[ Silco knows the way those scars feel against his tongue, the neuropathic twitch of them against his own clasped fingers; they weren't the first thing to draw him to Strange, but they were where he tipped over into something less controlled than he'd like. The commonality of scarring, of holding your physical trauma so visibly on such a vital part of the body.
He's watching Stephen intently, waiting out his chewing, his amusement at knowing he has Silco hooked to reel in. That's fine. They both like to play with their food, metaphorically.
An answer finally comes, explanatory but unsatisfactory. ]
Meaning you couldn't go back to surgery. Why?
[ Dragged out of him. He serves himself some carrots, a little less gracefully than usual because he's still watching Stephen. ]
Don't try and tell me there's a cost. You use magic too flippantly for that.
There's always a cost. Maybe not for the spells, but the choices?
[ Extortionate, usually. Silco must know that as well as he does, the question posed not just as pedantry. It doesn't need answering, but the raise of his brows still asks it after he moves on. ]
I became a doctor to save lives. As a surgeon I could save one at a time, maybe three in a day, five at a push. My first day on the job as a sorcerer, I convinced a primordial entity not to swallow the Earth.
[ A shrug, gaze dropping to his food, carving off another piece of steak. ]
[ Could Stephen consider not simply throwing out information that clearly has a wealth of story attached to it (or at the very least, a two hour film)? Silco's attention sharpens, and then he forces himself not to chase, to stay on the philosophy rather than demand more action/adventure. ]
And you feel healing your hands fully would stop you from being able to serve that higher calling.
[ He's chewing over the words rather than the food, considering what he's been told about the situation, dismissing that there is some — magical shortage, where spending his resources on the selfishness of his physicality would leave him less to offer as saviour.
His tongue touches the inside of his cheek, where he can feel the lower tip of his scarring, eased by the ReSculpt but still keloid. ]
No, you want the reminder. That what feels like the worst thing to ever happen can really just be the turning point to something better.
[ Barely even pretending to eat his food now, avid. ]
[ It's an observation that peeks out through his own relative reticence to self-reflect and glimmers, recognised and true. Once upon a time he'd have disputed it. Now he looks up from where he'd been teasing food transparently around his plate, smiles. A little wistful, a little glad for company that isn't afraid to ask.
To state, even, anticipating that he isn't wrong. ]
At first it was practicality. My hands are fucked, really, there's as much metal keeping them held together as there is bone. To 'heal' them, I'd need to build in concentrated spellwork to tell my body they're fine twenty four hours a day. Easily enough done, but more effort than simple pain management, and sorcery doesn't need fine motor control. So what would be the point?
[ But. ] But I could've had them fixed in New Amsterdam. Four centuries of medical advancement, they'd have been good as new.
[ A pause here, mulling over Silco's theories. Finding his truth in both and in neither, catching the essence of it somewhere in the middle. ]
I think more than anything, I didn't want to give myself an excuse to be who I was before.
[ A matter of trust and the lack of it. Of things being so much better, but remembering the man who'd thought them so much worse. He'd decided to remain resolutely as he was not as a symbol of those better things, but so as not to bow to the desperation of the self who'd wrestled so frantically with the sheets of the bed he'd made that he set them aflame with himself still inside, all because he couldn't bear to feel less than.
If he'd ever been less than, it hadn't been his hands that made him so. ]
[ Mm. A jump of the brows, a twitch of the lips, glancing away; he's picked up that Stephen likes to show off. It hardly bothers him, he finds it charming, but he can see how perhaps, younger and arrogant at the top of his field, it could have been... detrimental. Immature.
Still. The idea that he doesn't try to impress... Silco returns pointedly to cutting up his steak, lashes briefly low. ]
[ There it is. A heavenward sweep of his eyes, trying as he might to mute a little the stretch of amusement at his own expense, but it's funny. What can he do? ]
You're laughing now, but I haven't taken you to a single neurological society dinner to watch me speak about my own prowess to a room full of people who paid me to be there, so. You're welcome.
