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Rook passes through the doors of the dining hall with a lingering smile on her face and a set of empty plates in her hands. With her hip, she nudges them closed behind her, chuckling at Neve’s parting comments as she had left her room to venture toward the adjacent building just a moment beforehand. At the far corner of the space, she finds Lucanis hunched over a basin. His sleeves are rolled up to his elbows, hair pulled back presumably to keep it out of his face. A towel hangs over one of his shoulders. She supposes someone has to deal with the dishes after such a feast as seafood paella. “For the last time, there are no more ‘curlicue fish’,” he grumbles without turning around. One wet hand lifts from the basin to place a clean bowl neatly in the pile of dishes beside him. “Mira, Taash, I’m not hiding any shrimp from you because you ate it all.”
He extends the arm in a dramatic flourish of frustration before whipping around to glare at who he assumes is their Qun companion. Rook presses her lips together to keep her laughter from barking out at him. The furrow in his brows immediately falls from his face when he sees her, replaced by something softer. More affectionate even. “I knew there was more shrimp on my plate,” Rook muses with a grin. “Serves me right for leaving my plate unattended next to a clearly starving Taash.”
A pause floats between them as he purses his lips. She isn't sure if he's reformulating his thoughts or if he's trying to keep from rolling his eyes. Either way, she can't help the pull she feels drawing her across the room. It’s a hazy aimless wander, slow and easy across the stone floor. His eyes drop from her to the air beside him. A grimace spreads over his lips. “I know. I have eyes,” he grunts. “Puto demonio.” Spite. He shakes his head and his gaze softens once as it meets her own. “I'm sorry. Between the two of them, I feel like I am going crazy.” He tosses a hand off in the direction he had been speaking toward. Spite and Lucanis seem more in sync since their agreement was reached. Less volatile and resentful. Anxious for retribution but not angry.
Sauntering up beside him, she hands him the stack of plates before snatching the towel from his shoulder. There is no response from him aside from an arched brow, curious as to what her plan is. Since he had joined their team, the attempts he had made to keep to himself were mostly in vain. There is a continuous flow in and out of the dining area and pantry. Asking him questions. Looking to interact with him in general. Bellara looking for some recipe advice. Neve dropping by just for a chat. Emmrich coming through to discuss Spite. Taash continuing on with their endless stream of consciousness about the Crows. Davrin wanting nothing more than to talk shop. Harding offering her genuine friendship anytime she could.
And then there is Rook. Ever present and insistent. A little wry at times and all the while absolutely infatuated with him. “Afraid I can't do much about Taash,” she sighs with the smile still lingering on her face. She reaches out to grab the bowl that's freshly washed. “They're probably going to bother you over every little thing until you finally deliver on that cape you promised them… or apparently maybe you can bribe them with more shrimp.” He groans but returns to scrubbing the remaining dishes in the basin. “But I feel like Spite and I have begun to get on pretty well. Want me to give him a talking to?”
“Why must you encourage him?” Lucanis responds, glancing over at Rook. It’s less of a question than it is a sigh of a man who has already resigned himself to the fate of mediating such conversations. “He is already a nuisance whenever you come near.” She sucks her cheeks in, hoping they aren't burning as red as they feel. “Cállate , Spite! I'll… I will tell her. You may not.” His head drops and hands still in the basin. A heavy slightly annoyed sigh leaves him. “He says you smell like honey and oranges.”
“Spite, what have we told you about announcing how people smell?” she chides without looking up from the plate she's drying. “Most find it a tad off putting.”
“Me especially,” Lucanis chimes in.
She peeks over to find him averting his eyes, intensely pretending to focus on the dishes in the basin. “That being said, I'm glad you noticed,” she continues. Their arms touch when she leans toward him as if she's talking directly to Spite on his opposite side. It stops his movements dead. “I did wash my hair. Had to get all the blight gunk out of it.” Her face twists in disgust.
This time, Lucanis stares at her with the same look in his eyes as before. A twinkling of fondness and perhaps even awe. It makes Rook’s heart jump into her throat. “Of all the blood and the guts we have to deal with each day, that's what bothers you the most?” he wonders, lifting his hands from the water to rest his forearms on the basin. “You are strange.”
