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Percy woke first. He almost wished he hadn't. The light was grey still, the sun not yet over the horizon, but it was more than enough to qualify as 'the cold light of day', with all the attendant return to rationality that implied. He couldn't even claim to have forgotten the night before. There'd been no confusion when he swam his way up out of sleep, or only the smallest amount before memory landed back in upon him like a descent of Grog's fist. Which, he thought hysterically, might very shortly be a concern in itself. He lay very still, keeping his breathing soft and regular so as not to disturb the other occupants of the bed, and proceeded to indulge himself in a fairly comprehensive panic attack.
It didn't wake either of his partners, thankfully. Or not so thankfully, he wasn't sure yet. Regardless, neither Pike nor Scanlan stirred. They were curled together still, Scanlan's arms around Pike's middle as though even in sleep he didn't dare let go of her, Pike herself nestled back against Percy's right side. He'd sprawled a bit more than they had, his weight dipping his side of the bed and rolling the pair of them towards him. They'd fetched up against him, two hot, happy weights against his side. Percy's heart clawed desperately at his throat. He didn't know how it had happened. He'd no idea how he'd let himself manage this.
It was ... it was Scanlan's fault. He was almost sure of that. Most things were, really, unless they were Vax's instead. This. This had almost certainly been Scanlan's fault. Percy couldn't quite remember the details, couldn't remember exactly how Scanlan had seemed so very persuasive, but he was sure it had been Scanlan who'd talked him into it. This. Whatever the hell this was. Oh gods.
Except ... no. No, it had been Pike, hadn't it? Maybe not the persuasion, but the reason. He and Scanlan weren't exactly bosom companions. They loved each other, yes, they were family, but that alone would not have been enough to engender this. Not even close, nowhere near enough. But Pike ...
She'd said she loved him. Percy remembered it blankly, almost emptily. Scanlan had been beside her, with a strange, complicated, fiercely protective expression on his face, and Pike had explained to Percy very gently and very carefully that she loved him. It hadn't ... he couldn't remember even now how he'd reacted. If he had. It just ... hadn't registered, hadn't made sense, and that was the point where Scanlan had started talking. Explaining. Persuading.
That stupid joke from the Feywild. Polyamory. That was what had started this. Scanlan had been telling Pike, laughing it off as he spun tales for her, and Pike had ... taken it a touch more seriously than Scanlan had apparently expected. Out of hope. Relief and sudden hope. Pike had learned from the mess everyone else had made of their love lives. She'd been trying to find a way around her feelings without breaking anyone's heart, stuck between the love she really did hold for Scanlan, even if it wouldn't quite stretch to marriage, and ...
And the love she held for him. Had held for him. For quite some time. It wasn't ... it still didn't entirely make sense. Couldn't, maybe. Of all people to decide to love him ...
Platonically, he would have understood. Pike loved with everything she had, with a fierce, radiant, dazzling sort of constancy. She loved all of them, would fight for all of them, would die for all of them. Not a single one of them doubted that, not even Percy. He'd known she loved him as a friend, as family. But this ... this was something else. This was something beyond him. Pike, of all people. Pike, who was radiant and gentle and ridiculous and perfect and pure. Pike, who was so much his opposite it was nearly obscene. Pike, who had never ... who shouldn't ever ... for gods' sake. For Sarenrae's sake! She knew. Everything he was, everything he'd done. Surely she couldn't possibly ...
But Scanlan believed her. Scanlan, who had loved her damn near since he'd known her. Scanlan, who had turned himself around for her as only one other woman in his life, only his daughter, could have made him turn. Scanlan, who fumbled around her as he did around no one else. Scanlan, who had stood beside her last night with that look on his face, defiance and hope and strange acceptance, and argued slyly and fiercely and firmly for Percy to join them.