[ Silco's own smile breaks slowly over his face. He tips a shoulder up, not particularly thankful. ]
I like that you know your worth.
[ At a conference or otherwise. They're circling back around to what they actually should be talking about, now, but it feels easier than he expected. Playful. He doesn't even try to redirect into discussion of the food, though there is a moment here where he tries the gammon and pineapple and wrinkles his nose in light bemusement, having not expected fruit. ]
[ That gets him, Stephen blinking surprise, the humor in his face going briefly slack as that point fades into watching Silco try something new. He gathers himself after a short stretch of seconds, pulling on play like a coat to push through the fog of fondness. ]
In that case, I'll make sure to get you a copy of my books.
[ One last little sample of a past they can share more about another time. He can sense the full circle turn of the conversation too - even though he called for it, he's not quite sure how to start, but his expression settles into something calm and comfortable as he lapses into quiet to consider it. Watching Silco, not too concerned by the possibility of embarrassing himself entirely when he finds his next words, plucked from their earlier conversation. ]
Your opinion's important to me, too.
[ Even if it's just the fact that he likes the size of his ego, even though Stephen's wielding it disguised as play - it matters. In that and the rest. It makes a good segue: it's why they're having this conversation at all. ]
[ Silco is coming to terms with the pineapple; he doesn't dislike it, but the presence of sweetness in the meal has been startling enough to temporarily confuse his preferences. The carrots are sweet too, but in a different way, artificial and sticky and expected. He puts the pineapple to the side, to be reattempted later; refreshes his palate with a sip of wine; all of this allowing him to seem stoic in the face of conversation turned confessional. But fllirting has its own unexpected sweetness, too.
He puts the glass down, thumbing the stem a moment. ]
I've thought about you quite a lot these last few days. Mostly in the context of my own history with these kinds of things. Which, I suppose is inevitable, given the mirror becomes a window to the past.
[ But he's digressing. Glancing eye contact, trying to keep himself on track. To actually say something meaningful and honest so Stephen can understand a little better what he's getting himself into, even if Silco is growing concerned that the moment he's seen in any real clarity, this enjoyable flirtation will end. ]
Understand that aside from my daughter my relationships for the past fifteen years have been — transactional, in one way or another. And before that was something ill-defined.
[ There. They're in. Stephen listens, steady focus fixed on Silco as he speaks, dealing with the fizzing, anxious delight of I've thought about you quite a lot these last few days with an almost entirely straight face. He nods at mention of his daughter, at the gulf of time between now and when last Silco experienced any even-fielded ease in another's company.
His thoughts skim over the complex mire of his own more recent relationship history with a flip of the stomach. If not for Rubilykskoye, this might have been a less complicated conversation. But if not for Rubilykskoye, they probably wouldn't have found themselves here at all. He'd have vanished that mistletoe before they had the chance. ]
Is it alright? That this hasn't been [ hm. ] what you're used to.
[ One thing at a time. He'll start adding his colorful history to the pile once they've unpacked Silco's, the question more a prompt for a laying out worries than the sum of its parts. If the answer's no, they're shit out of luck - there's nothing else Stephen can offer him but their shared blind stumble through early days. ]
[ One simple word made burningly earnest, silken voice gone rough on it.
He hadn't known, of course, that he was starving himself, had been very deliberate about seeing to the distraction of his needs with ruthless efficiency. But "intimacy with a man his own age" hadn't been on the list.
There's more in him but he doesn't really know how to talk about it without the scaffolding of a negotiation. ]
It does mean I can be, I suppose, defensive. Of my autonomy, of the vulnerability that passion requires of me.
[ Weakness, he'd called it, and he makes Stephen fight for every inch of it, but that's ultimately what it is to him, the soft underbelly, the ruinously exploitable desires, the loss of total control. Silco eyes his potatoes, a little tense. ]
[ A thrill blooming bright behind his sternum with that yes, small breath snatched to compensate. There's a reason he doesn't have these conversations, he thinks. Funny enough, it has quite a lot to do with the next thing that comes out of Silco's mouth. ]
I get it. [ Phrased like this, separate from the heat of their earlier talk and cast in candlelight, it's all too easy to understand the sentiment. Their perspectives not the same, perhaps, but he knows the impulse. Remembers conversations like dark corners, his back unexpectedly against walls, fight or flight or freeze? It's the former more often than not - for both of them, it seems, and that's going to get them into some trouble if this keeps going where it's going. But. ] I know hearing it won't change that, but I won't make a weapon of the parts of yourself you let us both enjoy.
