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Chapter Text

His aunt and uncle had been over that night.  After dinner, when he and his cousin were meant to be shunted off into the nursery, they crept back down to eavesdrop outside of the sitting area.  Listening to adults talk about contracts fulfilled and funny stories was better than making them up in the nursery.  Plus, after dinner and drinks, they always drank coffee.  Lucanis closed his eyes and breathed in the smell.  Roasted, warm, inviting…it was his favorite smell in the world.  He couldn’t wait until he was able to do the same.

“You’re so weird,” Illario said, his voice at a whisper that wasn’t quite low enough.  Lucanis put a finger over his lips to let him know to keep it down even more.

Looking back, he was certain that their parents knew that they were there, but chose to indulge them.  Let them think that they were sneaky before their training began, and they would learn what true sneakiness entailed.  He never got the chance to ask them.  That was the same night that someone decided to take out the First Talon’s lineage.  Take away the heirs, and then go for Caterina’s head.  That night, his aunt had awoken the two of them and had them hide in a cabinet.  She had said to Illario, “Be quiet for mama,” and shut the door on them.  Lucanis didn’t know how long they sat in that cabinet, not moving, and not speaking.  He had preemptively put his hand over his cousin’s mouth to make sure he didn’t give them away, but he could tell by the way he shivered against him that he was trying his best.

Finally, after an eternity, they heard voices.  Muffled and distant, at first, but they grew clearer as they approached their hiding place.  Lucanis stayed as still as possible, because there had to be a reason his aunt scooped them from bed and hid them here.  A reason she made sure that her chatty, impulsive son knew to stay quiet.

“It is like the others,” a voice said. “No survivors.”

“Are you certain?”

Lucanis knew that voice.  It was his grandmother.  Next to him, Illario wiggled, but he still kept his mouth shut.

“Whoever did this wanted to wipe out the Dellamortes,” the first voice continued. “And end it with you.”

The others, Lucanis would later learn, were the rest of his aunts, uncles, and cousins.  At the time, he wasn’t sure what his grandmother was talking about.  He just knew that she was here and, if she was here, then the danger their aunt had feared must have passed.

“Nonna,” Illario whispered against Lucanis’s palm.

He nodded at him.  With his free hand, he pushed the door to the cabinet open.  He unfurled himself, not realizing how cramped his legs had gotten from how rigidly he had been curled up in the cabinet.  He stepped out and Illario followed, clinging to his shirt.

“Nonna,” he said.

His grandmother--and she was still just his grandmother here, and not Caterina the First Talon--widened her eyes in shock at the sight of the two of them.  It would be the first and last time that he ever saw his grandmother cry.  She dropped to her knees and threw her arms out for them.  Both he and Illario, scared and unsure of what happened (but knowing that it could not be anything good), went to her embrace.  It was also the last time he could remember her hugging either of them.

That night is a memory that creeps up on him often--not as often as others, but it comes up nonetheless.  Countless nights in the Ossuary, he felt like that little boy in the cabinet, not fully certain of what was happening around him, but aware that it wasn’t good.   And instead of his cousin shivering against him, it was Spite banging around in his skull.  He tries to move past it now, because he should count himself lucky.  He and Spite have a truce.  His grandmother is miraculously alive, and his cousin is arrested--he doesn’t know how to yet let Rook know that he made it house arrest, but that is a conversation he will have with him later.

Later, when Rook is not performing acts of grave sacrilege in Lucanis’s own kitchen.

“What are you doing?”

The sight should be unbearably lovely.  Despite Rook being an elf, they are not of too dissimilar in height, but whenever he wears his clothes, the difference in the breadth of their shoulders allows Lucanis’s shirts to drape over his lithe, lean body in the best way.  Especially moments like this, when he is clearly wearing nothing else beneath the shirt.  He stands at the kettle, the shirt slipping from one narrow shoulder and his black hair still sleep-tousled and falling in his brilliantly green eyes, committing atrocities.  He holds Solas’s dagger under his cup of coffee.  The lyrium dagger glows slightly as the air around him grows chilly.  It is not the casualness of him using pure, raw lyrium for a mundane task that gives him pause, but what he is doing with it.  To coffee.

“I like my coffee iced,” he says.

He has to remind himself that this is the love of his life.

