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silcodependent · 21 days ago

Text

Sway

Silco x Fem!Reader

2.6k words- Mature (but not explicit) Warnings: Blood, gore, trauma, PTSD, drug use

Chapter 17

The low hum of the street light.

The soft drip, drip, drip of liquid on asphalt.

The staccato catches of your own ragged breathing in the flood of sound and silence between the bricks of the alleyway.

A hand lay before you, outstretched in aid. Would taking it make this real? Cementing all the horrors of the last few minutes--Gods, minutes--into a cruel finite reality.

“Irene”

You shuddered at the sound of your own name, eyes snapping to the source.

Familiar eyes of fire and ice drew you in as your breath came in short gasps.

Silco.

Still, you made no move to take his hand. He crouched down, his dual color beauty cast in concern. His gloved hand was gentle and smooth as he traced lines on your face, moving slowly to investigate the bleeding spot of scarlet in your hair. As soft as it was, his touch made stars swim in your vision, something he must have noticed as he quietly cursed under his breath. You tried to speak. To say something but the words wouldn’t come out and the effort of moving felt impossible. Perhaps you would die here in the dim and disgusting alley. Perhaps you were meant to. Perhaps that’s why you had found it so comforting until now. Your eyes fell shut both exhausted and relieved. A heavy wave of darkness washed over you as your head throbbed in time with the dull beat of your heart.

A piercing pain shattered you back to consciousness and contorted your body with the tensing of every muscle. Sharp and electric, like lightning entering your veins through the crack in your skull. It made you cry out in a sound that was equal parts screech and scream. Your eyes shot open and everything within your vision buzzed and pulsed with the pain in a radiant hue of purple.

Then there was softness again. And warmth. And the slow brushes of a thumb on your cheek.

“Irene. Irene, look at me.”

And you did. Obeying to see those familiar sharp handsome features still colored by concern as your shallow stilted breaths began to slow and deepen. The pain had ebbed, the darkness retreated as you took in the unnerving calm and quiet of this backstreet carved into the hill below the bridge.

Still there was the persistent drip, drip, drip of blood on asphalt.

Your eyes went wide with the horror of what was around you, silent tears springing forth. Your hands, your legs, your coat. You were wearing a dress of Nox’s blood. Jolting from the realization only had you spilling more onto the street beneath you.

“Easy” Silco cooed, “You're still hurt.”

“He’s--He’s--” You couldn’t finish the sentence or tear your eyes away.

“Yes he is. But you’re not. You’re still alive” Silco squeezed your face lightly, with purpose. A grounding touch. A lifeline you found yourself melting into.

“No thanks to that bastard.” He added, casting a cold look toward Nox’s body that could kill him twice.

That’s when you spotted it. A small twinkling vile in his other hand, still mostly full of a neon purple liquid. Shimmer.

What you knew of the drug was limited but there was no question of its use here or of the exacting pain that pulled you from the darkness. He had saved your life with the contents of that vile.

Your body still sang with ache but without him, without shimmer, you very well might have found your end in the dirt of this alleyway. Your last breaths a plea to the monster who had cracked your skull to prove his ‘love’ with his lust.

Another warm stroke of his thumb on your cheek. Soft, kind, lovely. Your breathing had mostly calmed. Gorgeous hues of blue and red searched your face for any indication of how you were doing.

“Can you stand?” He asked quietly.

“I…think so.” You replied in kind, his hand moving to yours to help pull you from the puddle you sat in.

Drip, drip, drip, echoed in your very bones as the blood ran off your coat and onto the ground below.

You could stand, even though it hurt. Everything hurt. Cut and scrapes on your skin becoming more obvious as you settled back into your body. Muscles and bones sang from the fight you had put up. And distantly there was a pile of what used to be a man, bloody and unmoving, that you couldn’t take your eyes from.

“Don’t look at that,” Silco interrupted. “You don’t need to see anymore. Let’s get you cleaned up.” He said drawing you back toward the building by the hand.

Sounds of laughter wafted into the alley reaching your ears as something foreign and distorted. The light of the approaching stage door loomed heavily, each golden tendril reaching with strong hands and arms to smother you. Your body had stopped before you realized it. Heels digging in, head shaking.

