Chapter Text
Vax took a slow sip of his coffee, savouring the familiar, warm bitterness and forcing himself to let the unfamiliar, rubbery smokiness of badly burnt milk settle on his tastebuds, like some kind of penance.
He could blame it on the fact that he never used Percy's stupid, fancy espresso machine, that he was one of few people in their friend group who'd never done his time as one of Whitestone's charming bisexual baristas. Or that he preferred his coffee from the ancient - near decrepit - filter machine Wilhand had gifted to Pike when she moved out and that sounded a little like it was about to take off into the far reaches of the atmosphere most mornings, but that Pike or Vex would always switch on as the first ones up for the day and that had dutifully satisfied the entire house's early morning caffeine intake for five years now.
This morning, Vax was up long before Vex. Pike was already at the dining table when Vax dragged himself downstairs, body feeling heavy and taut with tension, but the steaming mug in front of her had a tag looped around the handle for a noticeably non-caffeinated Lady Grey tea. On an ordinary day, Vax would've quirked an eyebrow. Today, the reason for the kitchen's uncomfortably still quiet without the soft whirring and faint, plasticky rattle of the filter coffee machine was too heavy.
Percy had bought them the espresso machine during the dark, dreaded week of third year when the other one, on an otherwise uneventful Tuesday afternoon, finally gave out with a spluttering whine. Everybody begged Percy to fix it and he refused, instead returning home with his high-end replacement in hand and an irritatingly pompous insistence that this day had clearly been coming for years, that the old patchwork of sun-faded khaki plastic and loose screws sounded as though it were about to explode, and didn't make nearly good enough coffee for the inexplicable attachment everybody had to it. He waxed poetic about freshly ground beans, properly extracted espresso, the smooth, silky pour of well-steamed milk.
"You'll see," he said with unwavering certainty.
It took all of four days for him to cave (and they hadn't even needed to deploy Vex to convince him).
Vax had come downstairs that Sunday to find Percy at the breakfast bar, the filter coffee machine in pieces on the counter around him as he determinedly brought it back to life.
(He never managed to fix the noise no matter how hard he tried, but it hadn't given out in all the years since.)
(They still used Percy's often enough - hot chocolates on chilly, rainy nights, Scanlan making himself an overly extravagant salted caramel latte some mornings, Pike when she needed espresso for coffee cake. Over time, the coarse rumble of the grinder, the hum of the boiler, the low hiss of the steaming wand, all became as comforting to Vax as Wilhand's precious hunk-of-junk.)
The eerie quiet in the kitchen this morning had felt just as cold as the floorboards under Vax's feet as he stood there, staring at the two coffee machines side by side. It was in somewhat of a daze that he moved towards Percy's, flicking it on at the wall and following the motions of making himself a coffee with stilted, non-instinctive clumsiness. It hadn't been until Pike winced as she stepped up next to him to refill her tea that he realised the high pitched screeching was him, or rather, the milk. By the time he'd hurriedly spun the dial to switch off the wand, the acrid smell of burnt milk was already hanging in the air. Its sourness felt fitting for the morning. Stubbornly, childishly, Vax poured it into his also sub-par and already cold shot of espresso, ignoring Pike's exasperated protest.
Nursing perhaps the worst cup of coffee he'd ever drank in his life, Vax's eyes surveyed the living room.
It looked the exact same as usual, from his seat on the couch. Two books and a set of car keys on the coffee table, next to a discarded, half-finished crossword; the charger for Grog’s old, clunky, somehow still surviving laptop curled up and placed on top of the beanbag; Percy’s weathered jacket draped over the back of the couch, a little haphazardly but with enough care that it wouldn’t really catch anyone’s attention. Their cookbooks were still neatly lined up on the bookshelf to the left of the TV, the rugs still straight on the floor (Vex and Keyleth always fixed them before heading up to bed; last night, Pike had done it instead). The bright cushions they’d picked out for the couch years ago still sat perfectly in place around him. Everything was easily, comfortably at home where it should be, unmoved and familiar.
Vax struggled not to bristle at it all. When he closed his eyes, this house was a bomb site around them. Pulled up floorboards, books strewn open across the floor, cracked windows and splitting couch cushions, scrapes across the plaster and gouges in the wall, like a hurricane had swept through and been unforgiving with what it left behind.
Even in this strange, still ordinariness, tension from the day before hung thickly in the air. The house hummed with it, slightly off pitch, as if the sharp words he, Percy, and Vex had exchanged had settled into the woodwork, there to stay. It made his skin crawl unpleasantly; his eyes ought to be seeing this, seeing the worst argument, the worst disagreement, the most hurtful, biting chasm torn between them all in all the time they'd known each other. Instead, there was no trace.
Vax drummed his fingers uncomfortably across the edge of his mug, grateful, at least, that the sun had finally begun to creep up above the horizon. He’d been too restless to sleep for more than a few interrupted hours - at first, too full of adrenaline, then once the rush of his blood in his ears and the buzzing at the base of his spine had faded, too caught up in details from the evening, the kind that bounced over and over off the walls of his skull. The betrayal in Vex’s expression when Percy had said what he had about Velora, aiming exactly where it would hurt her most. The tears rolling down her cheeks, the shake in her voice as she’d sworn at the pair of them. Percy’s fury, but more than that, his fear - which now Vax had calmed down, he could recognise with the same bone deep, shattering empathy Percy had offered him out in the garden the week before.
He’d be terrified if he was in Percy’s position, he knew he would. As much as he was loathe to admit it, Syngorn’s hooked barbs still felt as if they were poised tauntingly, menacingly, inches above the surface of his skin - not digging in, because he’d painstakingly built the armour to ensure they couldn’t, but still there. Still hovering, just out of view. Fear didn’t excuse the way Percy had treated Vex, but the more Vax had tossed and turned in bed, Percy’s raging but paper-thin fury on his mind, the more his own anger had folded in on itself, its place in his chest instead flooded with a concern he couldn’t shake.
At least he didn’t have to be concerned alone now. He suspected he'd been the one to rouse Pike from bed with the creak of the old pipes as he’d flicked on the shower long before sunrise. She’d greeted him with a plate of freshly-buttered toast and an entirely undeserved level of kindness, the skin at the corners of her eyes also pulling tiredly, and in the time Vax had been sipping his god-awful coffee, Grog and Scanlan had joined them too.
Trinket nudged at Vax’s knee, and Vax reached out to stroke a hand over his fur. His big eyes were anxious and sorrowful, like he too was looking for the epicentre of the disaster that wreaked destruction within these walls.
"Christ, what smells so bad?" said Scanlan, wrinkling his nose as he artlessly tore a scone in half and tossed it into the toaster.
"Vax burnt the milk for his coffee," said Pike, shooting Scanlan a be nice look. She needn't have. Scanlan's eyebrows furrowed, and he looked at Vax, then at Percy's coffee machine.
"No one's heard from him, then?" Scanlan said, quieter, careful and delicate in a way people rarely expected him to be.
Pike grimaced, and Vax shook his head, staring at the dregs in his mug. Faintly, he heard Scanlan and Pike talking in the kitchen but he couldn't bring himself to try discern what they were saying. Whatever it was, the conversation didn't last long, interrupted by the toaster popping (and the charred edges of Scanlan's scone thankfully overtaking the lingering odour of burnt milk). Scanlan joined Vax in the living room, pulled the beanbag up next to the coffee table, picking up Grog’s charger and dumping it on top of the books on the coffee table so he could take a seat.
Trinket nudged at Vax's knee for a second time, wet nose leaving an imprint on his jeans, then whined insistently. Big brown eyes stared up at him, forlorn.
“I know, Trink,” Vax said quietly, past the lump in his throat. He wanted nothing more than to hear the jiggle of a key stuck in the front door, the stiff click of the latch opening. He wanted to hear Percy kick off his shoes and hang up his jacket on the coathooks by the door, Trinket bounding boisterously across the floor to meet him, tripping him over in his excitement. (Except Percy’s jacket was here, Vax reminded himself - he hadn’t even stopped to take it. Vax's teeth sank into the inside of his cheek. It was the middle of winter and Percy had been gone all night.)