“Besides, after I tricked Solas with the fake one, this one turned up afterwards.  Might as well make good use of it.” Rook spins the gold loop of the handle around one finger before placing the dagger on the counter next to the kettle.

“By doing horrible things to coffee in my home?” Lucanis asks.

Rook turns, his full and pouting lips cricked up at the corners. “I thought you said this was our home now.”

He takes him in.  The collar of his shirt on him dips low enough to see a bit of the tattoo of the crow’s head on his chest.  He sips his revolting, ice cold coffee and peers at him over the rim of the cup.

“It is,” he assures him.

Rook smiles and sets his cup down. “To be honest, I was kind of hoping you wouldn’t come in and see that.  I know--and usually love--how passionate you get about coffee.”

Lucanis draws closer to him. “It is fine.”

He doesn’t know if he fully means it, but he loves Rook enough to overlook it once the initial shock has passed.  He is his moon and stars.  A fellow Crow.  The man who rescued him.  The one who wouldn’t let Lucanis retreat into the shadows under the guise of protecting those around him from Spite.

He puts his arms around Rook’s waist and pulls him close.  Rook reaches up to card his fingers through his hair and presses a kiss to his lips.  He tastes like diluted coffee.  When they break the kiss, he keeps their faces close.

“Before you saw what I was doing, you looked like you were deep in thought.  What’s going on in that busy head of yours this morning?”

“Ah, I was just thinking about a time from my childhood,” he says, because it’s easiest to relay it like that.

“That could go either way,” Rook says with a chuckle.

“It can.” It occurs to him that he doesn’t know much about Rook’s life prior to meeting him.  He listened to Lucanis tell him details of his life and his training under Caterina, but kept quiet on anything that happened to him before he joined the Crows. “Does it for you?”

Rook leans back in his embrace, arching his back in a stretch. “It can.  I was brought into House de Riva when I was eight.”

That’s young, even for a Crow.  Lucanis’s training began around then, but he and Illario were special circumstances.  To them, being a Crow was a family business.

“Where were you before?”

“The Trevisan alienage,” he replies. “After my family was killed, I was snatched up real quick.”

He thinks back to the cabinet and, instead, pictures Rook in his place.

“I know that look.” Rook laughs and pulls from Lucanis’s embrace to take another sip of coffee. “I know we’ve got that in common.”

Lucanis draws up next to him and picks up the kettle to pour his own cup.  He doesn’t touch the dagger to make it cold, of course.  He can allow Rook’s desecration, but he will not partake in it himself.

“What happened?”

One thing that the two of them know is murder.  They’re assassins.  They deal death and take in death every day.  He doesn’t think much of asking how the death occurred, even if it--like the night his own parents were killed--must still weigh on him.

“My mother pissed off the wrong guy,” he says, his usually airy and jocular tone gone. “And, naturally, everyone but her had to pay for it.”

“Your mother?” Lucanis savors the smell of his coffee briefly before he takes a sip.  The warmth of it spreads in his body.  Spite, now just a tickle at the back of his head, thrums in delight at the smell.

“Yeah.  My mother is a con woman and my father was Dalish--or so she says.  My mother is a lot of things, but number one is that she’s a liar.  Only thing I really know for sure is that my dad was another elf.  Y’know.  Considering.” He gestures at himself and laughs.  One small tidbit of his past Rook had given them in their travels was telling Davrin that he had gotten someone in the city to give him the vallaslin he has on his forehead. “Anyway, one of her marks got mad that she ripped him off, so he showed up one night and killed everyone but me.”

“Or your mother?”

Rook makes a disgusted face and shakes his head.

“Nope.  She was always gone on some con or the other and only showed up every now and then to ‘teach me the family trade.’  I was raised by her sisters and cousins and some people I called aunts, but I don’t think that I was actually related to.” He gestures away from himself with the coffee cup. “So of course she wasn’t there the night that guy showed up.  I still don’t know how I managed to kill him, but it was apparently good enough for the Crow that was watching alienage brats for potential recruits to take notice.”

He knows that Rook telling him this is him trusting him.  Lucanis has seen him take in everyone else’s pain and try to help without giving any of his own.  He sets his coffee down so he can pull him back into his embrace.

