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1: Neve Gallus
When Neve first met Rook, she had thought he was a relatively polite young elf, who had trouble paying attention to things he found boring and was perhaps slightly too enthusiastic about fighting off darkspawn. The longer she spent around him, the more she realized that he was actually missing a few very important screws in his brain and had no fear of death or any sense of self-preservation at all.
Case in point: the fact that, currently, she was watching him hop across a circle of foot-sized floating rocks some thirty feet-or-so above the main courtyard of the Lighthouse.
“What in the world are you doing?” she shouted from her place on the ground, next to the towering wolf statue, shading her eyes against the sun (or whatever the Fade had as an equivalent) with one hand. “Get back down here, you’re going to fall.”
“Come on, I passed all my obstacle courses with flying colors as a fledgeling!” was the faint laugh she got in response. She couldn’t see much more than the lean, tight-fit blue of his casual clothes, and the swoop of his shoulder-length white hair as he balanced his way to the next foothold, but she just knew he had that cheeky grin on his face that she’d well-learned by now spelt trouble. “It’ll take way more than a couple of rocks to make me fall.”
“You can’t seriously be condoning this.” Neve turned to Rook’s fellow Crow, who had been leaning against the wolf statue with a cup of coffee since before she arrived, completely indifferent to the actions of their self-appointed leader.
Lucanis’s dark eyes flickered over to her for a brief moment, and he raised one eyebrow, mild bemusement clear in his expression.
“You think I can stop him?”
Neve sighed.
“Fair point.”
She’d developed a sixth sense for disaster, in her years working for the Shadow Dragons on the streets of Minrathous, and that sixth sense started to blare like a siren when a door slammed open, and the grating squawks of a excited baby griffon echoed through the air along with the rapid beat of feathered wings.
“Assan, wait, don’t — !”
She didn’t have time to shout a warning, could only watch in mounting horror as a grey blur whirled through the air and rammed straight into Rook.
Despite the young man’s earlier boasting, nobody could stand against a full assault from Assan on the ground, let aloneto prancing along a precarious series of rocks thirty feet in the air.
He dropped through the sky like a stone.
Her heart jumped into her throat.
Oh, gods, he’s going to —
A burst of black smoke across her line of sight startled her.
Where Rook had been plummeting toward the ground, there was Lucanis, a blinding visage of demonic magenta and black wings flaring out behind him in a wave of glimmering mist as he and the elf whose fall he’d managed to slow —though not stop completely — tumbled together onto the worn, solid brick of the courtyard.
Neve sprinted toward them.
When she finally reached the pair lying on the ground, her pulse beating hard enough in her ears to hurt, she found Rook laughing.
The boy had rolled off of Lucanis to prevent the older man from being crushed under Assan’s enthusiastic pounce, still half splayed on his back as he caught the baby griffon in his arms and giggled at the curious beak nosing through his wind-ruffled locks of white hair, cheeks flushed pink and eyes bright from the force of the adrenaline rush he’d just experienced.
“Assan!” Davrin hurried over from the open door to the dining room, near frantic and pale from residual shock. “Rook, I am so sorry —“
“Don’t worry, I’m fine,” the other elf laughed, leaning up on his elbows as Assan bounded back toward his distraught guardian. “I think he got too excited seeing someone else in the sky for once.”
“Good gods,” Neve gasped out. “You nearly gave me a heart attack. Are you two okay?”
“Intact, if slightly winded.” A gentle hand settling on the nape of his neck, above his hair, had Rook twisting around, grinning at Lucanis as the so-called Demon of Vyrantium sat up and gave him an unimpressed, squint-eyed glare. “Hey. Fancy seeing you here.”
“You are going to give me grey hairs by the time I’m forty,” Lucanis grumbled. A contrast to the gentle way he squeezed Rook’s shoulder and watched the young man with the barest hint of amusement softening the sharp edges of his features. “I said I would watch you train, not be your personal landing mat.”
Rook’s sheepish, “Oops?” had him huffing out a breath close to a laugh, tipping his forehead to rest on the elf’s shoulder, and… oh. Oh.
Neve couldn’t believe she hadn’t seen it before.
Lucanis had been watching him. Neve had fretted about the danger of Rook’s risk-taking behavior, but there had never been any danger in the first place, because Lucanis had been ready to catch him the whole time.
Lucanis was smiling at him — or as close to a smile as he could get.
Lucanis was fond of him.
