S A D B O Y S

She never knows how to defuse a situation, only escalate it further and further. She pushes and prods and pulls and pulls and pulls until something gives or snaps— it matters little how these things start, a minor disagreement, a few mean words exchanged, it’s all an excuse anyways.

How he wishes he could say he does not find her alluring in moments like this as well, panting like a dog, with those eyes of her intense and furious. How he wishes he didn’t find her rage beautiful, her ire as volatile as awe-inspiring. She gets so sharp, all teeth and claws, temper and thunder and edges all too easy to get caught on— all of that, in his service, might as well be one of the most beautiful things to exist, but against him—

(‘Whatever I am that you hate so much, you made me so.’)

Rosa has a nose for blood, knows how to find the soft underbelly of an issue, knows how to sink her teeth and rend flesh like the hungriest of beasts. What talent she has for riling him up— she makes him fight, always, always, demands he matches her fury, demands to be pushed back, if only to understand where the limits of her eternal storm lie. 

(That is what it is, is it not?)

Viago cages her against the wall to his office, isolates her from the rest of the world with his body. They pant in each other’s faces, breaths mingling— this close he can smell ozone and smoke, he can nearly taste the sweetness of peaches. 

Teia isn’t there to mediate between them.

“Like you cannot do anything without pain,” he says, tense, irate, frustration mounting higher and higher. 

She bares her teeth, this beautiful, half-domesticated creature. Bares her teeth, takes fistfuls of his shirt— does not push him away. What a mistake from nature that she was not born with the capacity to growl.

Viago does not back down. She would never forgive if he backed down.

“I would not have been able to make you into anything you hadn’t allowed yourself. You are far too willful.”

(But he did forge her, even if he had to suffer her constant input on his methods and results. When he looks at her, he can see the marks he left— in her stance when she fights, in the straightness of her spine, in what good care she takes of her knives. Anyone would find it difficult to look at her and not associate them immediately— or is that wishful thinking on his part? Is it that covetous, possessive thing that rears its ugly head from time to time (more and more often), such as when she performs admirably well, when she pulls feats no one else could manage— Teia says he preens— and he thinks, unbidden, unwanting of this want, ‘mine’?

There are layers to his guilt. Guilt over not feeling guiltier, for one.)

Rosa scoffs— infuriatingly arrogant, constant headache— “more criticism? Do not let me stop you.”

“Stubborn,” he says, each of his words laced with over a decade’s worth of grievances, “reckless. Arrogant. Making a joke out of everything— no common sense, no respect, no control. With this constant need to fight—”

It’s painful, this thing between them— whatever it is that refuses to be named, these feelings all tangled up and wrapped around each other like overgrown, unattended vines. Just like Rosa, they overflow— the boundaries of definition, they spill into several things, refusing to be constrained to a single name. It’s simultaneously too much and not nearly enough.

“—and things somehow still work out for you, no matter the depths your self-imposed idiocy takes you to. You are infuriating. You are the most irritating thing I have ever had the disgrace of crossing paths with. You are…” So close, close enough he can nearly taste the sweetness of peaches, and bitter soot, and the spark of lightning; so close he can feel the heat of her body against his. “You are…” Whatever he means to say escapes him— there is no place for his words to go other than “beautiful.”

He says the word with reluctance, with gritted teeth, with a glare, with his want refusing to be kept under wraps, with his heart beating madly in his chest.

Rosa never, ever backs down— but her eyes widen, and she inhales, sharp like a stab wound. She never backs down from anything, like it goes against the very fabric of her being, but maybe, Viago thinks, if she was not backed against a wall, caged in by his arms, held upright by his body; maybe she would try for the very first time.

“What?” Rosa asks— snarls— and, oh, something pleased unfurls inside his stomach at having caught her off guard, she who moves just a little bit faster than everyone else.

“Are you going to bite me if I kiss you?” Viago asks in turn.

Silence.

“Rosa.”

“Well— now you have put the idea in my head.” Her shrug is casual despite the heat in her eyes, the fury he can still read in there.

