davrookweek

Sixteen. Sixteen broken lockpicks. Sixteen pieces of evidence that Neve was right.”Sooo,” Davrin’s voice rang out, sounding way too smug for Reyla’s liking. “Is it normal for master thieves to break so many lockpicks, or is this door just extra hard.”

Reyla felt lockpick seventeen break in her hands. “Zip it, it’s the door. Super tricky lock.” It’s not fair, Reyla thought. To have a bet against someone with that distracting of a voice.  If there was justice in the world, his voice would sound like nail on a chalkboard, but no it was designed to torture Reyla in a different way. To make Reyla’s usually steady hands shake. 

Reyla was pulled out of her thoughts of cursing Davrin and his stupid voice when Davrin placed his hands on her hips causing the tragic death of her eighteenth lockpick. This was enraging, these lockpicks deserve better than to be massacred like this. She will ask Emmrich if the Mourn Watch would bury these lockpicks.  They deserve some sort of memorial to honor their sacrifices.  “Stop cheating!” 

Davrin pulled her closer to his chest and Reyla tried to suppress the shiver up her spine when she felt his lip brush up against her ear causing her nineteenth lockpick to snap. “Cheating!” Davrin whispered in what Reyla was sure was his best “I am offended” voice. 

“Reyla, besides how is me talking to you cheating. Surely casual conversation wouldn’t distract a master thief.” Davrin’s hands moved up away from her hips and lightly brushed against her breasts. Reyla felt like she was on fire and was about to stab lockpick twenty in his eye.  She was going to win this bet and Davrin will be buying her dinner today. No matter how much cheating he does.   She heard the lock click and she pushed the door open, feeling incredibly smug. 

“You broke like fifty lockpicks.” Reyla can’t believe him trying to weasel his way out of this.

Reyla gave him a light punch, “Don’t you dare, the bet was if I can open this door, the door is open. You buy me dinner. I expect something fancy. I’m a fucking lady.” 

“A “fucking lady”” Davrin laughed, Reyla can go home missing a warden she thought. No one could notice, something in her face must have been efficiently scary because Davrin held his hands up in mock surrender. “I apologize my lady, will Hal’s be sufficient enough to meet your very high standards of drinking booze you found in a dumpster.”

The kiss is—fffuck—so soft; he can't help but hum into it, his face cradled delicately between their fingers as the tension in their body gives and gives and goes gentle.

They hold him like he isn't real, like they need to make sure, their fingertips tracing the lines of his ear and their eyelashes fluttering whispers over his face. He could look at them, could say something along the lines of that's more like it or you were saying? but he doesn't want to joke the moment away. It feels… precious, ephemeral somehow.

But he's here. He is here. Basking in their touch, in all of this soft, slow, new, familiar, simply being here until the being here gets intimate—giving in to the languid pleasure of a long overdue conversation. By the time he moves to answer, they've feathered barely-there secrets over his eyebrows, his temples, his cheekbones, his jaw, and into the delicate skin behind his ears.

His reply is just a caress.

They stop breathing.

The world is his in that moment—skin on skin and unsaid words, the air in his lungs and the blood in his heart and the rhythmic ebb and flow of the Fade.

Davrin coughs down a chuckle and leans forward in his armchair, gesturing for them to continue.

Hrrrnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn.

"Are you sure you want to know?" Tofana asks, still horrified at the prospect of introducing Davrin to quite possibly the best (and the worst) serial of them all.

"I asked, didn't I?"

Fine. Fine. Tofana sighs, opens the book, takes a deep breath, aaand... snaps the book shut. "I change my mind!"

"You don't have to if you d—."

"It's embarrassing!!"

Davrin takes them in a moment, his beautiful brown eyes ducking quickly into a corner thought before he looks back at them. "I'll sing something," he offers in exchange.

Tofana bites their lip, and he watches them hither thither and dither their way toward and away from the book in their hands before they finally take the plunge and turn to page one.