“It’s not so bad,” Rook assures him. “Most Crows have similar stories, yeah?  And things got better once Viago was made Fifth Talon.  The guy before him was the worst.   At least Vi’s got a heart.  Under all the poison, I mean.”

Lucanis doesn’t tell him that it is a well known fact that Viago has a soft spot for him.  Teia teases him over it mercilessly when the Talons gather.  He is one of the few to still call him “Pasco” rather than Rook.  Rook has said that Lucanis can call him that and he does, sometimes, but he typically sticks to Rook.

“All that shit with Ferelden was starting to happen around when I got recruited, anyway,” Rook continues.

“I still have never been,” Lucanis agrees.  Rook is a few years younger than him, but by the time Lucanis was a fully fledged crow, the Ferelden ban was already in place.

“Yeah, me neither.  Harding said she’d--” Rook chokes a bit and puts his hand over his mouth.  His already large eyes widen even more.

They are assassins.  They’re used to death and murder.  He can see it in the way that Rook can talk about what happened when he was a child.  But this--what happened in the battle with the Gods--it hits him harder.  Weighs on him more.  Lucanis has spent many a night brushing Rook’s hair back from his forehead and saying that he beat regret’s prison, because he knows that Harding’s death wasn’t actually his fault.

He wipes his hand over his face and pushes back the hair that likes to hang over his forehead.

“Right, um.  So.  Teia tells me that you’ve been visiting your cousin a lot.  Is that where you’re heading after coffee or is there important, First Talon business you have to deal with?”

Rook speaks quickly, his intent to change the subject obvious.  Perhaps this is time to broach the subject.  Despite the heavy topics of conversation, Rook feels relaxed in his arms.

“I have been meaning to talk to you about that.”

“About what?  Talon things?  You heard Caterina.” Rook scrunches up his face and says, in a fairly spot-on impression of his grandmother, “‘Lucanis, he saved you, me, and Thedas, but he is not a Talon.  Stop telling him everything.’”

Lucanis tries not to laugh, because he’s certain that that would get back to her.

“It is about my cousin.”

“What did he do now?”

Rook steps away once more to sip from his cup.  He hums a bit at the taste, though Lucanis can’t imagine that it could be that good.

“He is being moved.”

“To where?”

“To here.”

Rook’s hand freezes with his cup partway to his lips for another drink.

“To here?” He looks at him and says, “Luca…are you sure?  After all he’s done?”

He nods.  Illario being put on house arrest was not a decision he made easily but he realized that he would much rather have his cousin nearby, both because he wants to keep an eye on him and because they were always together.  From that time in the cabinet up until Lucanis’s capture, they were together in some way.  Even if they had separate contracts, they would reconvene when each returned home.  Being without him feels off.

“He regrets what he’s done and who he allied with, and I believe him.”

“Wasn’t his skill as a Crow lying really well?”

Lucanis shakes his head. “It was seducing, and--I know when my cousin is lying.  And he knows it, too.  It’s why he would storm off whenever we would start sniffing around finding him out.”

Rook still seems skeptical.  Lucanis averts his gaze and picks his own cup back up.  He takes a long pull from it, the initial scald now just a pleasant warmth in the time since it cooled.  When he places the cup down, he can feel Rook’s gaze on him.

“Listen,” he says. “This is your call and if you say he’s fine to be here, I trust you.”

And Lucanis knows that, despite seeing what he does to coffee, that this is the man he loves and is meant to be with.

--

Sometimes Rook thinks that he still doesn’t deserve the life he has.  Not after everything.  How he is allowed to be alive when Harding is gone, when Varric is gone, when Bellara is still shaking off what Elgar’nan did to her.  Why does Rook get to live in a beautiful villa with the love of his life?  But he’s always felt that way.  Why was he the one who lived when that man came into the alienage to get revenge against his mother?  He wonders if Lucanis feels the same about surviving the massacre of the Dellamorte family.  If he thinks some of his other cousins or his parents should still be alive.  It’s not that Rook thinks that he ought to have died in their place, but he thinks that it’s unfair that they don’t get to be alive at all.  He has never really subscribed to the Andrastian religion--he never really got their thing about suffering.  When he was young and heard about his father, he had worshiped the elven pantheon, even going so far as to pay a guy to give him a semblance of vallaslin on his forehead, but that’s out the window as well--for obvious reasons.  But, even if he never got the whole “this is the Maker’s will” bullshit, he still thinks he probably ought to be punished a little for it.

