Percival Fredrickstein Von Musel Klossowski de Rol (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
st_ockandbarrel) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
strangetrip2018-04-12 08:35 pm
st_ockandbarrel) wrote in strangetrip2018-04-12 08:35 pm
Entry tags:
[LOG] Vax and Percy
The night before the reception, Vax hauls Percy out for traditional stag party drinking.
Vax had given some thought to making a complete public spectacle of the night before Vex and Percy'ssmall family dinner big public shitshow of a wedding reception. But he'd decided that it would be too much, before the event, and might give away the surprise of what was to come too soon. He wasn't sure he wanted Scanlan and Percy and Kash and himself all loaded with drink together just then. It was one thing to deliver the groom to the reception party hungover - which he well and fully intended to do. Another to deliver him with a black eye, or seething after a heated family argument, or once the surprise had been giving away by an inebriated wagging tongue.
In the end, as he banged demandingly on Percy's door well after dinnertime, it was Vax alone in a fine black wool sweater and dark skinny jeans tucked into his matching Boots of Haste. Which was just as good, considering they hadn't actually spoken yet about how Percy had gone and convinced his beloved sister to elope without so much as a word to her co-dependent twin brother. "Open up, de Rolo," Vax yelled at the closed door. "I know you're in there, and we've got business, you and I."
Percy heard the banging and the yelling. He was also in the middle of connecting the fine wires that commanded the wings on his construct, so he ignored it. Vax'ildan surely did have things to say to him, and Percival was fairly certain what the content of those things was. As Vax had also had several days, even weeks to express those things when Percy was not attempting a delicate procedure. "In a minute," he did say, several of such time units later.
Vax sighed, but consoled himself with the knowledge of his sweet revenge come tomorrow.
"Percival," he started again, more softly this time. "If you don't get up and answer the door in about sixty seconds, I'm going to break in. And then you'll have to wait for tomorrow for the lock to work again. And then you'll have to go to sleep tonight and leave all your lovely toys undefended from sneak-thieves, and who's to say what might go missing in that time?"
Percy was fairly certain he could manage some kind of security system but it would be such a bother. He sighed deeply and set his tools aside, intending to return once Vax had vented his troubles. Another thirty seconds were spent updating his progress in his notes before he walked to the door and tugged it open. "What is it, Vax?" He paused, took in Vax's entire outfit - he was going native at last it seemed - and raised an eyebrow.
Vax thought that making a habit of heavy drinking in the armor that went with being the Champion of the Raven Queen was a bit sacrilegious, but that was neither here nor there.
"Am I bothering you much? Is there a highly time-sensitive tinkering project that needs done right now?" Vax leaned his shoulder against the side of the door frame and peered around Percy's shoulder to make sure his sister wasn't hiding under a sheet in there or anything - nope, just a gadget or whatever - before looking back to Percy. "Can't I trouble you for a small piece of your evening, brother?"
Vex had been summarily carried away earlier for a girls day at the spa, Percy was given to understand, so she was not currently keeping him company. "I had hoped to make more progress on my project but I suppose I can make time." He stepped back with a small gesture inviting Vax in, then went back to his workbench to finish tidying it up. "What is it you need my evening for?"
Vax trailed in after Percy. "Well, Steph went out with Vex and the girls, a bit of pampering before the family get-together tomorrow." Yeah, that's what it's to be, for sure. Can't wait to see your face, you self-centered son of a- "So I thought you and I should do some drinking on our side. You know - socialize? Bond? Reminisce? Maybe even run the risk of enjoying ourselves. Come on, how long's it been? What do you say to just us and a few bottles?"
Percy paused and looked up at Vax, studying him closely. He seemed like he was plotting something, but there were a good number of things that could be. He wasn't wearing his armor, but Percy was well aware that Vax relied more on being an agile bastard than a well-armored one. Still, he'd been quite pissed when Percy shot Scanlan and Vex was unlikely to be amused if her husband came back missing limbs. "All right." He went to his closet and exchanged his grimy undershirt for a fresh one and a crisp blue button-down over it. "Lead on."
Vax almost tripped over something scooting along the floor as he turned to leave, lucky enough that his quick reflexes saved his ankle as much as his pride. "What - Is that -" He looked back at Percy, momentarily forgetting his agenda. "Did you bring home Ensign Stabby?"
Percy paused in buttoning his shirt and looked down to see the industrious little device rumbling over the floor, picking up debris as it went. He was rather fond of it. "Ensign...Oh, you mean the security device with the after-production blade addition. No, not at all. Vex picked up that one as a wedding gift." He smiled at the device. "I haven't modified this one, though I did poke about a bit to see how it was constructed. Quite ingenious."