The house remained quiet. Nothing like the raised voices and slammed doors of the night before.
It was equal parts relief and dread that washed over Vax twenty minutes later, when footsteps on the wooden staircase interrupted the thick silence that seemed to have swallowed the living room (and his friends) whole. Trinket’s ears perked up, his head tilting in the direction of the door for a moment before he took off, nails clattering against the floorboards as he headed for the stairs.
“Oof - Trinket, easy -”
Trinket whined unhappily again, and Vex’s inhale was just loud enough that Vax could hear it from where he was, sharp and off guard and echoing over the floors and walls with an emptiness that had never been in this house before.
Shuffled movement in the hallway followed, someone dropping to a crouch, the clicks of Trinket’s paws as he shifted position. A low, inaudible murmur, then another, and with all the twin telepathy Vax had known deep in his bones his entire life, he saw in his mind's eye as Vex stood with a slow, stuttering sigh, and clicked softly under her breath to Trinket as she walked into the living room.
She looked as exhausted as he felt. He knew those shadows under her eyes, their haunted, deep-seated sadness that Vax hadn't seen like this in years. She'd clearly slept even less than him. Red rimmed her eyes. Her shoulders were taut with tension he'd once thought was armour, the kind he would always don before throwing himself out at the world headfirst. But he'd been younger then, and hadn't seen so many parts of her because he didn't know how to. He did now, even parts that scared him a little, parts that Vex probably thought he was still resolutely seeing past. Her bravery wanting to know Velora. Her kindness in how she'd tried to talk Percy down the night before. That she had managed to take pieces of Syldor's parenting, pieces of Syngorn, and mould them into something she could use, something that made her better.
Seeing that tension pulled tight in her frame here, in this house, this life they'd built, and him having had a part in causing it, made Vax's stomach churn. He finally abandoned his mug on the coffee table. The gnawing regret and loathing that had been his constant companion through the night nudged at his chest, and he let it; it was well deserved.
Keyleth’s hand slid across Vex’s shoulder and squeezed before letting go.
Trinket looped around Vex and Keyleth’s legs, then sat himself down on the floor beside where Keyleth stood.
Keyleth, who had been the first to go upstairs to check on Vex, when he’d still been standing in the living room with his hands balled into fists, snapping at a terrified, hurtful Percy. Keyleth, who’d clearly spent some time with Vex this morning, and who Vex seemed to be leaning on for the support she hadn’t wanted from him. Keyleth, who’d always been kind no matter what the world threw at her, and who he’d callously tossed sharp words at, lashing out for no other reason than to deliberately push her away.
He’d fucked up. He’d fucked up badly, his tongue running away from him and saying things he’d never, ever believed. And unlike when he was seventeen, he'd known just how badly from the moment it happened.
(He was yet to figure out how to fix his mistakes in the moment. He'd start working on that after all of this.)
Keyleth offered him a terse smile, but if he was her, he wouldn’t have even given himself that.
It was so unlike the usual warmth he’d gotten selfishly used to. It reached her eyes, sincere, but with a sharp wall in front of it that hadn’t been there before last night, and had clearly needed to be erected just because of him.
He’d always gone to such efforts to not ever let his anger fall back on her. After finding out about Ryan, he'd kept it as an awareness on his periphery, but even before then, at high school, he’d been aware of the reckless edges his fury could have, and had tried with all he had to keep her away from the traces of Syldor in his veins. But just like Percy had done with Vex, Vax had let his anger deliberately twist a knife into a barely-healed wound. His words hadn’t been anywhere near true, but that wasn’t the point. He’d said them. He'd said them knowing the guilt and wistful regret she felt about leaving the way she had. Nearly six months of being in Whitestone still couldn't fix the years she'd missed, not seeing his and Vex and Pike and Grog's lives bloom into something so much more beautiful than they’d thought possible. (He also knew, deep in his chest, that if he’d been alone on the other side of the word, he wouldn’t have wanted to watch his friends - his family - all living their lives together, without him. If he was really, truly honest, he couldn't blame her. Not really.)
He’d never once asked her to come to Whitestone back when the option had still been on the table, because Zephrah held Vilya, and a world Keyleth had never known. How could he have faulted her for the decision to go, when the things she was chasing - her own history, her family, the whispers of her mother in the breeze - were all things he would’ve grasped onto with both hands, had he been given the same choice?
And that was before her grandparents had taken that choice and twisted it, poisoning all those years with secrets and lies and puppeting Keyleth's life like it was nothing. Before Keyleth had found out that the biggest decision of her life, and all the sacrifices that had come with it, she had been shepherded into making simply because of money.
She was still reconciling what was with what could have been had she known the whole truth at eighteen. Since the disastrous dinner with her family, every time Vax had gently asked if she wanted to talk about it, she'd shaken him off, still too fragile, too confused, and not grounded enough in being here to face whatever truths about Zephrah were waiting for her.
And Vax had found that spot, vulnerable and shielded, and aimed right for it.
His thumb restlessly traced the grooves of one of his rings, comforted by the familiar lines of it.
His gaze drifted back to Vex, and the shadows beneath her eyes. The fragile way she was holding herself that this long, too quiet, too still night had done nothing to alleviate.
Vax wanted desperately to talk to Keyleth, to begin the first of many apologies he owed her. But no matter how much he loved her, it had to be Vex first, as it always would be. He couldn’t count the number of times Vex had looked at him and sighed over another heartbreak of his, gently chastising him for giving his heart away so easily but still pulling him into her arms. She, on the other hand, was always so careful. So deliberate with her affection, so selective, so cautious to make sure she didn’t get hurt. With Percy still gone, he wouldn’t split his attention away from her.
At the very least, Keyleth seemed to expect that, murmuring something to Vex before veering off to the kitchen, exchanging a brief - if subdued - smile with both Pike and Grog. It left Vex to make her way across the room to where Vax sat, stepping over Scanlan’s outstretched legs.
Her palm briefly brushed over his hair before she took a seat beside him, briefly offering some hint of a sympathy he didn’t deserve.
The filter coffee machine finally rattled to life on the kitchen counter and it was like a layer of the tension blanketed through the room cracked right down the centre.
Vax exhaled with relief, reaching out to curl an arm around Vex’s shoulders and pressing a kiss to the top of her head. They’d made such a mess, between them. But long, long before them, this mess had come from whispered names that Vax had as much furious loathing toward as he did his own father. The Briarwoods - so far away from their lives most of the time, ominous and barely feeling real on a regular day. Today, Vax was fighting a long-forgotten instinct to go charging at rich, dangerously protected assholes with nothing but his fists and bared teeth, stubbornly convinced that he had some kind of chance at winning.
“How long have you guys been up?” Vex asked quietly, her hand straying absentmindedly over the edge of the couch to find Trinket’s fur.
“Me ‘n Pickle have been down here a while, Scanlan too. Grog joined us about half an hour ago.”
Scanlan’s expression held the kind of gentle sincerity that always twisted Vax’s chest up. “Did you sleep?” he asked Vex.
“Not really,” she admitted. She looked around at them - Vax, with the hollowed out dark circles he knew were under his eyes, Scanlan with the same, his usual fidgeting subdued, Grog sunken into the couch cushions, far quieter than usual. “Seems like that’s going around.” She paused, hesitation briefly stilling her tongue. She didn’t meet his eyes, but he knew the next question was coming before it left her lips. “He hasn’t come back yet, has he?”
Vax was intimately familiar with the way Vex sounded when she was desperately hoping to be proved wrong, despite already having an answer in front of her eyes. His tongue felt thick in his mouth, his throat tight.
“Not yet,” Grog said, from the other couch.
Vex held his gaze, then swallowed.
The scent of coffee - good coffee - drifted over as Keyleth made her way back from the kitchen with two steaming mugs in her hands. One was passed carefully over to Vex, who took it with a grateful, if small, smile, before Keyleth moved towards the opposite couch.