Granted, it was very easy to be fond of Rook, despite his chaotic nature, but the way Lucanis looked at him was far, far past the line of anything platonic.
She waited until both of them had gotten up, and Rook had checked that Lucanis wasn’t actually injured before bounding away, to raise her eyebrows pointedly at the demonic assassin in question, one hand on her hip.
“The big bad Demon of Vyrantium, smitten as a kitten,” she drawled out. “I never thought I’d see the day.”
He glared at her, the weight of his gaze making it even clearer that any hostility he had directed toward Rook was purely affectionate in nature.
“Not a word.”
“I wouldn’t dare.”
~
2: Teia
Lucanis cornered Teia the day after his and Rook’s coffee date that Illario unfortunately had to be present to witness (“It was supposed to be a reconnaissance meeting, and I had to deal with them making eyes at each other, Teia!”).
At the sight of him slipping through one of the arched windows and out onto the parapet she stood on, illuminated by the twilight and minus his usual companion, the elf assassin raised her eyebrows, arms folded over her chest.
“How’d you manage to shake your shadow?” Teia asked.
Lucanis ignored her question, his jaw clenched beneath the trimmed line of his beard and his dark-eyed gaze unsettled.
“You never told me about him.” His tone was harsh, but she knew it was only out of frustration, didn’t take offense and instead sighed, drumming her fingers against her elbow as she watched the way his eyes flickered to rove over their surroundings, the nervous tick of a man who had been under imprisonment for too long.
Teia wished she didn’t have to see it on him.
“You didn’t need to know,” the other Crow responded. “You were always gone on contracts for Caterina, and by the time Rook had fully fledged, the Venatori —“
“Had already imprisoned me,” Lucanis finished. He ran a weary hand down his face, and the tension melted from his body, his shoulders drooping as his sharp features veered into something more melancholic. “Rook… what can you tell me about him, now, at least? How did Viago — ?”
She had teased him about being jealous of her playful flirtations with his colleague, an offhand, unserious comment, but perhaps it was more true than she had originally thought, by the uncomfortable shift of his feet when he realized how earnest his request sounded and the way he averted his gaze back to the bustling streets beneath them.
“Have you tried asking him?”
Lucanis turned to blink at her blankly. It shouldn’t have been surprising, that a trained assassin with very few friends outside his own family wouldn’t think to just ask the target of his informational reconnaissance about himself, and it made her huff out a laugh, her face softening into a grin. “If you want to know about Rook, he will tell you. You just have to ask him.”
“He doesn’t say much about his time here.” Lucanis frowned, as if struggling to comprehend the idea she’d presented. “I don’t want to… make him uncomfortable, if there is something he doesn’t wish to talk about.”
Well, wasn’t that sweet. Teia supposed she could throw him a bone and give away a little information.
“Rook doesn’t think about himself.” At his furrowed brow, she held up a finger to keep him quiet until she finished speaking. “It is why I tell you to ask him, because unless someone else brings it up, he won’t think about himself. It goes along with the attention issues and the inability to sit still for longer than three minutes.” Teia used the finger she’d held up to flick at his forehead. “Go talk to your boy. If you need conversation starters, ask him about his tattoos. Or the time he almost blew up Viago on a job.”
“He almost blew up Viago?”
She shoved him away with a grin and an insistent, “Go.”
Later, Teia was very pleased to see them arm in arm, Rook laughing at something and Lucanis gazing at him as if he were the only precious thing in the world.
Perhaps she should start discussing wedding venues with Viago.
~
3: Taash
Taash didn’t usually mind being on guard duty while Lucanis slept, to prevent Spite from accidentally walking him off a cliff if he took control. It was quiet, and gave them time to read.
Well. Usually.
Usually, Spite wasn’t snarling at them and flaring the magenta-and-black swirls of flames that formed his wings in a defensive mantle and demanding, “Make it stop!” as he clutched his head and dropped to his knees, almost in pain, the violet glow that encompassed Lucanis’s eyes brightening in tandem with the smokey feathers surrounding him.
Taash squared their shoulders and clutched the axe in their hands tighter. Ready to strike, if the situation demanded it.
The doors to the dining hall flew open.
They had sent the Caretaker to find Rook as soon as Spite appeared and demanded his presence, but even with this knowledge, Taash still couldn’t disguise the relief that filled them at the sight of the elf that rushed toward them, his slim-fit blue clothes rumpled and his white hair hastily tied back, a stray lock of hair too short to fit in the low ponytail falling to frame the worried creases of his features.
“Hey, hey, Spite, I’m here. What’s going on?” Rook knelt in front of the demon inhabiting Lucanis’s body, not even hesitating to reach out and curl his fingers around the hands clawing tangles into dark hair, gentle as he coaxed them down and held them in his own.
“Make him stop!” Spite spat out in a raspy, rippling, twisted version of Lucanis’s voice, almost desperate, if a demon could be desperate. “I don’t want to see it!”
“See what?” Rook, ever patient in a way Taash could never be, asked softly. “Can you describe it to me?”
Taash had never known a demon to listen to someone so easily. Granted, they hadn’t really known any other demons in the first place, but still.
“Blood. Chains. Mages.” A furious hiss, shoulders shaking. “He… makes me see them. Don’t want to!”
Rook repeated the words makes me see it in a murmur to himself, a realization clicking together behind the shine of his mismatched brown-and-lavender irises.
“Spite, did Lucanis have a nightmare?”
“Night… mare?” Spite echoed.
“A bad dream. The… images you see. Do they happen when Lucanis sleeps?”
A confused frown, unnatural on Lucanis’s sharp features, the violet glare of his eyes pulsing.
“When… asleep. Yes.”
“Fuck.” Something terribly concerned colored the elf’s expression. “Is that why you take control of him when he sleeps? Because of the bad dreams?”
“Makes it go away,” Spite hissed out, curling in on himself, the misty visage of black feathers rippling as he pulled them close. “Want it to stop. You… he listens. Make him stop.”
“No promises.” Rook’s mouth thinned into a grim line. “If you let me talk to him, I can try.”
Oh, no. With what Taash knew of Lucanis, and feelings, they did not want to be around for this conversation.
Spite blinked once, twice, and the purple glow of his eyes faded, eyelids falling shut and wings dissipating as Lucanis’s body lolled forward into Rook’s waiting arms.
A soft groan, fluttering lashes, and a dazed, half-mumbled, “Rook?”
He smelled like blueberries. He smelled like fondness.
As soon as Lucanis was back in his own body, Taash hooked their axe back into their belt, stated, “I’m going. Bye,” before turning heel and getting out of there as fast as possible.
Unsurprisingly, Bellara and Harding were both hovering outside as Taash stepped out into the courtyard and shut the doors behind them with a sigh of relief.
“What happened?” Bellara queried, an anxious lilt to her voice.
“Is everything okay?” Harding echoed.
“Spite was… being Spite.” Taash shrugged, nose scrunching up a little. “Rook’s handling it.”
“Do you think he needs help?” Harding rocked back on her heels, peering around the bulk of Taash’s torso at the closed doors behind them. “Should we check on them?”
A loud snort.
“Not unless you want to walk in on them fucking. Probably.”
“Taash!” Harding’s scandalized exclamation, and Bellara’s soft gasp of, “Oh, are they really?” made Taash grin with all their teeth.
~
4: Viago
Viago couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“No,” he seethed. “Absolutely not.”
“Vi…” Teia gave him that look, the cautious, pitying one, that just stoked the flames of his indignation higher, her fingers still resting on the elbow she’d used to pull him aside, away from the muted chaos of the Crow headquarters above the Cantori Diamond.
“How dare he —” Viago hissed, not even bothering to turn and glare at the few crows who glanced their way at his rising voice. “Taking advantage of Kalias like this? What does he think he’s accomplishing?”
Kalias had always been a troublemaker, even before he earned the moniker of Rook, too headstrong and too impatient for his own good, but Viago had trained the boy ever since he entered House de Riva as a half-feral, scrawny thing that bit any hand trying to touch him. He knew that beneath the confident, lackadaisical veneer, was a sweet, bleeding heart that craved affection, and to hear that Lucanis Dellamorte of all people was preying on that weakness had him close to declaring war on House Dellamorte, seat of the First Talon be damned.
“I don’t think he’s accomplishing anything, Viago.” Teia smiled, soft and a little mischievous. “He was quite genuine. It was cute.”
“Where is he?” The other Talon demanded. Practically smoking with barely suppressed rage. “I’m going to kill him.”
Teia seemed far less concerned than she should have been, as she sighed and rubbed her forehead and murmured, “He’s with Rook in the marketplace. Please try not to —“
He was gone before she trailed off into a halfhearted, “… Make a scene.”
