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“How do you sleep like this?” Lucanis asked, the third time he visited Rook’s room. “No blankets, no pillows?”
“It’s comfortable, by my standards,” Rook replied, his wiry body reclining on the stiff green sofa, ash brown hair spilling over the armrest.
Lucanis knew why Rook’s standards were low. The poverty of his life in Minrathous, with the Shadow Dragons and before. Rook deserved more than life had given him. And sometimes, that meant Lucanis not making wounds out of all of his scars.
“I thought you’d be better at camping, then,” Lucanis teased, leaning over to press a kiss to Rook’s recumbent forehead. Careful as always, as if Rook might disappear beneath his touch. Lucanis sat at the far end of the sofa, putting the basket of coffee and biscuits on the floor.
Lucanis had managed to avoid the room for the first few months. He’d let Rook think it was because he hated the underwater window that reminded him of the Ossuary. Which he did. But mostly, he’d been pretending he could avoid his feelings for Rook by keeping his distance.
To his great fortune, his stubborn stupidity hadn’t convinced either of them.
And now that he was here, he had to admit that the Fade had, for some reason, provided their leader with the least hospitable room in the building. Lucanis was sure he’d caught Rook shivering the last time he was here. Minrathous was warm, and even through the thick velvet curtains Rook pulled over it, the ocean inside the wall was cold.
“Even after a year away from Minrathous, I guess I’m still a city boy like Davrin says,” Rook grinned as he sat up. “Besides, it’s windy in the Anderfels. Anyone could have gotten tangled while trying to pitch that tent.”
Lucanis laughed, and held out a hand to stop Rook as he reached for the basket. “I’ll do it,” Lucanis insisted.
“I can pour my own coffee, Lucanis,” Rook said, eyebrows raised. In the dimness of the room, his features were picked out by candlelight. His wide mouth, his scarred face.
“Maybe I enjoy pouring coffee for you,” Lucanis replied with a shrug, refusing to meet Rook’s eyes.
He wasn’t sure how to explain it, if Rook ever pushed the question.
Maybe it was that Rook spent so much of his time looking out for the rest of them – for him, in particular – and this was Lucanis’ way of showing him that same care in return.
Maybe it was that Lucanis selfishly savoured the look of Rook at rest for a moment, and the way he smiled when Lucanis handed him a drink, brought him fresh food. Everything Lucanis wasn’t sure how to say in words made sense to him when he tried to express them in a gift, or a touch, or a kindness.
“...Anyway, you’re one to talk about sleeping arrangements,” Rook said, a shy smile tugging at his mouth as he crossed his legs. “I’ve sat on that bed of yours. It’s hard as a board.”
“A firm mattress is better for my back,” Lucanis frowned, as he passed Rook his coffee.
“I’ve seen the rooms at the Cantori Diamond. I’m not sure anyone in Antiva would call that thing a mattress,” Rook replied, grinning over the rim of the metal cup.
Rook... wasn’t wrong. But a room almost as spartan as his cell had felt… easier, at first. Now Lucanis was used to it. He’d never been one for clutter, after all. An assassin always had to be ready to move.
Maybe Rook, the pragmatic man that he was, felt the same about this place. But even then, this was too far.
“The bed in the pantry still has a pillow,” Lucanis argued. “And a blanket. Which yours does not. Why don’t we strip one of the spare beds in the infirmary?”
Rook shrugged stiffly. “In case we end up needing it.”
Lucanis sighed. Rook had a point, as usual. “...When that textile merchant comes back to Treviso, I’m buying you sheets and a pillow,” Lucanis insisted. “This is your home, for now. I want you to be comfortable.”
Even though all three of them wished this wasn’t home. Spite didn’t like the Fade, and especially didn’t like this room.
And between Spite and his own inexperience and the thing that nobody in Antiva would call a mattress, Lucanis wasn’t ready to invite Rook to spend the night with him away from the fish tank and the place he spoke to Solas.
Maybe the next time they needed to stay away from the Lighthouse overnight. Maybe if Lucanis dared to let himself have a home again – rented an apartment in Treviso, or took up Teia’s dangling offer of a room at the Diamond.
