Part 2 to this bloodstarved vamp Lucanis drabble (god I hope that link thing works, it's my first time using it) 18+ please and thank you, you've been warned. Gender neutral Rook
But yeah. Rook is still bleeding. He can smell it before anything else, the memory of it bright and incandescent on the back of his tongue blinding him for a moment. Hitting him in the chest like a hammer. He dare not turn around, Maker knows what he looks like right now, so he uses his sense of modesty, his human sense, and keeps facing his cot for the time being.
Rook is safe. He knows he can show his back to them and not get stabbed.
"Lucanis?"
He grits his teeth. It's such an unsure, broken question. He's never heard them sound so worried.
"Rook."
"Are you hurt?"
Not physically, he wants to say. Not in the way you're asking.
He's trembling, aching, could crumble at any moment, curling in on himself to keep his teeth away from them, from their wrist, their throat, thier thighs--
"No," he bites out. "No, I am-- I am not hurt."
And oh, the sigh of relief they give cuts deep. Like his ribs are clenching.
"Good," they breathe, coming closer. "You're--"
Then they pause. He can feel their eyes on him like a fucking caress and he wants-- meirda he wants--
"You're not alright though, are you?" They ask, thankfully staying put. "I told you to come to me if you're struggling."
Now they sound almost hurt.
"Forgive me, Rook. I--" his voice sounds foreign to his own ears. Quiet, and choked. He hears the shirt still in his hands tear a seam.
They take a step, and his entire body tenses. He needs them gone. Needs them to leave right this second now--
"Lucanis? I need to know what's wrong so I can fix it, and to do that I need you to please talk to me."
Mierda, the way they said 'please' breaks him inside. His eyes are burning, blurry at the edges.
Out of habit he takes a deep breath to steady himself. A mistake. They're all around him, inside of him, and so close he could-- he could just--
He turns, slowly, so, so slowly, and the way their face blows open with surprise tells him all he needs to know about how he looks right now. A beast. No better than the demon that tore that hole into their side. The one that they have hidden under several layers of gauze and a primly buttoned up shirt. His chest warms at the sight of them, still alive, still put together, still thinking of him even though he is this.
Their face softens, then. Arms up with open palms as if trying to calm a spooked animal as they, just as slowly, telegraphing their movements, approach him.
"Oh, Lucanis."
"Do not pity me, Rook."
"Don't be so pitiful, then," they cut back, a flare of anger quickly squashed. "Have you been eating at all?"
Their emphasis at the end makes him flinch, and thats all the information they need to know that, no, he hasn't.
"Why?"
He swallows, thick and loud. "I can handle it."
"Evidently," they say, flat and scathing. But then they're so close, he can feel the pulse under thier skin drum against his, building to something.
"Rook," he stutters out, clamping a hand over his opening mouth. His teeth itching, begging to be allowed, just once, to sink into them like a finely sharpened blade. Fuck, they'd give so easily, like the broken flesh of a fruit, sweet and warm and satisfying.
"Lucanis, your eyes are changing," they warn, but thier pulse stays in that steady rhythm. Slightly elevated, but there's no fear there. They trust him far too much.
Then Rook is gently releasing his hand from his face, taking the shirt from his other and dabbing at the dark liquid trailing down his chin and upper torso. He's so stunned at the tenderness that everything within him stops. The hunger, the breath, the only thing left in him being the warmth and wonder that they have planted there. A lattice-work of vines and buds writhing in his gut.
"You're a mess," they laugh, and he's so lost in the sound and the feel of thier hands on his jaw that he's forgotten how they got here.
"Sorry, but the shirt is probably a lost cause."
"Why are you sorry?" He's asking, distant and lighter than he's felt in forever. "I'm the one who got himself in this state."
He takes their hand and holds it against him, feeling their heat and listening to the swirling, rushing blood that keeps them alive, keeps them whole and here with him.
They drop the shirt, both hands now gently holding his face, just like he'd wished they would. One daring to slide into his hair, just at his nape, and he sighs, feeling his shoulders bow forward.
When did he close his eyes?
"I swear, the bottles were working," he tries, his body calmed enough now to articulate the problem. "They do a good job of keeping me stable."
"Well, that's good," they whisper. "I was worried they might be too 'old' to count as fresh blood."
"No," he reassures, his own hands coming up to hold them, fingers in their hair too, pulling them closer, pressing their foreheads together. "The magic works, if a little bitter."
That gets a scoffed laugh. "I thought you liked bitter?"
"I do," he admits. "But, meirda, Rook, do you know how you taste?"
That sharp inhale has him barreling forward, despite his better judgement. "Because I do, now. That creature, the one that hurt you, I had to-- but it had your blood on it, fresh and warm and I--"
"Breathe," they soothe, and he's so close to them now, their warmth soaking into him. He doesn't breathe. Can't afford to. The words take priority.
