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On the way back to the Dock Town eluvian, Fahad’s step falters.
Lucanis is already a ways ahead. Behind him, Neve brings up the rear, a respectful distance from them, lingering now and then to discuss something with a contact that approaches her in the rainy, gray streets. Fahad tries to gauge whether she’s within earshot. Her face is turned away, her hat covering most of her profile as she speaks to someone in colorless and worn clothing. When he looks forward, back at Lucanis, he’s already looking at him, one eyebrow raised questioningly.
“Neve’s catching up,” Fahad says dismissively.
Lucanis sighs impatiently but doesn’t respond. He takes a few steps toward him, shortening the distance between them but not closing it. He’s been just out of arm's reach since they left the bar. Since they left the muted space of the Fade in Lucanis’s mind. Fahad looks back at Neve for something to do. She’s still speaking with her contact.
“Bringing her to Dock Town is always like this,” Lucanis says after a beat.
“What, should I come here without her? I take you with me every time I go to Treviso.”
“Yes, however I am never stopped on the street by random people trying to sell me a scoop.”
“Is that what’s happening?” Fahad glances back at Neve just in time to see her deposit a coin discreetly into the contact’s open hand. “Oh. Looks like she bought it.”
“Looks like it.”
Fahad meets his eyes. There are raindrops collecting on his dark hair and beard. The gray in the air and the sky around them seems to make Lucanis’s eyes more brown, drawing depth from the deep color. Fahad thinks of coffee, warm in a mug in his hands, the smell of it also warm, Lucanis’s breath also warm, in the little pantry room Fahad has been daydreaming of so often now. He takes a step forward, and Lucanis takes half a step back, keeping the distance between them just enough that Fahad can’t reach for him.
“Lucanis.” His name comes so easily to Fahad’s mouth, as easily as breathing.
The skin around his eyes softens, relaxes. When he looks at Fahad, his face holds less tension. Fahad’s breath hitches at the sight. He tries to pass it off as a cough.
“Not now,” Lucanis says.
“Just say you’re alright.”
Lucanis looks at him, then quickly looks away. “You were in my mind. You saw all. I know my thoughts can be trusted with you but I need… a moment to process that.”
“Sorry.” Neve appears beside him, tucking her coin purse back into her pocket. “We can go now. I have some letters to send.”
She glances between them. There is a heaviness in the air that the rain seems to slash through. After a beat, she starts walking. Lucanis quickly falls into step behind her. Fahad takes a deep breath—salty sea air, the now familiar fizzy smell of magic everywhere—but it doesn’t seem to hit his lungs.
.
Lucanis comes to Fahad, for once. In the room he’s claimed, the ground shifting with the water’s reflection, shadows darting around as fish move between the glass and some unseen, unknown light source. His eyes are still the color of coffee, even in this green lighting. Fahad pulls himself up off the couch and pats the space beside him.
“I will be quick,” Lucanis says, lingering by the door. “I don’t want to disturb your rest.”
There is a distance between them that feels wider than just this room, than just something that can be closed by a few steps. Fahad looks down at his hands, open on his lap. They feel useless, ill equipped to handle whatever this is that churns and churns in his chest. He can’t hit a feeling with a sword. There is no shield big enough to block the nervous flutter in his stomach when Lucanis meets his eyes.
“You’re making me nervous,” Fahad says.
“I’m the nervous one. You were in my head. My thoughts. You saw—” he cuts himself off abruptly.
Fahad lays back down on the couch. The tips of his ears feel hot and cold at once. In the broken and fractured world where he had found Lucanis, he had also been there, and the tips of his ears were pink as his own projection spoke to him. Lucanis got that detail right. Other details too, but Fahad remembers the ears specifically.
“Do you feel violated?” Fahad asks, staring at the ceiling.
Lucanis shifts, the sounds of his clothes rustling filling the otherwise quiet air. “Perhaps. More ashamed, I think.”
“Ashamed?”
Lucanis takes a few steps into the room. After a long moment, he kneels beside Fahad’s head. He’s close, close enough that Fahad can reach out and touch him, but he doesn’t.
