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Silco woke up with a splitting headache, in a bedroom he didn't recognize.
He was unharmed, which was a startling turn of events all things considered. Not even an ache, apart from the usual needling of nicotine withdrawal.
The room was not large, but it was clean and orderly, a space he liked instinctively. Wooden floorboards, brick walls painted over in a dewy gray, pleasant and inoffensive. Zaun's flag hung on the far wall.
He climbed to his feet. He felt… tipsy? That explained the headache. But no, that made no sense. He hadn't drunk last night. He'd been…
He'd been in the cannery. With Vander.
The memory hit him like a punch. He sat back down hard, digging the heel of his palm into his good eye. The throb of his headache reached a fever pitch. He grunted against the sloshing nausea, his other hand moving to his belly. He tasted bile.
What did he last remember? Vander's brats had arrived on the scene, yes, and Deckard had drunk the shimmer again, as Silco had known he would, every time, the foolish boy.
Silco had been about to win.
What happened?
Trousers were slung over the back of a chair. A pair of boots stood by the door, a folded umbrella stowed in one of them. A child's drawing was taped on a dusty mirror. There was a scent in the air, cloying and beautiful. It took Silco a full thirty seconds to find the source: cut roses in a vase on the windowsill.
Flowers were so scarce in the undercity, he'd forgotten the smell.
It was thirst and the need to piss that spurred him on. Silco was dressed in a blue button-down that was half undone, a sweaty undershirt, rumpled black pants. He didn't recognize any of these clothes, but they fit him. They stank of alcohol, too. Champagne.
More and more, his headache felt like a hangover, and things were making less and less sense.
Silco opened the wardrobe. There were two sets of clothes. The ones on the left could only have been for him, though they weren't his clothes. He didn't recognize a single item. Binders hung on wooden hooks, starched and clean—a far cry from the abrasive bandages he usually tied across his chest.
On the right hung clothes for a much larger man. They smelled of pipe smoke and sweat.
Silco blanched. He ripped a few articles of clothing from their hangers, slammed the wardrobe shut as if that could banish what he had seen. He dressed, disquieted to find that the clothes fit precisely, the way that only tailored clothes could. He pulled on boots that fit him just as well and walked out the door.
He caught the barest glimpse of his own reflection in the mirror as he passed. It wasn't right, but he didn't stop to look. Not yet.
It was The Last Drop, but different.
Nothing was quite as it should be. The colors were off, the grain of the tables different, little details so minute that he scarcely remembered how they ought to be instead. But the shape of the room was the same. The smell, too.
Everything was covered in confetti. A few balloons migrated listlessly beneath the lazy twirl of a ceiling fan. Zaunite flags were hanging from every surface, and there were half-drunk glasses of beer and champagne everywhere Silco looked. The crumbly remains of a cake sat on the bar.
Long Live Zaun! was spray-painted on a white sheet and hung over the back of the bar, along with the date.
Seven years in the future.
Silco stared.
This was a cruelty, this illusion, this dream. It was so beautiful, and so… mundane. It could have been a New Years celebration, a birthday party. No mass cremations, no blood in the gutter. No screams of grief or righteous, angry joy. When Silco imagined Zaun's liberation, he had always pictured—well.
Not this.
This seemed too kind to be real.
I'm dead. There was no other explanation.
"Nah… Don't think so, at any rate."
Unlike the clothes, unlike the pub, Vander's voice was exactly as Silco remembered it.
Silco jumped, span on his heel. He hadn't realized that he'd spoken aloud. He also hadn't realized that Vander was sitting at one of the booths, half obscured by a flag hanging from the banister above him.
Vander looked different. Longer hair. Clean, well-kept, beard trimmed. He was older.
About seven years older, in fact.
"You look good," said Vander.
Silco's eyes narrowed. It was in that moment that he realized that his left eye could narrow, even if it couldn't see. He blinked, reached up. The scars were still there, deep grooves in his flesh, but… different in texture.
"What is this?"
"Zaun's independence, I think." Vander scratched at his beard, looked around. "Dunno beyond that. I woke up, middle of the night. When I came down here, there was still people boozing and partying. Congratulating us, you know. For getting it done in the end. Zaun."