"That's what I heard them call it on the station. Little fucker could've hobbled me," Vax admitted with some grudging professional admiration. It was ridiculous, but also, strangely cute. And as he watched the one without a knife taped to it trundle along... Stabby, but not Stabby. Stubby. A warm smile spread across his lips, mirroring Percy's seeming appreciation for it. He had just the job in mind for Percy's wedding gift. All he had to do was borrow it later.
************
Nobody was in the Silver Bar by the time Vax realized it was taking a concerted effort to get alcohol put back into Percy's glass from their last shared bottle. The bottle seemed awkward, and also, with a sad little splash of droplets, the bottle was empty. That was the problem, there. The problem with the bottle, not with Percy, who was another problem also but a whole different kind.
He put the bottle aside with a clunk at their table. He still had a rolly-floor-Stabby-without-its-knife-taped-on left to steal. And also, the whole thing tomorrow. There was that. How clever of him to get Percy miserably drunk before those things. "I think, Freddy... I'm done with this, the drinking. For now, done. Are you done?"
Percy had resisted drinks at first, nursing one slowly, alternating with water. He had more work to do, after all and wanted to be relatively clear headed for it. But the evening wore on and his brother in law was a nimble fingered bastard. The level in his glass stopped going down and soon he was having trouble remembering how much he'd drunk. Then trouble remembering why he cared. At some point, there'd been a song and sudden memories of falling in a pool. Percy picked up his glass - it had started to go empty finally - and finished what was left. "I'm done. I'm...done. Done."
It was, ironically, one of the things that had always endeared Percy to Vax. For as upper-crusty and blue-bleedy as he was, Percy had never been too good to knock them back in a dive bar with the rest of Vox Machina between dragons and dying. It was one of those funny little contradictions in him, that made him more relatable, more a friend somehow. One of those things that made Vax want to love him, want to forgive him, even when he did terrible things. ...Was that how Vex felt, but all the time, and more of the one way than the other in counter-balance to him, Vax wondered?
"Done," Vax echoed back again. "With the drink." But he didn't feel done done. They hadn't actually talked at all about the crux of the thing between them. The thing that had hardened a piece of his heart like a stone, trying to sink deep into him, to weigh him down and kill him from inside-out.
...Okay. He was definitely drunk. But maybe that made what he had to say more true, more important, rather than less.
"But we're not finished."
"Are we going in the pool?" Percy put his hands on the bar and gripped it. His fingers trembled, as they often did when he wasn't focusing. If he thought back - and he only did when he was too drunk to avoid it - he could remember his father's hands doing the same. "I don't want to go in the pool."
"No, not that. Not the pool this time." Drowning wasn't a bad analogy, though.
"Percival..." Vax rubbed his hands over his face, groaning into them before lowering them again. He didn't know how to say it, which was why he hadn't said it over all this while since he'd known. He still didn't know how to say it. But the drinks made the feelings stronger, louder, and the feelings made the words happen- He turned in his seat, eyes both glistening and hard as his hands slid away, curling into white knuckles against the tabletop. "Fuck you, Percy. That's what. Fuck you for convincing Vex to elope, when she would've waited. For making that choice, to cut me out of her happiest moment in the life we'd always lived so close together."
That sliced through the alcohol and strike deep. Percy recoiled, lost his balance, and had to hold onto the bar to stay in place. "I convinced..." Percy looked down at his hands. At his wedding ring, one that he'd made himself, smelted, shaped, polished, setting each of the five stones. "What are you...? Did she tell you that? That it was my fault?" It had felt frantic and urgent, like walking out of the chapel would mean never getting this opportunity again. They wouldn't have... They'd have dithered and delayed and been just fine as they were, going on together without... "She tried to call you."
Vax was silent for a long moment, looking down at his hands rather than Percy. He didn't want to look at Percy.
"...I wasn't there. I couldn't know to be there. And after everything we've gone through together over the years, life and death, laughter and devastation, all that - I didn't matter enough to either of you to wait a single damned day." He swallowed, muddling past and present without meaning to exactly. "I knew you'd take her away eventually, soon even, to Whitestone or wherever. I hoped you would, when that's what she wanted more than anything. When - let's just be honest, shall we? - I'm death's consort already. I had accepted it. But you could have given me that much before it happened, to see her married. Only you couldn't be bothered."
