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Percy doesn’t even remember until Vex bursts into the hospital room.
“Are you alright?” She’s a little wild-eyed, hair falling out of its familiar braid in bits and pieces, and she’s still in the over-large shirt and sweatpants she wears to sleep in. “They just said there was an accident, are you-”
Percy cuts her off. “I’m fine, Vex.”
Her eyes narrow. “Fine?”
He nods. “Well- My arm’s broken, and a couple of ribs, but they’ve got me on the good drugs now.” He raises the arm not in a cast to show her the IV the nurse had put in a few minutes earlier. “It’s really not a big deal.”
Vex takes a deep breath, lets it out, and stalks over to thud down into the chair next to his bed. “What happened?”
He shrugs. “I was putting in some extra hours at the shop and the auto lift finally gave out while I was working on a car underneath it. It was an accident, really, it was nothing.”
Vex’s frown darkened. “I knew it. I said a thousand times, Viktor should’ve had that thing replaced, I knew it was a safety hazard, daft old coot never listened...” She trails off, muttering threateningly.
Percy adjusts his glasses. “Why, ah- Why are you here?”
Vex bites her lip. “Well. I’m still... I’m your emergency contact, still. Apparently.”
Something twists in Percy’s stomach. He blames it on the painkillers. “Oh. Of course.”
Vex has been his emergency contact since well before they started dating. He didn’t have any family, anymore, and of their group of friends, well...
He’d been sure any one of them would’ve shown up, of course, but Vex had been the only one he’d really wanted to.
He’d told her it was because he knew she had a vested interest in keeping him alive, what with the money he still owed her from various bets and dinners, and she’d laughed, but she’d agreed. And then they’d gotten together, and there’d been no one else he would’ve wanted to be with him when he was sick or hurting, and then they’d broken up, and-
They’d broken up, and everything to do with Vex had hurt. And the thought of finding someone else he trusted enough to list had made it hurt even more, so he’d never gotten around to changing it.
“Well,” he says, avoiding her eyes, “obviously, I’m fine now, so.” He nods at the door. “I’m sure this woke you up, it’s late, please. I don’t want to inconvenience you any more than I already have.”
“Incon- Percy!”
The sharpness in her voice startles him into looking at her, and he’s surprised to see anger in her face. “You were in an accident, you were hurt! They called me and told me you were in the hospital, and I didn’t know if-” She cuts herself off, biting into her bottom lip hard. “I’m driving you home and that’s not negotiable.”
“Vex, really, I can call a cab easily eno-”
“Percy.” She reaches out and grabs his hand, and it takes all of his hard-earned self-control to keep from flinching. “Quit being a dickhead and let me give you a lift.”
He chuckles, a little rough. “Well. Now that you’ve called me a dickhead.”
She squeezes his hand and stands up. “Good. I’m gonna find a nurse or somebody, see about getting you released.” She pauses at the door, looks back to give him a half-smile. “Don’t go anywhere.”
Percy raises an eyebrow. “Where on earth would I go?”
It comes out more sincere than he intended, and he looks away, picks at the bedsheet with his good hand so he doesn’t have to see the pity he’s sure must be on Vex’s face. “I’ll be right back,” she says, and when he looks up she’s gone.
It takes another half hour or so for him to be discharged, which is probably faster than is normal, but he can’t blame the poor hospital staff. Better people than they have crumbled in the face of Vex on a mission. They give him his clothes back, which is nice, although he can really only wear the pants and jacket since they had to cut his shirt off to work around his broken arm. He can only imagine how strange he must look as Vex leads him out, blue coat wrapped around his shoulder with only one arm in its sleeve, the other slung tight against his chest.
“I’m just parked over here,” she says, taking him by the unbroken arm and guiding him in the right direction. His stomach twists violently when they reach her car. It’s unremarkable, a compact at least 15 years old and probably 100,000 miles on it at least, but it’s not the car she drove when they were together, and the reminder sits cold and hard deep in his ribcage.
“You got a new car, I see,” he says, evenly.
Vex doesn’t flinch, but her not flinching is more obvious than if she had. “Yeah,” she says, tucking her hair behind her ear. “Well, not new new, but new to me. Jarret helped me find it.”
Percy bites down on the unkind things he wants to say about Jarret’s mechanical ability (all of which are untrue and unfair to the man, he knows) and settles for nodding. “Good,” he says, almost even meaning it. “I’m glad.”
