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Vex’ahlia has always watched, observed. It’s something she’s had ingrained into her since a child, and something that only helps in her chosen profession as a mercenary ranger for hire, the quickness of both wit and fingers, the strength of her arms on her bow draw secondary to the quick fire of her eyes, the perceivement of situations and out of the box ideas a boon that has helped both her and Vax far too many to count. It’s a skill she constantly honed, that has never led her wrong.
Others have called her paranoid. Scanlan does when he’s reached far enough into his cups that he’s merely maudlin rather than sex-crazed, tottering on his barstool as he slumps against Vex’s side. He sighs against her furred pauldron, patting her on the thigh as he gives a hiccup before falling face first onto the bar top, sloshing subpar ale all over his lap, snoring fit enough to awaken the dead. Vex rolls her eyes, turning his head enough that he’s not waterboarding himself in the beverage though she’ll refuse having done so if any ask her. She turns enough that she can take in the rest of the tavern, people scattered about the broad room.
In the flickering torch light that casts long shadows across the dark timber, they look as miserable as they had this morning, but there’s a certain looseness to them, a type of relaxation that can only be found when the threat that they’d faced day in and day out has been eradicated.
The only reason Vox Machina had come to the small village tucked out of the way in only a few stones throw away from Murdoon Mines and even further from Westruun had been because of the undead problem that had been apparently been plaguing the residents enough that they’d been cut off from help and business opportunities; most coming from Murdoon Mines. Lost not only to the undead, but also to famine and illness, it had been Lady Allura that had requested Vox Machina’s help not long after they’d returned from another campaign to defeat what turned out to be a host of wraiths that had decided to take up residency near the Dawnmist Pines, a monstrous sized forest that had even Keyleth in awe as they hunted down the monsters. Long since moved up in the world from petty scavengers and protecting ill-gotten gains, Vox Machina had become known as being incredibly proficient as monster hunters, as well as mercenaries for hire. Vex couldn’t say that she - nor the rest of her motley crew - don't enjoy the further opportunities presented to them as their reputation from the killing of The Iron Storm grew and grew.
She watches as Grog and Pike does just that, downing pint upon pint of shitty ale as Keyleth, tottering just as Scanlan had upon her low slung chair, burps, pulling a face at the taste. Grog laughs, smacking her on the back hard enough that Keyleth lurches forward and then goes green, and Vex has to muffle her giggles as Keyleth stumbles towards the outhouse, hand on her belly and having only downed one and a half ales, as is her usual. Pike manages to sober herself enough to throw a Lesser Restoration to her, downing another ale in reward when Keyleth is able to smile wanly her way, still nauseous but decidedly less green, continuing to stumble towards the rooms brought and bartered for them by Lady Allura.
Vax is doing as Vax does, looking decidedly bat-like as he watches with hawkish eyes the game of cards that is happening just to the left of him. His cards seem to disappear into his cloak, only to reappear just as quickly on the table as his compatriots groan and hiss curses beneath their breath as her brother, sly as a fox and just as quick as one, draws the hefty pile of gold and silver into a small pouch that clinks considerably as he places it in a pouch on his hip.
“Now, now dear brother,” Vex murmurs laughingly into the diamond pierced through her left ear, running calluses across the faceted clear surface. “Don’t swindle them so much that we get ran out of town again.”
The reply comes sly and scheming, despite the way that Vex doesn’t even see her brother touch upon the whispering gem in his ear. He sounds like he’s having a grand time, and Vex cannot find it in herself to begrudge him it.
“Perhaps you do not know me at all, Vex,” Vax whispers, and the quicksilver grin she spies on his face before he deliberately shows the smallest flash of a card up his sleeve has her laughing, turning to smile at the barkeep, a curvy stocky human woman that drops six pints of ale at her heavy lidded eyes and smirk. “Is it really a Vox Machina party if we don’t get kicked out?”
