#glo-squid

This one was fun!

(Prompts are always welcome - I’ll do my best to answer them as I can or hold onto them if I can’t for some reason! I know it’s been a while but this one bit me ❤️)

“And then I said,” Percy insists, gesturing, “then I said -- life... needs things to live. Which is true!” Both arms go up, one almost catching Keyleth in the face, struggling as she is with the collar of Percy’s coat. Vex keeps her eyes on the task of untying his boots. If she and Keyleth so much as look at each other she’s done for, and funny as it is, she can’t countenance laughing at him with that sad, confused note in his voice. 

“You’re so right,” Keyleth tries, admirably, even if her delivery warbles a bit. Vex yanks at one boot to cover a hysterical little squeak. 

“But they all scoffed at me,” Percy says, staring down at his hands, which have fallen to his lap. 

“That was very rude of them, darling, but maybe it was more to do with the ambitious volume of cold medicine you seem to have dosed yourself with?” Vex tries, tossing the second boot aside. 

Percy gives a defiant jerk of his head, which sends him back into the couch cushions in a dizzy slump. Keyleth blows a tendril of hair out of her face, holding most of his coat in her arms, the left sleeve still caught on his wrist. 

“Together, you think?” Vex says, standing up. Keyleth twists until the coat comes free, dropping it on the couch. 

“I’ll hang that up in a minute. Yeah, I think we can manage. On the count of three?” she says, bending to take one of Percy’s arms across her shoulders. Vex mirrors her on his other side, hooking his elbow around her neck. 

“One, two,” she says, bending her knees. 

“Three,” they grunt together, lifting Percy into a mostly standing position from the depth of his stupidly plush couch. 

“I think I’m going to be sick,” he says, hesitant.

“Do not!” Vex says back, much more firmly. 

“Come on, come on--” Keyleth is panting, and Vex isn’t doing much better -- they’re hardly the strongest of their friend group, and while Percy’s no Grog, he’s also doing an admirable impression of a sack of bricks. 

They shuffle him to his bedroom in the most ungraceful display Vex has ever participated in while not fall-down drunk. Getting him in bed is less a gentle transfer than it is just strategically dropping him, and if he remembers any of this, well. At least his dignity didn’t suffer alone. 

“I’m gonna--” Keyleth points at the door, hand on her hip as she gets her breath back. 

“Yeah,” Vex agrees, wiping a little sweat from her temple. “I’ll tuck him in. Maybe bring something for later?” 

“Sure.” Keyleth waves over her shoulder, already half out the door. 

That leaves Vex to steal a quick peek around Percy’s personal space, and then a longer one, when it’s clear from his dazed mumbling he’d just as likely assume she’s a coat rack as his friend. 

He’s very tidy, which isn’t surprising. A little Gothic in his tastes, also not surprising. The photographs... Vex takes a closer look, ignoring the flicker of guilt that comes with prying. At first it almost looks like he’s simply collected frames and never taken out the pictures of model families they came with. And then, with a jolt of recognition, the face she’s looking at resolves into Percy -- only different. For one thing, he’s younger; for another, his hair is dark brown without even a suggestion of the white it is now. The most unfamiliar feature, however, is his smile. In the photo, a younger boy hangs impishly from Percy’s shoulder while a younger girl leans almost parallel to the floor tugging on his arm. They all share some features, but the children favor each other so strongly they must be twins. Unbidden, the names Oliver and Whitney spring to mind. 

Vex pores over the rest of the photos, heart clenching as she finds Percy in all of them, even if only in a painfully familiar pair of blue eyes or a particular tilt to a grin. 

“Ves?” he calls blurrily from the bed. She abandons the photos to sit beside him, checking his forehead out of reflex more than necessity. 

“What can I get you, dear?” she asks. 

“Send mother in, please... when she's free?” His face is half buried in a pillow, eyes closed, voice small. 

For a moment Vex can’t breathe, let alone reply. She nods, drawing a blanket up around his shoulders, tucking in the ends. 

“Of course,” she finally says, smoothing his hair off his forehead. “Of course I will.” 

+++

Vex finds Keyleth humming to herself in the kitchen, setting a small vase with a single flower on the tray she’s assembled: a glass of ginger ale, a few crackers, a little packet of cold medicine pre-portioned into a normal human dose. 

Vex’s hands are shaking. She places them on the counter and leans her weight into them, dropping her head forward as she breathes and counts backward from fifty. 

“Everything okay?” Keyleth asks, hesitating with her hands on the tray. 

@thingsbeauregardwouldwear your thoughts?