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Credence cannot sing. Well, Percival thinks, tilting his head towards one shoulder a little, he can sing. And he does, frequently, but he couldn’t carry a tune if Percival gave him a bucket to do it with.
His off-key caterwauling can be heard from the kitchen on this fine Saturday morning while Percival lays in bed still, despairing over the smile that draws his unwilling mouth up at the corners. This burgeoning happiness when confronted with bad singing is the very definition of ‘sickening’, a word Percival used to employ often in the privacy of his mind to describe his love-addled colleagues when they would gush about their husbands and wives in his presence. Or, rather, try to gush, before he always cut them off.
Truly, he has become what he despises.
Percival groans and rolls onto his front in order to mash his (still smiling) face into the pillow.
He loves Credence; he accepts that fully. He loves his kind heart and his quick mind, his strength of will, his gentle hands, his awkward laugh. But he shouldn’t love the singing. No one else would, he’s pretty sure. It really is horrendous and if Credence ever manages to hit the right note in whatever melody he has chosen to strangle on any given day, it can only be an accident every time. Kind of like how even a broken clock is right twice a day.
So it’s horrendous, and yet here Percival is: grinning like Credence’s butchering of a song from a musical they saw together recently is the loveliest aria to ever grace his ears.
Sickening, he thinks. His cheeks are beginning to hurt.
Footsteps approach, only they’re not the normal one-two left-right steps of a normal gait, but an attempt to mimic tap-dancing. Percival turns onto his back again, sits up against the headboard, and watches Credence enter the bedroom. He’s drumming his feet against the floor in a manner Fred Astaire would not be proud of and carrying a tray with two cups of coffee rattling about (quite disconcertingly) in their saucers with his movements.
“My one and only,” Credence warbles as he gets nearer, the pitch of the tune shifting up and down in places the song’s composer could never have anticipated, “there isn’t a reason why you should turn me down, when I’m so crazy over you.”
He beams after finishing that line and his easy, endearing joy and utter lack of self-consciousness are more than enough to have Percival’s heart squeezing in his chest, wringing itself out and forcing love to rush all through his veins.
“I’d never turn you down,” Percival tells him sincerely. Not even for crimes against music.
Credence stops his (ridiculous, ridiculously adorable) tap-dancing and walks straight over to the bed to deposit the tray on Percival’s lap before leaning down over it to kiss his cheek.
He lingers instead of pulling back right away, one hand cradling Percival’s jaw as he softly says in his ear, “A new song. You’ll know this one.”
Percival huffs a laugh. He knows all the songs Credence loves best, even if he struggles to recognise them when presented to him in Credence’s best, most out-of-tune renditions. “Try me,” he says.
Credence’s lips curve where they’re pressed against the side of his face. “Now that my blue days have passed,” he sings, “now that I’ve found you at last…”
He draws out the last note, just like Henry Burr does (except Henry Burr sings the correct note), and then waits.
“I’m not singing it,” Percival says, tone aiming for ‘stern’ and landing somewhere around ‘could be convinced with very little effort’.
“Percival,” Credence says. The hint of admonishment he gives the name could be construed as ‘very little effort’.
Percival sighs, long-suffering, but he rubs his cheek against Credence’s to show he doesn’t mean it. “I’ll be loving you always,” he murmurs, and then turns his head to press their lips together. No more singing, not just now.
But if Credence is singing about loving him, Percival can tolerate—and even enjoy, Merlin help him—a few (okay, many, many) flat notes.
He breaks the kiss, brushes the pad of his thumb over Credence’s mouth, and says, “I’m crazy over you too.”