Chapter Text
There was someone new in Benzo’s shop.
New to Vander, that is.
If Ekko was the one manning the counter, that meant it was someone Benzo was comfortable leaving Ekko alone with. That kid knew how to talk a person into spending all the money they had on them, easily, but Vander knew that Benzo knew he was still just a kid , and Vander knew because of that, that under Benzo’s bluster and hard-headedness, he cared about that kid.
So, this new person was safe. Safe enough for Benzo to hide away in the back room while Ekko worked his magic, at least.
And Vander could tell, just by one look at this person’s back, that they were not built for this. He could tell, just by one look at Ekko’s wide, gleaming eyes, that the kid had a sucker absolutely hooked.
“This is…definitely enough, then?” the new person asked, voice hushed. Nervous. “If you need more—”
Janna. What an idiot.
“Wellll,” Ekko started, “you know, we had to outsource half this stuff, and it cost us extra, sooo — really, I was givin’ you a deal, just ‘cause you’ve been a real loyal customer of ours, but…”
“But, you need more. Right, no, yeah, that’s— Um— Shit, hang on, lemme just, uh, count…”
They batted their cloak out of the way, hand shoving into their pocket and just pulling out an entire fistful of gold, and then dropped that onto the pile of gold that was already sitting on the counter.
What was it, then? Crime, or Piltie?
The cloak was white. Only an idiot would wear white down in Zaun. It’d get stained by all the shit in the streets, literal shit, smog and smoke and ash. White looked dirty. Black, you could never tell, and if you couldn’t tell, it wasn’t even dirty. Muted colors looked fine enough, even if they were technically dirty. Neons stood out so bright that the dirt didn’t even matter.
So, nobody who made a living killing or stealing or beating or a mixture of those things would wear white. But what sort of Piltie would come all the way down to mix it up with the underside, come shopping here, when they had everything they’d need up there?
Someone with big enough balls, maybe, would wear white. Someone above killing or stealing or beating with their own hands. Someone—
“You’re gonna need to add a little more,” Ekko said, after thumbing through the new addition of gold coins so casually that Vander wagered he hadn’t even counted them.
“Oh.” The new person fumbled again, pulled out another five coins, dropped them on the counter, then fished back into his pocket and fumbled for another moment, before coming out of it empty-handed. “That’s…all I’ve got. Is that— is that enough?”
Fuck. Piltie. Definitely Piltie. Vander hated himself for having even entertained the notion of this person not being a Piltie.
Ekko grinned widely. “Yeah, I think so! Pleasure doing business with you, as always. See you next month, same order, same payment?”
“Uh— Foo.” They blew out a breath; Vander could imagine the way their cheeks must’ve puffed out with it. “That’s… Yeah. Sure, yeah, thank you, um, sss-same order, same— same payment. ”
That came out through gritted teeth, and Vander watched as their hands clenched into fists. On another sigh, though, they turned on their heel, and suddenly Vander was looking down at their face.
Black hair, gelled back. Wide, dark brown eyes, that were growing wider by the second. A gap between their teeth. Stubble on their jaw, their chin; dark circles under their eyes. Seeing the front of them, their clothes, their face, their demeanor, all of it, all properly ironed and poised, golds and whites, spick-and-span clean — it just screamed Piltover.
They weren’t built for this place. Vander knew it.
“S—sorry!” they blurted out, and despite being bigger themself, stocky and well-built, they somehow managed to dart past Vander and squeeze their way through the doorway.
Vander stepped inside as they did, giving them more room to squeeze through, and while he watched them run over his shoulder, the moment the door slammed shut, he turned to look back at Ekko.
“Who was that?” he asked, unable to deny himself the curiosity. Anyone would be curious.
Ekko grinned even wider. “I ‘unno. Some Piltie. He’s real dumb, that’s all I know; I mean, look’it all this gold! I bet me and Benzo could get some imported fruit with this—!”
“Money goes back into the shop first and foremost, Ekko!” came Benzo’s voice from behind the closed door into the back of the shop.
Ekko groaned, rolling his eyes. “Fineeee.” Then, he pulled his shirt out, taut, and used an arm to slide all gold off the counter and into his shirt. “I’m gonna bring all this back to Benzo! Whatever you need, Mr. Vander, you know we’ll just put it on your tab! Or, haha, maybe the Piltie just paid for it—!”
Vander waved him off with a begrudging, “Go on already, lad.”
