Chapter Text
Vex twists and dances through the packed marketplace while reading the list in her hand, muttering words to herself as she tries to make out everyone’s handwriting. Vax’s is easy and familiar, and Keyleth’s is fairly standard if a bit curlier around the edges, but that’s about where simplicity ends. Pike’s handwriting would be perfectly legible if it weren’t so neatly tucked away into a corner, small as her gnomish hand. Scanlan, for some ungodly reason, insists on writing in full-flourishes where flourishes aren’t even necessary; and Percy writes exactly as nobly as his posh accent would suggest.
(Vex has experience with handwriting courses, of course, and has penmanship to match any elven diplomat, but only in elvish. She’d focused so hard on outpacing the full-bloods who thought she never could that she’d neglected her common penmanship. Not that any of it’s been useful, anyhow.)
And, well. Grog can’t write. Most of the list items she assumes are his are tacked on to the end of most everyone else’s lists.
She thinks she’s gotten everything. It’s not that much, honestly, mostly stocking up on things for the Keep while they enjoy a bit of a quiet period, but it’s still odd to test the weight of her satchel and find it surprisingly light. Her own list, kept up only in her head, was saved for last, and even that’s gotten done. Surprisingly under budget, too, thanks to a combination of haggling and convenient end-of-season sales.
Vex turns back towards the Keep, excited about the lingering heft of her coinpurse and the budgeting she’ll be able to adjust for next month, when a flash of color catches her eye. There’s a small clothing stand that appears to be ridding itself of the last of multiple different batches — she doesn’t remember much from her and Vax 'helping' their mother with her sewing, but she knows that the selection is an odd variety of fabrics and styles.
What specifically caught her eye, though, is a fascinatingly cut piece of what she thinks might be silk. As she drifts a little closer, she recognizes it as the fully-unfolded shape of an ascot from the few times she’d bumped into Percival doing laundry. It’s quite a lovely color: a soft lavender, one that keeps a muted, pastel quality without being completely washed out. She thinks it might be similar to one of Percy’s waistcoats, one that Grog had teased him about, which Pike had elbowed him in the thigh for, and then Scanlan had started going on about lavender flowers and effeminate men and Vex had mentally checked out.
(Not before noticing that the color honestly did look rather fetching on him.)
She finds herself only a handful of feet away from the stall when she pauses. She’s not usually one for impulse purchases — impulse thoughts, sure, but she’s always felt too guilty to indulge. Then again, this isn’t for her, it’s for Percy, who’s given her so many lovely gifts (including a lovely new poison-tipped arrow just the other day) without expecting a thing in return. Really, it’s only fair.
(She isn’t thinking about how he might react to receiving a gift instead of the other way around, a reversal of the little unspoken dance they’ve fallen in step to. She wants to catch him off guard — but she also, honestly, just wants to make him smile. Which is gross and sappy and something she only really lets herself indulge in with Trinket (and sometimes Vax), but it’s been harder and harder to pull away from Vox Machina as whole, really.)
Vex still haggles for it, obviously. Just because she’s found herself in some sort of generous giving mood doesn’t mean she’s lost her mind.
Once she’s back at the Keep, she loops her way through all of Vox Machina to pass over their requested items before making her way to the basement, the ascot tucked safely in her satchel. The workshop door is cracked open slightly, the crackling of the furnace and clink of metal-on-metal bubbling out. Grinning, she slinks her way over on silent feet and peers into the room to try and see what Percy’s working on.
He’s at the table used for finer and more meticulous work, which is slightly (incredibly) less warped than the table used for more laborious and/or explosive creations. He’s got all three of the magnifiers on his left glasses lens flipped down, and has his gun disassembled to its innards in front of him.
Vex carefully nudges the door further open, wary of how the top hinge tends to squeak, just enough for her to step into the doorway and lean against the frame. She — look, she’s making a whole ordeal of it, sure, but this is new. She doesn’t really do gifts, it’s not something she’s been good at unless it’s for Vax, and that’s about the same as knowing what she herself would want. She’s excited, silly as it is.
Vex waits for Percy to pause, leaning back in his chair in that pensive way he does, before saying anything. She aims for casual, but the smile splitting her face shoves the tone up to ‘obviously giddy’ instead. “Whatcha working on?”
Percy still jumps in his seat, and Vex bites her lip so she doesn’t laugh at him. He carefully sets down the piece of gun in his hand — she thinks it’s from the… barrel, it’s called? — before turning to her, a smile already on his face. “Hello, Vex’ahlia. What’s dragged you down here?”