“The image of you I hold in my head,” Lucanis says. “You spoke to it. To yourself.”
“I did.” Fahad’s face feels hot. He looks back up at the ceiling.
“I can guess at the details of what it revealed to you.”
“You don’t have to guess. I can tell you.”
Lucanis flinches. “Please,” he whispers. “Do not repeat its words. I can’t bear to hear them from your mouth.”
Fahad reaches then, the tips of his fingers brushing Lucanis’s shoulder. Lucanis takes his hand. His hands are always a touch cold, as though the demon absorbs some of his warmth. Fahad brings his hand to his face and presses it to his too hot cheek.
Like a dam has burst, Lucanis speaks, haltingly. “I have wanted to share with you. Share more. My thoughts. What I’m feeling and thinking. I think this doesn’t come naturally to either of us. Sharing. Wanting to share.”
“You’re right.” Fahad speaks against Lucanis’s slowly warming hand. Each brush of his lips on Lucanis’s knuckles sends a thrill through him. He can’t get used to it, get used to the casual touch, the presence, the strange sensations that flood him when Lucanis is near.
“But I had hoped for something more like this—” he gestures around them, around the quiet room and the soft sounds of the water behind the glass, the reflected lights shifting on the ground and on Lucanis’s face. “I hadn’t anticipated Spite pulling you into our mind.”
Lucanis’s hand moves, the pad of his thumb brushing Fahad’s bottom lip, a soft touch. Fahad releases a shaky breath. He is completely out of his depth. Every touch disorients him. If there were rules, a known path to follow, a way to know exactly what to do, perhaps he would feel less like a frayed rope, barely hanging on, not even sure what he’s trying to hang on to.
“Do you think—” A stupid idea. He almost reconsiders, until Lucanis looks at him, his eyes wide, so different from the usual narrow analytical look he wears. The words pour out, “Do you want me to tell you what the you in my head would be like?”
Lucanis says nothing for several moments. Then, “Why?”
Fahad shrugs, trying to seem aloof, but he knows he isn’t fooling Lucanis, and he certainly isn’t fooling himself. “We’re uneven now, aren’t we? You think I know more about you than you know about me. When Spite pulled me into your mind, or the Fade, or whatever that was. It’s an unequal exchange between us now.”
Lucanis touches Fahad’s lip again, a delicate brush, barely a touch at all. Fahad bites his tongue. There is a mixture of fear and anticipation roiling within him. Something big. Something frightening. He sits up, and Lucanis’s hand falls down onto his knees.
“Yes,” Lucanis says, his voice low. “I would appreciate that. But not here. Come to Treviso.”
“Treviso?”
“Yes. You were forced to endure the unpleasantness of knowing me in my fractured mind. This time, let us at least have good coffee.”
A breathy laugh escapes him. He imagines a kiss, a quick one, a soft one, but doesn’t make a move, and neither does Lucanis, although there is a smile on his lips that commands Fahad’s attention as though dragged there by magic.
.
There is an ease to Lucanis in Treviso, especially at the cafe overlooking the canal. A slope to his shoulders, a relaxing of tension. He’s home, Fahad thinks, watching him settle in his seat at their table, close to the water. The diffused lantern lights around them reflect in his eyes, bringing out the depth, as complicated as the complex brews he loves. Fahad sits stiffly on his chair, although it’s comfortable. The Fade is home to him now, and the strangeness of the Lighthouse is no stranger than his quarters at Weisshaupt, no stranger than the various places around the Anderfels he’s had to camp over the years as he kept back darkspawn. He doesn’t have a home. Hasn’t for a while. Seeing Lucanis in Treviso is a rare treat, one he savors as Lucanis savors the coffee in his hands.
“You like it here,” he says, and immediately feels stupid for pointing out such an obvious thing.
Lucanis swallows the coffee he was holding in his mouth. “Yes. I do. When we are at the Lighthouse, my mind always wanders here.”
“I wish I could make it more comfortable for you.”
“You already do.” Lucanis smiles, and the lights bounce off his face and make his skin glow.
Fahad speaks without thinking. “I’ve never belonged anywhere like you belong here.”
