twoforsurprise | One Short Day In Antiva City

One Short Day In Antiva City

Davrin might have forgotten Lucanis' offer about the tailor, but he had not. Not all of their excursions were for fighting demons or cultists or darkspawn, and eventually Rook was going treasure hunting on the Rivani coast with Taash and Harding. And just them. Quite adamant that only Taash and Harding were needed, in fact.

Andraste preserve them, Rook was apparently becoming interested in matchmaking.

It worked out, though. The timing. Lucanis ever so casually mentions that Davrin promised to assist him in some errands in Antiva and Rook is just so happy they're not at each other's throats that they're told to not take however long they need. Lucanis makes a mental note to pick up something nice for Rook when they're in Antiva City.

Ah, Antiva City. A less beautiful Treviso, Lucanis used to say. That was before the Ossuary, before the occupation, before the blight. Now it's hard to not see everything that's been lost. He doesn't insult Davrin by assuming the man can't keep up with the Crow routes along the rooftops and across ziplines, so much faster than the weaving crowded streets up the hill the city is built on overlooking the harbor the few times they need to duck down to street level.

"Should be right around - ah, there it is," Lucanis declares once they're half way up the hill, the financial district of the city settled between the Palace at the top and the harbor and all the wealth the shipping industry brings. This time when he drops down to the street level it is where they'll stay for the time being, heading to an understated store front with a simple hanging sign that looks like an embroidered rose carved into the wood of it.

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"You're-"

Davrin had started without thinking, ready for another round when-

Huh. He paused, cleared his throat and nodded. Maybe it was the blood loss. Maybe he'd actually gotten through. Maybe Lucanis just listened to female Crows that didn't take his back talk. He may never know why, but at least they were getting somewhere.

"I'll try. But you try, too. Teia sounded serious about that collar."

It was possible they could meet somewhere in the middle- if they survived each other long enough to figure out where that was.

Now, the argument at least on the back burner, he was very much away he was still touching the other man- why had he done that to start with? It'd seemed important at the time. And it felt notable when he let his hand fall, ending the contact.

Teia had invoked the name of Caterina to get her way - one of the few people who could and not have the opposite effect, and even then she needed to tread carefully on how much it was used. For now it got the results she wanted. Lucanis privately suspected she might have the wrong idea about his and Davrin's relationship, but he'd let Davrin deal with that one if he was going to insist on following Lucanis when he needed to help Treviso.

As annoyed as he was with Davrin, he felt more displeased when he dropped his hand and broke the contact. No good, he needed to clear his head, and of course Spite was not giving him a moment's peace.

"She jokes with a straight face, it's better to assume she means what she says."

"She's a high ranking assassin. Trust me, I'm taking her seriously."

He didn't know her story, if she was another born and raised in the role or someone that had clawed her way to the top. Either option made for a highly dangerous individual. One Lucanis seemed to trust, but Davrin wasn't willing to extend the same grace Lucanis had earned to every Crow around. He'd watch his (and everyone else in the Lighthouse's) back around Teia.

He gestured to the Eluvian, stepping to the side slightly to make sure Lucanis went in first. He didn't expect the assassin to try to break their agreement already, but...well. He'd feel better seeing the man walk out of Treviso with his own eyes.

"C'mon. You need to rest."

The drugged and under watch seemed implied. Yesterday, Davrin would've said that was off the table for a spell. But injured and with Spite already primed? Maybe, if he didn't directly say it and just herded Lucanis along that path, it could work. It was harder to have an argument about something never said out loud.

Teia would surely be pleased to find out a Grey Warden found her intimidating enough to take very seriously, even if Lucanis suspected it was mostly Davrin's thing against Crows.

He rolled his eyes at Davrin ushering him forward, but stepped through with a "Yes, sir." that dripped with sarcasm.

Traveling through the Eluvians was such a strange sensation, like walking through a sheet of ice water that none the less left one completely dry. He stepped aside, waiting for Davrin and Assan under that strange sky where nothing felt 'real' and the black citadel hovered ominously in the distance.

"I need coffee," Lucanis corrected once Davrin was through as well. Because of course he was going to make it a fight.

So much for grace and tact. He let Assan start bounding up the stairs first, following after at a much more reasonable pace than the collection of feathers and endless energy.

