🪶 wound care rookanis enjoy 🪶
"It's just.. disrespectful. Honorless. Rude, even. Downright insolent."
Not even a twitch in her eye when the alcohol runs into the wound.
"Fairness looks different."
"You fought venatori and expected fairness? That may be on you, amore."
Eyes roll. Like marbles. Whose? Hers, or the Venatori's?
Two rapid blinks from Spite's finger in her waterline. Right now, hers. Annoyance. Anger. Patience and impatience at once. Soon? Venatori eyes. Pull them out like babes from mothers.
"Yes, fine. But still. You don't just go for a girl's earring and yank. What if the jewellery is cheap and just breaks apart instead of tearing skin? Got up close for nothing."
"I did ask you not to wear the big hoops," Lucanis reminds her, gently.
But they glitter! So pretty! Sun and rain and sparkle on her ear. And now, they hurt her. They bring nice things to Dock Town! You just like that the gems are purple. Purple like sugarplum. Purple like me.
The way Rook's eyes move to her side to watch him thread the needle, without putting pressure or new dirt onto the torn lobe must hurt her, he thinks.
Give her a headache behind the eyes like the one he has every waking minute at the Lighthouse. And most sleeping minutes, too.
The instant relief he feels from stepping out of an eluvian and into just about anywhere else than the Fade is delicious, like the gentle ache after stretching deeply through tension.
The instant relief she doesn't feel right now, because she keeps trying to watch him.
"But I look so good in them!"
The needletip is barely in her flesh before he stops.
Stills.
Not because he's re-adjusting his angle, or second-guessing his skill.
"You look good no matter what you wear," he says, so quietly he himself couldn't hear it if the sound didn't naturally run through his own body as well as the world. "You're always beautiful."
She turns pink, almost as pink as her hair in the sun. He sees it on the tip of her ear, not her face.
Even after so long, he can't speak these things out loud and look at her face.
"Even when I broke you out? Soaked to the bones, my hair so wet it clung straight to my body, almost down to my knees?"
Bright like sun. Shines to bottom of the sea. Only her. Brighter THAN sun. Sun doesn't reach there. Soft like furs and fire and sweets. Warm like soup and blankets.
"You're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."
She collects his hand from her ear, kisses each and every knuckle.
"So are you." And then she runs the alcohol rag over his hand before releasing it to get back to work.
A single drop of blood pushed past the needle, drops down to the tabletop. It doesn't stain the wood, not the way it stains the other studs in her ear.
Once he's done, he'll rub the alcohol onto them, as well. keep everything nice and clean.
That is, until she goes to sleep, face down in her pillow, her hair everywhere.
"Is this okay?"
Rook frowns, but not at him. Not at the needle pulling the thread in and out of her ear.
"Yes, of course. I trust you. Only two types of people who know sewing."
"Seamsters and Crows?"
A short, barking laugh, ready to fall into her habit of laughing way too hard at things she finds mildly amusing at best, because they were things that came out of his mouth. Then catching herself, remembering the needle in her ear.
"Yes. And you are a Crow who mends his own clothes. I think you can handle sewing up two pieces of loose skin. They're not even entirely loose. They're still attached to my face. Kind of."
"Still. You know what my scars look like."
Voicing that out loud makes him work all the slower, double-checking that the stitches are exactly where they should be, that the thread is tight enough, wipes the stray blood after every pinch to make sure there's no clotting.
Her huff is dismissive. She may as well wave away the comment with her arm.
But her hands have long returned to idly fiddling with the bottom hem of her blouse.
"It's different when you're sewing yourself up. You may only have one hand to do it." She blindly pats the tabletop beneath her. Almost leaning into his touch. "And not have the thing you're sewing up propped up on a table."
"Let me just knot this up for you."
"Can you put a little bow in it?"
"So that tomorrow a Venatori you let come up close can pull it? I don't think so."
"I let come up close? Lucanis, we fight with blades. Getting up close is the only way we know how to fight. It's what we do."
Spite motions out longbows, greatswords and warhammers. Then throwing daggers.
Spite doesn't know how weight distribution works.
We can learn. Wield longest weapon for her. Keep enemies off.
She'll be upset if we don't let her dance, Spite, you know that.
But she'll be safe. No torn ears, no plucked eyes.
But a miserable, resentful Rook for the rest of our time together. And that time won't be very long.
Safe means long life! But she'll leave. As she should.
Spite hates it when Lucanis is right.
Lucanis stands, pulls Rook to sit upright on the table. She instantly reaches for the mirror, twisting it, and herself, to peek at his handiwork outside of her peripheral.
"Oh, it looks cute. Even without a bow."
"You know you will have to get it re-pierced once it's healed, if you want to put your hoop in again."
"I know." She says it around a huff. For now, she's still intent to keep her hair away from it.
"Will you do it for me?"
"I.. I don't know that I can."
"You can stab, you can sew. Wound and heal. Seems like it's learned easily to me."
Rook leans into him as she points it out, her fingertips sliding beneath his layers and into his waistband. Chin on his chest. Looking up at him lazily.
"Fine," he says.
As though the word no was one he knows, when it comes to things she asks of him.
As though it was even a part of him when it comes to her.