Percy pulled his glasses off and rubbed his hands over his face, pinching his nose to try to focus. "I'm sorry." He stopped there, not because he didn't have more to say but because that needed to stand alone. There was no question that Vax was right. He couldn't even begin to disagree. Especially not while this drunk. "You should have been there."
Vax had enough drink in him that he almost didn't hear it - or almost convinced himself he hadn't heard correctly. He hadn't - Percy didn't often... He'd expected an argument, or a rebuttal, a defense. Percy was so fucking clever, raised learning how to put peasants like him in their places as a wealthy lording.
He turned his head, enough to see Percy had taken off his glasses. "...Yeah," was all Vax ended up saying, and softly.
"It's too fucking easy to lose people. I didn't know, the day of the banquet. I didn't know it was the last day I'd see them." Percy wasn't looking at Vax. He wasn't really looking at anything and he was too drunk to stop the words from carrying memories better left buried. "When you have that moment and you walk away from it, you'll never get it back."
The banquet. It took a sluggish moment to be sure, but Vax knew then with a certainty what it was Percy meant. Because there was only one banquet in all Percy's life that was The Banquet, the one where the Briarwoods had ripped out the roots of the de Rolo family tree that was the heart of Whitestone. That wasn't something that Percy talked about much. Only Vax wasn't sure he should say so. Like if he reminded Percy of that, the man would stop talking altogether, and who knew if or when he would speak of it again.
"Is that why-" Fuck, this was both easier and harder to figure from the bottom of their cups. It was hard starting the words, but then they tumbled out on top of one another. "You took so long to do it? To marry Vex? But then you - when you did decide, it had to be at that very second? No...plan, nobody else, not even telling people after, just 'let's do it before anything can take it away'?" Now Vax was watching Percy, shifted around to face him intently.
"No.Yes. We were. It was a dare. We've been daring each other." Percy picked up his glass but it was empty. He turned it upside down on the bar counter instead. "But it felt like if we didn't do it right then, we'd never do it." His hands were shaking again. His father's hands. "I don't deserve her, Vax. I know I don't deserve her. I know you hate me for it. But I'm a selfish man. And I wasn't going to let her go when the opportunity was right there. Even when I should have."
Vax's gaze slid to watch the fluttery tremble of Percy's hand over the wood. It never seemed to shake when he was in battle, blasting something in the face, but there it went shaking now.
"Who we love...it's never about who deserves it, Percival." Percy had said in his death letter that Vax reminded him of himself, sometimes. Vax didn't exactly feel comfortable the comparison, but he wouldn't say it was wrong, either. He'd done things. More than Vex even realized. Worse than Vex even realized. For her. It felt like a lifetime ago now, but it was still a part of him. "It's what you are that touches someone else in a way deeper and more profound than makes any sense at all."
He reached to fit his steady hand over Percy's, gripping the shaking fingers hard as he leaned in to search for Percy's eyes. "I don't hate you, you fucker. You're my brother, and not just because of Vex either. What you do is terrify me, because for as much as I love you, as much as she loves you, you are selfish. Because of the things you'll do, the lengths you'll go when you feel you've got the right or you understand everything better than the people around you." Like shooting Scanlan and taking his shit. "And if you ever do something so terrible that Vex can't pull you back from it, that even she can't forgive it... It would rip her heart open and leave her to bleed out." And not even her brother knew if he could ever fix her up again, after that.
Other than Vex, people rarely touched Percy. He didn't pull away though. "I might. Some day I might. You'd have to stop me before that happened. But I don't ever want to hurt her. Vex'ahlia the better part of me, of us both, I think. And she makes me a better man, having her around."
"Who's to say I'm going to be here?!" Didn't Percy, out of all of them, understand that Vax was at least one foot in the grave with his vow? Had he failed to notice that Vax had never exactly played it safe, even before that? "That's why I need you - I need you to be a better man. The man we all know you can be, but you've got to do the fucking work to be that guy. Vex makes everyone around her better, but she can't do that last part of it for you."
"I'm working on it." Percy assured Vax. "When I first...when I met your sister, I looked at her and thought...oh, that's a bad idea. Back then, I would have left before it got this far, if I'd known. Now, I look at her and think that I need to become what she deserves." He turned his head, tilted it, and studied Vax. "She's strong enough to stand without me. But I don't know what happens without you. Don't you dare make us find out."
Vex'ahlia... She was 'strong enough to stand on her own' without her brother, either. If nothing else, he hoped her deciding to get married without him was a sign of that. Vax believed she would find her way without him, when that time came. He had to.
