#to answer the other question: she's not much of a drinker. Doesn't like the dizzy feeling

[shivunin]

bergamot and/or morning glory, from the flower rook asks!

oooh thank you mer!!

I took this as a lil prompt, but the short answer to Morning Glory: What is something Rook’s partners could do to make them melt romantically? is "Cook her a meal." Lenore has a lot of baggage about having access to food, so it is genuinely like some kind of divine providence that Lucanis likes cooking so much.

The longer answer is:

Providence

(Rook Ingellvar/Lucanis | 1,083 Words | CW: Brief references to past child abuse/neglect)

The day hung about Lenore like a shroud as she climbed the steps to home. 

There was no reason today’s spell shouldn’t have taken, but it hadn’t. Thirteen hours of trying, of rearranging and testing and rearranging again had left her exhausted. Too exhausted, in fact, to climb all the long way to the communal dining room and take her meal there. She’d missed lunch, had been in too much of a hurry to eat a large breakfast. She’d been so focused on her task that she hadn’t even noticed that she was hungry until she’d been nudged from the laboratory by a research assistant and now…

Well. Perhaps she still had some crackers in the cabinet. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been to the market, now that she thought of it. Had she gotten herself oats the last time she was in town? Ah, but even the effort of boiling water for it seemed too much tonight. Maybe she would just go straight to bed. Maybe—

Someone was inside her quarters and that somebody was cooking. She had been so lost in thought that she had not even noticed the stir in the wards. Stir, not break; there was only one other person with unrestricted access through the wards. 

Lucanis had come to visit her.

Lenore paused in the doorway, tears springing to her eyes. She smelled something savory, rich with tomato and meat and sweet onion. Something sizzled in her kitchen, followed by a soft metallic tapping sound. A spoon against the pan, maybe. 

She hadn’t seen Lucanis in what felt like an age. To see him now, when she hadn’t been expecting him —to find him like this—was almost too much to bear. 

“Rook?” he called from the other room, though of course he must know it was her. “Did you know that you have no food in your kitchen? I had to go back to the market in Treviso, but I brought you some things.”

“Yeah,” she said, scraping the tears from her cheeks and trying to keep the strangled note from her voice. One by one, she set her things back in their place: leather and brass case under the end table, gloves and cloak on the hook, and her shoes tucked away beside his near the door. She stared at the two pairs for far longer than necessary, struck by some indefinite emotion at the sight of her shoes next to hers. 

She needed to get her head on straight before she went to him. And—and her clothes still smelled of embalming fluid. 

“I’m going to change,” she told him. And calm down, she didn’t add. 

Lucanis leaned through the doorway, dark hair swinging with his speed. He took her in; she had no doubt that he saw more than she might have liked. He always did. After a moment, he leaned away again and the hissing of food in the pan intensified. 

“This will be done in five minutes,” he called. “Will you open the wine when you are ready?” 

“I will,” she said. 

She ought to go straight to him and hold him while he worked, thank him for his existence, but she felt so abruptly odd that she turned toward her bedroom instead.

There were no doors in her quarters. They were leaned neatly against the wall in her closet, where she’d put them immediately after moving in. She stripped just inside her doorway and tossed the loose clothing into a pile at the foot of her bed, where yesterday’s clothing already waited. She washed the day away from her hands and face and dragged on a loose green dress, chosen for the sole reason that it required the least movement to don.

As she turned to leave, to go to him in the kitchen, it occurred to her that nobody had cooked her dinner here before. In fact, she could count on one hand the number of times someone had cooked dinner exclusively for her in any home. She paused in the doorway, arrested by the thought. 

Without consciously deciding to, her hands twisted together, fingers finding the smooth edges of old scars. How many times had she sat at her own table as a child, forbidden to eat the meal she’d been served? How many nights had she gone to sleep weeping at the emptiness of her belly, only the intermittent stash of food hidden in her closet to carry her to the next meal? And here he was now, cooking her dinner when she hadn’t even asked. 

Abruptly, she had no desire to be standing in here while Lucanis was in the other room. She took her skirt in hand and hurried across the living room to the kitchen. 

“I put the wine on the—ah,” he said, when she leaned against his back and wrapped her arms over his stomach. 

After a moment, his left hand found her arms, though he was still stirring something with his right. The back of his shirt smelled faintly of blood, of ozone, which likely meant he’d recently made use of Spite’s wings. Lenore breathed him in, cheek pressed against his back, and searched for something to say.

“I missed you so much,” she said, though she’d intended to ask what he was making.

For a moment, she listened to the hiss of the food in the skillet, almost ready to eat, and the soft bubbling of whatever sauce he was stirring. Once she let him go and turned away, they would sit together at the little table and eat the meal he’d prepared. He would tell her about what he’d been doing these past weeks. When they finally went to bed, she would tuck herself against his back and hold him tight and he would be warm in her arms. She would not be hungry, she would not be alone; she could think of no better gift that he could have given her. 

“I missed you,” he said quietly, squeezing her forearm. “I did not mean to be away so long. I’ll stay as long as I can. You have my word.”

Something nigh unbreakable, then. Lenore willed herself to stop darkening the fabric of his shirt and straightened, turning for the counter behind her. 

“I’ll get the wine,” she said, and thanked whatever higher power might exist for having the benevolence to bring the two of them together in the first place. 

The dinner, when she ate it at last, was delicious.