[ At least not outside of the context of that enjoyment. Words do very little to kill fear, he knows, and more of them won't change that, but context might help anyway. Something for him to remember, in the times when fear doesn't drown memory out. ]
I've spent the better part of the last year learning it's worth the risk. [ Being vulnerable. Baring the tender parts that can't hold up to misuse. ] I'll do whatever I can not to be the reason you decide it isn't.
[ It's more direct than he really meant to be, filled with a more fierce, focused determination. But it's important to him. Whatever this is, whatever it becomes, however long it's allowed to last - even if in the end he's only one small stepping stone in Silco's path, he hopes to be sturdy underfoot. To carry him onward, not crack and send him back the way he came. ]
[ This is the main difference, Silco thinks, between the two of them: Stephen is good. He really means that, Silco can see it, studying him carefully, that he wouldn't exploit Silco's avaricious hunger at being made to come apart. And it's true enough that Stephen hasn't presumed anything about him from Silco kneeling in the bathroom to suck him off, or crawling drunk and slutty over the bar to him. There's safe harbour in this, beyond anything he's had before.
He exhales a small slow breath. ]
I trust you.
[ Mostly. When he's rational enough for trust, when trauma doesn't slap that decision from his hands. It's not the first time he's felt it, but somehow it's easy to share here, mild-mannered, almost quiet, in between another bite of steak. He's almost finished his plate, and he's not sure what he's going to do with himself then, how to distract his hands and eyes. ]
That doesn't mean I'm going to make it easy for you. I think it's better when we're both playing to win.
[ Sexually, anyway. This domestication, deeply held truths about himself shared over a candle-lit dinner, this is much less of a battle. If there was still a chance he could return home to Zaun he'd be reluctant, but that death freed him from certain responsibilities. Now there's only Jinx — and, newly, this.
He's flushing again. Maybe he can blame the wine. ]
[ Trust. It pulls at his cheek without the thought to commit to a smile, tugging his mouth up at one corner, marionette. ]
Good. [ Emphatic. Some leftover gladness for the trust oozing into his enjoyment of the game. ] We can agree on that.
[ And he takes a moment here to bask in it. In the colour creeping under Silco's skin, in something new discussed and made real. Not that the conversation's over, but he's lost interest in the meal, and all ten extra meals' worth of sides the staff managed to squeeze onto the table. Wine, then. Another sip, then reaching to top them both up as the few seconds' pause clears out the joy and reminds him that there's more than one conversation that needs having tonight. Just because they've made it through the first doesn't mean he's off the hook for the rest. ]
... I have your history. [ The bones of it, anyway, as it pertains to what they're doing. ] Mine's a little less, uh. [ Past. How to approach it? He's realising - slow, creeping understanding - that the way he's learned to be no longer sits in the comfortable realms of normalcy outside of its context. ] I didn't leave my last life behind on purpose.
[ The start of a point that ends and people have a habit of showing up here. He doesn't get that far, lapses into quiet and his own turn to look uncomfortable, tension clear in his jaw and the skin around his eyes for all he tries to will himself relaxed. It's been all too easy up until today to consider this almost as if it were simple, truly simple, a new shoot in empty soil. Unfortunate, then, to have to take a point to the bubble of that self-delusion. ]
[ Silco has a manipulators acute awareness of how power flows — politically, sexually, conversationally. Stephen stutters, tenses a little, and it shifts the direction of what they're doing. Silco's defenses (around research, autonomy, weakness, sex) were being, if not attacked then softened.
And now they're not.