Scanlan didn't love him. Not that way. No more than Percy loved Scanlan either. This was nothing Scanlan would have come up with on his own, never seriously, and if Pike was genuine then Scanlan would sooner cut out his own tongue than use her like this for a joke. And Pike ... she wouldn't lie to him. Not about this, not about anything as serious as this. He had to believe that. Of all of them, Pike would never ever use anyone that way.
So ... So it must be real. It must be genuine. Pike. Pike. And, apparently, Scanlan. Because he'd planted the idea, he'd said it, and then Pike had wanted it. Had wanted the chance, had wanted permission to love them both, and Scanlan ... despite himself, Percy thought, despite his curiously monogamous streak when it came to Pike, Scanlan had decided to give it a try. For her. Not for Percy. Perhaps not even for himself. But for Pike. Because she wanted it, and perhaps because in its own way it suited Scanlan better than marriage as well.
They were not ... they weren't typical people. Scanlan had never had an entirely typical view of love. And Vox Machina had long since ceased to be entirely separate individuals. Perhaps it was easier to contemplate sharing his beloved's heart when it was with one of them. Even if she had felt compelled to pick Percy, of all of them. Perhaps it still lay within a slightly altered frame of Scanlan's perception.
Perhaps it lay within a slightly altered frame of Percy's, too.
He just ... he looked at them, as much as he could without his glasses. The pair of them, nestled next to him in the rapidly growing light of dawn. Pike. He didn't ... It had been a long time since Percy had ever seriously thought of love. For him, he meant. He felt ... he still felt things. He did still feel love. For Vex, perhaps most notably, and also for ... It was just, they were all so far beyond him. All of them, anyone he might ... trust enough to offer up his heart. He did know what he was. He knew what sort of blackened, pulverised thing he'd be offering up to them. Feelings or no feelings, how could he in good conscience ever seriously consider it?
But Vox Machina were different. They always had been. He'd thought it a sign when they pulled him out of that prison cell, an arrow leading his life down a new path. He hadn't been wrong. For different reasons and from different sources than he'd believed in then, but he hadn't been wrong. Any one of these people could be trusted with ... just about anything, really. Anything he had. If he were ever to allow himself to fall in love with anyone ...
But he had to be sure. He knew that. He couldn't go into this with anything less than absolute surety, because anything else would tear Pike apart when she figured it out. If she did ... if she really did love him as she said. And she did. She had to. He couldn't believe she would have said anything if she didn't. So he had to be sure. He'd hurt enough people by now, been hurt enough himself, to have an idea how much hearts could bear before they were broken. They all did, really. They'd all seen enough by now.
There was a reason they hadn't done more than sleep together last night. Sleep sleep. Actually sleep, nothing else. Even Scanlan hadn't protested that, or not too much at least. Whatever else you could say about the apparent mess his marriage proposal had caused between himself and Pike, it seemed to have altered his outlook on means of persuasion. Kaylie, too. Scanlan had changed so much since his daughter had come into his life. He'd followed Pike's lead. Not Percy's. Last night, Percy hadn't been ...
He hadn't been in a state to lead anyone. He'd only barely been in a state to follow them. Only because he trusted them. Trusted Pike, anyway. He didn't know if he would have followed anyone else. Maybe Vex. Just her, just those two. He would follow one or both of those two wherever they might lead. If anyone else had taken his hand last night, tried to draw him forward ...
He wouldn't have gone. He wouldn't. He didn't trust anyone else the way he did those two. Not with something like this. Not with ... with thoughts of love, promises of love, and all the inherent terror they contained. Perhaps not even with sharing a bed, either, not in that context. Anna Ripley had left more scars there than just the ones on his body. Percy could admit that. Past a certain threshold of vulnerability, the thought of touch, of hands on his skin, was more than he could bear, and few things ever made anyone more vulnerable than love. Well, torture, obviously, but with Vox Machina love was thankfully the more likely chink in his armour.
