Work Text:
It ends like this.
Face frozen, limbs broken.
Snow drifts lazily from the sky, adding to the already thick layer of snow and ice that has blanketed Emprise du Lion for weeks. It is beautiful, eerily so. And any other time, she would agree, it is beautiful.
It is decidedly less beautiful when it will inevitably become her tomb.
It ends like this.
Fingers scrabbling at the cliff-face, numb toes in sodden boots trying to gain even a modicum of leverage. Trying. Trying.
Failing.
Falling.
It ends like this.
The snow drifts around her. If it keeps up, her body will be covered in no more than an hour, hidden and undisturbed until spring melted away her coffin of ice. As surely as flowers would grow in the ground, ice would encase her and leave her unblemished by decay until the first shoots of spring began to weedle their way through the tundra below.
Snowflakes land on her eyelashes as tears freeze against her cheeks.
The little puffs of breath that steam from her mouth become shorter. Further between.
She closes her eyes.
It ends like this.
She can’t feel how cold she is any longer, but she knows it’s bad because… Well, she’s not shivering any longer.
Her muscles, trained and honed since youth to efficiency, are stiff and sluggish. Even if she wanted to, she knew she couldn’t move. She knows she’s been out in the storm for too long, that Viago will have started to look for her, but… it’s too late now.
She knows it’s too late. She only wishes…
She wishes she had told him how she felt.
She wishes she had kissed him that night.
She wishes she had been braver,
been stronger,
been smarter.
She wishes.
She wishes.
She wishes.
“Rook!”
Four hours.
It took him four hours to find her.
The job should have been simple – a quick in-and-out at a Chateau between Halamshiral and Emprise du Lion – but of course, it wasn’t. The mark hadn’t been where they were meant to be, the exit route had been lost to a sluff avalanche a day earlier, and the weather, which had seemed bright and clear when they left that morning, suddenly took a turn for the worse as the two Crows made their escape following a well-executed but wholly-improvised assassination.
Their escape on horseback into the mountains was, at least, somewhat planned – the cabin an hours ride south of the Chateau, but finding it ransacked a day after they had left it was certainly not.
Worse still, it hadn’t been bandits or brigands or even simple travellers who had ransacked their little cabin.
No.
It had been Maker-foresaken bears.
Bears had torn through the door and eaten their rations. Bears had all but destroyed the small cabin. Bears had chewed through their sleeping rolls and torn apart the extra mattress that Rook had found behind a wardrobe the day before.
By the time they had returned, snow had begun to pile through the broken windows and the cupboards were frozen solid. Viago, nursing a bandaged ankle courtesy of a bad landing in their escape, had sworn, and Rook…
Well.
“Look, one of us needs to get firewood since ours is… bear chow,” she said ruefully. “I’ll be quick. I saw a copse of trees on our way here, I’ll be an hour tops. You…”
Viago had grunted his disapproval, though he acknowledged the soundness of her plan.
“I will drag the mattress to the hearth and try to get the fire going,” he looked at the snow-hewn room. “And perhaps make a start at repairing the door as best we can. We can only hope the bears will not return.”
“After all, if one of us has to die,” she quipped, pulling her scarf up over her nose. “Better not to be the Fifth Talon, eh?”
He had no response to that, other than the slow, burning curl of disapproval that raged in his gut. Because losing Rook would mean losing a very competent Crow, of course.
Not for any other reasons.
But when she hadn’t returned within that promised hour, he simply continued to do his best to patch together a make-shift door for the front of the cabin. By the time a second hour had passed, according to the somewhat shattered timepiece by the only unbroken window, he was worrying.
“Blasted woman,” he muttered to himself, opening the barely-functional door and heading out into the storm. “She does these things to vex me. When I get my hands on her…” The burst of cold air against his face cut off the rest of his annoyed mutterings as he began to trek in the direction he dearly hoped she had gone.
Was this the Makers side?
“Get up!”
A very angry Talon.
"Makers Breath… you infuriating woman…"
At least now she could die pretending she was cradled in arms she had always longed to hold her. In all her training, in all her years, she had never really understood what it would be like to die — she hadn't thought herself immune, of course not; she was an Antivan Crow and knew better than most that death came for them all, eventually — but she had never realised quite how well her mind could play tricks as her frozen body began to succumb to the siren call of nothingness.