"Coffee doesn't have any healing properties."

Said with the authority of a life long tea drinker. But after the state he'd found the man in, Lucanis would be insane to think Davrin isn't going to keep pushing.

Grace and tact were for people who would not be tying him up and drugging him. In a better state of mind Lucanis would even agree to the necessity of it, but, well. In a better state of mind he wouldn't have ended up here in the first place. So a fight it was, and this time there was not Teia to invoke Caterina's name in Davrin's corner.

"Disagree, it helps with headaches," Lucanis pointed out. His headaches anyway. Sometimes the headaches had a name. "Besides, I need to see if Assan likes the food. And make sure the kitchen didn't end up in a state overnight."

"Assan will eat anything. Except what I make him."

Unless it was gingerwort anything, but that was a whole different story. At this point it seemed more a game between them than anything...though maybe Lucanis was right about the yams. It could be mostly a yam based argument between them. Still, that didn't mean the man had to start his gourmet griffon cooking today.

"And we're covered in Blight. Neither of us are touching the kitchen until after a wash and a rest."

If he kept saying the second part maybe he'd just wear the man down. Unlikely, but he they could at least be equally stubborn.

"A wash I will agree with," Lucanis said. There, look, he was compromising. He doubted that would make Davrin inclined to do the same. The man was stubborn as a boulder and about as worthwhile to try to reason with. Up the stairs after Assan and through the second Eluvian, back to - well, still the Fade, but a part of it he had grown accustomed to, even if his eyes needed a moment to adjust to the dimness of the cellar-like room the eluvian in the light house was in as opposed to out under what passed for a sky in the crossroads.

The battle lay ahead, but a skirmish won was a skirmish won. Davrin would take his wins where he could.

Happy and pleased with himself as a griffon could be after fulfilling his calling of slaughtering darkspawn, Assan trotted off in search of Rook or some other pleading heart to pamper and praise him- and hopefully let them know they were back and there wasn't going to need to be an emergency search for the Warden and Crow.

Davrin doesn't hesitate a moment, following half a step behind Lucanis towards the communal bathhouse. Another good thing about the Fade that was starting to spoil him: endless clean water. No worries about poisoning the local water supply every time he had to clean the Blight off.

"If I go get medical supplies, are you going to vanish?"

It was a strange kind of respect between the two of them, that Davrin fully expected Lucanis to honestly answer 'yes' if that were his plan.

A strange sort of respect indeed. Lucanis considered it. Much as he would normally content himself with a bucket and a rag behind the kitchen, that would require going into it to fetch and as Davrin had said: blight. Besides, between wound care and fittings, there was so little of Lucanis that Davrin hadn't already seen it felt pointless to play coy about the rest.

And getting off his feet and into warm water sounded nice, if dangerously relaxing.

"No, but I will not wait up if you take too long," Lucanis said honestly.

"I can manage that."

Considering their lifestyle, there wasn't a time his kit wasn't assembled and ready. After the last time Lucanis helped him patch up, he'd even taken to leaving the kit in a fairly visible place near his books and carving materials. Just in case someone else needed to help without time to explain where everything was across his room.

He does take a moment to shuck off his armor, though, placing it on the designated 'infected by Blight' stand in the back corner of the room to clean and polish and return to the 'battle ready' area later. The shirt and boots meet the same fate, Davrin opting to just go in his trousers and bare feet, kit tucked under one arm, rather than track more Blight than he has to around the Lighthouse.

Then it's time to see if Lucanis had managed to do a two minute speed run of a rinse off. Or fall asleep in the hot water.

There was a moment when Lucanis actually felt bad that it might look like he'd decided to lie to Davrin after all. The robe he'd left stashed next to the baths was not where he left it, but a little searching merely found it to have been moved and Lucanis did not need to go fetch another. The caretaker or someone else? Hard to say. Paranoia had him doing a thorough check, and by the third pass he had to admit to himself that paranoia was all it was.

Well. No one else had witnessed it. So it didn't count.

It meant that he had only just stripped, gave his clothing a thorough soak to get the worst off for a better cleaning later, and had them spread out to dry when Davrin was done with his errand. He was just slipping into the perpetually warm water when the other man arrived.