He only needed a bulb, because the one in Powder’s nightlight had gone out, and he knew where Benzo kept them, so that didn’t take much time at all to find. After calling to Benzo and Ekko that he’d taken one, he was already making his way out back onto the street, eyes scanning—
Scanning for that Piltie.
But he was clearly long gone, having run off with his metaphorical tail between his legs — and Vander would rather die than waste any time thinking about a Piltie. So, bulb in hand, he set off on the walk back to the bar.
- - -
Months later, a white cloak graced the doorway of The Last Drop.
Vander caught the sight of it in his peripheral vision, as he was sliding drinks down along the bar, and by the time he looked up, that white cloak had stepped through the doorway, and Benzo was behind him.
It wasn’t just Vander’s eyes following that white cloak across the floor of the bar. Plenty of patrons tracked him, eyed him, like he was a full platter set before them and yet they were told to wait, boy; sit, girl. Benzo, and thus Vander, were the only barriers saving him from being utterly devoured.
So, when they approached the bar, and Vander gave a look to a few curious patrons, those patrons immediately scurried off, leaving a few empty seats on either side of Benzo and the white cloak as they sat down themselves.
“Not often you bring a guest ‘round,” Vander commented casually. “Are the drinks on you or him?”
“Uh, me, ” the white cloak said, answering for Benzo. On one hand, a Piltie inserting themselves, speaking over someone from Zaun, would normally set Vander on his haunches, but there was something about this kid’s eagerness. He felt more like a puppy than a piece of shit. “Just — me, please. Tab. You can…open a tab. If you do that here.”
Vander scoffed, setting down the glass he was drying off hard enough that it clacked against the counter. “Yeah, boy, we have tabs. We’re not as uncivilized as you think.”
Benzo laughed deep in his chest, and the white cloak wheezed. It wasn’t a laugh; it was a noise of embarrassment, and Vander couldn’t even bite back a chuckle of his own. At least he was easy to tease.
“Relax. You’re not getting a tab, anyhow; I doubt Benzo’s keepin’ you here for long,” Vander added. (Reassuring the Piltie was a stupid move, but there he was.) “And better for me I knew how cheap the drinks needed to be.”
“Oh, don't embarrass me in front of the lad,” Benzo grumbled. “I could afford our drinks well enough myself. But he insisted—”
“Because you’re doing me a really big favor, Mr. Benzo—”
“A job, Javier; you’re paying me for this, even beyond the drinks.”
Vander paused in pouring out Benzo’s usual drink, arching a brow. “A job? Here? What’s this kid gotten you into, Benzo?” ‘Topsider’, of course, was left unsaid.
Benzo gave him a withering stare. “He wanted to see Zaun. I thought this was a good first stop.”
Ah. Vander scoffed again, nodding along. Tourism that was easier on Piltover sensibilities, then. The Last Drop, the surrounding markets, they were brighter, busier, lighter in both smog and ambiance. By no means was it perfect, but it was a better view than the slums or the mines, and with that, Benzo would get paid.
Although, funny, that he was wasting his time on a topsider. Even for all the gold in the world, Benzo wasn’t exactly the type of man to give more of his time up than necessary. Selling things to the kid — Javier, apparently — made plenty of sense. This, though? Selling his time? It was a goddamn waste. Time was money. So, really—
“He must be paying you your entire weight in gold,” Vander mused, still casual. He set Benzo’s glass down in front of him, a better scotch than they usually drank themselves.
“Cheers to that,” said Benzo, and that was all Vander needed to hear to know he was on the right track. Benzo tipped his glass towards Vander, and Vander nodded in turn, before Benzo took a drink from it.
With him served, Vander’s gaze turned to Javier. “What’ll it be for you, kid? You don’t seem the scotch type.”
“Um…” Javier’s tongue darted out to lick at his lips. His fingers drummed against the table. Nervous. Even still. Figured. “What sort of stuff do people usually drink here?”
“Stuff that’d burn your throat raw.”
“Oh. Uh. Well, not— not that, then, please. I like my throat not being burnt, I think.”
Probably liked his lungs not being burnt either, judging by the respirator hanging around the base of his neck. Looking down at that, Vander could also see the way Javier’s throat bobbed as he swallowed, and— and, quickly, Vander snapped his eyes back up to Javier’s face.
