Made the mistake of trying to locate an exceptionally generic (but nostalgic for me) YA romance that I absolutely cannot remember enough details of to pick it out of the deluge 🤦♀️
so i sent the jist of this to KR but i want it in my tag so here it is but better:
tl;dr percilmore!!!
Percy is young, I believe in a q&a Taliesin said he was early 20′s or so
and it’s been 5 years since the Briarwoods so he was late teens when that happened? maybe as young as 15?
he was practically a child. and we know from canon that he studied a lot, he didn’t have a lot of friends, and he liked to tinker with things
this makes Percy a boy who didn’t have a lot of social cues from kids his own age, a lot of his social experiences came from adults
and this is only compounded by the fact that he is a noble, where marriages are made for convenience, for power, for money; love is not a factor
so Percy, at a young age, probably believed that his job was to grow up, marry some girl his parents chose for him, crank out Percival Fredrickstein Von Musel Klossowski de Rolo IV, and then his duty will be done and he can hide in his basement and live the rest of his lonely life coated in black powder and missing most of his eyebrows
but then the Briarwoods came and Percy’s life was shaken up. he’s the singular noble in a group of weird misfits, and he’s watching them form relationships - platonic as well as romantic - and he’s going well then, maybe this love stuff isn’t so bad
for as smart as he is, for as clever as he is, he hasn’t socialized much at all, let alone socialized like this
they’ve known Gilmore for a while now, they’ve grown to trust him very much, and Percy watched the developing relationship between Vax and Gilmore, he’s seen the difference between Gilmore’s regular charm and the charm he saved for Vax. and, considering who Percy is, i’m sure he’s seen the lack of it since their little breakup and the attack from the conclave.
Percy’s never felt the wobbly knees or the mushmouth that comes when someone you’re attracted to - mostly because he’s never felt that attraction anyway - but imagine it hitting him like a ton of bricks when Gilmore looks at him with that smile and says “I love your mind.”
and this man - this boy - is suddenly deep in the throes of his first crush, something that should have happened years ago in the safety of Whitestone High School, but is now THRUST upon him in the middle of the most dangerous time perhaps in the entire history of Exandria.
Gilmore is in the middle of his own little crisis though, he still has feelings for his bird and he’s working to keep Whitestone safe from dragons. it’s a difficult time for any of this shit, really.
