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They go and get their ears pierced together – or, rather, the ones who haven’t already do. Vax watches, grinning and tugging at the small hole in his left earlobe, and so does Pike, with tiny, silver-white crystals sparkling in each ear.
It’s too much money a head for them to really afford, and the place they go to is tucked in a back-alley and almost certainly not the safest, cleanest, or best choice they could have made, but it’s okay. They take it in turns, bickering and teasing and squabbling as they wait, crowded into the small space of the piercing studio.
Vex goes first, straight-backed and blank-faced, determined not to show weakness – and pleasantly relieved when it doesn’t hurt too much, a quick bite on each side that fades into a low throb within seconds. Keyleth next, eyes bright with worry, grabbing at Vex’s hand just before the punch of the needle through skin and squeezing tight enough to make Vex’s fingers go numb.
Scanlan gets one ear done, steps up with a swagger and then whines like a baby when it happens. He tries to get Pike to kiss it better as Grog gets both lobes pierced, and then pierced again, because he likes the idea of having more little hoops than anyone else in the group. They have to stop him getting more done when he starts talking about industrial piercings, about neat rows of studs down the cartilage of one ear, about a curved barbell through the middle of his nose.
Percy goes last, tense and coiled-tight and looking an inch away from running when the needle comes towards him. He bears the bite of cold steel without a sound, though, without a blink, or so much as a flinch. There’s something almost eerie to his stillness, something unnatural.
Needles are nothing new, for him, though they’ve never been used on him like this. But when the piercing’s threaded through the freshly-made hole, he can’t stop touching – tugging until his ear’s red-warm with pain and there’s blood beading around the gleaming metal and the piercer stops him with a scowl.
At the back of the group, Tiberius runs a finger down smooth scales at the sides of his head self-consciously, clawed hands drawing circles – flinches when the piercer suggests a ring through the soft flesh between his nostrils, and sighs at Scanlan’s inevitable teasing.
After, they wander back to the two-bed apartment they’ve all come to call home, a cramped little thing in some forgotten, mildewed shithole of a tower block with mattresses across the floors of both the bedrooms so they’ve all got somewhere to sleep. Keyleth searches the freezer for ice, finds none, and freezes some water herself for something to hold to her ears. Tiberius corners Scanlan and fusses over his new earring, both curious and something oddly close to jealous.
Grog, predictably, pours them all drinks.
Vex curls up on the sofa next to her brother, Trinket sprawled chocolate-brown and shaggy and panting over both their legs – far too big to be a lapdog, no longer the armful of puppy he once was, not that he seems to have noticed – and watches them all. The flat’s too small for them, or they’re too big for the space, but it doesn’t matter. They make it work, pressed shoulder-to-shoulder, sprawled out on the floor, curled up in the armchair. They make it work.
She watches them, hawk-eyed and thoughtful, quiet despite the noise in the room, and the word family drifts through the quiet spaces in her brain. It’s an odd word, not without its share of baggage, but… she can’t help but think that maybe, just maybe, it might be the right one to describe the little ragtag group she and Vax have found.
-
When it all gets too much, Vax runs. It’s easy, calling the darkness to him – lighter than the smoke-black Percy wears on his shoulders like Atlas carrying the world, a thin and glossy and oil-slick dark – and slipping into the shadows, dodging the things with teeth and claws and empty, gaping maws that lurk there.
Gilmore, half a city away, always opens the door, no matter the time. Always has a smile for Vax, and a couch, and something hiding in the back of his golden eyes – like Vax has hooked fingers through the cage of his ribs and found something soft beneath, something tender, pressing on it like a bruise.
Vax knows he’s taking advantage. He knows. Every time, he’s gone before Gilmore wakes, the couch empty and cold by the time the sun’s fully over the horizon and Gilmore’s brewing fresh coffee in a silken robe. Every time, he tells himself he’s not going back.
Every time, he does, feet carrying him to the same, familiar door like there’s a red thread round his little finger tied to the doorknob.
In the end, breaking Gilmore’s heart is just so easy. Just another thing to feel guilty for. Just another sin to add to his long, long list.