Vex smiles at him, brittle and not reaching her eyes, and leads him to the passenger side door. She unlocks it and helps him in, careful of his new sling and cast, and walks around the front to get in the driver’s seat. Percy looks around the interior of the car. It’s immaculate as expected; apparently Vex’s rules about no food or trash have carried over to her new vehicle.
Vex slides in beside him and slams her door closed. The loud thud makes him jump, and Vex glances at him, opens her mouth as though to say something, but then shakes her head and turns the key in the ignition. They pull out of the hospital parking lot, headlights spilling yellow light across the road in front of them, and they ride in silence.
Vex heads for Percy’s apartment without asking for direction. Percy’s heart clutches a little, that she still remembers the route, but he shoves the feeling down before it can show on his face. Of course she remembers, she’s Vex. She remembers how much money Scanlan owes her for a bet they made four years ago, a drive she used to make almost daily is nothing, he shouldn’t, he won’t read into it.
She parks in front of his building, and before Percy can even begin to come up with something to say, she’s gone around and opened his door for him. “Come on,” she says, offering her arm, “with your luck, you’ll trip on the stairs and break something else.”
Percy lets her help him out of the car, lets her drape his good arm over her shoulder, lets her brace him against her, arm around his waist. He’s been hurt worse than this before, and they both know it, but Percy…
Percy lets her half-carry him to his door, because she’s warm and soft against his side, and because he’s a weak man, in the end, and it will hurt more when she leaves having had her this close again, but he’s always been weak for Vex, even now. Even when he knows better.
They get to the door, and Percy is briefly grateful for his ground-floor apartment, that he doesn’t have to navigate stairs like this, that he can let Vex go now in a clean break rather than dragging it out even further. “Well,” he says, lifting his arm from her shoulders and shifting away, “thank you for the ride, I very much appreciate it.” He fumbles across himself for his keys, which are, of course, in the pocket on the side of his broken arm. “I’ll just-”
He’s cut off by Vex stepping into his space and reaching into his pocket. She’s almost chest to chest with him, and Percy takes a second to hope desperately that the sound of his breath catching at her closeness isn’t as loud as it felt.
Vex smiles at him. “Here,” she says, pressing the keys into his good hand. She steps back from him, and Percy blinks for a moment before composing himself, (get it together de Rolo, honestly) and unlocking his door.
“Thank you, again,” he says. He’s not quite looking at Vex, preferring to focus on opening the door just as far as he needs to go in without letting Vex see the inside of his apartment. “I’ll be out of your hair now.”
Vex smiles, half-hearted. Percy means to end his sentence there, but some courtesies were etched into him so long ago they refuse to fade, no matter how he tries, and “Would you like to come in? Just for a minute?” is out before he knows he’s going to say it.
He doesn’t mean it, really. He’s tired, and hurt, and he’d quite like to be miserable by himself instead of miserable with Vex, because when he’s by himself he can be miserable about Vex, and he doesn’t expect Vex to take the invitation as anything other than reflexive hospitality.
He should’ve learned by now not to underestimate her.
Vex’s head tilts, and there’s a hint of her familiar smirk about her mouth when she says, “Why, Percival. I’d love to.”
And by the time Percy’s quite realized what’s happened, Vex has neatly side-stepped him and breezed past into his apartment. Percy blinks, twice. Then steps in and shuts the door behind them.
Vex walks through the entrance hall to the main room, eyes moving over the environment. Percy resists the urge to try and distract her from… whatever it is she’s looking for. He knows it will do him no good. And really, it’s not like this is the first time Vex has been in his apartment, even if the interior is a little messier than he’d kept it when they were together. Several in-progress projects are spread over various horizontal surfaces, gears and bits of metal scattered like exploded shrapnel.
Vex pauses and picks up a chunk of steel, turning it over in her hands. “Still hard at work, I see.”
Percy nods. “Yes, well. I do like to keep myself occupied, and I’ve got a bit more free time, now that…”
And there. He’s done it. The one thing he swore to himself he wouldn’t do, the one topic he’d forbidden himself from approaching. They’ve danced around the breakup, for the sake of their group of friends, and honestly, it was something of a point of pride for Percy, that they could be amiable with one another, even if it wasn’t like it was before. They’d been cordial, and polite, and smiled at the right places when the other was speaking, and it had felt like Percy’s heart was being turned to ash inside his chest, but he’d dealt with it, for Vex’s sake.
Because the thought of hurting Vex any more than he already had was simply unacceptable.
And now, here he is, blundering into the conversation he’s spent the last two months desperately trying to avoid having.
