Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The night was still.

Cold.

Almost unnervingly open, sky broken wide like a geode, stars a swath of silver light above the silent camp. She felt exposed sitting beneath their watchful eyes, grateful for each cloud that passed across the moon’s wide face. Back in her forest, she’d always had the canopy to guard her. Now she had…

What? Her brother, of course. Trinket. And a handful of strangers she was only just now beginning to like, much less trust.

Vex curled her fingers around the last of the coffee, hunching her shoulders against the uncomfortable feeling of being exposed. They’d banked the fire behind its careful blind and the rest the group was snoring blissfully through the first quarter of her watch. Not even Keyleth had seemed unsettled by the plains—if anything, she’d been pleased with the change in scenery, smiling face tipped up toward the too-big sky every chance she got. It would have been annoying if it hadn’t been so charming.

(Truthfully, Vex was a little annoyed despite being charmed.)

The fire popped, and she jumped. “Come on, then,” she muttered beneath her breath, rolling her shoulders every few seconds. “No need getting jumpy.”

“I can take over if you like.”

Vex startled again at the quiet voice, nearly upending her mug as she grabbed for her bow. She stilled as her eyes met Percy’s from across the fire. He was sitting up on one elbow, white hair falling across his brow, gaze surprisingly direct without the shield of his glasses.

Slowly, she set down her bow, never taking her eyes off his. “That won’t be necessary,” she said, voice pitched low. Then—remembering she and her brother needed these people still—she added a quick, “Thank you.”

Percy tipped his head in silent recognition, gracious as ever. Graceful, though not in the same way Vax was. Percy was… Percy was different. The way he held himself was different, though she hadn’t yet found the words to explain it.

She dropped her gaze, giving their newest traveling companion the illusion of privacy, but he didn’t settle back into his bedroll. Instead, he reached into a small wooden box he kept by his pillow and opened it, settling his delicate spectacles on the bridge of his nose. The moonlight caught on the lenses, flashing at Vex as he rose to his knees, then stood.

Graceful. Elegant. Practiced? Mannered?

Something. The way Percy moved was something.

“I told you,” Vex began as he stepped around the fire to join her, bare-footed despite the cold.

“I know,” Percy said. He sank down onto the ground next to her, though not so close that she felt crowded. Aware. Maybe the word she was looking for was aware. Not of his surroundings necessarily—at least, not the way she was—but of himself. As if his own body was an instrument he had taken pains to master, held too-tightly under his own control.

She wondered what he’d look like if he lost some of that control. She figured it wasn’t her place to even try to imagine.

To diffuse the growing tension, Vex arched a brow and offered him her mug; he took it with a small nod and pretended to sip before handing it back. She maybe (probably) would have called him on his prissiness if he hadn’t tipped his face up to the too-big sky then and said, “It’s going to snow.”

“How do you know?” she said. She didn’t follow the direction of his gaze, eyes fixed steadily on the ground between them. A cold wind blew, ruffling loose strands of hair. “Are you a druid now too?”

“It’s the smell,” he explained. At Vex’s scoff, he added, wryly, “Well, not really. It’s actually the cold affecting the mucus membrane in your nasal passages. It increases sensitivity to smell. Added to the steadily declining barometric pressure and— And you’re not interested in hearing about this.”

She hadn’t been, not really, but Vex bristled at the implication. “What?” she demanded. “Are you trying to say you think I’m stupid? I know how to read the weather better than you.” At least, she had been back before they reached this open, desolate place. Everything she knew was the forest, and the underdark, and the cities she occasionally followed Vax into. This was a whole new world, and she hated how defensive her own ignorance made her.

Percy didn’t know all of that; she wasn’t sure she wanted him to know. “No, of course not,” he was saying instead, turning to her with an earnest twist of his brows. “I’m sorry. It’s been a long while since I’ve had a chance to be with a group for any stretch of time. I suppose I forget that not everyone appreciates a pedant.”

