Work Text:
“Percy wants you in his workshop.”
Vax's head twitched up from where he'd been bent over the dining room table, trying to scrub out the blood that had soaked into the crevices of his dagger’s holster with a stiff brush. “Percy wants me in his workshop,” he repeated, brow screwing up as he heard the words again and tried to parse them further. They mostly weren’t processing still, mind focused on the job in front of him. It had been a hard week – fight after fight, no moment for real down time or maintenance, and it wasn’t as if an enchanted blade could rust from something as mundane as resting in a damp scabbard, but—
“That's what he said,” Vex replied easily, passing him to twist the kettle on its hook to start the water heating over the hearth before moving on to opening the cabinets and pulling down a box of tea.
—maybe it was habit. “Percy doesn't want anybody in his workshop,” Vax corrected, eyes dropping back down to the project before him and— gods, he should have worn gloves, dried flecked blood seemed worked into his very nail beds, and he could feel the faint swelling in his fingers, of his callouses being worsened by the polish, combined with the agitation of cleaning. “Sometimes I'm surprised he lets us live in the same building.”
“He asked for you,” his sister said airily over the sound of glass quietly clinking together as she selected a cup.
He didn’t look up again, but Vax’s brow furrowed as he gave the holster a final once-over, examined the places that had once been crusted over and searched for any remaining dull spots in the leather. “What does he want?”
“You in his workshop, Vax.”
“Okay, okay.” He was done anyway. Done enough for a break while the oil soaked in, so he tossed away scraps of bloody rags, cleared the table and scrubbed his hands clean. He left the sheath in the sun-soaked windowsill to dry through, half hidden amongst the shiny green leaves of one of Keyleth’s viny companions and made his way down the hall.
He slowed as he approached the solid steel door – made specifically and unapologetically to keep even Grog from bothering Percy without true intention or with any subtlety. Thinking back now, he really had no memory of the man ever asking him into his workspace. His eyes slid down to the metal plate that covered the door's lock but…
He had been invited, after all.
The half elf gripped the handle and gave an experimental tug – locked, of course – before rolling his eyes and knocking briefly. “Freddie! What, did you need a guinea pig?”
There was a solid thnk from the latch and Vax leaned back on reflex before the door swung open, smooth and silent despite the heft of it, and revealed Percy standing on the other side in sweat-stained work clothes.
Vax let his eyes drop down for just one second. Didn’t grant himself more than a cursory glance to make sure that he had all four expected limbs, though it was always a bit of a novelty to see the man with coat and decorum both shed. His hair was curling just slightly too, likely from the heat of the room that was tangible even from outside the door frame, the collar of his shirt just slightly askew. If he’d been asked to explain it out loud, he probably would have said the fascination was something like watching a hound walk on its hind legs – some unexpected but slightly delightful surprise to the evening, though it…
It might have been a little more than that, if he was to examine himself deeper.
But who had time for that, Percy had asked him here for a reason, and Vax cleared his throat and dragged his eyes up even as something registered as wrong. “You need me?” he asked, brow furrowing as he searched for what had caught his attention. Something in the way the other man was standing… “You alright?”
He didn’t remember Percy being injured after their last fight, but there was a strangeness to him now that made him take a longer look. He was a little… untidy, for lack of a better word. The curls of his hair were off center, an odd patch here and there where he seemed to have missed shaving, and he was standing noticeably squared away from Vax.
Still, his reply came quick and casual in a way that at least assured that Percy wasn’t secretly bleeding out. "Quite,” he said with a short nod. “Come inside."
Vax stepped in slowly, almost warily, his eyes already moving over everything as fast as they could, but... it was like stepping into another world. There weren't torches over the worktables, but gently glowing orbs of amber glass that left the space well and evenly lit, insulated wires lined parts of the walls, like the most meticulous spider had begun an inhumanly perfect web. The smells, the sound – hissing, ticking, whirring on every side.
Even knowing the man as well and as long as he had, he forgot sometimes how brilliant Percy was. A singular mind that saw so much further ahead than any of them. Just glancing around, he could see fragmented bits of Vex’ahlia’s newest arrowhead in production, but there seemed to be a half dozen other projects scattered around the room as well, each more incomprehensible than the one before. Vax just stabbed people with pointy things, practically pre-historic compared to what his friend was doing in his spare time.
It was so unfamiliar that part of him felt… uneasy, like he didn't belong here. This room and everything in it was part of a future that Vax wasn't sure he'd live long enough to understand.