Rook paces in one of the sitting rooms, turning these tumultuous thoughts over and over in his head.  At least Lucanis can’t see him like this.  He’s in the other room, talking to his cousin.  Rook had peeked in on them for a moment, just enough for Illario to lift the leg on his trousers to show the enchantment around his ankle that bound him to the villa.  He can still hear them through the wall.  Neither cousin is quite arguing with the other, but their voices are slightly raised.  Rook doesn’t worry about that, though.  That’s how Antivans are.  He didn’t even realize it himself until he traveled around with Varric--properly traveled rather than keeping to the shadows for contracts--and saw how much louder he was than other people.  So Lucanis and Illario speaking to each other in a way that is loud, but in a way that is not yelling is a good sign.

He pauses his frantic pacing to tune into what they’re saying.  Rook tells himself it’s not eavesdropping.  He’s getting his mind off of his own racing thoughts and also, he’s worried about Lucanis.  He said that he never even entertained the thought that his cousin could have betrayed him.  Rook fears that he’s his blind spot.  He trusts Lucanis, but he also doesn’t want him to get hurt again.

“This isn’t charity,” he hears Lucanis say through the wall. “Or mercy.”

“I did not think it was.  Caterina wants to keep a closer eye on me.”

“So do I.”

There is a pause long enough that makes Rook feel tempted to stick his head in the other room and check on them, but then Lucanis speaks again.

“I missed you, and I miss trusting you.  I want to get there again.  I want you to prove that I can have you by my side.”

“Well, you’ll have me.”

Those four, disembodied words stick in Rook’s mind.  He has heard them before, with the exact same inflection and in the exact same tone.  A vague memory resurfaces from a few years ago.  He was at some celebration--House Arainai had a new Talon again after another was murdered--and he was well beyond drunk.  There was a man, equally drunk, talking to him.  He was flirting, and Rook flirted right back.  He remembers only flashes of him: straight, white teeth, styled hair, a long and lean body.  A long and lean body he remembers, because he definitely had wild, drunken sex with this guy.  Before they’d gone to an empty room, he had said something about being too drunk to ward off a knife and the man had laughed and said, “Well, you’ll have me.”

It had sounded exactly, exactly how Illario said it just now.  Rook squeezes his eyes shut and takes himself back to the memory.  Before everything with the Gods, before Varric, back when he was just another Crow of House de Riva, drunk at a celebration.  A man with full, sensual lips, and perfectly styled hair, laughing.  He remembers watching the smooth column of his throat.  Rook tries to concentrate on sorting his drunken, hazy thoughts from years ago to remember the man’s face, but he thinks he already knows whose it was.  Ice cold dread grips his spine.

“Maker,” he mutters. “When I said I probably should be punished a little, I didn’t mean this.”

--

Rook decides to convene the council of elves--by which, he means that he gets together with Bellara and Davrin.  He doesn’t tell them that he’s coming to them for advice solely because Neve is on a case and isn’t available to hear him out.  Still, the two of them are some of his closest friends.  Harding is gone, Taash will laugh at him, and it’s embarrassing to tell any of this to Emmrich.

A bonus to saving the world, maybe, but they still have use of the Crossroads and the Lighthouse.  Rook vastly prefers Villa Dellamorte, but there is a comfort to returning here.  They sit at the table in the dining hall.  Assan is flopped in front of the fire, letting out little coos of delight at the crackling flames.

“So, what happened?” Davrin asks.

Rook buries his face in his hands.

“I had sex with Illario,” he says.

He peeks past his fingers to see Bellara’s eyes widen.

“You mean, just now?”

“No!” he exclaims, making a slicing motion with his hand to send the thought away. “I mean, like, three years ago.”

Davrin frowns and crosses his arms over his chest.

“What’s the big deal, then?”

Rook gestures emphatically with his hands as he speaks.

“The big deal is that it’s something that might…I don’t know.  Hurt Lucanis.”

Bellara messes with the dangling metal parts of her earring, her lips pursed in thought.

“Well, why didn’t you?  Tell him, I mean.”

Davrin nods in agreement. “I feel like the fact that you slept with the cousin that betrayed him is pretty crucial information to give.”