He puts his fork down with a careful click, sits back in his chair rather than leaning in. Dabs his mouth with his napkin, letting Stephen stutter through what he's trying to say, considering the spaces of what he doesn't, words swerved. It's fine, he finds that as much a game as the rest of it.
He resists the urge to point out that nobody's here on purpose. Not the point. ]
The place with 'a lot of sex'.
[ Tenderness you took where you could get it. He can imagine where this is going, or at least the shape of it. Regrets doing it on the table rather than with the advantage of touch and teeth to stop Stephen stepping so carefully. Though Silco isn't any less deliberate. ]
I can. Not much of it is pleasant story-telling, but I don't mind if you don't.
[ The place isn't the problem. He can spill his hate for it happily, all his rage and resentment, the horrors and the things he can't help but miss. Some of the tension seems to slip at mention of that part at least, no resistance to be found.
But. This isn't a conversation about pasts in the general sense. Is it better to be honest now, whatever extra pressure or inference of expectation that might pile on something too new to have to bear it, than have it break under unexpected weight without warning down the line? ]
It's more that I had people there. Some of them have been and gone, here. Some of them are here and don't remember. Some of them aren't.
[ People, is the point. He's not unattached, for all that he's been torn from those attachments. It isn't— straightforward. ]
[ Silco doesn't particularly catch the plurality simply because it doesn't strike him as odd. Piltover has monogamy, of course, it's how they solidify their power, by creating houses and passing wealth and title down to their offspring. But it's not the same in the undercity.
No, what strikes him is the usual need: to be the best. The most valued, of many. But it's without particular jealousy. They've known each other a month or two, things are only newly unfolding between them. Silco knows that his history, with so few people allowed in it, is not the norm. ]
All right.
[ He props his chin in his hand, fingers covering his mouth. Considers his emotional response: it doesn't quite correspond to that logic. The drugs — the ReSculpt — does tend to twist the psyche towards insecurity. Irritating. He ignores it; if it bothers him once the withdrawals are past he'll revisit the topic. ]
My ex showed up, as it happens, so I do take your point.
[ Sometimes the world simply shifts on its axis and takes the best laid plans with it. ]
[ There's a yes in his tone, the tip of his head. Silco at least seems unperturbed. Death doesn't stick here, so he can't just quietly make the problem go away, but he's got it handled. ]
He's agreed to a — truce. For Jinx's sake. Missed her whole teens and still considers himself her father. It's touching, really.
[ Silco does not seem touched.
He spears the pineapple he set aside with a fork and bites into it, considering the flavour more seriously now that it's not such a surprise. ]
[ A cant of his head, this information new. Concern is etched deep in his frown, the betrayal Silco shared with him somehow made worse by the implication. ]
Her parents were our best friends, once. They died when she was four, in our attempted revolution. And our relationship with them.
[ Those last words dry, bitter. Pain too old to really hurt anymore.
He finishes the pineapple, letting the silence hang for a moment. Just when it seems he mightn't be going to say more, and they can end this digression. ]
He blamed my explosives. Gave up on our dream. Co-operated with Piltover enforcers to bring the survivors to heel. Everyone returned to their miserable lives. I was furious, at the time, but I understand it better now. He would rather Jinx and her older sister live to experience a hard world than lose them fighting for a better one.
[ He'd made the same choice in the end. Is there anything so undoing as a daughter? ]
But no, we never co-parented. So I imagine this will be a learning experience for us all. But we weren't talking about my past.
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He's watching Stephen intently, waiting out his chewing, his amusement at knowing he has Silco hooked to reel in. That's fine. They both like to play with their food, metaphorically.
An answer finally comes, explanatory but unsatisfactory. ]
Meaning you couldn't go back to surgery. Why?
[ Dragged out of him. He serves himself some carrots, a little less gracefully than usual because he's still watching Stephen. ]
Don't try and tell me there's a cost. You use magic too flippantly for that.
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[ Extortionate, usually. Silco must know that as well as he does, the question posed not just as pedantry. It doesn't need answering, but the raise of his brows still asks it after he moves on. ]
I became a doctor to save lives. As a surgeon I could save one at a time, maybe three in a day, five at a push. My first day on the job as a sorcerer, I convinced a primordial entity not to swallow the Earth.