He turns, not waiting to see Vex’s reaction, and shrugs his coat off. Hanging it on the hook by the door one-handed is tricky, and he devotes his focus to it, and not the way his one good hand is shaking.
“Percy…”
A soft hand brushes against his shoulder, and he flinches from the sudden contact. Vex pulls away immediately, and he turns to face her, burningly conscious that removing his coat leaves him bare to the waist.
“Percy.” Vex’s voice is soft, and he can’t help but to look at her. Her face is solemn as she looks at him, looks him in the eyes, and Percy’s breath catches. Vex told him once that being the center of his attention was addictive, but he thinks now that she’d got it backwards, because Percy knows addiction, knows the gnawing, gaping ache of it, and that is nothing compared to the yearning in his chest, standing in front of Vex, and being looked at by her. “Tell me you want me to leave,” she says, “and I will.” And Percy’s stupid, traitorous mouth picks this, of all times, to be honest.
“Don’t,” he says. “Don’t go.”
Vex’s face softens. “Alright,” she says. “I won’t.”
She takes a breath and her eyes drop, and she seems to realize then that Percy is standing in front of her, shirtless. At one point in their relationship, this would have drawn a quip about his needing more sun and the glare off his pale skin. At another, it would have been a sly grin and a grip on his wrist as he was dragged towards the bedroom.
Now, Vex considers him almost objectively, it seems. Percy swallows as her gaze moves over him, coming to rest on the purpling bruise spreading along the side of his torso. Her fingers move, coming to rest less than half an inch over the tender flesh, and Percy can’t help the shiver that runs through him at Vex’s almost-touch.
“That’s going to hurt,” Vex says, light.
Percy snorts, then winces as his ribs twinge. “You think so?”
Vex give him a look. “Yeah. Mine hurt like anything when they were healing up, you know, after-”
She cuts herself off, eyes going wide. Percy holds his breath, already coming up with something to change the subject, to defuse the tension, but Vex’s jaw sets and she continues. “After the accident.”
Percy nods jerkily. “Right. Of course.” He makes a show of checking his coat, making sure it’s secure on its hook, and walks past Vex to the main room. There’s an old cardigan thrown over the back of one of the armchairs (which he’s fairly certain is actually Keyleth’s, to be honest) and he pulls it around himself. The well-worn wool rasps slightly against his skin as he pushes his good arm through the sleeve, and he sinks into the feeling, letting it fill his mind rather than-
“You know, we never really talked about it.” Vex settles into the other armchair, feet tucked up under her. Percy swallows against the sense memory of it, Vex in her sleep clothes in his apartment, curled up and drowsy and talking dreamy nonsense. “What happened,” she says. “To me.”
Percy picks at a loose thread in the cardigan. “I can’t think there’s much to talk about,” he says, trying and failing to keep his voice light and conversational.
There’s a pause, and he looks up to find Vex’s eyebrow raised in his direction. “Really?” she says. “That’s the best you can come up with?”
And just like that, Percy’s furious. “What do you want from me, Vex?” he snaps. “What do you want to talk about? How I didn’t catch the rusted brake line when I looked your engine over? How I got a call that you’d been in a wreck and when I got to the hospital they told me you’d died?” He stands up then, pacing in front of her, the cardigan slipping from around his shoulders as his free hand swings wildly in front of him. “I spent 30 minutes in a waiting room with Vax, praying to- to whatever it is that I pray to, that my stupid mistake hadn’t gotten you killed. Is that what you want to hear?”
“Considering that’s the first honest thing you’ve said to me in two months,” Vex says, hard and cold as ice, “yeah, I’d say that’s a damn good start.”
They glare at each other for a moment, until Percy sighs and sits heavily back in his chair, the tension bursting like a soap bubble. “It was my fault,” he says, resting his head in his hand.
“Bullshit.” The anger has drained from Vex’s voice, but he still looks up at the quickness of her response. “It wasn’t your fault.”
He shakes his head. “If I’d looked more carefully-”
Vex laughs, once. “If I’d gotten that car looked at regularly like I was supposed to instead of asking my boyfriend to do it when he got the chance. If I’d been driving home 5 minutes earlier, or later. If I’d been paying more attention and not been going over the speed limit when the brakes failed.” She shook her head, half smiling. “You think I haven’t gone through all the possibilities? It happened, Percival. Why dwell on it?”
“Why-” He cuts himself off, before he says something else damnably stupid, and takes his glasses off, rubbing the lenses against the fabric of the cardigan. “It was all I could think about,” he says finally. “Every time I looked at you, I saw…” He swallows. “You deserved better from me. Than me.”
