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“I just… Do we even deserve happiness, you know? Does anyone?” Keyleth gestures expansively, though she’s pretty sure no one’s listening to her any more. Maybe they all left without her.
She jumps a little when Vex appears at her shoulder. “Keyleth, are you drunk?”
“What? No!” Keyleth is offended. She’s definitely, absolutely offended and doesn’t at all think that that’s actually kind of a fair assessment, given that she’s in a tavern, and given her predilection for that particular coping method recently. Honestly though, she doesn’t know why Vex sounds so accusatory. It’s not like anyone could blame her under the circumstances.
“Good,” Vex continues, grabbing her by the hand. “In that case, you can come with me.”
Keyleth follows Vex but she doesn’t ask where they’re going. She finds she doesn’t particularly care, today. Vex could be taking her into a damned dragon’s lair and Keyleth thinks she’d probably just shrug and do what needed to be done.
Vex doesn’t take her to a dragon’s lair. Vex takes her to Scanlan’s latest incarnation of the mansion and, once they’re inside, Vex takes her to her room - Vex’s room, not Keyleth’s, which is briefly confusing. It’s not until the door shuts behind them that Keyleth realises they’re not alone.
From her seat at the end of Vex’s bed, Zahra grins at them, showing her teeth.
***
Keyleth doesn’t know how precisely she ended up kissing Zahra.
She knows Vex and Zahra have had a thing going on. The others think she’s naive but she’s not stupid, and they haven’t been exactly subtle about it. And she’s jealous. She knows that too, though she chooses not to look at it much. It’s not a hard choice - there’s been so very much else to worry about, and examining her own visceral reaction to Vex (her Vex) doing whatever Vex has been doing with their new and extremely attractive tiefling friend has not been a priority.
So, honestly, if she’d taken the time and thought she might be kissing anyone in this equation, she would have guessed it would be Vex.
Glancing over Zahra’s shoulder and seeing the hungry look in Vex’s eyes, Keyleth is suddenly sure she’s not so far off with that prediction.
Zahra kisses like heat and fire and the way your skin feels under the brightest sun. She kisses like she adores it, like Keyleth has become the very centre point of her world, for those few precious moments. Keyleth could lose herself in Zahra’s kiss, if she wasn’t so constantly, burningly aware of Vex’s eyes on them, of Vex’s breath and quick, fluttering kiss on the side of her neck. She breaks away from Zahra and turns to Vex, still held in the circle of Zahra’s arms.
Vex, it turns out, kisses something like the way Keyleth imagined she might in the secret dark of her own room, late at night, when all the others were asleep and she could, very occasionally, let those thoughts run wild. Vex’s kiss holds all the secrets to the Vex underneath her bravado, all the hidden parts of her that Keyleth only ever feels like she glimpses here and there. Keyleth is utterly overwhelmed, her heart threatening to beat its way out of her chest. She thinks maybe her knees might have given way were Zahra not still holding her up.
***
Drinking doesn’t help as much as it used to.
Keyleth used to be able to forget, when she drank, just how messed up everything can be, but recently she finds the alcohol just heightens the emotions, which is the last thing she needs. She knows she makes a lot of mistakes, she knows she’s hurt people, she knows she can be awful, she knows they all can even when the rest of the world somehow doesn’t see it. She’d just like to get her brain to stop reminding her about it, sometimes, and let her rest.
Drinking might not help, but apparently what does is lying with her head pillowed in Zahra’s lap, Zahra’s tail twining lazily about her waist, holding her in place while Vex goes down on her.
She clenches her fists at her sides as Vex draws circles around her clit with her tongue, looks down to see Vex looking back up at her from between her legs, her mouth continuing its work. Keyleth’s hips buck involuntarily.
Zahra leans down and murmurs, low and husky, her bare breasts brushing against Keyleth’s face, “That’s it, you’re all right. Good girl.”
All the noise in Keyleth’s head fades out, nothing left but Vex and Zahra and all the intense, building heat and oh, yes. She comes with a whimpering cry, but Vex doesn’t let up, keeps her rhythm to carry Keyleth through and on and Keyleth can feel herself tensing again, her thighs are shaking and she presses herself to Vex’s mouth, grabs on to Zahra’s arms as a second peak hits her and her whole body shudders, helpless and gasping.
She finds afterwards that she has left little half-moon indents in Zahra’s skin with her nails, and she thinks she should be embarrassed but instead feels obscurely proud.
***
Vex is alive.
Keyleth still can’t quite believe it a lot of the time. Vex died. Keyleth saw her dead and cold and she knew, truly understood down to her very bones for an excruciating moment, that a world could exist that didn’t contain Vex’ahlia. But Vex is alive.
She’s alive and she’s right here, all the warmth of her pinned between Keyleth and Zahra, and she kisses Keyleth, and Keyleth watches her turn to kiss Zahra, and Vex’s expression is so open, her eyes so wide and dark, that Keyleth almost wants to cry.
She slides her hand down between their bodies and finds that Vex is wet and burning hot, that she shifts against Keyleth’s cautious, questing fingers and kisses her again, deep and messy.
“Yes,” Vex says, when she breaks away from the kiss. “Darling, please…”
Keyleth tries not to let her nerves take over, tries to do what Vex wants but she isn’t sure what that is or how to ask and what if she guesses wrong? But then there’s Zahra, a steady hand finding Keyleth’s, guiding her fingers. “She likes it if you do this,” Zahra tells her, and Keyleth does, and Vex shivers against her.
Keyleth finds her own way, after a moment, her confidence building as Vex responds to her touch, and Vex is not quiet, is not afraid to show her pleasure.
“Gods, yes, please, right there, please.” The desperate note in Vex’s voice goes right to something buried deep in the centre of Keyleth, a rush that feels a little like when she casts a particularly potent new spell, like when she takes down an enemy and knows her own power, her own strength.
Vex pleads and Keyleth gives her what she needs, and when she makes Vex come, she feels like the whole world and all the elemental planes might be hers for the taking.
***
Keyleth learns, later, that there are uses for Zahra’s tail that she’d never have dreamed. She learns that there’s a low moan that Vex makes in the back of her throat that Keyleth wants to hear over and over again for the rest of time. She learns that Zahra, her head tipped back and her eyes flashing white, with Vex’s fingers inside her and Keyleth sucking dark bruises onto the soft red skin along her collarbone, is possibly the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen.
The world might end tomorrow, might be ending already. Or it might not. They might save it yet.
Keyleth doesn’t know if she believes that there’s a happily ever after. Not for her. Not for Vox Machina. Not after everything they’ve seen and done and everything they still have to do.
But she’s learning, and maybe she’s beginning to believe, that perhaps she could have moments of happiness, in between everything else. And maybe that’s ok.