#parental panic

The air was biting, a thick fog rolling off the Pilt as Felicia hurried through the back entrance of the half-finished bar. She looked exhausted, her coat threadbare and her eyes darting toward the street. In her arms, she balanced a sleeping Powder, while a very small, very fierce-looking Vi gripped the hem of her shirt.

Vander was behind the bar, polishing a brass rail, while Silco sat at a nearby table, buried in a mountain of blueprints and supply manifests.

"Vander," Felicia whispered, her voice tight. "I can’t keep them tonight. The Enforcers are sweeping the block, and I—I have to move. Just for a few days."

Vander dropped his rag instantly, his face softening into that look of mountainous empathy that always made Silco’s chest tighten. "Of course, Felicia. Bring them in."

Silco, however, didn't look up from his blueprints. "We are running a business, not a crèche, Felicia. The basement is still flooded and the electrical is a death trap."

"They're not 'electrical,' Silco, they're kids," Vander countered, stepping around the bar to take the sleeping Powder from Felicia’s arms.

Felicia looked at Silco, then back at Vander, a weary smile touching her lips. "Vi, stay with Vander. Be good for Powder."

Vi, who couldn't have been more than six, didn't look at Vander. She marched straight over to Silco’s table. She was high enough to see over the edge, and she stared at his blueprints with a defiant, judgmental pout.

Silco finally looked up, his good eye narrowing as he met the gaze of the pink-haired child. "You are standing in my light," he said coldly.

Vi didn't flinch. She reached out a small, grubby hand and poked the center of his map. "That’s a bad drawing. The bridge is over there."

Silco’s pen snapped.

"Vander," Silco hissed, his voice like sliding glass. "Remove this... creature. It’s critiquing my logistics."

"She’s got a point about the bridge, Silco," Vander laughed, walking over with Powder tucked against his shoulder like a sack of flour. He looked at Felicia and nodded. "Go. Stay safe. They’re home."

Felicia blew a kiss to the girls and vanished back into the fog, the door clicking shut behind her.

The silence that followed was heavy. Vander looked down at the two children, then at Silco, who looked as if he were being asked to handle a box of unstable hex-crystals.

"Well," Vander said, his voice echoing in the empty room. "I’ll go get some blankets. Silco, watch them for two minutes."

"I will do no such thing—Vander! Vander, come back here!"

But Vander was already heading for the stairs. Silco was left alone at the table with Vi, who was still staring at him, and Powder, who had just woken up and was beginning to lip-tremble in a way that suggested a localized monsoon was imminent.

Silco looked at the blueprints, then at the children, and let out a long, suffering sigh. "I suppose we aren't getting any work done tonight."

A few hours later, the bar had quieted down. Vander was busy helping a regular, and Vi was occupied with a training dummy Vander had rigged up for her.

Vander realized he hadn't seen the younger one, Powder, in a while. He wiped his hands on his apron and headed toward the back, half-expecting to find Silco in a state of nervous collapse.

He stopped at the doorframe of the workshop.

The room was dim, lit only by a single green-shaded lamp. Silco was hunched over his workbench, his jeweler’s loupe pressed to his eye. He looked like he was defusing a bomb.

Sitting on the stool beside him was Powder. She was so small her feet didn't reach the rungs, her eyes wide as she watched Silco’s every move. Between them lay a small, battered mechanical bird—a toy that had clearly seen better days, its wings hanging at a tragic angle.

Silco was using a pair of surgical-grade tweezers to realign a microscopic spring. His movements were fluid, his breathing rhythmic.

"If you move the tensioner here," Silco murmured, his voice low and devoid of its usual sharp edge, "the gear won't slip. It requires... finesse. Not the brute force your sister uses."

Powder nodded solemnly, leaning in until her blue hair brushed Silco’s shoulder. He didn't pull away.

Vander leaned against the doorframe, a knowing smirk tugging at his lips. He watched as Silco clicked a final piece into place. With a flick of a tiny lever, the bird’s wings gave a rusty whirr and began to flap.