“So you broke up with me.”
He puts his glasses back on, pushes them up his nose. “At the time, it seemed like the best thing, for both of us.”
Vex sighs. “Well. That was pretty stupid of you.” He looks back at her, startled, and she laughs again. “I mean, there I was, my brother freaking out, Keyleth freaking out, everyone freaking out, and then you dumped me. It was…” She chuckles, soft and empty. “I spent so long trying to keep it together for everyone else, and the one person I was supposed to be able to fall apart on…” She takes a shaking breath, runs her thumb under her eye, and Percy’s heart clenches as she wipes away the wetness. “Pretty shit move there, de Rolo,” she says, and despite himself, Percy laughs.
“I’m fairly certain most of my moves are shit, to be honest,” he says, and Vex laughs, too, wet but genuine.
They sit there in silence for a moment, and Percy wraps himself in the cardigan once more. Vex watches him do it, and he tries very hard to keep his blush from spreading. He’s always been somewhat nervous under her scrutiny, his body too scarred and full of bad memories to be comfortable when looked at. At last he’s got himself covered, and he sinks back into his chair with a long exhale. “So,” he says, and Vex’s mouth quirks up, just a little. “What now?”
Vex shrugs. “Depends. Are you done being a dickhead?”
Percy opens his mouth to say something sarcastic and self-deprecating, but Vex cuts him off. “I meant it, Percy,” she says, and the joking is gone from her voice, so he shuts up and listens. “I’m not gonna stick around so you can use me as another reason to- I don’t know, whatever self-loathing thing you do when you’ve decided everything bad that happens in the world is your fault.”
“I know,” he says. “I-” he sighs, runs his hand through his hair. “I don’t know how to say I’m sorry without seeming… self-loathing? I suppose? But. I am, truly.”
Vex nods. “And no more doing things because you think I deserve better, or whatever shit that was.” Percy tilts his head, and Vex’s eyebrows snap together. “I’m a grown-ass woman, I make my own decisions about my life, and I don’t need you, or Vax, or anyone else telling me what’s best for me, got that?”
Percy blinks. “...sorry, where are you going with this?”
Vex bites her lip. “Look. You broke up with me for shitty reasons, right? We’ve established that.” Percy nods. “And… shit, Percy…” She swallows hard. “When I got the call that you’d been hurt, I… I think I get it, a little bit, because I don’t know what I would’ve done, if it’d been bad. If it’d been like what happened to me.”
Her eyes are glossy with unshed tears again, and without thinking, Percy reaches his good arm out to her. She doesn’t take his hand, like he expects. Instead she gets up, and before he can realize what she’s doing, she’s slipped past his outstretched arm and curled herself onto his lap, burying her face in his shoulder. She’s perched somewhat haphazardly, since she’s having to navigate a sling and some broken ribs, but Percy brings his arm around her shoulders and pulls her to him anyway. His ribs give a twinge, but he ignores them. He can take it, for this.
“I love you,” she says, soft and warm into the skin above his collarbone. “And I’m pretty sure you still love me.” She inhales, exhales slowly, her breath sending shivers over his skin. “So I guess where I’m going with this is, if I love you, and you love me…” She shifts, resting her cheek against his shoulder so she can look up at him. “Can we be done with this thing where we both act like we’ve moved on and we’re okay being apart from each other? Can it just- can it just be over? Please?”
There are a thousand things Percy could say in this moment. That it’s a terrible idea, that nothing has changed, that she deserves better than whatever broken thing he has become. But she’s made up her mind, has his Vex, and if he can’t put his faith in her, then there really is very little else left in his life worth holding onto.
So Percy leans down, presses his forehead to hers, and says, “Yes. Alright. Yes.”
She kisses him, so gently the ache in his chest flares into desperation, and only the sling on his arm stops him from threading his fingers through her hair and pulling her to him until he can kiss her breathless. As it is, he pulls away far too soon, wincing as the much needed gasp for air sends lancing pain down his side.
Vex is off him in an instant. “You should-” She presses a trembling hand to her lips, shakes her head. “You should rest. Come on.”
She helps him out of the chair, hand skating over his bruised and swollen skin, and supports his weight back to his bedroom. She eases him down onto the bed, and against his better judgement, Percy reaches out to grab her wrist.
“Stay,” he says. “Please.”
Vex looks at him, and he lets her. “Alright,” she says finally.
And she toes off her shoes, and she stretches out next to him, and she stays.