Rook realizes that the truth will make him look exceedingly bad, but he also reasons that it is probably better than them thinking he was withholding the information from Lucanis the entire time.

“I only just remembered it,” he says. “And I don’t think he remembers it, either.  We were both really, really drunk.”

“Of course you were.” Despite the chastisement, Rook can see Davrin’s lips twitching with suppressed laughter.

Rook spreads his hands out over the gouged, worn wood of the table.

“The question is…should I tell him?”

“You definitely should,” Bellara says. “It could just come out, and make things worse.  If Lucanis finds out another way, he might get upset, and run off on an extremely dangerous contract.  And then he gets captured and badly injured, leaving you needing to save him so you can make up.”

Rook eyes her warily.

“Bell, do not put any of this in your story.”

She sits up straight in her chair and looks everywhere but at him.

“What makes you think I would do that?”

“Maybe the fact that you just described, in detail, an entire dramatic scenario?” Davrin asks, quirking a brow.  To Rook, he says, “If neither of you remember it, it might make it worse to bring up now.  But.  If Lucanis does find out, it should be from you.”

Rook knows that he’s right on both counts, and so does Assan, who lets out a little chirp.

“Alright,” he says after a moment. “You’re both right.”

Assan lets out another chirp, this one more indignant.

“You’re all right,” he amends. “I’ll tell him.  Just cut it off at the pass so we can move past it.”

“It was years ago,” Davrin says. “I don’t know why he’d still be upset.”

While that is true, Rook doesn’t want to tell him that he doesn’t know Antivans.  He thinks, as one, he can make generalizations about his culture, and it’s that they like to hold grudges.  Crows, especially.  Killing is killing and contracts are contracts, but betrayal is something else.  It’s probably why he still holds what happened in the alienage against his mother when he hasn’t seen her for over twenty years.  Hopefully, Lucanis will be at least a little more forgiving.

--

A book lies open in his lap, but Lucanis would be lying if he said that he had read any of it.  He opened it to pass the time while Rook was away and to stop himself from spying on his cousin.  He knows it was the right move to bring him home, but he also knows that--even if he wishes it to--things will not go back to how they were between them.  Right now, he knows that Illario is sprawled dramatically on the bed in the room that had been set up for him, probably flung back with his arm over his face the way he would when they were children and he didn’t get his way (which was often).  Even so, despite everything, he feels better with him here.  Someone else to fill this massive villa and make it feel less empty.

It has been so long since either of them lived here.  When they were very small, they would race each other through the large rooms on stockinged feet, slipping and sliding as they went.  Like most things, it was used as training by Caterina even if they, at the time, thought of it as a game.

He knows, to some degree, that he is lucky.  He saw what happened with Bellara’s brother and Taash’s mother.  His grandmother not only came back to him, but he didn’t have to make the decision about killing his cousin.  Lucanis gets to keep his family, and he gets Rook.  Rook, who has been out almost all day.  He tries to think much about it.  Rook is in high demand, the way people always get when someone saves Thedas.  Even with the Ferelden ban, Lucanis heard about the reason for it--the Hero of Ferelden ending the Blight with the help of an Antivan Crow he swayed to his side.  After that, everyone wanted to get their hands on the Warden.  The Champion of Kirkwall, the king of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, also was sought after to help the Inquisition from what Harding told him.  Everyone slobbers after the Inquisitor, even now.  It would make sense that Rook is next in line.  Just the other day, he had received a letter from the Prince of Starkhaven, leading him to look at Lucanis and say, “Who the fuck is Sebastian Vael?”

Still, more proof that he is lucky is that, even with everyone wanting a piece of him, Rook comes home to him.   As if on cue, Rook walks into the sitting room, holding something wrapped in his hands.

“What is this?” Lucanis asks when he drops it on his lap, right on top of the book.

“A special roast.  Davrin found it and gave it to me to give to you.”

He cocks a brow. “You saw Davrin roday?”

Rook nods and sits on the arm of Lucanis’s chair.  He reaches over to run his fingers lightly over his back.

“I did.  I had to convene the council of elves.”

He chuckles a bit.

“You know that no one calls it that but you.”

“Bell does!” he says defensively.

“Right, right,” he allows. “Anyway, was there a pressing reason for it?”

Lucanis tries not to let worry creep into his words.  While he lives a life of danger and always has, he would like to think on a smaller scale for a while versus world-shattering problems like those they just faced.