She places a dry plate in the separate stack she began away from the pile of wet dishes and then turns to face him completely. Her hip rests against the edge of the wooden table beside her. “Strange has been getting the job done by all accounts,” she quips, leaning closer to him. Whether she is doing it consciously or not isn't certain, but there’s something that buzzes inside her at their proximity. She silently notes all the lines that appear on his face when he grimaces, eyes shifting away from her again. “Sounds like Spite agrees.”
“Spite,” he begins with a growl. “Is being…” The words trail off as he listens to his invisible stowaway. “Ach, basta! Enough!” His fists clench in front of him. “Between Illario and Weisshaupt and you–”
Rook blinks, drawing back from him just a touch. “Did I do something?” she asks before he can finish. Her arms fold over her chest. It hasn't even been something that crossed her mind. Even when he's been closed off or quiet, she hasn't interpreted it as being something between the two of them in particular. “If I did, please know it wasn't something… it wasn't intentional.”
He is quick to answer, “No!” A little too quick, perhaps, for his taste, so he clears his throat and straightens up to turn to her. Hands still wet from the dishwashing water, he holds them up to her. “No, you did nothing… or maybe everything.” The disdain on his face shows all the gears turning in his head. Everything he has written down but not said aloud. She can’t help but frown with him. “I can't be sure. It is all complicated.” He presses his lips in a tight line. “He wants to talk to you because he is thinking that I am not.”
“Well, where is he?”
This time, it’s Lucanis who blinks at Rook. “Who?” he gawks, sounding so incredulous he must know the answer already. She stares at him, both firm and gentle in her way. His eyebrows raise. “Spite?” She nods: a simple single angling of her head that gets her point across. Bewildered, he gestures vaguely behind him. The not so figurative devil on his shoulder. The demon–though, the Rivaini in her was more inclined to refer to Spite as a spirit the more she learned of him–right behind him at all times.
She trains her eyes on the seemingly empty space he had directed her to, hoping she is making direct eye contact with Spite himself but knowing she likely isn't. “Spite, as flattered as I am that you wish to speak to me, I really was hoping to speak to Lucanis,” she explains. There's something soft in her tone as if she is speaking to a toddler and not an ill-acquired otherworldly entity at all. “One of these days, you and I will have a nice long chat, alright? Maybe I'll even teach you how to play Bezique. Think we've got a deck of cards around here somewhere.” She lets a moment of quiet pass, giving Spite a chance to consider her offer. “Do we have a deal?”
“You are negotiating with a demon, Rook.”
“I know,” she whispers as if Spite can’t very well hear her. Pressing forward once more, she peers over Lucanis’s shoulder. “Is it working?”
His breath hitches in his throat. Pulling back, she realizes their chests are almost touching. Heat floods her face. “He is very interested in this card game,” he replies, voice soft and gravelly. Their eyes connect. It is the earth meeting the sea in a silent symphony. “He’s pouting but quiet.”
If she wants to (and she so desperately does want to), she can wrap her arms around him. Pull him close to her. Press her body to his. Kiss him finally. But she doesn't. Instead, she stares at him, doe-eyed and blushing like a schoolgirl. “Didn't mean to hurt his feelings,” is all she can muster, but it earns her a laugh, quiet but sweet to her ears. His breath is warm on her face, already laced with the scent of coffee and perhaps chocolate. “You know, someone once told me that Crows can slow down their breathing until they become invisible. Is that true?”
She still feels his breath smooth and even on her cheeks. Nose-to-nose, this is the closest she’s been to much of anyone she isn’t plowing an axe into in quite some time. Aside from their near kiss in the pantry. But truth be told she thought the same thing in that moment as well. “Well, can you still see me?” he asks, one brow arching curiously. His composure remains despite their closeness to her surprise.
“I can.”
“Then no, it is not true.” They stand eye to eye still. Neither one of them seems to be inclined to move, which feels like a positive at least from Rook's perspective. Though, when she looks at the situation, she really has backed him into the corner of the room with no escape. “So did you come here only to scold Spite and ask me ridiculous questions, or was there something else you wanted, roja ?”