Lucanis takes a sip of coffee and swallows it slowly, his throat moving, pulling Fahad’s attention. A nervous flutter settles in his chest. He puts his hand flat over his heart, trying to settle it, to calm himself down.
“I disagree,” Lucanis says. “Everywhere we go, even Treviso, I see you there. Your impact. Your effect on the people.”
“Yeah, punching people. Killing enemies.”
“Helping. Helping people. Pulling them out of the prison of their minds.”
The sound of the water in the canal below them seems too loud, suddenly, and the chattering of the patrons of the cafe, and the sound of Lucanis’s cup scraping the table as he lifts it to his mouth and takes a careful sip.
“What is it like, in your mind?” Lucanis asks.
Fahad’s knuckles ache suddenly. He glances down at his lap and sees his hands clenched into tight fists. Slowly, he relaxes them, but the tension doesn’t leave his body. “I don’t know. Maybe the wilderness. In the Anderfels. Camping in the mountains. Clearing out abandoned Deep Roads entrances. It’s what’s most familiar to me.”
“Treviso is familiar to me, and yet you found me in a broken Ossuary.”
Fahad is clenching his fists again. “Right. Then, maybe, my… clan. The place where we…” he trails, uncertain.
Lucanis stares into his cup. “The place where the blight found them. When you were out camping. On your… warrior trial?”
“Yeah.” The night before Weisshaupt, before the flickering fire in the Lighthouse kitchen, the night before Fahad had fully expected to die fighting the archdemon. Whispers of his past over dim candlelight. There was so much uncertainty that night, but for a few moments there was a light feeling of something like hope as he and Lucanis spoke with the kitchen table between them.
And somehow, he’s still here, drinking coffee in a glittering city. Guilt floods him anew, never an unfamiliar feeling, but especially out of place today, wrestling for space amidst the warmth of Lucanis’s presence, the memory of the first and last kiss they shared heavy in the air between them, a kiss as soft and ephemeral as a dream in the cramped pantry room. Too many emotions flooding him, too much to process. Too much exposed, out in the open, ready to be read and judged and witnessed. He digs his nails into his palms and lets the pain ground him.
“You… are in a forest in the Anderfels,” Lucanis says, his voice cutting cleanly through the chaos in Fahad’s mind.
“I’m in the forest. And my mentor is there. You would run into him first.”
“Describe him.”
Fahad closes his eyes. “He had vallaslin like mine. Honoring Mythal. And his skin was like leather. Beaten by the sun. Wrinkled. He was taller than me. And he was hard, unrelenting. He wouldn’t let up. Training under him was a nightmare. And yet if it wasn’t for his training, I would be dead by now, I’m sure.”
“I feel the same way about Caterina,” Lucanis says. “I believe age made her, and perhaps your mentor, hard. But now I look back and realize she was right, and maybe that means I am growing soft.” He leans forward, his hair slipping over his shoulders, the sound sending a shiver up Fahad’s spine. “Your mentor. In your forest. What would he say to me?”
Fahad keeps his eyes on Lucanis. He tries to keep his voice detached and cool. “He would say that I’ve always been a little shit. Difficult to manage. Quick to anger. Proud. I spent too long on my warrior trial. I wanted to prove myself in the wilderness. Two weeks of camping on my own out there turned into four, just because I could do it. When I got back to my clan, they were all dead or blighted. He would tell you that my arrogance and my constant need to prove myself got my entire clan destroyed.”
His voice wavers at the end. He stares down at his clenched fists on his lap. Again, he searches, searches for a guideline, an existing path upon the dirt floor of his mind and his heart, something to follow in feeling, but all he can see is the broken earth where the darkspawn clawed up and tainted his home, his clan, his life as he knew it.
“If I may,” Lucanis says.
Fahad glances up, feeling Lucanis’s eyes on him as much as he sees them.
“I think you know you are being too hard on yourself,” he says.
Fahad shrugs, looking out at the glittering water, the lantern glow. Lucanis continues, his voice soft as it rises slightly above the din around them, just loud enough to be heard by the two of them.
