Between Shadows

Between Shadows: Chapter 05-A (Weight of Suggestion)

When Lorian returned home from the Filigree, the door to the stairwell was unlocked.

That, in itself, wasn’t unusual. The Nightjar rarely closed before midnight, and the staff downstairs knew to leave the back stairwell accessible. He climbed the stairs, briefly pausing against the railing, fumbling for keys. The hallway light flickered as he reached the landing.

He paused. The door to his apartment was slightly ajar.

He frowned, fingers resting against the door for a moment, before pushing it open. The room was dimly lit with the amber glow from the streetlamps outside, bleeding through the curtains. The faint smell of bourbon reached him before he crossed the threshold.

“Silas?” he called as he stepped inside.

No answer.

He peered around the corner to catch the unmistakable figure in front of the lounge window—one hand braced against the frame, the other holding a tumbler. Lorian would have thought he was admiring the city view, but caught the man’s cold gaze from the reflection in the window.

“Evening,” Lorian said, stepping inside and closing the door with his shoulder. He set a bag on the table and tossed his keys in the dish on the counter with a deliberate clatter, making his way to the kitchen. “What finally brings you here after—what—a whole month of ghosting me?”

“I was nearby,” Silas said smoothly, voice warm with feigned civility. “Thought I’d check in.”

Lorian opened the fridge, pulled out the half-empty bottle of mineral water, and drank. “Well. You certainly know how to make an entrance. Good to know I’m still useful for something. Even if it’s just the liquor cabinet.”

Silas took a drink. “Don’t sell yourself short.”

“You know,” Lorian continued, “I was starting to think I’d pissed you off. But if this is your idea of showing affection, I’d hate to see what happens when you’re angry.”

The silence lingered, heavy in the air. Lorian frowned. His posture shifted, just slightly. The next remark died on his tongue as he looked closer.

Silas looked pale. Not in the usual way—elegant, ghostly, untouchable—but drawn. Too still. The set of his shoulders was rigid. There was something hollow around his eyes and a tightness to his mouth that suggested restraint.

Lorian’s voice quieted, the edge falling out of it. “When’s the last time you fed?”

Silas didn’t answer right away. His hand tightened slightly around the glass. That was answer enough. Eyes fixed on something outside, he took another sip and said, “I hadn’t realized I was being monitored. Should I start submitting a feeding schedule?”

Lorian rolled his eyes. “You’re not exactly subtle when you’re running on fumes.”

That earned him the faintest smile.

Silas finally turned, glass dangling from his fingertips like he’d grown bored of holding it. He moved through the room slowly, without urgency, and rested against the far end of the counter, reclaiming the space between them.

“You’ve been busy,” he said. “Digging.” It wasn’t a question.

“You mean working?”

“I mean publishing ghost stories to stir up local folklore—under your own name, no less.” He set his drink on the counter’s edge, sliding it toward the center. “You’re not usually that careless.”

“I’m not usually banned from the primary source.”

“Ah,” Silas said, with mock realization. “So this is spite.”

Lorian folded his arms. “You revoked my access without a word.”

“You wanted inside so badly, I thought I’d remind you what it feels like to be locked out.”

Lorian flushed, letting out a sharp breath that might’ve passed for a laugh.

“God, you’re exhausting,” he muttered, running his hands through his hair and turning away like he was done with the conversation, like it hadn’t hit. He moved back toward the kitchen, fingers reaching for the nearest cabinet. Movement was easier than looking at Silas right now.

His face burned, but his hands were steady. He opened the cabinet, took down a tumbler. The weight of it in his palm was anchoring, cool and familiar. He set it on the counter, took the bottle of uncapped bourbon, and poured with slow precision—a grounding ritual as he felt his focus sliding. The sound of it filled the quiet.

For a moment, there was nothing else. Just the feel of woodgrain under his fingertips, the sting of liquor in his throat as he took a sip, the warm weight of routine. He leaned back against the counter and kept his eyes on the glass, watching the way the amber liquid caught the light. “You didn’t kill the article,” he said. “I’m still writing it. You’re just making it harder to finish.”

Lorian paused, glass halfway to his mouth, when he saw Silas shift out of the corner of his eye—barely a tilt of the head and the suggestion of a smile.

He could feel the silence stretch, warm and deliberate, heat settling at the base of his spine. He downed his drink and turned back to pour another. Behind him, the ice clinked softly in Silas’s glass. A shift of weight, then footsteps.

Silas didn’t speak right away.

Just the measured sound of his steps across the floor, slow and deliberate, until he stood at the other side of the counter, across from Lorian. His eyes dropped to the glass in Lorian’s hand, then back to his face.

“I’m not here to argue,” he said, lightly. “The piece dies.”

Lorian blinked. “You’re seriously pulling rank over a story you’ve ignored for years?” His fingers curled loosely around the base of the glass. “You used to laugh at half the s**t I put in those. You didn’t care. I didn’t even mention you in the last two.” His voice was rising—not angry, just trying to find the edges of it, the logic. “What changed?”

Silas met his eyes. “You did, darling,” he said. “You’ve stopped writing fluff and started building a narrative.”

Lorian stared at him. “What the hell does that even mean?”

“It means people are starting to believe you,” Silas said. “And that’s inconvenient.”

He scoffed, but it lacked any real heat. “Inconvenient,” he echoed. “Silas. It’s a Halloween feature, not a f*****g manifesto.” He ran a hand down his face, then set the drink aside with a little too much force. “You think people are going to read that and storm the Filigree with pitchforks? You’re seriously worried about a bunch of ghost hunters and conspiracy theorists?”

Lorian shook his head, disbelief mounting. “Why this? Why now?”

