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Silco was hunched over the bar in the Last Drop with his journal open, the room lit only by a few strategically placed lamps. The place was still open for business and Silco rarely idled in the main areas during business hours but it was pouring heavy rain outside, well past midnight already; no one would be coming in. Silco’s pen moved steadily, scratching soft, deliberate lines across the page, freshly filled with ink. The evidence of Silco recently refilling the tool blotted on his fingers.
Vander lingered on the other side of the counter, pacing with a glass in his hand as he finished up drying the dishes. He had glanced over at Silco’s work several times but this time he lingered longer than he had originally meant to. At first, he told himself he was just waiting for Silco to finish, but his eyes kept drifting back to the page, eager to see what else Silco had written down. Vander wasn’t even reading what Silco was writing. He just admired the ink on the page, the swirls and curves and lines Silco had artfully put on the paper. The neat slant of Silco’s letter was nothing like the blocky, uneven scrawl Vander left behind when he signed ledgers or made his own notes in hasty and careless manners.
“You’re really good at that," Vander said offhandedly, breaking the quiet. When Silco paused his focus on his journal and shifted it to Vander, looking quizzical, Vander cleared his throat and briefly elaborated. “I meant your writing. It always looks so nice.”
Amusement flickered across Silco’s sharp face. “What brings this on? A half assed compliment if you are trying to get me to do something for you.”
“No!” Vander shook his head, mildly offended. “I was just making an observation. It is allowed.”
“Hm,” Silco briefly hummed, glancing at his own handwriting again.
Vander stepped closer to the bar, getting a better look at the tastefully connected lettering. It really was surprising to see coming from someone like Silco, who had the same bare minimum education as Vander had and then been sent to work at the mines before he had reached a fair age to do so. While Silco’s handwriting wouldn’t be considered eloquent topside, it was like a luxury in the undercity.
“Where’d you learn to do it?” Vander asked, nodding at the open pages.
Silco sighed and capped his pen as if resigning himself to conversation with his friend. “My mother,” he stated simply.
Vander acknowledged him with a nod but didn't press further. Vander hadn’t known the woman, but he knew the rumors. He heard the slight upper class lilt in Silco’s voice that he sure as hell hadn’t gotten from living topside, but rather from spending his early years with someone who had. Whatever the deal was with Silco’s mother and Piltover, it didn’t matter. Silco was Zaunite through and through. But the situation had left little pleasant surprises like Silco’s accent, his preference for clean, finer things, or, apparently, his handwriting.
“If you are so hypnotized by it,” Silco teased, “I could teach you.”
That regained Vander’s attention to him. “Really?” Vamder inquired seriously, missing the joking in Silco’s tone.
Silco erased his smirk quickly. Vander was actually interested in learning cursive? Silco had meant it passively, finding the idea of Vander learning such a fanciful skill comical. Which was rather a dickish thing to think, he realized and mentally chastised himself.
If Vander wanted to learn anything Silco could teach him, Silco would do his best to do just that.
“Um…yes.” Silco nodded quickly. “If you really want to. But it isn’t all that special of a thing…your handwriting is just fine…”
“Maybe. But I like the way you do it.”
Silco’s gaze flicked to Vander’s hands. They were broad, calloused and shining, still faintly damp from the dishes he had been doing. Vander wasn’t exactly known for his gentleness physically. Silco could see it now in his mind: Vander, breaking the pencils, dropping them, spilling ink, tearing the page, too harsh, too demanding. Then again, Silco could never rightly consider himself gentle either, no matter how badly his mother had wanted him to have the genteel sensibilities she had been raised with before she ran off with the most hellish husband and father known in Runeterra. If he could do it, so could Vander.
Silco closed his journal, confident the ink had dried by now. “Alright. You know I won’t exactly be a good teacher. But who am I to deny the Hound of the Undergrounds if he really wants something?”
Vander grinned at Silco. “Oh, hush. You’re fine. Not that I think I’ll be as good as you. Just…may come in handy knowing a thing or two.”
“Maybe,” Silco agreed even though he didn’t see how it possibly could.
The rain drummed harder against the roof. Silco noted to triple check on the bucket under the leak in his and Vander’s room before he went to sleep.
“Tomorrow?” Vander asked, finally putting away the glass he was holding, not wanting to seem too eager.
“Tomorrow.” Silco confirmed, picking up the journal. He stood and stretched. “Goodnight, Hound.”
“Goodnight, Canary.”
The next evening, slow and nearly empty again in the bar, Silco was back at the counter, armed with a fresh sheet of paper and a pen he liked but not enough to throttle Vander should it meet an unfortunate end. Vander watched as Silco set out the materials he had brought. His mouth twitched upwards thinking of how enviously Silco usually hoarded paper but was sacrificing some on his behalf.
