Chapter Text
The dry earth gave softly under Rook’s fingers, releasing the strange dark scent that all the soil of the Necropolis seemed to have—not decay, exactly, but something that might have welcomed it as an old friend. Tiny beetles scuttled out of the way, some spreading iridescent wings in their haste to escape.
“Not too deep,” said Matheus, glancing over from his own work. “You don’t want the rhizomes to be completely covered.”
Matheus Zharadnyk was the Head Gardener of the Necropolis. He was a small, slight, middle-aged man with curly greying hair, a scruffy salt-and-pepper beard and an encyclopaedic knowledge of the bizarre flora that grew in this realm of death, and Rook had liked him the instant he had sat down opposite him at dinner and said, “So, I hear you’re thinking of getting off your arse and doing something useful around here.” What had followed had been a lightning-fast introduction to necrobotany, mostly in the form of Matheus handing him a trowel and saying “Dig here,” which had been a refreshingly straightforward method of instruction—though he had also given Rook an armful of books to work his way through. The plants down here were strange forms of life, existing as they did in a world with no natural light and very little in the way of weather, and they had strange ways of doing things.
Today, they were planting out a wheelbarrow full of the unpleasantly named ‘Corpselight’ iris, and the drooping petals did indeed give off a pale, watery light which, Matheus said, grew brighter in the immediate presence of the dead. Their long sword-like leaves protruded from fleshy rootstalks that to Rook’s untrained eye looked uncomfortably like Blight boils. It was nice simple work, though; dig a hole, lay one of the rootstalks down, whisper a small charm and feel the roots wriggle a little deeper into the earth, like settling into a well-worn armchair. It felt productive, and it had been a long time since Rook had felt productive. Some people would probably have said that saving the world had been productive, but he hadn’t wanted to do it and he wasn’t convinced he’d done a very good job of it anyway. People had still died, cities had still been razed. There was an awful lot of blood on his hands for the so-called saviour of Thedas. But he could take those bloodied hands and dig in the dead earth, and the flowers he planted probably wouldn’t overthrow a monarch, or wipe out a culture, or—
“Hey, Rook, you still with me?”
He jolted out of his reverie to find Matheus looking at him with an expression of concern on his kindly face.
“Sorry, miles away.”
Matheus’ brow smoothed a little. “It’s fine, you were just frowning at that plant like it insulted your mother.”
“Is that likely to have happened?” Anywhere else, that might just have been a colourful metaphor, but it never hurt to check.
“Some of the poppies can get a bit cheeky if you don’t set boundaries. Unusual for an iris, though. They’re normally very demure.”
“Oh.” Rook considered the plant in his hand, which had been perfectly polite so far. “No, I was just… thinking.”
“About…?”
Rook cast around for anything to say that wasn’t deeply self-pitying and landed, for once, on something good. “You say these things glow around the dead, right? Well, do the undead count?”
Matheus thought for a moment, hands still digging and planting and patting with practised ease. “I’ve always assumed so. Why?”
“Right, this is going to sound silly but… you’ve met Manfred, haven’t you?”
“Yup. Hard not to, he gets about. Lots of skeletons around here, not many that’ll try and trade you a handful of bottle caps for your watering can! I hear he’s talking now? And doing magic?”
“It’s a long story but yeah, that’s the short version,” said Rook. “Well, he’s decided he’s afraid of the dark. No idea why, he’s lived here all his… er, life? Un-life? I think he just found out you could be and thought he would give it a go. Emmrich thinks it’s fascinating he’s developed such a ‘mortal idiosyncrasy’. Which is fine, except he’s not the one that keeps being prodded awake in the middle of the night because Fred’s convinced himself that there’s a ghast in his room. I keep telling him he’s probably the scariest thing in the darkness anyway but it doesn’t seem to work. We don’t like to leave him alone with candles ‘cause he’s got a bit of a thing for fire, so I thought, maybe I could give him a couple of these to—what?”
Throughout this entire explanation Matheus had been smothering a smile with increasing difficulty, and now he lost that battle entirely.