“Aye, I can manage that for you,” he said, turning and squatting down to pull a bottle from under the bar. Still low-range, but not as vile, more stinging than burning. He came back up, grabbed another glass, poured it half-full just to let him get a taste of it first, ignored the fact that he was considering those Piltover sensibilities of his, and then set the glass down in front of him. “That’ll be one gold, kid, for the both of you.”
Less considerate. Better.
Javier grimaced a bit, but then he pursed his lips together, ducked his head down with a deep nod, and reached down below the bar’s counter.
A few moments later, his hand came back up, and he set three gold coins on the counter.
Javier’s own eyes were lowered, his gaze settled on the counter too. “You can, um… You can keep the change.”
Vander stared down at those coins. Stupidity, tourism, and pity, it seemed, like illness-borne shit that stunk all the way up to the fresh air of Piltover. One gold coin was enough of an overcharge; three in return was pointed, knowing.
So, Vander took the one, and flicked the other two, one after the other, right at Javier’s chest. “You can keep the change.”
That had Javier’s eyes blowing wide, as he suddenly looked up at Vander. His cheeks grew ruddier. “Sss—sor— sorry,” he said, gathering those two coins and assumedly shoving them back in his pocket. “I didn’t mean… I jus-just want to help? That — is why I’m here. I thought, um— I—”
Benzo’s shoulder shifted to the side, and judging by the way Javier then shifted to the side, Vander could guess pretty easily that Benzo had just elbowed him to get him to shut up.
Smart move, really.
“Ignore the lad,” Benzo said then, shifting again to clap Javier on the shoulder. “Topsider dreams. We’ll finish our drinks and be out of your hair. Plenty more left on the tour, after all.”
Vander scoffed a third time, grimacing. “Sure. No need to tip.”
While the patrons of The Last Drop still left a couple seats of a buffer between them and Benzo and Javier, they did start approaching the bar again once Vander moved on from them. It was easy enough to push that damn Piltie pup out of his head, and focus on serving literally everyone and anyone else.
He hadn’t even noticed Benzo and Javier getting up from the bar until a whole group took over their space, and by then, when he looked up, the only glimpse he caught of them leaving was Javier’s white cloak.
Then the door shut, and Vander had far more important things to focus on.
- - -
There were a few more months between Vander’s sightings of Javier.
Sometimes the image of that kid crossed Vander’s mind between then, and it made his mouth all sour and twisted-up, and then he’d think about the bob of his throat, and his mouth would dry out, and then he’d remind himself of those two damned coins, and that’d sober him up entirely.
Sometimes Vander would wonder what the hell was that kid’s problem. What his notions of ‘helping’ even were. What he was so dead-set on he’d put himself into fucking debt with Benzo for.
He didn’t make any sense. But, fuck, Vander really had more important things to focus on than some puppy-eyed upstart.
That included his kids being fucking idiots. He loved them, he did, but they had apparently started harboring overly-grand notions of ‘helping’, too. They just wanted to help, wanted to prove they could fight and sneak around and steal and bring in money, everything Vander didn’t want for them — and they just had to fail massively and spectacularly at it all, to boot.
It wasn’t until his talk with Benzo, and Claggor’s talk with Ekko, that Vander realized the explosion in that topside apartment was Javier’s apartment. Grayson’s appearance during their talk did little to assuage whatever mess of emotions he’d felt, now that he knew enforcers were looking to pin the explosion on someone.
If it wasn’t the young man who’d made the explosive material, it was going to be the children who’d set it off. Neither Vander nor Benzo offered up the children, though.
Vander was sure he’d have reached across the counter to strangle Benzo if he’d so much as opened his mouth to breathe — but that was a fruitless train of thought. Benzo understood; he had Ekko.
Which meant that was that. Vander returned to the bar with Claggor; enforcers roamed the streets of Zaun in search of the children, and all Vander had to do was put out about twenty different raging fires at once.
Until the next evening, when there was a pounding on the front door of the bar. Vander had kept the place locked up for the night; people were pissed and hurting, sure, and while it’d likely have done good to give them a communal place to come together and vent their anger and hurt, the enforcers had backed off in the afternoon, ran for Piltover with their tails tucked between their legs. Nobody was going to attack an enforcer or two because the doors to The Last Drop were locked that night, anymore.
So, nobody should have been knocking on those doors. But the knocking grew louder, and louder, and eventually it became a pounding, and after that came a bellowing voice: “Vander! Open the fucking door!”
Benzo.