“I should warn you,” Silco said, sitting down and gesturing for Vander to take the seat in front of the paper and pen, “I’ve never taught anyone anything before. There is a very real chance I’ll be terrible at this.”
“You say that like you’re planning for me to fail,” Vander took his seat, chuckling nervously.
“I’m being realistic.” Silco shrugged. “Teaching requires patience. Of which I am famously short.”
Despite his deprecating words, Silco used his own sheet of paper and began writing. Vander watched as he wrote out the alphabet, keeping each letter large and spaced out from the other.
“Aren’t they all supposed to connect?” Vander asked.
“When you’re writing words, yes. But I just thought this would be an easy starting point. Here,” he turned the paper now full of his lettering to face Vander. “Trace over the letters so you get a hang of the shapes. That’s how my mother taught me.”
That was how the first few minutes passed, with Vander tracing over Silco’s letters. Each time he looked up at his friend, having finished the page, Silco would make him do it over again. Eventually Vander got bored of the monotony of it and was about to say as much before Silco spoke first.
“Wanna try it yourself?”
Vander looked up as he finished tracing for the dozenth time to see Silco gesturing at the clean sheet of paper meant for him. Too eager, Vander reached for it and let the used one fly up and off the counter, drifting to the ground and under somewhere he wouldn’t care to find for months. Vander started writing his own alphabet, attempting to copy Silco’s cursive without any reference.
He could feel his face heat up as Silco peered at the half finished page over his shoulder.
“Stop watching me,” Vander growled, pressing the pen down too hard on the page and making ink pool there. He tried to maneuver his broad shoulders to block Silco’s view.
“You asked me to teach you,” Silco retaliated, lightly slapping Vander’s shoulder to get him to cease the childish effort. “Keep the pen looser. You are meant to be writing beautiful curves not bricks.”
Vander glanced over at Silco at that, briefly looking down before correcting his focus and turning to the page again. His face was dusted a faint pink now.
Vander finished the alphabet on the page and couldn’t even pretend to admire his work. It looked nothing like what he had traced earlier. Sharp lines, shaky streaks, and jumbled textures. He sighed, already feeling defeated.
“This was a stupid idea.”
“It is not,” Silco elbowed him in the side. “Don’t give up so easily. Janna, you’d think you had no motivation at all. Why is it you want to learn this in the first place, hm? Why did you ask me?”
Vander looked over at Silco, teal eyes boring into his. He scratched the back of his neck, feeling that Silco was somehow suddenly putting him under a microscope.
“I dunno…” He started out. Silco gave a gruff noise of dissatisfaction at that which made Vander defensive. “Really, it is stupid. I guess…I guess if I really do want to be some kind of leader for the Lanes, I want to be able to do what you can do.”
“What I can do?” Silco raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
Vander sighed and swiveled in his stool to better face Silco. “You…look, it is like whenever people need something in the cause, they come to me. But I go to you. That doesn’t seem fair.”
“So…” Silco narrowed his eyes at Vander. “You want to be able to do what I can do so you can cut me out?”
“No!” Vander objected. He hadn't meant it in that way in the slightest. “Just that, you do all this behind the scenes work and I feel like I am the one who gets recognition for it.”
Silco smirked at Vander. “Obviously. You’re easier to like than I am. You’re the face of the Lanes, Vander, whether you like it or not.”
“And what I am saying is I want to deserve that,” Vander implored Silco to understand. “To deserve it the way that you do.”
Silco went quiet at that, eyes widened again. Vander bot at his bottom lip slightly.
“You are really smart, Sil,” Vander continued in his friend’s silence. “And I know I will never be able to do half of the things you can. But I want to at least try and be there for the cause like you are. Do as much as you do. For Zaun.”
“You do,” Silco tried to reassure him. He put a hand on Vander’s shoulder, lightly rubbing a circle with his index finger over the worn cotton shirt. “We have different strengths in this fight. Together we make a whole person,” Silco joked but it was very close to the truth.
Vander let out a small chortle, shaking his head. “I know. You’re the other half I need and I am not trying to replace you or anything. I just want to be able to stand on my own feet the way you do. And I know having pretty handwriting isn’t much of a start to that but…to me it is at least some kind of start.”
Silco tilted his head, watching Vander’s face, considering him for a moment.
“Fair enough,” Silco said simply, looking back down at Vander’s failed attempt. He flipped the page over to the blank side. “Here, let’s try something else.”
“Wha—?” Vander began to ask, but Silco was already spinning him to face the paper and taking the hand Vander held the pen in in his own, moving it over to the top left of the page.
“We start at the beginning,” Silco said, leaning over Vander from behind so he too could see the paper. “I’ll guide your hand but you write. Yes?”
Vander felt his face burn at Silco’s sudden proximity. “Uh…yes,” he said dumbly, nodding.