“Sorry, sorry,” he said from behind his hand, “but it's just… I didn't think the rumours were literally true.”
Rook sighed. “Oh, most of them are. Any in particular?”
“The ones about the two of you having a kid.”
“Ah. Yeah.” Rook sat back on his heels and contemplated for a moment the inherent absurdity of the situation. “Not exactly how I imagined becoming a parent, but then, I guess I didn’t really think it would happen at all. Given my… inclinations .” Not that it necessarily ruled out the possibility, but it certainly reduced it significantly. “But Fred’s great, and Emmrich adores him, and…” He couldn't quite finish the sentence. There was an awful lot to say and it all seemed woefully inadequate, and besides, he could feel his face doing something strange, like it couldn't decide whether to smile or laugh or cry.
“Fatherhood’s a good look on you,” said Matheus gently. “Take a couple of the smaller ones. They’ll do nicely as a night-light. I’ll find you a little pot later.” Then he slapped his thighs and added, “Come on, we’ve got another barrow of these and then we need to dredge the duck pond.”
Rook paused, hand halfway to the next iris plant. “We have a duck pond?”
“Well, they’re not ducks, exactly. More like… aquatic beetles. Really big ones. You swim?”
“I try not to.”
“Right, so you’re on duck patrol, which means you get the big stick.”
“What’s that for?”
“Keeping the ducks away so I can do the hard work.”
“And if I don't keep them away?”
“If I survive, after I crawl out of the pond, I get to hit you with the stick.”
“Sounds fair.”
In the end, it turned out that the ‘ducks’ were two feet long, chitinous and extremely belligerent, and fending them off involved standing waist-deep in the luminous waters of the ‘pond’ (which was in truth big enough to be a modest lake) and smacking them on the carapace with a steel-tipped quarterstaff while Matheus hauled armfuls of stinking pondweed out of the depths. By the time they were done, Rook was soaked through with sweat, mud and pond slime so that it took most of a full scuttlebutt of fresh water for him to feel clean again.
“My word,” commented Emmrich from his desk when Rook appeared in the doorway of the study like some ghastly apparition from the depths, still damp and clutching a small stone pot of corpselight irises like a prize. “What have you been up to?”
“Dredging the duck pond,” said Rook by way of explanation.
“Yes,” said Emmrich dubiously, eyeing the puddle of water slowly accumulating on the floor, “I imagine that would do it.” Then he spotted the pot. “Oh, irises! I do love an iris. How thoughtful of you.”
“Sorry, love, they’re for Fred, so he stops waking me up every night.” There were not many empty surfaces in their rooms (because they were really Emmrich's rooms and his interior decorating tended towards the maximalist) but Rook found a few square inches free to put down the irises. They still glowed gently, presumably because of the background presence of death that was standard for the Necropolis. He glanced around. “Where is Fred?” Normally by this time of an evening, Manfred would be pottering around making tea or tidying up, or sat practising sums or casting runes under Emmrich's watchful eye. But the place seemed strangely quiet.
“In the kitchens,” Emmrich said with a meaningful look. “Hopefully, learning the consequences of setting the tablecloth alight at dinner last night.”
“Ah.” It had been Rook’s idea for Manfred to sit with the other students at mealtimes despite the fact that, for obvious reasons, he didn't need to eat. The principle was that it might give him the opportunity to improve his social skills, but it also meant that he was largely unsupervised and surrounded by curious and often very young fellow mages. Unfortunately, in addition to the darkness thing, he was going through a phase of ‘showing away’, as Emmrich put it, and his critical thinking skills had not kept up with his spellcraft. This had not been the first incidence of inadvisably-applied magic at the dinner table and probably would not be the last, but an afternoon spent peeling potatoes and shelling peas might be boring enough for a curiosity spirit to make him think twice next time.
(Rook very diplomatically did not suggest that there might be a reason why Manfred had developed a tendency toward dramatic displays of magic, not least because he was very aware that Emmrich’s showman streak had worked on him embarrassingly effectively.)
