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A Thing Called Hunger

Chapter 25: Scruffy

Notes:

And now to interrupt our plot for some pointless smut.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

A Thing Called Hunger

 

It wasn’t that Lucanis expected enthusiasm from her.

 

He just hadn’t been expecting her to look at him like he had thrust a dagger into her stomach instead of simply handing her a straight-edge razor.

 

“Do you hate me?” Rook asked, gray eyes wet.

 

X

 

Lucanis should’ve known he was walking into trouble the second he had entered the dining hall to see it packed with Lighthouse companions. Nothing good ever happened when they were amassed without something to hit.

 

“So, wait, what was yours then?” Taash asked. They were sitting backward in a chair, arms draped over the headrest, making it look diminutive.

 

“I was already Scout Harding,” Harding said.

 

Taash snorted. “That’s not a nickname though. It’s just your last name and your job.”

 

“Maybe Varric was running out of inspiration by the time he met you,” Neve offered. Lucanis saw her by the coffee rack and said a small prayer for the beans.

 

Harding rolled her eyes. “Whatever, Slick.”

 

“So what would mine be then?” Gull asked, arms akimbo.

 

Harding studied Gull, nose scrunching. “Probably something like Squawk.”

 

“What?!” Gull squawked.

 

“I still fail to see the originality of Bones,” Emmrich grumbled into his mug.

 

He shouldn’t. He really shouldn’t.

 

But “What are you talking about?” was out of his mouth before he could reconsider the consequences of the question.

 

The small party glanced up from where they were gathered around the fireplace, no meal served to justify their combined presence.

 

“What Varric’s nicknames for everyone would have been,” Harding answered, a dash of pain flitting across her eyes before she hid it with the wideness of her smile. “He had one for everyone. It was kind of his thing.”

 

“We’ve all unanimously agreed that he would’ve called Rook Teeth,” Neve said, blowing steam from a suspicious cup of coffee that made Lucanis rethink his initial venture. Yes, he always brewed another, but sometimes the taste from before lingered like a vengeful ghost sent to haunt taste buds.

 

Our Teeth! Spite piped up from the back of his skull with too much venom, not understanding the situation.

 

Taash gaze narrowed on him, zeroing in on prey that had just scampered into their encampment. “What would Lucanis’s be then?”

 

Gazes swung his way. Lucanis held up his hand, backing up. “No,” he began to say.

 

“Scruffy!” Harding declared with too much passion. Heads nodded in agreement, one by one, traitors all of them.

 

He froze in his retreat, flight turning to fight. “I am not scruffy!”

 

“You’re a little scruffy,” Gull amended.

 

X

 

Lucanis examined himself in the mirror over the sink of his and Rook’s bedroom, turning his head this way and that.

 

It was true he had perhaps let his grooming regime grow lax ever since escaping the Ossuary, taking up this contract. Seeing his reflection for the first time in a year had been jarring, but shaving and trimming hadn’t exactly been concerns amongst the captives. (How rude of Zara not to consider.)

 

Before, his self-care had been immaculate. While he had never committed to Illario’s waxing, he had taken pride in a well-kept image. A nightly shave was done to keep prickles from dotting his cheeks by morning. Bi-weekly trims to his chest, arms, and eyebrows kept that hair from growing unruly. Monthly barber appointments kept his mane tamed at the nape of his neck.

 

He hadn’t quite been able to pick all of that back up, hadn’t wanted to take a blade that close to his neck, not when Spite could seize control at any moment. Even when he had begun to trust the demon, it had been too much of a mental load amongst everything else, committing himself to the arduous task of grooming it down. It would’ve taken two razors alone, possibly, to get the full thatch of his beard off and his cheeks slick once more.

 

He had at least been able to maintain somewhat of a trimming routine to keep himself from looking too unkempt but...scruffy?

 

He had never put much thought into his appearance, so he wasn’t sure if he was pleasing to look at or if he inspired pity. He scarcely understood what physical qualities amounted to attractiveness on a unified scale, would rather take a blade to his wrist than be forced to pick out features amongst strangers.

