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ofcrowsanddragons · 21 days ago

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The First Kiss Scene That Didn't Include Any (Much?) Kissing / Rook's Demisexual Love Letter to Lucanis

Thank you for tagging me in WIP Wednesday, @basedonconjecture! Tagging @dustdeepsea, @i-had-bucky, @teyrnacousland, @thebaldursmouthgazette and @deputyrook if you have anything from fic to meta that you'd like to share.

This is a MUCH later snippet of my Rookanis fic, A Working Relationship, which jumps to the point where a young Crow Rook and an undercover "Luca" are in Minrathous and there are FEELINGS.

Thank you to @thedissonantverses for encouraging me as I worked on figuring out the dynamic between these two.

An earlier side fic, But I Won't Do That includes this bit of context:

Lucanis might have his own blindness, but he knew enough to realize that anything he could offer might not be seen as optional by the younger assassin, and the thought terrified him.

If such a thing happened, Viago could slit his throat and Lucanis would prearrange to hide the body.

Here's the first draft of the first kiss/almost kiss scene. The final version might be different, but I need to write another 20-30k words to get there. (Power dynamics, consent issues addressed, no sex).

I leaned in, placing one hand gently against the back of the chaise. I kept my weight on my feet, ready to step back if I was rebuffed. My whole body was tight with anticipation, my mind ready to pull back at the rejection I knew was coming.

Instead, Luca raised his eyes to mine.

I could drown in them, I thought. His eyes had gone dark with want, for all that he looked at me like something wounded.

He held himself rigid, like he was afraid to move. His jaw was slack, peppered with evening stubble across the warm tones of his skin, and his lips were parted just so.

Without thought, drawn to the heat of him, I reached across his other shoulder and braced my hand against the chaise. I boxed him in, tentative, and the fabric of my sleeve just barely brushed his arm.

I let my weight fall onto the chaise, and the inside of my knee brushed against his thigh. It felt like lightning, and I sucked in a breath, desperate to keep my eyes on Luca, to not be distracted by my own reactions.

He was trembling. He squeezed his eyes shut.

Luca raised a hand from where it rested on the side of the chaise. There was a barely visible shake in the fingers as his arm skirted over the velvet cushions and came to hover near my hip, like he was afraid to touch me. Taking it as a sign of his interest, I sighed out my relief even as I kept the toes of one foot on the floor, ready to pull away if he needed me to.

My back leg trembled, and I wanted nothing more than to fall into his lap. The heat from his muscular thigh on the inside of my leg was agony, and I felt weak with it.

I was afraid to touch him, too. I was afraid to push too far.

“Look at me,” I breathed, inches away from his face.

Warm, brown eyes met mine, and I marvelled at the softness of them. At the smooth planes of his face and the mole next to his hairline. At the crease between his brow and the spot next to his nose. At the creases in his bottom lip.

His tongue darted out on reflex, to wet the lips even as he prepared to push me away.

“You don't have to do this,” he said, even as his eyes fell to my lips and he tilted his face to match mine. The fear in his voice was real. “Please tell me you know that.”

The warm breath from his voice was close enough to feel against my lips, and I bit my lower lip without thinking, sweeping my tongue out to soothe the dryness I found there. My mind felt like it was full of the thick, sweet syrup used by a nearby street vendor.

“I don't know if I can stop,” I said, too honest. Not knowing what he wanted, too full of whatever I was feeling to make room for him, I tasted something like failure at the back of my mouth.

He met my eyes, and his fingers finally brushed against my hip. The lightness of it felt like a brand, striking like a viper through my nerves and into my chest. I had to slap down the instinctive rise of my magic to meet it.

I gasped, falling forward another inch as I struggled to keep my eyes on his.

Luca’s eyebrows were furrowed as he kept his touch light on my hip, his other hand clenched in the cushions. All of the tension in his body was held away from me, in his legs and core and his far arm. I didn't know what he was holding back, but I wanted to beg for it. I wanted him to pull me down and fist his hand in my hair like he was holding the cushion and I knew it was too much.

That light touch, urging me closer. I obeyed without a thought.

Luca tilted his head forward and I let my forehead meet his in a gentle touch. It felt like a cool breeze on a summer day, and I sighed into it with relief, closing my eyes.

“Any advantage you want,” he breathed in promise, “It's yours for the asking. I don't want…”

I should stop, I thought, but I was afraid of what would happen if I did. I was afraid that he would look at me afterward like a student who had tried to seduce him for safety, for power, for resources. For a chance to live.

“You've given me everything I've asked for,” I said, tilting back so that my lips almost brushed his. “Can I ask for something else?”

“Anything within my power,” he vowed, breath ghosting across my lips.