“I really expected to have to tell you not to touch anything. But before you get any other ideas, don't touch anything,” Percy said, making his way back to a work bench with a number of small tools spread across it, and the wrongness of it all finally clicked in Vax's head.
Hair uneven. Shave uneven. Squared away.
“What's wrong with your hand?” he asked, before he could stop himself.
Percy let out a sharp sigh as he sat, his left arm still hanging at his side and half out of sight behind his back. “Observant as always.” With that, he raised his hand up, and Vax felt himself straighten a little to see him ungloved.
Truly ungloved.
He forgot, from time to time, that most of Percy's hand had been damaged beyond repair during their fight with Orthax. Two of his fingers, half of his palm, gone. Replaced with gleaming metal that was somehow seamlessly soldered to the skin itself, each joint must have been an engineering marvel, but right now—
As Vax watched, Percy flexed his mechanical fingers, the bronzed metal quietly clicking before the prosthetic stopped halfway through the motion with a tiny grinding noise that made him wince and Percy tense. “It's broken?” he asked, stepping closer cautiously.
Grog had stepped in here one time and touched a jug of water that he said melted away half of the skin on his hand. Vax was happy to keep his limbs intact and wait for more information.
“Just in need of a little tune up. I would do it myself, but—” Percy tilted his head pointedly, turning his wrist again and it was all Vax could do to drag his eyes away from watching the strange inhuman motion of it. “You have the steadiest hands.”
“Right,” Vax said, a little too distracted to take in the easy compliment as he stepped closer. “Okay, uh... tell me what to do,” he said, making his way slowly over to one of the main worktables.
“What an obedient little assistant you make,” Percy said, his voice teasing – nearly smug – in a way that should have made Vax bristle, but… the man had asked him to come into his space and help fix a part of him that was broken. It must have been driving Percy mad that a piece of his own body had faced something as base as mechanical failure.
“Just tell me, de Rolo, I don’t want to fuck this up,” he said, sitting on the stool beside him and fighting to keep himself from reaching out for a tool to fidget with.
The snark faded out of Percy’s expression as he sat and laid his mechanical hand down on a stretch of dark cloth. “We’ll begin with disassembling. Let’s see if I can find the problem. I want you to start with loosening the joint so we can see if the rubber tendons are a part of the issue. Do you see the seam at the base of the ring finger?”
Vax set to following his direction, taking painstaking care as he removed each panel and piece, cleaning, oiling, replacing components at the other man's instruction through the background din of mechanical workings. He stayed quiet through it, lost to some degree in the feeling of being surrounded by machinery, like they had found their way to the middle of a gigantic clock.
Percy was the one doing all the talking, but he was somehow still the one who broke the strange silence of the moment. “You look uncomfortable,” he murmured, and Vax didn’t look up, but he could feel the weight of those blue eyes on the top of his head.
“You're the one with someone else's fingers inside you,” the half elf countered, barely able to reach for the teasing tone he’d been trying for.
“You look uncomfortable here,” the other man amended. “I'd honestly assumed you snuck in before.”
“Nah, this is... it's your world,” Vax said, eyes slipping away to scan over the walls again, shelf after shelf of strange chemicals, raw metal, bits and pieces of contraptions – any one of which might be enough to change the landscape of science in Exandria as they knew it. Maybe in fifty years’ time, half of Emon would be lit with non-magical light, he knew it was already a growing trend in Whitestone. Maybe a hundred years on, long after Percy himself was dead and gone, his clockwork would be the bedrock of new cities that didn’t even exist yet. “Feels... feels like I don’t quite fit here,” Vax finished, tightening one of the last minuscule screws. “Last one. You could try now.”
Silence stretched for a moment, the weight of Percy’s eyes feeling heavier and heavier as he tried to keep his eyes down.
“You fit, Vax,” Percy said, his voice gentler than a moment before as he slowly flexed the digits again, the soft metallic clicking oddly loud in the room as he curled his fingers to twine them together with the half elf’s.
Strange to feel the juxtaposition, warm fingers interspersed with cold metal.
Months later, Vax’s eyes slid open to a darkened bedroom and the feeling of those fingers gliding lightly up and down his bare back, a gentle touch to make him aware of another presence in the room before Percy slowly climbed into bed beside him.
“Working late,” Vax whispered, still half asleep as he let his eyes slide shut again.
“Caught up with something,” Percy murmured back before he pressed up to the half elf’s back and looped an arm around him.
Vax hummed a short acknowledgement even as he felt himself pulled back towards sleep, listening to the quiet buzz of machinery in the room as Percy tugged him closer, urging him flush against his chest.
A perfect fit.