The entire walk back from the market, Vex had been thinking up the best teasing little one-liner to present the ascot with: something about expensive fabrics and tastes and overall poshness, delivered dry and faux-annoyed (fauxnnoyed, you could say, but she won’t, because this whole thing is embarrassing enough). But she clams up as he looks at her, steadily as he always does, and she realizes again how odd this is for her, how out of depth she is in getting people things they want instead of things they need. He might already have enough ascots, or he might not actually like lavender that much, or he might not like the texture and she knows how personal clothing can be. What if lavender isn’t a proper color for ascots, only waistcoats? What if she’s fucked up some unspoken social faux-pas? Then she’ll be an idiot on top of being a horrible gift-giver.
He might hate it — oh, he won’t tell her if he does, but gods that’s almost worse, polite barriers and pleasantries and all those things she can’t stand — but it’s too late, she’s got one foot in the (workshop) door, and she’s already spent the gold.
“I got you something,” she blurts out, and she realizes she’s twisting her hands in front of her. “I just thought, well, one of your trick arrows really saved my ass the other day, and I was thinking that I really do owe you at this point — and it’s fine if you don’t like it! I don’t really, y’know, if you don’t like it I can exchange it, or just take it back…”
Vex lets the sentence die out awkwardly; she’d honestly been expecting to be cut off halfway through, but Percy had just let her run with the whole thing. He’s still looking at her, but he’s got this odd little expression on his face that she can’t really figure out.
“Well, I have to see it to know if I don’t like it, don’t I?” he says, and it’s soft, almost, when compared to its wording. Vex laughs, the nervous sound just spilling out of her, pushed up by all this pressure in her chest to make some room.
“Yes, I suppose you would. Um.” She can’t think of anything else to stall with, so she carefully draws the neatly (she thinks, she hopes) folded ascot and crosses the distance to hold it out to him. “I saw it at the market today, and I think I’ve seen you wear this color before, and… I thought I owed you one.” Dammit, she’s already said that. Fuck.
Percy’s expression fades as he takes the ascot, his thumb brushing along the silk almost absently; his eyes flicker as he looks down to it, a little like he's reading, and for a moment she wonders if he could actually count the threads with those stupid magnifier glasses. (Not that silk has a thread count, she thinks. Elaina never enjoyed working with it, and would grumble whenever she had to. Or maybe that’s just a memory she made up.)
“It’s lovely, dear,” Percy says, looking back up. He’s smiling again, that small one that he doesn’t use as often. It suits him even more than the lavender. “Excellent choice in design. Thank you.”
Before Vex can continue to deflect like her life depends on it, Percy takes her right hand in his and brushes the lightest kiss against her knuckles.
It’s -
She’s kissed him on the mouth before, back at that first, gorgeous exploding arrow; all but a whisper against the back of her still-gloved hand is practically celibate in comparison. It barely lasts a second, too, and he’s already let go of her hand, and it’s probably just some holdover from being raised noble, so why…
Oh. Oh, the bastard’s got a look in his eye. She’s walked right into her own trap, hasn’t she? Strung up a snare all perfect for him and just marched on in. He took her turned tables and turned them right back around, except not really, because this is still odd and new for the both of them, and at this point the metaphors aren’t doing her any good.
“Well, I do have good taste,” Vex says, completely on autopilot, and Percy still seems to fluster a bit but he’s still grinning at her that little shit.
“You do.” There’s a lilt to his voice that sounds a little like contained laughter, and Vex has suddenly and decisively had enough.
“Well, you’d better not be lying,” she says as she turns and walks to the door, easy and casual steps that are neither easy nor casual. “Because I might get you another one if you keep up this arrow business.” There, easy and transactional. Tit-for-tat, except not, and that’s a really unfortunate saying for this situation.
“Vex,” Percy says just before she reaches the door. She only hesitates a second before turning back. His face has lost most of the teasing little edges. “You know that’s not necessary, right? The arrows are freely given.”
Vex swallows a little thickly. “Yeah, sure.” Except no, not sure, because there seem to be only a handful of people like that, and she’s not lucky enough to have just stumbled upon one in a jail cell and had him stick around. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t give you something back every now and then.”
“Of course.” Vex watches as he unfolds the ascot and folds it back, just slightly different. “Thank you, Vex, again. It really is lovely.”
“I’m glad.” Vex throws him one last smile — and a wink, a final attempt to scrounge up some dignity — before she slips out of the workshop into the hall.