"Did you stop to chat with someone?" He teased. And since Davrin was already mostly undressed, let himself look the other man over for injuries too. Two could play at that game.

Bruised? Yes. Especially along the sides of his ribs, the hips, places where small gaps in the armor needed for movement allowed for harder hits. But not so much bloodied. The benefit of plate armor. But carrying that weight had its own costs, leaving him sore and worn in muscles he hadn't known existed before he started wearing heavy armor. He was looking forward to the warm water.

So it's an unceremonious affair as he places the medical kit next to the edge of the pool, then slips off the trousers and smalls and lowers himself into the water. Scars congregated in the same areas as the bruises, particularly along his knees and where thigh met groin. The tiny gaps where darkspawn seemed to just love to dive in and try to bite and claw at, trying to pull their quarry down into the muck with them. The greater damage was usually hidden underneath, bones broken and healed and rebroken over the course of duty, but luckily there'd been nothing so much as fractured today.

He goes full in, head dunked under the water, before resurfacing with a small sigh. Lucanis' mocking ignored for the moment.

Once when Lucanis was probably sixteen or seventeen, it had been a miserably sweltering summer in Treviso. The canals had been low that year too, which meant any cool air off the water was minimal at best. Lucanis had been watching some of the others training. Viago was practicing with a rapier. He'd taken his shirt off for it. He was hardly the only one, but as he worked up and down the marked line, focused on the movement of his blade, Lucanis couldn't look away from a bead of sweat that was working itself down his chest and Lucanis felt hot all over in a way that had nothing to do with the summer.

He tried to not think about it, but that memory returned to him sometimes, vividly clear in some ways and faded in others. Usually when he slept, so another bonus to simply not sleeping anymore.

There was little similar between Viago and Davrin, yet the memory came back then as he looked the other man up and down to check for injuries. The hot air, the smell of too many bodies in too small a space, the bead of sweat trailing down sun-kissed skin–

Davrin ducked under the water and Lucanis forced himself to look away, forced the memory back into the dark corners of his mind where it belonged. An unnecessary thing. He busied himself with combing fingers through his own hair to make sure nothing was caught in it.

If Davrin noticed the look, he didn't show it. Instead, he had the limited restraint to give Lucanis a moment to fuss with his hair, just letting muscles melt in the warm water in the process. He'd never had long hair himself, but from all appearances it looked like a headache. Particularly when getting blood and viscera splashed all over the place was a daily occurrence. Though, watching Lucanis' fingers slip through the strands, he can remember the soft feeling himself, unconsciously touching thumb to forefinger out of the water in memory. So. It had some selling points.

But after a bit of watching and unwinding, he finally sat fully up and gestured for Lucanis to either come closer or at least get his chest out of the water.

"Let's have a look."

It was the longest Lucanis' hair had been since he was a youth. It was already overdue for a cut when he took the Minrathos job that had been the trap, then a year imprisoned... and it just hadn't been a priority to do anything with since getting out. He thought he should ask Neve about how to tie it back in a way that wouldn't make it worse when he was out and about. Sure she was a mage, but who else would he ask, Harding? Even a disaster like Lucanis could recognize 'Ferelden farm girl braids' were unlikely to be flattering.

But he had managed to get out anything that was trapped in the hair or the beard, and had a moment to relax himself before Davrin decided to be a nanny about it again.

"Mierda, again with the mother henning," said the man who was constantly complaining about everyone's diet. "The potion took care of it, I'm fine."

But he still stood and moved closer so Davrin could check as much as he wished. The skin was still terribly bruised and tender, the stage of healing where it would take little to break it back open again, with other smaller hurts scattered around.

"Rook knows we went out together. I don't need a lecture on getting the favorite assassin beat up by Darkspawn."

It was a wonderfully technically true lie, and Davrin didn't expect Lucanis to buy it for a moment. But maybe it would be enough the Crow could pretend to accept the lie and unruffle his feathers a bit over being fussed over.

The skin was there, healing. It could use a bandage to protect it, maybe, if they were heading out again soon. There was no reason to mess with it, but Darvin traced the edges of it again, anyway. It could have easily, very easily, been the end of the Crow and the birth of a new Darkspawn. Something that twisted at the core of the elf yet seemed to be barely of notice to Lucanis.