Vander hesitated for a moment. He clearly wanted to say something, but he was holding himself back.
"What?" asked Silco.
"Do you think Janna caused this?"
Silco could think of nothing else that would have.
She'd intervened on their behalf before. It wasn't insane to think she may have again. Silco and Vander would be long dead in the mines if she hadn't; suffocated and forgotten. Skeletons in the dark.
Vander climbed to his feet. "Let me fix you a drink."
Silco's head throbbed at the thought of it.
"A coffee."
It was an absurdity. Silco and Vander, at the bar, sharing a pot of coffee just like the good old days. If one could call those days good. Both of them were quiet, lost in thought, but their eyes met every little while and they knew the conversation was coming. They were both desperate for it, but neither of them wanted to be the one to start it.
Such contradictions were common, where they were concerned.
Vander cracked first. "I was wrong, Sil."
That was not the opener that Silco was anticipating. He refocused his gaze, said nothing. Waited. He fought the urge to say, obviously.
"If this is the future we could've had, I obviously went wrong somewhere." Vander seemed, if anything, a little peeved. "Giving up the fight."
His eyes flicked to Silco's face.
"Your eye's different."
"I noticed." Silco found a cigarette in his pants pocket, and he lit it with a steady hand. He damn well knew why, too. "No shimmer."
"Maybe I'm not the only one who messed up, eh?"
Silco shrugged, sipped his coffee. This conversation was ludicrously civil. Silco had committed himself wholesale to Vander's eradication, with the same fervor that Vander had committed himself to surrender. Oblivion, even. For both of them.
Being handed everything they wanted on a silver platter rather took the wind out of their sails. Two hounds who caught their own tails and had no idea what to do with them.
"I woke up holding you," said Vander. "Last night. You know that?"
Heat prickled Silco's cheeks. He did not miss the hoarseness in Vander's voice, the dangerous little touch of longing.
"We were both inebriated." Silco looked away. "…And we're obviously cohabiting."
Vander smiled. The rueful warmth might as well have been a slap to the face. Silco didn't think it was fair for him to bear the burden of Vander's dreams, nor his regrets. He already had to live with the burden of Vander's actions.
"You've still got the scars. So I still fucked up, even here." Vander picked up his own coffee, blew on it for a moment. "Wish I knew what I'd done to make you forgive me."
Silco's felt his expression flatten.
"Do you really have to wonder?" He looked at a Zaunite flag, raised his eyebrow. "Is it that hard for you to guess?"
"…Suppose not."
Vander heaved a deep breath, let it out in a gust. He sank down against the bar, head bowed, exhausted. Silco forgot to smoke the cigarette between his fingers; a clump of ashes fell on the bar.
"I'm so sorry, Sil. I tried to find you, tried for a long time, but you were just gone. Like you'd vanished. Sometimes I wondered if I dreamed you escaped. If maybe I'd actually killed you and just didn't remember." Vander lifted his head to look at him; his eyes were swimming with unshed tears. "It's a shit thing to live with. I'd have given anything to take it back. Anything."
Silco had no intention of granting absolution, nor did he think Vander was asking for that. But Vander's words soothed him nevertheless, teased out some warmth and compassion that Silco had tried very, very hard to destroy.
In this fantasy he'd woken up in, it was too easy to feel unguarded.
Silco said nothing. He held out his mug for a refill. That was answer enough.
The children were theirs. Not just Vander's. It was quite a violent whiplash, after Silco had been set on killing them all. He hadn't relished the thought of murdering Felicia's daughters, but he had at least comforted himself with the prospect of erasing her and Vander from physical existence in all ways he possibly could. It sounded peaceful.
This world wasn't peaceful at all.
It was noisy.
Powder doted on Silco. She also looked so much like Felicia that it was a physical ache. It felt like a reprimand. You were going to kill the only part of me that's still alive? Yes, Silco had intended as much.
He fumbled through a day that didn't belong to him. Vander had an easier time at the bar. He knew what to do, how to behave, how to blend in. And he clearly wasn't different enough from his counterpart for anyone to notice.
But people noticed Silco.