Rook stills. “Well.  I needed their advice on something…that I have to tell you.”

He looks down for a moment, staring at his knotted together fingers where they sit on his lap.

“What is it?”

He draws in a breath and says, “I slept with your cousin.”

Of all the things he was expecting to hear, that wasn’t one of them.  Lucanis feels like someone poured ice water all over him.  The hand he had been using to stroke Rook’s back drops down over the arm of the chair.

“What?” he demands. “As in, today?”

Rook shakes his head. “No, no.  Like…a few years ago.  It was at one of the House Arainai new Talon things--you know, when the Black Storm was ripping through them, and then that thing with Emil on the island and all that.”

That, at least, is far more preferable to finding out that Illario had been in the house for less than a day and had already bedded Lucanis’s lover.

“Why did you never tell me before?”

Rook winces and reaches up to toy with the errant strands of braided hair that is tucked behind one pointed, delicate ear.

“So…this is going to sound bad, but.  I didn’t remember until today,” he says with another wince. “We were both really, really drunk.  I didn’t even realize it was him until I heard him through the wall say something he’d said to me that night and I remembered.  I don’t think he remembers either, if it helps.”

Lucanis turns his words over in his head.  Rook has admitted to him that he was fairly cavalier with his romantic life prior to all of this.  He said that Lucanis is the first person that he has ever wanted to commit to, really commit to.  Before the Ossuary, Lucanis knew he focused on jobs more than his personal life.  So much was mapped out for him, but it wasn’t like he was chaste.  Yes, he thought more with the head above his belt than his cousin did, but he lived life fully.   He wasn’t going to judge Rook for his past any more than he would want to be judged for his.  He doesn’t know how to articulate that, though, so he tries for a bit of humor.

“Pasco,” he says, and he watches Rook’s cheeks tinge pink at the mention of his actual name. “If I limited myself only to people that hadn’t slept with my cousin, I would have a remarkably narrow dating pool.”

That gets a small laugh out of him.

“I am glad you told me.  That you feel…comfortable enough to be honest.”

Spite doesn’t quite agree, but Spite isn’t the one in a relationship.  Lucanis closes his eyes briefly and shushes the demon with a thought.

“I was worried it would hurt you,” Rook says. “I don’t want anything to ever hurt you again.”

With one hand, he pushes the bag of coffee beans and the book from Lucanis’s lap and replaces it with himself.

“Hurt is inevitable,” Lucanis says.  He places his hands on Rook’s waist, rubbing his thumbs along his hip bones. “But I appreciate the sentiment.”

“I love you,” Rook says. “I was so worried this would make me lose you.”

“Blighted Gods couldn’t separate us, why would your romantic history?”

“Well, when you put it that way…”

Rook leans down and kisses him.  As he does, he wiggles his hips into Lucanis’s groin.  He lets out a soft moan into Rook’s mouth.

“So,” he says, breaking the kiss. “We go to our bedroom to… celebrate our openness and honesty with each other and, afterwards, I take that nice new coffee Davrin got me and make us a pot.  A hot pot of coffee.”

Rook gets a mischievous look.

“I still have the dagger, and it has an ice rune,” he warns.

“I can look past you sleeping with Illario, but I don’t know if I will be quite so forgiving about what you do to coffee.”

Lucanis gets to his feet, taking Rook with him.  He feels his legs lock around his waist and his hands around his neck.

“Well, too bad, you’re stuck with me and my cold coffee.  Lucky you.”

He thinks that telling Rook that they are both lucky--that they are here and alive to joke with one another--is laying it on too thick, so he just kisses him once more before carrying him out of the sitting room and towards their bedroom.

Chapter Text

It likely is not a wise choice to go to a celebration where there will be copious amounts of alcohol in a dismal mood, but Pasco has never made a habit of making wise choices.  Drinking, at least, will take his mind off of the fact of his supremely inconvenient feelings for his Talon.  It isn’t like he truly planned on developing feelings for Viago--if they could even be called that--but he is the most consistent person in his life.  He knows that it’s fruitless.  Viago is incredibly discerning.  With wine, with food, with everything.   He covers himself from neck to feet and winces when someone places a hand on him.  Pasco doesn’t think that he could be with him long term.  No one can, not even Teia, and she can handle him like no one else.  Nevertheless, whenever Viago rolls his eyes at him or calls him an idiot, he can’t help but picture his mouth on his.

