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Percy doesn’t wake immediately. He spends the first day and a half asleep and most of the next month bedridden. It’s not just the stab wound in his side - and they keep Raishan far away from him in the Zephrah Ranch’s sickroom for that - it’s whatever drugs he’d been dropping too. He shakes something terrible and between withdrawal from the drugs and the pain of his injury he’s by turns delirious and angry, desperate or just sad.
Vex probably shouldn’t spend so much time at his bedside but it’s right by Vax’s. After her brother’s all healed up (and spending more time with Keyleth) Vex keeps visiting.
They can’t give Percy much for the pain - tylenol is what they have to hand, sometimes aspirin. The Ashari seem to be big fans of natural medicine - they’re as likely to offer willow-tea as aspirin from the store. Percy accepts whatever he’s given - Vex thinks he’s too desperate from pain and withdrawal to care what form relief comes in.
He certainly clings to her hand a lot when offered it, when he’s not angry.
As the weeks go on he becomes more lucid. His apologies after his snapping anger don’t sound like a druggie’s desperation but sincere, as though he’s ashamed of his anger, his inability to contain it, his reliance on whatever the El Royale’s managers had given him.
And so they talk.
“I just don’t think it’s wise,” Vax says, blowing smoke and passing the joint to one side. “Y’know?”
He and Keyleth are sitting under a tree a little way away from the ranch proper, watching down as Vex coaxes Percy through his exercises in the yard.
“Vex and the bellhop boy?” Keyleth asks. He narrows his eyes - she’s teasing him. He’s the only one who still calls Percy that, Keyleth is as friendly with Percy as Vex is.
“Just…” he gestures, reclaims the joint. “Saundor was a fucky bastard, y’know. And Vex is- somehow he got her all snarled up.”
“And you think Percy’s gonna make that worse.” Keyleth’s leaning back against the tree now, long legs stretching out and Vax’s hand drops to rub gently at the grass stains on her knee.
“I think,” he says, “They’re both goin’ too quick.” He gestures down to the yard. “He can barely walk and they’re trying to run.”
Keyleth laughs, and it’s utterly charming; he tears his eyes away from his sister and the bellhop boy to see Keyleth’s pulled her hat down low over her eyes.
“You ever think,” she says. “That they’re running into friendship cos they both know running into anything else’d be unwise?”
They actually are taking things slow, is the thing. Percy doesn’t even know, really, what to make of the friendship that’s sprung up between himself and Vex but he’s glad of it even so. He barely knows anyone here for all they’re perfectly kind, but Vex - like her brother and those others at the El Royale, for now taken their leave - went through the same hell at the El Royale as he did.
And… she’s kind. She’d been kind to him, offered him sympathy, back at the El Royale, but he’d hardly been in his right mind and she’d been... he didn’t know how high and messed up.
But kindness isn’t nothing. Sympathy isn’t nothing. And that she still is- he’d wonder if it were guilt or sympathy or keeping herself distracted from something else but it isn’t his business, really. And if all she wants is to find distraction in his company he’s glad to give it however he can. She coaxes him into exercising, to building up his strength again and he grumbles and he listens and apologises for his remaining hard edges.
Least he can do when she’s still so kind.
She’s kind so he tries to find what dregs of kindness he has left. He can do courtesy - courtesy is what got him hired after all, his ability to cling to procedure if nothing else - but courtesy isn’t kindness and Vex-
Vex offers him kindness, he thinks because she thinks, somehow, that he deserves it.
He’ll give her the same because he knows that she does.
Coaxing him to exercise is harder than it seemed - he won’t do it for its own sake, but make it a bet or a game or a dare and he takes to it like a duck to water. It’s kind of endearing, really. She probably shouldn’t be surprised when, as soon as he’s deemed well enough, he starts helping with her chores.
Most of what she’s asked to do isn’t strenuous - feed the chickens, water the beans, maybe get the horses exercised if they’re not being worked that day and look in on some of the feral dog litters the Ashari pick up from the roadside.
(There’s one, a huge puppy, so fuzzy he’s always sweltering in the heat, found all alone. He’s practically a bear, too big to play with the others and if he’s Vex’s favourite no one knows it but her.)
“Percy,” she calls, half-chiding as she catches him hauling out the bag of chicken feed. “You don’t have to do my chores.”
“Sure,” he says easily. “But I do need something to do.”
She narrows her eyes at him but he just smiles all the more sincerely and she sighs.
“Well, get a move on then,” she says, gesturing at the chickens. “They’re not gonna feed themselves.”
Keyleth has only a little idea what they’ve all been through. Sure, Vax has told her this’n that about what’d happened at the El Royale, about what’d happened down at Echo Tree Ranch, but that’s just what he’d seen and she knows he’s missed something. What he’s said doesn’t explain how Vex pulls back at the fireside gatherings, doesn’t explain how though Percy can make every shot perfect at the little pellet-gun stand at the fair he still jumps a foot at the sound of gunfire.
She can guess though. Keyleth’s seen enough people escaping other things to recognise it and sure she can be blunt but she also knows better than to pry.
