## Preface

Shame
Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/8313262.

Rating:
  Mature
Archive Warning:
  Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Category:
  F/M
Fandom:
  Critical Role (Web Series)
Relationship:
  Percival "Percy" Fredrickstein Von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III/Vex'ahlia
Language:
  English
Series:
  Part 2 of AFK: an MMO AU
Stats:
  Published: 2016-10-18 Words: 1,888 Chapters: 1/1

# Shame

by Shippeh

Summary

> Their visit is a whirlwind, a shock of life to the empty de Rolo household after so long. Percy is left to pick up the pieces- or try to.

> (A peek into Percival's mind during the events of AFK. Occurs after chapter 12.)

## Shame

Percy hated cleaning- it left him with too much time to think and just wasn't a busy enough task for his hands- but if Cassandra saw the state the boys had left their room in, she would have a conniption. After the night she'd had, sleeping only after pillaging his own medication and missing the departure of their friends, he would happily do battle with the vacuum to spare her that.

Friends, though. What an odd thought. It'd just been him and Cassandra for... too long. He knew she was lonely. She played it off well, and the last time he'd suggested that she ask a classmate for coffee, she'd laughed and said, "I don't have time for playdates." But he knew she wished for company that wasn't him, somebody capable of holding a real conversation with a teenage girl who wasn't interested in video games or technical hardware. Percy tried- he really did. He'd do anything for her, and if you asked Cassandra, she'd say that he already had. But it wasn't the same. It wasn't what she needed.

Percy had thought their relationship was perfectly normal (as normal as either of them were capable of, anymore). Siblings weren't meant to be best friends. And then he'd met the twins, who knew each other better than they knew themselves. And he'd met Pike and Grog, who didn't have a speck of shared blood between them but had chosen each other as siblings, anyway.

Maybe he should try harder with Cassandra, then. Try to share in her interests or school. Take her to group meetings like a proper big brother, help her get involved and out there and making friends of her own who didn't live states away.

Maybe he should do the same for himself.

God- this was exactly why he hated cleaning. Too little action, too many thoughts, clustering at the front of his mind in a disorganized mess. If only thoughts were as easy to straighten as the sheets, he thought, tucking corners of fabric underneath the guest bed. He knew Cassandra found this kind of thing cathartic (as evidenced by the spotlessness of their entire penthouse after every time she had a bad night), but it did the opposite for him.

"Oh, hello," Percy said, pulling another discarded sheet from the ground and revealing the room's resident painting. "Grog couldn't take it, hmm?" To be fair, it was a terrible piece of art. The smoke damage hadn't improved on the original, either. Percy picked it up carefully by the frame, and hung it back on the wall.

He remembered the Christmas Vesper had given this to him. She'd insisted, that year, that they all make each other gifts. Percy hadn't minded- making things for people had always been easier for him than shopping- but Whitney and Oliver had complained for weeks straight.

"Lovely," he'd said, "but why did you paint me a picture of your dog?"

"I didn't have enough colors for anything else." As if she couldn't have asked and gotten an entirely new art set within the hour. As if there weren't a thousand more interesting black and white objects that weren't a dog he hadn't cared for.

Once, Cassandra had confessed the truth: late one night, alone in their room, whispering as sisters do, Vesper had wondered how it could be that Percival didn't get lonely, sleeping in a room by himself. Maybe he should have a dog to look after him, too, she'd said, kissing her beloved hound on each ear.

(He'd never confessed this to Cassandra, because he wasn't sure if it was real or just something else he'd imagined to fill in the blur that was That Night, but he often dreamed of Vesper's dog barking and waking him just in time.)

A buzz from his phone startled him before he could sink himself into another dark memory. Percy adjusted the picture, straightening it, and pulled out his phone. Keyleth. He smiled. Of course it'd be her text to bring him out of another bout of self-inflicted gloom.

I made it home safe Perc!!

Very glad to hear it, Keyleth.

He wondered if everybody else had made it home alright. He had Pike's number, but he'd never actually used it and wasn't sure if it was appropriate to start now. Technically, he had Vax's as well, though he and his sister wouldn't be home for hours now, and he was very sure it wasn't acceptable to text a number he hadn't been given permission to use. Probably. Friends were so hard to navigate; it was too bad they didn't come with a manual.

....That was a thought he didn't need to share with to his therapist, because there probably was a manual on interacting with friends, and Dr. Desnay would probably be happy to send him home with a stack of books on the subject.

Okay.

Percy spun slowly around the room before deciding it was acceptably clean, and left, shutting off the lights and closing the door. Pike and Keyleth had left their room spotless, the bathroom counter wiped down and the bed made. Percy rearranged the bed's many pillows slightly, just to make sure they were the way he knew Cassandra liked them, before shutting that room off as well.

