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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only | Expand All

"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.

'Discretion is the better part of valor', that was certainly a saying. It was for times like this.

"Illario was there," Lucanis says, but Illario was off helping the freed slaves escape. He didn't see the thing himself, only what it had done to Lucanis after.

"Tevinter wigmaker and Venatori, he'd been feeding his slaves that grew the hair he used red lyrium. Someone," it could be anyone, really, absolutely anyone. "Broke his little artifact that was keeping the demons out in the middle of one of his shows. I fractured three ribs when it tossed me onto a roof."

He brought a hand up to his own side to point out which - just above where he took the hit today.

"Hate that feeling. There's no such thing as dignified running with busted ribs."

Discretion, sure. But then there was sliding his hand up a bit to nearly meet Lucanis', ending up with his palm and fingers half splayed over old wound, half over the new. Even as he grinned at the whole mental image.

"How'd you take it out? Aggressive combing?"

Lucanis' skin felt hyper-sensitive to every ridge of Davrin's callouses, similar but different to his own, sword instead of daggers. Another memory to haunt his nights, he already knew. The idea of doing more than just quietly wanting didn't really occur to him.

"Knives," Lucanis answered, smiling. It was usually knives. "The wigmaker ate some of the possessed hair and became the biggest abomination I'd ever seen. Like one of those giant spiders they have in the south, just - half made of hair. Cut off some of the legs then split him open. When he died, the rest of the demons that came through had nothing to anchor to and dissipated."

"Alright. That's one for the book."

The Davrin book of hunting all things demonic and monstrous- now including hair demons. For prosperity if nothing else, since he truly hoped those specific circumstances never lined up again.

"How to kill it. Where it came from we'll leave out. I don't want to start inspiring the next generation of idiotic blood mages."

He moved his thumb slightly, feeling the edge of a once broken rib- now healed, fine. Like Davrin's own bones, more often crushed under that armor than his skin was ever sliced open. He paused, weighing- then moved forward. Because when had he ever stopped to really consider every move before throwing himself into danger? But he watched Lucanis carefully, trying to read into any reaction before carrying on.

"I want to ask you something."

"Most things die if you stab them enough."

Okay, maybe sometimes you needed a special knife to do it, but 'stab it' hadn't failed Lucanis yet, provided he made the shot.

A little shiver ran through him at the touch to the once injured rib, remembering the pain of it, of limping his way to the docks and finding Illario in the tavern after. Just a memory now, a dull ache a little lower from the more recent injury.

Cautious, but not spooked. This moment felt fragile, and Lucanis wondered how long before it shattered like a bubble frosted over.

"I might answer, depending on the question."

"I'm a monster hunter."

Solid start. Begin in fact. He watched his own thumb moving along that rib, slow but certain. His hands were also sure, even when his mind was far from it. Helpful trait for a soldier.

"But when it comes to...people," his voice even sounded steady. Good for him. Now there was just one last bit to get through as he took a breath and tried to catch Lucanis' eyes again. "I don't chase people that don't want to be caught."

((Cut Off or Express Romantic Interest (does not commit to romance). Honestly went back and forth here, if it's too rushed let me know and we can step back.))

Oh. That was not where Lucanis was expecting him to go with that opening. Maybe a comment about Lucanis being a monster. That would be valid. He is surprised, but not shocked. Not disinterested. Hesitant, but curious. He doesn't move away, doesn't remove Davrin's hand from his side.

This is probably a bad idea for so many reasons. Yet even as he can come up with dozens of them and so few for why to continue...

His own words are slow, carefully spoken, his own dark eyes meeting Davrin's.

"...I am ... not something that has been caught before."

(Not been pursued as far as he knows. Too good at being just out of reach. No idea how to start such a chase himself. )

(( I love it! I'd been waffling too since it's such a good moment... ))

"Would it be alright if I tried?"

There were people, Davrin was aware, that simply weren't interested in being pursued by anyone. They weren't uncommon in the Wardens overall, considering the lives they led. Some by choice after heavy loss, some just by nature. But he could have sworn he'd at least caught a glance or two from Lucanis, hints that might not be the Crow's situation. But that was the point of asking directly. No second guessing if he should or shouldn't because it might not be wanted. Whether it would work- they would work- if it was a good idea, if either of them liked what happened after the hunt was done? Different conversations for later days.

Assuming they survived that long.

Lucanis felt the heat build under his skin. So direct, as he always was, their Warden.

('Your Warden', Teia had said.)

He had watched the coy games of flirtation that Illario played with his marks (they were all marks, one way or another). It had seemed like a wholly different language to Lucanis, he could speak the same words but his intonation was all wrong. He couldn't understand what he was missing. This forwardness, it was - unexpected.

Good.

It was entirely possible Davrin would be disappointed with what he found, what he caught. It was also entirely possible they would die tomorrow.

He had spent so much of his life letting other people dictate his life for him, never making a choice of his own. If he only got one... there were worse ones to make. He shifted his hand, fingertips brushing against Davrin's.

"Yes. I would like that."

"Good. Me too."

Obvious? Yes. But he was fine sounding a little foolish, now that a tension he'd been holding in his shoulders, his spine, without knowing it flowed down to a delicious heated coil in his midsection. The hunt was on.

He slid his hand off Lucanis' chest, moving to grip the Crow's fingers and raising the hand up, out of the water, to press his lips against the palm before releasing him. He didn't know what his face must look like as he kissed his hand, but Davrin could almost feel a fire in his own eyes now the challenge was accepted. It might take a while- hells, may not happen until the gods were dead and the world possibly re-made given how much they sniped at each other even on a good day, given how much personal weight they both had yet to sort through. But he was going to devour this man.

Later.

"After you sleep."

One Short Day In Antiva City

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)