-
Jarrett, their next-door neighbour – the one who’s an actual adult, the one with an actual job, though he won’t say what – keeps an eye on them. He doesn’t say much, winks at Vex when he passes her in the hallways, winks at Percy too just to see him blink owlishly, flush pink. But he watches them. Sees them come and go, all hours of the day and night, leave rowdy and boisterous and come back quiet, tired, battered.
He tries to not let it get to him, these kids, playing house, playing at being adults, playing at being heroes. It’s none of his business what they get up to, the fights they choose to pick, the way there’s less bright excitement in them now than ground-down exhaustion. That’s their problem, not his.
In the end, it gets to him.
He brings them pizza, one day, turns up at their door with an armful of boxes and say the place he usually orders from made a mistake. They don’t believe him for a second, of course – but it’s pizza, and things have been tight this week, jobs few and far between. They’re all tired and hungry and stretched-thin from the eternal worrying, worrying about whether the money Vex has jealously hoarded away from all their earnings are going to be enough to cover the month’s rent.
They accept the pizza with one discordant, squabbling voice, practically grabbing it from his hands, and it takes Pike reminding them of their manners for them to invite him in.
That evening, lying on the floor and eating pizza and gossiping, laughing, trying – and failing – to pry information out of Jarrett about who he is and what he does, they all fall in love with him. Just a little bit.
It’s none of his business, they’re none of his business, and he tries not to let their strange, easy, cheerful charm get to him. But, even so, he falls in love with them just a little bit right back.
-
Pike doesn’t question when Vax joins her, sometimes, for her morning meditation. She sits cross-legged on a cushion, ragged and mostly-flat, stolen from the sofa, curtains open and the weak morning sunshine filtering in. It’s not Sarenrae’s glorious light, warm and brilliant and holy, but… she makes do. She always does.
Vax is tall where she’s short, dark where she’s fair, tense and hunched over and so full of pain that it practically spills from him with every breath he takes. It hurts her, that he hurts like this – hurts her more that she can’t fix it, make it right for him. Can’t reach into his chest and pull the rotting, festering pain from him like she could if it was a physical thing, something she could touch.
They make an odd pair, no doubt about it.
She straightens her back when she feels him settle beside her, and reaches out to touch his knee with one sun-warmed hand, all worn fingertips and blistered palms and chipped forget-me-not-blue nail polish. It’s not much, she knows, fingers against the dark denim of his jeans and a shared moment of silence in the morning sun – but maybe, just for today, it’s enough.
-
“We could go home, you know,” says Vax, one night, sprawled out on the couch. He’s got one hand round the neck of a beer bottle, and the other tracing the curve of his ear with soft fingertips – lobe to pointed tip to lobe again, toying with the heavy weight of the earring hanging there. “Back to father’s. We’d have food. Proper beds. Wouldn’t have to worry about making rent.”
Pike’s in one of the bedrooms, sprawled out on a mattress next to Keyleth – the both of them asleep, like they all should be. Scanlan and Grog are god-knows-where, as usual, off in the bright lights and crawling darkness of the city at night, neon and rainwater and teeth glowing white in the alleyways. Tiberius is tucked round the corner of their kitchen-cum-living-room – cooking something on the ancient gas stove that only he can seem to get going – with earbuds in, humming to himself.
Curled up in the armchair, Percy twitches in his sleep, shudders. The shadows around him pull closer, darkness pooling like a cloak, a safety blanket, a noose-in-the-making.
Vex, sat on the floor with her arms around Trinket, snorts. Pressing her face into the thick fur of the dog’s neck, she closes her eyes, and doesn’t even deign to reply to such a stupid suggestion.
This is their home now. They both know it, even if neither of them have quite put words to it yet. Their home, their family, their place, in need of some serious repair as it might be. Despite everything, they’re both happier here, in the tower block apartment with their ramshackle disaster of a family, than they ever were in their father’s expensive penthouse suite.
Vax falls silent, eyes half-lidded, and doesn’t bring it up again.