Pike wouldn't hurt him that way though. Probably none of them would hurt him that way, nearly certainly none of them. Scanlan hadn't, wouldn't. But with Pike the trust was absolute, instinctive. With Pike he didn't even think. The thought of her harming anyone that way was simply anathema.
And that was ... that was rather illustrative, wasn't it? Pike or Vex. The only two he trusted that much, the only two to whom he could give this willingly. Pike or Vex. One or the other. Or perhaps, given Scanlan's wonderful joke that somehow, suddenly, wasn't actually a joke at all, perhaps both.
They weren't normal people, he thought with sudden, desperate humour, dropping his head down onto his arm. None of them, not one. They couldn't do one single solitary thing the simple way between them. For gods' sake. Polyamorous, Scanlan said. The poor gnome apparently hadn't had a clue. Oh gods. And Vax had gotten there first, hadn't he? Vax had jumped in first, torn himself up between Keyleth and Gilmore, and the rest of them apparently really, really should have paid attention there. Vax always jumped in first. But then the rest of them followed him. And now look where they all were.
Though Pike had learned, hadn't she? Or perhaps she was, somehow, simply more of an opportunist than Vax. The thought boggled the mind a bit, but in this bed lay the evidence, didn't it? Pike hadn't wanted to be torn between anyone. She hadn't wanted to hurt either of them, though she hadn't entirely managed that with Scanlan. And then Scanlan had made that joke, and Pike had seen her chance, and Pike had apparently made up her mind to try and have both.
And Percy was ... he was nearly afraid to think it, nearly afraid to even allow the possibility, but Percy was very nearly all right with that. Even eager for it, really. It was selfish in the extreme, but the thought of loving someone shared was nearly a relief to him. How much damage could he do, when she had someone else to lean on besides him? He couldn't hope to be enough on his own, not for someone like Pike, but surely he and Scanlan could manage to be close enough between them? And if it was shared, if it was shared from the start ... maybe she wouldn't mind that his own heart, tiny corrupted remnant that it was, harboured feelings for more than just her as well?
Percy snorted blackly at that. Closed his eyes, snorted at himself, tried to curl instinctively into a ball as well before his legs bumped against Pike's and he remembered rapidly why he shouldn't. Good gods, they made him giddy, didn't they? They made him think ... such flatly ridiculous things, they really did. Dreams on dreams. Years without even hoping for one, knowing himself better than to dare, and now suddenly he was hoping for two? And not just any two, even, but Pike and Vex. The two most brilliant, most radiant ... Yes, absolutely, that was most definitely going to happen. That was absolutely something he deserved. For gods' sake. What sort of spell did these people cast, anyway?
"... Percy? Are you ... Are you okay?"
Percy froze. Tried not to flinch, tried to hide the muscles that tensed in his arms and legs and tightened all the way down his spine. He'd woken her. Well, of course he had. She was right on top of him, trying to curl up in ball around her was naturally going to get her attention. And it was more or less light out now. She'd probably have been waking naturally soon anyway. That was ... None of that made it any easier to face her, suddenly. None of it made it any easier to try and answer.
She didn't wait for him to try. Well, she did, she waited a little, but then she turned to him. He felt her doing it, felt the shift of weight on the bed as she squirmed around in Scanlan's arms, felt her hands come up to lightly touch the arm he had curled around his head. He shuddered without meaning to. She made a noise, a tiny, heartbroken thing, and for a startlingly vivid second Percy hated himself quite virulently.
"I'm sorry," she whispered softly. "Oh Percy, I'm so sorry. I never meant to hurt you, or to frighten you. Please believe me, I never wanted that."
And that ... That. Gods. Gods. There was only so much cowardice any man could bear inside himself. There was only so far he could let himself go. He'd hurt enough people accidentally, the least he could do was not manage it on purpose, not let it happen when he could damn well help it at all.
He raised his head to look at her. Blearily, mostly, his glasses were still sitting prettily and uselessly on the night table on the far side of the bed, but he made the effort. She was easily visible regardless. Always radiant, was Pike. Always gentle and vivid and strong.
