patheticvillain | twenty-five ➢ private + spam

[There's this new expression that Cassel has. It's nothing like the Real Boy faces he used to practice in the mirror, especially just before he was sent to Wallingford, the ones that he used to prove (at least to the unobservant) that he was normal. This is different, though, one that emerged organically alongside a gradual realization that, while a lot of people might still hurt him, they won't all. It's tender, tentative, quiet and as sweet as Cassel ever gets, tinged with surprise and sprinkled with perpetual disbelief.]

[This is how he looks at Slevin now as he falls in beside him, at least until he ducks his head to hide it and starts walking towards the dining hall.]

There's a bingo card for getting screwed, but not screwed over. If there was I'd have won it by now.

[A moment's consideration; then he shrugs.]

But I kind of rigged that game by being an idiot.

[The moment Slevin catches sight of that tenderness, his dark eyes go flat and reptile-blank, and he waits for it to pass. It would be a mistake to trust him with anything, and he's not playing a confidence game right now. He's not trying to trick Cassel into anything. He's just observing.

But it's safe enough to smirk himself when he hears that.]

Anything to amuse yourselves in space, huh? I have a hard time believing you've got the monopoly over Chris and Scott for being an idiot, though.

[Cassel misses the snake-eyes, kind of. He sees the tail end of them, when he glances up again to see Slevin hitching up a smirk that doesn't negate the aggressive neutrality in his eyes. It makes him pause, but he doesn't question it much, just stores it away for later consideration.]

[The truth is, Cassel doesn't need to be tricked. Not really. He assumes things will go badly wrong between the two of them eventually, because he's involved, and when Cassel Sharpe is involved things generally do. But that doesn't mean he can't be happy now, just for a minute.]

[He smirks right back, shit-eating, heartbreaking.]

Nah. No monopoly. But historically speaking, I have this thing I do . . .

[Hand someone the knife. If they gut you with it, they're an enemy; if not, they're a friend. He raises his eyebrows.]

You ever hear of the ouroboros?

[It could be ironic, if Slevin knew. He doesn't think things will go wrong because he's involved, but simply because they must. He's never been interested in having friends. What good are friends? They forget about you the moment you're gone, don't ask their degenerate gambler fathers about you, don't recognize you when you smile in their faces and tell them you're not someone that you're not. You don't matter to them once you're out of their sight. So Slevin never lets them matter to him at all.

He forgot that sometimes no one gets a choice in who matters and who doesn't. He raises his eyebrows right back.]

Yes. What part of it is important?

[What good are friends? Cassel often asked himself this, before. What's the point of them? The obvious benefit is that they're something normal people have. Normal kids especially. Slightly-less-monstrous monsters that help you through the hard times, the petty heartbreaks and shake-ups, that feed you ice cream and get you drunk when you think you can't go on anymore.]

[The trouble always was that if you can't trust your family, you definitely can't trust friends, and Cassel never could trust his family. Love 'em or leave 'em: they weren't trustworthy. So friends were no good. If he was going to put his loyalty into something slippery, it'd be Sharpes all the way.]

[Just because he knows differently now doesn't mean he doesn't still have that impulse.]

Cycles.

[All soft-edged and hard-centered. There's a bitterness to him. It's not terribly different from Slevin's. Different sources, different reasons, different outcomes. But they're both angry. They both died.]

I fuck up. And then I fix it, kind of, a little. And then I fuck up in the exact same way all over again and call it a mistake, sorry, won't do it again. Destroy myself a little piece at a time. All of which is supposed to be in past tense, but confidentially speaking, I don't know that graduation's that clear-cut.

Anyway. [He stretches and shoots a dazzling grin at the ceiling.] It's inefficient.

[Cassel works in cycles, fucks up, apologizes, fucks up again, and thinks graduation isn't all that clear cut. The longer he talks the more Slevin realizes maybe they aren't all that similar after all: Goodkat would not have tolerated something that inefficient. The kind of mistakes they make aren't fixed by apologies, there are no second chances. Goodkat had been very, very clear on this long before Slevin ever talked his way into the game.

Slevin makes mistakes exactly once. If he gets another chance, he won't ever make the same misstep again. And graduation? Graduation's easy if one does the research. And he has.

So instead, Slevin makes a thoughtful noise in the back of his throat, and smiles his smoothest smile.]

Confidentially speaking.

What you're saying is that you still haven't figured out how to keep from choking on your own tail.

That's exactly what I'm saying. I mean, I can do it some of the time. But it's not automatic. It's not instinctive. I'm self-destructive. You could take easy advantage of that if you wanted to; other people have.

[It'd be easy. The easiest thing in the world - because Cassel is pretty sure that, once it's dug in, he'd help, even after all this time. He graduated, sure; he's better with almost all the awful shit he used to do. But he's still a Sharpe. He's still the youngest, the brat, the little monster, the Hope Diamond. He's still selfish in a lot of ways.]

[He's still manipulable.]

[He wonders if Slevin will take advantage. Maybe not. Maybe handing it to him on a platter will keep him from using it, out of some weird sense of pride. Or maybe he'll use it against Cassel sometime in the future - but he probably would have anyway. In the end, it doesn't matter. Cassel is what he is: easy to hurt, easy to maim, hard as hell to put down for good.]