I pulled away enough to meet his eyes, feeling an overwhelming wave of my own emotion threatening to spill out of them.

His hand dropped, instantly. His expression was guarded, on the verge of the desperate triumph of being proven right.

“Believe me,” I begged, meeting his desperation with my own. “Believe me when I say that I want you.”

He searched my face, eyes flickering across my features. “Why?”

I finally stopped resisting the urge to touch, and I let my hands grasp at his shoulders. He startled, like it was a shock I would touch him this way.

The wants of my own flesh barely registered. The only thing I needed was this.

“Because you're beautiful,” I said, reaching for the meaning that meant more than his handsome face or his grace in battle. “Because the first day I met you, you started changing out our rations until everyone had something they enjoyed eating, not just me. Because you're kind when you don't have to be—because when the world tells you not to be, you'll be kinder out of spite.”

His lips twitched with a pull at the corner that was barely a smile. “Acting out of spite is hardly a virtue.”

“I don't care,” I said, leaning fully into his space, drawing both feet up so that I was kneeling on either side of his leg, a blasphemous approximation of an Andrastian chant. “Void damn it, Luca, I'm an assassin. You told me yourself that there's no virtue in what we do.”

His expression changed, slackened into something softer. “You make me wonder if it could be different,” he told me, with something like a smile rising up from his eyes.

My heart was pounding in my ears, as fast as a sparrow’s. I fought the urge to run, feeling the unfairness of doing so when I had trapped Luca so thoroughly. I forced myself to meet his eyes, even as the sensations of the man’s warm body beneath my legs and hands rose into the foreground.

I blew out a breath. “I want you. What do you want?”

Something seemed to rise in him at those words, settling over his face and pulling at his restraint, and it thrilled through me like a wave of electricity. He held fast, holding himself back, only bringing his hand back to my hip in a touch so feather light it risked driving me insane.

“I just…” Luca started, and trailed off like he didn't know what he was trying to say. The hand at my hip settled more firmly into the position he'd use to lead me in a dance. “I want—”

He cut himself off with a growl of frustration and brought his free hand to my shoulder. In one smooth movement, he threw me onto my back on the soft, velvet cushions of the chaise. I had to force myself to relax into it, and I let my arms fall, boneless, along the back and over the edge of the couch.

“Is it too much,” said Luca, kneeling between my legs, with one elbow against the back of the chaise gripping my arm, “To want you to feel like you don't have to be afraid?”

“We're dangerous people,” I said gently, tilting my chin to expose my throat. “Maybe I know what that means, and I trust you not to hurt me.”

He rolled off the chaise into a crouch on the floor. I felt the bitter disappointment at the loss of contact, but I stayed on the cushions, following his movement only with my eyes. I was exhausted, aroused, and beyond ready to retreat into my bedroom to cry into the pillows. The points of warmth on my body that Luca had touched tingled with the awareness of the loss of him. I had been expecting a rejection, but I didn't know what this was.

With too much gentleness, Luca reached from where he had settled on the floor, to hold my hand where I had allowed it to drape over the edge.

He met my eyes. “I don't want you to be afraid.”

I pulled his hand up onto the cushion, slow and telegraphed, forcing him to let go or move so that his knees were closer to the base of the chaise. He chose to move forward, and I turned onto my side. He watched carefully as I pressed a kiss to the palm of his hand, next to the meat of his thumb, and then rested my cheek against it like a pillow. I let my eyes fall shut.

His breathing was even and deliberate in the way that we’re trained to be.

I let my mind drift to the solid mountain of my dreams, where my feet were always on the ground and there was always a way forward, no matter what obstacle rose in front of me.

Frowning, still focusing on the way the imaginary light reflected from the harsh alpine trail, I told him, “I don’t know how to stop being afraid. What does it feel like, when you’re not afraid?”

The sound of wet laughter. “I’m not sure I can answer that right now.”

“Maybe,” I said, opening my eyes, “We can find out together?”

Too much hope was riding on the last word, but Luca didn’t pull away. Instead, the smile—maybe the first real, true smile I had ever seen from him—lit up his eyes in a way that took my breath away. I let what was probably a stunned smile play across my face, in turn.

“Maybe so,” he said, voice soft as he shuffled forward so that he could rest his head against mine.

I let my breathing match his, and let the time pass me by, luxuriating in the closeness of another being who I somehow, miraculously, trusted with more than my life.

#wip wednesday #veilguard fic #the almost kiss scene #no not that one #my writing #fic snippets #lucanis dellamorte #lucanis x rook #crow rook #spite dragon age #veilguard #pre game #magpie files #a working relationship #angst and fluff #rookanis #rook x lucanis #antivan crows #antivan crow politics

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