But Powder squealed, hands smacking over her ears as she skittered behind the bar. “Who is it who is it who is it!” she wailed out. “Don’t let ‘em in, Vander— If it’s enforcers, you can’t—!”
Fuck. Vander pinched the bridge of his nose, taking a moment to breathe, but when he looked back up, Vi had already followed after Powder and was bringing her down to sit on the floor, hidden behind the bar.
“It’s just Benzo, Pow, not the enforcers,” he explained slowly. “Vi, finish pouring her juice. Straw’s in the sink.”
Mylo and Claggor had already scrambled over to the doors, and with Mylo sitting on Claggor’s shoulders, he could look through the peephole carved into the door — a literal hole — that was at Vander’s exact height.
“It’s definitely just Benzo!” Mylo called. “And, uh, Ekko? Yeah! And some other guy— Guy’s wearing white! What a loser!”
White?
Fuck.
“Boys, move, ” Vander snapped. He came up behind them and pushed Claggor out of the way, then immediately reached a hand up to grab Mylo by the collar as he nearly fell off of Claggor. He set Mylo down with that one hand, and used the other to unlock and open the doors at the same time.
On the other side of the doors stood Benzo and Javier. Benzo seemed ruffled, stressed. Ekko was peering around Benzo’s back, looking nervous. And Javier—
Quite frankly, Javier looked like shit. That pristine white cloak of his was covered in what could only be Zaunite muck, there were a few bruises starting to bloom on his face, and he was clutching a bag that was overstuffed, about ready to burst at the seams.
“Benzo,” Vander said. “Ekko. Javier. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I haven’t got room in my place for him—” Benzo started.
Immediately, with an even sharper snap of, “No,” Vander started to slam the doors shut — but Benzo’s hands came up and caught them before they could be.
“Vander, yes,” Benzo snapped back. “This is our faults. This lad is our problem.”
“A fucking Piltie? I’ve got my hands full with this lot of kids; I’m not taking in a bloody grown topsider who knew what he was getting into—”
“Did he know my kid was going to follow him home and blab to your kids about what he had in there? Did he know your kids were going to blow up his apartment, his entire life? The enforcers are gone, Vander, because he took the fall. The least we can do—”
“The least he can do is deal with the consequences of his own actions! Janna, Benzo, I’m not taking in a fucking Piltie who can’t deal with that! What happened to him, eh? Did you even ask before you trudged all the way over here? I’d bet you a night’s income he just got fined, and maybe his bloody honor got disgraced, so now he thinks he’s worth as much as we are down here in the fucking dumps—”
“S-si-sss—”
“—so he came running down here with his tail between his fucking legs, and in a week tops of him being down here he’s going to realize it’s nothing he can handle, and he’ll go running right back topside to his parents who’ll wipe his tears with their money—”
“Sss-sir— ”
“—and, fuck, I’m not doing this to my kids. I’m not making them watch me drop everything to take in some damned topsider—”
“SirIwasbanished!”
Vander inhaled sharply, his fingers curling against the doors as his gaze shifted over to Javier. “What?”
“They, um.” Javier’s tongue darted out to lick at his lips, and he shifted on his feet, nervous. “They — banished me. I was banished. So, I— I can’t go back. I have s-some of my things, and, that’s it, that’s all they let me take, they said I was lucky for even this much, but, now— now I—” His eyes flickered down, and his lips wobbled, pressed together tight. After a tight pause, his mouth opened again, but all that came out was a crack of his voice, and he quickly closed his mouth.
On one hand, he looked absolutely pitiful. Like the saddest, wettest, muckiest dog whimpering through the streets of Zaun looking for scraps of food and a place to sleep. But on the other— “ Banishment is serious,” Vander said, voice falling lower. “Means you’re dangerous. ”
At that, Javier looked up again. “I— I’m not. What I was trying to make, it wasn’t supposed to be a weapon, it— it was sss-supposed to help people. It was just…unstable. Which is why they were safe in my apartment, and why nobody but me was ever s-supposed to handle them, and that’s why I paid Benzo to give me a tour, because I needed to know what sort of things I could build to help everyone down here too, not just Piltover, but the Council didn’t understand the Academy never understood, and now I’m just Jayce, no Talis, my whole life is gone, and I just want a fucking bed, please—”
Fuuuuck.
Vander leaned his head back with a groan. There was another crack in the ceiling. Maybe he could shove the kid up in there. He’d stop rambling, and Benzo would stop guilting him into taking the kid in.