“Can you make this out at all, dearest?” Emmrich held out one of the parchments from the mess in front of him. Rook crossed the room and squinted at the tightly-packed, spidery scribbles on it.
“Hells,” he said, fishing in his pocket for his glasses—he was permitted to carry them again only because Emmrich had devised a neat little enchantment which teleported them back onto his person if they were separated for too long. Unfortunately they did not improve matters much. “Where are they learning to write like this?”
“Not everyone has the good fortune to have been brought up in an elite educational establishment,” said Emmrich, with a tone of gentle reproach. “Some of our students come to us from far less favourable circumstances. What do you suppose this word is?”
Rook considered the word. He read the rest of the sentence a few times, tilting the paper this way and that, as if he might take the meaning by surprise by out-flanking it.
“‘Periphery’, I think,” he concluded eventually, “but they've spelled it wrong.”
“Excellent, that's what I thought too.” Emmrich jotted a few comments in the margin in a poisonously green ink and put down the pen with a sigh. He rolled his shoulder, which gave a sickening crack in response.
“Yikes!”
“Don't fret, it's just these old bones. They do creak more than they used to.”
“You work too hard.” Rook dropped a hand onto the offending shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. “You're one of us mere mortals for good now, you need to take care of yourself.”
“Isn't that what I have yo—” The rest of Emmrich's sentence was lost in a groan as Rook found the knot of muscle near the base of his neck and pressed his entire weight into it.
“Sorry, didn't quite catch that.”
Emmrich heaved a contented sigh and leaned back into Rook's hands. “I knew there was a reason I kept you around, darling.”
“What, and it's not my sparkling wit and can-do attitude?”
“Laudable qualities, I'm sure, but— ah, a little lower, if you would—sometimes we must consider more practical—oh, that’s lovely—more practical matters.”
“Always happy to get practical with you,” said Rook, and demonstrated this by leaning over and kissing Emmrich upside down, for the novelty and because he could—it was still a bit of a marvel to him, to be able to take these liberties. Of course, one liberty always seemed to lead on to another, like kissing down Emmrich’s neck instead (which was a nontrivial task to accomplish without horns getting in the way) and listening to the quiet gasps of pleasure this produced. One of Emmrich's hands came up and wound into Rook's hair, which Rook took as encouragement to scrape his teeth over Emmrich's carotid artery. The hand in his hair tightened and he growled; Emmrich made a desperate noise somewhere between a moan and a whimper.
“How long ‘til dinner?” asked Rook into the crook of Emmrich's neck, and felt him twist around to glance at the carriage clock on the mantelpiece.
“A little less than an hour.”
“No time to lose, then.” Rook swiftly considered a number of alternatives and opted for simply scooping Emmrich out of his chair like a bride on her wedding night—though the bride would probably not have squawked indignantly and cried “Have a care, dearest! I have a reputation, you know.”
“Oh, you love it.”
“Regardless, this is hardly the behaviour of a gentleman.”
“Never claimed to be one, love. Bed? Or shall I just have you right here on this desk?”
“Don't you dare!”
“Bed it is, then.”
In the end, they only made it as far as the hearthrug, because Emmrich whispered something decidedly magical in Rook’s ear that went straight down his spine and turned his legs to jelly, and he had to choose between collapsing onto the floor with Emmrich or just dropping him like a sack of flour. Then, once he was down there with his fingers digging into the thick pile and Emmrich already grinding against his hip, it seemed like too much trouble to get up again.
“You’re very eager today,” he observed, in between worrying at Emmrich’s lower lip. “It’s the pond water smell, right? Irresistible. We should bottle it and make our fortunes.”
“I find you irresistible most of the time, dearest,” said Emmrich. “It’s a wonder I get anything done at all.”
“Shocking. A man of your age should know better.”
“The folly of youth must be rubbing off on me—oh—” Rook had run a hand up Emmrich’s thigh to cup the hardness between his legs.