Vax watched her go, his eyes following her path. That same regret pooled within him and threatened to spin out of control with every step she took. Things felt wrong, in a bone-deep, aching kind of way. There was none of the usual affection; no brushes of her hand over his shoulder, none of the warmth that usually accompanied her gaze, or the softness that’d been gradually building up unspoken between them over the last few months. He hadn’t realised how used to it he’d gotten until it had been suddenly stripped away.
Pike’s gaze flicked between the three of them before settling on him and Vex. She worried her lower lip with her teeth, a furrow between her eyebrows. “He’ll be back,” she said quietly.
“What did he mean yesterday, about the Briarwoods killing his family?” Scanlan asked abruptly.
It hung in the air, an odd string of words for what would otherwise be a regular morning in their house. It was something too scary and grown up and serious, more terrifying than even Syldor, something that Vax, even in his own intimate familiarity with grief, couldn't begin to imagine.
He could feel Keyleth’s gaze burning into him from across the room. Grog leant forward, elbows on his knees.
They all knew that Vax and Vex were the only two who knew any real details about Percy's past.
And Percy’s business was his; it wasn’t fair to tell the others secrets he’d shared in confidence. But then again, he’d made it all of their business, yesterday. Vax found Vex already looking at him when he shifted his eyes in her direction, and watched her find his agreement. She ran her hands through uncharacteristically unkempt hair.
“I don’t know," she said. There was a mask to her tone that Vax recognised as something closer to her work voice, wading through logic and parsing out truth with careful intent. "There were rumours, I think, because the Briarwoods had previously tried to buy out Sun Tree Enterprises and there'd been a lot of business disputes between them and Percy's parents. They had tried to gain influence in Whitestone's corporate and political circles for a long time and the de Rolos were apparently the main thing keeping them out.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Vax noticed the rapt focus on Keyleth's face, her furrowed eyebrows. She looked several paces ahead of what Vex was saying. He hadn't realised Keyleth knew anything about Percy's family already.
"When the de Rolos died, the Briarwoods were in Whitestone and took their place before anyone could even blink," added Vex, the objectivity wavering in her voice as her eyes hardened. "The political and financial upheaval in Whitestone during the years after the de Rolo accident was insane. None of us would've noticed because we all moved here when it had already started, but only by a few years. All the stuff the student activism groups back at uni were talking about was tied to that. And I deal with the ramifications of policies and funding backed by the Briarwoods at work all the time. The fact that Mary's almost closed down in second year was because of a sudden, concerted effort from conservative councillors to shut down queer spaces around the city. They'd never had any traction before, but suddenly the Briarwoods had the keys to Whitestone and all those assholes came steamrolling through with whatever agendas they wanted."
"Mary's almost shutting down was because of them?" Scanlan said, fury in every syllable. (Vax could relate. Mary's had been the first queer space he'd ever stepped into and it had welcomed him with open arms. Scanlan had organised - and performed at - the fundraiser concert that had helped save the bar, in the end.)
"Not officially," said Vex. "The Briarwoods don't even live here - Percy would never have stayed if they had. And the councillors, businesses, and lobby groups the de Rolos worked with have a strong enough opposition now that Whitestone isn't at the Briarwoods' whim anymore. But they own Sun Tree Enterprises, which in itself was the heart of the city, so god knows what power and influence they do still have. And god knows what it's funding for them beyond Whitestone."
"Christ," said Keyleth, running a hand over her face.
Pike swallowed. "So them being responsible for Percy's family … that makes sense, right? Like, there's no world where that's just some coincidence for rich, powerful assholes like that?"
"But I guess there's also no world where all the good, powerful people Percy's family knew and helped and worked with didn't think the same thing," Scanlan pointed out. "If they knew politicians and CEOs and activists and people in every corner of the city … surely someone would've tried to prove it."
"Unless there was nothing to prove," said Keyleth quietly.
"You don't believe it?" Grog asked, surprised.
"No, I do," Keyleth said. "But if the Briarwoods really are that influential, I guess it's not so hard to make it look like an accident. That was the point, right? I've seen it on some of Dad's more high profile cases - people with money can hide a lot."
"Oh," Grog said. "Jeez, okay."
“No one knew Percy and Cass weren’t on the plane,” Vax said, finally speaking up. All eyes promptly turned to him. He kept his on Vex. “It was supposed to be a family holiday, but as the youngest, Percy and Cass both had exams later than their other siblings. They were going to fly out the weekend after."
"So for all anyone knew, the entire de Rolo family was on that plane," said Scanlan through his teeth. "God."
"And they never found the black box," added Vex, picking at the skin around her nails. "They couldn’t establish the cause of the crash.”
“Fuck,” Grog said eloquently.
“You can say that again," Pike murmured, digging her thumbs into her eyes. "I can't believe he - he's just been carrying this around all this time. Walking around a city with ghosts on every corner."
"No wonder he and Cass never stayed in touch," said Scanlan with a soft whistle.
"And no wonder she never came back," said Vex, softer, though there was a frown creasing her forehead. "But I don't understand how she then chose to…" She trailed off, her gaze dropping and all masks of logic and fact falling away as her thoughts clearly narrowed back to Percy and his sister. Vax pressed his leg against hers, hoping it could be some kind of comfort. She leaned against him gratefully.
"There must be so much fucked up shit happening in the city that the Briar-whats-it's are responsible for too," Grog said, outraged. "Like, half the kids in my club are in the situation they are because their parents lost their jobs in the last ten years, or some unfinished development got abandoned in their neighbourhood, or an environmental project got turned on its ass and now their drinking water is fucked."
"De Rolos died almost ten years ago," said Vax with a nod. The heaviness of it all, the enormity, felt crushing. Scary and grown up and serious, and so beyond what Vax could ever imagine knowing how to fix.
For a second, Keyleth looked as though she had something to add, her lips open as if to offer her thoughts to the conversation - but she swallowed instead, pressing her lips tightly together. He longed to follow the words, chasing her thoughts.
Vex tapped his leg for him to move it out of her way, then got to her feet and headed to the kitchen under the guise of making breakfast for herself. Vax could see that she had gotten lost at the origin point of this all: Percy. Percy who was still missing. Percy who had said what he said last night. Percy's sister, who had been the spark for all this strife and hurt, and in a way Vex had determinedly been convincing herself Velora wouldn't be for her.
All the confidence and unflinching resolve Vax knew in who Vex was now seemed to have gotten lost along with Percy. The rigidity in her shoulders, the tension in the line of her jaw - it was like seeing a ghost of Vex's teenage self, desperate and cast aside. It left a bad taste beneath Vax's tongue, worse than the coffee he'd finally given up on.
But Vex, he could follow, and push, and apologise to, and comfort, even when things felt like this.
He joined her in the kitchen, settling into a spot leaned back against the kitchen counter. Vex pulled a slice of seeded sourdough from the breadbox and put it into the toaster, her movements absent and robotic as she pulled a knife from the cutlery drawer and claimed the last slab of butter in a pathetic strip of crinkled, torn, foil wrapping from the fridge. The faint click of the rickety toaster timer was uncomfortably loud in the quiet they'd all fallen back into. Vex curled her fingernails into her palms briefly, then moved to grab a pale grey plate from the drying rack beside the sink.
She spread her butter unevenly. It was too cold - she should have used some from the butter dish on the countertop, rather than the fridge - and as she attempted to coat the toast, the inside of the slice tore away from the crust. Vax slid the butter dish across the counter.
Vex set her knife down and glared at him, blatantly exasperated. “Stop hovering.”
Childish indignance prickled in Vax's chest. He wasn’t -
“And quit acting like you’re waiting to catch all my little pieces when I break,” Vex added, a more biting edge to it. It was just about quiet enough not to be heard by the others from around the corner, but audible irritation laced through her words. The kitchen suddenly felt colder than usual, even in the faint, early morning sun. He’d always tried to catch her pieces, when she let him. She’d done the same for him over and over.