The wine is flowing.  House Arainai truly believes that this Talon will last for some time, especially since the Crows are attempting some semblance of unification and cohabitation due to everything happening with the Antaam.  Everyone around him is in a celebratory mood, but Pasco can see that their shoulders are still locked and their necks are tensed.  Teia pushing for the First Talon to bring her more idealistic view of the Crows closer to reality may be happening, but no one can get assassins to fully let their guards down.  Pasco thinks he might be as close as he would ever be, anyway.  Every time he drains his wine glass, someone comes along with another to replace it.  If he doesn’t notice the glass disappearing and reappearing, it is as if the amount never diminishes.

He’s seeing double by the time the trays bearing antipasto are done circulating, and triple shortly thereafter.  He closes one eye to watch Viago up talking to the other Talons.  His arms are crossed and his gaze is pointed as it always is.  Pasco wonders that, if he ever smiled, if he would look downright adorable or that the gesture would be so out of place on him that it would be frightening.  He spins on one foot to turn around and wrench his gaze from him, only to slam into someone standing behind him.

“Oh, mierda,” he grumbles. “Ir abelas.”

How drunk am I that I’m mixing languages?

Pasco knows some degree of the Elven language from growing up in the alienage and hearing about his father, the supposed Dalish spy who swept his mother off his feet.  Right.  He knows that his mother is a liar.  His father was probably another elf from the tavern or something.  Or he was a liar, too.  He doesn’t know if she’s alive, but she likely is.  His mother is skilled at getting into trouble, but she is even more skilled at getting herself out of it.

“It’s alright.”

The first thing he notices is that the guy he bumped into isn’t much taller than he is, which is something Pasco has always appreciated about his fellow Antivans.  He had a job in the Free Marches once, and he had seen some of the transplants from Ferelden that fled there after the Fifth Blight.  He’d felt like he was lost in a forest of particularly burly trees.

The second thing he notices is that he smells really, really good.

He smells like wine, of course.  Just those two spoken words have let Pasco know that he was nearly as drunk as he was, if not at the same level.  He could smell the wine on his breath.  But, below that, whatever he doused himself in before the party smells inviting.  Alluring.

In his blurred vision, Pasco can make out a straight, even nose, and a full, pouting mouth full of grinning, white teeth.  How lucky this man is that he can have had as much wine as he definitely has had and not have stained teeth.  Pasco doesn’t want to think about the current state of his own mouth.

He lifts his gaze a little higher to find himself staring deeply into the man’s dark eyes.  He loves dark eyes, probably because his eyes aren’t.  His mother said his father had green eyes, but all Pasco knows is that they’re so much more sensitive to the sun to the point that he’s almost constantly squinting.  Thankfully, being a Crow, he does most of his business at night.

It occurs to him, then, that after crashing into him, Pasco has braced his hands against his chest to keep himself from tumbling over.  A chest that he can feel is quite nice under the samite of his shirt.  The shirt is also cut lower, exposing more skin and a thin, gold chain.  He also notices, near that deliciously exposed chest, is an emblem on his shirt that more than likely matches a tattoo somewhere on his body that matches his house.  Pasco has several for being a Crow and being part of House de Riva all over his own body.  The emblem on the shirt, though, is telling enough without the accompanying tattoo.  A crow skull, viewed from above.

“Oh.  You’re from House Dellamorte,” he says.

While other Crows are brought into the Houses and adopt the surname, as Pasco did, House Dellamorte--the House of the First Talon herself--is blood family only.  As such, it currently only has three members: Caterina, and her two grandsons.

“I am,” he says, laughing.

“Are you the Demon of Vyrantium?” he asks, excited.

His voice comes out a degree or two colder when he says, “No.  That is my cousin.”

Pasco blinks his eyes twice and works his lips off of his teeth.  They feel numb and his lips won’t stop sticking to them.  It’s making talking difficult.

“Oh.   You’re the sexy one, then.  Right?  Ignazio?”

“Illario,” he corrects. “But…I will give you that assessment.”

