🪶 rookanis blurb to plug my commission 🪶
Rook laughs at him as soon as she sees him, the instant she stops rubbing the sleep from her eyes, runs her fingers through her hair instead.
"What?"
"You've got ink all over your - well, your everything."
Lucanis looks at his hands, and true: there's ink stains well into his shirtsleeve.
He mutters under his breath, rolls up his sleeves, but there's already black bleeding into the fabric. He must have pulled the cuffs down before the ink had a chance to dry.
"Sorry," Rook says as she approaches, somehow already armed with a sponge, handsoap, a bowl of water and a towel.
"For what? You didn't dip me into a vat of ink, did you?"
She doesn't shy away from him, leans into his fingers brushing her hair from her eyes. Uncaring of the way he might stain her purple.
"No." Her nail replaces the sponge, picking at his wet skin like scab from a wound. "I didn't stay up while Spite was using it, though. I was just so tired, and I didn't think he'd go on to extend his canvas onto your skin once he'd run out of parchment."
NO. DID NOT WAKE HER, Spite says before the thought can even take root in Lucanis' head. Know where ink and parchment lives. Got up for drink, ruffled hair. Have fun, Spite almost sounds like her now, and Lucanis somehow remembers her hand fleetingly sliding across the width of his shoulders, once on the way out, once again on the way back into the sheets. Very quiet. Out of parchment, but the drawer grinds and squeaks. Didn't want to wake her.
The shaky lines, circles and spirals suddenly look a lot like a child's first attempt at writing letters, just before the soapwater and sponge wash them away into grey rivulets that drip from his hairs onto the floor.
"We talked about this, querida. You don't need to watch my demon. You're not my nursemaid."
A smile threatens to tug at Rook's mouth, while she moves the sponge across his forearm slowly, deliberately, purposely displaying the opal ring that's been sitting on her finger for less than a month.
"Well. I think at this point it's safe to say he's our demon, right?"
YES. OURS. ALL OURS. OUR ROOK. OUR LUCANIS. OUR SPITE. OURS OURS OURS.
Spite keeps cheering even as the words break out of Lucanis' mouth and Rook laughs so hard she spills the water in the bowl over the both of them.
🪶
this is spite the night before:
