Abi's Happy Place

Fucking Illario, Lucanis mouthed at the ceiling, more silently than his door hinges, then tossed the knives on the foot of his bed. He scrubbed his hands over his face—he had not anticipated being accosted by his cousin so soon after returning to Treviso. Releasing his scowling features with a final preparatory pat that verged too close to a slap, he dropped his arms and reached for the handle.

“You shouldn’t leave your window unlocked, cousin,” Illario greeted him before the door had fully opened, grinning. He undoubtedly knew Lucanis had been accumulating weaponry on the other side. “Bad people might come through it.”

“I’m worse,” Lucanis scoffed in answer from the threshold. “But I locked it. What brings you here so early you picked open the door rather than knock?”

“Lucanis,” his cousin chided, making a meal of the three syllables in the way he did whenever he had something up his sleeve—other than a hidden dagger. “Where’s the ‘I missed you too, cousin, thank you for your Antivan hospitality and for starting my day with a fresh pot of the only thing in Thedas that I truly love’, hmm?”

Lucanis balled his hands in his pockets rather than let them drift up to rub his already aching temples.

“Does it count as hospitality when you break into my apartment? Or use my supplies to brew said pot?” he groused, though he did make for the tiny kitchen.

“Details,” Illario said, waving a careless hand.

Lucanis poured himself a cup of coffee and sipped it. Though he had been looking forward to indulging in the small ritual of making coffee in his own kitchen after a very long string of contracts, he could admit Illario’s coffee wasn’t half bad—leaps and bounds better than the swill he’d been subjected to these last few months, even if a touch too weak. He took it to his favorite chair, the one with the good views of the window and doors.

Illario took a long look at Lucanis while he settled in. “How was Tevinter?”

Lucanis drank more coffee as he pondered the many ways he could answer. “Busy. Made my eyes itch.”

Illario made a face like there might have been lemon lurking at the bottom of his cup. Lucanis knew he expected salacious details, but what was there to say? He showed up, killed the target, then moved onto the next, and Caterina had plenty of mages for him to take down in the Imperium.

“Glad to be home, at least?”

Lucanis also considered that for a moment too long. “It was nice to sleep in my own bed before Caterina runs us ragged in the Satinalia onslaught. Is that why you’re here? To talk contract division? You didn’t answer my earlier question.”

“Maker, Lucanis,” Illario complained. “No. I wanted to steal an hour or two with you before the Satinalia contracts started. I thought maybe you’d be less like a Mabari with a bone about work this early.”

Lucanis stared blankly. “When has that ever been true about me? All I do is work. When I’m not working, I’m thinking about what I need to do for upcoming work.”

“Which is why I’m here!” Illario snapped. He swung his feet into the room, leaning forward. “You’ve been gone for three months, running yourself ragged, from the look of you. We are about to enter our busiest time of year. I came to get you to do something other than work before we are consumed by it.”

The line of Lucanis’s mouth grew tight, so he hid it behind another sip of coffee. “I appreciate the gesture, Illario. I do. Work has been… a blur, these last months. But I have plans today.”

“Oh?” Illario needled. “What are they?”

The question made Lucanis blink in surprise. “Well, I need to sharpen my blades—”

“Work,” Illario cut in.

Lucanis frowned.

“I wanted to do some knitting. The sweater I wear beneath—”

“Also work.”

The frown turned into a scowl.

“Am I allowed to cook?”

“Depends. Will you be poisoning it to slip into the festivities tonight?” Illario simpered ingratiatingly at the daggers Lucanis glared at him. “Believe it or not, that’s work.”

“What about a haircut? Is that on your list of approved leisure?” Lucanis spat.

“Ah, an errand! Progress is progress, I suppose. We can stop by Antonio’s on the way back. I could use a trim before the festivities too.”

“On the way back? From what, precisely?”

Illario stood, his eyes glittering now given the chance to explain what he’d been dancing around. “I’ve been learning how to sail, you see—”

“Learning?” Lucanis rumbled, dark as thunderclouds threatening a clear sky.

“Learned,” Illario corrected, his most charming smile plastered, on his lips. “I’ve learned to sail, and I have access to a boat. We could take it out on the bay—”

“Illario,” Lucanis muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I’ve just spent a week on a ship. It is Harvestmere, about to turn Frostfall, and it’s cold now. If this skill you’ve ‘learned’ fails you, the water will be even more frigid. What makes you think I want to be anywhere near the bay right now?”

Illario’s fists found a familiar home on his hips while he regarded Lucanis, bewilderment clouding his piercing gaze.

“Because you don’t just love coffee. You love the bay. You love being on the water. Is it so crazy to want to do something with you before we’re too busy to do anything?”

The hand on Lucanis’s nose moved to rub his brow, but he caught Illario shaking his head bitterly. Lucanis agreed with the sentiment, unsure when this chasm between what Illario thought Lucanis liked to do and what he actually liked to do had started forming.

“Will there be other people?”

“It’s not that big of a boat, Lucanis. What do you say?” When Lucanis said nothing, Illario offered up one last temptation, dangling it like a carrot on a stick. “We can go to Cafe Pietra after.”

Worse was that it worked.

“Alright, Illario,” Lucanis sighed into the last of his coffee. “You win.”

Hours later, Lucanis stood on a dock he’d swum much to far to haul both their exhausted bodies atop. Gasping for air with lungs burning so fiercely it reminded him of their training days, he stared up at the moons just beginning to peek over the horizon. The dusk was too young for the calm waters to shimmer under their light, but their pale, expressionless faces joined the cousins, four silent sentinels watching the boat slip beneath the glassy surface into the frigid waters below.

“You said an hour or two,” Lucanis spat through gritted teeth, lest they chatter. “You said you’d learned how to sail.”

Illario couldn’t answer, still coughing up water, hands on his knees.

Lucanis shook his head at the sorry sight. “How will Caterina ever think you fit for the seat if you can’t even drown me fucking properly?”

Spitting water at Lucanis’s feet, Illario straightened enough to glare. “I’m sorry, did you want to go down with the Maker-forsaken thing?” he rasped. “Should I have not thrown you over the rail?”

Holding his tongue, Lucanis turned and squelched off, leaving Illario where he stood panting, wondering if there was even time to quickly sharpen his blades for the Satinalia work, let alone coffee.