But life wasn’t that simple. Benzo continued to glare at him, and Javier — Jayce? — continued to ramble, so Vander was once again snapping: “Shut up, kid.”
“S—sorry. ”
There. Quiet. Vander heaved a heavy sigh and turned to look over his shoulder. Vi was standing behind the bar still, arms resting on the counter, her face pulled into an expression of utter disgust. Mylo and Claggor were both hovering by the jukebox, since it was far away enough to the door to feign disinterest to the conversation they were obviously interested in. And, Powder—
Powder’s eyes peeked over the edge of the bar’s counter.
“Vander,” she called, her voice ringing out in the tense silence, “if we blew up his bed, shouldn’t we give him a new one?”
Vi and Mylo both immediately voiced their dissents to that, voices melding together with Claggor’s as he argued that maybe Powder was right, actually—
And, with another sigh, Vander stepped out of the doorway. “Inside,” he said tersely, over all four of his kids bickering amongst themselves. “You set one foot out of line, topsider, and you’re out on the streets.”
Jayce — Javier — was promptly shoved into the bar by Benzo. And with nothing more than a mildly encouraging and mildly sarcastic, “Atta boy, Vander,” from Benzo, he turned on his heel and ushered Ekko along.
Vander could only hope he’d be back to fetch the kid in a day or two, once he cleared up space in the back of the shop. Maybe he’d finally stop hoarding so much junk.
- - -
An hour later, the kids were all seated at the bar with Javier — Jayce — with two on either side of him. Powder and Claggor on one, Vi and Mylo on the other.
Vander had cooked up dinner for the lot of them, door to the kitchen wide open so he could keep an eye on them while he cooked. To say he had even a shred of trust in Jayce — Javier — would’ve been a vast overstatement. Each time he breathed, Vander was clutching his wooden spoon tighter.
But nobody died in the time it took to cook and serve dinner. And now, as Vander stood on the other side of the bar and picked at his own bowl of stew, all the kids sat their, their bowls untouched, as they ogled their new guest.
Said guest was devouring his bowl of stew with the voracity of a man who’d been starved for a week, not a day.
“Did they not feed you in prison or something?” Mylo asked.
“Wasn’t enough. Porridge and bread.”
“Is your name Javier or Jayce?” Claggor asked second.
“Um. Yes? Javier was my grandfather’s name; I chose it. But, when I joined the Academy, too many of them said it wrong, made it a problem, s–so, I went by Jayce. And it sss—stuck. I used Javier here, because I hoped me being down here wouldn’t have, um, followed me back up to Piltover? S–since I, you know, um, mostly just go by Jayce, now. But I guess Ekko followed me, instead…”
“What were you even trying to make? You said it wasn’t supposed to be dangerous, but an explosion is still an explosion,” Vi asked third.
At that, Jayce frowned. “I probably shouldn’t answer that one.”
“All the more reason to answer,” Vander commented.
“Uh…” Jayce blew out a breath, cheeks puffing out. “Uhhh. Yeah. Okay. Uh. Well. Nothing violent, or crazy, or harmful, just— jusssst— uh— magic.”
“Magic.” Vander squinted at him. “Magic.”
“Magic,” Jayce repeated with a slow nod. “Yes. Yeah. Yep.”
Benzo would kill Vander if he threw if this kid out onto the street. Benzo would kill him, his kids would have nobody, nobody except some fucking twenty-something year old upstart who was trying to create magic—?
“Is it- is it my turn now?”
Powder’s voice broke through the silence once again, and when nobody spoke up to tell her it wasn’t, she balled her hands into fists, took in a deep breath.
“Do you hate me?” she asked fourth.
Jayce blinked down at her. “Do I—” And he blinked again. “Do I hate—?” Again. “I…” Again. “No. No, I— You’re just a kid. You all are. And, you- you didn’t know. Benzo didn’t know, Ekko didn’t know, so none of you knew, nobody knew— So, um, no. I…don’t hate you. Any of you.”
Powder blinked down at her soup. Her nose scrunched up with a sniffle, and her lips trembled. She just mumbled, “o-okay, thanks,” and promptly shoved a massive spoonful of stew into her mouth.
In that moment, Vander knew he needed to reel them all in, so he told the rest of his kids: “Eat, too. It’s been a long couple days.”
They all ate in silence, after that.