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“This game is no fun,” Hilda slurs, taking a sip of her appletini—which is mostly just ice at this point, but she doesn’t seem to notice or care.
“You’re only saying that because you’re losing,” Claude tells her.
“Which shouldn’t be happening when Sylvain is playing.”
Dorothea giggles and glances at the man on her left, who’s taking Hilda’s implication with an easy smile. “Not my fault you aren’t asking the right questions,” he sighs out, resting his cheek in one hand. The other holds up three fingers—the same number Dorothea is sporting, her elbow resting on the edge of the table. Claude has two, Hilda has one. It’s no wonder she’s complaining. “But it’s your turn, so you’ve got an opportunity to fix that.”
Hilda rolls her eyes. “Fine. Never have I ever…” Her eyes dance around the table, gauging her competition. Then they illuminate with a decision. “Never have I ever had surgery!”
The rest of the table groans and puts down a finger.
“Low blow, Hilda,” Claude mutters. His emergency appendectomy is common knowledge, considering he had to be rushed to the hospital from his own birthday party. No one could stop talking about it for weeks. Claude took it in stride, at least, since it meant they got to have a second, even bigger party to make up for the first.
“Cheer up,” Hilda coos, voice dripping with faux sympathy. “You’re not alone.”
“So it would seem,” Claude groans, shooting a glance toward Dorothea and Sylvain. “What were you two in for?”
“Wisdom teeth,” Dorothea chirps, giving her cheek a light tap.
“Fell off a horse,” Sylvain says casually.
Hilda’s jaw drops. “Oh my god, really?”
“Hey, it happens! I still have the scar.” He rolls up his sleeve, turning his left arm over and leaning into the center of the table. Everyone else draws closer: it’s difficult to see underneath Sylvain’s impressive array of tattoos, but there’s a dark line that runs from his lower bicep, across the elbow crease and several inches down his forearm. “Broke my arm in three places. Hurt like hell, but… It’s a cool story.”
One that Dorothea thinks she would have heard before, if it were actually true. But she’s gotten good at spotting Sylvain’s tells: a certain excessive smoothness in the way he talks, a near-imperceptible stiffness in his shoulders. Lines memorized and recited with precision, an unavoidable tension that comes with performing a lie.
“Anyway,” Sylvain starts, once everyone’s gotten a good look. “I think you’re up, Claude.”
“Right. Okay.” Claude takes a deep breath, his lips already curling upwards before he parts them to say, “Never have I ever had lesbian sex.”
Hilda slams her palm down on the table in defeat. “Like I said,” she growls, “this game is no fun.”
Sylvain shakes out his wrist, descending from his stool. “We can play something different, then,” he says absent-mindedly. “But first, I’m gonna take a smoke break.”
Dorothea watches him slip away with little fanfare, intuition and morbid curiosity tempting her to follow. She stays planted in her seat, trying to blink away the after-image of his bright red hair disappearing into the night.
“You know the rules, Hilda,” Claude lilts behind her. “Loser buys the next round.”
“Ugh. I’m so picking the next game,” groans the loser in question, before taking off for the bar.
“Something on your mind?” Claude asks, his voice louder now that it’s directed at her. Dorothea nearly jumps in her seat. “You’re staring at the door like you’re trying to burn a hole through it.”
She shakes her head, turning to face him. “Oh. It’s nothing, just…” A sigh rushes past her lips. “Sylvain knows that we know he’s lying about his ‘smoke breaks,’ right? I’ve never found a box of cigarettes on him, let alone seen him light one up.” Not even the time she borrowed his jacket one brisk evening and inevitably checked the pockets, against her better judgment. The most interesting thing she found in there was a swiss army knife, which she’s also never seen him use. For a guy who’ll chat your ear off if you aren’t careful, he’s shrouded in mystery.
Claude shrugs. “People have lied about stranger things.”
Sylvain especially, she thinks. “I’m gonna go check on him,” she decides, hopping down to the floor with a light tap. “Be back in a bit.”
The bar chatter, which was pleasant white noise a few minutes ago, begins to grate on her as she shoulders past other patrons—as clear a sign as any that she’s anxious. She can’t quite put her finger on why; Sylvain’s brooding should be none of her business, and certainly not her main concern, but…
But the cool quiet is immediately calming, and so is his darkened profile leaning against the wall a few feet from the entrance. Notably not smoking, as she suspected.
“You can just tell us you need some fresh air, you know,” she says, her voice a bit raspy from talking over the crowd. “We’d understand.” She would, at least.
Sylvain looks up, straightening when he sees her. “Well,” he starts, motioning to the hazy cloud produced by the actual smokers lingering further down the sidewalk. “The air isn’t exactly fresh out here, either,” he points out with a low, rumbling laugh. “But I guess the cat’s out of the bag. Sorry for the smoke and mirrors—no pun intended.”
Dorothea hums, stepping closer and leaning sideways into the wall, her shoulder pressing into the brick. “I’d actually be more upset if you hadn’t been lying. It’s a terrible habit.”
“Spoken like a woman whose voice is her livelihood,” Sylvain says, mirroring her posture. His face is haloed by the low yellow light of an old street lamp, looking right at home against the alluring backdrop of Derdriu’s entertainment district: leather jacket, crimson v-neck, small silver hoops dangling in his ears. “Anyway,” he adds, and she realizes she’s been staring. “What’s there to understand about me being out here, exactly?”
She meets his eyes. “That sometimes you just want to be alone.”
