#vander roleplay

[talistalk]

The Last Drop

Jayce pulls on the last of his new pair of boots, wiggling his toes within its ill-ventilated interior, and cracks his neck. Despite spending much of his morning and afternoon bent first over his increasingly irrelevant dissertation, then over his considerably more interesting “independent study” research, Jayce feels energized and only marginally nervous.

“You try going across the river?” Art had asked when Jayce bemoaned the cost of copper. “Stuff comes cheap.”

”You mean the Undercity? I don’t know. Are you sure it’s… safe?” Jayce had replied, eyebrow lifting, thinking back several years ago to his rebellious teenage ventures, embarrassing trips which only took him within the outskirts of the place. “Not really, but I hear they sell scrap metal for crazy cheap. I can’t remember the place my buddy mentioned, but I’ve heard The Last Drop - some bar - is a good place to start. Kind of the main watering hole down there, used to outsiders.” ”I’ll think about it,” Jayce had replied, scratching the back of his neck. ”I thought you had your prototype built?” Art had asked, hands on his hips, head cocked to the side. “Just how behind are you, Talis?” ”Ah, just some independent research. I might shift the direction of my dissertation, I don’t know. I’ll - I’ll talk to you about it later, alright? Anyway, gotta go, Arty. Thanks a lot.”

And now Jayce is here, wearing what increasingly seemed to him a poor disguise - his Academy uniform peaking out of a new hooded cloak - taking a seat at a bar well-worn and buzzing, populated by figures tattooed and suspicious. He sits, looking up from his hood, and eyes liquors familiar and exotic alike. Some seem to contain creatures frozen in time. He wonders if people actually drink from the bottles, or if the display is simply some macabre display appreciated by whoever owns the place. @houndunderground

[houndunderground]

It’s early. Vander’s trying to be quiet, but that’s not the easiest thing to do at his size, juggling a tray of fresh-baked pastries with a pot of coffee, a wrapped box, and a sealed letter all whilst trying to avoid the loudest of the creaky floorboards.

He manages to wrest the bedroom door open without dropping anything, and finds Silco still fast asleep. Vander slides the tray onto the foot of the bed, then leans back on his feet to admire the view. Silco’s hair is fanned around their face, soft feathery black against the pillow. Their thin fingers are curled just below their chin, and there’s a smudge of pen ink on the usual spot on one side of their hand.

Mornings like these are Vander’s favorites. Sil’s always been a night owl. It’s made it hard for Vander to work on her gift in secret, painstakingly polishing the rhodium pieces by hand and threading them onto the length of leather measured to wrap a few times around her wrist.

He pictures her scribbling away after the bar had closed, right into the early hours and exhaustion sent her crawling, yawning into bed, slipping in beside Vander and pressing her face into the cradle of his chest. She looks softer like this, younger, the dreamer Vander once met, laughing with Felicia over some minor act of rebellion. It makes his chest hurt.

Vander carefully sets out the gift and breakfast things on the nightstand. The pastries are filled with stonefruit—he’d had to call in a few favours from the dockworkers to smuggle a box down—and the coffee is bitter and strong, exactly the way Silco likes it.

“Morning, love,” Vander rumbles softly, easing down onto the bed. One of Silco’s thin feet is poking out, and Vander bends to kiss his arch before tucking it back under the rumpled covers. Then he ducks his own head under to follow, and kisses his ankle, the inside of his knee. Vander winds his fingers through Silco’s as the covers lift, and he grins up at him. “Want your breakfast first? Or can I have mine?”

@revolution-cheri

[houndunderground]

[Part one here.]

Vander's enjoying himself more than he should. The Piltie's visibly flustered, his blush a gorgeous russet underneath olive skin. "Easy," Vander says, slow and deep. "Look like you're gonna do yourself an injury, you're so worked up."

He takes another pull from his pipe, releases it slowly. Smoke hazes the room, offering a filter of gentle, herbal calm. "You didn't hear wrong. Plenty of scrap traders downstairs'll happily empty whatever's in your pockets." He lifts an eyebrow, the double entendre tripping with a light irony off his tongue. "Bigger problem for you, though, is you've attracted a lot of attention to yourself. Won't get too far down there tonight without more hands on you than I'd wager you want. So you've got a few options. There's a back staircase that'll get you into an alley and back out to the Lanes where you can run off home, no harm done. Tomorrow morning Benzo's opens at ten, and if you tell him Vander sent you, he'll give you a decent price on whatever it is you're looking for."

A heavy pause. Vander leans back in his seat a little, his thick thighs spreading. One hand is draped comfortably across the armrest of the seat, his fingers absently stroking at the upholstery.