Flitting across the rooftops with practiced speed on silent feet, Viago had no trouble pinpointing Lucanis and Rook’s location amidst the bustling marketplace, his dark eyes narrowing in on the telltale waves of Kalias’s white hair, and the smooth stride and broad shoulders of the Demon of Vyrantium at his side.
Kalias had a hand hooked around Lucanis’s wrist, saying something inaudible, but insistent, his hair swishing to reveal the base of his pointed ears.
Viago expected Lucanis to refuse. To pull away, to shift into the shadows, to leave Kalias alone.
Instead, he… followed. Let Kalias tug him into the open square, closer to the street musicians and into the blue light of the lanterns, and… oh.
They were dancing.
Viago registered the faint echo of Kalias’s delighted laugh as Lucanis spun him around, their hands tangled together, feet moving in sharp ripples that matched the rhythmic beat of the drums and the upbeat pluck of the guitar.
In Viago’s memories of him, Lucanis never danced. Lucanis never would have indulged someone in an act so open, so vulnerable, never would have stumbled over his own feet and hid his face in the hair of his partner in embarrassment, shoulders shaking with good-natured laughter at himself as Kalias tugged him forward with insistent, infectious enthusiasm.
He slumped back on his heels.
Maybe Teia was right. Maybe Lucanis was being genuine in his affection for Rook.
Fuck.
He was actually going to have to look at wedding venues, wasn’t he?
~
5: Assan
Rook wasn’t moving.
Assan chirped, nosing his beak at the side of Rook’s cheek, repeating the action with more nervous insistence when his friend still didn’t move, lying on the stone as if Assan wasn’t there.
Why wasn’t he moving?
His dad would know. Assan’s dad knew how to fix everything.
The baby griffon let out a high-pitched call, his talons scraping against stone tiles as he rustled his wings and called for his dad again, anxiously nosing at Rook, his friend smelling of the pungent red liquid that he knew was bad, and meant bad things.
“Assan!” A distant shout.
Relief filled him at the sound of his dad’s voice.
Assan picked up the volume of his calls, until his dad rushed toward them, surrounded by other humans in shiny metal like him, jumping up to paw at his dad’s leg, to make him see Rook and fix him.
“Assan,” his dad gasped out. “Assan are you —“
Someone else let out an awful, devastated cry, and Assan watched the human with the funny-colored wings drop to his knees next to Rook, touching him, and that had the baby griffon lunging to shield his vulnerable friend, warbling low in his throat and puffing his feathers up.
“Assan —“ His dad tried to scold, stepping forward.
The human with the funny wings interjected before he could do anything.
Gentle hands reached out, smoothing over grey feathers, and Assan’s defensive posturing melted away into a confused chirp at the earnest dark eyes that looked into his, that said, “You found him. Thank you.”
Assan sat back on his haunches and watched as Rook was lifted off the ground, cradled against the other human’s chest, letting out a small chirp and looking to his dad for reassurance.
His dad smiled at him, exhausted.
“Don’t worry, Assan. Lucanis will keep Rook safe.”
Mollified by his dad’s comforting tone of voice, the baby griffon trotted behind him as he followed Rook and the human with the funny wings.
~
+ 1: Rook
Rook had a fucking killer headache.
First, he’d woken up battered and bruised and aching in the infirmary, and then, when he finally managed to limp his way down the stairs to the main foyer of the Lighthouse, he found the entire team arguing in bellowing overtones that hurt his ears. Even after he’d corralled them all into the dining hall for a debrief on what he’d missed while he was passed out, all they did was snipe and yell and accuse each other of frankly ridiculous things that he didn’t have the brainpower to try and understand.
None of this felt like a victory. Weisshaupt was in ruins. The Grey Wardens had been massacred. The First Warden was dead.
All Rook wanted to do was sit down and put his head in his hands and scream.
He couldn’t, though, because half of his team had stalked off in a huff, and he knew they weren’t going to sort out their issues unless he dragged himself all around the Lighthouse to talk to them.
Sighing, the elf leaned his shoulder against the stone wall of the dining hall, bracing himself for the upcoming conversation with Lucanis. A pissed-off Lucanis, by the way he’d snapped at Davrin and stormed away in a cloud of anger and self-loathing, and Rook really didn’t know if he could be on the receiving end of any more vitriol without doing something horribly embarrassing like breaking down into a pile of tears. Especially not from Lucanis.