No. You couldn’t go inside. Couldn’t go back there. The door frame stood before you like an open casket, constricting the air in your chest. The walls of the building, of the alley felt close, so close that if you took your eyes off of them for one moment they’d seize the opportunity to crush you from all sides. The thought of crossing back through that threshold into what you have made your home made your breath go shallow and ragged. You felt that hot heavy weight atop you again. The inescapable scramble of hands pulling at your flesh. Silco took notice immediately, squeezing your hand tightly-- both a comfort and a query.

“It’s alright now,” He reassured you in hushed tones. “The danger has passed. But we do need to get you cleaned up.”

He was right, a fact you knew without looking down at the carnage you were clothed in. But you couldn’t go back there for reasons you did not know and could not name. Silco watched you shake your head in protest, looking you over with hardly concealed concern.

“I can’t…” Your voice came out hoarse and weak.

“You won’t have to see anyone. We will go directly to your dressing room-” You didn’t hear anything Silco said after that.

Just the thought of bringing this into your sanctuary made you sick. Images of crimson smears coating the sink and bathroom walls he had built just for you made every muscle in your body tense.

Drip, drip, drip.

The sound was a dull refrain to the gruesome scene you had survived. Barely survived. And you’d be damned if you let another drop into the empire you had built with your bare hands. No, you would not let this horrible filth walk through those doors. You would not let it stain everything you had worked for and created over the months. This place was your sacred creation and you couldn’t allow this abomination to enter.

A sharp burst of laughter from inside jolted you from your thoughts. Silco remained perfectly still studying you.

“I can’t-” You fumbled for air, for the words to express the screaming in your heart.

“Please, I can’t--I just…I have to go home.” Your breaths came quickly, mind racing as you searched for what to say. Still the vision of tile streaked ruddy haunted you.

“Irene-”

“I have to go home. Please. Take me home.”

Silco opened his mouth in what you knew would be polite refusal, redirecting you to the club but you interrupted him.

“Please Silco.”

Maybe it was the pleading, or quiet sound of your voice giving out but Silco fixed you with a long serious stare before he said “Very well. But you can’t go anywhere like this.”

His eyes fell onto your blood soaked silhouette once again.

“May I?” He asked, indicating the buttons on your coat.

You simply nodded your head in resignation. Another undressing so different from the last. This couldn’t be real. You felt like you were watching the scene from the road above. It all felt so, so far away. A part of you prayed it stayed that way.

Silco surveyed the alley and the street above while making quick work of your buttons, tossing your drenched coat over Nox’s lifeless body with little ceremony. It landed with a sickening wet sound. You couldn’t bring yourself to look at what was left of your clothes. The pulls and scrapes and rips from earlier told you all you needed to know about what state they were in.The cold air rushed over your exposed skin making you gasp. But before you could so much as shudder, you felt the warmth of something soft and silken pulling around you. It was his coat.

It was still warm.

It smelled like him.

Something unmistakably gentle flickered in his eyes.

Before you could appreciate it his back was to you as he let out a whistle and two knocks on the stage door. Immediately the door opened to reveal a stone faced woman you recognized as one of the club’s regulars. And one of his employees it would seem. You couldn’t make out what they were saying but you could guess. To her credit she didn’t bawk at what she heard. She didn’t react at all aside from the occasional curt nod.

You were swimming in Silco’s coat like a child. It was heavier than you would have imagined and your fingers barely stuck out of the sleeves. It was almost comical. There was a silent comfort in the way the wool pooled around you. In the smell that clung to the fabric. In the man that had wrapped you in it. So much so that it distracted you from the persistent weight that pulled at the pocket and the horrible truth about what lay there.

Footsteps echoed into the alley from the street above. Voices, distant but familiar, called out into the quiet of the night. Where had you heard those voices before? What were they saying?

The answers escaped you as you felt a harsh yank on the coat and the painful thud of your back on bricks. You cried out in surprise only to be cut off by a hand over your mouth muffling any sound you could make.