 

But...he hadn’t thought he had been bad-looking. Rook had never given him any kind of indication she found him displeasing. Then again...perhaps she was only sparing him.

 

Purple vapors coalesced in a smokey afterimage behind him. Don’t see any problem. We are perfect!

 

Lucanis ran a hand down his cheek, feeling the sharp rasp of his coarse hair under his palm

 

A memory broke through all his careful barricading. His father, standing before a mirror every morning, cheeks sudsy and wielding a straight-edge razor like it was one of his knives. Lucanis had often padded in just to watch the routine, somewhat mesmerized by how close the blade came without nicking.

 

For your mother, his father had said once, after he asked why he did this task. He could recall her playful shrieks once, when he had prolonged it for that morning and he had greeted her by rubbing his stubbly check against the nape of her neck, her delicate skin reddening under the onslaught.

 

He recalled just that morning, his arms winding around Rook as she stirred awake, the nuzzling of his cheek leaving the column of her neck faintly red when he drew back to look. They often liked to lay naked or in their smalls, so there was scant protection against his assault.

 

Selfishly, he had liked the claim of it, hadn’t thought to ask her if she minded.

 

Spite stirred, brow furrowing as he examined the memory alongside him. He felt the demon’s conviction waver. If it’s for Rook, our Teeth…

 

X

 

He hadn’t wanted to shock her, have her come back from Dock Town to find him bare-faced. While he didn’t know much about relationships (and even less about ones with demons), he knew enough to know that changing one’s appearance should at least be something discussed beforehand. He had thought they could make something of a moment out of it. He could picture her standing between his legs, bent over him, his hands on her waist as her attention remained affixed on him. He wouldn’t mind baring his neck for her. They had a sink and Lucanis had pestered Emmrich for some shaving cream.

 

This line of thinking proved to be fortuitous as Rook gazed at him, looking like she had been gutted. (He shuddered to think of her reaction if he had already committed this transgression. He might’ve had to stop her from pitching herself from the balcony.)

 

“If you hate me, you could just say it,” she continued.

 

Lucanis checked that it was in fact a razor he handed her and not, say, cyanide.

 

“I only meant—. I was just considering shaving, Rook—.”

 

Her eyes rounded and he was horrified to glean wetness shimmering there. “You want to break up?!”

 

Was he speaking in tongues? Had he slipped through a Fade crack and been spat out into a mirror world that was like his own except the act of shaving was tantamount to regicide?

 

Even Spite could not follow the happenings, just a coiled mass of agitation crouched there behind his eyes, distress spiking his own.

 

“I fear there may be some miscommunication here,” he started to say.

 

Rook cut him off. “Did I do something wrong?! Say something I wasn’t meant to?!” She was still clutching the razor, knuckles bone-white. “You have to tell me if I do. I can’t—. I don’t always understand social graces. So whatever error I made, I am sorry. But you don’t have to resort to—. To—!”

 

We made her mad, scared. Fix it! Fix! Spite urged.

 

He would if he knew how.

 

Panic had him grasping the razor from her, glad for its leather sheathe, then chucking it out the window, watching as it pitched over the railing to fall forever.

 

...He only just remembered he had borrowed the razor from Emmrich as well, vowed to make a trip to Nevarra to replace it before the necromancer could think of doing anything funny with his corpse. 

 

Rook immediately settled once it was out of sight. “...That was a bit dramatic,” she told him. “You didn’t have to throw it.”

 

He stared at her. “I’m the one being dramatic?”

 

A flash of white as her bottom lip disappeared and a flush rose in her cheeks. “I suppose I could’ve handled it better.”

 

X

 

Rook had half a mind to throw herself after the razor, ashamed of how she had acted.

 

But in her defense, she had been startled, coming back from Dock Town smelling like fish, only wanting to curl up in bed with Lucanis and being met with the precipice of devastation instead.

 

Shave. He wanted to shave. Where in the Fade had he gotten a crazy notion like that?