"You're... there is no way to describe it, Rook. I had to run. Had to create distance otherwise I would have lost it, lost everything."
"You think you would've killed me," they state, understanding dawning on them.
"Yes," he chokes out. "Or died trying."
"Well," they joke. "It's good to know you think I could take you even while bleeding out."
That shocks a laugh from him. "Emmrich was there, Rook."
Silence. The flush on their cheeks so very charming this close up.
"Oh yeah."
He shakes his head against theirs with a small smile.
"Hey, I could still take you," they say, nose bumping into his and he's-- they're--
"I'm sure you could," he says, and it's a different sort of darkness that takes his voice then. Something with a sweet, cloying heat. It takes him a moment to catch up with what he just said, eyes snapping open.
"I uh, I mean--"
He goes to step back, but Rook's hand in his hair tightens, stilling his movements with a quiet gasp.
"Rook, I--"
"Can I?" They ask instead, and he's nodding so fast they nearly collide. And then Rook is pushing him down to sit on his cot, quickly following suit to straddle him and he's not quite sure he's awake right now. This has to be a dream. A fever dream soon to devolve into the usual nightmare of sea and salt and blood magic.
But then they're looking down at him with eyes like fire, like they want him so much it hurts, and he's waiting. Waiting to see what they do with that want, hands fisted and shaking in the back of their shirt.
"Say you want me to kiss you," Rook breathes, all warm honey tongue, and Lucanis responds with nothing but a groan and a pull, but Rook holds fast, pressing against his chest with firebrand palms.
"I need to hear you say it," they practically beg, and if it's good enough for them then it's sure as fuck good enough for him, too.
"Please," is punched out of him, all breath and desperation. "Please--"
And then they're on him, lips crashing into him like a wave against the shore and he wants nothing more than to drown in them. Hands floundering, one grasping their nape, the other clutching at a thigh and yanking them forward, closer to him, he needs them flush, needs to feel their heart fluttering against him as he tastes them proper. Not second hand, no third party, just them whimpering into his mouth as he grinds their hips against him.
"Luca--" falls from thier lips as they push back, rolling into him and he groans, deep and guttural and on fucking fire.
"Rook," he answers, tracing thier outer thigh and squeezing. "Keep going."
His lips instinctively trail over their jaw, about to kiss their way down their neck when Rook grasps his face and brings them face to face.
They're a sight. Panting and gasping and looking at him like nothing else in the world matters.
"I want you," they say, and his hips buck up, both moaning in unison. "I care for you so much. So, so much it makes me so fucking stupid."
Then he gasps, stills. He smells it, sharp and white hot to his senses.
"You're still--"
He looks down and there, a fresh wave soaking through the gauze and shirt, a dark spot that makes him salivate.
"Please," they whine. "Please don't stop, I'm so close--"
And he must be stupid too, because he's twisting, laying them down on his cot and undoing their belt with quick, deft movements, finally palming them through their smalls and marvelling at how wet they are. All for him.
The gasp they let out has him claiming their mouth, again and again, as he strokes them to completion right there on his sheets. Their nails scoring down his back the most exquisite sting of pain and he can't-- he needs--
He's rutting against them like an animal, their scent thick and heady and driving him incoherent. It's only when it's too late that he realises their undoing their shirt, the top buttons slipping from their weak grasp.
Then they're sliding their fingers into his hair again and guiding him to their neck.
"Rook--" he gasps, giving a feeble attempt at trying to break free, but they hold fast. "I can't--"
"Please," they beg, and those eyes, soft and dazed, are his undoing. "For me?"
He can't deny them on the best of days. This is just cheating.
He swears, a long string of words in his mother tongue that have that flush in Rooks cheeks spreading even further, and then he kisses their throat, slow, exploring them, trying to find what makes them twitch and whimper with over sensitivity.
When his teeth finally sink in, it's like coming home. Every ounce of tension releasing, the tight coil in his gut snapping as he spills himself in his breeches with a wordless noise he's never heard himself make. The taste secondary to just how alive they make him feel, bright and desired and enough, always enough--
There's an insistent tapping on his shoulder, inconsequential on its own, but then the cotton in his ears clears just enough to hear what Rook's saying.
"--anis, don't make me have to ruin this by kicking you in the--"
His fangs pull back, a tiny, tentative laugh making its way from his chest as he licks the wound, reaching down for his shirt. He tears off a piece to help stem the flow, placing kiss after kiss along their neck to eventually reach their lips once more. Their nails scratch at a spot just under his jaw as he does, and he curls over them, careful to not press on their wound as he holds them to him.
"You can laugh all you want Dellamorte, but I would've done it if you didn't let go when I asked. Afterglow be damned."