Powder gasped, her face lighting up with a joy so bright it seemed to startle Silco. "You fixed it!"

Silco cleared his throat and immediately pulled back, snatching the loupe from his eye and assuming his usual rigid posture. He began frantically wiping his tools with a silk cloth.

"It was an affront to engineering," Silco snapped, his voice returning to its cool, detached rasp. He didn't look up, but his ears were suspiciously red. "The constant sniveling was distracting me from my work. I merely silenced the source of the noise."

Vander stepped into the room, his shadow falling over the workbench. "Right. Total coincidence that you used your most expensive set of tweezers for a 'noise-reduction' project."

Silco finally looked up, narrowing his eyes at Vander’s smug expression. "Don't start, Vander."

"I didn't say a word," Vander raised his hands in mock innocence, his eyes twinkling. He reached down and scooped Powder up, setting her on his hip. "Come on, little bird. Let’s go show Vi. Say goodbye to your favorite uncle."

"I am not an uncle," Silco muttered after them as they headed back to the bar.

But as the door swung shut, Silco looked down at the workbench. He picked up a tiny, stray blue thread that had fallen from Powder’s sleeve. He hesitated for a second, then tucked it into his vest pocket before returning to his ledger.

The next day...

The atmosphere in the office was thick with the scent of old parchment and the sharp, medicinal tang of ink. Silco leaned over his desk, his pen scratching out logistical notes for the next Shimmer shipment—until the light from the hallway was abruptly severed.

A massive, familiar shadow stretched across the floor.

Silco didn't need to look up to know who it was. The tension in his shoulders bled away, replaced by a rare, private warmth. "You’re late, Vander," he murmured, a faint smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

"I brought a guest," Vander’s rumble was full of suppressed amusement.

Silco looked up, expecting a stray informant or perhaps Benzo. Instead, he saw a shock of blue hair. Powder stood there, clutching what looked like a pile of discarded scrap metal and rusted springs against her chest. Her eyes were wide, glowing with a frantic, inventive light.

"It won't work," she whispered. Before Vander could even introduce her properly, she bolted from his side, scurrying to Silco’s desk and plopping the mechanical lump directly onto his meticulously organized ledgers.

Vander leaned against the doorframe, his arms crossed over his chest, his eyes crinkling. "I'll leave you to it, then," he said, throwing a wink toward Silco before retreating into the bar.

Silco let out a long, weary sigh, looking down at the "junk." It was covered in neon-pink sketches and crude markings, but as he began to study the internal alignment, his eyes widened.

It wasn't a toy. It was a bomb.

He looked at the small girl again. Respect, sharp and unexpected, bloomed in his chest. The mind on this one, he thought. A little spark of chaos.

"Well," Silco murmured, his voice losing its edge. "We can't have it failing at the crucial moment, can we?"

He pulled his tools towards him. "You’ve miscalculated the fulcrum," he explained, his voice low and instructional. He was surprised by her grasp of volatile chemistry—at such a young age, she understood the marriage of fire and pressure better than most of his grown men. "The trigger needs a secondary catch. Otherwise, it's just a paperweight."

He showed her the inner workings, his steady hands guiding her small, trembling ones. To prove the logic held, he clicked a gear into place and activated the mechanism. A sharp, rhythmic ticking filled the room. Powder held her breath.

With a practiced flick of his thumb, Silco hit the failsafe. The ticking died instantly.

"There," he said, setting her back on her feet. He gave her a pointed, stern look—the picture of a blase father who had just helped with a science project. "Don't set it off in the tavern. Take it to the sumps if you must witness the explosion."

"Thank you, Silco!" she chirped, scooping up her lethal treasure and darting out the door.

Silco leaned back in his chair with a heavy sigh, pushing his dark hair back from his forehead. He stayed like that for a moment, the silence of the room returning, until the shadow returned.

Vander stepped back in, his shoulders heavy and rolling with the exhaustion of a day spent keeping the peace. "They’ve gone home," he said, his voice dropping into a deeper, more intimate register. "Felicia picked them up."