 

...Somehow she felt Gull had a hand in this, vowed to make another threat of eating her and meaning it this time.

 

He was staring at her, brows still raised, and she knew she owed him an explanation, maybe even an apology.

 

“Who said you should shave?” fell out of her mouth instead, words accusatory.

 

“No one said I should. I just—,” he floundered. “I wasn’t like this before—. I don’t want you to think of me as displeasing—.”

 

“Who said I think of you as displeasing?” Oh, someone was most definitely getting eaten.

 

“You haven’t said anything to the contrary,” he argued.

 

Had she verbally told him she wanted to lick every inch of him, hair and all? That she wanted to gnaw on the corded swell of his muscles and nuzzle her cheek against his bearded one? No, because she thought it had been understood and such frank confessions were sometimes found disturbing on this side of the Veil, that such an ardor of naked emotion was frowned upon. She thought it had been enough in the way she stared and her fingers were reluctant to leave him each morning. Why would she stare and touch someone she found displeasing?

 

“My father,” he began to explain and Rook jerked all of her attention to him, interrupted her listing of candidates to devour, “he started shaving only when he met my mother. Her skin… She had delicate skin, easily irritated. And when he would go too long, sometimes you could see rashes break out along her neck, right where he liked to lay his head when he hugged her from behind. I… I thought…”

 

Rook weaved her fingers together and pressed them to her belly, putting aside her own muddled mix of emotions for the moment. “I would’ve said something if it had bothered me,” she assured him.

 

He gave her a doubtful look.

 

She struggled for her next words, trying to offer him that same level of vulnerability he had shown her. “I… I like sensations, textures. Though the bodies I’ve inhabited have varied, that fact has remained the same. We don’t feel things like that in the Fade; nothing varies in temperature or feeling, we just are. There are certain… Like I can’t stand the texture of chalk. But velvet and silk I enjoy. And the first time I felt a dragon’s hide…” She felt the heat in her cheeks, knew she was revealing more of her oddness for him to judge and risking ridicule for it. Her gaze darted away from his, unable to endure his stare. “And you… Your beard…”

 

Her tongue fumbled, unable to continue, hoped he understood her well enough to amass something intelligible from the broken sentence fragments.

 

She was looking down so she saw the toes of his black boots as he stepped forward, felt the sudden heat from his body as he tipped into her personal space. She glanced up only to be met with his frustrated expression transformed, turned sultry and sly.

 

“So,” he said, reaching out to run the backs of his fingers along her hand, “I am a sensation you enjoy?”

 

She lost her breath for a moment, had to work to recover it back. “Very much so.”

 

X

 

We please her! Spite declared with relief. 

 

The knowledge sat like something treasured and coveted, golden. He hadn’t even known how worried he had been, how much he had fretted until the weight of his concerns left him.

 

He pleased her.

 

Rook trembled as he leaned against the wall behind her, caging her in with the length of one forearm braced on the wall and a hand gripping her waist on the other side. He leaned down, nuzzled her cheek, heard her breath catch and felt his own satisfaction grow terribly.

 

He might become a bit conceited with this.

 

“Plus.” Rook swallowed as he moved down her neck, still nuzzling, “You are very handsome with it. I’m sorry if I never said it. I’ll try to say it more if that is needed. I thought it had been understood, that you… You attract appreciative glances everywhere.”

 

“There’s only one that matters,” he said against her neck. He dragged his cheek down it, rasping the bristles of coarse hair against her, felt a shudder wrack through her. There was an array of fading marks there, right where the neck of her shirt tried to hide, kisses he could count where he had grown too zealous and she had done nothing to stop him.

 

“Whose would that be?”

 

He pulled back, thinking she was teasing him but her gray eyes were free of any glint.

 

“Yours, Rook.”

 

Red rose in her cheeks not before he caught the dart of something across her features, almost like savage enjoyment. “Oh.”

 

He hung his head as a laugh slipped from him. “You torment me, you know that?”

 

Confusion had her brows puckering. “Should I stop?”

 

He leaned down to nip at her ear, luxuriating in the way she jerked. “Never.

