songbird ; cop & wilder

[ᴥ]

w i l d e r

Moonlight bores into the back of his neck, all silvery judgement. He hasn't read a single word in the last three pages of this report, red ink bleeding into the margins from the idle path his hand has set. It's exhausting work, pretending to be busy.

Wilder certainly doesn't have to - his father's name is all he needs to keep his ass in this cozy chair - but the quiet kind of nepotism is just no fun. It should be obvious he's wasting space, or what was the point of all this privilege?

Most of the worker bees have funneled out of the building by now, rubbing at the hunch in their spine. They were diligent little things with a penchant for gossip when caught by the coffee bar. Wilder had collected novel's worth of dirty secrets from his coworkers, the banal lamentations of the white collar workforce.

He presses his pointer finger to his temple and pulls the trigger.

Gods, he hates the lot of them.

Wilder is always restless, but especially on nights like these. When he's let his coffee go stale because the air smelled a bit like citrus. He pushes back from his desk, taking great care to shatter the sleepy silence. A walk will do him some good, and if the lights humming overhead are any indication, he's not the last one here.

Copernicus Fenwick is a heavy kind of name. Stretching so much taller than the unassuming man in the adjacent office, whose glasses sit low on the bridge of his nose as he puzzles over the papers scattered in front of him. Of course Wilder knew the extent of that legacy, just as he knew it was a good idea to tread carefully around such a man.

So of course, he spends much of his time playing in his shadow. He and death are old friends, after all, he has no reason to fear her.

"It's me." He doesn't knock, and is pleasantly surprised to find that the door is unlocked. He lets himself in, of course, leaning over Copernicus' desk to read whatever's atop them. It's futile, the words swim just as they had his own reports. "Oh, these are boring too." He frowns over at him, "That's great, you can go for a coffee run with me."

"Mine tasted funny, and I'm falling asleep over there."

There's no point in playing games, if they aren't a little dangerous.

"I bet these can wait, I don't want to."

[✌ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ]

C O P E R N I C U S

There's a song in his head playing on a loop.

Some old swayer from a different era, lately so popular at the various fundraisers and galas that Copernicus is made to spend his time at that he knows he could sit down with the band and play the damned thing himself. He's already looked it up of course, it's a piece from a golden era movie made in the years after the dark days, when the economy was picking up and his family's legacy was born.

He hums a note softly to himself, not entirely by choice, as he reads through a report for a case file that has him working late again.

His underlings disappear like clockwork as soon as it hits five thirty but Copernicus doesn't move. He can be so still sometimes that it feels like he will never move again, just erode there in place, moss growing slow over the angles of his face until he becomes unrecognisable.

A shiver runs like lightning down his spine and Cop straightens, using the interruption to stretch his stagnant muscles. His gaze falls on the window and the dark beyond it. The moon is bright tonight, it almost offers more light than his desk lamp. White gold pools on the carpet, lapping at his feet.

And it's just all so mundane.

He turns back to his report, glasses perched on the end of his nose for a better vantage point. Charts and letters stare back at him and he wonders when the other shoe will drop, if that cargo will come in at the expected time, if they've got it all under control and what he will have to do if they don't.

There's always so much to think about.

A figure moves in the doorframe, Copernicus doesn't look up. It's not danger, just a coworker. "It's me," Wilder tells him. Copernicus bites his tongue, yes. Obviously.

"Oh these are boring too."

He's not wrong. The letters have been blurring together for the last twenty minutes, the work is important but one can only read about wheat fields for so long without wanting to jump out the window.

"A district skimming wheat and shorting us isn't boring," Copernicus says, tone bland, "And your coffee tastes funny because you bought it three hours ago."

He looks up then, at Wilder's face, so much closer than he's ever let anyone just be but the thing about Wilder is he rarely asks for permission to take up space. One doesn't tend to in their circles though, old money is a whole different class from the freshly sewn that the Capitol is seeing these days. When Wilder enters a room, everybody knows it, when he leaves it, there is an absence, almost painful in its starkness.

Beautiful in his features, sharp jaw and classic looks, courtesy of his movie-star mother and seemingly an ego to match. He sticks out in the office like a fresh cut rose in a bouquet made of glass.

Copernicus doesn't lean away, he rests his chin on his knuckles, almost moving in closer instead. His instructions have always been clear. The Morningstar family are treasured friends to the Fenwicks, learn how to work with him.

But how does one tell a wildfire to stay in line?

"Since when do you work late anyway," he says.

Wilder is usually out the door at his first opportunity with the rest of them, leaving Copernicus to pick up the slack.

[ᴥ]

w i l d e r

Wilder's gaze is a hungry thing.