Death was painful, Rook decided.
She aches from the tips of her ears – too cold, felt too numb – to the bottom of her soles – frozen over, burning like icy fire – and yet she canfeel.
It burns.
“Cazzo(Fuck), Rook, open your eyes.”
An order. But not one she can follow.
“Rook?”
“Rook?!”
“ROOK!”
It took him far too long to get her back to the cabin.
Longer still to lay her on the threadbare couch and drag the small mattress, that had inexplicably survived whilst the other had not, in front of the empty hearth. As Viago’s numb fingers worked the flint in a desperate bid to create fire, his eyes continued to flick towards the shivering–
No.
Not shivering.
Cazzo(Fuck)
“Just a little longer,tesoro(darling),” he hissed, striking the stone against steel viciously until– finally. A spark. The meager tinder he had managed to collect, coupled with the wood that Rook had been cradling to her chest like a child, began to catch.
“Forgive me.”
He was quick to undo her leathers, buckles and laces undone and pulled open til he could peel his frozen protege from her casing and clutch her cold – too cold, too still, not like Rook at all – body against his own.
His own leathers were stripped away as well, cast aside like hers, as he settled them on the mattress before the low-crackling flames. The time for decorum had long since passed as he covered her in the thin blanket, the spare clothes they both had in their packs, the torn curtains from the windows – anything he had been able to scavenge from the destroyed cabin to layer upon her.
Viago’s arms wrap around the frozen elf in front of him and for the first time in forever, he starts to pray.
Too cold.
Too cold to even shake.
This was surely death.
Rook wakes.
Finally.
Blessedly.
Rook wakes in Viago’s arms and the cabin is still dark around her. Outside, she can hear the whistle of the snowstorm that she thought would have been her grave – death came for them all eventually, Crows know that better than most. But she is inside now, and warm. Very warm. Viago is like a furnace behind her, all hot lines and hard edges and…
Oh.
Very hard edges.
Rook’s cheeks burn with heat that really should be regulated to her still-chilled toes as she realises that she, like Viago, is bare as the day she was born and that Viago, still asleep – thank the Maker for small mercies – is… hard.
Hard and pressing against her bum.
This is like every terrible soft-back book she had ever secreted away in her quarters in VIlla de Riva. This is like the start of one of Bellara’s awful serials. This is…
Not a situation she ever anticipated.
Rook shifts and Viago shifts with her – a miscalculation on her part, because his arms are around her like vines and when she moves, so too do his hands, and one of those lithe, nimble hands that she has shamefully ogled whilst he measured and prepped and brewed poisons and practiced bladework is now… cupping her breast.
The thumb is ghosting across her cool nipple, coaxing it from soft sleepiness to hard as the frozen ground outside within seconds. A low gasp caught in her throat as Viago made a quiet sound and shifted ever closer.
“Nnnggg… Rook?”
He wakes as she moves.
If he’s completely honest with himself – and truly, he rarely is – he’s surprised he managed to sleep at all. Perhaps it was the prayer that kept him from ruminating on how cold she was, how she felt as though she was already dead as he clung to her, pulse thready and sluggish, how…
No.
She’s alive. Her skin is no longer frost-touched against his, and the back of her neck is closer to its usual hue. Relief floods him as he realises she is shaking in his grasp. Shaking and alive.
And… pressing against the uncomfortable side effect of him holding the object of his many, many desires.
Her mouth is dry.
His hand tightens on her breast.
His other hand, splayed over her belly, drifts down.
“Tell me no.”
She stays silent.
“Tell me no.” More forceful.
Silence, still.
“Rook.”
Viago’s fingers dip below the small curve of her belly – the little pouch she never lost despite training and exercising – to the scorching heat between her legs, legs that parted for him like curtains opening on a brilliant morning. At his sharp intake of breath, she knew he had felt what she felt.
“Tesoro(darling), you’re soaked,” came Viago’s hoarse voice, scant inches from her ear. Rook nods, her throat suddenly too tight. Words didn’t work, wouldn’t work, as Viago’s practiced fingers slid through the downy hair at her centre. It was hard to focus as Viago’s breath ghosted across the nape of her neck, hot and damp, before his lips settle against the delicate skin just below her ear.
