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It first happens on an otherwise unassuming day. Perhaps a Wednesday, not that weekdays mean much when you're an assassin, or someone trying to save the world, or both. But it's not an explicitly save-the-world day; it's a clean-up-Treviso kind of day, those of which understandably tend to be his favorites.
Anyway, they've just killed some Antaam, Rook is poking around their bodies like a magpie looking for something shiny, and Lucanis is looking around, mildly on alert but mostly a little bored, when his gaze meets that of Neve Gallus.
She holds his stare for a moment questioningly, one eyebrow arched and her chin raised in an expression quite typical of her. But then she smiles, just a quirk of the corner of her mouth, and Lucanis… Lucanis in the span of about a second feels a hundred things. A warm flush on his face. A swooping sensation around his chest. A churning of the stomach.
Oh, he thinks, and then shortly after: Mierda.
Harding notices first, because of course she does, with the clever eyes of a trained scout.
She pokes her head in his room after dinner one night, and she's grinning.
“What is it,” Lucanis says warily.
“You were staring.”
“I was not,” he denies, and then, just to make sure, asks, “At who?”
“At Neve,” Harding says, thankfully dropping her voice a little.
He winces. “I… I was not.”
Harding looks fascinated. “Shouldn't a Crow be a better liar?”
“Assassination is a career for the straightforward.”
“Wild,” she says, and then, “Anyway. You so were. You couldn't take your eyes off her. And you asked her if she liked the food. And if she wanted seconds. And offered her dessert.”
“I offered everyone dessert,” Lucanis points out.
“Not in the same way. Not like you actually cared about the answer.”
“I'm tired,” he says suddenly. “Please, I need to nap.”
Lucanis does not really know how to flirt. He knows how to kill, and to cook, and to knit, all of which are fairly straightforward and follow a pretty defined set of rules. Stab a person in the right place. Put the onions on the pan first. Knit three, purl five. Flirting, though? If there's a handbook, he's in dire need of it.
He only knows how to offer what he has, so he tries the killing first.
“You know,” Neve muses one day, “when you were assassinating all those Venatori — it's too bad Aelia missed the list.”
“Say the word, and I'll make up for it this time,” Lucanis promises, and he gets another one of those smiles for his effort, even if she doesn't seem to realize how deadly serious he is.
“So,” Taash says, and Lucanis already has a bad feeling about this conversation, because Taash has that look on their face, the really intense one, that usually means something he doesn't really want to hear is going to come out of that mouth.
“Yes?” he asks warily.
“You know,” Taash says unhelpfully.
“I do not know.”
“Yeah, you do. Your thing for Neve.”
“I do not have a—” the look they shoot him is so unimpressed that Lucanis folds immediately, if a bit defensively. “What about it?”
“It's cute.”
Lucanis pauses. And then, “What am I supposed to say to that?”
Taash just shrugs.
Neve drinks bad coffee. It's okay. Everyone has to have flaws. And it gives Lucanis an excuse to make extra in the middle of the night, and leave it out around the hours he knows she's pacing the grounds of the Lighthouse, mulling over Aelia or the gods or whatever else.
When she thanks him, in her roundabout way, he tries responding, “I'm always happy to get you a refill.”
“Careful,” Neve says. “I might take you up on that.”
Lucanis counts that one as a win.
Emmrich tugs him aside, gently with a hand to the inner elbow, when they're walking in Treviso.
“Look,” he says, pointing at a bunch of flowers, poking out between the bars of a gate from a park next to them. “Snapdragons!”
“Yes?” Lucanis says, confused. “What about them?”
“They're lovely flowers,” Emmrich says, steepling his fingers in front of his chest like he so often does, and Lucanis resigns himself to a lecture from Professor Volkarin. “Called as such because they look like a dragon's mouth. Press on the edges of the blossom, and it moves as one too. As you can see, they're quite sturdy plants, even able to thrive in a city. They often represent both graciousness and deception. Which sounds like it might be a negative aspect, but I think in this context, the intent and complimentary meaning would be understood.”
“Okay,” Lucanis sees things no clearer than before, “what context, exactly?”
“I rather thought Neve might like them,” Emmrich explains, making Lucanis carefully school his face into a blank expression. “Unless you already know what her favorite flower is?”
“I have no idea,” says Lucanis.
“Oh, dear.”
Listen, it can't be said that Lucanis isn't trying. He is. He might be bad at this and at times rather awkward without a knife in his hand, but he… well. The world might be ending, and one so rarely meets a person like her. He can't help but at least try.
“If you need fresh eyes, I'm awake anyway,” he offers one day, quietly, in hopes that Rook doesn't overhear.
“Maybe,” Neve says, but her eyes flicker over him curiously. “If you don't mind the company. It comes with wisps.”
“Wisps are nothing,” Lucanis replies, and then adds, “Besides, you're better company than Spite.”
It makes her laugh. He makes her laugh. “Really? Rumor has it I'm a pain in the ass.”
“Just pretend you're looking at Neve,” Bellara says, clasping her hands together eagerly. “It'll be good practice! Pretend it's her, and then just… you know, your feelings. Talk about them. Say them out loud. Romantically!”
Lucanis sighs. He looks up. His eyes meet Davrin's dead gaze. Neither of them want to disappoint Bellara, but also neither of them want to be doing this.