"I'm sorry," she said again, soft and small and flinching inside herself, and Percy uncurled his arms to take her hands carefully inside his. Scanlan was awake behind her, he could see. Scanlan was holding her tightly and gently and glaring at Percy with a look that promised vengeance should he say so much as one more word to hurt her further. Well. That at least was a sentiment Percy entirely understood. One he shared, too. He wasn't going to begrudge it to the bard at all.
"Don't be sorry," he said quietly, grimacing faintly and wryly as he did so. Honestly, you'd think she'd know where to place the blame by this stage. "I'm not ... It's all right, Pike. It's just ... This is a new thought. Very, very new. And ... and very big, and I haven't ..." He growled at himself, frustrated by the stammering, and forced himself to firm things up. "I just ... I don't know how to do this. I've never ... wanted this way before, and I ..."
Her face changed, a rush of pain and understanding and something very, very fierce surging across it, and then suddenly she was struggling upright. Scanlan let her, after a startled moment, Scanlan pushed her up from behind, and then she was there. Leaning over Percy on her knees, pulling her hands from his to rest them gently against his face instead. Percy blinked up at her, helpless and bewildered. He didn't flinch from her touch at all.
"I'm not going to hurt you," she said, quietly and fiercely. "Either of you. I'm never going to hurt you, and I don't want either of you to let me. If you can't do this, if you don't want to do this, then you tell me. Both of you. You tell me the second it happens. I am not going to hurt you. Not for any reason. If you're scared you have to tell me. If you're hurt you have to let me fix it. Please."
There was a startled pause at that, while Percy tried to bludgeon his brain into formulating an answer, tried too not to fall into breathless distraction at the sheer ... at her brightness and her fierceness leaning over him, the depth of care in her, and then Scanlan spoke up quietly and determinedly from behind her. Then the bard spoke, the author of this entire mess of possibilities, and Percy felt a rather reluctant surge of quiet admiration for him.
"I wouldn't have to agreed to this if I wasn't okay with it," Scanlan said, leaning back to stare mildly and thoughtfully at the ceiling. They turned to look at him, Percy and Pike both, and he tilted his head a little to smile crookedly over at them. "I know, I know. Maybe I would have once, just to see what it was like, to say I'd tried it. But I'm not ... Things are different now. I've got ... I've got responsibilities and things these days. I've got a kid. I'm trying to show her I'm not a screw-up anymore. So I wouldn't do that to you. Not even you, Percival Whatsit The Third. I think ... I think we're all a bit past the point where I could lie to you, to any of you, about something like that. I'm not scared, Pike. Not of this. I wouldn't be here if I was. I'm not hurt that you love him too. I'm just ... I think I'm still just so glad that you do love me as well."
Pike looked down at him, stunned and silent, and her expression ... Oh, she did love him, didn't she. She really did. There was such a stunned, breathless love in her face there, for him, for this new Scanlan who was trying so hard, something so bright and fierce and shining. Percy stared up at her. He searched around inside himself, tested himself, trying to see if it made him jealous. If it hurt him, to see that pointed at someone else. But it was ... this was Pike. This was Pike who loved with all her heart and all her soul. There was nothing in him for her save a vague and desperate yearning, a blind and unreasoning trust. She could love anyone. She could love everyone. So long as he could believe she loved him too.
And she ... she did. When she turned to look at him, kneeling over him in the light of dawn. He could see that she did. That hope in her face. That need and that yearning, as strong for them as theirs for her. Well. Close, anyway. A need not to hurt them, a need to be allowed to love them. She wasn't just a distant force of goodness, a font of healing and strength. She was Pike Trickfoot as well. She needed things too. She wanted and yearned and could be shattered by them as easily and more so as by anything else.
Love. Nothing else could make you quite so vulnerable. A roll of tenderness went through Percy at the thought, tenderness and hope and breathless, squeezing terror, and he reached up carefully to touch her cheek.