“Yet here you are,” he murmurs, gaze lowering to the ground. His mouth twists immediately after saying it, his brain catching up. “Fuck.” He squeezes his eyes shut, pushing off the wall and pacing down toward the curb, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Sorry. I sound like an asshole—”
“No,” she cuts in, moving to follow before opting to leave a few feet of distance between them. “I should apologize. I…”
Sylvain raises an eyebrow and cracks a smirk, any sliver of sincerity draining from his face. Like a fucking switch. He’d be such a good actor. “Couldn’t stay away, huh?” he drawls, closing the gap. Dorothea would find his syrupy tenor more alluring if she thought he actually meant it. “Guess I can’t really complain about having a beautiful woman’s attention.”
“I was worried,” she cuts in before the charade can continue further. The veil between who Sylvain is and who he pretends to be is rarely this thin, and she hasn’t been able to break her compulsive urge to cross over to the other side. “You seemed reluctant to talk about your arm earlier,” she continues. “Like you’d stirred up a bad memory.”
His expression shifts into caution. “Falling off a horse isn’t what I’d call a good memory.”
“…Fair.”
She knows she needs to back off, to let him decide if he’ll tell the truth or not. “But you seemed to be in a hurry to get out of the crowd, so I wondered if there was more to it.” Something he might like to confess, maybe, or a weight she can help slide off his chest. She waves her hand through the air, dismissing the fantasy—which is what the cloying desire to figure him out is, loath as she may be to admit it. “I’m known to have quite the imagination, though, so I was probably worried over nothing.”
Silence draws out long, somewhere between awkward and comfortable. There’s something refreshing about putting Sylvain in this position, watching his brow furrow and his gaze wander. He’s thinking, for once. And there’s a thrilling risk to it, a fear that she might push too far if she isn’t careful. High risk, high reward.
“Hilda and Claude are probably waiting for us,” she says, once she decides too much time has passed. No revelations tonight. “We should—”
“It was my brother,” he bites out.
Oh. “What?”
“I didn’t fall off a horse,” he admits with a sigh. “My brother pushed me out of the second floor window when I was seven. I ended up with a concussion and a fractured tibia, too—but only my left arm was bad enough for the doctor to put me under.”
Broken in three places. A scar he’s tried to paint over, literally and figuratively. “I’m so sorry,” she murmurs. None of the rumors she’s heard about Miklan Gautier have been good, but this is the first time she’s heard Sylvain mention him, directly, to her.
He lets out an almost-laugh, pure nerves. “Don’t be. It was a long time ago.” He folds his arms across his chest, shrugs. “And it feels nice to tell someone, actually. Especially you. If anyone is going to understand the weight of traumatic childhood events, it’s…” He trails off, scrubbing a hand across his face. “Shoot. I said something rude again.”
“Not at all.” Dorothea thinks that might be why she can read him so well: in moments like these, she can sense his pain, its nature a paradox of familiar and foreign. Like an echo distorted in a tunnel, or her own image reflected back through a fun house mirror.
“What about you?” he asks.
“Hm? What about me?”
“Wisdom teeth,” he specifies, mimicking the cheek-tapping motion she’d used earlier. “You had that answer prepared. Too prepared.”
“Because it’s the truth,” she says, immediately wary. It’s not like she doesn’t deserve this, considering their conversation, but…
“But not the whole one,” Sylvain concludes with irritating confidence. “I happen to know why you’re so good at picking me apart, Thea. It’s because you think like me—and you lie like me.”
She scoffs, planting her hands on her hips. “Sounds more like a theory.” But she could give him a sliver of proof, if she wanted. It’s only fair. Now could be her only chance—who knows when she’ll have the confidence to bring this up again? She flutters her lips, letting the rationalizations pile high.
“I got shot,” she says, exhaling the words out like they’re a toxic byproduct her body is rejecting. She waits to see if she feels anything—relief, euphoria, regret. But there’s nothing. The only thing that elicits any reaction is Sylvain’s dumbstruck face, which makes her chest… lukewarm.
“I can’t tell if you’re lying or not,” he says, and for once she can tell right away that he means it.
“Maybe I don’t lie quite like you, then,” she quips back. Somewhere in the back of her mind a voice is screaming at her: Why did you tell him that? Why did you tell anyone? Dorothea distracts herself with the allure of toying with Sylvain. Any emotional consequences can come later. “But you could learn how to lie like me, Syl. Take an acting class—you’ll pick it up in no time.”
Sylvain smiles—and it’s too dark where they’re standing for Dorothea to determine whether it’s a real one or not, but she has a hunch it’s the former. “Or I could spend time with an expert,” he says. “Get some practical experience.”
She has to hand it to Sylvain—he knows how to think on his feet. It’s almost like they weren’t discussing some of their worst memories a minute ago. “Interesting idea. I’ll consider it.”
“That’s all I—” He pauses, his gaze moving beyond her. “All I ask,” he murmurs, clearly distracted.
She’s about to spin around to see what’s caught his attention when a pair of familiar voices cuts through the otherwise peaceful street.
“See, Hilda? They didn’t ditch us.”
“Okay. But that doesn’t mean they weren’t about to run off and—”
“Hey, guys,” Sylvain calls before Hilda can finish the thought, waving them over. “Sorry for taking so long. Lost track of time.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Hilda says. Dorothea turns to find her a bit unsteady on her feet, holding onto Claude for support. “We drank both your drinks, by the way.”
“I can see that,” Dorothea says with an amused giggle. “Are we going back in?”
Claude shakes his head. “No. Hilda wants to go to—”
“Karaoke!” Hilda interrupts. “There’s a place nearby. I won’t take no for an answer.”
Dorothea and Sylvain exchange a look. She’s down for it, of course—and Sylvain’s why not? shrug is commitment enough. “Works for me,” he says. Hilda is already dragging Claude down the street, and he moves to follow. “How much do you wanna bet she’s taking us in the wrong direction?”
She strides forward, slipping her arm into his. “I think we can improvise.”