"Or, you can wait it out up here with me." He exhales again. The Piltie's trousers look uncomfortably tight. Vander wonders if it's not just bartering the lad's green with. It would explain the tension across his shoulders, in the set of his strong jaw. Sympathy wars with amusement.

"Got a name, pup?" he says, the vaguest hint of a smirk pulling.

@talistalk

[houndunderground]

have you heard of jayce talis? he's a piltie kid, comes around sometimes to benzo's shop

Vander smirks.

Heard of him? Yeah, suppose you could say that. Good lad. Eager to please. Got a hell of a mouth on him, though.

[houndunderground]

You step down the stairs into the empty bar. It's closed, around noon, quiet. No kids in sight, jukebox silent, dust particles swirling in the beams of week light coming in from the couple windows.

You flick the lights on. A familiar figure sits at the bar, in his usual spot. He's doing paperwork, of course (you don't realize that he's been doing it in pitch black just a second ago), twirling with a strand of his hair. He doesn't look up.

Oh. Hello, love.

@revolution-cheri

Vander, moments ago, had been dreaming of fire. Even as he steps toward the figure at the bar, he can taste the acrid stench of burning hair, can feel tongues of heat licking at the backs of his arms.

“Silco?”

He’s beautiful in all the ways Vander has forgotten with time and bitterness. His fingers are sharp and pale around his pen. His eyes—both of them, perfect and free-skies-blue—are still set on the page in front of him.

Vander reaches an unsteady hand out, half afraid he’ll wisp away like the memory of this moment almost certainly will once he wakes. But his fingers meet the soft ends of Silco’s hair and it’s like before, like he’s twenty-six again; hopeful and brave and scared and proud and trusting.

“Sweetheart,” Vander breathes. “You’re here.”

[houndunderground]

have you ever gotten anyone pregnant? i bet there's some lucky gents who would looove to receive such a treatment

Yeah, I have. You asking?

Sil used to beg me for it. Wanted me to pin him down, too. Only sometimes, and only in the heat of the moment, though—would’ve killed me if he’d actually ended up with a kid to take care of.

[houndunderground]

A thin, speckled man, angular and pale, enters the bar, his cane tapping softly against the worn floors. He wears a button-down brown shirt, open at the collar, and simple black trousers, one leg of which is caged in a complex brace.

He sits at the bar, head down, surreptitiously observing the commotion.

“Good evening. I do not suppose you have any Becherovka in stock? If so, I would enjoy a couple shots, neat.”

( @askviktor )

Vander runs an appraising eye over the man. He’s Zaunite; nobody else would request a drink like that, but something in the gentle, elegant way he rests his hands on the bartop is incongruous with the familiarity of the syllables on his tongue.

“Been away long?” Vander says lightly. He pours out a shot glass, then leaves the emerald bottle beside it. “Got that look to you. Always recognize a local. But don’t think I’ve seen you in here before.”

Vander stops himself, taking a closer look. There is something familiar about him. The man’s eyes are a strikingly unusual colour. Amber gold, bright and clear, ringed by dark lashes. Something tickles at the back of his head; a memory of dancing, long fingers on strings, music. He’d been younger. Cheeks rounder; less skinny. “The artisans’ boy,” he murmurs, as though to himself.

[houndunderground]

Jericho had his cloak over his head as he walked into the alley behind the last drop, aiming to knock on the back door, not wanting to risk any of Silcos workers seeing him enter and snitching to Silco.

Jericho knocks a few times on the back door, leaning agaisnt the wall beside it, he was exhausted, he wanted to see his friend and have a drink, he couldnt believe how stupid it was to have to sneak around to the place he used to work.

"Van? Its me Jericho."

@errandboyjericho

//Hey its me who asked if i could make the oc blog with the one sided crush haha\\

Vander lowers the stack of heavy wooden crates in his arms to the floor of the rarely-used maintenance corridor, then straightens, wincing. Years of abuse are finally starting to take their toll on his back. He'll try to have an easy night, he decides, and leave the chairs he needs to stack until the morning. He's about to return to the noisy main room of the bar when there's a knock behind him.

He frowns to himself, leaning in to listen, and when he catches the sound of a half-hushed voice calling from outside, his brows lift up again in surprise. He unlatches the door to reveal a cloaked figure, and underneath the hood, a familiar face.

"Didn't think I'd be seeing you here again, lad," Vander says, not unkindly. He glances out into the alley behind Jericho, conscious of the light drifting in from the street beyond, and the possibility of shrewd, Shimmer-bright eyes beyond it. His frown deepens. "You'd better come inside."