love bug

Recommended Listening: Riki's Kindness

If it had been three hundred, two hundred, one hundred years ago, Vandham would have met Minoth on a job, and warmed up to him, or not, and gotten into a bit of a tussle with him, or not.

If Cole had been a younger man, they might not have gotten on so well as they did. Maybe it was to be that Vandham had rules about scrapping with guys who couldn't defend themselves, or maybe he simply felt sorry for the poor sod (and what, pray tell, was the grand and glorious difference between those?).

What it meant to be an old man followed different scales, for an ex-noble Urayan and an ex-Blade whatever-the-hell-he-was. Blades didn't need continental affiliations, as Cole had mused to himself many a time before, but...it helped to have some sort of a signifier, didn't it?

Their working relationship probably also wouldn't have involved cohabitation. If they weren't creaky old men, and Vandham wasn't even.

Of course, they hadn't done it on purpose - who would? No one who could look at such a situation and realize just exactly, or even approximately, how ridiculous it was.

Vandham just kept on crashing at the playhouse, and Cole just kept on letting him. Cole just kept on setting up shop in Garfont, and Vandham just kept on letting him.

But there was crashing, and there was setting up shop, and then there was making it seem like you were about to move in, and eventually Cole had to lay down some ground rules (Garfont already had enough, and the place wasn't exactly crawling with spare people, but there were many more of them there than ever appeared in Mymoma, except at premieres or repremieres, and there hadn't been any of those in a good while).

"No physical weapons. Blade weapons are bad enough."

Vandham looked at him sideways. "'aven't you got a gun?"

"Rusted," Cole said simply, as if that explained it. "They're basically props, at this point, which is the only kind of weapon I intend to keep around."

"As if you're a pacifist!"

"Maybe closer to a pugilist."

"I see, I see..."

Despite his contesting interjection(s), this rule sat just fine with Vandham, since he didn't carry any other weapons than Roc's (Roc often patrolled the square for free samples from shopkeepers, while their Driver went about "visiting"), and his pouches were, however troublingly, full of medical supplies, not ammunition or the like.

Cole continued: "No touching the bugs."

One of the first few times Vandham had visited the playwright's office, he'd learned of their small and scaly existences, in this cage and that, but he'd never until this moment prodded about why an old man should keep the bloody things around. Don't they just give you the creeps?

(Bugs didn't, to Vandham, in general, mostly because he was so huge and they so small, his skin so callused as to barely feel the spiders he cupped in his hands and escorted out of tents and off of bedrolls. It was more the fact that Cole had collections of them, and they were everywhere.)

"Don't you appreciate art?"

Oh. Right. Vandham shook himself out of arachnoidal reverie. "Sure. Love history."

Cole gave him a wry, if slightly conceited, smile. "I know you love history. It explains everything. But you don't understand what these explain about me, is that it?"

Seeing as that hypothesis made him out to be not quite so clever, Vandham shifted gears somewhat, replying, "When I forget that you're beyond explainin', yeah, I do. I don't, rather."

"Well, they're beautiful, in sort of an aesthetic and useless way. But also, not. Very practical, well-designed. The perfect harmony of form and function. Most certainly not done by the Architect."

"Sounds like you."

"Only, I'm not so dangerous, anymore. I'm only ornamental."

Vandham grinned. "Don't remind me."

But Cole ignored his roving glance. "Last thing, don't open my office doors when I'm not here. Not that you can't go in, but I don't want anyone else getting in who's not supposed to."

"What, you don't trust me?"

"I trust you to get distracted." When Vandham pouted, Cole offered, "Put it another way: I don't trust anyone to be as tightly wound as me."

"Alright, alright," Vandham relented, "I see you there. So what, no guns, no bugs, no doors. You got a kid 'round here I don't know about?"

"Unlikely," sniffed Cole. "The only place I could get one is you."

"Woah, woah, those parts don't work on cue!"

"Your orphanage, Aquila?"

It was a bit of a lie, all in all, since Cole could get anything he wanted from anywhere and anyone, if he thought long and hard enough, with or without weighing on distaste for the Praetor, and usually without making himself any of a slime for it. If Sir Cole felt of the mind to get himself a child to raise at this stage (as he might have at many previous points unbeknownst to present and current company), he could probably do it without help from any such fine feathered friends. Still, if Vandham's reception of Cole's probably-not-so-accidental innuendo was to be bought, then yes, there was no one around to help except the big, broad mercenary.

Vandham considered it. Worse places for a kid to end up, yeah? "You want the next one we get in?"

"Do me a favor and don't refer to her like a side of Armu meat."

"How do you know she'll be a girl?"

"I don't. I just know you're not stupid enough to give me a boy."

"Tch. Dunno if I should be complimented or offended."

Vandham was neither when Iona arrived, however, note tucked into a fold of her swaddle as the mercs had, apparently, found her: in a dusty chest, in a looted house, in an abandoned village.

"Horrible way for them to have to leave 'er, huh?"

Cole simply said, in a tight voice, "I've seen worse." His hands were still locked behind his back, but his usual unbending crooked posture had relented, somewhat, that he might lean forward and to one side, and take a look at the tiny infant, such a miracle as to fit right in the heart of Vandham's gigantic palm.

"Don't think my boy was ever this small."

As ever, Cole had to raise a jagged brow. "Permission to speak freely, sir?"

Though Vandham laughed, his eyes didn't move from the tiny curl of blue hair at the center of Iona's forehead. His silhouette was smaller, without the countless field packs, it was true, but even so; his thumb, about the size of her fist. "What could you possibly say that's any worse 'n your usual? Go on, love."

"I hope we can make sure she never gets as sick as your son, either."

Not worse, necessarily, but sobering - far more sobering even than the simple existence of a child as small as a blue milkweed beetle, and twice as loved.

If it had been one hundred, two hundred, three hundred years ago, a quiet baby turned healthy toddler like Iona might very naturally have progressed to calling a man like Minoth "Papa". Since it wasn't, though, Vandham's eventual suggestion, behind the old cowboy's back, was that, sure, I bet he'd love bein' called "Grandpa", eh?

(He might also have said to her, "An' you can just call me Vandham, or Mister Vandham if you like," perhaps thinking of what the old man would indeed say, but whether or not he did, that was how Grandpa referred to him, so that was what he was, henceforth, to be.)