The question itself is innocuous and fair enough, but it's the tone that throws her off. A deep rasp that is barely above a whisper. An enticing delicacy intended just for her just like… “There were complaints about dessert,” she can't help but spit out. Despite him specifically saying there wouldn’t be complaints, it is the whole reason she came back to see him after all. Simply a little jesting to be shared with someone she… cares about very deeply. Not to ask him silly questions she has already heard asked in their travels. Not to help dry dishes. Not to give Spite what for. Not to shamelessly flirt and stand so incredibly close to him.
Now, both brows are raised. “Oh?” Yet Lucanis remains where he is, sleeves rolled up and damp hands on his hips.
“Neve said the tart was fine, but she insists something with chocolate would have been better.”
“Of course, anything else?”
“You may have spurned Harding a bit by making dessert when she specifically told you her mom made pie.”
With a groan, he tosses his head back. “I tried her mother's pie, Rook,” he tells her, eyes squeezed shut in the memory of the pie Emmrich and Harding had returned from their camping trip with. “There are peas in it. Peas, Rook! For dessert!”
She beams at the outburst. There are flickers and glimmers of a person kept under lock and key beneath a cool steely exterior, and this, she assumes, is just that. Getting to know him is a gift she loves to continue unwrapping. “Culinary prowess must run in the family,” Rook chuckles. There's a reason Bellara had suggested the two of them alternate cooking duty. “I loved it if my thoughts on dessert matter.”
His brows knit together in concern. “Harding's mother's pie?” he asks, trying to hold back whatever horror he feels at the thought of her liking such a dish. There is a question of her sanity that will not leave his throat, but she can sense it all the same.
Shoving his chest, Rook laughs. A genuine full bodied laugh, which draws a smile from him. “The lemon tart,” she reminds him. There's a light that hits his eyes, and the glowing fire behind her can't be blamed for it. A feeling she can't quite name lingers in the look he gives her. Lavishing her from eyes of the most decadent chocolate she has ever been privy to. “It was the best thing you've made so far, I think.”
“Ah, so you’re only here to give me a hard time but also compliment the dessert then?” She simply watches him. Eyes are trained on her. A smirk is perched on his lips. One brow is arched, awaiting her next move. Lucanis, she decides at that moment, is teasing her. Finally giving back what she hands to everyone who allows her to: a bit of light playful jabbing to break up the chaos that surrounds them at all times. “Rook?”
In a brief second of fleeting self control, she pushes toward him again until her lips come to brush against his. The contact is soft. Barely even there really. But it's that which she has wanted for so long. Almost since the very moment she set eyes on the Demon of Vyrantium, she has wanted to be near him. Talk to him. Fight alongside him. However, once she grew to know the man beside the demon, she has only grown to want more. Everything if he is so inclined to allow her access.
She lingers a moment, hoping for some sort of response from him. Their feelings are clear for one another. They almost shared a kiss previously, yet here she is finally taking the jump for the reciprocation to be very much lacking. How foolish she is, always has been really. Always too quick to jump into things. Always making rash decisions. It's why she took up swinging great axes after all. Many problems, she's found, can be solved by hitting with an axe. This particular problem, though, obviously cannot be remedied in a similar fashion.
Preparing to turn on her heel in order to make a quick escape, she pulls away and feels more unsure of anything than she has in years. A light touch at her waist pulls her back, and just like that, he is the one initiating the contact. The kiss is gentle, tentative even. Testing the waters. Trying to get a hang of the feeling. She tries to will her heart to stop pounding in her chest but there is a prickling feeling running down her spine like a limb regaining feeling after being numb.
“Still quiet?” Rook wonders, peeking one eye open. Her lips drag against his as she speaks. Part of her anticipated to find glowing purple eyes staring back at her and a distorted growl coming from Lucanis’s throat.
Instead, he allows one gloriously warm eye open to meet hers. “Yes,” he confirms. The hand on her waist moves to rest on the small of her back. Chests are pressed flush to each other. He is warm against her. Deliciously so. More than she's even anticipated.