Vex sighed through her teeth, her nails tapping frustratedly against the countertop, but after a moment, her expression gave way to something minutely softer. “Vax,” she said firmly. “I’m upset, and I’m embarrassed, and I’m worried about Percy. But I don't need - or want - you to be my shadow through it all. Especially when that means you take blind swipes at people whenever they get too close to me.”
He swallowed down the nausea that rose in the pit of his stomach again. His gaze instinctively flickered over towards the living room, to the glimpse of red hair that was just visible without being blocked by the wall, but Vex shifted so she was back in his line of vision, obscuring his view.
“You fucked up and I know you know that," she said, blunt but unexpectedly gentler.
He sank his teeth into the inside of his cheek, and felt the sharp metallic tang of blood at the back of his mouth. "Yeah," he said quietly. "I do."
"But here's something I don't know if you do know, and I need you to hear me." She paused, searching his face for something that he wished he could recognise so he could give it to her. Whether she found it or not, he couldn't tell, but when she started to continue, she reached across the space between them to curl her hand around his wrist. "We're not one person, Vax," she said in barely more than a whisper. "You're my best friend and my other half and my soulmate and the most important person in my life from the moment we were born and for the rest of time. But we're not the same. We never were. And we spent a long time acting as though we were because of what we'd been through and for a while, that was okay. I was so easily swayed by the likes of Dad and I had no sense of who I was or wanted to be, and you being you was this unfailing lifeline I never had to think twice about reaching for or hanging onto when you pulled me out of wherever I was drowning. But we see things in different ways, Vax. This whole thing with Percy – who he is to you, and who he is to me, aren't anywhere close to being alike." She offered him a fragile, tentative smile. "At least, I should really hope not."
Through the weight on his chest, Vax managed a slightly strangled laugh.
"I love you," Vex promised, the words falling from her lips so quickly and so easily with infallible truth, that the ache around Vax's lungs lessened ever so slightly. "And I will never not be grateful that you're there to protect me and take care of me. But you were angry with Percy. I wasn't. And you lashed out on my behalf with your anger. Just like, when she first came back, I let Keyleth think I was angry at her for what she did to you, even when you weren't angry, and I was mad at her for having left me." She squeezed Vax's wrist. "The older we get, the more different we're going to become, Vax. I don't want how much we love each other to cause hurt between us because we feel … entitled to acting on each other's behalf."
"I don't feel like that," Vax said in a rush, the words scraping the back of his throat hoarsely. "You don't think - ?"
"No, no," Vex said. "But it's not hard for me to feel like I know what's best for you, out of worry, or anger, or jealousy. And maybe that's one way we are exactly the same."
Unbidden, Vax found himself thinking of the day Vex had come out to him.
I didn't want to take anything away from you, she'd said. I didn't want you to feel like you had to - I don't know, share your queerness, when it had always been so important to you. Your sense of self.
Her hands had shook, tears clinging to the corners of her eyes. She'd squeezed her fingers into fists, roughly wiped her eyes with an embarrassed laugh and said, "I don't know why I'm - it's not like - it's you."
"How long have you known?" Vax asked. He thought about the freedom queerness had brought him here in Whitestone; how student nights at Mary's and sunny mornings tangled in Gilmore's bedsheets and walking to class with Scanlan's here & queer! playlist blasting in his headphones felt like wings unfurling from the place anger once coiled in his spine and soaring high above the clouds. Dread clawed at his throat at the idea that Vex had been keeping herself carefully, determinedly boxed up from that freedom so that he could fly.
"Not long," she replied, sounding a little like a promise. Her lips curled upwards, wry. "You think I could keep something like this from you?"
He'd thought about how little he'd seen her that summer - the least they'd seen each other their entire lives, in different sublets and different jobs, different ends of town. He knew now about Saundor (and was still fighting the urge every morning to find him and rearrange his face), had assumed he was the reason Vex had felt so far away. But as Vex watched his expression with sharp, still hesitant eyes, Vax realised there'd been this she was hiding in too.
"Start of the summer," she added, quieter. "It's kind of why I ended up dating Saundor. I was … scared. I didn't want to face it. To me, being queer was you, it was how bold and unapologetic and colourful and beautiful you are. How sure you've always been of yourself and what you believe in and bringing something good and hopeful into the world. I couldn't imagine myself - I'm not like that, Vax."
"Yes you are," Vax said, rushed and breathless and a little desperate to get there first, before she could continue. "Of course you are Vex, are you fucking kidding?"
She laughed, a soft, tearful sound and curled a hand around his, clutching tightly and holding it against her chest. He could feel her heartbeat hammering against her ribs. "Maybe," she said. "Maybe you see something I can't - it wouldn't be the first time. But even if that's true, I needed a little time to see that it wasn't the same. It meant something different for me." Her thumb traced along his knuckles. "I was scared I'd be taking something from you, or that you would feel like I was, but it's not the same. I'm not the same. Does that -"
Make sense?
"Do you -"
Understand?
"Yeah," Vax whispered, surprised by the sudden taste of his own tears. He leaned forwards, pressed his lips to her forehead. "Yeah, Stubby, of course."
It's not the same. I'm not the same.
It caught Vax off guard, how he suddenly, unexpectedly, felt the calmest he had all morning.
"Yeah," he said, almost tasting the tears from his memory even though his face was dry. He could see the surprise in Vex's expression at how steady his voice was. "I hear you."
"If nothing else," Vex said, quieter, "it's not fair for the people who get caught in the crossfire. No matter how much we unintentionally hurt each other, it can't ever change us, not really. The others, though …"
Vax never wanted to see the look on Keyleth's face from when he'd snapped at her last night ever again. Except he'd found it waiting behind his eyes every time he blinked, taunting and unrelenting. He pulled his hand free from Vex's loosened grip, rubbed a hand over his face with a little too much exhausted force. Vex immediately reached out and curled her fingers back around his wrist, pulling his hand back down so she could look him in the eye.
“I get it,” she said, gentle even as he watched her own regret and tiredness settled heavy at the corners of her eyes too. “I lashed out at Key too when she followed me upstairs, and Percy took his own swipes at her. You’re not the only one.” Which made it worse, truthfully, but Vax didn't need to say that out loud; Vex knew. “She’s okay, though. Grog, Pike, and Scanlan took care of her last night. She and I talked this morning and I’ve already apologised. She knows us - she would never hold grudges against us for a situation like this." A stern eyebrow arched as Vex's expression turned fierce. "But she also doesn’t need you to mope or throw yourself down at her feet in some kind of pathetic penance, okay? You of all people should know she's made of tougher stuff than that. But you do owe her an apology, as does Percy, and you better make it a fucking good one because she’s done far too much for us to keep using her leaving as some kind of excuse to hurt her.”
Vax nodded, eyes flickering just for a second to the living room, then back to his sister. “I know.”
Vex squeezed his wrist before letting go. She moved back over to the countertop, where her toast sat abandoned and growing colder. The knife she’d been using was deposited in the sink with an echoing clatter and the scraps of the butter packet tossed into the trash.
“It can wait ‘til Percy’s back though,” Vex said, seemingly more to herself than Vax as that ferocity petered into something more muted, less certain.
She was facing away from him now - deliberately so, he was sure, to shield whatever emotions she couldn’t hide. She needn't have; the sharp line of her shoulders and the tilt of her head, the curl of her fingers against the countertop, all gave her away. Vax wished, desperately, that he could just fix this for her - and for Percy, too. That the world would be kinder. That things could be less complicated. That even for all the love he knew was here, hadn't gone anywhere, that the messy, human parts of them all would hurt less.
Vex glanced over her shoulder, huffing out a breath when she saw him still loitering in the middle of the kitchen, purposeless. She swatted in his direction. "For god's sake - go sit down," she said, frustration and fondness curled into her words in equal measure.
Vax offered her a half-hearted, bashful, apologetic smile before turning to head back into the living room.