He loathes when she does that— and how good she is at it, pretending nothing moves her, touches her, wrecks her. She wraps herself tightly in overlapping layers of humor and dark pragmatism, makes herself into a creature as infuriating as unreachable, as if nothing truly matters to her. A shrug, and a grin, and a joke, and a knife between the ribs, and that is that, no big deal.

He taught her that too, in a way. To never show her hand before she plays it— but Viago had not expected how she would twist the general idea into something that would serve her, tailored specifically to her own nature. He had not predicted how good she would become at it, how often she would use it against him.

(Sometimes he wonders if there are things that have worked the other way around as well. If someone looks at the way he holds himself, or chooses chairs with armrests strong enough to resist inevitable perching, or how he sometimes scowls at sunsets for no reason other than daring to exist, and associates them as well. These are not comforting thoughts.)

“Do not bite me,” Viago insists— stern as ever with his wayward pet.

“I won’t.” Rosa promises easily.

He leans in, measured, careful, controlled. One of them has to try, at least.

He leans in, leans down, until he can taste her breath on his tongue— stops. It’s easier, so much easier, when he has something she wants; and she wants, begins to lean in, to close the distance herself, not knowing how to get her hands on things other than reaching out for them—

Viago pulls back. Rosa bares her teeth again, kept in place by gloved fingers twisting into the hair at the back of her head. If this hurts, she does not show it— what bothers her more is the indignity of being made to stay still against her wishes.

“Do not bite me,” he insists, again.

“I won’t,” she hisses.

Up until now, he has managed not to kiss her. Up until now, she hasn’t tried either. He cannot tell— Teia is right, Rosa can be surprisingly cagey when she puts her mind to it— if she is respecting an unnamed boundary— which would be somewhat surprising— or if it is all the same to her, nothing ever moving her, touching her, wrecking her. As if him kissing her or not is entirely inconsequential, as if she’s beyond all the things that make him hesitate, as if anything and everything is meaningless unless she decides it’s not.

He doesn’t want to want. 

But he does want.

And perhaps, on occasion, the way out of things is right through.

(That always seems to work for Rosa, doesn’t it?)

Viago leans in again— stops. Lets her strain against her leash, lets her gnash her teeth and stew in her rage, a hair’s breadth away from her prize but not allowed to get closer. 

“Do you want me to kiss you?” He asks.

Rosa swears at him— in antivan, in tevinter, in what he can only estimate to be an obscure dwarven language. She loves words but hates reading, she loves talking in spite of her damaged vocal cords— she loves talking to spite her damaged vocal cords.

“Yes or no, Rosalie?”

“Oh— full name? I am in trouble, then.” Panting like a dog, like it’s difficult for her to remember how to be a person, like she does not want to admit to anything either— slippery thing, Teia calls her every time Rosa leaves them, easy to catch but hard to hold. “Yes.”

“Then do not bite me.”

“I won’t!”

Viago leans in to brush his mouth over hers—

She bites him.

He’s never met anyone who could make him so furious so easily, who could find new and tortuous ways to test the limits of his patience.

“You said you wouldn’t—”

“I lied.”

“Do that again and I’m walking away.” This is not an empty threat. 

“Just kiss me.”

“You don’t even deserve—”

“I know, I’m difficult. Just kiss me anyways.”

Both hands in her hair now, he surges towards her again, compelled regardless of the alarms going off inside his mind. She doesn’t bite him, not this time. Instead, she kisses him like she hungers, she kisses him like there is something inside her that needs to be calmed, quelled— a mess of teeth and spit and tongue, the inside of her mouth unbearably warm.

“Biting like an animal,” Viago speaks against her mouth, “like you cannot control yourself.”

“Control is too hard,” her nails rake his scalp.

“Hard like wards?” He groans.

“Harder. The hardest thing. Do it for me?”

The things she says to him, sometimes.

(The concept is not entirely new, it is merely a rearranging of past things, a twisting of what once was, layered with this newer glaze of shifting feelings. 'Reading is hard', she had said, more than once, frustrated, bored, looking like she might start picking fights again or set books on fire, 'do it for me'?