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“Flowers?” Silco raises a skeptical eyebrow, hardly looking away from his work. There was so much of it these days, now that he was an honorary council member. It piled high around him, it seemed before he could finish the first stack, another one, twice as tall, was dropped on his overflowing desk. “I didn’t take you for the flower type.” His pen scritch-scritch-scritches across the paper, signing off on all sorts of fancy reforms that made Zaun the nation it was always supposed to be.
Jinx kicks her legs, stretching high from her perch on Silco’s fancy new desk. Behind him, she has a view of Piltover unlike any she’s ever seen. Jinx could stare for hours, she did stare for hours. The first-time Silco opened the doors, she rushed to the windows three Jinx’s high, her face pressed as far against the glass as she could manage, watching the airships fly by. Sure was a pretty sight.
One of her braids is loose, pooling all over the ‘oh so important’ forms. She combs her fingers through the other one. Jinx lets the metal casings fall to the ground, absentmindedly working her hair out. “Vi’s girlie dragged me around all kinds of places today-” a grin spreads across her face when she notices Silco’s gaze and the lines of his signature turn messy. “One of them was this fancy-pants flower shop. Sure I couldn’t stop sneezing even after the snob behind the counter made me leave- but you should have seen the bundle Kitty Cait walked out with! It must’ve been as big as her!” Jinx drops her hair and opens her arms as wide as she can to emphasize the size of the bouquet.
“And…” Silco pauses, She’s sure he’s counting to ten because he closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose so hard it leaves a red mark. “Where else did Caitlyn take you?” Jinx hardly hides her giggles behind a fake cough.
“Oh, nowhere special, here and there, y’know how it is.” She gestures vaguely, tangling her fingers back in her unfurling braids. Silco’s eyes flick to her, so she smiles wide and gives him a little wave through her hair. His eye roll and barely hidden smile are a treat she’s hardly gotten much as of late.
A calculated knock at the door interrupts their moment. Jinx hops off the desk with a sigh before Silco briskly tells the intruder to enter. She collects the adornments from her hair off the ground. Jinx leans over and interrupts Silco with a wet kiss to his scar-tissue-laden cheek before bounding out of the room. She blows a kiss from behind the guest and pulls the door shut as she goes.
Jinx bounces down the hall on the tips of her toes. She’s halfway to the stairs when she remembers something. She spins on her heel and marches back to Silco’s office. She doesn’t bother knocking. Jinx peeks her head in through the door and smiles at him. “Oh, Silco?” The look on his face tells her he’s already bored and irritated at whatever conversation he’s having. Some things never change. She saw that look almost constantly in Zaun, but never so much since he’d become a council member. “Don’t forget about dinner tonight!”
Jinx spends the rest of the day wandering the streets of Piltover. She ignores the nasty scowls from the stuck-up Pilties and the mothers who pull their children closer when she passes. She hadn’t even ‘ploded anything in months now. She didn’t see what they were so afraid of. The lazy afternoon walk gives way to a late evening. Jinx stands by the isolated dock overlooking the water. The taste of salt hangs in her mouth, and it's there that Silco finds her.
"Jinx."
She smiles to herself, turning to look at him. The sunset washes them in a rosy glow, and the final rays of sunlight sharpen the edges of his face. In his arms, wrapped in baby blue paper, is a bouquet. It doesn’t matter that it’s not as big as the one Caitlyn bought. Here on the docks as the golden hour draws to an end. It’s the prettiest sight she’s ever seen.
“I didn’t take you for the kind of guy who’d buy a girl like me some flowers.” Jinx wipes at her eyes to stop the treacherous tears dripping down her cheeks. Silco strides forward, opening his arms for her.
Jinx throws herself into them, hanging from his neck. They sway like the wind in a sail. Her tears wet his coat, but he doesn’t complain, just runs his hands through her loose hair. “Anything for you my love.” He lays a chaste kiss on the crown of her head, rubbing soothing circles against her skin.
She takes a small step back, wiping her snotty nose on the back of her hand. She carefully accepts the bouquet from Silco’s callused hands, not daring to touch the silken petals. There must be thirty varieties. None of which she’d ever seen in person. “Do you like them?” Silco’s voice is measured, he strokes the fringe out of her eyes, and she nearly bursts into tears again.
“Of course I do, silly.” Soft purple flowers on the ends of a long stem. Blushing pink things that open up into a hundred petals and smell like summer. Little white daisies. Vivid pink bells spun upside down on what must be a small vine. How could she not love them? “They’re beautiful.” Her voice cracks and goes quiet at the end.
Silco doesn’t stop touching her like magnets gravitating toward each other. “Just like you.” He looks at her like she’s breathtaking, like he never wants to look away.
His lips are scarcely a hairs-width from hers. “We’re going to be late,” Jinx whispers, hardly heard above the noise of evening-goers flooding the streets.
Silco grabs her waist before she can run too far, pulling her close to his chest, flowers crinkling between their bodies, His hand caresses her jaw, and he leans down. Their lips touch as the final rays of daylight touch the docks. They part just an inch. There’s such a look of devotion in his eyes when he says- “I love you” -it feels like an endless declaration of safety. Is there anything she can really speak to that but kiss him again?