The space that Percy should have filled in the living room felt like a gaping chasm, stretching unbearably with each faint tick of the clock. The difference between six people being home compared to seven shouldn't have been so vast and all-consuming, but there seemed to be nothing any of them could offer to distract from it; conversation picked up, then gradually fizzled out, tense, uneasy silence returning no matter how hard they tried to avoid it. Vax's skin prickled uneasily, his blood unsettled beneath his skin. The guilty discomfort that had haunted him through the night sat thick and heavy in the pit of his stomach, and he watched Vex spin her phone around between her thumb and forefinger, twirling it over and over and over until it slipped back down into her lap with an unhappy thump.
He hadn't known she had Yennen's phone number until she'd quietly mentioned it half an hour ago, to him more than to anyone else in the room, although several sets of eyes had flickered between the two of them as she'd spoken, hearing the weight of the admission even without the context to understand it.
("You do?" he'd asked quietly, and Vex nodded, her eyes fixed firmly on his. He itched to press for more, but oddly, the intimacy of the moment stilled his tongue. Both he and Vex knew so little about the time Percy and Cassandra had spent living with Yennen after their parents' deaths, so the trust imbued in Percy giving Vex a key into that world floored Vax. His thoughts were unexpectedly pulled back to Percy in the garden the week before. The lightness in his eyes, the stubble on his cheeks. Grown up, not a scared, flighty kid.)
Calling Yennen hadn't helped, exactly.
Vax didn't know the details of Vex's conversation with her - she'd slipped upstairs, deliberately well out of earshot of them all - but she'd returned with the same tension still in her shoulders, a worried crease between her eyebrows, and a confirmation that Percy wasn't back at Yennen's, but that he'd been there the morning before.
Vax watched Vex now as she tucked one knee up to her chest and wrapped her arm around it, her eyes fixed on the scrap of paper she'd scrawled Cassandra's phone number onto as Yennen had dictated it. He didn't need to ask to know what she was thinking. Clearly she, like the rest of them, was just as wary about their concern for Percy overstepping a uncrossable line and becoming an invasion of his so carefully maintained privacy. From beside Vex, Vax could see a couple of 9s, the slope of a 7, the rounded curls of a 3.
The six of them had gone back and forth about this for the better part of an hour, whether or not to call the one person who might actually know where Percy was.
That Yennen had passed this on to Vex at all made Vax restlessly curious. He wanted to know what Yennen knew, particularly who Vex was, in her eyes.
Vex shifted to look up to him, her closeness suddenly jarring. "Do you think she can help?" she asked quietly. "Do you think she would?"
Her face wavered, a few inches from his own, and all of Vax's words and arguments and curiosities dried up in his throat. He didn't know. The fear he'd heard laced through Percy's voice yesterday, the bitterness towards his sister … the chances that he'd headed towards Cassandra after storming out felt beyond slim. And if what Percy had said about her and who she'd become was all true, what would she know, about where he might be? She'd grown up with him, and presumably had once known Whitestone as well as Percy, but she'd left when she was twelve and barely come back since. And nevermind the city - she didn't know anything about the person Percy had spent the last six years becoming.
Vex's eyes flickered from Vax to the rest of the group, but all anyone had for her was more uncertainty, more worry.
Ever fearless, of course it was Scanlan who leant forward, elbows on his knees and brows furrowed in careful thought. "I don't think it would hurt. We don't know if the two of them talked, after whatever happened with … Yennen, right? Even if she doesn't know where he is right now, it's not like we know exactly what went down. Maybe hearing it from her can help us get a read on where Percy's head is at."
"Maybe he did go see her," Grog suggested. "He could've gone to confront her? He was pretty mad."
Pike looked torn. "Is he more likely to have run towards this, or away?"
The thrum of Vax's pulse was an unsteady thud thud thud in his ears, and he shifted minutely, creating the smallest of spaces where his thigh had previously pressed into Vex's. He knew this fear - the kind that was best kept in the periphery, because when pulled into focus, it had a tendency to catch in the throat and tangle around the windpipe, grip tightening and tightening until the world began to blur and darken at the edges. "Away," he said quietly, unwavering certainty in his voice.
The weight of several sets of eyes settled on him heavily the moment it left his lips, the second syllable catching and leaving raw nerves unintentionally open and exposed.
Grog continued the conversation with a smoothness and tact that Vax didn't know he was capable of. "Well, maybe we should make it clear that Percy has people in his corner. People who know about her. Just in case she plans on trying anything these Briarwoods fuckwits might want her to do."
"Okay, that plan I like," said Pike, that rare but terrifying thead of cool anger simmering beneath her words.
On the opposite couch, Keyleth still remained silent, listening to the others but not offering an opinion. Vax couldn't tell if it was because she wasn't sure what to say, or was too caught up in her own worry, or whether it was because of what he'd said last night.
For the fiftieth time since he woke up this morning, he wished he could turn back time and stop those words from ever leaving his mouth.
Keyleth deserved her worry over Percy, her closeness to him, being seen as someone who really did know him. Their friendship had surprised Vax - still surprised Vax, sometimes - but it had forged quickly and steadily despite Keyleth having haunted their lives for years, and Keyleth and Vex's shaky relationship back in autumn, and Percy's sharp edges and towering walls made for keeping people away.
(Vax didn't know many people kinder than her, and no one more trustworthy - perhaps that was what Percy had found.)
“We don’t have any other ideas,” Vax told Vex quietly. Vex glanced over at Scanlan one more time for reassurance, which he gave with a small nod.
The living room crackled with tension, which only amplified when Vex straightened her spine and picked up her phone again, tapping the screen.
Outside, a sparrow chirped, the usual birdsong sharp and dissonant as it filtered through the glass doors, but Vax still found his gaze drawn to it as it pecked at the birdfeeder he and Grog had strung from the roof of the wooden veranda last year. The bird tilted its head to stare at him too, then swooped off back into the hedgerow.
“Okay,” Vex said definitively, sounding fiercer than Vax knew she felt, and she pushed herself up from the couch. They all watched her leave, seemingly holding their breath in unison. Scanlan’s fingers tapped out a rhythm on his leg, then repeated it over and over and over.
“He’ll…" Pike swallowed. Her anger from before had fallen away and her voice was soft but small. "He’ll be okay, right?” She ran her nail over the arm of the couch, seeming shakier than she had been all morning. “Like, obviously we’re all worried and we don’t know where he is, but… he’s Percy. He’s more logical than any of us, he knows this city like the back of his hand. He has places he could crash, it’s not like he’s…" Her gaze flitted between Vax and Scanlan. "He’ll be okay, won’t he?”
“Of course he will,” Scanlan said, reaching out and putting a gentle hand on her knee.
Grog nodded, instantly. “Our boy’s a twig, but he knows how to get through shit.”
The last thing Vax expected was to find Keyleth’s eyes finally on him, something uneasy lurking in them as she held his gaze. Vax recognised it as the same doubt he felt churning ceaselessly in the pit of his stomach, like some instinct buried deep beneath his skin, like something Vax knew but didn't know he knew. Keyleth's eyebrows furrowed, her gaze darting to the other three for a moment, as though trying to let herself believe their comforts and consolations before looking back at him. There was a certainty to her doubt. Like she had some reason to be more worried about Percy than she was letting on, like she knew something -
Vax's chest went cold.
Oh fuck. Oh no, no no no -
How had he forgotten?
But he knew how - because the taste of cheap whiskey and sharp, cold Whitestone night air (so different from the humid Emon winters) was a muted memory now from so long ago, it may as well have been a different life.
Eighteen, scared and angry and drinking whiskey on the flat roof of a houseparty after a different fight with Percy and Vex, his pulse thudding in his ears.
He’d snapped at Percy, protective and suspicious and jealous, and Vex had snapped at him because she and Percy were sleeping together and Vax was being an asshole and - and truthfully, it was none of his business, he just hadn’t liked that it felt like losing her. He'd never had to do this before, see someone else this close to Vex. And he knew he was being a hypocrite because he was chasing down possibilities in Whitestone that she couldn't follow (or at least, hadn't then, yet), with Gilmore and Scanlan and Zahra and Kash. But seeing her with Percy, seeing them so alive together, made something twist in his chest. She didn’t need him the way she had before. But he didn’t know who he was if not a part of her. Every plan for leaving Emon that Keyleth had helped them put together, in late night whispers and bullet-pointed lists in notebooks that stayed at her house, safe from Syldor, had ended with his and Vex's new life in Whitestone, together, as the people Keyleth had always fiercely believed they could be. Selfishly, for all his daydreams about getting to be himself, fully himself, he'd never imagined that the same for Vex might have been with someone that wasn't him. Especially in the wake of Keyleth leaving.
