A Lion's Tears [Silk/Harper JB Blitz]

Harper Le Roux doesn't cry.

Tears may stain his cheeks, but they don't exist to him. Tears weren't beautiful. Tears were a flaw upon the aesthetic of strong individuals. Tears were meant to be hidden behind closed doors, hidden behind the dark curtains where the sun sets. Harper was broken now, standing in the halls of his mother's building where his sister, the heir to the family, was residing. Tears wiped away with the red sleeves of his dress shirt, buttoned up to perfection, ruined by his own doing as the anger and grief hits him all at once. A wall of emotions bottled up until they spilled out and he wiped them all away. Plastering the perfection and fixing his own outfit for a moment, taking in the truth of all of this.

Harper Le Roux wasn't meant to be an heir.

Never once did he try to take that title from Silk. Instead, he had stayed silently by her. Looking up at his sister who always was better at the things he wasn't. A career through and through, but he can still taste the bitter emptiness of Emmett beneath the layers of walls their family piles up and up. Silk, the sister who he had shared memories of laughing and playing as children. Training together over the years and feeling the divide of strengths between the two of them over and over. He had mastered his words, the smile, the charisma it takes to bleed trust between people. Silk had mastered weapons, the strength, and the mind for the games. Out of everyone, Silk was the one he always believed would win the games, but he's here outside of the door to see her feeling lost once again.

Anger still coiling in his stomach, but he bites down his tongue and pushes open the door.

"Silk."

Tight words upon his lips as he rolls up his sleeves to two thirds the way up his forearms, feeling the smile he plastered on even when he didn't want to smile trying to pull at the corners of his lips. Silently, the door closes, barely a sound, but he stands there for a moment, takes in his sister in her pretty dress, looking as fierce as she always has been. Fingers curling in on the pockets of his slacks, a nervousness that felt unusual to him even.

"W-Why'd it have to be you?"