Chapter Text
The streets of North Pole, New Hampshire are the kind of narrow where parking a car along the side of the street makes for careful handling, especially with the thin glaze of ice on everything. It’s settled like someone’s shaken a snowglobe and let the pieces drift down, quaint, lined with cute little brick shop fronts with bright red and green decorations in the windows. Golden light fills the winter air, spilling out the windows of white clapboard houses, glinting off decorations and snowdrifts. The roofs and pine trees are crystallised and perfectly sparkling in the light that filters through the grey-white blanket of clouds overhead.
It looks, in short, like a holiday postcard; all it's missing is a scrawled black wish you were here signature. Every green and ribbon wreath on every successive wrought iron lamppost makes Silco just a little more homicidal.
It’s not as though Manhattan doesn’t decorate for Christmas. The Rockefeller Center is right there . But something about this town sets his teeth on edge. Of course, part of the reason for that lives here, in the little gabled house with its cedar siding and green roof.
Part of the reason for that is framed in that perfect golden light, in the doorway as Silco pulls into the driveway and parks the car.
It could almost be a welcoming sight, someone waiting in the door for him, but Vander is frowning.
“Spare me the disapproving look,” Silco says, as he climbs out of the car.
He gets a slightly more intense disapproving look and then Vander asks, “How was the weather coming in?”
“ Cold ,” Silco says. Because it’s December, in northern New Hampshire. Vander had clearly never been satisfied with New York winters and wanted somewhere that ran twenty degrees colder at any given time.
“I meant the snow.”
It’s coming down in puffier flakes, big ugly ones that don’t melt even on Vander’s forearms, which are - inexplicably - exposed to the cold, his ivory waffle-knit henley pushed up to his elbows. Silco’s not looking at his arms, though. He’s not.
“It’s sticking a little,” Silco tells him. Doesn’t point out that he’s been driving in the snow since he boosted his first car.
Vander chews his lip. “Radio says it’s getting bad.”
“You probably should’ve met me halfway, then. Where is she?”
"Trying to sneak Little Man into her suitcase, I think.”
"Well, Ekko is always welcome to come back with us to Manhattan for a visit,” Silco says, tone innocent.
Vander’s expression conveys decades of exhaustion. “Don’t you start.”
“If Benzo has a problem with me, still, after all these years—”
From inside a familiar voice, somewhat muffled, thunders: “SILCO! YOU ANIMAL! KEEP MY NAME OUT OF YOUR—”
Silco gives Vander a look like butter wouldn’t melt. “Oh, is Benzo here as well? A little holiday gathering?”
“I’ll go get Jinx,” Vander says, ignoring both of them.
Silco leans against his car and tries to get enough signal to text Sevika; he holds his phone up to the overcast sky. Message could not be sent . Flakes fall and melt on his fingers, collecting on the back of the phone, and he tucks it away.
As he’s drawing his hand back out of his pocket Jinx comes running out of Vander’s house and Silco moves to brace himself so he doesn’t slip in rocksalt when she - inevitably - flings herself at him at full speed.
He catches her in a hug, grateful for it despite the wind getting knocked out of him and the shock to his knees. “Jinx,” he says, warm, hugging her.
“DAD!” She half-yells. “WE MADE EXPLODING ORNAMENTS.”
“Did you wear your goggles?”
“YEAH.”
“...did you wear ear protection?”
“WE FORGOT!”
Silco nods a little, accepting that she’s going to yell the entire way home. “Did you say goodbye to your friend?” He speaks in a slightly quieter voice in the hopes she'll mimic him.
“Mhm!" She chirps, in a loud speaking voice and not half yelling. "He’s gonna buy me something at the craft fair and call me to tell me about the parade."
"Did you repack your bag once you realized he won't fit in it anymore?"
Jinx pauses.
Silco nods a little. "Is that what Vander is doing?"
"Probably!"
"Well. Get yourself buckled in, it's cold. We'll wait out here." Silco could go help pack, but far be it for him to go where he's not wanted. He ignores the sick little twist in his stomach with the discipline of an army cadet pushing past muscle soreness.
“Can we listen to Christmas music?”
Silco sighs, long-suffering. “Of course.”
Roughly thirty minutes later Vander comes out and glares at Silco through the windshield while Jinx is busy ripping the innards out of a Furby in the backseat. Silco makes eye contact and pops the trunk.