"I don't know how to do this," he said, softly while she stared at him. "I've never loved before. Not like this. I wasn't ... I was young, and then the Briarwoods came, and everything happened, and I ... But. But I do ... think I love you. I do ... want. I just, I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to make it happen. And I ... And it wouldn't be just you. Love. I didn't think ... either of you, I didn't hope, but then you ... You should know that I ..."
"I know," she interrupted gently. "It's okay, Percy. I know you love Vex as well."
Scanlan snorted behind her. "You and everyone else," he said, though not entirely ungently either. "Grog could see that, and Grog's not exactly the most perceptive when it comes to these things. Though he has his moments, I guess. Still. You and Vex. Not exactly a secret over here."
Percy closed his eyes, violently fighting the need to sink himself into the bed and vanish from the universe entirely. Pike stroked her hands across his cheeks. She brushed her thumb underneath his eyes, coaxing him gently to look back at her.
"It really is okay, Percy," she told him, smiling lopsidedly above him. "I'm not a complete hypocrite, you know? I don't how Vex is going to feel, I don't know if that's ... what either of you want to do about that, but ... whatever it is? Whatever happens? I love you, and I want to be there for you through it. I know I'm ... I'm being selfish right now, loving you and Scanlan and trying to keep you both, I do know that. But it is real. What I feel for you, what I feel for both of you. I want to try, if ... if both of you do as well. If you can't, or if you'd prefer to ... to try something with Vex instead, to have someone you wouldn't have to share, I'd understand that. You don't ... you don't have to do anything. I wouldn't ever force you, or try to trap you in something you didn't want. Please believe that. I really don't want to hurt you. Either of you. The last thing I want is that."
"... I know," Percy said. Softly, and in complete and utter earnest. He did know. It was ... It was probably more than anything else the reason he was here. He shook his head. He felt his face twist in a breathless, self-amused sort of smile. "I'm not afraid of you," he said, looking up at her, feeling the warmth of Scanlan at their side. "That was never the problem. I'm not ... I'm not a good person, Pike. I'm a very bad, very selfish one. I want this. I want you. I want Vex too. And if I thought, for even half a second, that I could have you both, that I could somehow earn you both, by some miracle ..."
He trailed off, shaking his head at the ... the sheer size, the ridiculousness of it all, and Scanlan chuckled suddenly beside them. Scanlan rolled towards them, rolled into them, and shook his head around his laughter.
"Polyamory," he said, snorting softly to himself. "You know, I honestly thought it was a joke? I mean, I was happy to play it up, I didn't mind it, but I really did think it was just a ruse. Guess that shows what I know, huh?" He shook his head, looking between Pike and Percy, his eyes crinkled with humour. "You know you two are probably the last people anyone would expect as well? You and Keyleth. Me, yeah, I've got my reputation, and Grog likes the ladies as well, and the twins flirt with everyone, not to mention the messes Vax gets himself into, but you two ..."
He shook his head again, snickering to himself, and Percy glanced back at Pike, found her looking down at him and flushing luminously in the morning light. She ducked her head, the colour bright in her cheeks, but it was more ruefulness and reluctant humour than shame, he thought. She wasn't ... she didn't seem ashamed of what she was, what she wanted. Sorry if it hurt people, yes, afraid of hurting people, but not ashamed. She smiled at him, wry and sheepish, and Percy felt a rush of ... he wasn't even sure. His chest felt compressed, breathless and drowning in something, and he touched her cheek again compulsively. Touched his fingers to it, held them shaking there.