He smiles, showing serious dimples.  Pasco knows that he is drunk, unhappy, and caught in a whirlwind of complicated feelings towards his Talon.  The room is spinning and, without meaning to, he places his head on Illario’s shoulder.

“I’m so drunk,” he tells him. “I don’t think I’d be able to even ward a knife off right now.”

“If it comes to that, well, you’ll have me,” he says, laughing again.  His own words are slurred as well.

“Will I?” Pasco asks, lifting his head.

Viago is unattainable.  He knows this.  Illario, though, is handsome and smells good and is here, holding Pasco around the waist when he caught him during his stumble.  As many stories as he’s heard about the Demon of Vyrantium, he knows that the other grandson has a reputation as well.  Pasco knows he shares a similar nature of flirtation and seduction.  Thus, he can’t be all that surprised when he finds himself in a spare room upstairs, on his knees, with his cock in his mouth.

Or when they wound up on the bed with Pasco’s chest pressed into the mattress and his ass in the air.  Or when they switched positions and he had Illario against the wall.  Or dangling from the chandelier in whoever’s bedroom they had taken over.  Everything is swirling in his head, and they brought more wine into bed with them.  It stains the white sheets like blood as they take turns pouring it into each other’s mouths and then sharing a kiss.

Afterwards, Pasco lies bonelessly on the bed, watching the ceiling tilt and spin above him.  He sits up to assess the damage they did to the room, and he has a feeling neither of them will be welcome at any gathering House Arainai holds for some time if their new Talon finds out who did this to the bedchambers.  The chandelier hangs at a tilt and, somehow, Pasco’s smallclothes are dangling off of it.  The sheets are a sticky mess of come and wine.  There is a hole in one wall and the flocked, Orlesian wallpaper on the opposite wall is pulled back and peeling.  He looks over his shoulder to see that the headboard is cracked, and there is a mark in the wall from where they had repeatedly slammed it.

Maker’s balls, did we have sex or did we set off a bunch of fire grenades in here?

Next to him, Illario is spread out on his stomach, his perfectly perky, round ass bare and in the air.  He’s spitting out feathers from a pillow he had managed to destroy.  Paso sees that his perfectly, ruthlessly styled hair is an absolute mess, so he can only guess what his own looks like.

Pasco puts a hand to his temple to stop the spinning in his head.  He is still pretty drunk.  His stomach churns, unused to doing so much activity when there is as much wine in it as there is now.

“Ugggh,” Illario mumbles. “That was…wonderful.  You were wonderful.”

“Back at you,” Pasco says.

He watches him weakly pull himself up onto his arms, noting that his face is almost tinged green.

“Are you alright?” he asks.

He gives him a shaky, queasy version of that charming, dimpled grin he gave Pasco at the party.

“Oh, yes, I am--” He cuts himself off with a hrk sound before diving off the bed and towards the chamberpot.  He barely makes it before he’s retching his insides out, the sound of it clanging off of the metal.

“I’ll try not to take this personally,” Pasco tells him.

Illario finishes and lifts his head from the rim of the pot.  With the back of his hand, he wipes across his mouth.  Spittle, tinged red from the wine, clings to his chin.

“Don’t.  It’s just too much wine and too much, ah, tussling.”

“Right.” Not that Pasco can blame him.  He’s fighting against his own regurgitation, concentrating on sitting up in the bed and keeping it in. “Well, vomit aside, this was a lot of fun.”

“A time to remember,” Illario agrees from his spot wilted over the chamberpot.

“Absolutely.”

--

A Missive from House Arainai

Whoever destroyed the main bedchambers on the second floor owes me six hundred sovereigns worth of damage in addition to two hundred sovereigns for the pain and suffering my staff went through having to deal with the…stains left on the rugs and bed covers

A message attached from Viago, bearing House de Riva’s emblem

Pasco?  You disappeared at one point at the celebration.  Do not think that I didn’t notice

Small, precise, rounded scrawl under Viago’s message

I am going to be honest, I have zero recollection of anything after antipasto

A message from Caterina Dellamorte, First Talon of the Crows

I have asked my grandson (you know which one), and he is certain that he remembers nothing between arriving and waking up the next morning at Villa Dellamorte.  I will go ahead and send the sovereigns as a precaution in the event that he was at all responsible.

Swirling, looping, showy, and dramatic script below Caterina’s message

Nonna, you are embarrassing me!