Rookanis Week Roundup
Art by @ratbagjasper
Thank you so much to everyone who followed along with my first full theme week response! I love those two (three) so much I could die, and it was a lot of fun to write some of their softer moments. We'll be back to your regularly-scheduled Thornecanis Pain in the coming months.
In the meantime, here's everything in one place!
Day One: Coffee & Chocolate (G)
"Rook…" Lucanis began slowly, the sound of his voice pulling her out of her reverie. Andraste's tits, she really was tired. She scrubbed at her face with one hand and waved at him with the other to continue. It was the one that held her mug—nearly empty, she noticed, and having noticed she tossed the end of it back like a shot of spirits. It wasn't really hot anymore, but it was bracing and she needed the support; by the look of that furrow on his brow, there was some soft concern coming, the kind that she didn't know how to handle at all. He hesitated again, and then, to her complete bewilderment, finished, "Do you… like coffee?"
Day Two: Open Doors (G)
"Did you know," Lucanis said without preamble, "that Spite doesn't understand that 'warden' can mean anything but 'someone who opens doors'?"
Day Three: Warmth/Touch/Romance (T)
Awash in her excited chatter, he shook out the grey-knit something in his hands and found he held a scarf. The wool was a little coarse but very warm in his freezing hands, and the stitches were close and even… except toward one end where a span of four or five rows were a mess. He looked from it to Mila, utterly bewildered. "What is this about?" "Rook knows how much you hate cold. She asked me to teach her how to knit so she could make something for you but she's awful at it, like really bad, so I offered to finish it for her." The girl grinned, and whispered conspiratorially, "I kept her bit because I thought it was cute."
Day Four: Peace (T)
Lucanis hummed rather than answering as he turned to shut the door behind him; it was silent on its hinges, and did not even click when he turned the lock. Showoff. It did not take him long at all to cross her little room; she had declined the offer for one larger, though she was entitled to much better apartments per her station. She was glad of it. With him suddenly here, she begrudged even the slightest distance between them. Their moments together were no longer stolen from an impossible, onrushing fight, but even in peacetime a war-scarred heart could not take them for granted.
Day Five: Spite (E)
Lucanis shook his head, a rueful, knowing smile on his lips, but even as he did Rook watched him withdraw carefully to make way for Spite. Once again their shoulders stiffened, their back curved, and between one blink and the next violet replaced brown. The deep glow of her demon's stare was intoxicating this close up, otherworldly, atavistically wrong, and she leaned in to gladly it until they were forehead to forehead.
Day Six: Dreams (E)
He had never dreamed of marriage; it had simply been an inevitability, a duty. He had not been able to picture that future, but he had offered it anyway because it was what you did with a ring and a lover and a life curved unexpectedly out of darkness. When Rook refused, he'd tucked all of it away with a distant pang. But this—the bright metal swinging above him, her eyes burning on his as she began to move faster, a mounting doubled pleasure so keen Spite's silent cry stole his own breath—he had never dreamed of this, either. It had not been anything he'd been capable of imagining.
Day Seven: Free Day (Truths) (T)
"You're beautiful, you know," Lucanis said, joining her at the balcony rail. He was one to talk, so handsome in his sharply tailored suit and neatly trimmed beard that it made her teeth ache, but when he said it like that it was hard not to believe him. She shivered a little as reached out to trail a hand up her side, his fingers light on the black-on-black brocade, on the fine grey-and-silver rope from its elegant knot under her right arm to where it secured the ridiculous cape over her left. His touch lingered at the deep blue sapphire at her shoulder, though he was looking unwaveringly at her face. "It brings out your eyes. Teia chose well."