He’d wanted to call Keyleth, to admit that it was too hard, that she was tangled irreparably into his heartstrings and he didn’t know how to let her go, that Vex had found everything she needed whilst he didn’t know how to - but she was completely out of his reach. He’d lost her too.
He’d hoped the footsteps behind him were Pike, coming to give him some solid advice (and swap his whiskey out for water), or Grog, there to make sure he didn’t drunkenly fall off the roof. But it had been Percy who silently took a seat beside him, and held out a hand for the bottle of whisky he’d swiped from the back of a kitchen cupboard, then took a long swig before returning it. The air had been crisp, an icy, wintery bite that Vax wasn't used to - the kind of cold that lingered on skin and clothes when anyone returned inside. Percy stayed beside him regardless, ignoring the chill of the roof beneath them.
Percy had exhaled, his warm breath causing a condensed cloud in the night air, then quietly offered, “If you want me to stop sleeping with your sister, I will.”
Keyleth’s eyes burned into Vax from across the room. He swallowed, memories of the night racing back to him now that he’d opened the floodgates.
He didn’t remember his response exactly - something bitter, about Vex clearly meaning so little to him then, but Percy hadn’t taken the bait, just furrowed his eyebrows and held out a hand for the whisky again, not taking another swig but preventing Vax from doing so for a moment.
“No,” he said quietly, the background hum of music spreading out from the open windows below. “That’s not true.” He said it as if it was simple, and it felt like Vax had missed a step walking up the stairs and Percy was trying to catch him before he fell. “But you’re my friend too, Vax, and it’s been a long time since I’ve had people. I’m not willing to lose it all because of one decision. Vex and I are friends, and I hope to keep that for a long time after whatever eighteen-year-old fling we have comes to an end.”
“Mature of you,” Vax said, all biting snark but Percy had simply pushed his glasses up his nose and pulled up one knee, his arm resting casually on it with the whisky bottle dangling from his fingertips as he looked out at the twinkling lights of the city around them.
He’d been skinnier back then, and paler too, his eyes piercingly blue even in the darkness, but haunted at the corners.
It wasn't until Percy opened his mouth and began to speak, his words slightly slurred as cheap, shitty alcohol crept through his calm veneer, that Vax had realised how much he didn’t know. Somehow, while everyone else they’d met here had been fairly open about the roads that had led them to Whitestone, Percy had slipped under the radar. But he’d talked, up on that roof, about spending the last few years looking for his life to mean something, anything. For it not to slip into an emptiness he couldn’t control. About how the past few months had been so filled with an exhilaration he’d almost forgotten could exist, with light and colour and wonderful people, and how he finally felt like his life could go somewhere again rather than following the path to hell he’d been heading down.
There’d been a vulnerability to it that knocked Vax completely off his footing, and he’d watched Percy take a long swig of whisky afterwards, before passing the bottle back his way. An unspoken understanding, an offer of something that was theirs, outside of Vex between them, outside of the rest of their friend group that was slowly forming into something resembling family.
“I’m afraid that I’m not worth anything if Vex doesn’t need me,” Vax told Percy before he could convivnce himself not to, some combination of alcohol and Percy’s own admissions tugging the words from his chest. “That she’ll do incredible things while we’re here, and I’ll just fade into obscurity, both in my life and to her.”
The look on Percy’s face had been so odd, at that, and when he’d finally responded his voice had been far softer than Vax expected. “I don’t think that’s possible, Vax.” Cool air had caught on his own inhale, but Percy just waited, his gaze far steadier than it ought to have been. “She relies on you just being there, no matter what, having her back without her even needing to say anything. And she’d do the same for you in a heartbeat. I don’t think you’d ever be able to fade away if she had anything to say about it.”
He’d sounded so sad, so Vax had carefully turned, suddenly aware of how close the edge of the roof was and how much he’d drunk. The flash of moisture he saw on Percy’s cheeks as he ducked his head down caught Vax entirely off guard, but he carefully crossed his legs beneath himself and watched Percy quietly for a moment. “You sound like you’re familiar with this kind of thing,” he said eventually.
Percy’s laugh had been so suddenly hollow. Alarmingly so. “I guess I am,” he admitted, an edge to his voice. “I know what it feels like to think your life isn’t worth anything.”
The weight of it had caused Vax’s chest to seize, his breath catching in his lungs. “Percy -” he’d started, but Percy had looked up, eyes a little damp as they met his and pupils a little blown from the alcohol, but as sincere as Vax had ever seen him.
“That’s why this means so much to me,” he said quietly. “Having something that brings fun and joy back into my life. You and your sister and the others - it’s pure insanity, to be honest, but it makes me feel like my age, rather than like I have the weight of the world on my shoulders. I’m so grateful for it, and I’ll do anything to hang onto it. So if you want me to stop sleeping with Vex’ahlia, I will.”
It was a long, long time before Vax replied - to tell Percy no, Vex would never forgive him, and he didn’t have the right to make that decision for her anyway. And besides, she liked him and he clearly cared about her too - it wouldn’t’ve been fair to anyone. Vax was just scared.
The rest of the evening was inseparable from so many others like it in their first year, but Percy had made a point to stay up on the roof with Vax, silently watching lights flicker off in nearby buildings as the thin crescent moon slither crept across the sky. His palm had been warm against Vax’s back as they’d climbed back through the open window, noticeable because it so vividly contrasted the personal space Percy usually kept to. He’d checked the two of them were okay before they headed back downstairs, and that had been that.
And that had been so, so long ago.
The Percy who had walked out their front door last night wasn’t that same Percy from back on that roof, Vax knew that. He’d grown immeasurably and found so much, and it wasn’t until much later that Percy had mentioned Cassandra to him, so Vax had, perhaps foolishly, never tied her and everything else with Percy's family with the things he'd said on the roof. But as Keyleth’s gaze stayed fixed on him, blazing and verging on desperate, as though pleading for someone to see what she saw, Vax found that sad, scared, barely clinging on to something real and alive version of Percy springing to the forefront of his mind. Eighteen-year-old, just-walked-away-from-my-parents'-legacy, just-abandoned-my-sister Percy, a hollow echo of I know what it feels like to think your life isn’t worth anything bouncing around alongside it.
Vax knew the rest of the story now - not all of it, but enough.
The Briarwoods had kicked the stool out from under Percy long before Vax and Vex had been there to ease him back onto his feet. And in that time between, Percy had been clawing at the rope on his own, trying desperately to decide whether it was even worth catching his breath.
Keyleth’s expression was swimming with something she clearly didn’t know how to voice.
“Fuck,” Vax said, mostly to himself but still louder than he meant to and drawing everyone’s quick attention. His coffee mug banged clumsily against the coffee table and liquid sloshed down the sides, but he ignored it and reached for the set of keys next to the coaster, not caring whether they were his or Vex’s. “Fuck, fuck -”
“Vax, what -”
He stood up and snatched his wallet and phone from the breakfast bar as Pike frowned, concern and confusion fighting for space in her eyes just as Vex made her way back into the room. Her eyes were red-rimmed, but she shook her head before Grog or Scanlan could even start to ask - no response from Cassandra, then. It took her a second to register Vax standing there clearly getting ready to leave, and her eyes narrowed.
“What is it?" she demanded. "Do you know where he is?”
“Stubby, I just gotta - I’m sure he’s fine.” About as useless of an attempt to dissuade her as he could have possibly made, but his mind was still on a rooftop on the other side of Whitestone, tasting watered down honey whiskey on the tip of his tongue. Panic flashed through Vex's eyes.
“What do you mean?" she said shakily. "What do you know?"