“Neve,” Lucanis tries halfheartedly, and Davrin just stares lifelessly back at him. He has to turn away. “Uh. Bellara. I don't think this is going to work.”
“Well,” says Neve, and she’s looking at him, a carefully neutral expression on her face, “you ever need a hopeless wall of clues to stare at until far too late… you know where to find me.”
Lucanis wishes he could say that he didn't think about that, tossing the words back and forth in his mind as if that would make their meaning suddenly clear to him, for the rest of the day and a good chunk of the night. But he definitely does.
So far, Spite has been blessedly uninterested in this ongoing saga. When he lets himself dwell on the fine shadow that Neve cuts, or on the crinkles at the corners of her eyes when she smiles, he gets no unwanted mental commentary. Until after Rook and Spite go into the Fade together, into his mind.
One day his eyes land on her — just, just for a brief moment, he isn't staring — and Spite says, his presence manifesting at Lucanis’ side, invisible to all others, Why her?
Some things can't be explained, Lucanis thinks back. Things like this.
Why? Spite hisses impatiently, and Lucanis can feel the frustration, and the genuine desire to understand.
How can he explain attraction? Affection? The way she feels special, important in a way that the others aren't quite? All that to a demon?
Anxiety, Spite says. Too frequent. Fix it! Tell her!
Even Spite seems to understand that he's pining.
I can't just… I'm working on it. Lucanis stares down at his plate, his thoughts a mess.
Talk. To her!
I'm trying!
Try harder!
“Lucanis, is everything alright?” He hears Rook's voice.
Blinking, he looks up. Everyone at the dinner table is staring at him, and his hand is empty, his fork having fallen to the floor when he relaxed his grip.
“Yes,” he says, ignoring Spite's continual whining. “Just… thinking.”
He wasn't planning on telling her that she, or her likeness, had been in the Fade, but the conversation with Spite stays on his mind, and so one day he clears his throat, catching her attention.
“Neve,” Lucanis starts, his voice quiet with uncertainty. “In the Fade with Rook and Spite… you were there. I mean, not you, but… you know what I mean. You helped Rook. Sort of.”
She looks at him with eyebrows raised, a hand resting casually on her hip. “Sort of? Well isn't that flattering. At least I'm on your mind.”
“You are,” he says, honestly, softly. “And not just then.”
Neve's eyes widen. That's a new look on her, one he rather likes. “I… oh,” she says, uncharacteristically at a loss. “Well, then.”
He catches her glancing at him a few more times on that mission, little looks that she quickly abandons when caught in the act. It feels like progress.
“You're sweet on Neve,” Rook says, delighted.
“Don't say it like that,” Lucanis says, a little desperately. Oh Maker, Rook knows. It's done. It's all over. Not because Rook will tell Neve. But Rook is always the last to know and if Rook knows and he still hasn't managed to make his interest known then there is truly no hope left for him.
He asks Rook if the pie is too much, and thinks he might throw himself off the Lighthouse if she says yes.
“I don't need pie. But you remembered my favorite. You find me at midnight just to talk. Maybe I like that,” she says, and Lucanis’ pounding heart grows even louder, “maybe I like…”
“Really?”
“Right,” Rook says, struggling to hide a grin and already backing her way out of the room. “I think you've got this.”
Lucanis swallows, and takes a step closer to Neve.
“You know I won’t make your life easy,” she says, but her eyes remain on him. “I don’t make anything easy.”
He laughs because it’s true. “But you do make it better.”
“I, uh… Well,” says Neve, pausing, “Don't use all your charm at once.”
“I have more than that. I hope.”
There's a moment where they just stare at each other, unsure what comes next, and then Lucanis steps yet closer.
“May I,” he starts, and then she leans in and kisses the question right from his mouth. A gentle, exploratory press of lips, with one of her hands sliding up his arm and his own making its natural way to her waist.
As they part, he presses his lips to her cheek, and her hand raises to tangle in his hair briefly before pulling away.
“I do have some papers I wanted to look over,” Neve says, and she sounds regretful. “Come find me tonight? And we can talk.”
“Alright.” Lucanis backs away reluctantly, his hand the last point of contact to leave her body.
“Besides,” Neve adds, “I think the others are waiting for you.”
He blinks. “What do you mean?”
She smirks, and nods towards the door.
With a sudden sense of trepidation, Lucanis gives her one last glance before he steps outside of Neve's room.
At the bottom of the stairs stand Harding, Taash, Emmrich, Bellara, and even Davrin (with a begrudgingly curious expression, though he was probably dragged there), with Rook a little behind them, grinning as she looks on.
“Did you tell her?” asks Bellara excitedly.
Taash sniffs the air. “Oh yeah, he definitely did.”
“Taash,” Emmrich says admonishingly. “Give him a chance to tell us himself.”
“Or we could leave them to their own business,” Davrin mutters.
Harding's beaming face outshines the sun. “You all owe me so much money.”
“Am I ever going to get to speak?” Lucanis asks.
Everyone looks at him as one, expectantly.
He wets his lips, presses them together. “I… thank you.”
Lucanis takes the last few steps down the stairs, and is greeted by smiles and friendly touch, good-natured jokes and a little eye-rolling. Despite everything, the world ending, everything that he's lost, he finds himself grateful in this moment. For Neve, for whatever may grow between them. And for these people, that he can be proud to call his friends.