[ A shrug, gaze dropping to his food, carving off another piece of steak. ]
The choice was pretty clear.
[ As was the cost of not making it. ]
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And you feel healing your hands fully would stop you from being able to serve that higher calling.
[ He's chewing over the words rather than the food, considering what he's been told about the situation, dismissing that there is some — magical shortage, where spending his resources on the selfishness of his physicality would leave him less to offer as saviour.
His tongue touches the inside of his cheek, where he can feel the lower tip of his scarring, eased by the ReSculpt but still keloid. ]
No, you want the reminder. That what feels like the worst thing to ever happen can really just be the turning point to something better.
[ Barely even pretending to eat his food now, avid. ]
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To state, even, anticipating that he isn't wrong. ]
At first it was practicality. My hands are fucked, really, there's as much metal keeping them held together as there is bone. To 'heal' them, I'd need to build in concentrated spellwork to tell my body they're fine twenty four hours a day. Easily enough done, but more effort than simple pain management, and sorcery doesn't need fine motor control. So what would be the point?
[ But. ] But I could've had them fixed in New Amsterdam. Four centuries of medical advancement, they'd have been good as new.
[ A pause here, mulling over Silco's theories. Finding his truth in both and in neither, catching the essence of it somewhere in the middle. ]
I think more than anything, I didn't want to give myself an excuse to be who I was before.
[ A matter of trust and the lack of it. Of things being so much better, but remembering the man who'd thought them so much worse. He'd decided to remain resolutely as he was not as a symbol of those better things, but so as not to bow to the desperation of the self who'd wrestled so frantically with the sheets of the bed he'd made that he set them aflame with himself still inside, all because he couldn't bear to feel less than.
If he'd ever been less than, it hadn't been his hands that made him so. ]
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[ Since if ever there was a time for reminiscing on the state of selves past, selves young and left in the dust, it's been this week. ]
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[ Short, to the point. A brief upward glance as he considers that answer, then his focus drops back on Silco again. ]
A different kind of asshole. I wasn't doing my job to help people anymore. I was doing it to impress them.
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[ Mm. A jump of the brows, a twitch of the lips, glancing away; he's picked up that Stephen likes to show off. It hardly bothers him, he finds it charming, but he can see how perhaps, younger and arrogant at the top of his field, it could have been... detrimental. Immature.
Still. The idea that he doesn't try to impress... Silco returns pointedly to cutting up his steak, lashes briefly low. ]
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What?
[ He knows what, but still. ]
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[ Fighting his own smile, murdering his steak. Thinking about alternate applications for that drive to impress. ]
I'm very impressed you henceforth decided to live a life of humble modesty.
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You're laughing now, but I haven't taken you to a single neurological society dinner to watch me speak about my own prowess to a room full of people who paid me to be there, so. You're welcome.
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I like that you know your worth.
[ At a conference or otherwise. They're circling back around to what they actually should be talking about, now, but it feels easier than he expected. Playful. He doesn't even try to redirect into discussion of the food, though there is a moment here where he tries the gammon and pineapple and wrinkles his nose in light bemusement, having not expected fruit. ]
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In that case, I'll make sure to get you a copy of my books.
[ One last little sample of a past they can share more about another time. He can sense the full circle turn of the conversation too - even though he called for it, he's not quite sure how to start, but his expression settles into something calm and comfortable as he lapses into quiet to consider it. Watching Silco, not too concerned by the possibility of embarrassing himself entirely when he finds his next words, plucked from their earlier conversation. ]
Your opinion's important to me, too.
[ Even if it's just the fact that he likes the size of his ego, even though Stephen's wielding it disguised as play - it matters. In that and the rest. It makes a good segue: it's why they're having this conversation at all. ]
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He puts the glass down, thumbing the stem a moment. ]
I've thought about you quite a lot these last few days. Mostly in the context of my own history with these kinds of things. Which, I suppose is inevitable, given the mirror becomes a window to the past.