[The truly ironic part is that Cassel is telling him all this freely, and it doesn't change a thing: Slevin stores it away, of course he does, but he can't really believe him. He also can't say it changes anything he ever intended to do or not do. Cassel is what he always was; Slevin is who he always was, too.]

I take advantage of a lot of things when I want to, not just what's easy. [He hasn't known Cassel long enough to be able to say he's self-destructive, that he moves in cycles, whether he's really changed or not; there are certainly changes in the young man speaking to him now and the one Slevin's seen speaking on the network in the past, but time can do that. Surfaces change all the time, and only time can dig deeper than that. He tilts his head.]

Including this. So why tell me?

You know . . .

[He sighs and pulls a cigarette out of his pocket. It's just some random brand; he cycles through them, now that he's not fixated on Lila's. He lights it and takes a drag, letting the smoke sit in his lungs while he thinks, staring at the baseboards of the hall.]

You know, [he says, exhaling,] I'm not really sure? I just like you. So I started talking.

[That's how it is now. That's how he likes it. It'll get him in trouble, but hey - he's happy. He never was that, before.]

Starting the cycle over, I see.

[This is almost flippant; there's a moment where he considers trying to convince Cassel of what he's tried to convince him of before, of what he tried on Kara. He's not a good person. They shouldn't like him.

Hell with 'em if they won't see what he's handing out on a silver platter. So instead he grins - the bright, winning one that makes people think he's a charming boy, cleancut and handsome.]

It's okay. A lot of people like me. I mean for them to.

I know you do.

[He knows that Slevin is a world-class liar. That he's not a good person, and that he's a killer. He knows that Slevin could trick him, because he knows (although doesn't admit) that his own lies have always had a certain amount of porosity to them. A certain transparency. Whether he meant it or not - and even now, it's hard to know what he meant to do, once upon a time.]

[It doesn't matter, though. He likes Slevin, whether it's a bad idea or good. That's just how it is.]

Do you mean for me to, out of curiosity? You can lie if you want. I figure I won't be able to tell either way. [This is 90% a lie, although he has doubts.] Just something I've been wondering about.

[The answer, of course, is yes. Slevin decided before he ever showed his face to the Barge, ever logged on to the network for the first time, that he would be Slevin Kelevra, who is harmless and unassuming and whom people like. Whom people want to like. Henry Mason is a ghost, a dark and bitter and angry and dangerous ghost, and no one wants to let him be their friend.

But instead of answering, he lets his grin fade and turns his dark, unreadable gaze on Cassel and lets something intent, something almost but not quite either calculating or curious, something in between taint the perfect neutrality.]

Would it change anything?

[Cassel makes friends with angry, bitter ghosts. He loves his brother Philip, who is the angriest and bitterest ghost. There are shades of Philip in Slevin - in Henry, rather, which Cassel has only had the barest occasion to see thus far. Angry men who would tear down the world to win - they're family. They're blood.]

[It's to Slevin's disadvantage, too, that pound for pound, Cassel's attachment is stronger than a crocodile's bite pressure. No giving up, no letting go. So would it change anything? No. It might make him angry and stupid, but he's made up his mind, and he doesn't hold grudges anymore. Not in the same way.]

[Cassel smiles like the devil.]

No. It sure would not.

[Perhaps that is what it is: Henry, of all people, can respect sheer tenacity. It is its own kind of integrity, the refusal to let something go and forget about it, and while its lack is a convenient trait in a mark, it is not required. It makes the con more interesting. More challenging.

Cassel is a challenge for the sheer fact that he does not seem to be one. The lies he tells are glinting and bright, the reflection of light off the surface of water, making it impossible to tell how deep the dropoff is. But light fades, if one waits long enough.

Slevin has patience. Slevin has learned patience. He nods in the face of that smile, and does not smile back.]

Then it doesn't matter, does it?

[He snorts.]

Stupid question. Of course it matters. Intent always matters.

[It doesn't cure anything and it doesn't break anything all on its own, but it can be the last straw, if set up right. If it didn't matter, he wouldn't have asked. If it didn't matter, Slevin wouldn't be dodging.]

[That's how he sees it, anyway. He has no illusions about being as good a confidence man these days as Slevin is, but that doesn't mean he can't see the outline of one, the shadow of it, when it overtakes him in the hall.]

Huh.

[Slevin pretends to consider this. There's no need to, really, because he has absolutely no intention of answering the original question; he hasn't had any intention of the same for even a moment. But there's an art to evading, to hiding the true reason for anything, and it requires its own set of acts, of smaller lies, of silent deceptions.

So he makes a joke of it, too, pretending to consider what is news to him. Like intent never mattered to him before.

Then he smiles - charmingly, so charmingly - and shrugs.]

Guess you'll just have to decide for yourself.

I guess I will.

[Once upon a time he was out of practice at that. Now, he's starting to feel tentatively confident - that he knows how to make decisions, that his decisions mean something, that he's taken seriously, that whatever he decides won't end in an inevitable slide into failure.]

[He might fail at this. If he does, he'll try again and fuck up less hard the second time. At least that's the theory.]

[Cassel smiles too, just as charmingly. A mirror in miniature.]

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