Starting on the tangle of veins on the back of Copernicus' hands, drifting to where his fingers curl in toward his palms. He settles his chin atop them, features resting in an easy indifference. He's comfortable in this space, but not quite relaxed. Though the office lights still flicker overhead it does not reach his eyes.

Cop allows the proximity, as he knew he would. Wilder is a precious jewel, treated with touches as reverent as they were greedy. The Fenwick heir held little interest in the Morningstar legacy, but that did not mean he wouldn't have to bend rules where Wilder pushed.

As they should, it can't all be for nothing. There may be tragedy in his veins, but it is golden. They say he's beautiful when he cries.

The night goes still, as it often does when his thoughts drift too far. His eyes dart away, jaw tightening around a the sour taste flooding his mouth. The emotions pass as quickly as they come, and Wilder wonders why they even hurt at all.

"Since when do you work late anyway?"

"Does it matter?" He responds with a tight-lipped smile. The question hooks its fingers into stapled wounds, probing around beneath his skin in a way Copernicus isn't owed. Perhaps that's why Wilder was still so captivated with him, in spite of his notoriously short attention span. Wilder's polish and poise were all that mattered, no one was interested in the blood pooling beneath him. Except, it seems, for Cop.

He pulls away first, admitting defeat as he instead perches on the corner of Copernicus' desk. There's a displaced paperweight now teetering half off the furniture, but he makes no move to rescue it. "I grew bored of being adored, and decided bothering a nosy hermit would be more interesting."

Never mind the fact that he was working with his mother's old colleague, who seemed intent on mapping out all the features they shared. He laced her memories around glasses of wine until Wilder was so full of gaps they began to feel like his own. He's convinced that Wilder is fragile, like she was, and the more time he spends with the man the more he worries that he's right.

It's embarrassing that he's let a sentimental old man unsettle him. The walls of his apartment have grown eyes, he doesn't feel alone there anymore.

He looks toward Copernicus. There's a tension to his shoulders that seems painful, Wilder wonders just how much more pressure it would take to make him snap. He does not burn like Wilder, but that only promises a creeping pain. The kind that is lethal long before it is agony.

He yearns for it.

"I could give less of a shit that the starving are stealing food. Either give me a good reason to leave you alone, or come with me."

[✌ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ]

C O P E R N I C U S

”Does it matter?”

To me, yes.

To be pierced by a thorn, the sharpness of breath and the pain of it, no matter how brief, it serves as a warning. There will always be more pain. Copernicus knows this better than most, that there will always be things worth that pain too.

The thorn is what caught his eye in the first place. The one that Wilder can't leave alone and the flickering behind that steady gaze, the aching there. Almost beautiful in his exhaustion, the same feeling Cop gets when he’s still awake for the sunrise after a very long night. These days they always make him think of Wilder.

And that thought deepens the wound in his chest that he calls his heart.

Makes it bleed.

He waits the moment out. Wilder doesn’t handle silence well he’s noticed, it leaves him defenceless and he’ll always fill it given the opportunity. Cop on the other hand, has always been patient. He can sit in silence for hours like this, would even if he could, if he had the time.

The other man moves then, creating mild chaos as he does so. Typical. The papers on the desk shift, a paperweight that his sister made for him in school is pushed to the edge, near danger of falling but not quite there yet.

Annoying.

Wilder goes on the offence and Copernicus only finds that interesting. Strange how a perfectly normal question could call for such a response. Usually Wilder takes a little longer to show his cards, which must mean that something is bothering him.

As his coworker, it shouldn’t mean anything to Copernicus, he has no reason to care that deeply about how he’s feeling.

But there’s an intensity behind Wilder’s eyes that he’s usually better at hiding. There’s a shadow beneath them, it tells him that he hasn’t been sleeping well.

"I could give less of a shit that the starving are stealing food."

It's not as if there's a moral high ground in what they do. None of it matters anyway, the Capitol has never been so wealthy. A few tons of grain is negligible, but in the eyes of the Capitol, overabundance should be filling the landfill rather than make it into the mouths of district children.

Cop's got his own beliefs but a disregard for human life comes with the territory. It was never so much a choice that he made, but a necessary thing for his own survival. Each case, each death whether by his own hand or not, it only matters less each time.

Wilder gives an ultimatum then.

It's hardly one for Cop.

He could do that, give Wilder a reason to leave him alone. Copernicus Fenwick has always been known for his capability and for the depths that he can sink to in order to get what he wants. There are many cutting things that he can say right now, designed with expert precision to trim the excess, push anyone who might get close to him away.