But for right now, it was just the two of the men in a bar, coming to an understanding more plainly than they'd ever done before.
Percy hadn't pulled away from his touch. Vax seized on the opportunity before either could think better of it, reaching to clasp the back of Percy's neck and pull him tight, to wrap his other arm around his back and grab the man close to him in a strong hug. "Don't you dare fuck it up, brother," he said in a needy whisper, close to Percy's ear.
Vax had given some thought to making a complete public spectacle of the night before Vex and Percy's
In the end, as he banged demandingly on Percy's door well after dinnertime, it was Vax alone in a fine black wool sweater and dark skinny jeans tucked into his matching Boots of Haste. Which was just as good, considering they hadn't actually spoken yet about how Percy had gone and convinced his beloved sister to elope without so much as a word to her co-dependent twin brother. "Open up, de Rolo," Vax yelled at the closed door. "I know you're in there, and we've got business, you and I."
Percy heard the banging and the yelling. He was also in the middle of connecting the fine wires that commanded the wings on his construct, so he ignored it. Vax'ildan surely did have things to say to him, and Percival was fairly certain what the content of those things was. As Vax had also had several days, even weeks to express those things when Percy was not attempting a delicate procedure. "In a minute," he did say, several of such time units later.
Vax sighed, but consoled himself with the knowledge of his sweet revenge come tomorrow.
"Percival," he started again, more softly this time. "If you don't get up and answer the door in about sixty seconds, I'm going to break in. And then you'll have to wait for tomorrow for the lock to work again. And then you'll have to go to sleep tonight and leave all your lovely toys undefended from sneak-thieves, and who's to say what might go missing in that time?"
Percy was fairly certain he could manage some kind of security system but it would be such a bother. He sighed deeply and set his tools aside, intending to return once Vax had vented his troubles. Another thirty seconds were spent updating his progress in his notes before he walked to the door and tugged it open. "What is it, Vax?" He paused, took in Vax's entire outfit - he was going native at last it seemed - and raised an eyebrow.
Vax thought that making a habit of heavy drinking in the armor that went with being the Champion of the Raven Queen was a bit sacrilegious, but that was neither here nor there.
"Am I bothering you much? Is there a highly time-sensitive tinkering project that needs done right now?" Vax leaned his shoulder against the side of the door frame and peered around Percy's shoulder to make sure his sister wasn't hiding under a sheet in there or anything - nope, just a gadget or whatever - before looking back to Percy. "Can't I trouble you for a small piece of your evening, brother?"
Vex had been summarily carried away earlier for a girls day at the spa, Percy was given to understand, so she was not currently keeping him company. "I had hoped to make more progress on my project but I suppose I can make time." He stepped back with a small gesture inviting Vax in, then went back to his workbench to finish tidying it up. "What is it you need my evening for?"
Vax trailed in after Percy. "Well, Steph went out with Vex and the girls, a bit of pampering before the family get-together tomorrow." Yeah, that's what it's to be, for sure. Can't wait to see your face, you self-centered son of a- "So I thought you and I should do some drinking on our side. You know - socialize? Bond? Reminisce? Maybe even run the risk of enjoying ourselves. Come on, how long's it been? What do you say to just us and a few bottles?"
Percy paused and looked up at Vax, studying him closely. He seemed like he was plotting something, but there were a good number of things that could be. He wasn't wearing his armor, but Percy was well aware that Vax relied more on being an agile bastard than a well-armored one. Still, he'd been quite pissed when Percy shot Scanlan and Vex was unlikely to be amused if her husband came back missing limbs. "All right." He went to his closet and exchanged his grimy undershirt for a fresh one and a crisp blue button-down over it. "Lead on."
Vax almost tripped over something scooting along the floor as he turned to leave, lucky enough that his quick reflexes saved his ankle as much as his pride. "What - Is that -" He looked back at Percy, momentarily forgetting his agenda. "Did you bring home Ensign Stabby?"
Percy paused in buttoning his shirt and looked down to see the industrious little device rumbling over the floor, picking up debris as it went. He was rather fond of it. "Ensign...Oh, you mean the security device with the after-production blade addition. No, not at all. Vex picked up that one as a wedding gift." He smiled at the device. "I haven't modified this one, though I did poke about a bit to see how it was constructed. Quite ingenious."
"That's what I heard them call it on the station. Little fucker could've hobbled me," Vax admitted with some grudging professional admiration. It was ridiculous, but also, strangely cute. And as he watched the one without a knife taped to it trundle along... Stabby, but not Stabby. Stubby. A warm smile spread across his lips, mirroring Percy's seeming appreciation for it. He had just the job in mind for Percy's wedding gift. All he had to do was borrow it later.
