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The moment Silco wakes up, he knows he's in trouble. His throat is tight, itchy, like a burr lodged itself down there and refuses to be swallowed away. He sniffs, his nose cold and runny. There's a pressure between his eyes, and a headache on the horizon. Next to him, Vander snores softly, yet unaware of Silco's budding sickness.
But maybe he isn't sick. Maybe this is just from yesterday's drinking. Or a little cold. They did get caught in the rain, after all. And perhaps it'll go away during the day.
Silco slips out of bed, careful not to wake Vander. He grabs his clothes and leaves the room, getting dressed in the corridor. He puts on an extra layer, sniffling all the while and cursing Janna under his breath for her winds—never enough of them, and cold and damp when they show up. What is even the point of worshipping her any more?
He goes down to the bar, coughing into his fist, and starts searching for the tisane and the pot of honey. He knows they're here somewhere, he just doesn't know where Vander has gone and hidden them. Silco shouldn't let him run the place so much on his own. Not that Vander needs oversight, or even help, but it doesn't sit well with Silco that he's struggling to find things in his own home. The movement is taking so much of his time, nowadays. Sometimes it feels like the Last Drop is just the place he does his paperwork at. That Vander owns it, and Silco is a mere guest, coming in and out, forever running after people, fleeting from one meeting to the next.
'Hah!' he exclaims as he finds the clay pot used to keep the one herbal brew they own. 'Got you!'
A coughing spell immediately punishes him for the outbursts, and it dawns on Silco that he might have to spend the day outside, if he's to hide this from Vander. The man simply can't be made aware of—
'Looking for this?'
Silco whirls around, too startled to even cry out. 'Vander?! What—'
The man is standing at the end of the bar, honey pot brandished in one hand, the other firmly pressed akimbo into his hip. He's barefoot, that's how Silco didn't hear him approach. That, and the coughing.
'You shouldn't be up,' Vander admonishes him, voice low and soft, like talking to a beloved but unruly child. 'You know you shouldn't.'
'I don't know what you're talking about.'
'You know, and I know. You've been coughing all night!'
Was he now? Well, so much for being discreet. Silco walks up to Vander, pressing his hands to his broad chest and looking up into his eyes.
'I'm fine,' he says, trying to persuade him of the truth. He is fine. He knows his own body. He knows illness; no Sump child lives to adulthood without a few brushes with death, and this isn't that sort of close call. 'I just got a sore throat.'
Vander's mouth pinches in a tight line and his eyebrows knit together. It's like a cloud forms over his face, darkening his features. One could mistake the expression for disappointment, but Silco knows it to be worry.
'Silco, please... Let me take care of you. You should stay warm, in bed...'
'Yes, yes, fine.' Silco sighs, defeated.
Vander is a child of the Entresol, raised by a single mother in the various cultivairs she tended to. She died from a cough that never went away. 'It chipped at her until she was nothing,' that's how Vander had described it. Ever since they moved in together, Silco hasn't been able to sneeze without getting concerned glances from him. He may dislikes the mothering, but he hates worrying Vander far more.
'Just let me just make this drink, all right?'
Vander beams at him, and snatches the jar out of his hand. 'I'll put the kettle on, sit down.'
Silco grumbles, but he hoists himself on a stool and resigns himself to being dotted on like he's dying of the carbon plague.