Nox? Was he alive? And back to finish what he started. You struggled beneath the force holding you to the wall with all you had left. Your feeble fight, an automatic reaction now. It didn’t make any difference, still he held fast, not giving an inch. Underneath the awning of the loading entrance, hidden from view of that familiar voice approaching, you squirmed as tears fell down your cheeks and onto the gloved hand that silenced your cries.

“Nox!”

That voice. You knew that voice.

“NOX!”

Your blood froze with the realization.

Gabriel.

And Lucas.

Oh Gods. They were looking for their brother. Checking the club and the surrounding area after the incident in the gondolas you helped clean up. He hadn’t come home and it was late. Out of the corner of your eye you could make out the shape of his body covered by your coat, still as it had been since Silco had discarded him earlier. And this soft smooth glove keeping you quiet belonged to Silco, who was pressed atop of you against the wall hiding from view of the remaining Kane brothers. Silco didn’t look at you, his focus on the small gap between where you could see the road above and where they could see you. You squeezed your eyes shut and let the tears flow in earnest now, grateful Silco wasn’t watching.

Nox’s name rang out again and again but received no reply. The bricks cut into your hands, an all too familiar feeling from earlier. It made you want to scream. To struggle. To cry. You only followed through on the last, something small within you breaking at the futility in it. The weight of your own body felt too heavy to keep up right, as your knees buckled beneath you falling into Silco’s arms. You certainly had his attention then.

The lines of deep worry and alarm were ones you’d never seen on his handsome features, but even in the midst of your own delirium you couldn’t deny how lovely they looked.

“It’s alright, it’s alright” He whispered, wiping the tears from your face with tender swipes of his thumb on your cheek.

All was quiet now. The calls of the Kane brothers nothing but echos on the wind as Silco held you close to him, sparks of fear flashing behind the eyes that tried to comfort you.

“They’re gone.”

Off somewhere else now, still searching for a brother that would not be found.

“Can you walk?”

You nodded weakly.

“Show me” One look into those eyes was all it took to see he was serious. Normally you’d relish in a snarky retort but didn’t have it in you. Not after tonight. You took several feeble steps before Silco swept you off your feet and began the walk to your apartment.

It was funny, how small you felt in his arms. The ease at which he had scooped you up only aided in this delusion. So small you could be lost in between his fingers like a grain of sand. Almost like your prayers had been answered from earlier, giving you the ability to disappear.

A foolish delusion dismissed by the firm squeeze of Silco’s hand on your leg.

But your prayers had been answered-- not to disappear, but to survive--for help. They had been answered by him. The man whose lithe frame had lifted you effortlessly. Who cradled you in his arms. Who heeded your pleas and saved your life. So different from the games you had been playing for months. From the way you had imagined his hands on you.

You buried your face into his chest, basking in its warmth. Silco released a gentle sigh, thumb brushing softly on your leg.

“Thank you” Your voice was so soft you weren’t sure he had heard you.

The sound of Silco’s footsteps in time with the beating of his heart were the only refrain in the street as you passed building after building.

“Don’t--” Silco seemed to struggle for words, a silent war for the right ones raging in his head.

“Don’t thank me.” He finally ground out.

“I should have been there sooner. I should have been there.”

Your head lifted to look at him, taking in the tension woven from his jaw down to his shoulders and through the rest of him.

All you could do was shake your head, mouth open dumbly in a loss for words.

“I knew he would do something stupid and desperate the first chance he got.” Silco went on muttering to himself more than to you.

You don’t know why you did it, exactly. And it wasn’t until you felt Silco halt in the middle of the sidewalk that you realized what you had done.

Your lips pressed firmly to the very corner of his mouth, hand holding the other side of his face to still him.

To allow you.

To allow you this one gesture of sincere affection impervious to the games you both played or the weight of tonight.

Your fingers brushed delicately over his jaw, his cheekbone. Silco didn’t move.

Rigid muscles cradled your body as you pulled back, returning to the comforting warmth of your head on his chest. Something in him seemed to soften as you did so and you almost thought you could hear a smile before he set off again, the rest of the trip in silent measured steps.

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