 

Once the clasps of her blouse had confounded him. There were tiny hooks on the inside that notched together. One had to either skate their hands underneath or work blindly over top her blouse by touch alone and hope they didn’t pinch her skin.

 

Now, he knew them intimately, had them unhooked and her bandeau and fluttering belly revealed to him in seconds. He pushed the garment off her shoulders, leaving him with more to traverse, more to conquer. He pressed his lips to her shoulder, feeling silly as he just dragged them around, tickles of his beard proceeding it, but sweet gasps fell from her lips and she shook as if he were doing something wicked.

 

She fell back against the wall and he let her, anchoring his hands on her hips. As he reached her belly button, adding a nip of teeth at its divot, she bit down on one of her hands to muffle herself, teeth shining white.

 

He stopped. He felt Spite flicker across his features as he peered up and growled at her. “Want to hear.”

 

She momentarily freed herself. “But I—. I’m being quite loud and we haven’t even—.”

 

His teeth glanced across the flesh of her hip. “Don’t care.” She cried out, loud and wanton and unrestrained as he tilted his head and rubbed his cheek there.

 

He could become quite addicted, he realized. Possibly already was.

 

A need birthed in his chest, a star erupting with its own center of sucking gravity when he came to the band of her trousers.

 

He was half-kneeling, having taken a knee to get at the unprotected plane of her belly. He glanced up, finding her staring down, gray almost lost to her dilated pupils, her lips red from the worry of her teeth. Her skin was pinkened along the left side of her neck from where he had nuzzled perhaps too viciously. Her bandeau had slipped down one breast, though he couldn’t recall messing with it, nearly revealing one nipple. She already looked half-ravished and he felt overly proud seeing her like this.

 

He smoothed his hand down her hips, curved them to squeeze at her ass then cup it. “I want…” He pressed his lips to the buttons of her trousers when words failed him, looking up at her.

 

He swore he saw her pupils dilate another inch. “You don’t have to…”

 

She always proceeded any of their dalliances like this, as if she was something to be endured, not enjoyed. As if Lucanis wouldn’t spend his hours with his hands down his pants, thinking of all the things he wanted to do with her, the hours of their days seeming too few in comparison.

 

One day he would rid her of the habit.

 

“You will have to walk me through,” he admitted. While imaginative, he wasn’t sure if his fantasies lined up with satisfactory results. He freed one button, then the next, the promise of what was to be revealed to him having a fine tremor rake his fingers. “Let me know if I do anything wrong.”

 

She swallowed, a dart of pink parting her lips as her tongue flicked along her bottom lip. “There’s no real wrong way to do it,” she assured him.

 

Lucanis just kept from rolling his eyes. He highly doubted that was the case.

 

He slipped her trousers down her waist, over her creamy thighs, caught the hinge of her knee to help her step out of them. His gaze zeroed on the vulnerable swath of skin tucked behind her kneecap. His head was moving before he could fully make a decision, rubbing his cheek there.

 

She spasmed, nearly falling, only the press of his hands and the huddled closeness of his body keeping her pinned to the wall. He let her caught leg fall over his shoulder as he smoothed a hand up her outer thigh in apology, made sure to tuck it close so the tickle of his beard could be felt.

 

“Walk me through it,” he urged her, gaze falling on the apex of her thighs, to the damp stretch of fabric there. “What should I do? What should I avoid?”

 

Rook’s head fell back against the wall, open-mouthed panting, making him want to stand and claim her lips, only the heady promise of what was to come keeping him there, kneeling. “Ah, you… The hard part is it’s...sensitive. So even just a few teases can become a lot, can have me coming too soon. You want to prolong it, so you should, um, alternate, don’t spend so much time sucking on…”

 

He slipped one band of her smalls down the notch of her hip as he listened diligently, losing himself for a moment in the unmarred stretch of skin it revealed. He licked the area the cloth had once covered, feeling her belly hitch.

 

Another gray band of fabric down the swell of her hip. Then carefully, slowly, dragging out the moment, feeling her squirm as she was revealed to him.