Besides. Vex and Percy seem to be doing good for each other. She doesn’t miss how, as everyone eases at fireside meets, high on this and that - alcohol and weed, mostly, and love, but love’s easy to find with friends and family - when Vex pulls back to the shadows at the edges, Percy takes a minute or two but always follows, sits a few metres from her and rolls her a bottle.
And they sit there, in silence, and drink a little and relax a little, and don’t say a word.
It’s not just that. Percy is more obvious than Vex but rarer - the day he jumps when the truck backfires, goes so deadly still where he stands in the yard, chicken feed dripping from his hand like water, Vex is the one to bring him out of it, to make him laugh as she trickles chicken feed over his head and gets the biggest of the hens to flutter right up to Percy’s shoulder, pecking at his hair and the collar of his shirt.
Keyleth watches it happen in the rearview mirror, silent and waiting because she doesn’t quite dare to disturb them. From the look on Percy’s face, he’d forgotten what it sounded like, to laugh.
Keyleth can’t think of anything quite so sad as that. Percy who’s forgotten how to laugh and the twins who’ve forgotten how to hope.
Sometimes, Vex saves a joint and goes to the tree on the hill above the ranch. Sometimes Percy joins her. Sometimes he’s already there.
They sit there, and they smoke.
Percy jumps when she puts hands on him, startled in a way she thinks has nothing to do with how he reacts to guns and panic and loud noises, but he takes her hand in his and just- holds it.
“Sorry,” she says, because she hadn’t meant to make him jump.
“No,” he says, slowly, almost uncertain. “No, it’s alright.”
It’s one thing to touch when - when she’d offered her hand to him, to help him through fever and shakes and desperation and pain. It was one thing when she was coaxing him to stand again, to exercise so his wounded side wouldn’t be a weakness forever.
It’s another thing entirely when she touches him seemingly because she can.
He doesn’t mind it, which is more of a surprise to him than perhaps it should be. He’s grown used to her and- he trusts her, he thinks. She could have killed him, easy, back at the El Royale, could have done a lot of things. But she hadn’t and she’d held his hand as his body worked out whatever it was the managers had given him and perhaps that’s why. He’s been as vulnerable as anyone might ever be, guts spilled out and what there was of his mind unravelling and she hadn’t minded then. Hadn’t hurt him worse, then.
So- he lets her as she reaches out, lists into her hands as she moves past him, her hand on his waist or his shoulder, a simple tap of I’m here. Lets her as she moves closer as they edge away from the fireside meets, sitting just within arms reach.
Lets her when, as they blow smoke out into hot summer air, she leans against him like it’s nothing.
Maybe it is nothing. That thought probably shouldn’t hurt as much as it does.
Saundor had pushed. He was good at it too, she’d barely noticed it when he had even as he’d used much the same means as everyone else she’s ever known to have done it. Maybe he was just more charming about it, pushed more carefully, coaxing trust out of them bit by bit. He’d back off just enough you doubted it was what you thought so next time - next time you let it slide.
You trusted he wasn’t doing it with malice.
Maybe he hadn’t. Vex doesn’t think she really knows what went on in his head really, just that she’d been good enough to guess when he was fucking with people and how to sidestep the game he played.
Do you want to be right or do you want to be wrong?
Neither.
He’d pushed. He’d had a reason for everything even if he had to ramble in circles to make his point - if he even had one. That little singer lady - Pike - she’d had a point when she’d chewed Saundor out, polite and pretty as you please. Big men saying lots of words like they mean anything.
Thing was, they very easily could to the right ear and too many things sound similar these days.
She likes the Ashari, no doubt about that. Weirdo hippies they may be, but no weirder than Saundor’s lot and much kinder.
But she can’t sit at their fireside gatherings, all their preaching of love and trust and fate, the circular thoughts about love and trust and fate, and not think about Saundor. Instead, she sits at the edges, watching all of them, so trusting, inch closer to each other, embracing easily and like it’s nothing.
Saundor played a lot of things as nothing while making them mean everything. Making them matter. Making you owe.
So she sits at the edges. When Percy joins her, both of them sitting silent as Vax and Keyleth cuddle up among all the rest, she wonders if he understands.
Maybe he does. Working at pervert hotel, fed drugs and reasons to justify what he did, maybe he does know what it’s like to have all your reasons knotted up in your head.
Maybe that’s why, when she decides to reach out again, she reaches for him.
It doesn’t stop. It doesn’t slow. It just is, small touches here and there. Vex rarely looks at him as she does it or - not at his face. Doesn’t mean he can’t see hers, the look of quiet consideration, sometimes concentration, as her hand reaches out, touches, moves away.
Percy wonders if she’s testing herself.
Percy wonders why she’d need to test herself. Even when Saundor had been there no one had seemed more sure of what would happen at each turn than Vex. She’d known so well she’d played Saundor at his own damn murder game and perhaps it should worry him that he’s seen her murder a man with the same hands she touches him with now.
But it doesn’t. Vex isn’t just the anger that let her murder Saundor for sake of her brother. If she’s testing herself - she’s scared of something. If she’s testing herself on him - he doesn’t think he scares her, not after how she’s seen him at his worst, feverish and torn up and spat out.