He only reaches out in silence to drag the paperweight back into position, to save it from toppling over into an abyss it may not be able to return from. It's an error to react with anything but quiet calm. Wilder has a way of making him forget that.

”I'm done here,” he says.

He stands then and stretches out muscles gone stiff from a long day of office work. There's a lightness in it, a gentle release as the tension leaves him for a fleeting moment. It finds its way back onto his shoulders in the next as he straightens and pushes his glasses back up onto the bridge of his nose.

"You can order coffee at dinner if you're so inclined," he says, then flicks off his desk lamp, "Unless of course, you already have plans."

Either way, his careful actions scream, it doesn't matter to me.

[ᴥ]

w i l d e r

It's not the kind of dance he's used to.

They play with power here. Vipers seeking the heat of leaking veins. Wilder makes himself an easy mark with his head tilted back toward the stars, baring his skin and all the hides beneath. His refusal to learn the rules is a subtle kind of harm. Ever the clever fool, playing on precipices. He often considers his own death.

Copernicus speaks decisively, "I'm done here." Unfurling from beneath his desk, the wrinkled fabric of his suit catches on the skin beneath. For a moment he is flesh and blood, unwinding around a low exhale.

Wilder's head falls to the side with a snap. He watches; quiet, curious.

He's careful about the faces he wears. At his loveliest when he is pleasant and docile, thinking of nothing and feeling less. That doesn't work in Copernicus' presence. His words are sharp, his statements pointed. He holds simple conversation like it's a game of strategy. The way his words sting is nice, makes it harder to slip away.

He's grateful for Copernicus' indifference, he doesn't have to worry about him committing this face to memory. There's far too much truth here.

"You can order coffee at dinner if you're so inclined," With a swift motion he steals the last of the light, his shadow starts playing on the walls, "Unless of course, you already have plans."

Sometimes he swears he can feel those fangs in his throat. He swallows around the sudden dryness of his mouth. "Thank you," his voice is soft, he quickly clears his throat of honey. Copernicus doesn't care that these are the kind of nights Wilder barely survives.

He runs his finger along the surface of Copernicus' desk, tracing constellations. He has to say something before the silence starts grinning. "Might need something stronger, if I'm honest." The industry encouraged indulgence and Wilder was at home with poison in his veins. He loves to collect bad habits.

"This is a fine night for making mistakes, don't you think?" Pity is a pretty thing, there's no shame in begging for it. It's the only kindness that comes without strings attached, "And if you say no, I'm afraid I'll have to fall back on my other plans."

There's always a premier, an afterparty. There's always someone eager to leave bruises where he asks. Self destruction need not curl off Copernicus Fenwick's pretty lips.

If he were more his father's son, he might have the good sense to fear the Fenwicks. It's not Wilder's fault they make themselves so fun to prod at. To his credit, his old man had tried to raise him well. It was not his fault his son had ended up like this.

It was

inevitable.

Sometimes he even misses his dad. A quick-witted coward who was currently tucked away in the apartment complex he couldn't bring himself to sell. The fortune he made off Wilder's childhood rots in it's foundation.

The treatments aren't working, he doesn't remember having a son.

Wilder turns toward the door, slinging off his suit jacket and leaving it in a heap by the exit. He won't be wearing it again anyway. Fiddling with his tie, he makes an aimless path down the hall. Either Copernicus will catch up and guide him, or he will stumble his way into a dive bar along the strip.

Whatever happens, he will get what he wants.

He stops every so often to listen for footsteps.

And tells himself that is not hoping.

[✌ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ]

C O P E R N I C U S

It's almost a surprise to feel the velvet softness of a petal beneath his thumb rather than the sharp point of a thorn that he was expecting.

It feels like a fracture, the quiet few seconds that Wilder's mask drops and that soft, "thank-you," that follows, as if a dam has broken. There's a tremble in his lips, a vulnerability so sincere that it almost burns him and Cop knows that he should look away. There's an intimacy in that softness that he's yearned for as long as he can remember, that he knows can never belong to him.

The moment passes, the dance begins again with Wilder trailing his fingers along the edge of Cop's desk. He wonders fleetingly what it would feel like if Wilder's fingers were sliding down the small of his back instead, maybe the pit in his stomach would go away then. Perhaps something else would bloom there instead, something that terrifies him in its newness.

Can't have that.

Not again.

His mouth opens slightly, the promise, 'it's my pleasure,' sits there, waiting. He misses the opportunity, Wilder has already moved on in the conversation.

"Might need something stronger if I'm honest."

"As you so often are," he murmurs, then slides the papers strewn across his desk into a neat stack.