“You don’t need to do that, Lucanis,” Rook said, with a weak smile. “I’m fine. But… thank you. You’re sweet, you know.”
“You might be the only person in Thedas who thinks that.” Lucanis smiled softly, shaking his head at nothing as he set his coffee aside and reached into the basket for the plate of brown, oval-shaped biscuits. “I baked these this morning,” he said. “They’re flavoured with anise and cinnamon. They should be crisp on the outside and soft in the middle. I made enough for everyone to eat for lunch while we’re travelling, but… they’re best when they’re warm.”
“I’m not sure how I’m going to compete with this,” Rook said, as he took a biscuit with his free hand. “Bringing me breakfast almost every morning.”
“It’s not a competition, Rook,” Lucanis replied. “I enjoy eating a decent Antivan breakfast, and having a few minutes alone with someone I care about before the day begins.” His voice softening as he watched. People had commented that Lucanis seemed to be smiling more. He wondered how they hadn’t noticed the same was Rook. He was glad of it, the crooked curve of his mouth. “There is nothing to compete with.”
“I’m sure I’ll think of something,” Rook grinned. Leaning back against the bare sofa, he lifted the biscuit to his mouth, and took a careful bite.
#
They’d reached something of a truce. An agreement of what Spite could and could not do while in control of Lucanis’ body. And how much sleep that body needed every night, even if Spite was very much enjoying having limbs that hour.
So Lucanis was used to waking up with Spite’s art projects scattered around the room. Complicated sigils drawn on the walls with chalk and then, after every mage in the Lighthouse had assured him they weren’t blood magic and Lucanis had bought him the materials for it, on ink and parchment.
The knitted squares were new. Lucanis sighed as he picked one up from the floor. At least Spite hadn’t decided to start with socks the way Bellara had. Turning a heel was so much more complicated than people realised, and that was before you had to make two of them.
Spite had clearly been paying attention when Lucanis worked at wool to keep his hands busy. The tension in his stitches perfectly even, long cables of swapped stitches creating three long diagonal stripes across the square. Lucanis tugged the square to test, and it held – no stitches dropped carelessly from Spite’s needles as he worked to unravel into a long ladder of gaps.
“Spite,” Lucanis said, as he gathered the other four squares on to the bed. They were all evenly sized, despite the different thicknesses of wool Spite had used. Around six inches by six inches, each with one of Spite’s eccentric geometric patterns carved through the stitches. “What are you making?”
for rook, Spite replied. we are making. a blanket.
Lucanis stared at the squares a little longer.
He wished he’d been the one to think of it first.
“...You’re right,” Lucanis sighed. “We are.”
Lucanis opened the canvas bag he kept his craft supplies in, the one behind the coffee. Spite had skewered the four different pairs of needles he’d been using through a madder-root-red skein of wool, the loose end dribbling like entrails across the rest of the bag. Lucanis wound it back up.
“This will be good practice for us,” Lucanis elaborated, although both of them knew this was almost entirely for Rook’s sake. “It’s a test of dexterity. We have to match each other’s tension.”
There were still a few hanks of spun wool in the bag, dyed in a few different plant tones. Perhaps he could ask Harding if she could source any from Ferelden for them. Fereldan wool might be coarser than what he was used to in Antiva, but it was warm.
purple, Spite insisted. we want. purple.
“Fine,” Lucanis muttered, not wanting to consider the cost of Valmont Purple dye too strongly. He had his contacts. And a similar colour seemed common in Nevarra. He’d ask Emmrich. Perhaps they made it in some way less eye-wateringly expensive than by boiling rare snail shells.
Even if they didn’t, Rook was worth it.
Lucanis pulled out a thick wool, dyed a deep dark indigo blue, and a pair of needles. It was still early morning. He had put the bread out to prove last night, and would only need to put it in the oven. If he worked quickly, he could make a good start on another square while it baked.
Spite’s violet glimmer in his veins as he walked through to the kitchen. Lucanis frowned. Fine. They would work faster together.