"You're lucky. You can delay it with blood magic, if you can pay that cost. But there's no treatment. No cure. Just death or the Calling."

It didn't quite help unruffle those feathers. Mainly because a significant part of it was that he found the attention enjoyable on some level, just enough that he was aware of it, and he had no idea what to do about that. He held perfectly still as Davrin's fingers traced at the edge of where the injury had been, tingles leaving goosebumps in the wake of the touch.

He knew what he was thinking was not something Davrin wanted to hear - that they'd lost so many others already, that maybe it would be fitting for him to go down the same way, that he was acutely aware that once this job was over if he lived to see the other side of it he didn't know what he'd be doing with himself so why not just take the damnation and the clear course? He didn't want to be blighted, it seemed a terrible way to go, he wasn't going to go out looking for it.

But yes, if he could put himself at risk of it to save someone else's life, to save any little bit of Treviso, it was an easy choice to make.

"How long have you been a Warden? How much time do you have left?"

If it was death or the Calling.

"Doesn't work like that. There isn't a count down the moment you join. Some people go fast, some last decades. Others can ignore the calling for a long time, past when their friends went mad from it."

Pure random chance, when it would come for you. All the more reason to volunteer to be the one to strike the archdemon, to go down in history as The Good Warden that saved the world instead of one slipping into madness or, maybe worse, looking back at your life at 80 and thinking there had been time to have both worlds. If only you'd tried.

"But how much time does anyone have? Most we can hope for is dying for something."

It was, perhaps, a slightly awkward position, but he'd let his hand settle there, palm pressing just under the wound, as he talked. Not moving to be the one to break away this time.

"There is always one final Contract, and you don't know which it will be until it comes due."

Lucanis' own voice is soft, thoughtful. People like them lived on the edge of death all the time, it seemed odd to prioritize one as worse than the other. One somehow more of a guarantee.

Between the devil, or the devil you know.

Lucanis didn't move away either. Instead - slowly, carefully, like he was trying not to startle a wild animal, he brought his fingers up to lightly trace the scar over Davrin's brow.

"What's this from?"

The corners of his mouth twitched up slightly, in synch with his head tilting, just a touch, towards the fingers on his brow. It wasn't an embarrassing story, far from it. But he'd found that given his standing as a monster hunter it was usually a surprising one.

"Bear. A pack of deep stalkers have nothing on a hungry bear that doesn't want to part with the hurlock corpse it dragged to her cave for dinner. Guess if you focus too much on the strange it's the normal stuff that gets you."

Oh. That ever so slight tilt of the head, towards his touch - Lucanis felt his heart beat heavier behind his ribs for just a moment.

The story, short as it was, was a welcome distraction. It was a startling reason, and it prompted an unexpected laugh from Lucanis.

"A bear? Truly? You didn't just try to intimidate it into submission?" he asked, a grin spreading across his face.

"I tried punching it in the nose. Just made it angrier," he chuckled, giving in to a full grin as well at Lucanis' laugh.

"Turned out it was a great distraction for my team to get in and out of the cave. Got the body, found a hole leading down to the Deep Roads. The scout was nice enough to write it up as a brave instead of incredibly stupid action."

He was lucky, he knew. To have the kinds of close calls that made funny stories instead of sad eulogies. Not everyone was so lucky.

"Got any of those kinds of mission stories?"

"I have never tried to punch a bear," Lucanis said primly, but he was still smiling. He should stop touching Davrin's face, it was going on too long, it was surely getting weird. He traced the line of the scar one last time as he thought before he let his hand fall aside.

"There was a hair demon, though."

"That isn't real."

He said with the expectation of Lucanis rising to the challenge and proving it was real. He raised the same scar-marked eyebrow in anticipation. And in part because he was now hyper away of that patch of skin.

Damn it. They were going to have to...something about this. Weren't they. His expression grew slightly more serious at that thought, but he tried to push it off for now. A tomorrow problem, maybe. When they'd both had some sleep.

Yeah. Tactics. Not avoidance.

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Now wondering about the wash room situation in the lighthouse

bioware didn't provide. want to go classic anime hot springs episode style?

ALWAYS.

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