#rosiago

Viago loses the struggle not to close his eyes— not that it is a battle he fights with much effort.

She follows a path up, up, up, until the pads of her fingers meet the slightly-raised edges of his house tattoo, near the bend of his elbow.

“You don't like it,” she says— claims. There is no question whatsoever in her words, just an observation, from observant eyes, from years and years of walking half a step behind him.

(Surviving her takes effort, and attention, and focus; surviving her means learning her patterns, watching her exist and trace invisible lines that intersect each other to find steady coordinates he can use as fixed points in the strange, changing night sky Rosa is. 

Something like that, he supposes, cannot be achieved without offering the same in return.)

“Should I ask how you noticed?”

“Yes,” Rosa says.

“Will you tell me?”

“No.”

Their tattoos are not alike— it is not entirely uncommon for different assassins to add their own flair; after all, what is their profession if not extremely personalized?

Deft, clever fingers dance over his skin. Warm, but not burning. 

Capable of so much harm.

“I couldn't wait to get mine,” she says.

“I know,” he answers, “I remember.”

“You made me wait so long for it.”

There is a spark— it tickles, but it's not strong enough to contract his muscles, to give him that vindictive, localized pain she often blesses him with if the mood strikes her right.

He made her wait to leave her fledgling feathers behind. He made her wait longer than anyone else under his command— long enough for people to begin arching eyebrows at the dissonance between her ranking and the long string of fulfilled contracts she brought him like gifts, like little, bloodied birds she cradled carefully in her hands.

(And he always said: you could be faster, you could be sharper, you could be deadlier, you could be better.

And she always answered: yes, yes, yes, yes.)

“All houses have different conventions about it—”

“I know,” Rosa interrupts him, “to some, it’s little more than proof of ownership.”

“Some?” he cracks an eye open. Bathed in light from the moons, Rosa always looks so strangely cold, but her touch is warm. Both distant, and right in your face. “You think it's different here?”

“I think,” her fingers stretch to cover as much of the tattoo as she can, “that you make it a badge of honor because the less people resent you, the less likely they are to stab you in the back. And you’re right.”

“Look at that,” there is humor in his voice, the kind with teeth that she appreciates, “you do think.”

Rosa's nose wrinkles in delight. Her pale eyes gleam in the night, twin embers that refuse to be put out. 

“Funny,” she declares.

“I know you think so,” there is a pause, as Viago wonders whether or not to share the rest of his thought. Eventually, he ventures: “not a lot of people think so.”

Rosa only hums, ambivalent, inscrutable, in that way that has him wondering if she means something she won’t share, or if she is only filling the silence so he doesn’t call her unnerving again.

Tonight she smells more like rain than like ash, though sweet smoke clings to her— like the kind in those places she likes to go to, with bards and poets and storytellers and terrible decisions.

(She keeps inviting him. Viago keeps explaining to her that he would rather die. She keeps inviting him.)

“Tell me,” she says.

“Tell you what?”

“Just tell me.”

Viago closes his eyes again. Her touch is soothing, strangely declawed. She came in through the door (because Rosa would hate to be predictable) without warning nor permission, changed for bed and climbed beside him.

It's not new behavior. It’s also not a routine. There are no set days or times— sometimes she is there, on his bed, not tangled together, but sleeping nearby. Sometimes she is not.

This is the extent to which he likes to think about it.

“I had to get mine as soon as I joined, I was not given a choice,” he explains, slowly. “I was terrified— weeks after, I barely slept, thinking there was something slowly releasing from the ink.”

“They wanted to humble you.”

“Most likely.”

“Well,” her nails scratch down his forearm, feather-light. “I don't think it worked, not even a little bit, Vi. Maybe someone should tell them.”

His lips pull at the corners.

“I thought you had no talent whatsoever for necromancy?” 

That earns him a laugh— quick like her fingers, like her lightning, like her temper. Scratchy, like her gentle touch and as familiar as finding long strands of red hair in his personal space.

“I… nearly fell asleep when I got mine,” Rosa says. “So— very different experiences.”

Of course she would find needles on her skin relaxing. 

He had not been there, Viago had been busy with his newly-appointed responsibilities as Talon; he had pushed her out the door, claimed her an annoyance, told her he was too busy, and to go get it done already, and later she had returned with a wide smile and her chest tender with a tattoo that looked like a cross between the traditional sigil for House de Riva and the embossing on his personal stationary.

(The design skews one way more than the other.)

“I always thought you'd want it bigger,” he muses, voicing old, aimless thoughts. 

“I thought about it,” she lets go of his arm— to gesture at herself, he imagines. He can do things like that: imagine how she moves without looking. “The head on the back of my hand, and then have the snake swirl all over me, and end at my opposite leg.”

He— vaguely remembers that idea.

There are many things she says, Viago can't be expected to remember all of them.

“That sounds,” words are chosen carefully, “like a lengthy process.”

His arm remains stretched across her lap— he could take it away. He does not. Eventually, her touch returns, almost as soft as the sigh that leaves his lungs.

(How long did he spend being scared of those hands on his bare skin?)

“I don't think I would have had the patience for such a large tattoo, truly,” he can hear the smile in her voice, “and I thought… it wasn't all that necessary to flaunt it. It's for me, isn't it?”

“Is it?”

“It feels that way.”

This is what makes him laugh— brief, quiet, half lulled into sleep by her aimless, exploratory touch. 

Viago does not laugh very often.

(He remembers the first time he laughed in front of her, many years ago; he remembers, because instead of having a normal, sane reaction to a perfectly normal human behavior, Rosa had wrinkled her nose, this time in displeasure, had bared her teeth and hissed no, offended and resentful of anything she perceived as too soft being offered to her.

At least if it came from him.)

“What?” she asks, eternally curious, always so willing to dig her fingers wherever she wants, regardless of if it's a wound or not, and if she might be reopening it.

(But, perhaps, fire may burn infection away.)

“It's only fitting,” he says, “you take things and make them yours, and then you act like they were always meant to be yours, and like anyone that questions you has lost their mind.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“No? Whose shirt are you wearing right now?” He reminds her, as though the grey silk is not embroidered with his initials.

“It was with my things, so it must be mine.”

“I barely took it off.”

“And I’m telling you I don't know how it would have made its way into my hands unless it was mine.”

“Infuriating thing.”

Viago feels her shift, feels her lift his arm— he is not paying much attention, not until he feels the heat of her breath on his skin, the scrape of teeth over that tattoo, and he imagines—

He imagines that her teeth are sharp enough to cut him open with ease, he imagines she might lap at that old, trapped ink, burning tongue licking it away, along with a mouthful of blood, for interest. He imagines she might leave something else behind to fill the void: fire or lightning, the incandescent imprint of herself. 

He imagines she might tear the layers of skin away entirely, that she might spit them out, and smile at him with red-stained teeth, and leave him with a pulsing, raw, bloody mess of flesh that feels very much like her love. 

(A pet, she calls herself. A dog— if a dog was a wild thing with a hundred eyes and several rows of sharp teeth, if it was the size of a house and had fire at the back of its throat and brought storms with every howl of its frothing mouth, if it saw a collar and thought it might be funny to let itself wear it and pretend to be tame and laze in front of a hearth.)

“Rosa,” he calls.

There is no blood, there is no pain; only the gentle scrape of teeth, and the warmth of her mouth.

“Make it storm,” Viago orders her.

“It doesn’t work like that.”

“You did it once.”

“It only needed a nudge— I can’t change the weather like that. Or would you like me to switch the tides and shift the constellations to a more agreeable configuration as well?”

He thinks: would you?

“Make it storm,” he insists, like a tyrant. Or like a child. Or like someone who commands a force of nature that never seems to find its limit.

“Vi—”

“Make it storm.”

Her laugh tickles his skin like her lightning does.

“Yes, Fifth Talon.”