She doesn’t bother replying, as he’s turned steadfastly towards the group of residents that seem destined to be swindled again and again as she watches through the reflection of the distorted glasses as Vax loses his next hand, doing a considerably good job of acting gutted. Perhaps even Vex would be fooled, if she hadn’t seen him do this act over and over and how quick he can go from gutted to sly, ready to slice the flesh from your ankles if he needed.
Perhaps it's how she turns when a bang echos through the tavern, before Grog and Pike sheepishly shout a stumbling sorry! to the barkeep as they almost split a table in half as Pike slams an empty pint of ale to the tottering table that makes her eyes catch on the only shadowed and silent corner in the entirety of the tavern and has her brows furrowing, twisting enough on her precarious stool that she can see the young man brooding there.
Percival de Rolo is oftentimes an enigma that Vex finds herself puzzling over, eyes far more observant than she thinks he would like when she stares at him. As the only full human member of their party, it’s perhaps easy to slip into the well known stereotypes of humans. Of course Vex, Vax, and Keyleth share their own half human ancestry, but their elvish heritage has always been the first thing people have noticed, derided them for, especially in Syngorn where half human and half elvish heritage had been something to sometimes be killed for if you were from particularly bad blood. Both her and Vax had known the brutality, the cruelty in which family and strangers could act upon and visit; she often wonders if she hasn’t inherited her own fathers brand of cruelty, the selfishness and viciousness he oft so turned upon her and Vax. She knows, as she knows her own heart, that Vax often does as well, despite how she thinks that Vax might be the best of them both, a heart that he has sitting on his sleeve that Vex, try as she might, loves and cares for.
Percy, however, is a reminder of how human they could truly be. She had been puzzled by him when Pike and Vax had first dragged him from the cell he’d been in, scrappy and starving and feral and all the more admirable for it. He’d stood ready to try and kill them all, despite the way he wavered in his shackles, hunched and looking all the more a pitiful dog that its owner had beat and left for dead. She’d been reminded of the little dog's rich nobility like, all bark and little bite, but perhaps that wasn’t necessarily true. She traces the broad shoulders always buried beneath a thick coat and at least three other layers, the sharpness of his cheekbones, the cold steel tucked across his lap as he thumbs at the drawback. Smoke spills from every movement of his thumb, as if he’s recently shot the pepperbox.
Despite the humanity so prevalent about him, Vex had often been tricked into forgetting he was human; he'd been able to keep up with them so well.
In her musings, Scanlan has awoken and slipped away, having gained his third wind of the night, and she watches as he moves with the gait of a much more sober man despite the amount of alcohol Vex had seen him consume, personally. She watches as he charms a couple into walking out the front door with him, a scandalous smile on his face as he kisses the man’s knuckles, the woman tilting forward flirtatiously. She watches them leave, the tavern door thudding closed. Her gaze turns towards Percy, who hasn’t even moved, not even to flinch.
In fact, he hasn’t moved for the entirety of the six hours they’ve been in the tavern, nursing already healed wounds from the undead and the bandits that had sensed opportunity but hadn’t received it. He remains in shadow and silence, his pepperbox laid across his lap, thumb still on the drawback, his black mask next to an untouched glass of wine. Only his thumb moves, a slight caress of the metal drawback, a slow back and forth that has Vex’s considerable gaze darting up and down from thumb to gun to eyes.
Perhaps sensing something watching him, that magnificently white head raises, and Vex is pinned with a heavy gaze of green, barely hidden beneath golden glasses. Percy watches her, unmoving, over the rim of his glasses before he sits back, deeper further in the shadows. His glasses glisten in the candle light in the middle of his table. Vex finds herself arrested by the sight.
Perhaps it’s a moment of stupidity, even pride, but no doubt weakness that has her moving, throwing back a pint of ale and swiping another from Pike’s hand. Ignoring the cleric’s offended curse words, she dodges the sloppy, teasing punch Grog throws her way, smacking a hand across the back of her brothers head as he’s about pull a card that has him throwing a blunted knife at her back, Vex laughs as she catches it, giving an underhanded throwback to him. He pulls a face behind her back, she can see in the windows just besides Percy and she throws the middle finger back at him behind her back.