His lips twisted, and the noise he made was clearly supposed to be a laugh. It sounded…brittle, though. That iron-clad control she recognized in the way he moved closing about his throat. “I guess I’ve forgotten how to talk to anyone who isn’t myself,” Percy said.

Vex frowned down at her drink, watching the slow coils of heat escaping the mug. His words… They made something twist up inside her chest—empathy, pity, curiosity, recognition. She remembered how he’d looked when the group had stumbled across him. The rough rasp of his voice. Well damn it, anyway.

“Well,” Percy said, beginning to rise. “In any case, good n—” His words cut off into a yelp when she grabbed his arm, yanking him back down.

“Don’t be stupid,” Vex said, voice still a touch too sharp—she looked up as she said it, though, wide mouth twisting into a more natural smile. “It doesn’t suit you.”

“Doesn’t it?” he said, bemused, adjusting his glasses.

She didn’t answer for a long, long while, taking the opportunity to really study her latest ally. He was handsome, she supposed, in an aristocratic way. Too thin, as if it had been a long time since he’d bothered taking proper care of himself. Tall though willowy, with that grace-not-grace she had noticed. That…stillness she still couldn’t quite pinpoint. He had kind eyes hidden behind those spectacles and a serious brow. Well-shaped lips. A good jaw.

Clever hands that tapped out secret messages against his thigh when he grew nervous.

“Ah—still deciding?” Percy finally asked.

“Shush,” Vex said. “I’m taking your measure.”

“Ah. …and?”

She shrugged a shoulder almost playfully, hiding a smile when that earned a rusty laugh. She supposed it wasn’t the end of the world to let him sit up with her for the rest of her watch. At least with Percy here, the sky didn’t feel like it was going to swallow her at any moment. In fact, she realized with a slow curl of surprise, she hadn’t even noticed its uncomfortable weight for some time now.

Huh. Maybe Percy Von Blah Blah Blah was good for more than a quick draw and a…what had he called it? Pedantic tongue.

She smiled again as a fat snowflake floated between them, lazy and silent. Another. Another. Like falling stars, they drifted around them, catching in her lashes, on her sensible leathers. Vex’s smile spread into a slow grin as they gathered in his hair, white on white and nearly lost in the dark of second watch.

“What?” he said, but he was smiling back. He actually reached up to touch his own mouth as if to hide it from her—or maybe to test to see if it was real. She was getting the feeling Percy didn’t smile often.

“Here,” she said instead of answering. She thrust the mug back into his hands and drew up her legs, wrapping her arms around them. “Drink the rest. Or pretend to drink it and spit it out when I’m not looking: I’m really not fussed either way.”

He cleared his throat and lifted the mug, taking a sip. This time, watching the long line of his throat work from the corners of her eyes, Vex was fairly certain he really did drink. It felt weirdly like a victory, or some kind of wall coming down.

He caught her watching and quirked a brow; she waggled hers back, making him cough and sputter against a mouthful of cooled coffee. “You are,” he began, setting aside the mug and clearing his throat into his fist, “very strange. Did you know that?”

She grinned brightly and rested her chin on her knees. “Oh yes,” she said. “Vax tells me all the time. So what about you, Percy?” Vex added before she could think better of it.

“Am I strange?” He coughed into his fist, clearing his throat. “Quite.”

“No,” Vex tsked, though something in her warmed at the words. “What’s your story? You’re not very big on sharing, I’ve noticed.”

Percy went still again, smile gone as if it had never been. He tipped his face up toward the sky, the flakes landing on his glasses, on those serious brows. “The storm’s going to get worse,” he said. “Can you feel it? We should see about setting up a sturdier camp. Perhaps a lean-to or a snow blind.”

“You know, you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to,” Vex pointed out, watching him stand. Controlled, careful, conscious.

Contained? Yes, that would work as well as anything.

Percy just looked down at her, tall enough she had to tip her head back to see; with the moon haloing his hair and snow falling with a quiet shush shush around them, his (handsome) face was lost in shadow; he was perfectly unreadable again. “I know,” he said, reaching up to adjust his glasses in that way he had.

Then he turned and walked away.