Silco didn't move. He sat in his high-backed chair, watching Vander move into the room. He looked over him hungrily, a sudden, sharp desire blooming in his gut. He wanted the weight of the man, the heat of him, to erase the lingering traces of the day. He wanted to be taken right there, draped over the desk amongst the blueprints and inkwells.

Vander saw the look. His gaze shifted, darkening as his lips curled into a slow, knowing smile. He didn't say a word as he reached out, his large hands sweeping the ledgers and tools to the floor with one decisive motion.

He stepped between Silco’s legs, his hands gripping the edge of the desk. "You were saying?" Vander whispered, pulling Silco forward.

The desk groaned under their weight as they came together, a frantic, desperate collision of skin and leather. The heat in the office was stifling, the kind that made the fine silk of Silco’s shirt cling to his skin. Vander’s hands were a rough, welcome anchor on his hips, pulling him to the very edge of the desk until the wood bit into his thighs. Silco’s breath hitched, a sharp, ragged sound that was lost against the junction of Vander’s neck. He felt unraveled, his usual composure melting under the sheer, bruising weight of Vander’s presence.

Vander leaned in, his voice a low, gravelly vibration against Silco's ear. "Always so tense, Silco. Even now."

"Shut up," Silco hissed, his fingers digging into the muscle of Vander’s shoulders, pulling him down for a kiss that tasted of salt and obsession. Silco let himself be consumed by the only man who truly knew the monster beneath the suit.

The door didn't just open; it slammed against the stone wall with the force of a tectonic shift.

"VANDER! SILCO!"

The two men scrambled, a chaotic tangle of limbs and frantic adjustments. Silco practically vaulted backward toward his chair, his hair a wild mess and his vest hanging open, while Vander nearly knocked over a heavy inkwell trying to stand upright, desperately pulling up his slacks.

Felicia stood in the doorway, her chest heaving, her face a mask of parental fury. She wasn't empty-handed—she was holding the mechanical bomb, now glowing with a faint, ominous violet light.

"You gave my girl a fucking bomb?!" she roared, her voice echoing off the rafters.

The silence that followed was deafening. Vander looked to Silco, his eyes wide and pleading for a miracle. Silco looked back at Vander, his expression slowly settling into a mask of pure, unbothered nonchalance. Finally, they both turned to look at Felicia.

"Technically," Silco said, leaning back in his chair and coolly smoothing his hair, "she made it. I merely improved the internal combustion ratio. It was a matter of professional pride."

"It’s. A. Bomb," Felicia seethed, slamming the device down on the desk (luckily, on its side). "She’s six, Silco! She should be playing with dolls, not demolition!"

Silco shrugged, one elegant shoulder rising and falling as if they were discussing the price of grain. "She’s talented. It would be a crime to stifle such... explosive potential."

Vander, seeing the vein throbbing in Felicia’s forehead, quickly stepped between them. He cleared his throat, his face still dangerously flushed, and put on his best 'Peacemaker' voice.

"Silco is sorry for building your daughter a bomb, Fel," Vander said, casting a sharp, warning glance over his shoulder at his partner. "Really. Truly sorry. It won't happen again."

Silco opened his mouth to argue, but Vander’s look promised a very different kind of 'desk time' if he didn't shut up. Silco went quiet, though he looked distinctly bored by the lecture.

Felicia’s eyes narrowed. She looked at Silco’s disheveled state, then at Vander’s undone slacks and the sheer amount of sweat on both of them. Her anger didn't vanish, but it was suddenly joined by a sharp, knowing smirk.

"It better not happen again," she said, her voice dropping an octave as her gaze swept the room. She looked at the desk, then back at their flushed, guilty faces. "Though I suppose I should be glad you were... occupied. Might have given her a grenade launcher if I’d left her another hour."

She grabbed the bomb back up, tucked it under her arm, and turned on her heel.

"Lock the door next time, boys," she called out over her shoulder. "Some of us have lives to lead."

The door clicked shut, leaving the two men in a stunned, vibrating silence.

Vander let out a long, shaky breath and looked at Silco. "A bomb, Silco? Really?"