“The token I promised. For your escape. I’ll seal a note for you, too, if you’d like.”

"--better not. If someone finds it -- this is less suspicious."

He's gripping it a little tightly.

“All right—”

He takes his wrist in one hand.

“You’ll get a message to me, once you’ve done it. Promise me.”

Fuck.

"--if it's in my power."

Which it won't be.

He nods, and pulls him down onto the bed with him, pulling the furs in around them both.

“I’m cold,” he says, as an excuse.

"I'm very warm."

“You are.”

As the drugs kick in, and the pain fades out into contented, dozy warmth, he starts to drift in and out of sleep again.

Camillo holds him gently, and keeps his breathing steady and level, and lets the tears run down his face about how much Anatole doesn't exist.

He's going to wake up, and there will be no token in his hand, and no Anatole to tell. And in a day this will be half-forgotten, and in a week it'll seem like it never mattered at all.

Anatole pulls him closer in his sleep, buries his face in his side. His breath is warm on his skin.

He tries to memorize the shape of him, the scent. He feels so real.

(Maybe he's been the real one, this whole time? Maybe Camillo will poison Dorothy and nothing will change and he'll have to come back here and -- handle things -- and then there will be a real Anatole to find in the waking world--)

Camillo keeps watch, as long as Anatole sleeps. He has nowhere else to be.

Eventually, he yawns, opens his eyes again.

“…you’re still here.”

"I don't think the party's leaving that soon."

He knows perfectly well what Anatole meant.

“She communes with severed heads now. Who knows what her schedule is like?”

"...an alarmingly compelling point. Maybe I should go find her."

“And leave me to freeze to death?”

"I'm sure you'll have no trouble finding another boy to warm your bed while I'm away."

“Either you expect her to tow you off right away or you overestimate my abilities.”

"She does seem pretty restless."

“…before you go, stay just there…”

He feels around under his pillow for something.

Camillo will take the excuse to linger. And kiss the back of his ear.

(Hey!)

He turns back around, and puts his arms around him, and there’s a momentary sharp tug at the back of Camillo’s head before he comes away with his little silver dagger and a single curl of hair.

Um okay he feels slightly less urgent about leaving all of a sudden.

"Hey," he says, but his heart's not in it.

He sets his knife aside and wraps the little curl around his finger.

“I think it’s a fair trade.”

Camillo laughs, and kisses him again.

"You'll hardly even know I'm gone."

Where is his shirt. ... here's his shirt.