“Is this for me?”
“Yes,” she croaks, the first words she has managed. And like a dam had broken, the rest come flooding out. “For you, Viago. Cazzo(Fuck), please!”
Viago’s fingers split her lips, swiping through the mess between her legs with a groan of his own. “You like that, Rook?”
“Yes!”
Her hips jerk forward and his palm flattens against her cunt, pulling her back firmly against him. Her arse fit perfectly in the cradle of his hips, his cock already thick against the backs of her thighs. And then…
Then he starts rocking against her, and Rook whimpers desperately. His hot breath fanning against her neck and ear, his lips nipping at her earlobe, his other hand delicately plucking at her hard nipple… How could she focus on anything but Viago, Viago, Viago de Riva.
She feels the thick head of his cock against her fluttering hole, hot and hard and probing, before she registers his next question. She makes a confused noise as he pinches her nipple.
“I said,” he sounds hoarser than she has ever heard him. “Are you certain? Because if I have you now, Rook, I will not let you go.”
That sounds like a promise she is desperate for him to keep. She nods and then squeals as he pinches her other nipple.
“Yes! Maker, yes! Please!”
Hot. Wet. Tight.
Rook’s cunt is like a vice around his cock and Viago recites poison recipes, antidotes, things about Caterina fucking Dellamorte, anything to keep himself from cumming there and then like a green fledgling. Judging by Rook’s gasp and the way her body arches, she is having the same problem.
Well, he can fix that.
The fingers he used to split open her pussy slide up to form a V over the swollen bundle of nerves just above her opening. With a sharp nip to the side of her throat, he strokes that little nub and is rewarded with her walls clenching down around him as she shatters almost instantly.
“Oh,” he coos. “You want this so much, don’t you?”
Anyone else, anywhere else, it might have been mocking. But here, now? It’s genuine, it’s reverent, it’s almost broken with how much he needs it to be true.
“Uh huh, please!”
That little sound is more than enough. Viago pulls back until just the tip of his cock is nestled in her sweet little cunt and then surges forward, burying his length inside of her in one long press. Rook manages little more than gasps and moans as he rocks into her, one hand rubbing soothing circles into her thigh and the other gripping her plush breast. It shifts beneath his fingers and he groans, biting down on the juncture of her neck and collarbone as a litany of curses swell and spill from his mouth.
“Precious girl,” he grunts, his words timed with the slap of his hips. “Perfect, precious Rook. My perfect, precious darling.”
“Viago! Oh, Maker, yes!”
She tilts her head just so, and he strikes, capturing her lips as the hand on her thigh returns to her clit and rubs. He swallows her screams of pleasure, drinking them down like the finest Antivan red, and feasts on her mouth like he is a man starved and she is the sweetest meal in all the land.
Were they anywhere else, at any other time, he would spend hours worshipping her. He would lave kisses upon her skin until he had marked every inch of her, until there wasn’t a single place that his mouth had not known her. He would bring her to peak after peak on his mouth and fingers until she was writhing and begging for his cock, until she was begging for release, for mercy, for him.
But they are not anywhere else – they are in a ruined cabin in the midst of a blizzard, and he does not have the time, nor the tools, that he would prefer for such endeavours.
“When I get you home,” he grunts against her mouth. “I shall keep you in bed for a week, Rook. A fortnight, if I must, until you understand.”
“Understand what,” she gasps, one hand twisting up and around so her fingers can lace into his hair.
“Understand that you are mine.”
Words fail them both as he picks up intensity and pace, the only sounds now their ragged breathing and the crackle of the fire in the hearth only feet away. Rook arches and cries out as he brings her to a third peak, and this one… This one claims him as well.
Viago roars his release as he presses as close to her as he can get. “Take it. That’s it, tesoro(darling). That’s it…!”
Rook succumbs once more to sleep and so Viago allows himself the indulgence of lingering far longer than he should. A shiver curls down his spine as he withdraws and watches his cum trickle down her thigh. He’ll certainly need to clean her up, just as soon as he gets up.
Yes, he thinks to himself as he draws his Crow back into his arms. Just as soon as he gets up.