************
Nobody was in the Silver Bar by the time Vax realized it was taking a concerted effort to get alcohol put back into Percy's glass from their last shared bottle. The bottle seemed awkward, and also, with a sad little splash of droplets, the bottle was empty. That was the problem, there. The problem with the bottle, not with Percy, who was another problem also but a whole different kind.
He put the bottle aside with a clunk at their table. He still had a rolly-floor-Stabby-without-its-knife-taped-on left to steal. And also, the whole thing tomorrow. There was that. How clever of him to get Percy miserably drunk before those things. "I think, Freddy... I'm done with this, the drinking. For now, done. Are you done?"
Percy had resisted drinks at first, nursing one slowly, alternating with water. He had more work to do, after all and wanted to be relatively clear headed for it. But the evening wore on and his brother in law was a nimble fingered bastard. The level in his glass stopped going down and soon he was having trouble remembering how much he'd drunk. Then trouble remembering why he cared. At some point, there'd been a song and sudden memories of falling in a pool. Percy picked up his glass - it had started to go empty finally - and finished what was left. "I'm done. I'm...done. Done."
It was, ironically, one of the things that had always endeared Percy to Vax. For as upper-crusty and blue-bleedy as he was, Percy had never been too good to knock them back in a dive bar with the rest of Vox Machina between dragons and dying. It was one of those funny little contradictions in him, that made him more relatable, more a friend somehow. One of those things that made Vax want to love him, want to forgive him, even when he did terrible things. ...Was that how Vex felt, but all the time, and more of the one way than the other in counter-balance to him, Vax wondered?
"Done," Vax echoed back again. "With the drink." But he didn't feel done done. They hadn't actually talked at all about the crux of the thing between them. The thing that had hardened a piece of his heart like a stone, trying to sink deep into him, to weigh him down and kill him from inside-out.
...Okay. He was definitely drunk. But maybe that made what he had to say more true, more important, rather than less.
"But we're not finished."
"Are we going in the pool?" Percy put his hands on the bar and gripped it. His fingers trembled, as they often did when he wasn't focusing. If he thought back - and he only did when he was too drunk to avoid it - he could remember his father's hands doing the same. "I don't want to go in the pool."
"No, not that. Not the pool this time." Drowning wasn't a bad analogy, though.
"Percival..." Vax rubbed his hands over his face, groaning into them before lowering them again. He didn't know how to say it, which was why he hadn't said it over all this while since he'd known. He still didn't know how to say it. But the drinks made the feelings stronger, louder, and the feelings made the words happen- He turned in his seat, eyes both glistening and hard as his hands slid away, curling into white knuckles against the tabletop. "Fuck you, Percy. That's what. Fuck you for convincing Vex to elope, when she would've waited. For making that choice, to cut me out of her happiest moment in the life we'd always lived so close together."
That sliced through the alcohol and strike deep. Percy recoiled, lost his balance, and had to hold onto the bar to stay in place. "I convinced..." Percy looked down at his hands. At his wedding ring, one that he'd made himself, smelted, shaped, polished, setting each of the five stones. "What are you...? Did she tell you that? That it was my fault?" It had felt frantic and urgent, like walking out of the chapel would mean never getting this opportunity again. They wouldn't have... They'd have dithered and delayed and been just fine as they were, going on together without... "She tried to call you."
Vax was silent for a long moment, looking down at his hands rather than Percy. He didn't want to look at Percy.
"...I wasn't there. I couldn't know to be there. And after everything we've gone through together over the years, life and death, laughter and devastation, all that - I didn't matter enough to either of you to wait a single damned day." He swallowed, muddling past and present without meaning to exactly. "I knew you'd take her away eventually, soon even, to Whitestone or wherever. I hoped you would, when that's what she wanted more than anything. When - let's just be honest, shall we? - I'm death's consort already. I had accepted it. But you could have given me that much before it happened, to see her married. Only you couldn't be bothered."
Percy pulled his glasses off and rubbed his hands over his face, pinching his nose to try to focus. "I'm sorry." He stopped there, not because he didn't have more to say but because that needed to stand alone. There was no question that Vax was right. He couldn't even begin to disagree. Especially not while this drunk. "You should have been there."
Vax had enough drink in him that he almost didn't hear it - or almost convinced himself he hadn't heard correctly. He hadn't - Percy didn't often... He'd expected an argument, or a rebuttal, a defense. Percy was so fucking clever, raised learning how to put peasants like him in their places as a wealthy lording.