So that can only mean that, somehow, she feels safe enough with him to take whatever risk this test of herself might be.
He cannot help but be humbled by that.
Percy doesn’t push. She touches him almost enough to be invitation itself sometimes, small touches here and there, yes, but more now, fingertips brushing his as they sit at the very edge of the fireside meets, her shoulder pressed to his, close enough she can see the pulse jumping below his jaw, below the mess of scars that side of his face.
“Do you mind?” she says, one evening. Most everyone at the fireside’s either settled in to sleep or snuck off into the woods around in twos, threes, even a four she spotted. Her fingers brush Percy’s, her head has tilted to his shoulder, and she feels as he turns to look at her.
“No,” he says gently. “No, not at all.”
She sleeps there, leaning against him. When she wakes, she sees he fell asleep against the tree. Their fingertips still just barely brush.
She can push her own boundaries as much as she likes. Percy’s made it clear he doesn’t mind her reaching out, her leaning against him - that he doesn’t mind her, not in the least. She doesn’t miss, as they do chores together, how he moves around her, accommodating, close enough she can touch but never so much in the way she has to. He doesn’t make her reach out to him. He doesn’t avoid it or tell her not to, either.
Vex wishes she knew what to make of it.
She knows better than to push - push her own boundaries, yes, to test what they are now, yes. To test Percy’s-
He trusts her. Somehow and for some reason. Perhaps because she’d sat with him so long and coaxed him into exercising, improving his health. Perhaps because they’ve spent so much time together now. She doesn’t know, she doesn’t think it matters.
She doesn’t want to damage that trust. She knows very well just how much it means.
Vex’s touches don’t slow. They… linger. Her hand stays on his shoulder longer, she stays at his side when there’s no need and he can’t quite help but lean into it, the ready contact.
They’d never touched much in his family, more formal than affectionate for all that they loved each other dearly but this is-
It’s easy. He and Vex have spent so much time around each other, in one another’s space as he recovered that he trusts himself safe with her, knows that if he stumbles or startles, she’s there.
Perhaps that’s why he reaches back.
When he first touches his hand to her shoulder as he passes she stills as though electrified, something in her eyes he doesn’t know how to read.
“Sorry,” he says, because he hadn’t meant to startle her.
“No,” she says quietly. “No, it’s alright.”
So he reaches again. The next day, his hand on the small of her back as he passed, the day after that their fingers barely brushing. It’s small but it’s constant, now, not just her reaching to him but him reaching to her, here and there, small fleeting moments as they pass. Her hand on his shoulder, his on her back. His hand on her arm, hers on his wrist. When she tilts her head to his shoulder as they sit at the very edge of the fireside gathering, he tilts his to hers, when she leans closer, makes herself comfortable, he weaves their fingers together, no longer just their fingertips brushing.
“Percy,” she says, lifting her head, and he lifts his too, feels her lips brush against his jaw, feels his pulse jumping, heart beating hard in his chest.
“Yes?”
“Is this all right?”
He can feel her breath on his skin, warm as she is, her lips almost against his pulse.
“Yes,” he says. “Very much so.”
And he feels her lips press against his pulse.
It escalates. How can it not? They spend the evening pressed close together, Percy pressing kisses to her palms as she presses them to his pulse. They fall asleep beside each other, they wake up completely entangled.
It hardly matters. She knows she’s safe with Percy, has known it for months and as they go about their day they reach and touch as they go, small brushing hands, a press of fingertips to a shoulder, fleeting and momentary and not enough.
By the time Vex makes excuses to head for the tree on the hill, it’s great spreading branches making the shadows below deep and dark, Percy’s already there.
He doesn’t get a chance to rise from the ground to greet her; she straddles him, reaches for him, almost immediately.
It’d be a stretch to call it a long time for Percy. It’d be more honest to say never.
Vex is warm in his lap, her lips warm on his, her hands careful where they cup his face, gentle on his jaw, gentle on his scars. He can never forget them around the Ashari. It’s almost easy to forget them around Vex. Her thumb idly traces a line, down and around, weaving past each one and he cants his head back, lifts his mouth to hers, some noise in his throat he doesn’t expect, has never heard before.
Vex breaks the kiss, pulling back unexpectedly, and he opens his eyes as quickly as he can, fixing on her face.
“Percy,” she says.
“Vex?”
“Do you mind?” she asks and he shakes his head. “Do you want to?”
He can only swallow, looking up at her, her eyes wide and deep and dark, bright and warm, her lips slightly parted as she watches down at him. He can feel her against him even through their clothes and all he can really think is that he doesn’t think there’s anything he’s wanted quite so much in his life.
He’d wanted the pain to end with desperate hope. He’d wanted his family back with desperate grief. He’d wanted the fighting to end with desperate fear, the nightmares to end with desperate disgust, the cravings to end with desperate self-hatred.
He wants this just… entire, in every way and shape and form, like her warmth against his skin, like her weight on his lap, like her touches these past six months. Because they’re her, because they’re Vex.
Because he loves her.
“Yes,” he says. “Please.”