“Sorry, thought you said something about rubbing you off,” said Rook, deeply pleased with himself. He received a scathing look for his trouble, but he was already busy working open Emmrich's breeches and paid it no mind. He wasn’t in the habit of carrying oil around with him and he certainly wasn’t going to get up to find some, so he just licked wetly up his hand and wrapped it around Emmrich's cock. Emmrich's head fell back, eyes closed, and he gave a hum of delight.
“You're getting calluses, darling.”
“Sorry, occupational hazard.”
“It wasn’t a complaint— yes, just like that, darling, if you would.”
“Appreciate a working man, do you? That's a Whisperings article right there. ‘Confirmed: Professor Volkarin likes a bit of rough.’ Inside scoop. I’ll do an interview. It'll sell out instantly.”
Emmrich's only response to this was to pull Rook down to him and kiss him vehemently, fingers buried deep in his hair, hips moving in time with Rook's strokes. Magical energy skittered over Rook's body, lighting up nerve endings all down his arms and legs. This was one of a selection of little cantrips Emmrich liked to call his ‘box of tricks’; he'd clearly perfected them over a lifetime of study and he was very good at casting them even with his hands busy and his mouth full. Rook groaned and broke away to bury his face in Emmrich's shirt.
Emmrich's hand found his wrist and squeezed gently. “Slowly, dear, we've all the time in the world.”
Rook levered himself off Emmrich's chest long enough to glance at the clock. “No,” he said, “we have forty minutes.” But he did slow down a little, loosening his grip so that Emmrich could thrust through his fingers at whatever speed suited him.
It seemed improbably good fortune to have this—the soft rug under him, the fire cracking warmly against his back, and in his arms a man who would reach into the Fade for him without a second thought. Perhaps this was what saving the world really meant: to be allowed to lie here with Emmrich and watch the flush creep up his cheeks with every stroke of Rook's hand; to see the series of emotions—delight, ecstasy, a fierce sort of fondness—cross his face one by one; to hear his breathing turn ragged and listen to the tiny noises of pleasure gradually become less restrained, more desperate. Then Emmrich gasped “Please”, as close to begging as he normally got and the cue for Rook to tighten his fist again. Emmrich made a strangled noise, gave half a dozen short, sharp thrusts and came messily over Rook’s fingers.
“That’s it, love,” Rook murmured into his hair. “Maker, you’re gorgeous.”
Emmrich gave a satisfied groan and stretched like a cat. “Flatterer,” he said, voice a little scratchy, then let out a quiet oh as Rook cleaned them up with the hem of his shirt (still somewhat pond-watery despite his best efforts).
“Honest,” Rook corrected him, and kissed him long and slowly, fastening his breeches as he did so.
The flush was still visible on Emmrich’s face when he pulled back, ran a finger around the curve of Rook’s horn and asked, “What would you like, darling?”
Rook’s response was interrupted by the sound of his stomach growling loudly. “Dinner, apparently,” he said with a laugh. “And I’ll need to change this shirt first. Pay me back later?”
“Of course,” said Emmrich, kissing him with more vigour than was really helpful given that they needed no further distraction. “Would you help me up? My knees aren’t what they used to be.”
“Bollocks, there’s nothing wrong with your knees. You just like it when I manhandle you.”
“Alas, found out again. It was worth a try.”
Rook pulled him to his feet anyway, because it was hard to refuse Emmrich anything.
“Dinner, then,” he said, “and I’ll think about how you can pay me back.”
“How uncivilised to do that at the table,” said Emmrich with a smirk, straightening his clothes.
Rook winked. “Not a gentleman, remember?”
“Oh, I do, darling, I do.”
All in all, this gardening lark was shaping up to be one of the better decisions Rook had made in his life.
Codex entry discovered:
Internal memorandum attached to a copy of an expenses claim for the Department of Necrobotany and Xenohorticulture, Quarter 3, 9:53 Dragon
Matheus,
It has been brought to my attention that the attached expenses claim includes a total of four replacement watering cans. This was also the case last quarter, and the quarter before. If there has emerged some new demonic force which feeds exclusively on gardening equipment, I would fain know of it, that it might be properly addressed. Else, I shall have to ask that you replace them out of your own purse henceforth.
Myrna