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White, pupil- and strangely expressionless eyes were not a comforting sight to one just out of unconsciousness, Percy found. In fact, for a brief moment, he thought he’d died again and was now being greeted to the afterlife by Celestial beings, as one was when their soul hadn’t been promised to a shadow fiend, or at least so he assumed for the split-second it took him to realize that the pain he was currently in was much different from the one he’d been during his demise.
Then the pieces came together; he wasn’t looking at anything from the afterlife, but at one of Vex’s new adoptive sons. This notion was strongly supported by Vex herself kneeling to his side and now reaching across his body and clutching the angel boy’s hand.
“Thank you!” She breathed, her voice strained and tears drying on her cheeks. “Thank you so much, dear!”
“It seems you bought us some healers,” Percy managed to quip, every word burning in his throat. “That’s something.”
“Shut up,” Vex ordered him, then scrunched up her face while looking at him. “SCANLAN!” She bellowed across the room. “Drop the fucking spell!”
“We’re a bit busy over here!” Scanlan’s voice answered from across the room, strained in the way it always was when the gnome was in crisis mode but trying to keep up his aloof persona.
“Dear, can you go over there and help them, too?” Vex asked the young Celestial.
“Yes, mistress,” the boy conceded and backed away with his head bowed, making her wince some more.
“I’m not your mistress – “ She started, but the boy had already gone.
“No, you’re more like his adoptive mother, aren’t you?” Percy asked to lighten the mood, then attempted to look around. Moving hurt, but he was definitely in the mansion, there was a large, red, smoldering pit fiend corpse blocking his view of most of the foyer, and he could hear chanting and hectic conversations all around him. “What’s the situation?”
“The situation is that you got yourself almost killed again,” Vex unnecessarily informed him, while avoiding looking at him. “Stop doing that. SCANLAN! THE SEEMING!” The last part was shouted across the room again.
“I take it I still look like your brother?” Percy surmised.
“You look like two of my nightmares in one neat package, and I need you to only look like one of them,” Vex confirmed. “I swear to god, Scanlan, this takes five fucking seconds!”
“Well if that isn’t the most flattering thing a girl has ever said to me…” Percy mused, and chocked down the laughter bubbling up inside him when Vex made very panic waving gestures to silence him. “How are the others doing?”
“Well, Scanlan’s fine,” Vex answered, hectically looking around. “I’m fine. You’re conscious. Pike and Keyleth are both down, which made healing a lot harder. My actual brother is stalking around here somewhere doing his holy shit, you can tell because his wings are singed and smoking up the place. I can’t see Grog right now, but I think he at least was on his feet when the thing died.”
“How did the thing die?” Percy asked. “Last I remember, I think its tail got me. Or maybe the mace?”
“You’re not singed enough to have been hit by the mace, darling, thank the gods,” Vex claimed. “Scanlan, do I need to come over there?”
“You’re welcome to put your Cure Wounds to use!” Scanlan shouted back. “Most of us are out of spells!”
“The angel boys aren’t, let them help!” Vex argued. “Who’s still down at this point?”
“We’re all conscious, but, ah…” Keyleth now spoke up, voice hoarse. “I think Pike and Grog are poisoned.”
“I can take care of that!” Pike assured them from another corner of the room. She, too, sounded very rough.
“S-so can we…” One of the angel boys’ faint voices announced.
“Then everyone is taken care of?” Vex made sure.
“Fine,” Scanlan finally gave in. “Have your moment. Just think of the lost entertainment value here.”
Percy had only a split-second or so to admire the angry blush creeping on Vex’s face, before she looked at him again, now without the disgust and confusion caused by the seeming. Instead, there was a flicker of terror in her eyes, quickly chased away by fierce determination, just before she threw her arms around him and pressed her face against his neck. Her body was shaken by sobs, and he awkwardly put his arms around her, too, though he was finding it a bit difficult to remain sitting up with her weight on him.
“Shh,” he muttered into her hair. “It’s okay, I’m fine. We’re all fine.”
“Stop fucking doing this,” she demanded, her voice brittle, face still buried between his shoulder and neck.
“It’s not like I’m doing it on purpose,” he half-heartedly defended himself, caressing the back of her head now. “But I’ll try to do better.”
“You got into range of that thing!” She argued. “The whole point of your weapons is to not do that!”
“Bad luck and close quarters,” he justified this. “Two things I like to avoid.”
“First you stab a dragon, and now this!” Vex retorted, finally sounding more angry than anything else, despite the tears still soaking through his collar. “Stop it, you hear me?”
“Technically I didn’t stab a dragon, but a dragon’s illusion…” He pointed out, and then winced in pain when she punched him in the side. “Okay, fine, I’ll stop. Only shooting dragons from now on, unless the circumstances call for a different course of action.”
“That’s one hell of an arbitrary guideline,” she protested, pulling away from his chest to glare at him, eyes red from crying and tears streaking her cheeks, but he could tell she was at least a little amused.
“See, we have that thing that prevents any and all plans we make from actually working out the way they’re supposed to,” Percy pointed out in attempt to cheer her up some more. He also reached out to wipe the tears off her face, just because it felt like the right thing to do. “So I try not to make any promise.”
She actually chuckled, but it was rather humorless.
“Fair enough,” she admitted, then swallowed audibly, blushed again, and took a deep and very shaky breath. “It’s just…”
She glanced away from him, and toward the hand he had caressing her cheek. Percy briefly considered pulling it away, feeling the heat rising to his own face at the realization, but decided against it.
“I…” She started again, her voice growing thin and quiet. “I… I need there to be a later, okay?”
Now it was his turn to swallow and avoid her gaze, as his heart jumped up into his throat. He was determined to actually have that talk with her, yes, but… He glanced at the giant pit fiend corpse next to them. Not now.
“Well,” he answered after a while his throat very, very dry. “I promise to at least try.” He gave her a smile that was supposed to be self-deprecating and reassuring at the same time, but when she smiled back at him, she blinked away fresh tears.
It was enough to get him started on working up the nerve to just kiss her again, but –
“Are you making out already, or can we harvest this pit fiend first?” Keyleth, of all people, yelled across the room, making them jump apart. Vex turned an even deeper shade of red, while Percy had to recover from a sudden fit of coughing as she stood up, glaring across the room to where to druid was waiting for her, arms crossed, and looking way too pleased with herself.
“You know,” Vex said, her voice steady in its annoyance. “As much as I understand your need to do this, at least get your own material, okay?”