[ But he's digressing. Glancing eye contact, trying to keep himself on track. To actually say something meaningful and honest so Stephen can understand a little better what he's getting himself into, even if Silco is growing concerned that the moment he's seen in any real clarity, this enjoyable flirtation will end. ]
Understand that aside from my daughter my relationships for the past fifteen years have been — transactional, in one way or another. And before that was something ill-defined.
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His thoughts skim over the complex mire of his own more recent relationship history with a flip of the stomach. If not for Rubilykskoye, this might have been a less complicated conversation. But if not for Rubilykskoye, they probably wouldn't have found themselves here at all. He'd have vanished that mistletoe before they had the chance. ]
Is it alright? That this hasn't been [ hm. ] what you're used to.
[ One thing at a time. He'll start adding his colorful history to the pile once they've unpacked Silco's, the question more a prompt for a laying out worries than the sum of its parts. If the answer's no, they're shit out of luck - there's nothing else Stephen can offer him but their shared blind stumble through early days. ]
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[ One simple word made burningly earnest, silken voice gone rough on it.
He hadn't known, of course, that he was starving himself, had been very deliberate about seeing to the distraction of his needs with ruthless efficiency. But "intimacy with a man his own age" hadn't been on the list.
There's more in him but he doesn't really know how to talk about it without the scaffolding of a negotiation. ]
It does mean I can be, I suppose, defensive. Of my autonomy, of the vulnerability that passion requires of me.
[ Weakness, he'd called it, and he makes Stephen fight for every inch of it, but that's ultimately what it is to him, the soft underbelly, the ruinously exploitable desires, the loss of total control. Silco eyes his potatoes, a little tense. ]
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I get it. [ Phrased like this, separate from the heat of their earlier talk and cast in candlelight, it's all too easy to understand the sentiment. Their perspectives not the same, perhaps, but he knows the impulse. Remembers conversations like dark corners, his back unexpectedly against walls, fight or flight or freeze? It's the former more often than not - for both of them, it seems, and that's going to get them into some trouble if this keeps going where it's going. But. ] I know hearing it won't change that, but I won't make a weapon of the parts of yourself you let us both enjoy.
[ At least not outside of the context of that enjoyment. Words do very little to kill fear, he knows, and more of them won't change that, but context might help anyway. Something for him to remember, in the times when fear doesn't drown memory out. ]
I've spent the better part of the last year learning it's worth the risk. [ Being vulnerable. Baring the tender parts that can't hold up to misuse. ] I'll do whatever I can not to be the reason you decide it isn't.
[ It's more direct than he really meant to be, filled with a more fierce, focused determination. But it's important to him. Whatever this is, whatever it becomes, however long it's allowed to last - even if in the end he's only one small stepping stone in Silco's path, he hopes to be sturdy underfoot. To carry him onward, not crack and send him back the way he came. ]
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He exhales a small slow breath. ]
I trust you.
[ Mostly. When he's rational enough for trust, when trauma doesn't slap that decision from his hands. It's not the first time he's felt it, but somehow it's easy to share here, mild-mannered, almost quiet, in between another bite of steak. He's almost finished his plate, and he's not sure what he's going to do with himself then, how to distract his hands and eyes. ]
That doesn't mean I'm going to make it easy for you. I think it's better when we're both playing to win.
[ Sexually, anyway. This domestication, deeply held truths about himself shared over a candle-lit dinner, this is much less of a battle. If there was still a chance he could return home to Zaun he'd be reluctant, but that death freed him from certain responsibilities. Now there's only Jinx — and, newly, this.
He's flushing again. Maybe he can blame the wine. ]
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Good. [ Emphatic. Some leftover gladness for the trust oozing into his enjoyment of the game. ] We can agree on that.