In that chaos, Percy hasn’t moved, not even to look at her as she pulls a seat out next to his. He’s sitting with his back against the wall, all the better to see the exits of the tavern that she and the rest of Vox Machina have already scouted out. Vex has often been called paranoid, but she often thinks that Percy takes it to a new level; she’s never seen him without at least his back to the wall, or a weapon in hand. He sleeps apart from them, if he sleeps for more than a handful of hours at that. Vex has never so badly wanted to cleave a person in half for their secrets before; she wants to strip Percival de Rolo of his buttoned up manners, slice every layer from his body and inspect the secrets, the forbidden beneath. Sexual or otherwise, Percy is a fascinating creature in any aspect, and Vex has always been prone to dissecting them.
“You’re looking positively grim, darling,” Vex says as she slips into the chair. Percy remains as still and silent as a statue. She’s impressed. “Has the wine managed to depress you that much?”
She leans forward, hooking a finger around the delicate glass stem. The rich scarlet wine burns her nose, and the sip she takes burns her throat even more. She’s never been a wine fan, years as a mercenary and ranger having long since attuned her taste to less refined things. One cannot be picky when one does not have money, after all. She often thinks Percy likes to fall back on mannerisms ingrained as a child, as she does. She doesn’t know much about the scrappy little human she’s adopted, but she delights in finding new ways to get that information. He’s a tragic thing, their Percy, locked up so tightly into himself, as if he doesn’t trust himself. Perhaps he doesn’t.
Percy doesn’t say anything, but the little movement of his head, golden glasses perched delicately on his nose glistening in the guttering candlelight has his eyes on her. Triumphant sits low in her belly at the sight of it, and she reaches out to pluck them off his face. Immediately-
“Vex’ahlia -” Scandalized, his mouth goes into that pouty scoff that it does when he’s annoyed, a barely there movement of his muscles as he tries to reach forward. Vex dances out of the way in her seat, tilting enough to avoid his reaching hand. Even this close, she knows Percy suffers with his vision, wonders what she looks like to his blurry eyes, if she looks as half as beautiful as she thinks he does, face freed from both mask and glasses, his pepperbox heavily placed on the scarred table between. For a moment, Vex is arrested by the sight of his cheekbones, his teeth biting into his bottom lip, the way his eyebrows - a shade darker than that of his snowy hair - furrow over the neon shade of his eyes. She has to remind herself to breathe, watching with selfishly avid eyes the way his throat bobs when he swallows, and mourns that the hollow of his collarbones is hidden beneath silk.
“I think you need to unbutton , darling,” She says, leaning forward as Percy retreats, the flush of his cheeks charming her incredibly. “You’ve shoved yourself in this awful little corner just to brood, haven’t you? Even after all the fun we’ve had.”
The flush of his cheeks grow when she leans forward to delicately place the thin glasses on his nose, the curve of his sharp cheekbones dusting rosy as she accidentally brushes it with the tips of her fingers. For a single moment, Vex’ahlia thinks she sees the very moment Percy is made vulnerable; green eyes wide, pupils dilated and sclera a sharp white that has her in mind of snow. She’s arrested by the sight of his pink mouth dropping open the barest amount, the slick of tongue across teeth, the furrow of his dark brows. This is not the closest her and Percy have been, nor with any other of Vox Machina, but there is something heady in being able to make Percy off centered, flushing at her touch.
The moment is lost when a loud holler echoes across the tavern and she sees the way Percy jumps, the flinch he gives, the way his neck tightens, his hands tightening further. For a moment, he’s still, like a rabbit caught between an arrow, hands wrapped tightly around the butt of his pepperbox. When the racket proves to be nothing more than Grog heaving Pike onto his shoulders, three pints in her small hands that slosh over the side and onto the onlookers below, something seems to visually unwind beneath his skin, his shoulders. He backs away, leaning further out of the loom of the candle light. For a flash, his shirt collar and that scrap of silk around his throat is tugged away, and she sees the flash of dark red, shining pink intertwined, her perceptive eyes see the way it ropes around the hollow of his collarbone, up to the middle of his neck, scoring there as if he’d been hanged upon something like a coat hook, but a coat hook could not have been so vicious, so deliberately cruel . It’s barely a moment of a look, but it’s ingrained into her eyes, scored beneath her pupils.
