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No. 1 —
Almost immediately after Silco signs the treaty for Zaun’s independence, Sevika escorts him from Piltover’s cold, distant council chambers back to The Last Drop. He is met there with cheers, raised glasses, pats on the back, handshakes, forehead touches, dancing, singing, grateful tears and loud laughter.
As soon as he can, he slips away upstairs to Vander’s office. He closes the door behind himself and starts to cry.
Crying is not something Silco often indulges in, but the occasion seems to call for it. His tears are not silent. Sobs catch in his throat before violently choking up out of him. He stumbles towards Vander’s desk, hands catching on the edge. Stray tears fall and dot the wooden surface, where he’s bent over with emotion.
It’s hard to say for certain exactly which emotion has him hunched over like this. Elation, to be sure. Frustration, for how long and hard he’s fought for this, all the lives lost, all the years wasted under Piltover’s thumb. Relief, relief, that it’s finally over.
Fuck. They actually did it.
There is still so much work to do, but for now he can just —
The door opens suddenly. Silco straightens immediately, attempts to hide the way he shakes with every breath, though there’s really no point in hiding. Not from Vander, anyway, who stands in the doorway like a ghost.
“Sorry, Sil,” he says. His gaze darts around Silco’s face, like he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing. It’s not an unfamiliar look on Vander, who often stares at Silco like he is seconds away from disappearing. “I didn’t know you were up here.”
“It’s fine,” Silco says, trying to scrub the evidence of tear tracks from under his eye. Which is difficult, since he is still crying.
Vander continues to hesitate by the door. “People are asking for you down there,” he says. “I think everyone in the bar wants to buy you a drink.”
Silco wants to laugh, but he also doesn’t want to laugh, so he just ends up scoffing wetly. “Let me compose myself first.”
“You don’t have to,” Vander is quick to say. “You can stay here all night, if you want.”
They stare at each other for a moment. Whatever Vander came up here for, it appears he’s forgotten. He looks seconds away from tearing up now, too.
“Silco,” he says. “Could I hold you?”
“I think you’d better,” Silco replies, before he can convince himself it’s a bad idea. Vander crosses the room in two big steps and pulls Silco into his arms with practiced ease.
Vander has not held him like this in six years. The last time Vander held Silco this closely, it was to keep him still as he wrapped a hand around his neck and pushed him under the cold, filthy currents of the Pilt.
It’s been almost a year since Vander’s brats caused that explosion topside, which shook the flimsy peace between the cities. It’s been almost a year since Silco reappeared at the Drop and declared he would try and accept Vander’s apology, with the singular condition that Vander take advantage of the explosion’s fallout and rejoin the fight.
In the year since, Silco has kept Vander at a careful distance. He knows very well that what they had before, they will never have again. Vander is a colleague. He is a brother-in-arms. He will not be his lover, he will not be his confidant, he will not be his companion or his partner or his other half, not again, not after everything Silco survived at his hands.
And yet.
Vander holds him like a lover. He tucks Silco’s teary face into his shoulder and doesn’t flinch when Silco starts to cry again. He seems unconcerned with the mess Silco is making of his shirt. He rocks them slightly, as if torn between soothing Silco or celebrating him.
“Is this real?” Silco rasps, once he feels calm enough to speak again. “Did we really do it?”
“Yeah, Sil.” Silco feels Vander’s murmur through his whole chest, with how tightly they are pressed together. “We did.”
Of everything Silco feels as he clutches onto Vander, he is most surprised to find that he feels young. He feels like himself twenty years ago: a starry-eyed revolutionary, excited and angry and hopeful all at once, who loved and was loved. A young man so distant from who Silco is now, he’s honestly surprised to recognize him.
He wonders how Vander feels. Whether he feels vindicated or guilty, joyous or melancholic. Terribly young or terribly old. Does he feel like a burden has been lifted, or like the ground has come out from under him?
Suddenly, Vander presses his mouth to Silco’s wet cheek. “Blisters and bedrock,” he whispers. The words chase another wave of tears out of Silco.
“Blisters and bedrocks,” he echoes. Somehow, Vander manages to hold him even tighter.
Zaun brought them together, and Zaun drove them apart. Now, Vander holds him to his chest as if Silco might be stuck there forever if he tries hard enough.
No. 2 —
The venue for Violet’s wedding has a lovely indoor garden just outside of the reception hall. It’s the perfect place to escape an overbearing, overjoyed, overfunded wedding reception and take a breath.
As eager as he is to escape, Silco is, of course, happy for Vi, who has become like a daughter to him over the years. Though it was a surprise the girl Vi had met topside — a sore subject in itself for their family — was actually a Kiramman.
The Kirammans are far too rich, to put it bluntly. Rich enough that they offered (read: insisted) to take care of the entire wedding, the only expense-slash-decision allowed to Silco and Vander being Vi’s suit.
As much as Silco was, admittedly, loath to submit control over his daughter’s wedding to some rich Pilties, it’s honestly a relief to not have to work with the Kirammans again. Though, how much harder is it to plan a wedding than to build a sovereign state?