"I suppose we are an odd pair," he admitted, wry and careful around the thing inside his chest. "The cleric who loves everyone and the gunslinger who thought he'd forgotten how. We are ... we're quite a pair." He shook his head, grimacing and fumbling around for more words. "I don't know if this will work. I don't know if it can work. Things like this don't happen to me. But ... I love you, and ... what Scanlan said. I'm ... I'm so glad you love me as well. And I think I'm ... Sharing works? For us, I mean. Doing things alone doesn't ... work so well for me. I trust you. I'm pretty sure I even trust Scanlan. I don't know what might happen with Vex, if anything should happen, I don't know if she could do this too or ... Regardless. I ... I want to try this. If you're both willing. If you don't mind ... what I am, the way I am. I think ... I think I do want to try."
He wasn't sure quite what to make of Pike's expression at that. There was something, maybe a breathless sort of thing like the one in his own chest, a tangle of things all caught up together. He thought she looked like she was going to cry. She couldn't answer at first, opened her mouth but couldn't find the words, and so Scanlan answered for her. Scanlan reached over to curl his hand around hers where it was still cupped against Percy's cheek, something odd and exasperated and curiously gentle in his face.
"If we weren't willing to try we wouldn't be in bed with you," he informed Percy, rather chidingly. "Pike wants you, and since she wants me too I'm pretty sure I'm okay with that. You're not the love of my life or anything, de Rolo, I don't love you the way she does, but you are ... I mean, I get where she's coming from. You and me, we can work this out between us. And Vex ... Let's just say working that out would be a lot easier again." He waggled his eyebrows briefly, though the thread of seriousness remained in his voice. "We'll work it out, we'll figure out if it can be done. Vex is good at greed, if nothing else, and I think we're all proving very happily greedy in here. She might surprise us, you know. You two certainly did. I mean, if Pike can turn out more polyamorous than me, not to mention Mr Emotional Constipation six years running, I'd say Vex'ahlia is looking a better and better bet all the time. I just hope she doesn't bring the bear. That would be a step too far, even for me."
He shrugged, grinning faintly over at them, and it was ... like so many things with Scanlan, Percy thought distantly, it was terribly crass and simultaneously comforting as well. The man had a knack, he really did, for making even the most ridiculous of things seem plausible and doable and well within the realms of possibility. It was ... it was terribly annoying, and yet at times it was perhaps one of the most reassuring things someone could possibly have at their side.
In the face of it, slowly, suddenly, Percy felt himself starting to grin as well. He felt the thing in his chest break, the half-terror snapping apart like ice floes, and a rush of ... hope and fondness and tangled love and blind optimism surged up in its wake. And humour. Most of all that. What else could greet Scanlan Shorthalt at his most ridiculously, inspiringly confident?
"You know," Percy said mildly, with a little streak of wickedness, "I almost think I want to kiss you right now, Shorthalt. I'm not even sure why, but I rather think I do."
Pike made a little squeaking noise at that. A very startled, hungry sort of squeaking noise, and Scanlan, who had been looking more startled and alarmed than anything else himself, abruptly switched to contemplative instead. Wary, thoughtful, intrigued, which Percy had not exactly intended, but the expression on Pike's face was perhaps doing interesting things to his reasoning faculties as well. Scanlan hummed suddenly, a low, thoughtful, decidedly dangerous sort of a noise, and then he levered himself up with a grin and leaned in around Pike to touch his nose to Percy's cheek. Softly at first, nearly gently, giving Percy a second to back out if he needed to, and then Scanlan leaned all the way in and pressed that wicked grin to Percy's lips.
Pike's hands curled convulsively around Percy's face. Her breath hitched audibly, and Percy found his arm gravitating towards her, the one that wasn't awkwardly pinned now beneath the weight of two gnomes. He brought his hand to her hip, held on tight, and opened his mouth nearly instinctively to Scanlan's kiss. Scanlan gave a little startled hum, but he neither questioned it nor flinched. He leaned in instead, flicked his tongue gently and testingly against Percy's teeth, and then ... then he set about demonstrating for Percy his long and apparently very considerable experience in the art of kissing. Percy's breath started hitching rather notably itself, and Pike's hand drifted down behind his head to stir and grip the tiny hairs at the back of his neck. The sensation sent a bolt of ... of something through him, and Percy's brain went neatly and gloriously blank for rather a long few seconds.