“I would say the same to your mentor, in your head. I would tell him that perhaps your hardheadedness is why you are alive now. That the same need to prove yourself is what brought you to Varric. All the qualities you think he would hate you for is what you are using now to save the world. Would he… let me pass?”
Fahad clears his throat. Something has lodged itself in his windpipe, holding back words. His hands twitch to reach for Lucanis but he keeps them on his lap. Slowly, he nods.
Lucanis looks pleased. “Alright. Good. What’s next?”
Fahad takes a sip of coffee and tries to swallow this imagined obstruction. “This is hard.”
“I know.” Lucanis drains his cup, then gets to his feet. “There is a spot. On the rooftops. I would go up there to clear my head, after a difficult job. Perhaps I may show you.”
Another thing, shared. Fahad smiles, surprised at how easy it is, despite the churning emotion within him. “I’d like that.”
.
The city is less imposing from the rooftops. Fahad sits on the edge of a building, close beside Lucanis. The lack of space between them is almost a presence in itself, conspicuous, and every breath Fahad takes is a brush of his shoulder or his side against Lucanis, a rustle of their clothing, a brush of his hair on Lucanis’s shoulder and vice versa. Fahad keeps his eyes forward, unable to look at him while all his other senses are engaged, smelling him, touching him, occupying the same space in this wide, wild world as him.
“This city could be a forest from up here,” Fahad says. “Tall buildings as trees. Criss crossing roads and canals, paths and streams.”
“Is that so? I don’t spend much time in the wilderness.”
“I know. City boy.”
Lucanis nudges him softly in his side, moving with deliberate slowness. “You have given me enough today,” he says after a beat. “We can return to the Lighthouse, if you wish.”
“No.” Fahad feels a familiar determination spread through him. He doesn’t know where this will lead—the path forward is obscured, undefined—but he will go anyway. “I was in your mind. Now you get to see mine. And this was all my idea, anyway.”
Lucanis stares out at the city. The lights reflect in his eyes. He always looks calm, decades of training, but Fahad has learned the small details that give him away. The tiny wrinkle between his eyebrows. The way he pinches fabric on his lap between his thumb and index finger. A brief, momentary press of his lips, blood rushing to them when he relaxes his mouth, turning his lips pinker than usual and dragging Fahad’s attention as though by force.
“Who is next?” Lucanis asks, and Fahad watches his mouth move around the words.
“The First Warden, probably.” Fahad leans back on his palms, their sides shifting against each other as he readjusts. “You’ve seen him. A hard man, dutiful, but relentless with his standards. We disagreed on so much. I would find a way to argue with him every time we crossed paths, which was often by the time I was sent away.”
“He deserved that punch,” Lucanis says. “Not to speak too ill of the dead.”
“He did deserve it.”
“What would he say to me?”
Fahad closes his eyes. He can still see the glittering city lights behind his eyelids but they blend together with the torch lights around Weisshaupt as it was before all of this. When it was his home. As much a home as anywhere could be. “He would say I am an unworthy Warden. That I don’t bear my duty well. That I should’ve sought out some other calling. He would say I am using the Wardens purely for revenge against the darkspawn that crawled out of the earth and destroyed my clan while I was away.”
Lucanis is quiet, absorbing the words as they pour out of Fahad’s mouth. Then, “That is completely wrong. You understand duty. How would you have found and recruited me if you didn’t?”
“He would be right, though. A little.” Speaking the words aloud, they almost cut his tongue on the way out. “I did join the Wardens for revenge. I do want to avenge my clan.”
“Your motivations are your own. As long as you can perform your duties, who cares what the reasons behind your actions are? I don’t believe anyone can doubt your abilities. Would he let me pass?”
Fahad tries to speak. There is a sudden disconnect between his mind and his mouth. He nods instead.
“Good. Tell me what’s next.”
Fahad lays back on the cool rooftop. After a beat, Lucanis lays beside him. There are far fewer stars overhead than Fahad has grown accustomed to. The city lights, too bright to let the stars peek through.
“You, I think,” Fahad whispers.
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
The backs of their knuckles touch, hands at their sides.
