Oooooh. This is technically my first ever fic for this ship, I hope you like it!

Prompts from this Whump Fic Bingo post!

Another character sees their hands shaking so they hide them

Warnings: post Crimson Diplomacy, spoilers up to c. ep 45

You would think that after watching his family’s killers disappear into the night without so much as a by-your-leave, Percival Frederickstein Von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III would not be able to sleep. To his great frustration, however, the biological imperative was apparently even stronger than his desire not to succumb, even briefly, to unconsciousness. Thus, when Percy was not haunted by the waking nightmare that was his life, he was haunted instead by stranger and strangely vivid horrors in the intimacy of his mind. It was enough to drive even a great man insane, and Percy had never pretended to be a great man. 

So he falls out of a dream full of writhing shadows screaming his siblings’ names and hits his nose hard against his worktable, knocking his glasses up into his forehead as he does so and spitting a curse. His workshop is cool, the fire having long since gone out with no one to tend to it. Percy’s mouth tastes like hot metal, and his head hurts, and he cannot shake the feeling that something is standing just behind him, ready to eat him alive. 

Of course, it is at this exact moment that Vax decides to remove himself from the shadows in one corner of the room. Because he’s accommodating like that. 

Percy flinches, violently, one hand fumbling for his gun as the other tries and fails to catch the back of his chair. He starts to fall, swearing as he does so, and then a warm, strong hand wraps around his wrist and catches him. Percy’s grip loosens on his gun as he’s pulled upright, and he squints through the half a lens that’s still somewhere near his left eye. Vax fades into his vision like a ghost and Percy sighs, letting go of his gun and moving his free hand to adjust his glasses.

Vax narrows his eyes at him, hand still wrapped firmly around Percy’s wrist, as if he thinks that if he lets go Percy will fall all over again. “You ok, Freddie?”

Percy nods, tugging his hand back and away from Vax and trying not to think about the way the heat of his touch lingers long after he lets go. “I would be better if you had entered my workshop like a normal person. Have you ever tried knocking? I hear it does wonders for your health.”

Vax’s mouth curves at the corner into a lopsided smile. “People don’t tend to let me in when I give them a choice about it.”

Percy sighs. His nose and forehead are still stinging from his graceless awakening, and for all that he knows there is no real threat, his heart is still pounding as if he’s running for his life, not sitting in his home. “Yes, and obviously the natural conclusion to draw from that is to get good at breaking and entering.” He pinches the bridge of his nose, wincing. “Was there something you wanted, Vax?”

Helpful as he usually is, Vax just lifts one slender shoulder and leans back against Percy’s worktable with the casual, proprietary ease of a big cat, all shadow and lean muscle. “Just figured I’d check in. See how you were doing.”

Percy frowns. “I assure you, I’m quite well.” This is a bare-faced lie, but since the windows at the top of Percy’s workshop are showing him nothing but a dark sky and therefore an ungodly hour of the morning, he doesn’t see any reason to tell the truth. 

Vax scowls at him, folding his arms across his chest. “Percival.” His tone is warning, and a little like his sister’s, and Percy wonders – not for the first time – why exactly he had decided to choose these people, of all the people in the world, to make his new family. 

But it is touching that Vax has even bothered to be concerned, and Percy hopes he isn’t far gone enough to take that for granted. So he takes a deep breath, and he forces himself to meet Vax’s dark eyes. “I’m fine. I promise.” He tries to put a little warmth into the words, though he’s not sure if it comes through over the exasperation. 

He thinks it does, because Vax’s features soften. His eyes glance down, quicker than Percy can really follow, certainly not groggy as he is after days of half-rejected sleep. “Your hands are shaking.” Vax’s voice is quiet, and very kind. Percy looks down and sees that he’s right: his fingers, stained with oil and black powder, are trembling lightly on the table as if he were terribly cold. Percy stares at them for a moment, like they’re a puzzle he can solve, and then he swallows and sits back, tucking his hands into his coat pockets.

“I must be cold.” It’s a stiff lie, and Percy can tell from the unimpressed look on Vax’s face that he doesn’t believe a word of it. But he moves to the fire anyway, turning his back to Percy as he lights it.

“I don’t suppose there’s much point reminding you that you have a bedroom upstairs?” It’s Vax’s turn to sound exasperated now, and the corner of Percy’s mouth pulls him in the direction of a smile despite himself. For all that Vax seems to want people to see him as some dark, cold harbinger of cruel justice, he has trouble containing his inner mother hen. It was moments like these, more than any others, that told Percy he cared. And for all that Percy had given up on such things long ago, it was nice to be cared for.

Vax turns and raises one dark eyebrow at him, his sun-dark skin turned copper and bronze by the growing flames, waiting for a response. Percy thinks that he looks not unlike a flame himself, standing there, drawn in lines of charcoal and gold. But then his gaze falls to the still healing, neat puncture wounds on Vax’s neck, exposed as his hair slips over his back by the loose black shirt he’s wearing. Percy looks away.  “I’m afraid not. There is much to do before we leave. If we leave. I am still not entirely certain about – ”

Vax cuts him off with an impatient wave of his hand. “We’re coming with you, so you can stop that particular line of thought before you start it, if you don’t mind. I’m not in the mood to argue.”