Strange how that's often the first balm in their line of work. There's no gentleness to them anymore, worn edges only made rough by the weight of what they do, mask cracking under the pressure. Instead of talking to someone about it, the right answer has always been to dull the things that hurt with the slow erosion found at the bottom of a rocks glass.

Wilder makes a new offer, so simple in itself that it becomes complex. What then, comes after, Copernicus wants to ask. If he agrees to make a mistake then is it even still classified as one, then if it all goes terribly does it become worse than one?

He doesn't know what he's asking for.

Cop knows that, no one ever does with him, he can't win in that sense. Sharing even the smallest piece of the boy who lives beneath his skin has always been a mistake in the past. They ask him to smile for them and when he finally bares his teeth they always run.

That would be a pain for Copernicus, if that happened with Wilder.

Training someone new for his position would be a long waste of his time.

"Not one, but two threats in one night," he says, tone mild despite the warning laced expertly within it. Everyone knows not to mess with a Fenwick. "You really have reached your limit, haven't you?"

Wilder's moving on already, jacket slipping silken off of his shoulders to fall behind him on the floor before leaving. Copernicus stares at it, gaze travelling over the folds, the dips and valleys of the fabric. He's always liked that jacket on Wilder, like most of the things that he wears, it's tailored well to his frame. The shade is nice against his skin, he remembers noticing that a few weeks ago at some board meeting, Wilder's palm flat against the glass table top, pointer finger tapping slowly.

His hands are running down the lambswool, smoothing out the creases. He walks across his office floor with it draped carefully over his arm, to hang it inside the closet against the far wall.

It's a pointless endeavour.

Copernicus noticed a long time ago that on the days his coworker seems most fragile, he'll never see the clothing he wore that day again. It's as if the very feeling of the fabrics against his skin is enough to bring back the way he felt while wearing them.

The hallway is dim but still brighter than the dark of the corner office that he just left. Wilder hasn't gotten very far, Copernicus catches up within moments, footsteps light, a response to a home that valued silence far more than the lives within it.

You learn things in a place like that, like how to build a wall so high around yourself that no sound, no light can penetrate you again. The shadows become a second home, something far safer than what you had before. One day you wake up and realise that you don't remember what the sun looks like, that it doesn't even matter.

He doesn't need warmth.

Wilder stops suddenly, Cop isn't expecting it. His momentum is still sending him forwards, right into Wilder's back. Cop moves into it, reaching out in front of him to loop his arm around Wilder's chest and then pull back slightly in an effort to keep them both from landing in a heap on the carpet. A few strands of hair fall over his eye as he steadies the both of them and then steps away, a frown of annoyance already forming on his face to cover up the shock that was just there.

"My apologies," he says, "I was not expecting such an abrupt stop."

Copernicus adjusts his glasses, the sudden move causing them to slip back down to the end of his nose.

"What's wrong, leave something behind?"

They've yet to reach the bank of elevators, it's not too late to turn back.

[ᴥ]

w i l d e r

Like a scruffed rabbit, Wilder goes limp in his hold. Back pressed against his chest, a gasp sitting at the junction between his lungs and throat. The warmth of cold blood shocks him, he didn't expect the touch to burn. It flushes up the column of his neck and into his cheeks. As soon as Wilder is made aware of the softness inside him, he resolves to smother it before the night's end. It means nothing good.

Wilder touches in metaphors. Always meaning something else when he skims his fingers along bared skin. It's never a matter of want, but more like necessity. The more he makes his motivations into shallow, vapid things the less he's questioned about them. Ambition lives within him, in the pit in his stomach whenever he tends to the garden his mother left behind. She waits for him there, so patiently. Just a little longer until he gives her death meaning - until they can both rest.

The awkward half-embrace is over as quick as it had come. He realizes too late that the low hum in his ears are words, only catching the end of them. Perhaps he let himself be distracted by the parts of Copernicus that had come undone. He flexes his hands at his sides, fighting the urge to see just how easy it would be to slip his fingers between the knots. That's a game for later - when the consequences are not so dire.

"Nope!" There's a tremor in his fingers as he pulls off his tie, wrapping the silken fabric around Copernicus' wrist and quickly securing it with a looping bow. Of course, that'll ruin the pressed fabric but he'll keep pretending that wasn't the point. "Seeing as you've decided to come along, all I need is you." He tugs him toward the elevator. "And now you're gift wrapped."

Copernicus' scales shimmer under the office's fluorescent lighting and he turns his back to it. Eager to find a place that makes them easier to ignore. The elevator sings a lullaby as it descents, Wilder hums along. It's a nervous habit. He's nervous. There's the distinct sensation of a wound being ripped too deep, blood runs and stains his sleeves. If it were anyone but Copernicus, perhaps he could convince them they were rose petals.

