.
"You look dreadful," Oskar commented.
"Thank you."
"You know perfectly well what I mean."
"Perhaps," Silas said. "You didn't dance tonight."
"Neither did you."
"Wasn't asked."
"Neither was I. Atleast in any sense I could accept," Oskar said.
"You looked like you wanted to be asked something."
"Did I?" He hoped his voice sounded more indifferent than he felt.
"You did. Though I can't imagine what else a man who has everything could want." A small frown appeared on Silas' face.
You, Oskar thought. Though he replied:
"Perhaps I was reflecting on all the fortune stolen from beneath my nose by Lord Byewill. He seems very desperate to flaunt it."
"Stolen?"
"Don't be pedantic."
Silas laughed, "I'm sure your wealth is ample enough to have not suffered that much by Lord Byewill's slight."
"It's the principle. I ought to have had someone competent look at it before I sold. You, ideally, though I don't suppose diamonds are your area." Oskar paused. "Still, I find I trust your judgement far more than any other."
"Is that so?"
Oskar plucked the cigarette back from Silas in lieu of response, inhaling much slower this time and carefully suppressing another cough. The stick was rancid. It was a wonder Silas could stomach them so frequently.
"I wish you'd give these up," Oskar said.
"I've tried."
"Try harder."
"You aren't very persuasive, are you now, Oskar?" Silas smirked.
"I think all the land deals which have worked out in my favor beg to differ."
"And yet you were slighted by some newly minted lord."
Silas always knew how to get under his skin. "I hope you develop a cough one of these days," he retorted.
"I'll worry about that when it comes to it," Silas replied in that scratchy voice of his that drove Oskar insane in entirely inappropriate ways.
"I read in a doctor's column that they ruin one's morals as well. A gateway to general deviance."
Silas raised an eyebrow. "So you're a man of morals now, Oskar?"
"I simply find them repulsive."
"Well," Silas said. "My morals survived four years of the war. I doubt tobacco is going to dissolve them."
Oskar let silence settle after that. He had known, ever since Silas began working for him a few years ago, that Silas had taken up smoking during the war. He knew that was also when Silas' bouts of insomnia had begun, and the nicotine had primarily been a way to occupy the time rather than relax.
Silas took the cigarette back. Their fingers brushed once more. Oskar let them linger for a moment too long before pulling back.
It was far from the first time Oskar had let thoughts of Silas' mouth or fingers occupy his mind in ways which were unrelated to cigarettes. Oskar had never once in his life desired something he could not eventually have.
There was no fortune on Earth which could buy him Silas.
Oskar had once known a man well enough to nod to when their paths crossed in clubs. His name turned up in the paper last spring, and no one spoke of him after. Oskar hadn't necessarily chosen to stop inviting him to things, but he had stopped being asked whether he wanted to.
His reputation was longstanding enough and predating him by enough generations that if need be, it could all be played off as an eccentricity of himself rather than a damning trait of his character. That other man's hadn't been.
The obstacle was everything it would cost Silas, who had so much more —though not in terms of wealth—to lose. It would follow him the rest of his life, undo twenty years of work in a single afternoon.
Oskar's money was the whole problem, and yet the only reason he'd ever been able to solve one. If he'd been some invisible merchant, never owning a single acre of land, the two of them may have stood a real chance. Instead, he had thousands of acres and multiple manors and more money than he could spend in three lifetimes, and none of it made wanting Silas any less dangerous.
The two of them holding an unremarkable name may have been the only way to achieve the freedom of not being watched. But even that carried its own risks. Oskar had read the gossip columns. Hotel rooms raided in Manhattan. Men arrested in public restrooms, in parks, at the beach. He had seen the laws.
Money could keep the police from knocking on his door. He could protect Silas from the prosecution, but he couldn't protect him from the ruin that would follow. Silas would be entirely dependent upon the man protecting him.
But without his money, the danger would reverse. Silas would have far less of a life built on intelligence and position to lose, while Oskar would have no reputation, no influence, and no friends to shield both of them from the consequences.
There was no version of this where Silas didn't lose.
"Why are you out here, Oskar?" Silas asked, turning his dark-eyed stare onto him.
"Must there always be a reason?" He fiddled with the golden ring on his thumb, rotating it absentmindedly.
"Usually, when it comes to you."
"Then let's say I find your company agreeable."
Silas' mouth twitched. "What an honor!"
Oskar looked at him, and the laughter slowly faded from Silas' face. For a brief moment, the two men stared at each other until Silas lowered his gaze and took a brief drag of the cigarette. His cheeks were tinged red— whether from the chilly midnight air or the bitter cigarette smoke, Oskar did not know.
