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Tiff ฅ^•ﻌ•^ฅ˚⁎⁺˳✧༚ [22] She/her•Shy Lee 🌸 Multi-Fandom Sfw Tickle Blog･:*+.\(( °ω° ))/.:+ ♡

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Tickletober Day 31/nope: Tickle Monster

tickletober day 31/nope: tickle monster

this one's a birthday gift for @wordstrings and also a long overdue fill for this prompt! it's as much of a guess at characterization as i could cobble together from a supercut and a few clips, but i hope you enjoy, you wonderful person 💛

---

Something’s wrong with his face.

Well, not really - Percy has it on good authority that his face is quite fetching, in certain circumstances, even with the nearsightedness-

The point being. Vex’s hand is on his cheek, and lovely as she is, it's also quite distracting.

“You’re not listening at all, are you?”

He blinks. Something about it is unpleasantly sticky. “What?”

“Percy, darling.” She’s leaning between him and his soldering iron now - bad, very bad, these people know nothing about tool safety - with her eyebrows raised in a way that never signals well for his dignity in the following minutes. “You’ve been down here for far too long - why don’t you come take a walk with me? Trinket misses you terribly, you know.”

He makes an attempt at nudging her out of his field of vision with his shoulder, spine twitching in sharp disapproval after a few hours of piecing together the minute details of his current project. “Does he?”

Vex grins, just visible in the blurry corner of his vision where his glasses don’t quite reach. It’s almost worth the terrible burns he’s certainly going to get from not being able to see what he’s doing. “I’m sure he’s going to give you a big wet kiss the moment he sees you.”

He heaves a put-upon sigh just to stretch her smile an inch wider, and - oh, she’s got him thoroughly distracted now, hasn’t she. Clever. And annoying.

Luckily, he’s not entirely unarmed at the moment. “Vex,” he starts. “You like it when I make you things, don’t you?”

The entire line of her body shifts - lovely, he can see his hands again. “This is for me?”

Ha. “Yes, so for the love of gods don’t make me fuck it up, all right?” He can’t quite help smirking as he pushes a little further. “Especially at this stage, which will be quite expensive to redo if something goes wrong.”

A complete lie, but not one she’ll know to spot - worth it, for some peace and quiet to finish the blasted thing. He’s fairly sure his aching spine will survive the night.

“Oh.” Vex’s fingers twitch, light and lithe against his jawbone. She’s contemplating. Good. “That’s - well, that’s not fair, now I hardly want to drag you out of here.”

He twitches a somewhat conciliatory grin in her direction. “Don’t worry, your greed is very endearing.”

He can’t see her face anymore, but he can feel the wince even as she laughs. “Oh, fuck off - you need rest, Percy. I’m supposed to look out for you, aren’t I?”

“Well, seeing as I’m not currently possessed-”

Vex sniffs pointedly. “There is a lot of smoke in here.”

He huffs. “I’ll find a good stopping point in an hour or two… maybe...”

There’s a frustrated sound from somewhere above his head, and Vex’s hand drops to the back of his neck. “Bad luck for you that I’ve brought help, then.”

Percy barely hears it, already half sunk back into the repetitive process of melting solder and pressing metal into place - but she pulls his head up, just a little, and-

“Hello, Percival.”

He freezes, a sharp reprimand on his lips, just in time to watch Vax melt from the shadows with a grin entirely too chilling to be pointed at anyone he isn’t trying to kill.

Though, judging from the way he’s flipping a dagger lazily in one hand, maybe death isn’t out of the question. It’s - it’s a lot, now that he’s distracted enough to feel every single ache of a day and a half of tinkering, but he makes the attempt to match that sharpness with some of his own. “Do the two of you really not have anything better to be doing?”

Vax shrugs, smooth and utterly unhurried, and advances. “Oh, normally I’d be quite happy to let you two handle yourselves, but you’re being a dick to my sister and today-”

His eyes gleam with a distinctly predatory look that Percy can’t quite keep himself from twitching away from. “Oh, today - today, I know a secret.”