Vex has known cruelty, has known brutality but there’s always a difference when it is done to you and done to someone you care about.
Percy doesn’t seem to realize what she’s seen; she doesn’t think he’d be half as composed if he did. Instead he sighs, sounding like the elderly man he thinks he is. When asked of his age, Percy had done something Vox Machina has become increasingly familiar with, answering without truly answering the question or, if that didn’t work, managing to change the topic of conversation completely in such a skillful way you weren’t quite sure what had happened. They’d managed to glean that Percy, for all his pale hair and mannerisms more befitting a far older man, is early twenties, perhaps of age with Keyleth.
“I apologize, Vex,” Percy murmurs, and for all that she wishes he would look at her, he takes his glasses off and, using a dark coloured cloth pulled from the inner confines of his greatcoat, intently polishes the surface of his round glasses, despite the fact she can see no smudges. A delaying tactic, she thinks, and drinks a pull of her ale rather than wondering why he needs distracting. His wine remains untouched before them both. “I find myself out of sorts this evening, and I cannot imagine making an adequate drinking partner after our victory early.”
She doesn’t bother muffle her laughter, and his offended side eye is enough to have her leaning back with a guffaw.
“Percy dear,” She says to him. “We all know you’re more bad tempered than even Trinket. You can tell me to just fuck off, you know, but,” - here, she leans in again, and she waits until he has placed his glasses upon his face to duck down so she can see more than the side of his face. “I gather you rather want company but just don’t know how to ask .”
There’s a moment where Vex thinks she’s completely fucked it up and that Percy is about to storm away from her, perhaps suitably dramatically into the night. Instead however, Vex is the only one to see how her words affect Percy, how he braces himself forward, hands tight against the tottering table, as if to protect himself from a blow, knuckles white even against the pale of his skin. His magnificent white head is bowed, and his shoulders are brought together tighter, as if making himself a smaller target without express permission. A ragged sound from the confines of his body has her darting forward, pressing against the edge of the table, a hand hovering between the broad expanse of his shoulder blades, unsure as if she has permission to touch or not. Vex’ahlia has never been the best at comforting people, that’s what brothers are for afterall, and Keyleth is far more gentle, far more comforting than her.
It’s only when she’s made up her mind, letting her hand settle gently on Percy’s shoulder that he lifts his head.
“Oh darling.” She gasps quietly.
In the dimming candlelight that leaves the shadows creating strange patterns and images across their corner of the tavern, Percy’s face is as blank as he’s tried to make it, but he cannot hide the way his bottom lip trembles, white teeth slicing through it until almost blood. His eyes are just becoming bloodshot, pink creeping against the very edges, eyelashes tenting in their wetness.
“I’m-” His voice cracks, breaks, shattering like she’s never heard him before. But no, that’s a lie, isn’t it? Shattering like she only ever hears when he’s finally laid down to sleep, and he murmurs names over and over, a list of people Vex doesn’t know if he’s lost or if he’s trying to find them. She doesn’t remember a lot of them, only remnants , most only a half bitten Cassandra that ends in a choked back scream that leads to him bolting upright, wild eyed, chest heaving, pepperbox brought to bear upon the empty air, black smoke as if he has fired it. He’s never noticed that Vex has been awake sometimes when he does so, half elves are generally light sleepers and don’t need the amount of sleep full humans do, but Percy never gets back to sleep after his dreams, regardless if he’s been awake for going on forty hours, and his eyelids flag but his stubbornness does not.
“I’m so sorry, Vex’ahlia,” Percy tries again, wrapping himself in those impeccable manners of his that he uses like a shield. In his seat, he sits tall, proud. It has a core of fragility that she’s never once associated with him and it has her careening, trying to assemble the delicacy of the man in front of her to the controlled powerhouse she’s become used to. “I don’t quite know what’s wrong with me. I can promise I’m usually not this out of control.”