He was saved from answering by her phone's shrill ringing, the screen lighting up with a number that Vax didn't even need to look at properly to know was Cassandra returning the call. Vex looked between it and him, paralysed by the decision. Vax shook his head and forced his racing pulse to slow. “Answer it,” he told her, as calmly and gently as he could manage, in the hopes that it acted as an unspoken trust me. She gave him a long look but did so, pressing her phone to her ear as she slipped back out into the hallway and towards Grog's room. Vax faintly heard her voice, sharp and authoritative, the way she was dealing with insufferable clients at work.
Vax waited to hear her close the door behind her before following into the hallway, veering off to the front door. His mind raced as he shoved on a pair of shoes, snatched one of Grog's jackets off the coat rack and clumsily tugged it on. There were places he could look. Percy had to be at one of them, there were only so many options and in a blind rage, surely he wouldn’t have opted for somewhere difficult to get to. Vax yanked open the front door, growling under his breath at the momentary resistance from the stupid old latch. Before he could pull harder, a hand curled around his arm and he turned to find Keyleth, the same fear that was racing through him reflected in her eyes.
“Vax, wait,” she said quickly, breathlessly, eyes wide and desperate and bordering on relieved that someone else had met her where she was at. When he paused, let her hold him in place for a second, she looked at him searchingly. A gust of January air blew through the open doorway and she shivered, her free hand curling around her stomach. “You don’t think…”
She didn't say it. Vax suspected she couldn't. He wasn't sure he could either, not out loud.
Keyleth's fingers scalded his skin where they curled around his wrist, below the rolled-up cuff of his sweater and the worn down corduroy of Grog's jacket. All of the morning's awkward avoidance seemed to have burned away with the growing flames of urgency they both felt.
“What did Percy tell you?” Vax asked, and Keyleth’s teeth sank into her lower lip as she shook her head.
“Nothing," she said, sounding frustrated at herself. "Not really. He just - we’ve talked about his family a little, and he told me a few things about working under the Briarwoods, and it -” Her hesitation matched his. “I don't like the idea of him being alone and scared about this,” she confessed, whispered. "Not with what it was like the last time he felt like that."
Vax swallowed down his own panic at the confirmation. “I’m sure he’s okay,” he lied, unconvincingly, “It’s been years since all that.”
Keyleth didn't look like she believed him for a second. “Please let me come with you."
Vax immediately shook his head. “No.”
The word came out too harsh, and the grasp she had on his arm loosened as she let her fingers fall away. For a second, when she ducked her head down, she looked almost like she had yesterday when he’d snapped at her - lost, a little withdrawn - and Vax didn’t think before reaching out to catch her chin with two fingers. He tilted it back up so she was looking at him. A little wide-eyed with surprise, trying to hide her hurt, her fear, her exhaustion. He so desperately needed to sit down and apologise to her, but there wasn’t time for that right now. Instead, he slid a hand to settle over her jaw, thumb featherlight against her cheek. It felt almost worse that she seemed to lean into the touch unthinkingly.
“No,” he repeated, his tone still insistent but deliberately softer. “I need you here with Vex. Please.”
Just in case. Vex would be with the others, sure, but it was Keyleth she’d gone to this morning, looking for something safe and reassuring. He needed her to have that if … if.
Recognition flickered in Keyleth’s expression, and her nod had Vax’s shoulders sagging with brief relief, although the rope with her name on it that was wrapped around his chest squeezed so tightly he almost forgot how to breathe, and for a second, he just wanted to stay and say the things he needed to to her before it was too late to.
As if she could see that, Keyleth's hand came up to cover his, pulling it from her face and squeezing lightly. “Go,” she insisted, nudging him towards the door. “Go.”
Vax curled his hand so tightly around his car keys that the metal cut into his hand, and ran out the door.
The space between Vax’s text to say he’d found Percy (upset, but otherwise okay) and their return home was almost two hours, and the anxious energy filling the house would probably have caused the place to go up in flames if a match had been lit. Thankfully though, Pike decided that now that they knew Percy was okay, everyone had reached their quota of moping and fidgeting. She yanked Scanlan's phone out of his hand as he opened Twitter restlessly for the fifth time in less than ten minutes, ordering him into the kitchen. She did the same with Vex, albeit more gently, determinedly giving them orders of what to chop, what to stir, and what to measure out into their largest wok. Whether it was to work off her own stress or to help with theirs, Keyleth couldn't tell, but it was the first time the house had felt alive all day as warmth and slow, quiet, but steady conversation radiated from the kitchen.
Meanwhile, Keyleth and Grog tidied the house, neatly stacking belongings that had accumulated downstairs into piles according to whose they were. It wasn’t long before the sound of sizzling began to break the silent stillness of the day, followed by the intoxicating scents of chargrilled chicken, smoked paprika and parsley, a hint of citrus too, and Keyleth exhaled, neatly setting one of Vax’s research notebooks on top of his laptop on the bookcase. It was always impossible for the cold to linger when the stovetops were turned up high. Scanlan must’ve connected his phone to the living room speakers because it wasn’t long before soft music began to play, chasing away most of the tension that stayed lingering.
(Not all of it - despite Vax’s reassurance, no one would be able to fully relax until they heard the door latch click and groan open, and they could see Percy with their own eyes.)
It took an age. And in the end, no one did hear it; Percy just appeared in the doorway with Vax half a step behind him, clearly unsure what to say or whether to interrupt when Scanlan and Pike were entirely distracted arguing about who the packet of fried onions belonged to, and Keyleth was trying to decide if the lily on the bookshelf was salvagable from its point of alarming dehydration, and Grog was in the backyard playing fetch with Trinket who had likely suffered the most from the heavy, anxious energy around him that he couldn't understand. But Vex, of course, saw Percy immediately, eyes quick and having been focused on nothing else since her role in the kitchen had been excused.
Everyone's heads snapped up at the sound of Vex's gasp and her chair scraping against the floor as she rushed to her feet.
"Percy!" Pike said, abandoning the wooden spoon in her hand into the sink.
"Oh, thank fuck," breathed Scanlan, darting round the countertop towards Percy.
Keyleth hurried towards them too, but Vex beat them all, slinging her arms around Percy's shoulders with enough force to knock the air from his lungs. He took a step back, his soft oomph making Keyleth smile through the ache in her chest, and Percy raised his own arms to wrap them around Vex, fingers curling tight into shirt. He swallowed thickly. “Vex, I -”
“Shut up,” Vex interrupted immediately, her voice hoarse even in its ferocity, muffled slightly by his sweater. She stretched up onto her tiptoes and tightened her grip. “Just - shut your stupid face for thirty seconds, okay? You can apologise later.”
Vax laughed softly as he stepped around them, the weight that had been resting on his shoulders last time Keyleth saw him clearly halved with Percy home safe. Keyleth caught him mouthing something to Percy, and Percy deflated with relief. Vax caught her eye too, afterwards, and she offered him a small smile that she hoped didn't waver; she didn't believe that what he'd said yesterday had any real truth to it. It hadn't stopped it from hurting, but it was Vax. Even for this, the forgiveness was already there. They'd find time for the apologies later.
Keyleth crossed her arms and watched as Vex murmured something inaudible to Percy before letting go, and his throat bobbed as she took a step back. Not that he got much of a reprieve - Keyleth barely had time to blink before Pike was pulling Percy down into a welcome home hug too. Keyleth let Scanlan and Grog attack Percy with more boisterous, energetic, chastising hugs of their own before she stepped forwards last to wrap him up in her arms. As she did, the stress of the morning finally began to fade.
Up close, his eyes were faintly red-rimmed, and his bottom lip had been chewed raw. The shadows beneath his eyes made it easy to imagine the version of Percy that Scanlan had briefly mentioned in a moment alone with her this morning, the introverted insomniac who’d moved into their university accommodation a day before almost everyone else, and had taken weeks to warm up to anyone.
“I’m sorry, Kiki,” Percy quietly told her, too soft to be overheard. The nickname fell from his lips a little clumsily, unfamiliar to him but desperate in its intent. Keyleth let out a soft exhale against his neck, pressing a kiss to his cheek before letting go.