He and Vex recoil in shocked unison - and oh, if she doesn’t know, that’s so much worse. “A-” Percy hedges, wondering if he can perhaps make a break for the door. “A secret?”

Vax reaches the other side of his workbench, reaching out to pluck the soldering iron from Percy’s hand as he leans in - thankfully he’s got enough sense not to grab it by the smoking end. “Would you like to know what it is?”

Percy’s shoulder hit the back of his chair. His chair hits Vex, boxing him in from behind. Fuck. “Will it matter if I say no?”

Vax - chuckles, low and throaty, his fingers on Percy’s wrist. He feels like a prey animal.

Vex clears her throat overhead. “Come on, Scrawny, please don’t make me watch you flirt.”

Her twin’s grin doesn’t waver one bit. Percy’s running out of danger signals for this situation. “I ran into Pike on my way down here,” Vax starts casually. His middle finger pokes out past his others, another swinging out in front to take a few mincing steps up Percy’s arm. “And, when I told her where I was headed-”

He leans impossibly closer, beaming up for the barest instant over Percy’s head before bearing back down on him. “She told me that, on the very predictable occasion of you being difficult-”

The combination of Pike and difficult and Vax’s extremely poor attempt at capturing their cleric’s saintly brand of frustration triggers a very unfortunate memory. Percy’s eyes widen. “Oh, no.”

He tries to tug his arm away, but it remains pinned with a grip of steel as Vax’s spidering fingers and betrayal press mercilessly on. “Oh, yes. Our dear Pickle told me that someone might be susceptible to a little convincing from the tickle monster-”

He’s not quite sure what happens next, really.

There’s a shout that’s certainly too high pitched to be coming from him, and - he’s trapped in his chair in one moment, and in the next he’s across his workspace, panting as his head whips frantically between a deviously smirking Vex and her evil, terrible brother collapsed into near hysterics on a nearby chair.

“Oh,” Vax squeaks out, “oh, your face, Freddy - Vex, get on his other side, now we have to tickle him-”

Percy looks despairingly at the jars of acids and many, many gently steaming pieces of metal currently strewn across the room. “No,” he insists. “Someone’s going to get hurt, this is undignified - Vax, I can see you, don’t you dare -”

His heart skips a beat as Vax regains his composure and rolls upright with that same teasing grin, starting to round the tables towards him. “You’d better run, Freddy,” he sings. “The tickle monster’s coming!”

He doesn’t have it in him at the moment to be embarrassed of the giddy terror that springs into being high in his chest. “Vex - Vex, darling,” he pleads, backing up until he can keep them both in eyesight, “let’s be reasonable here-”

She’s grinning too, rounding the room in the opposite direction. He sprints for the door.

Two figures lunge in his periphery. He yelps, grabbing blindly for the door handle, as two thin arms wrap around his shoulders - a feather tickles his neck, coaxing a frantic giggling hiccup from his throat - it’s Vex, he’s stronger than Vex, he can get free of her as long as-

Cold hands claw at the back of his shirt, prying their way underneath and around to his sides. “No,” he gasps, fighting back the laughter bubbling in his lungs - it squirms into his muscles instead, turning his arms to jelly. “No, no!-”

A roguish grin weasels its way against his ear. “Got you~”

He makes one last desperate attempt at escape, but the first ghosting touch against the edge of his belly has him thrashing so badly that it’s hardly a struggle for Vex to wrestle him prone on his own workbench. “Hhh - ha! - this - ahhh, hnn - is a violation- oh gohohods-”

“Oh, darling,” Vex purrs, Vax smirking to match beside her, and he thinks he might have to make another deal with a demon to gain any sort of mercy. “You’re listening now, aren’t you?”

“Haahh - yes, yes, just - ahhh!”

Monsters, indeed.