He's going to be eaten alive.

"Lovely night." It's been dreadful. "I'm really looking forward to this." He doesn't know how else to purge this restless agony. Something is wrong but he can't find the words for it. "Are you coming along because you pity me, or are we actually friends?"

He hadn't met to let that part slip out.

Fuck.

[✌ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ]

C O P E R N I C U S

It's like the scent of smoke the morning after.

He's already stepped away, already straightening his sleeve by the time the feeling of Wilder's skin brushing over his finally settles. It sits there like an itch that can't be scratched. His fingers find the place, press down, it does nothing to alleviate the feeling. That phantom touch, It's going to haunt him for a long time.

Copernicus sighs and fixes a cufflink as a coverup. There's a fleck of colour on the edge of his sleeve, too dark to be from his red marking pen. His labyrinth of scales shift under the light; he twists the fabric slightly until it's out of view.

Wilder's fingers pluck at his tie, fingers catching beneath the bud of the knot, tugging, undoing, pulling apart. He watches the silk slide quickly out from under his collar, it's distracting enough that the next moment approaches, then near finishes before Copernicus can open his mouth.

There, on his wrist, over the itch.

He stares down at a beautifully tied bow, then turns his wrist over, fingers curling up, touching the edge of the silk still warm from being around Wilder's neck. It will be unwearable for the rest of the night now, the fabric bent in places it was never meant to, it can't lie flat again. Strange how he does that, how everything that touches him falls to ruin.

Like Wilder, in front of him now, pulling on the end of the tie like a leash. Copernicus' arm is tugged and he steps forward. The obedience it requires leaves a sour taste on his tongue, mouth pressed into a thin line, he follows. Wilder is falling apart in front of him, blood red petals leave a trail in their wake behind them in the hallway as they stumble into the elevator together. It's hard to ignore.

"All I need is you," echos off of the walls and tries to bounce back but Copernicus lets the sound glide past him to resonate elsewhere. This isn't Wilder. "And now you're gift wrapped." This is a caricature.

The elevator doors close and they're falling. He inspects the bow again, raises his free hand to pull the knot loose and then drops it again. Wilder is holding onto the other end still as if it's a lifeline and maybe for him it is. There's not much that they really have between them. A dinner after work here and there, coffeefbreaks and the gentle undoing of a number of years forcing small intimacies upon them. Despite all of it, in the end it's only because they're coworkers.

If they'd met elsewhere, Wilder might have just been a face in the crowd, at most a pleasure for one night.

He tries to convince himself of this, doing his best to ignore the way heat pools beneath the bow around his wrist and begins to beat against his skin, as if his heart has migrated to that particular spot.

The elevator moves, Wilder starts humming along to the machine's song, his mask seemingly picking and choosing where it belongs. His features seem sharper in the harsh overhead light. It's easy to catch the brass in his hair, the shadows under his eyes look more hollow.

There's this tight feeling in Copernicus' chest, it rarely leaves him but it feels unnatural now. He never realised until this moment how much it usually fades when Wilder is near. Even like this, petals of sanity shedding off of him like snowfall.

"Lovely night," he says.

Liar.

"I'm really looking forward to this."

"It has been awhi-"

"Are you coming along because you pity me, or are we actually friends?"

The elevator glides to a stop but the doors don't open.

Copernicus' finger is pressed against the emergency stop button, his gaze empty as he stares at the small screen above the rows and rows of buttons. An arrow points down, the ticker stuck between floors seven and six. His head feels light, as if this sudden suspension of their downwards trajectory was always an alternate path. In another universe, they're stepping out onto the first floor, the tie left behind in a heap in the elevator behind them.

He turns then, wrapping his hand in the line of the tie and tugging sharply until Wilder is closer to him, until the lights seem to dim overhead. His free hand finds the elevator, boxing Wilder into a corner between his arm and the wall.

It would be so easy to give in when he's like this, to fit his neck into his palm and pull him close enough to kiss him, to run his thumb over the sharp lines of his cheek bone and bleed enough for the both of them.

It wouldn't be fair. It'd be taking advantage of him. Wilder doesn't really want him anyway, he just wants to be touched enough to ignore whatever it is that's really bothering him and that's annoying to Copernicus no matter how hypocritical it may be- he doesn't like being used.

He doesn't like pity either, it always burns too much, it makes him feel weak. It's even more painful when Wilder is right, Copernicus was pitying him. But he's also incorrect, as is Copernicus.

It wasn't all pity.

His eyes meet Wilder's.

"We're friends," he says, "So tell me what's wrong or we stay here all night."

I'll fix it.