Oskar yawned, badly attempting to cover it.
"Go to bed," Silas said softly.
"You first."
"I don't sleep. You know that."
"Perhaps you ought to start trying to."
Silas turned the cigarette between two fingers. "A doctor offered me sleeping pills today."
"Is that so? I take it they don't work."
"I poured the whole bottle down the sink after he walked away."
"You're terribly suspicious," Oskar sighed. "Did he tell you what was in them?"
"Not precisely," Silas said. "But he gave them to me free of charge, which was suspicious enough. And I had no intention of spending the night unconscious because a doctor decided I should be."
"Mm. I wouldn't have taken them either," he admitted.
"You're paranoid too, then," Silas teased.
"Paranoid is such an ugly word." It reminded Oskar of his late father, constantly concerned someone would try to slight him out of his land.
"And what word would you rather I call you?"
"Tell me about the dig site," Oskar redirected. "The one in Ohio."
Silas lit up immediately, cigarette forgotten between his fingers as he gestured animatedly with his hands. He told Oskar about a newly excavated burial his team had been working on. Carved arrowheads and copper axes, and on occasion, human remains. Silas glanced at him once in a while as he spoke, checking Oskar was still listening, and each time their eyes met, Silas' expression softened before resuming his explanation. Oskar asked short questions he mostly knew the answers to, just to keep him going. He could sit through an entire hour of Silas' rambling and never feel the familiar plague of boredom that followed when listening to another rich man talk about their investments or business prospects. He didn't always reply to what Silas said. He was more than content to watch with an attention he scarcely gave anyone else. At some point, his eyes drifted to where Silas' collar had come loose at some point in the evening, pale collarbone peeking out.
"You're not listening," Silas said eventually.
"I am. Pipes. Arrowheads."
"You're not commenting on any of it," Silas huffed. "I could ask for another hundred-thousand dollars of funding and you wouldn't even register it."
"I like listening to you," he said before he could filter the thought.
Silas didn't reply. For once, he seemed to have nothing clever to say. Oskar wasn't sure whether he had embarrassed himself or Silas.
The cigarette flickered low between them until Silas finally ground it out on the top of the wall. The terrace had grown colder and the fading stink of tobacco hung in the air between them.
"We ought to go in," Silas said, already swinging his legs back to the other side of the stone wall.
"I suppose so."
Silas held the door open for him, and Oskar stepped past the slightly older man. The house was almost entirely dark now.
They walked silently side-by-side down the hallways of plush carpet.
Oskar glanced up at Silas as they passed beneath a lamp. His pale face glowed golden beneath it, and it disappeared the moment they passed the lamp, leaving a tired man in its wake.
They walked the rest of the length of the guest corridor and stopped outside their respective rooms. Silas' room sat directly across from his own. They stood across from each other, neither quite reaching for their own door yet.
Oskar went quiet for a moment, searching for something to say. Silas' brow furrowed in concentration.
Silas reached towards him, and his entire body screeched to a halt, because surely not—
Silas flicked a piece of ash from Oskar's collar. "You'll ruin your coat, Oskar," he said, the two symmetrical moles on his cheeks lifting as he smiled. "You're an awfully messy smoker."
"Worth it," Oskar replied, heat creeping up his neck, and mercifully, Silas didn't ask him to explain.
"Goodnight, Oskar."
"Goodnight, Silas."
Silas went right. Oskar turned left to his own bedroom. Once inside, he stood with his back against the door, listening to Silas shut his own and the entire house fall into quiet.
The space in his bed felt colder than the air outside had felt. He was terribly aware of the lack of body heat beside him.
Last winter, Oskar had gone himself to visit one of Silas' excursions that he had funded. That night, they sat on the sofa in front of the hearth in Oskar's hotel suite. Silas' hotel room was far humbler and didn't come with its own fireplace, and Silas had complained the entire day how cold it was. At some point, far into the night, he had sat before the dying fire with Silas' head heavy on his shoulder. His breathing had slowed, and Oskar had been too afraid to so much as shift his arm in case it disturbed Silas' fleeting sleep. The following morning, Silas had looked well rested for once, and Oskar had been so tired that he snapped at anyone who tried his patience.
He lay in bed until sometime past two, turning over that memory, and it was almost enough to pretend he felt the weight of Silas' head against his shoulder again, his breathing slow and even, one hand draped across Oskar's chest.
He reminded himself, as he always did on nights when the wanting became too much, that it would remain a private crime. He would never act upon it, and it would never cost either of them anything. He could simply go on like this.
Oskar hoped Silas was sleeping tonight.