A hand - shaking, she notices, trembling like a leaf does in the wind, delicate for all its considerable strength - reaches up and he takes his glasses off again, smudged as they are with his tears, with his vulnerability. Careful fingers wipe the tears against his cheeks, shimmering in the candlelight. It illuminates him in burnished bronze, the crystalline tracks of his tears gilded silver against the pale of his skin, the glisten of golden glasses.
“You don’t need to apologize, Percy.” She tells him, and her hand slips from between his shoulders, for all that her fingers linger on the worn soft fabric of his coat, on the once starched stiff padding of his shoulders since worn thin with repetitive washing and wearing. She watches as he tips his head back, white hair against the dark timber of the walls. He sighs, swallowing. She watches the bob of his throat, and as her gaze drifts to the stretched skin of his jaw, her own jaw tightens, rage threatening to choke her out as she spies them.
Scars. A thousand tiny scars etched into the bottom of his jaw, as if someone has taken a giant hook and used it to lift his head, the largest is flush against where his jaw meets his throat, never noticeable she imagines, unless he’s like this. That he has made himself so vulnerable to her is the only thing that quenches the molten rage, born from her own fathers cruelty but further stoked by the indignities and the cruelties that she comes across. She’d reap her arrowheads across the throat of those that had done this, she thinks calmly, even as she watches Percy settle into his seat once more. She watches as he carefully tucks all the bits that made him vulnerable into himself, and wonders what lurks beneath that placid levity, a glowing lure that threatens to drown all by the most experienced swimmers.
“I should retire,” Percy says, and his voice is half rasped, as if trying to hold back the wetness she can see still lingering on his eyelashes. She’s never seen him cry, not really. “I’m so sorry for putting this on your shoulders, Vex, I haven’t a clue of what’s overcome me.”
Vex can see it for both the lie and truth it is.
“Drink your wine, Percy, dear,” She says instead of all the ways she wants to see him vulnerable at his own behest and at her own hand. She leans forward, and doesn’t give him a chance to pick up his wine glass. Her own fingers wrap around the delicate stem, and it’s only after he’s cleaned and placed his glasses upon his nose that she lets him take the glass, the wine staining the glass after having sat there for so long.
Their hands brush, long fingers against long fingers, and she can feel every callous, every scar upon his flesh; a roadmap of his hardships, his skill in tinkering, in forging; every experiment he’s ever made is laid bare before her questing hands. She wishes to read them as she does maps, as she reads every fletch of her arrows, every scar upon the wood of her bow but she finds herself lost in the way Percy reacts upon her touch, how she slips a hand from his fingers to cradling his wrist, drifting against the sharp knot of bone between pale flesh.
He doesn’t make a noise, but she thinks there's nothing more flattering than the way his cheeks, still damp with his silvered tears, flush a rosy pink, creeping up from his cheeks to his temple, showing a smattering of pale freckles that she’s never noticed before. He drops his gaze, green eyes fastened onto his wine, but he can’t hide from her the way he looks at her from beneath his eyelashes, darting from her to the table to her once more. He looks a little stunned actually, as if this is the most someone has touched him without violence in the longest of times.
That thought depresses her, has her earlier rage from before wrapping around her throat, but she doesn’t allow it to affect her grip. She moves her hand from glass stem to flesh wrist, barely able to touch skin with how tightly buttoned and cuffed Percy usually is. She watches, avidly, as he passes the glass into his other hand and something greedy that has roared to life and she doesn’t think she can ever put back in her belly is soothed when, instead of slipping his hand from hers, he twists it, capturing his long fingers between hers.
No one else is there to see how he desperately holds her hands, as if this is something that he’s wanted for such a long time but hasn’t known how to ask, hasn’t thought he deserved to ask.
Only Vex’ahlia knows, and she’ll take the feel of callouses and scars to her grave, and how pleasingly he flushed when she stroked her thumb over his protruding knuckles.