She wants nothing but to relish this moment. To lose herself in him. To be wrapped up in this kiss. “And now?” she murmurs once more, though the words are almost entirely swallowed by a free hand tangling in the mess of copper curls on the back of her head to hold her close. An affirmative hum is all he provides as a response, which is more than enough certainty for her to rest her hands on his cheeks. To pull him deeper into the kiss that she is now certain is mutual in its desperation. To enjoy the bristling of his beard against her skin. To press her body ever closer to his. To–
“I'm telling you he won't tell me where he's hiding the rest! I swear–shit! Bel, why'd you stop… oh.”
It's uncertain whether Rook or Lucanis pulls away first, but they both snap their gazes toward the now wide open dining hall doors and the frozen Bellara and Taash standing in the threshold. “It's happening,” Bellara whispers to herself more than anyone else.
There's no moment to comment on anything before Emmrich’s voice begins to approach as well, “Taash, I'm not entirely certain what sway you seem to think I'll have regarding crustaceans and Lucanis.” The professor's head pops up over Bellara’s shoulder. “Oh dear.”
Rook’s hands drop first, barely grazing Lucanis’s chest as he loosens his grip on her enough to allow her to inch away from him. “Taash, you ate all the shrimp,” she announces after clearing her throat.
“Yeah, okay,” is all Taash offers as a response, eyes darting between Lucanis and Rook. “So are you guys doing it?”
“Taash,” Lucanis groans, scrubbing a hand over his face.
Emmrich rests a hand on their shoulder. “My friend, romance is a delicate dance, as I’m sure you are aware,” he insists with a knowing grin of his own. “One can’t simply ask if their friends are ‘doing it’.” The air quotes he adds with his bejeweled fingers add more insult to the present injury than he intends.
With a huff, Lucanis ducks down behind a stack of bowls below the table. “Fine.” Only at that moment does Rook realize he didn’t move his hand from her lower back. Her cheeks are burning, and she is all too aware of it. He resurfaces with a bowl of what appeared to be the paella from dinner, adorned with three pieces of shrimp and a sliver of lobster. “Have it!” he concedes.
“I fucking knew it!” Taash shouts as they proceed across the room, nostrils flaring. There’s no chance for him to respond prior to them plucking the bowl from his hand. “I could smell there was more, you lying shit!”
He tosses his hands in the air. “The whole place smells like fish, Taash.” His frustration and the bickering is as heartwarming as it is hilarious. Rook claps a hand over her mouth to attempt to keep a laugh in, but the effort is fruitless. He tosses a glare at her, though it doesn’t feel as serious as it would have earlier on in their travels. “Oh, so this is funny?” The shaking of her shoulders gives her away even as she shakes her head. “It was for you. Taash ate half your plate.”
“Yeah, because she ate from the stuff you made for Emmrich,” Taash argued through a mouthful of food.
A frown crosses his face as he glances back to Rook. “I’m sorry,” she pipes up, releasing her mouth from the hand that had been clamped over it. “I’m sure it was wonderful but…” A large apologetic smile forms toward him. “I just hate fish.” He runs a hand over his face again, releasing an even heavier sigh. “But the vegetarian version I can confirm was fantastic.”
“I second that,” Emmrich chimes in.
“What’s all this about?”
Neve sidles up beside a still stunned Bellara, who seems to still be processing the situation. Amusement is present in her eyes, hand perched on her hip. “Lucanis was fucking lying to me about having more of the curly fish,” Taash explains, swallowing a mouthful of paella before continuing. “And Rook and him are doing it.”
She furrows her brows in an assessment of the situation. “And Bel?” she wonders with a nod in the elf’s direction.
“Dunno. She’s been like that since we caught them sucking each other’s faces.”
“Taash!”
“Mierda.” Regardless of half the team walking in to discuss the relationship going on between the two of them, Lucanis remains close to Rook. If she isn’t mistaken, she swears he’s been getting closer at the situation before them progresses. They both lean against the table in front of half cleaned dishes. His pinky brushes against hers lightly. She glances over at him to find that he is still looking out at their companions. “Did you invite the whole camp to convince me to give you more shrimp?”
With a shrug, Taash continues to enjoy the spare bowl of dinner. “I rounded up the three smartest people I could find,” they explain. “Couldn’t find Rook because you two were too busy trying to do it in the kitchen.”
“Por la sangre del hacedor.”