“Good.” Silco was speaking directly into Vander’s ear, voice calm. Like honey, Vander thought idly, as his hand started to automatically move, helped by Silco, or silk.
Silco’s fingers were settled neatly over Vander’s knuckles, Silco’s hand cold and icy to touch as always but light, gently adjusting Vander’s grip and lifting their hands after the first letter was done. It wasn’t perfect but it was an improvement.
“Oh,” Vander breathed out. He barely registered having written anything at all.
“There you go,” Silco sounded proud. “Next.”
Vander swallowed and nodded, eyes fixed on the page. The pen moved—hesitant at first now that Vander was more aware of what he was doing but becoming smoother as Silco’s fingers subtly corrected Vander’s angle and the amount of pressure. The start of the new letter bloomed on the paper. They continued like that for a while, Silco eventually settling his head in the nook between Vander’s neck and shoulder, making himself comfortable there. Vander inhaled a sharp breath and accidentally made a jagged streak on the paper but Silco corrected him back where he should have been and tried again.
Neither noticed when Felicia came from one of the back rooms, took one look at Silco bent over Vander from behind, holding his hand, and backed right back out from whence she had come, giggling and thinking about collecting the money Benzo would owe her.
Eventually, Vander found himself relaxing. Shoulders easing their earlier tension under Silco’s touch, his earlier frustration draining the more praise Silco murmured, breath tickling his ear. It was becoming easier now, their hands moving in unison until Silco was barely helping Vander anymore and the larger hand was doing the work on its own.
Silco pulled away after they completed the alphabet. “There. Better?” He asked Vander lightly.
“Huh?” Vander felt like he had been shoved out of a reverie, feeling the loss of Silco’s warmth sorely. “No. Oh, you mean—the writing—yes, yeah, it looks better.”
“It does,” Silco confirmed, nodding. “Want to do it yourself?”
And Vander did. It was nowhere near as good as it had been when Silco had been over his shoulder…pressed up against him…talking him through it…lips so close to his ear…
Vander shook his head, tugging at his collar, suddenly feeling warm. Silco noticed but didn’t comment. Again, the paper Vander had written on was flipped over. Silco moved forward and took the pen away from Vander.
“Hey!” Vander objected but Silco hushed him.
“There,” Silco stepped back and Vander looked down to see that Silco had written Vander’s name on the paper. “Practice connecting the letters by writing your name.”
“How many times?”
“Whatever it takes to get it to stick.”
V. Vander managed the first letter with some confidence—broad, slanted, a little on the heavy side. By the time he reached the n, the line wobbled. The d leaned the wrong way, the e practically collapsed in on itself. By the end of it, the name looked tired, uneven, and Vander sighed looking at it. He tried again several times more but it didn’t look all that different.
Silco was still beside Vander but with his back leaning against the bar. His gaze was elsewhere, watching as heavy mist built up outside, tinged a strange yellow. Vander chanced a glance at his distracted partner and picked up the pen after a long pause. While Silco wasn’t looking, Vander changed tactics.
Silco.
Besides the several shaky attempts Vander had made of his own name, a more steady, inked Silco sat proudly. Vander had to flip over the page sever times to make sure the s and o were right but he got there eventually. Vander smiled at the effort and ducked back down to write the name again with determination.
Soon, the rest of the paper was filled with Silco’s name. Still not perfect but written with more intention. Vander found he was actually enjoying this little handwriting lesson now.
“Oh, that looks much…better…”
Vander tensed. He looked up sheepishly like a child caught stealing sweets. Silco had returned his attention to Vander and was looking down at the paper full of his name.
Vander cleared his throat, suddenly too aware of the silence. “It, uh…it just sort of… worked better.”
Silco didn’t look up at him right away. He reached out his pale hand slowly, hovering over the drying ink, as if debating whether to touch it.
“Yes,” he said finally, voice softer than before. “Yes, I can see that.”
Another tangible pause.
Silco coughed as well and broke the silence, looking away. And maybe Vander’s eyes were deceiving him but it looked like Silco may have been blushing.
“The air looks wrong tonight,” Silco said, trying too hard to sound casual. “I’m going to double check all the filters are clean and working properly.”
He sat up from where he had been leaning and straightened his clothes even though they were barely out of place. Vander watched as Silco reached out and carefully slid the paper with their names toward the edge of the counter, picked it up, folding it once, then again, precise as ever.
“What are you doing?” Vander asked.
“Keeping it,” Silco replied without looking up. “For reference.” He put the page in his jacket pocket.
Something warm swelled in Vander’s chest. Pride? He smiled, uninhibited, at Silco.
“Think you’ll teach me again?”
Silco hesitated only a heartbeat. “Yes,” he said, a corner of his mouth twitching upwards in return. “Tomorrow.”