Lucanis glanced at the door, towards the tower that held Rook’s uncomfortably cold room. And he found his frown melting into a smile at the thought of warming it with something they’d made with their own hands.
#
Lucanis’ needles clicked together, this month’s book club volume sitting on the round lounge table in front of him. And they were his needles this time. Spite seemed to be daydreaming somewhere at the back of his skull. The book was Bellara’s choice this time, a thin novel about the romance between two professional Wicked Grace players. Spite had started demanding to be taught the game.
He could hear Rook coming, recognised his footsteps by his very slight limp. The worn leather boots pacing down the round staircase above.
“Lucanis,” Rook said, a smile in the sound of his voice. Lucanis finished his stitch and put the work aside as Rook walked towards the sofa.
His hands free, Lucanis stood and reached for Rook’s face. Cradling his jaw softly as he stepped in close enough for a kiss. “Rook,” he murmured. The salt taste of Rook’s mouth, the lavender salve he used when his scarred nerves ached.
Lucanis was overtaken by the urge to hold him close. The constant fleeting feeling of being unsure if this was real. He let himself, arms tight around Rook’s cold shoulders. Rook sank into him, chest pressed tight against Lucanis’ beating heart.
“Book club tonight?” Rook asked gently.
“Yes,” Lucanis replied. “I’m early.”
“What a shame,” Rook teased, his voice soft against Lucanis’ ear, jaw glancing against Lucanis’ beard. “I was hoping you were free.”
“You could always join us, you know,” Lucanis said, as his face warmed. “I think we’d all enjoy your company.”
Rook avoided Lucanis’ eyes as he turned his head. “I… well, I’m busy. I’d never have time to finish them.”
Lucanis caught Rook’s cheek with the lift of his hand.
“Please, Neve only finishes the books half the time,” he smiled.
He was surprised to feel Rook flush beneath his fingers. “Besides, I’m… not the fastest reader,” Rook admitted.
It clicked. Rook’s background, which had no great need for literacy. The way Rook mumbled the words aloud to himself when he read letters in the lounge, which Lucanis had found so charming that it hadn’t occurred to him to question why.
Bellara had told him that the Dalish were great oral storytellers. And that telling stories was part of courting, for them. But… that did not mean Rook would be anything other than embarrassed at the thought of Lucanis offering to read a romantic book to him.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Rook,” Lucanis said quietly. Kissing his cheek, and holding his face. Trying, and failing, to coax Rook into looking him in the eye.
“What are you making this time?” Rook asked, eyes finding the table instead. “Harding’s always wearing those fingerless gloves you made her when she’s gardening.”
The gloves had been a bribe, gratefully received in exchange for wool from her mother’s village. Lucanis glanced over his shoulder towards the table. The knitted blanket square.
surprise, Spite insisted.
“Oh, this?” Lucanis lied. “I’m keeping my hands busy. I’ve started to teach Bellara.”
“Maybe you can teach me sometime,” Rook mumbled. “I have… more time for hobbies here than I had before I left Minrathous. I should probably find something to do while the rest of you are busy that isn’t cleaning my equipment.”
“The knitting was another of Caterina’s lessons – a sort of dexterity training that Illario never took to,” Lucanis replied. “I only taught myself to cook because I was tired of terrible food while I was travelling, and Illario mocking me for spending all night sharpening knives. Now it’s difficult to imagine a life where I didn’t. You’ll find something, Rook.”
“I should have guessed she was involved with anything involving sharp metal sticks,” Rook replied. “I might ask Davrin and Taash if I can join in their sparring. Maybe I’ll see you later, if I’m still conscious.”
Rook started to smirk. Lucanis realised he was frowning. “You dislocated your arm last week,” he explained weakly. “And I saw Taash punch through a stone wall yesterday. Of course I’m worried.”
“You’re cute when you fuss over me, you know,” he said softly.
“You might be the only person in Thedas who thinks that,” Lucanis said softly. Kissed him again, and let him go just in time for the door to swing open with a burst of Bellara and Emmrich’s enthusiastic chatter. “I’ll see you this evening,” he said, hand lingering on his forearm for one last moment.