Percy raises his eyebrows, and Vax scowls at him. “What?” 

Now he’s smiling, and Percy looks away to hide the expression in an attempt to avoid making things worse, squinting at the scribbles he’d left on a scrap of parchment on his desk before he’d fallen asleep. It’s hard to make heads or tails of it, and not for the first time Percy wishes he’d spend more than thirty seconds on making his handwriting legible, for his own sake if no-one else’s. Distracted, he replies to Vax, feeling his gaze on the back of his neck. “I’m just not used to you holding that position.”

Vax huffs, and crosses the room so silently he may as well not have moved at all. The effect is as eerie as it ever has been, and the hairs on the back of Percy’s neck lift despite himself. In the corners of his eyes, the shadows flicker and seem to move with a life of their own. “Yeah, well, calling me Mr Surprising. Listen, are you going to talk to me or what?”

Percy takes a deep breath, and looks up at Vax: now barely a foot away from him and frowning. “Vax, I have no idea what time it is…”

“3am.” Vax supplies, and Percy groans, pushing his hand up under his glasses as he passes his hand over his face. That would explain the headache, then.

“Right. Can’t we do this in the morning, or at least at a more godly hour? I need to sleep. I’m sure you do too.” As Percy looks at him, he becomes a little more certain of the truth in his own words. There are deep purple bags under Vax’s eyes, and his features are worn like old clothes, faintly creased with lines of stress and worry. Not for the first time, guilt at having thrown Vox Machina into this whole sorry situation comes biting at the back of Percy’s mind, chewing on what’s left of his nerves. “It’s been a long week, for all of us.” Percy says it as kindly as he can, and a little of the tension stretched taut across the line of Vax’s shoulders goes slack. 

He reaches up, and rubs theside of his neck, slipping his fingers under his hair and covering the place where Sylas had bitten him, looking away from Percy and towards the roof of the workshop and the various implements which hang from it. “Yeah, well.” Vax purses his lips for a moment as his frown returns. “I figured, if I’m having nightmares after like, half an hour with those assholes, then your life probably sucks right now.”

Percy laughs, loudly and despite himself, without much humour. “My life has sucked for a very long time, Vax. This doesn’t really change much as far as I’m concerned.”

Vax makes a soft sound of frustration. “Don’t lie to me Percy.” Beside them, the fire huffs and sighs, but the rest of the keep is quiet. It feels strangely intimate. Vax leans forward, bending to meet Percy’s eyes. Percy leans back against his chair and tries not to think about Vax’s breath and the way it falls hot over his lips. “Look me in the eyes and tell me that you’re fine. That nothing’s wrong, and you’re doing as well as you were a week ago, before that whole fucking mess at the palace. I dare you.” Vax’s eyes are dark, and fierce, and angry. Percy lets himself hang in his gaze for several heartbeats more before he breaks it, pulling his glasses away from his face and cleaning them with the hem of his shirt. His hands shake a little as he does so.

“You shouldn’t get into people’s space like that. It’ll give them all sorts of ideas about your intentions.” Percy thinks that this is a clumsy effort at best to change the subject, but since it’s 3am he’s willing to cut himself a little slack.

Vax clicks his tongue and reaches out to hold his shoulder firmly with one hand, squeezing hard. “Tempting as that implication may be, Freddie, it’s not an answer to the fucking question, and I am far too tired to beat around the bloody bush. Just talk to me. Please. I’m freaked out. You’re freaked out, whether you want to admit it or not. You’ve got to talk to someone about it. Besides anything else, you’re no good to us drunk on sleep deprivation and jumping at shadows.” A far larger part of Percy’s mind than really should be concerned with such things catches the start of Vax’s sentence and lingers there, caught by the idea of of tempting implications, and all the pleasant distractions it could provide.

The rest of him is willing to admit that Vax, as usual, makes a simple kind of sense with the blunt instrument that is his pragmatism. Percy sighs, and puts his glasses back on. Vax doesn’t let go of his shoulder. “I’m having bad dreams, but I can’t sleep. I want to kill these people, slowly, and have my bloody vengeance for everything they did to me and my family, but I don’t want any of you within a hundred miles of them. I’m terrified that i’m going to get you all killed. There. Are you happy now?”

When Vax kisses him, it’s so quick and so sudden that Percy has barely has a moment to register the lightning-touch of chapped lips and the bump of teeth and the sudden smell of leather and cotton before it’s gone. He blinks, owlishly, and barely notices the fact that his hands have stopped shaking. Vax, for his part, gives him a grin that is altogether far too self-satisfied and gently pats his cheek. “Very.” He says, smugly, ears pricked the way they normally are when he laughs. “Don’t stay up too late, alright? We’re going to need you in top shape tomorrow. We’ve got a city to liberate.” Then Vax leans forward again, still quicker than Percy can react, and presses another brief, warm kiss to his forehead. He pulls back, and before Percy can react, turns and walks away with half a cock-eyed wave. “Night, Percival.”

Percy stares after him, and wonders who exactly taught him that any of that was an appropriate way to behave. Then he thinks that it was Vex, probably, and that explains some of it. Despite himself, Percy smiles, lifting one hand in the direction of his lips. The fire, behind him, casts dancing shadows over the wall. But shadows they remain. (At least for now.)