[ And he takes a moment here to bask in it. In the colour creeping under Silco's skin, in something new discussed and made real. Not that the conversation's over, but he's lost interest in the meal, and all ten extra meals' worth of sides the staff managed to squeeze onto the table. Wine, then. Another sip, then reaching to top them both up as the few seconds' pause clears out the joy and reminds him that there's more than one conversation that needs having tonight. Just because they've made it through the first doesn't mean he's off the hook for the rest. ]
... I have your history. [ The bones of it, anyway, as it pertains to what they're doing. ] Mine's a little less, uh. [ Past. How to approach it? He's realising - slow, creeping understanding - that the way he's learned to be no longer sits in the comfortable realms of normalcy outside of its context. ] I didn't leave my last life behind on purpose.
[ The start of a point that ends and people have a habit of showing up here. He doesn't get that far, lapses into quiet and his own turn to look uncomfortable, tension clear in his jaw and the skin around his eyes for all he tries to will himself relaxed. It's been all too easy up until today to consider this almost as if it were simple, truly simple, a new shoot in empty soil. Unfortunate, then, to have to take a point to the bubble of that self-delusion. ]
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And now they're not.
He puts his fork down with a careful click, sits back in his chair rather than leaning in. Dabs his mouth with his napkin, letting Stephen stutter through what he's trying to say, considering the spaces of what he doesn't, words swerved. It's fine, he finds that as much a game as the rest of it.
He resists the urge to point out that nobody's here on purpose. Not the point. ]
The place with 'a lot of sex'.
[ Tenderness you took where you could get it. He can imagine where this is going, or at least the shape of it. Regrets doing it on the table rather than with the advantage of touch and teeth to stop Stephen stepping so carefully. Though Silco isn't any less deliberate. ]
Will you tell me about it?
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[ The place isn't the problem. He can spill his hate for it happily, all his rage and resentment, the horrors and the things he can't help but miss. Some of the tension seems to slip at mention of that part at least, no resistance to be found.
But. This isn't a conversation about pasts in the general sense. Is it better to be honest now, whatever extra pressure or inference of expectation that might pile on something too new to have to bear it, than have it break under unexpected weight without warning down the line? ]
It's more that I had people there. Some of them have been and gone, here. Some of them are here and don't remember. Some of them aren't.
[ People, is the point. He's not unattached, for all that he's been torn from those attachments. It isn't— straightforward. ]
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No, what strikes him is the usual need: to be the best. The most valued, of many. But it's without particular jealousy. They've known each other a month or two, things are only newly unfolding between them. Silco knows that his history, with so few people allowed in it, is not the norm. ]
All right.
[ He props his chin in his hand, fingers covering his mouth. Considers his emotional response: it doesn't quite correspond to that logic. The drugs — the ReSculpt — does tend to twist the psyche towards insecurity. Irritating. He ignores it; if it bothers him once the withdrawals are past he'll revisit the topic. ]
My ex showed up, as it happens, so I do take your point.
[ Sometimes the world simply shifts on its axis and takes the best laid plans with it. ]
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The bartender?
[ The bartender, like that's really the thing of the few things Silco told him that Stephen actually defines him by. ]
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[ There's a yes in his tone, the tip of his head. Silco at least seems unperturbed. Death doesn't stick here, so he can't just quietly make the problem go away, but he's got it handled. ]
He's agreed to a — truce. For Jinx's sake. Missed her whole teens and still considers himself her father. It's touching, really.
[ Silco does not seem touched.
He spears the pineapple he set aside with a fork and bites into it, considering the flavour more seriously now that it's not such a surprise. ]
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She was both of yours?
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[ Those last words dry, bitter. Pain too old to really hurt anymore.
He finishes the pineapple, letting the silence hang for a moment. Just when it seems he mightn't be going to say more, and they can end this digression. ]
He blamed my explosives. Gave up on our dream. Co-operated with Piltover enforcers to bring the survivors to heel. Everyone returned to their miserable lives. I was furious, at the time, but I understand it better now. He would rather Jinx and her older sister live to experience a hard world than lose them fighting for a better one.
[ He'd made the same choice in the end. Is there anything so undoing as a daughter? ]
But no, we never co-parented. So I imagine this will be a learning experience for us all. But we weren't talking about my past.
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cw: emeto
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🎀