“We don’t—”
“Lucanis. I want to.”
“Alright. Tell me.”
Fahad closes his eyes. Lucanis feels warm beside him, it’s impossible to forget his presence there, solid and reliable. In the pocket of the Fade that Spite had dragged them into, Lucanis had also been a warm spot in the colorless, cold expanse of his mind. He takes his hand and holds it on his chest, over his pounding heart. He speaks, and the words are dragged out of him, dragged out of the viselike grip he has on everything inside of him, out to the warm presence at his side.
“You would say that I destroy everything I touch. That I will destroy you with my pride and my anger. The same way I destroyed my clan.”
Lucanis’s hand twitches in his, on his chest. He props himself up on his elbow, hovering over Fahad, his hair tickling Fahad’s face. “I cannot bear to listen to this.”
“Tell me it’s wrong,” Fahad whispers, keeping his eyes on what few stars poke through the dome of light around Treviso. “You know it’s right. I destroyed my clan. I destroyed the world, disrupting Solas’s ritual. And I dragged you into this.”
“You saved me.” Lucanis’s hand pulls out of Fahad’s grip and grabs his chin, forcing him to look at his face. His eyes are wide. A small smile touches his lips. “Don’t forget that. You saved me from the Ossuary. Risked yourself to do so. Continue risking yourself, constantly, to fix the world. Do not put yourself down. Do not use me to carry these thoughts in your head.”
Fahad closes his eyes, suddenly unable to look at Lucanis’s face. He is utterly exposed. A breeze brushes past them, and Fahad imagines it ripping at his skin, tearing out his hair, exposing him further.
The Fahad inside Lucanis’s head had also been rough, relentless, holding insecurity, holding fear. Fear of attachment, fear of abandonment, fear that Lucanis would ruin this fragile and delicate thing between them. Fahad’s fear is far more ugly. And far more possible.
“There,” he chokes out. “You see me now.”
“I do.” The kiss is unexpected. Lucanis’s mouth is almost feverish, hot against Fahad’s. A gasp makes its way past Fahad’s lips, and he starts to rise from where he lays on the ground, but Lucanis pins him there with his body, a solid weight on his chest, warm and comforting. Fahad’s hand settles on Lucanis’s chest, feeling his pounding heart, each beat counting the seconds Fahad had never dared hope for, had never dared think could be possible. When Lucanis pulls away, Fahad tries to follow, to chase another kiss, more warmth, more, more, more.
“Would you let me pass?” Lucanis asks, his voice brushing Fahad’s mouth, sending shivers through him.
“Yes,” Fahad says, quickly. “Yes.”
“Alright. Good.” Lucanis kisses him again, the faintest touch, a ghost of a kiss. “Thank you. For sharing with me. I think we both are out of practice. With sharing, I mean.”
“Perhaps I am out of practice with other things too,” Fahad mutters.
Lucanis laughs, a bright sound, low and steady, and just for him. “Yes, so am I.”
Fahad pulls him down by the collar, pressing their lips together. Relief floods him. Anticipation still claws its way through his chest. A clash of emotions that he pushes into the kiss. An image of Lucanis in his mind, saying things so at odds with the warmth of his mouth now that Fahad feels like two versions of himself, superimposed upon each other, speaking disjointedly at the same time.
Fahad pulls away, just enough to look at him, his head falling back on the ground, feeling dazed and overwhelmed. “Lucanis,” he whispers.
Lucanis closes his eyes. “Say my name again.”
“Lucanis.” A shiver moves through Lucanis, his body shifting over Fahad’s, their clothes slipping against each other. “I have so much to say to you. So much to share.”
“Yes.” Lucanis’s mouth moves over his, soft and easy. “You’ve seen my mind. I trust you with my thoughts. And you can trust me. You can trust me.”
Fahad’s mind churns, races, searches. He looks for a railing, a familiar path forward, something to follow. But all he feels is a warm glow of something that is bright and unknowable, and it beckons him. Take a risk, it seems to say, and he follows, leaning up for a kiss, losing himself in an embrace, following the unseen, unknown path into the warmth that surrounds him.