Just one more bed to make then, one he'd been putting off. It wasn't as if Cassandra would bother to check if he'd made his own bed, really, but-

He wondered if it smelled like her.

He grimaced, ashamed of that thought. If she knew the way he'd thought about her last night, knowing she was only a single wall away, in his very own bed- he was sure she'd never speak to him again. He'd lain there, staring blindly at the ceiling, remembering how she'd winked at him in the dark kitchen, how she had walked arm in arm with him for hours, how she hadn't been wearing anything underneath the thin tank top she was wearing and-

It had almost been a blessing when Cassandra had come to his door in tears. (Almost. Nothing was actually worth that.)

Percy tucked in the sheets, pulled up the blankets, and straightened the pillow. She wouldn't know if he picked up the pillow and pressed his face into it, hunting for any lingering scent of her long, dark hair-

-but he had some self control, so he didn't.

It was embarrassing, he thought, stripping down in his bathroom to shower before Cassandra got home from whatever meeting had been important enough to hold on a Sunday. They'd barely spoken before this weekend; not alone, anyway. He didn't even have her number, and he didn't know if she'd give it to him if he dared ask. Percy folded his glasses carefully and set them on the sink and hit the button for the shower. If he didn't have his glasses on, he wouldn't be tempted to pick up his phone and look- for the hundredth time- at the photo he'd take of her yesterday, surprised and wearing the hairpiece he'd bought her.

"Ridiculous," he said, speaking aloud to his reflection in the mirror while the water ran, just to make it feel more real. "Get it together, Percival."

She was everything a person could aspire to, and he was nothing. Nothing but money, and technically, that wasn't even his. She was a flurry of laughter, a hurricane of intensity that put every emotion he'd ever felt in his life to shame. She was thoughtful, and kind, and she was more present in life than he could ever hope to be.

He was nothing but a gloomy shadow of a man who had no right to be alive.

He was being very Shakespearean, he thought. Fitting.

Percy sighed, and stepped into the shower. It was a shock, as always, and momentarily rushed all thoughts of her from his mind- a blessing. He always showered cold; as cold as the water would run. Anything else felt too hot now, scalded his back as if his skin was melting away all over again. It still felt like hell even like this, as the ice water fell over him, but he was grateful for the distraction.

("It shouldn't cause you pain any more, Percival," the doctor had said, "Have you heard of phantom pain before?")

He ruffled one hand through his hair, and as his body grew accustomed to the frigid water, he found his thoughts drifting again, unwilling, to her. It felt like asking too much to even entertain the fancy that she might be interested in him, ever. Just a smile from her was more than he deserved, and it wasn't as if he had anything worthwhile to offer in return. Tainted money, an infamous past, bloody hands and night-terrors: none of those made for an appealing dowry.

And yet.

And yet he couldn't get the thought of her hair from his mind; he couldn't stop picturing the way she pressed back wispy locks as the day grew longer and her braid fell apart. Her eyes like the heart of a storm, tearing him away from his own reality in their intensity. Maybe he could pretend, just for a minute, in the safety of his shower, that she might someday smile at him with a particular fondness. That someday she'd send pictures of herself just to him-

-he had never forgotten that facebook thread- the picture she'd taken, so casually at work, her shirt around her neck and her breasts threatening to spill out of an old bra that seemed to barely fit-

Percy shuddered, and it wasn't from the cold shower. He closed his eyes, pretending that if he didn't actually look, he could excuse himself the way his hand crept across his thigh, finding the length of himself, and just- holding his cock.

This was- terrible. He should be ashamed (though, when wasn't he?). She was just a friend. It wasn't right to think of her now, like this, stroking himself slowly under cold water. He'd done so well until now, though, gods, it had been so hard, laying there the past two nights thinking of her in his own bed.

Maybe he could let himself imagine, just for a minute, that she felt the same. Maybe she'd been in his bed and thought of him in the next room over. Maybe she'd felt the urge to touch herself, too, and maybe she hadn't been so good at resisting-

" Fuck," he groaned, his spare hand flat against the shower wall as he gripped himself tighter, stroking faster.

He'd saved her picture. He'd hidden it away behind locked folders on his desktop, and he had yet to permit himself to look at it, but it was etched in perfect memory. Her soft stomach, nails painted but chipped, her torn, lacey bra looking more beautiful than anything he'd seen in a catalog. It was a luxury to imagine how she'd feel under his hands- how she might taste- the sounds she could make if he pressed his rough chin against her wet-

Percy came with another drawn groan, every muscle tight, his fingers clawing the shower wall as he fought to remain standing.

It was a beautiful thing that he was already nothing, because she was going to ruin him.

## Afterword

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