"Are you doing okay?" Violet didn't look all that sympathetic, though she was nice enough to wait for a private moment to ask. "Did you and Vander have a fight or something?"
Something like that.
When the pub finally shut for the night, Silco couldn't have been more relieved. He'd barely had the opportunity to speak to Vander at all.
But first, he needed to wash. He had spent the day sweating through his lies. He was exhausted, grimy. He felt vaguely ill.
The shower was much nicer than Silco remembered, a new water heater that lasted more than five minutes. Vander joined him without asking. Silco admired both the tenacity and the entitlement. Warm arms around his chest, lips to wet hair. Not sexual, not yet. But there was a promise in that contact, a yearning implication. I still want this. I never stopped.
"Would you have really killed me, at the cannery?"
It felt like a thousand years ago already, and still more real than any of this. Silco didn't hesitate to answer truthfully. "Yes."
Vander's grip tightened a notch, and a quiet laugh rumbled through Silco's shoulder blades. "Is it funny that makes me feel better?"
Silco smiled. "Yes."
Vander took the soap bar from him, lathered it between his hands. He touched Silco like he was testing the edges of the fear he'd left, finding the boundaries of it in Silco's skin. The first scrape of soapy fingers against his neck made Silco flinch. Vander sped away to other places, kissed his shoulder apologetically. But Silco, never one to shy away from his worst impulses, caught Vander's wrist, guided him upwards. Bared his throat. Pressed Vander's warn fingers against it.
When Vander's other hand slid into the gap between his thighs, Silco forgot about fear entirely. Pressure against his clit, swelling heat. Vander's fingers slipped into his folds with absolutely no resistance. Silco hadn't even realized how wet he was.
Another chuckle, low and knowing. Silco flushed.
"Here, or bed?" A growl in his ear, a vibration. Silco's spine tingled.
Weak-kneed and holding onto the rail for dear life, there was only one option that wouldn't end in humiliation or a broken neck.
"Bed."
Vander didn't even let them dry off. He picked Silco up, slung him over his shoulder like they were fucking teenagers again. This was an old habit, a playful little game that never failed to elicit an outraged snarl. He sank his teeth into Vander's shoulder blade, but not enough to draw blood. Another game.
He was carried up to the bedroom, and it was a blessing the Drop was empty at this hour and no one was forced to get an eyeful of Silco's cunt. He might have actually killed Vander in that case.
"Are you mad—"
Vander kicked the door closed behind them, tossed Silco down onto the blankets. Soft, knitted, made with care and color, brighter than anything Silco would have chosen for himself. Another detail that his mind would have never conjured. More evidence of the texture, the realness of this world.
Hands still dripping with water pushed his thighs apart. Silco didn't resist. His cunt betrayed years of longing and abstinence. His clit throbbed, twitched; embarrassing impatience, too obvious, too needy. Vander drew out these responses without needing to even touch him.
Silco fell back into the mattress as Vander swept over him. There was no hesitation, no slow tease, no self-doubt over whether or not fucking the man you tried to drown was a good idea. Foreplay had never been Vander's way. He found a nipple with his teeth, a razor-edge of pain and ecstasy, like the hot tingling of a shallow cut.
Vander was a lover always in motion, like he wanted to do so many things at once that he could never choose just one, fucked Silco in ten positions before he let either of them cum. Hot kisses trailed down, down, down between his thighs. A tongue lashed against his clit, a bolt of heat that knocked the wind from Silco's lungs. But Vander went even lower, lapping the soppy wetness. And then even lower still; his tongue dragged between Silco's cheeks.
Vander always made love to him this way, serving and dominating at the same time, migrating from one pleasure to the next until Silco had no choice but to shatter.
Hands circled his hips, rolled Silco onto his front. Everything between his thighs was sticky and slick, the mess of his own arousal mingling now with Vander's spit. Vander licked right in again, tonguing the tight, stubborn ring of muscle.
Silco wailed into the pillow, skin boiling with embarrassment. He did not tell Vander to stop.
And then that mouth was moving up his spine, and Vander's cock pressed against his cunt. Silco was aware of two things, quite suddenly: he missed being fucked at least as much as he missed his left eye, and this was going to end embarrassingly fast for him. Years of abstinence left his cunt so wet that his thighs were soaked in it.