Silas watched him for a long moment, the faintest motion in his jaw like he was weighing whether to say it at all.

“Because I’m not the only thing watching anymore.”

“What?” He didn’t know what answer he expected, but it wasn’t that. There was something final in it—something that reached past the argument and touched on a depth he hadn’t realized they were circling.

Silas adjusted his stance, fingers pressing more firmly into the counter. His grip looked steady at first, but Lorian caught the faint tremor just before it stilled. The skin beneath his eyes looked drawn, and his jaw tensed slightly. Rigidity crept back into his shoulders.

Silas picked up his drink and tipped it back, draining the last of the bourbon in one long, silent swallow. He lingered there for a breath longer, then pushed off the counter with easy grace, smoothing his hand down the front of his coat like he could press the moment back into shape. The tension remained, but folded into something more controlled.

He crossed the final stretch of space between them with practiced ease. His presence pulled heavier now, as if gravity itself bent around him. Lorian held his ground, but the weight of it settled in his chest, warm, familiar, and dangerously steadying.

The air between them seemed to still. The usual buzz of the city faded behind the apartment walls, muffled and far away, as if they stood inside a bubble within some liminal space. Silas’s gaze dropped again, this time to Lorian’s mouth, then back up to his eyes, a steady tether.

“Breathe, Lorian. Don’t wind yourself up. You know how this ends—I quiet the noise, and you thank me for the silence.” His voice was warm, low—threaded with a familiar persuasion. Lorian could feel a pressure that wasn’t physical, more like suggestion worn smooth by repetition.

Silas reached for Lorian’s glass, and their fingers brushed. It was brief, barely contact at all, but Lorian still felt the heat of it linger as Silas lifted the drink from his hand and set it aside.

Lorian didn’t move. Couldn’t, not right away.

There was something about the way Silas stood there, poised in the low light, coat half-open, tension folded into elegance. That same gravity as before, but heavier now. Cloying. Measured. He didn’t reach for Lorian, didn’t touch him again, but the nearness of him worked its way under Lorian’s skin all the same.

It rolled through him like muscle memory, his body reacting before his mind could catch up. A hitch in breath, a flicker of heat beneath his ribs, the remnants of a cue once drilled into place. Not desire, but conditioning, deeply carved. He hated how easily it resurfaced. Hated that Silas knew how to call it back in an instant.

“Don’t,” he said, voice sharp enough to cut through the haze. “Don’t do that. You can’t just keep killing arguments like this.”

Silas stilled in a moment of recognition, as if Lorian had touched a wire long buried under charm and calculation. He stepped back, resting against the opposite counter.

“No one listens when the shouting starts,” Silas said quietly. “You taught me that.” He said it without heat, like it was a truth they both already knew. Not quite a rebuke. Something gentler, more poisonous—a memory reworked into gratitude, offered back like a gift.

Lorian snapped, voice sharper than intended. “You don’t get to turn my worst moments into justification for yours.”

Something flickered in Silas’s expression—barely a twitch of the mouth, a slight shift in weight—but it was enough that Lorian could see the moment he marked it. Some sort of confirmation. Leverage. An opening, but one he suddenly decided not to take.

“Not your worst moment,” he said, laughing.

Lorian could still feel a tug at the edges of his mind, gentler now, receding with a sort of resignation, allowing them to settle into something more comfortable.

But the quiet didn’t last.

Silas moved toward him again. Lorian barely had time to register the shift before he was close again, reaching for Lorian’s glass he’d set aside earlier.

He didn’t speak. Just brought the glass to his lips and finished the last of the drink, eyes never leaving Lorian’s face. The excuse was flimsy—transparent, even—but it worked. The proximity, the pretense of ease. It sank in with the same smooth inevitability as before, threading beneath thought.

Lorian’s pulse kicked. He could feel the pressure again, subtle but certain, holding him in place.

Silas set the glass back down. Then, without warning, he leaned in—slow and fluid—and rested his forehead lightly against Lorian’s temple. Lorian could feel the breath on his neck, soft, steady, and cool, brushing against his skin with a chill. It began to unravel him before he could remember how to respond.

“I’m not killing the conversation,” Silas said, a sudden, strange breaking of quiet. “We’ll talk more in the morning, after you’ve had some rest.” He didn’t move away immediately, but the pressure began to ease like a hand lifting off the back of his neck.

Lorian exhaled, shakier than he meant to. The fog in his head thinned by degrees, thought returning with the slow ache of something previously clamped down.

The weight in the room shifted with it—still dense, but less suffocating. Enough for Lorian to breathe and realize, with sudden clarity, what had been bothering him from the start.

Silas hadn’t asked to feed.

The realization landed sideways. Not because he expected it—he didn’t—but because the absence of it felt unnatural. Like a step missing from a ritual neither of them acknowledged anymore.

He turned slightly, just enough to glance at Silas out of the corner of his eye. “You’re really not going to ask.” Something between a question and an accusation.

Silas was still close, though no longer pressing. The atmosphere between them had cooled, softened, still laced with something careful. “Tomorrow,” he said mildly. “We’ll talk.”

That was when Lorian finally turned to face him. “You haven’t fed since you locked me out of Filigree, have you?”

Lorian didn’t need an answer. He could feel it in the room, in the taut stillness behind Silas’s charm. He knew how quickly hunger twisted into something feral.

He smiled lazily, tiredness apparent. “Maybe I just want to fall into angst and self-loathing for a while, Lorian. Get a feel for your process,” he said, backing away and angling toward the door. “Besides, when I feed tonight and someone dies for it, it’s not going to be you.”

“Silas—”

The door had already closed behind him.

“Charming.” Lorian sighed. “That’ll help me sleep at night.”