 

She was already glistening, already wet. His fingers ached with the memory of how he had mapped her, worked her, itched to return to their purpose, but he kept them on her thighs and hips, keeping her steady.

 

Her smalls were only down to her knees but suddenly her shins to her feet seemed like too long of a journey.

 

Need drove him forward, drove him to fuse his mouth to her cunt.

 

She squealed, legs spasming, freed foot kicking out, her trapped leg clamping down over his shoulder. He took it all, gladly, licking through her folds as he sucked on her clit. He urged her to part her legs with the lightest of touches, turning her inner thighs out towards him, giving him more room to work but not too much room. He wanted her legs to stay close enough to brush his bearded cheeks, for him to periodically nuzzle at the very top of her inner thigh.

 

Above him, she keened, body stuttering, as if it wasn’t sure to cant into his mouth or away from it, could only barely commit to brief hitches as a result. He had a mad urge for her to grab his hair and take her pleasure, for her to grind her cunt into his face and to suffocate him, he nothing but a thing for her to use.

 

He tabled that for a later discussion.

 

She was warm, wet, and quivering, the tiniest questing brush of his tongue had her jerking. He could feel the swollen nub of her clit, had the vicious urge to attend to it solely, but recalled her earlier words and settled for only half-indulging. He found other places to dally: lapping at her folds, the hinge where her thigh met her torso, the vulnerable swell of her inner thigh, beautifully unmarred for his perusal. Kissing just the top of her mound had her moaning so sweetly he decided it was his new favorite place.

 

His cock swelled in his pants, but he ignored it, ignored everything that wasn’t her and the pleasure he evoked with his mouth.

 

She was a contract that deserved all of his attention, his focus. 

 

He ate her out, diligent and attentive, ears pricked for further instruction, hastening to follow when she managed a small, “To the, ah, left.” “Slower.” “More...” He put all those years of assassin training into studying her body when her words devolved into vowel-filled moans, feeling the fluttering acceleration of her pulse from where her femoral artery was pressed to his cheek.

 

He sacrificed a hand, tightened his other one on her hip to compensate, as he slipped two fingers into her, feeling the way her walls pulsed and clamped. It added another modicum by which to measure her and he massaged his fingers there, using the pressure from them to push her up into his mouth, stilling them when he felt her quivering too much.

 

Rook was sobbing when he finally decided to be merciful. A glance up through his lashes showed her bandeau had slipped free of one breast, nipple pebbled in the air and begging for attention, the other still clinging valiantly. Her expression was lost to the tousles of her hair, head canted back.

 

He latched onto her clit with singular purpose. He felt the moment she reached her crest, her entire body strung taut like a wire, walls clamping down on his captured fingers, clit throbbing where he kissed it. He attended her through it, gentling his actions, wondering if he could better his actions to keep her poised here like this longer.

 

Lucanis licked her arousal off his lips and lifted his head from her though every instinct in him was braying for him to stay there nestled there. He glanced up—.

 

A pair of fangs greeted him, curving sweetly down over her incisors, stabbing into her chin. He glimpsed more in the open-pant of her mouth, still retracted up into her gums. Her eyes were lost to wells of black, lashes fluttering.

 

He stood, maybe too hastily as she flinched from the loss. Her leg trembled as it was returned underneath her and he kept a hand pressed to it to will it hold.

 

He caught her chin. This close, he could see the shape of an iris and a pupil moving in the black, flitting to focus on him.

 

A garbled “Sorry” left her as her tongue flicked out and felt her teeth. She reared back from his hold, pressed her lips tight to hide, but the length of her fangs was too long, was still there hooking over her bottom lip, though he saw them shift a little as she worked to draw them back in—.

 

“Don’t,” he told her and she stilled as well as any tamed creature.

 

He pressed his thumb to the corner of her mouth, urging her to open. She did, slowly, seeming scared as he crowded her against the wall.