"... Fuck me," Scanlan breathed laughingly, pulling back and looking down at Percy's dazed and probably distinctly flushed expression. Percy grimaced up at him, mustering some vague offense from somewhere, and Scanlan only shook his head, laughing harder and patting Percy gently on the cheek. "Shit, Percy. Yeah, yeah okay. That was all right. Yeah. You know what? This might just work and all."
Pike made a noise again, thin and keening and insistent, and both of them looked at her. Her eyes were so bright, Percy noticed breathlessly. Fuck. So that was what greed looked like on the face of an angel. She shifted, leaned up to nearly sit on Percy's stomach, and Percy's brain was definitely not all there right now, because that motion sent very insistent notices to several less-than-polite parts of his anatomy. Not that Pike appeared to mind. Rather the opposite, it would seem.
"That was lovely," she whispered, staring at them desperately. "You ... the both of you ... Oh that was lovely. That was just ... that was very nice indeed."
... Right, Percy thought. Distantly, foggily, but with a rather stunning surge of avarice beneath it all. Right, yes. Doable. Plausible and doable and well within the realms of possibility. Oh yes. Terror and responsibility be damned. Right now, this second, Percy was all aboard for this and then some. He was a bad man, all of them knew that. He was greedy and selfish and he always had been. Fuck it. They'd make it work. Somehow or other, if he had to rewrite reality from the ground up to make it happen, they were going to make this work. All of them. Him and Scanlan and Pike and Vex and anyone else they cared to have join. It was going to work. Screw everything. He was going to make it work or he was going to die trying.
"... Well then," Scanlan said beside him, wry and cheerful and blindly amused at the lot of them. He glanced over at Percy, that terribly annoying and aggravatingly reassuring twinkle in his eyes. "Polymachina, here we come, eh? Man, I've got to be more careful what I say to you people. You all take the weirdest of my ideas way too seriously, you know that?"
"You probably should have seen that coming," Percy retorted dryly. "We're not normal people. We're Vox Machina. We haven't been normal in our lives. You've no one to blame but yourself if you didn't expect someone to follow through."
Scanlan considered that, and conceded the point. "Fair enough," he allowed. "Though I still maintain that asking anyone to have expected it to be you two is a bit much. Not that I'm complaining." He grinned a bit. "Trust me. I'm not complaining at all, and less so by the minute. I've got a good feeling about this, you know. It feels right, it feels like us. I think we should give it a go."
Percy raised an eyebrow, and then looked up at Pike, sitting there on top of him with her eyes all fierce and hungry and hopeful still. The most beautiful, avaricious angel in existence, save possibly Vex'ahlia should he somehow manage to give her cause. And it wouldn't work, of course it wouldn't, these things didn't happen to people like him, but there was little doubt now that they were trying it anyway. Just to see where it went. Just to have as much as possible for as long as possible, before something somewhere managed to take it away.
"... I don't think you'll find any objections here," he noted quietly, and watched as Pike nodded rapidly and fervently in agreement, her hands fierce and gentle where she held him still. "For good or ill, I do believe we're committed now. Sarenrae help us all."
Scanlan snorted. "I'm not sure she'd know where to start," he commented wryly. "But fair enough. I don't think anyone else does either. So. All right. Here's to Polymachina, then. Here's to us and here's to making as big and sexy as mess of this as we can!"
"Here here!" said Pike, grinning happily on top of him as she looked down at them both.
"Here here," said Percy, a little slower and a little more fearful, but with all of his not-inconsiderable will power behind it. "To Polymachina, and to all Scanlan's bloody jokes that never seem to stay that way."
How the bastard always ended up getting it right, Percy would never fucking know. Damned, blasted gnome. Every fucking time.
On the bright side, though, surely it couldn't get any more ridiculous from here?