Rook walked away, and Bellara and Emmrich sat down as Lucanis picked up his knitting again.
“Oh, I should have brought the socks,” Bellara said. “I guess I still have time-- no, never mind. What are you making, Lucanis?”
Lucanis smiled to himself.
SURPRISE, Spite repeated.
“Oh, this?” Lucanis said. “I’m keeping my hands busy.”
#
“...This is what you were working on?” Rook murmured. On the bare green sofa, the faintest glow of blue through the crack in the velvet curtain, Rook stared at the blanket in his hands, his voice dazed.
It was an eclectic long rectangle of squares, no semblance of pattern to the strange shapes and grooves Spite had woven into his squares. Almost no order in the colours, apart from the stripe Spite had insisted had to be purple. It was thick enough for Rook to drape over the green sofa’s armrest, and large enough to wrap around his torso, and they could add more rows of squares as they finished them.
“It was Spite’s idea,” Lucanis admitted. “It should have been mine.”
With Spite working through the night, they’d finished in a few weeks what might have taken Lucanis alone months, even if it had left Lucanis’ wrists aching on a few mornings.
see? Spite crowed. i have good ideas. and it doesn’t matter that i didn’t sew the ends in.
“I know,” Lucanis snapped to the side. “But you should learn how, if you want to make anything else.”
no, Spite replied.
Rook smiled at them. “Well… thank you,” he said. “Both of you. You really didn’t need to do this just because I’m not used to having the money to buy myself something nice.”
“Yes, I did,” Lucanis said firmly. “It’s been… practical, learning to work with Spite like this. And any textiles that have come into Treviso in the past few weeks have gone straight to the Antaam. And... I was worried about you. I know you don’t sleep well.”
“I... think this might be one of the most thoughtful things anyone’s ever given me,” Rook replied, wrapping the multicoloured blanket tightly around his shoulders. “Second to the hazelnut torte. Just above the time Harding resoled my boots because I was complaining about them leaking.”
Rook lifted his eyes, his hands sinking into deep handfuls of the fabric as he held the edges together over his chest.
“I’m never going to feel like I deserve this,” he said, with a quiet smile. “But that… doesn’t mean I want you to stop. I like when you bring me coffee and breakfast. When you worry about me just as much as you worry about the mission. When you think about whether I’m comfortable, and… do things like this. I feel like I’m worth something.”
“Rook,” Lucanis said gently. “Even without me, you are worth something.”
He moved closer, tilting Rook’s chin towards him with his fingers. His way of saying he’d never felt like this about anyone before. Wanted someone so completely that his want had worn away his caution.
“I didn’t think I deserved to be saved,” Lucanis said. “But you did. I don’t think either of us are the best judges of what we deserve.”
“Maybe not,” Rook replied. “But I’m still going to think of something to give you in return.”
“I wear the wyvern tooth dagger you bought me the week we met almost every day,” Lucanis replied.
“A lucky guess,” Rook grinned.
“And you bought me a good Antivan coffee set, since I didn’t have one in the Lighthouse,” Lucanis continued.
“That was clearly for my benefit as much as yours,” Rook added.
“And I think I need to give you at least three more apologies for how I pushed you away,” Lucanis said, brow creasing. “Not to mention the thanks for being there for me during Caterina’s funeral. For helping me face Zara. For… whatever is going to happen with Illario. Not because I have a debt to you, but… because I want to.”
It was Rook who moved closer this time. Sliding his shoulder into Lucanis’ palm, and wrapping the blanket around both of them. Arms around Lucanis’ waist, head lowered against his neck, lips sighing against his jugular vein.
He didn’t need to say anything. It was neither of their strong suits. Lucanis understood his hands, his closeness. The way it made him want more, a new depth of need every time he passed something he didn’t think a tool like him was capable of feeling.
Lucanis was never going to feel like he deserved this. The touch of Rook’s skin, the taste of coffee, the smell of the pistachio cookies they were yet to eat. But that didn’t mean he was going to stop.
Saving the world could wait for one more moment. Lucanis pressed a gentle kiss against Rook’s temple, nose nestling in his hair, and closed his eyes.