He liked Lucanis, and Lucanis, he —
He indulged Rook, sure, but that was just how he was, kind and considerate in a way senior Crows usually weren’t. Likely, it wasn’t anything more than platonic fondness, perhaps some sort of obligation toward the person who had freed him from the Venatori prison. Tolerance.
Somehow, that thought didn’t make him feel any better.
Heart heavy beneath his rib cage, Rook forced himself off the wall and limped his way toward the pantry door hidden in the corner of the dining hall, staring at the grains in the wood for too long before curling his knuckles and pushing it open.
Lucanis sat on the small cot pushed against the far wall. Slumped over with his arms resting on his knees, one hand reaching up to rub down his face, the trimmed edges of his beard, a frustrated noise escaping his lips.
Rook cleared his throat.
“Hey.” His voice was quiet, subdued, but in the silent space of the cramped pantry, he might as well have shouted.
“Rook.” Lucanis didn’t move, past the rasp of his name, his eyes closed, forehead resting on his knuckles and broad shoulders a tense line beneath the periwinkle silk of his dress shirt, the darker grey of his diamond-patterned vest.
“How are —“ A swallow. “How are you holding up?”
“How do you think?” His furious snarl had Rook briefly shutting his eyes and letting out a soft sigh.
“You did the best you could. It wasn’t your fault.”
“Wasn’t my fault?” Lucanis didn’t yell, his voice low and dripping with venom, and somehow that felt more threatening than if he’d bellowed and raged like a bull seeing red. “I had my shot at Ghilan’nain, and I missed. How is that not my fault?”
“She —“
“Crows don’t miss, Rook!” He stood up, a hand fisting and tearing through long strands of slicked-back hair. “I don’t miss.”
“I know.” Rook knew, maybe better than anyone else on the team, a lump rising in his throat. “But —“
“But, what?” His chest heaved with the force of his anger, his dark, red-rimmed eyes trained at the younger crow, as if accusing him. “There is no but. By right, my life is forfeit. You hired me to complete a contract, and I failed.”
“I know!”
Rook’s shout echoed off the stone walls. Horrifyingly, he could feel his lower lip tremble, his vision blurring as he raised his forearm to try and wipe away the tears spilling down his cheeks, but the dam holding them back had finally, irreparably broken. “I know.”
An awful, choked sob tore from his mouth, followed by another, until he was crying in a way he hadn’t since he was fourteen, newly freed from slavers and inducted into House de Riva, his whole body trembling as he sunk to the ground, hid his face in his arms, tucked himself up against the cold stone wall and shivered through shameful sobs, bruised ribs aching with every painful inhale.
“Rook.” A murmur of his name, uncertain and lost. “Rook, I —“
“I know I’m — I’m a worthless excuse for a Crow, but —“ Rook sniffled, scrubbing at his soaked cheeks with the backs of his knuckles, a wet, wavering, mirthless copy of his usual laugh falling into another sob. “I don’t care that you didn’t kill Ghilan’nain, I don’t care about Crow laws, I’m just so fucking glad you came back alive. I thought —“ A choked-off shallow breath. “I thought I was going to have to watch you die.”
“Rook.” Callous-marred, gentle fingers covered his, pulling them away from his face, revealing Lucanis’s earnest expression, his grief-clouded dark eyes, from his place kneeling on the floor in front of him. He lifted his palms to cup dampened cheeks, thumbs wiping the tears that Rook tried in vain to blink away. “When you used yourself as bait for the dragon — when I could not find you after the battle — mierda, mi cariño — do not make me fear like that again.”
He didn’t get to finish, didn’t need to, not when their mouths met in a kiss that bled of long-withheld desperation, wet and rushed, hands fisting into silk fabric and hands sliding into locks of white hair, the scrape of his facial hair and the taste of coffee on his tongue making Rook arch into him, shuddering and melting into the arms that held him close, held him tight, as if he might disappear.
They were still on the floor of the kitchen pantry, still half-awake and exhausted and aching from the past day’s events, and eventually, the kiss slowed to a natural stop, lips separating, lashes fluttering open and irises of dark, shimmering liquor meeting ones of pale, sunlit wisteria petals.
Rook spoke first.
“Viago is going to be so pissed at us.”
Lucanis laughed, a lovely sound, and Rook grinned, darting up to claim his lips once more.