Vander, like Silco, was uncompromising. When he slid into Silco, the penetration was as smooth as silk. The pressure was still blinding, though—Vander was big in all ways.
The noise was obscene, bubbly and slick. The shrieking whimper that followed was only marginally less humiliating. Silco clawed into the blankets, bucked and squirmed like he was fighting the intrusion, but his body was so greedy and he couldn't get enough. And Vander knew, soothing him, touching him, a hand on his flank, in his hair. Easy, love. I've got you. Shhh.
A hand slipped beneath his stomach, the other forcing his face to the mattress, gentle but uncompromising. Despite all that had happened, Vander didn't hesitate to be forceful, and Silco didn't hesitate to submit to it. It was a brand of insanity entirely unique to them. If Silco were a ridiculous man, he would have said they were soulmates. As a pragmatist, he would say they were idiots who never knew when to give up.
"Fuck me!"
As if Vander wasn't already. But he began to move faster, harsh, sharp thrusts, animal, each one forcing Silco forward, throwing the bedframe against the wall. This position lasted only a minute before Vander pulled out, rolled Silco onto back again. Hands on his hips, lifting him, cock nudging against his cunt. Another sharp thrust, buried to the root. Silco threw his head back and snarled, a lewd noise to join the rest.
Body taut, elbows digging into the mattress, thighs forced apart until his muscles strained. He wasn't near as flexible now as he had been, but this body was used to fucking. It knew Vander intimately.
Vander picked him up, balanced on his knees, caging Silco against the headboard. Silco grabbed at the wood with slippery fingers. Sex with Vander was often a physically punishing experience, exhausting, something that had to be endured more than participated in.
"Vander," Silco hissed, sweat and spit splattering against Vander's chest. "Make up your damn mind...!"
A low, playful chuckle. Vander's mouth pressed to his neck, a brush of blunt teeth. "I can feel your pulse thumping, Sil."
Silco growled. "No sh—"
Vander crushed him into an embrace, lifting Silco away from the headboard. There was nowhere to grab except Vander himself, and Silco clung to him for balance, for dear life, and suddenly every inch of his was surrounded in wet, warm, safe heat. His face pressed flush to Vander's shoulder, a hand cupping the back of his head like he was precious, so precious.
The pace stuttered and slowed, the strokes lengthening. Vander was holding all of his weight like it was nothing. Silco finally, at long last, just let go. His hands were slippery, too slippery to find purchase on Vander's skin. His muscles screamed. Surrender was an inevitability, a relief.
It wasn't destined to last much longer. Vander ground inside him, rumbling and snarling in his chest. When he climaxed, he uttered a low, plaintive noise, a broken relief. He collapsed on top of Silco, sloppy kisses over his cheeks, his neck, his breasts.
Silco lazily slid a hand between their bodies, fondled his clit. It was slick and stiff beneath the pads of his fingers, a little epicenter of heat and tension. But his touch was a half-hearted indulgence at best, awkward with Vander crushing him down against the mattress. He was also shaking and winded, reeling. He relished hovering at the edge of orgasm, not quite tipping his way into oblivion, left eager and wanting. He didn't mind staying like that, for a little while.
A hazy and half-remembered part of himself wondered why he wasn't nervous, trapped like that, pinned and helpless and struggling just a little for air. Vander didn't put his full weight on him, he knew better, but Silco was still pressed flat, speared by that swollen cock. Silco's hand traced a lazy, meandering path down Vander's hip.
You know he won't hurt you. Because you forgave him years ago. Because you found that ridiculous letter.
What letter?
Silco pawed around his thoughts, trying to find meaning in the chaos. There was some… memory, hidden down there. A memory that didn't quite belong to him, yet was a part of this body, this life, this world. A context that he didn't yet understand.
This was not the time to unravel such puzzles.
Silco grunted. "Get off."
Vander rolled and fell onto the mattress next to Silco, shaky and red-faced. Silco felt the lewd wetness spilling down his backside as Vander slipped out of him, a delicious little jolt of vulgarity.
A panting mouth pressed to his shoulder. "You alright, Sil?"