(In any case, the celebration at The Last Drop later this evening will be decidedly more enjoyable than the stiff Piltie rituals they’ve been subject to so far — Powder has made sure of it. And Silco suspects that even Caitlin is as excited as the rest of them to be done with all the wedding formalities and have some time to just be happy with Vi.)
Silco soon learns he is not the only one to have discovered the garden. He recognizes Vander’s hulking silhouette, sitting on an overly ornate bench and curving in on himself. His shoulders are shaking.
Silco makes his way around a row of rose bushes until he is close enough to press a hand into Vander’s shoulder. Vander startles slightly, but softens when he sees Silco.
“Hey, sweetheart,” Vander says. His eyes are red. He runs a large hand down his face, as if that alone could remove all trace of his tears. “You alright?”
There was a time when consoling a weeping Vander would have set Silco on edge. A time when Silco would have crept out of the garden before Vander could notice he was there, to avoid having to choke his way through some assemblage of comforting words.
But between each other and the four kids, they’ve wiped away plenty of tears by this point. Maybe they’ve softened up in their old age, or something humiliating like that. But now Silco knows, when Vander’s in his head like this, to stick himself in Vander’s space and get as close as he can.
There is just enough room left on the bench for Silco to shove himself against Vander’s side. “Yes,” he says, once settled. “Are you?”
“Fine,” Vander says, waving his hand dismissively. “It’s happy tears.”
“It’s okay if it’s not… happy tears,” Silco says, with only a hint of derision for the soppy phrase.
Vander sighs a wobbly rush of air. Silco stays quiet and tucks a hand around Vander’s arm, running his fingers over the fabric of Vander’s suit.
“I’m just thinking about Fel,” Vander admits, after a moment.
Ah. Silco’s fingers go still. It used to be an unspoken rule to never talk about Felicia, ever. The memory of her death was so tangled with the cruel betrayal that followed, with the blame thrust so violently onto Silco that still he bears the scars.
But the girls had questions as they grew up, and the heat of that night cooled in Silco’s memories. The things they used to leave unsaid were finally spoken aloud: apologies, reminiscences, declarations of forgiveness.
What they had before, they will never have again. It’s not like Silco was wrong about that. But eventually, he realized they were starting to make something new — maybe something better, if not overly domestic at times.
To this day, Silco still feels slightly sick when he thinks of Felicia. Sometimes, when Vi laughs or Powder rolls her eyes, he sees her, and the guilt pulses through him. It aches a little less now, knowing he’s finally given their promised Zaun to her children, but he supposes the feeling will never leave completely.
“She’d be proud,” Silco manages to say.
“I wish she were here,” Vander says. Silco’s grip tightens. Immediately, Vander seems to realize how Silco might take a statement like that. “Sorry,” he says. “I’m not trying to start anything.”
“Don’t apologize,” Silco says, sharply, before unclenching his fingers. In contrast to his cutting tone, he gently leans his head against Vander’s shoulder. “I wish that, too. I wish she could see the girls. And what a fine job you’ve done with them.”
Predictably, Vander corrects him. “You’ve done a fine job. What would I have done with a teenage Powder without you?”
They’re quiet after that. It’s not something Silco likes to think about often — how close they came to never having this. How close they came to hurting each other in ways beyond forgiveness.
Vander is still sniffling slightly, now leaning his head against Silco’s own. The music in the reception hall, muffled where they sit in the garden, has shifted from polite orchestral to loud and lively dance music. Their family’s doing, no doubt.
If they don’t make their way back soon, Silco suspects a child or two will start hunting the venue for them. He rubs his cheek against Vander’s shoulder and, to end the conversation with an easy truth, says, “I love you.”
Vander does one last swipe under his eyes. “I love you too, Sil,” he says, just as easy. “So damn much.”
Silco pulls himself from Vander’s side, satisfied, and stands. “Why don’t we go show those stuffy Pilties how to really dance?” he asks.
Vander rises too, but pauses like he wants to say something else. Silco holds his gaze, patient. “You know I regret it every day, don’t you?” Vander asks.
“No,” Silco says, rolling his eye. Not this again. “You’ve never mentioned it.” He grabs Vander’s hand and tugs on it, steering them back around the rose bushes. “Janna above, even today you’re punishing yourself. Don’t you know that you’ve already given me the greatest gift I could have asked for?”
Vander follows where Silco pulls him, of course. “What, the kids?” he asks.
“Actually, I was talking about Zaun,” Silco says, and because he’s been waiting the whole day for a chance to come on to his husband, he adds, “And getting to stare at you all day in that suit.”
Vander looks down at himself, like he’s forgotten what he’s wearing. Silco certainly hasn’t. By the gods, does Vander clean up well, with his gray hair and his dark suit and his charming little smile lines. “It’s enough to drive a man mad,” Silco says, out loud, as the door to the reception hall falls shut behind them.
“Really?” Vander asks, smiling now. He stops in his tracks, which stops Silco in his tracks, too.
“Don’t be coy,” Silco demands, but Vander is already leaning down to shut him up.
When all is said and done and Silco is properly lightheaded, Vander turns him back around. They resume their path to the dance floor, where Silco is pleased to see their children looking thoroughly mortified.