And just like that he's chuckling all over again, pressing into their chest to hide his face, feeling the rumbles of their own answering mirth.
"Soooo," Rook starts after a bit. "Does this mean I'm getting more red meat for dinner? OW--"
Ohhh they're gonna regret falling asleep without getting clean first, but waking up tangled in eachother, well... that helps some
A classically trained Rook finding the music room. She reaches the piano, keys smooth and familiar, and she begins to play something simple. She doesn't sit, she doesn't have time to get comfortable, but she runs her fingers over the keys and remembers.
In the memory she's maybe twelve years old, the old lady sitting next to her with thier usual scowl and yard stick, waiting for her to mess up. She doesn't, of course. That was one of her first perfect performances, the one where she heard a "not bad" and grinned from ear to ear for weeks. She remembers flowers being thrown at some point. Roses? Anrdraste's grace? Something like that. Petals got everywhere. Not as romantic as you'd expect when you're the one cleaning it up at the end of the night.
This piano seems exactly like that one. Even the lighting from the windows feels like the angled lights from that old stage. Only here it's warmer, quieter, no one is about to throw their drink at someone else for looking at them wrong or 'stealing' their company.
There's something else here, though. There's a deep, aching sadness Rook doesn't understand, but she feels it anyway. It moves her to eventually sit, and to play something she doesn't remember learning, but she feels it in her joints, in the pads of her fingers pressing and gliding and--
She's not alone.
"I didn't know you could play."
She misses a key, but relaxes at the familiar accent.
"There are many ways to seduce a potential client," she says as if scripted. Straight from her lessons as both a courtesan and a crow. "Though I suppose you've never needed to persuade yours, Mr Dellamorte, Demon of Vyrantium."
She says it with so much fondness she's not entirely sure what to do with it. It fills her chest like sweet, flower laced vines, climbing up her throat, threatening to choke her. But then he laughs, and the vines loosen, recede back into her too-far-gone heart.
"I remember you singing once," he says, voice low. "When I was there on a contract."
"Must have been after the antaam invasion," Rook answers simply, keeping tempo but playing more aggressively. "Requests like that were popular. Qunlat, you see. A bit of home for the invaders."
He hums deep in acknowledgement of the acid in her voice, coming to sit next to her. "You managed to calm an entire room of angry qunari that day. No easy feat."
It was her turn to hum, shifting over so he could join her proper on the stool. "Honestly, I think they were all just shocked a qunari walked out on stage in a 'bas' brothel. Probably not something they expected."
He presses a key, exploring, like stretching out a muscle you haven't used in a while.
"Careful. Might pull something," she jokes, grinning wide. He just lifts a brow in question, or maybe in incredulity, as if to say 'do you know who you're talking to?'
He plays a few notes mixed in with hers. They merge fairly well, and that seems to add confidence to the flair of competitiveness she could feel from him. Now it's his turn to grin, sharp and, dare she say, determined, as he smirks at her.
They both play well, apparently. But Rook is not one to be outdone. She rallies, picks up the pace, the tempo going for something sounding complex but looking effortless. All the while staring him down with a burning challenge in her eye.
He takes the bait, hook, line, and sinker, and, oh, it is magnificent. They begin. Each with thier own flair, their own style, his treble supported and made fuller by her bass, the allegro climbing, higher and higher. The sadness of regret is gone, only the impending sense of something new beginning, coming to a head, fingers brushing every so often but neither ever really noticing. There is only a rare joy, something bubbly and contagious, and the want to out-do eachother. Then they're both laughing, light and carefree and Rook can't remember ever feeling like this while playing.
They move together towards the finale, almost forgetting the vicious competition they'd started this with. Finishing with a definitive chord, deafening silence follows, only broken by thier panting breaths.
She looks to her side, pleasantly surprised to find him just as flushed as her.
"You're good with your hands, Dellamorte," she praises. "Thought you would be."
He nearly chokes, but rallies quickly with a warm chuckle instead. "Have you been thinking about my hands, de Riva?"
Okay, she was flushed before, now she's flustered. "You do not want to know the answer to that."
His brows shoot up almost comically above those dark, gorgeous eyes and she needs to leave right this very second now before those vines come back to strangle her.
She stands to leave, the memory of that day in the pantry uprooting her and moving her forward. "Uhhh, good session, we should do it again sometime--"
"Rook--"
"Nope. Not doing this again. Not unless you're--"
He's what? Sure? Ready? Interested? She groans into her hands at all the uncertainty.
"Rook," he says. Insistent. Certain.
She does something stupid. She turns back.
He's stood, brushing off his slutty little waistcoat, does he know what that does to her?? Probably.
Ass.
"I was actually coming to get you for dinner."
Rook blinks, dumbfounded from the one-eighty turnaround in conversation. But she follows, regardless.