“I know you are.”
The day descended into comfort. Everyone ended up piled onto the couch, music still playing from the speakers but faintly so, background ambiance rather than imposing, and conversation flitted from one meaningless thing to another. Vex leant firmly against Percy’s side, and which of them it was meant to reassure more didn't matter. Keyleth, on the other hand, sank into the cushions next to Pike, leaving Vax to take a seat on the beanbag opposite.
It was only an hour and a half after returning home that Percy looked up suddenly, eyes finding the glow of the clock on the microwave before glancing between Vex, Pike, and Grog. “You’re supposed to be at work.”
Grog shrugged one shoulder. “Family emergency," he said through a mouthful of the stirfry Scanlan had just passed him.
For a second, Percy looked as if that might crack him to pieces, until Scanlan passed him his plate, Pike kicked Grog with a reprimand about manners that made Keyleth giggle and Vax roll his eyes, and Vex squeezed Percy's knee before reigniting Pike and Scanlan's argument from the kitchen, saving Percy from having to find a response.
By the time it reached mid-afternoon, the house had fallen quiet. Percy and Vex had disappeared off upstairs for the inevitable conversation waiting for them; Vax would be surprised if they reappeared anytime within the next few hours. Scanlan had gone out for the afternoon production meeting he’d planned on cancelling earlier, and Pike dragged Grog and Trinket out for a run. Which left just Vax and Keyleth downstairs, their laptops open on the kitchen table as they worked on their respective research, ignoring the elephant in the room.
Well. Keyleth genuinely seemed to have tabled the conversation they needed to have for later, the shared stress of the morning and the snippets of conversation between them having brought them to an impasse, as far as she was concerned. Vax, meanwhile, couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Even looking at her now, one knee up resting against the table, her nose buried in her well-worn, note-filled copy of Tal’dorei: Native flora and fauna, he couldn’t stop seeing the way she’d looked at him the evening before after his words had sliced through the space between them. The way her hands had curled around her waist, her feet pulling her back a step, away from his accusations. Away from him. His stomach twisted, and the ever-present haze that winter dragged into him threatened to make a reappearance, now that the panic-fuelled adrenaline of the day had worn off. He forced it into his peripheral vision.
In the afternoon calm, the truths of it all were clear.
He’d been upset with the way Keyleth had left when she’d first moved to Zephrah, yes, but he’d never faulted her for leaving. She’d needed to be there. He'd known that long before the day she got on that plane.
Perhaps more importantly, he didn’t get to choose how well she knew anyone. Pike and Grog and Vex and Scanlan and Percy were her's as much as they were Vax's. He owed it to her, and to the others, to respect that.
“Kiki,” he said quietly, nudging her ankle beneath the table. He hadn't exactly meant for it to already be so soft and apologetic, but as her eyes flickered up to meet his, she seemed to already tell where this was going.
“You want to do this now?”
“I can’t think about anything else,” Vax admitted honestly.
The house felt so big, all of a sudden. Percy’s room was on the top floor next to his, so there was no chance of his and Vex’s conversation reaching them down at the dining table, not even as faint murmurs, and with all of the others out, no background noise came from people’s bedrooms either. Even the garden felt still, the birds that usually flit between the bushes having left them alone to talk too.
Keyleth lowered her book, sliding a loose sheet of notes in between the pages to keep her place, then set it down on the table and leaned back in her chair, waiting.
Vax exhaled. The worst thing, maybe, was that this was far from the first time he'd been in this position. Lashing out at Keyleth in defence of Vex, unthinking, unapologetic because he was acting on love so how could that be wrong? He only saw it in the aftermath, the hurt and the unfairness of it.
At least now, he could tell that he'd grown up. He'd seen the hurt in the immediacy, when she'd still been right there in front of him, when he could still feel the buzz of the words on his lips. It felt worse, but he preferred it, preferred knowing that this wasn't what it had to mean to love someone. It might have been a long time ago, but his mother had taught him better than that.
He swallowed, tasting the apology on his tongue, then quietly letting it go. “The things I said yesterday weren’t true, and they weren’t fair. I know you’re not going to be able to forget them, or the way I acted, and there’s no way of turning back time and taking them back, but if I could, I would. I’m sorry.” Out loud, it didn't feel like nearly enough.
Keyleth nodded, but more words bubbled up from Vax's chest, tumbled from his lips. “It means so much to me to have you back in our lives. And it’s not like that’s any big secret, but … it feels like after yesterday, it deserves to be said." He wanted to reach over and take her hand but stopped himself. Say it first, he told himself. "You matter so much to me," he said in a exhaled rush, not meaning for it to shake a little. She heard it, something flickering in her eyes. "I love that you're here. I’ve loved watching you find a home here, and I love that all of our people - all of my people - have become family to you too. I don’t want you to ever think otherwise.” Tears burned behind his eyes for a moment. "Please don't let what I said make you think otherwise."
Keyleth studied him carefully from the other side of the kitchen table, as though weighing up what it was she wanted to say, her expression completely unreadable to him. It made his fingers itch with the same restlessness he'd had this morning, but when she spoke, her voice was soft. “Okay."
Vax’s felt his face twist into a frown, confusion in the creases of his brow. “Okay?”
Something between amusement and fond exasperation lightened her features. “Okay,” she repeated. She reached out a hand across the table, palm up, and Vax hoped it didn't look as desperate as he felt when he took it immediately, knocking the corner of his textbook to do so. Her thumb traced lightly over the lines of his fingers, featherlight and forgiving. Vax’s breath shook as he exhaled.
“You messed up,” she said honestly, “and it hurt. But I could see that you knew that the second you said it.” Her thumb caught on a faint scab from where he’d cut himself earlier in the week on a kitchen knife, and she brushed over it twice before her thumb resumed the rhythm it’d had before. “And I do know you. You don’t have to explain how important Vex is to you. I know how reckless you get about her. I thought you'd know that I of all people would expect as much by now."
“That's not an excuse,” Vax argued quietly. "We're not kids anymore. It's not fair to you, or her, and I don't get to -" Keyleth squeezed his hand to interrupt.
“No, you don't,” she agreed. Her obvious relief to hear him say it caused guilt to rise up in a fresh wave, but her eyes were earnest, determined to meet the accountability he'd refused to shy away from with unfailing kindness. “But you're not a bad person, Vax. You just care, more than anyone I've ever met. Just remember to use your head as well as your heart next time."
Vax’s shoulders sagged, letting out a weak chuckle. His hand felt clammy but she didn't let go for another ten, fifteen seconds, and even when she did, when the conversation settled back into comfortable quiet, she looped her ankle around his under the table as a grounding reassurance.
She went back to her research, he went back to his, and as the afternoon crept on until gradually, everyone else began to reappear. Grog and Pike first, their laughter a breath of fresh air, Pike hopping up to sit on the kitchen counter and dangling her legs in the air as she downed a glass of water and passed a second over to Grog. Then Scanlan, somehow having a salacious story to regale them all with from the space between his meeting and coming home, just spicy enough to have Keyleth's ears turning red and Vax groaning in protest, his head thudding against the table.
By the time Vex and Percy’s socked feet padded lightly across the floor, the last rays of bright golden sunlight had just faded from the sky. The two of them joined everyone over towards the kitchen, perching against the back of the couch, and Percy caught Vax’s eye.
Percy offered him a small smile, his head briefly dipping. Vax returned it, and stole a moment to study him with all the weight and clarity of the last two days. His eyes were a little red and swollen and he - unsurprisingly - looked even more exhausted than he had earlier, but there was more colour in his cheeks than when Vax had found him this morning, and his haunted expression had mostly faded.
Even still, the messy, terrifying complications of the Briarwoods and Cassandra were still lingering outside the comfort and safety of this house, closer to Percy than any of them would have liked. But Percy didn't seem afraid right now - just tired, and sheepish, and grateful, and Vax could relate.
The rest of it could wait patiently beyond their frost lined windows and their creaky, halfway-to-broken front door as problems for another day.
Today, they were all home, and that would have to be enough for now.