He can see the angry huff Vander makes, steam curling around in the air, and then he goes to stow Jinx’s bag in the trunk and close it.
“Wave goodbye,” Silco reminds Jinx.
She looks up, a screwdriver between her teeth, and waves at Vander, who melts immediately and waves back.
“Now. Let’s get out of this town, hm?”
Jinx nods. “New York!” She says, still around the screwdriver, which sounds more like Oo Ork!
He pulls out of the driveway and heads towards the bridge out of town. The lampposts are catching the falling snow in little bright flecks as they come down to settle on the wreaths, and then they’re past the last of the lampposts, out of the main section of town, and the houses become more sparse, the trees denser.
And then Silco has to slow the car to a stop, because a man is placing orange and white striped barricades in the road. Silco assesses him briefly - he’s taller than anyone has any right to be, wearing a tan shearling sheepskin coat that’s hanging open. He has the platonic perfect shoulder-to-waist ratio that menswear designers dream of, with a muscled chest that seems barely contained by the buttons of the red buffalo check flannel stretched across it. Silco stares at him a moment, then: ah . He’s a local.
“Why are we stopping?” Jinx asks, as she takes the opportunity to unscrew something.
“There’s just something in the road. I’ll get it clear.” Silco puts the car in park and steps out.
Jayce is moving to block the road. He’s only half paying attention to what he’s doing; in the back of his mind he’s running a longform equation and really, if he could just get through this, everyone in town knew the blizzard was coming and weren’t stupid enough to drive out of town anyway and—
A shiny black sedan that does not look suited for the roads pulls up to the barricade. Jayce notes the New York plates. There's a pause, and then it parks and a tall, thin man steps out. He's bundled into a long black wool coat with a carefully folded red pashmina at the throat, wearing sunglasses. "What are you doing?" He calls, and huh. Right. Tourists.
Jayce smiles, winningly, and then remembers he's not in the city anymore and doesn't have to do this and says—
"Isn't that self-evident?"
The man’s eyes are hidden behind the flat black lenses, but Jayce can tell he’s being glared at. His lips thin, just a little. "And why . Are you blocking the only way out of town."
Oh, yeah, fuck this guy.
"Because the snow's messing up the roads too bad to get down them safely. Nothing for it."
"What about snow plows?" The man asks, tone disbelieving.
Jayce snorts. "Where do you think you are, exactly?"
"I knew I was in an insignificant backwater but I assumed you'd be able to manage snow."
"Ooh, is this how we're playing it," Jayce says, sticking his hands in the pockets of his jacket. His breath fogs in the air as he takes one to try not to say something too mean.
"Well, I hope you enjoy the insignificant backwater, because you're going to be stuck here a while till the plow gets through all the other towns in the area and works its way down to us." Since we’re such an insignificant little backwater - and man he’d be madder if it wasn’t true —
"How long will that take, precisely?"
Jayce resists the impulse to roll his eyes.
"Depends on how heavy the snow gets, but you're certainly not going anywhere tonight. Not that you would be anyway in that." He gestures at the car.
"It gets good mileage," the man says, "unlike whatever pickup truck you take cow tipping."
Jayce feels a funny little swell in his chest, and huh. He’d forgotten this feeling. It’d been a while since someone actually pissed him off.
"Yeah, well, my cow tipper can drive in the snow,” He’s surprised to find that his voice comes out even.
"Dad?" A child’s voice calls from inside the car.
"The road is blocked," The man explains, voice terse. "It looks like we'll be finding somewhere to stay here in town."
Jayce looks at the girl in the backseat - her bright blue hair is distinctive enough that Jayce recognizes her as Vander’s younger daughter - and waves a teenie bit while the man’s back is turned to talk to him.
She waves back.
The man turns again to look at Jayce. "Is there. A hotel. Or perhaps a bed and breakfast."
Jayce sucks in a dramatic breath through his teeth, faux-regretful, enjoying the pretense a little more than he probably ought to. "I'm afraid that we're such an insignificant backwater that no big important city people want to stay here. Guess you're gonna have to go find some country bumpkin with a big heart."
The stranger’s expression hardens. "I guess I will."
"Well, best of luck," Jayce says, with a winning smile, and then walks off to climb back into his truck, just a little spring to his step.
Take that, asshole.