He turned his head, enough to see Percy had taken off his glasses. "...Yeah," was all Vax ended up saying, and softly.
"It's too fucking easy to lose people. I didn't know, the day of the banquet. I didn't know it was the last day I'd see them." Percy wasn't looking at Vax. He wasn't really looking at anything and he was too drunk to stop the words from carrying memories better left buried. "When you have that moment and you walk away from it, you'll never get it back."
The banquet. It took a sluggish moment to be sure, but Vax knew then with a certainty what it was Percy meant. Because there was only one banquet in all Percy's life that was The Banquet, the one where the Briarwoods had ripped out the roots of the de Rolo family tree that was the heart of Whitestone. That wasn't something that Percy talked about much. Only Vax wasn't sure he should say so. Like if he reminded Percy of that, the man would stop talking altogether, and who knew if or when he would speak of it again.
"Is that why-" Fuck, this was both easier and harder to figure from the bottom of their cups. It was hard starting the words, but then they tumbled out on top of one another. "You took so long to do it? To marry Vex? But then you - when you did decide, it had to be at that very second? No...plan, nobody else, not even telling people after, just 'let's do it before anything can take it away'?" Now Vax was watching Percy, shifted around to face him intently.
"No.Yes. We were. It was a dare. We've been daring each other." Percy picked up his glass but it was empty. He turned it upside down on the bar counter instead. "But it felt like if we didn't do it right then, we'd never do it." His hands were shaking again. His father's hands. "I don't deserve her, Vax. I know I don't deserve her. I know you hate me for it. But I'm a selfish man. And I wasn't going to let her go when the opportunity was right there. Even when I should have."
Vax's gaze slid to watch the fluttery tremble of Percy's hand over the wood. It never seemed to shake when he was in battle, blasting something in the face, but there it went shaking now.
"Who we love...it's never about who deserves it, Percival." Percy had said in his death letter that Vax reminded him of himself, sometimes. Vax didn't exactly feel comfortable the comparison, but he wouldn't say it was wrong, either. He'd done things. More than Vex even realized. Worse than Vex even realized. For her. It felt like a lifetime ago now, but it was still a part of him. "It's what you are that touches someone else in a way deeper and more profound than makes any sense at all."
He reached to fit his steady hand over Percy's, gripping the shaking fingers hard as he leaned in to search for Percy's eyes. "I don't hate you, you fucker. You're my brother, and not just because of Vex either. What you do is terrify me, because for as much as I love you, as much as she loves you, you are selfish. Because of the things you'll do, the lengths you'll go when you feel you've got the right or you understand everything better than the people around you." Like shooting Scanlan and taking his shit. "And if you ever do something so terrible that Vex can't pull you back from it, that even she can't forgive it... It would rip her heart open and leave her to bleed out." And not even her brother knew if he could ever fix her up again, after that.
Other than Vex, people rarely touched Percy. He didn't pull away though. "I might. Some day I might. You'd have to stop me before that happened. But I don't ever want to hurt her. Vex'ahlia the better part of me, of us both, I think. And she makes me a better man, having her around."
"Who's to say I'm going to be here?!" Didn't Percy, out of all of them, understand that Vax was at least one foot in the grave with his vow? Had he failed to notice that Vax had never exactly played it safe, even before that? "That's why I need you - I need you to be a better man. The man we all know you can be, but you've got to do the fucking work to be that guy. Vex makes everyone around her better, but she can't do that last part of it for you."
"I'm working on it." Percy assured Vax. "When I first...when I met your sister, I looked at her and thought...oh, that's a bad idea. Back then, I would have left before it got this far, if I'd known. Now, I look at her and think that I need to become what she deserves." He turned his head, tilted it, and studied Vax. "She's strong enough to stand without me. But I don't know what happens without you. Don't you dare make us find out."
Vex'ahlia... She was 'strong enough to stand on her own' without her brother, either. If nothing else, he hoped her deciding to get married without him was a sign of that. Vax believed she would find her way without him, when that time came. He had to.
But for right now, it was just the two of the men in a bar, coming to an understanding more plainly than they'd ever done before.
Percy hadn't pulled away from his touch. Vax seized on the opportunity before either could think better of it, reaching to clasp the back of Percy's neck and pull him tight, to wrap his other arm around his back and grab the man close to him in a strong hug. "Don't you dare fuck it up, brother," he said in a needy whisper, close to Percy's ear.