What a question. And whatever the answer was, Silco didn't get the opportunity to say it. A hand slid between his thighs, fingers circling his clit. Silco's hips rose instantly, heels dug into the mattress again, a hand rising. He bit his index finger, a sting of pain to center him, steady him.
It took only seconds. Silco, shaking and overstimulated, tipped into an orgasm, a sensation like a knife-cut between his thighs, heat and not-quite-ecstasy, something more complicated and more painful. A fresh mess of fluid spilled over Vander's fingers as they dipped lower.
It took minutes for the shaking to subside. Vander didn't crowd him, which was a small blessing. Silco wasn't sure he could take much more affection.
They hadn't said anything in the hours since they fucked, but they were both awake. Now and then, Silco would light a cigarette or Vander would reach for his pipe. The window was cracked, and the air that swept in was cleaner than any Silco could remember from the undercity before.
"I think I hate it here," said Silco, staring up at the ceiling.
A low chuckle. "A free Zaun? A loving family?"
"This wasn't what I was fighting for."
Vander propped up on his elbow, facing him. "Then what were you fighting for?"
An easy answer. "I wanted to humiliate Piltover. I wanted them to give me everything I wanted out of fear, not magnanimity. This feels too… mh. Clean."
A strong arm slid under Silco's body, and he found himself suddenly cradled against Vander's chest. He squirmed at being shown such affection outside of the context of fucking, but he didn't try to deny it. He was greedy for all he could get. One never did know how long such things would last.
"If you were a little bit more social, Sil, you'd know that we fought for it. Here." Lips on his brow. "And we fought brutal. I got some people talking about it at the bar. Easy to ask drunks questions, you know."
Silco looked at Vander, his expression grim. "You fought?"
"Yeah." Vander frowned. "I've been puzzling about that too. I think maybe you coming back— I don't know. It changed things for me. Made something about it feel okay again."
Forgiveness had given Vander the will to fight. Go figure.
Silco coiled an arm around Vander's waist, fingertips drawing across his abdomen, slow, meandering. "There's hope for you yet, then. But I suppose it doesn't matter. Everything's resolved here. There's nothing left to rally against."
It felt so hollow to be handed everything you wanted.
"For what it's worth, I don't think Janna will leave us here," said Vander. "Or whatever brought us, if not her. And if we do go back, I'm with you. Okay? If I can make Zaun like this, then I want to keep going."
"It's not that I don't believe you—Vander—but that's easy to promise now, isn't it? Clean air. Quiet streets. What about when we return and you remember exactly where we left off?"
Vander had become little more than a custodian. Not a hound, not a fighter. And once he remembered that Benzo was dead, that the Lanes were on the verge of an explosive confrontation with the Pilties… What then?
Would he have the stomach for it then?
Silco, ever the pessimist, didn't think so. But no sooner did the thought cross his mind did he feel a hand around his throat, and Vander rolled on top of him. The terror that bit through Silco was cathartic, an explosion of energy and heat that prickled under his skin from his cheeks to his fingertips. He had longed for this violence, to feel it again, that willingness to fight for his life when it was pushed to the brink.
But there was no knife this time.
The hand on his throat wasn't suffocating him, it was only holding him still. So Silco didn't thrash, didn't scratch and bite and snarl. He glowered up into Vander's eyes, dared him to try it. He was ready to scrap a second time.
"You think I've forgotten, Silco? Listen to me. Put a knife in my back, and I'll still love you. I'll die thinking that you were worth every inch of that blade, even if you are a mean, self-righteous little cunt. But once we do get back, if you ever so much as threaten my kids again, you're gonna end up right back in the river with my hands around your throat."
Even if Silco could talk, he wouldn't have the words to express his joy. Vander's was not an empty threat. Through those eyes he glimpsed rage, a fire he'd thought long extinguished.
The hound was still in there. Still intact. And Vander could loose it whenever he wanted. He'd just been keeping it on a leash.
The hand fell away from his throat. The fire settled into embers, and the expression of sorrow that followed was simply unbearable. Can you love me even now? As if the threat of violence was the thing that would chase Silco away.
"I'd forgive you a second time."
Silco reached up, grabbed Vander by the hair, and wrenched him down into a biting, brutal kiss.