#sinvanco

Spent 3 outta the 4hrs fussing over anatomy that was immediately hidden/cropped.

Vander kind of feels like he’s been punched in the face.

Okay, he rationalizes. Okay, this is fine. He and Silco haven’t been... anything. In a very long time. And it didn’t matter. It really didn’t matter what he did. Or rather, it hadn’t mattered since Jinx had decided she was tired of split custody and wanted to go live with him. No matter how much that had stung. Silco was no longer his business. Jinx still called, sometimes, even. She never said anything about Silco. He didn’t ask. So of course he hadn’t known about the... boyfriend. The boyfriend.

The boyfriend that is none of his business. But it kind of is, because they’re in his car, and it’s fucking Singed, because of course it is. And because they’re on the run from the cops. Because of course they are. Great. Fantastic. He nods, once, twice, realizes he can’t deal with this and reaches forward to punch another address into his nav system.

“Great.” He says. “I’m happy for you both.”

“You don’t need to strain yourself.” Singed says, calmly.

“—Yeah actually I'm not gonna, where’s Jinx? Tell me you didn’t—”

“At her boyfriend’s for the summer.” Silco snaps, scathing. “As you would know if you’d returned her call last week.”

“I had a lot going on.”

“Of course you did.”

“Well if you hadn’t—”

Singed clears his throat, with a definitive sort of weight, and Silco shuts right up, which both impresses and annoys Vander, on a level that he thought he was beyond feeling. He didn’t think he’d ever been able to shut Silco up that fast.

“I don’t believe this is a productive conversation.” Singed says, serenely. “Do you have somewhere safe to take us? Unfortunately this.... Was. my backup plan. So I’m fresh out of places to hide.”

Vander sighs. “—yeah, I've got somewhere. What did you do?”

“That’s need to know information.” Silco says.

“And I need to know—”

Singed clears his throat again, and then looks faintly pained, like he regrets it, and reaches over to grab water out of a backpack he’s placed neatly on the floor. Vander kind of wants to ask what else is in that backpack and if any of it would be admissible as evidence in court. He doesn’t.

Singed very neatly pulls the mask over his face down to take a drink of water, and then he says, with all the weight of someone disclosing the weather—

“We killed four people.”

Vander thinks distantly that actually he wishes now that he hadn’t asked, but there’s no taking that back. He debates, for a moment, the pros and cons of plausible deniability, settles on—

“Did they deserve it?”

“Probably.”

“...Great.” Vander says, and then resolves not to say literally anything else for the rest of this drive.

“May I roll the windows down?” Singed asks, “And have the aux cable?”

“Oh, sure.” Vander says, without thinking. “Just— lean up and grab it.”

Silco rolls his window down without further fanfare, and Singed reaches up to plug his phone in. Carly Rae Jepsen starts blasting out Vander’s car speakers, and Vander fixes his eyes on the road.