Secrets and kindnesses? Who needed them?
Rhys didn't.
He scowled at the bottle instead of allowing the full expression that furrowed into his well-carved features to fall onto Niccolette, "You did think on me poorly—don't pretend you didn't. It's fine, you know. I fuckin' deserved it." Blue eyes drifted upwards from the table, but the stretched thin, bled dry blond was sincere, believing every word that dripped like spilled Brunelleschi, "Still do. I did this to myself—you? I don't mean harm by it. I just—things are hard. This is hard. I—whatever. You don't have it any easier, and I know it."
He sighed, letting all that alcohol sink in, yearning to drown in it, eyelids heavy for a moment until the dark-haired Bastian's retort about Hawke dragged a laugh out of him, reluctant and rough with sarcastic disbelief,
"None of your business or not, I know just enough to be dangerous, I suppose. But it's not on my docket. I'm nothin' more than a blackback-riding patty now." The once-Inspector hummed, resisting the urge to add that there was very little at the end of her path but betrayal and more death. But, then again, hadn't he seen the same? Wasn't he headed in the same direction but along a different route? The words were sour like bile, like the churning of his stomach as his mind mulled over shared truths. He should have been horrified or angry or sad, but wasn't he already? Niccolette's associations didn't bother the Seventen like they should have, already too numb to betrayal, already so used to assuming he couldn't trust someone else in uniform, let alone another galdor who'd never worn one.
This was, perhaps, a trust out of necessity. Nicco wouldn't be able to finish her mourning—Rhys may have come across as calloused, but even he understood that—until she'd solved this problem. Hawke held that in his greedy hands like his own heart was trapped beneath the thumb of Damen D'Arthe.
"Not the same 'cause we're not swinging for school children anymore, no shit. Just means I don't have to pull any more punches in your company. Good."
It was with great effort that he shifted, that he raised his glass with a slowness that surely only he could perceive as frustrating, smirking as the gesture was returned and then grinning, lopsided and admittedly no longer entirely in a sober state of mind at her toast. Then he drained it—whatever was left in there—setting the poor thing down heavily, upside down, definite, only to be startled into focus by the wave of heat that washed through her field and through his senses and startled into focus by the vicious undertone to her words.
"Ashes and blood, indeed."
He watched the embers of her fierceness in her expression and turned as she leaned back in her chair—too quick, a little clumsy, fumbling through his dark green-dyed coat, fingers brushing over those damn four snaps, and tugging his notebook and his pen out. Setting them on the table, squinting and sputtering a few curses before he returned to his godsbedamned coat to dig for his spectacles. The way he shoved them on his flushed face revealed his distaste for their necessity, but he wasn't at all sober enough for them to make a difference.
Thumbs navigated through notes, hunting for a blank page. Pages and pages of his studious, intuitive Inspector habits flipped by,
"You don't have a choice now—to come to dinner." He murmured, words moving closer together, mind burning alcohol for fuel, bright and too hot, "You'll bring everything you know and, uh, and a bottle of wine. I'll roast something with garmon and organize what I—no—we, Charity and I—we—know. I can only pretend to guarantee things will go smoothly. It will take a lot more than fucking wine for that—"
Rhys sucked in a breath, aware that he couldn't even guarantee his wife sober. He wrote his address. A Dives address. Painted Ladies. A rowhouse. With trembling hands, he tore the thing, tongue pressed against that damn scar, careful not to rip his handwriting, careful not to force himself to start over. Blue eyes narrowing from behind the lenses, he slid it across the table,
"—that address isn't public record. You can get me arrested with that, if you'd rather."
Probably hung, too.
The not-galdor refrained from saying the whole truth, drunk enough to have some damn empathy, drunk enough to know it would have been too sharp, would have cut too deep in the company of someone he should have done a better job comforting in her loss. He tasted too much of his own, bitter and dry and yet aware he was still thirsty,
"But that would leave too much unfinished, and I'd be really pissed off."