 

The longest of her teeth reminded him of a snake’s fangs, built to strike first and snare deep to hold its prey in the maw of its mouth. The rest were still hidden, sharp tips just breaching her pink gums. He could see a set that would snap over her normal teeth and another that would emerge from behind them, all with the intent to pierce, to rend.

 

A strange thrill fluttered up from his belly, hastened on Spite’s wings.

 

His thumb reached for one of the two fangs fully revealed to him, traced its shape from where it emerged from the gum until its pointy end, the pad of his thumb pricking from that small touch alone.

 

Our Teeth, Spite whispered.

 

Beneath his ministrations, Rook was a frozen thing, eyes wide, seeming to quiver with fright. He wished to assure her but found his words sparse at that moment, leaned down inside to kiss her.

 

He felt her teeth under his lips, felt the way they shifted slightly, as if alive and responsive because of it. He licked past them to claim her mouth, feeling no fear as such sharp things came dangerously close to piercing his bottom, almost wanting them to, wanting them to leave a mark for evidence.

 

She groaned as he pulled away for air, his tongue darting out to lick the length of one. “You…” she managed, lashes fluttering. “You...she continued, the word loaded.

 

“Me,” he assured her, pressing a brief kiss to her upper lip. “Was that… Was I…?” he asked, suddenly unsure.

 

She reached up, knotted her hand through his hair, grasping the back of his skull as her lips claimed his, fangs still out and on display, their presence speaking of his victory. He sucked on one and her moan caused molten desire to pool into his gut, made him a living of twitching nerves and pounding desires. 

 

He skated a hand down her back, found the ties to her bandeau, and loosened them so her one trapped breast wouldn’t be so cruelly pinched. He made sure to drag his face across the hard pebbles of her nipples as he bent down once more. He moved her weak, trembling leg to fall over his shoulder again, naturally widening her for him, and decided that was where he belonged, kneeling at her feet, servicing her.

 

“Lucanis,” Rook started to say, a plea in her voice that he ignored, too selfish to hear her.

 

“Let’s see if I can make a few more appear,” he told her, right before he descended onto her.

 

X

 

Rook woke deliciously sore right as the silver flames winked to gold and increased their glow. She lay in bed instead of rousing right away, taking stock of things. Her cunt ached fiercely, clit seeming to pulse with its own heartbeat. Her inner thighs were smarting and she knew if she moved the duvet to look down she would find them chafed from the constant irritation of Lucanis’s beard. She relished the sensation, memories echoing faintly, making her blood heat once more.

 

In the light of a new day with her energy slightly restored, she felt a bit miffed she hadn’t had equal time to indulge him, but he had been quite focused on what his mouth and fingers could do, seemed to be training as if there were some exam later. (He would pass with flying colors, Rook knew for sure.)

 

The ache in the back of her throat for some sustenance finally had her lifting up onto her elbow, blinking sleep from her eyes and batting coils of black hair from her vision.

 

She expected to find him seated in the wicker chair, his second mug of coffee already in hand, sharpening one of his mugs or maybe sitting in smug silence. (He had earned it.)

 

Instead, she parted her lids to see the broadness of his back facing from where he stood, staring down at something on the table, foreign tension coiled there in his still frame.

 

Rook clutched the duvet to her chest as she sat up, as she threw her legs over the edge of the bed to stand. “Lucanis?”

 

He jerked, but didn’t turn to her, still immobile, staring down at the dark slashes of ink across the parchment. Rook couldn’t make anything out from here, not even vague shapes and the possibilities of words, the shapes strange and blockier than any letters.

 

An Antivan Crow cipher, she realized as knowledge rattled from Wilhelmina’s boxes.

 

“Caterina,” he finally said, jaw unhinging and the words falling from the cage of his mouth. Something glinted in his hand. She caught the wink of silver and the sheen of white, like an opal. He finally turned to her and she beheld his slack-jawed expression, his eyes wide and trembling. His next words were a gasp of breath, of just air ejected from his lung and words tore free as a result. “She’s alive.”

Notes:

Tune in next time for the telenovela Keeping Up with the Antivan Crows.

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