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It happens one morning. An unassuming morning, like any other, in the middle of the week - everything would be dull, boring even, if it weren’t for the fact that he coughs until petals are coming out of his lungs.
Soft, crumpled things. Indigo petals, like his favorite color. The irony isn’t lost on him. He stares at them in his palm like they might mean something else. But he knows better, he’s read the stories. They say death comes quietly, but the stories it leaves behind scream - silken shards turning from ivory to blood-red before anyone thinks to worry.
Rook closes his eyes, breath shallow after another fit, lungs scoured raw. On the nightstand, a quiet pile of petals - delicate, fading things - are all he has to show for it. Unrequited love, now rooted in his ribs, growing toward death with every breath he takes.
Viago is breathtaking this morning, just like always. There’s something about him that demands Rook’s attention without trying - those eyes, deep ocean blue, steady and unreadable, make it hard to look away. The way he speaks doesn’t help either: his voice carries that calm, even cadence that makes it easy to imagine him saying soft, careful things, even if he never does. His hands are gloved, as usual. Not out of vanity - Rook knows better than that - but as if the world itself is too sharp to touch barehanded.
If Viago touched him skin to skin, Rook’s breath would catch, his chest would seize, and that would be the end of him - undone before it even started. That would never happen. Even if what he feels is love, it wouldn’t make a difference - offering himself when he had nothing to give would feel worse than begging.
“Rook,” Viago calls out his name, the nickname feels wrong somehow. “Do you need any help with the documents Lucanis has given you?”
Of course. It’s always business with Viago and it shouldn’t be different. He shakes his head without looking up, and continues to work silently. The Fifth Talon’s scribbling on the rough texture of paper is almost a lullaby - he’ll remember those later when he needs to fall asleep.
“It’s a nice day outside. Care for a stroll, Rook?”
Viago’s comment about the weather is as out of place as the nickname - and so is his invitation. Still, Rook accepts it in silence, the ache inside him only growing more intense as Viago talks on about inane Crow business. The world drifts around him, almost dissolving into incoherent static, drowned beneath the storm of his own thoughts. The coughing returns - harsh, relentless - making it impossible to hide from Viago. The static in Rook’s mind swells, unbearable now, a thick fog drowning out everything else.
Viago turns toward him. Instant recognition. The same blue eyes that once looked at him with casual ease now carry something else - pity. He has seen the petals crumpled in Rook’s trembling hands.
“Who is it?” Viago asks, completely unaware that he’s the reason Rook is coughing up a bouquet’s worth of petals.
It’s you, Rook wants to scream. It’s always been you.
But the words never make it out. Instead, he brushes it off like second nature, like muscle memory built from years of silence. “Don’t worry about it,” he says. “I’m handling it.”
Rook wishes he could say he’s truly handling it, but the truth is crueler. He’s not managing in any way that matters. The petals keep coming - more frequent now, like his body is trying to say everything he won’t. Sleep slips further from him, the ache in his chest growing heavier by the hour. He goes through the motions, wears the same calm mask, but underneath, something is unraveling thread by thread.
It’s not getting better. It’s getting worse, and he’s running out of ways to pretend otherwise.
Viago worries. It’s not that Rook means nothing to him. Far from it. They’ve been through too much, survived too long side by side for Viago to pretend otherwise.
Mentor and protégé, for certain. Fifth Talon to House de Riva? Absolutely. These are all acceptable definitions of how Viago has threaded himself through Rook’s life, even before the fall of the Evanuris.
But the thought of dying like this, undone not by a god or a blade but by a disease made of silence and yearning, leaving Viago behind to drown in endless sorrow. That stings more than anything else.
Not that Viago would mourn a lover. No, he’d mourn a student lost before his time. A fellow Crow. A friend. Anything but a lover. A lover would mean Rook had told him the truth. Had opened his mouth and bled honesty. But that’s impossible.
He is a liar. A hypocrite. And perhaps worst of all, he is pathetic - survivor of the elvhen gods, brought low by this.
Viago notices, though he doesn’t say anything. The way Rook lingers - always hovering at the edge of the room, always the first to offer help, to stay close, to be useful. There’s something in it, something unspoken yet heavy, like a silent offering pressed gently into his hands.
I will miss you when I’m gone , it seems to say.
And Viago, for all his sharpness, doesn’t know what to do with that kind of grief before it’s real. Doesn’t know how to hold something that's already slipping away.
“There must be something we can do,” Viago says, his voice firm with determination, but tinged with something softer - fear, maybe. “No one is that much of a fortress. There has to be a way to reach whoever it is, the one you love. The one who hasn’t seen you yet.”
He means it. He really does. He still thinks this is fixable.
But Rook just stares, the silence stretching, the petals in his hand again like evidence of a crime he can’t confess to. Because the person Viago wants to reach is standing right in front of him.
It gets worse.
The petals haven’t stopped, however. They’ve changed. Once a deep, mournful indigo, they now carry streaks of crimson - thin threads of red blooming across the softness like veins. Bloodied edges, beautiful and damning.
They’re not just petals anymore. They’re fragments of everything he’s never said, everything he’s buried beneath loyalty and silence. Crimson, like confession. Crimson, like love unspoken and love returned too late - or not at all.
The inevitability of it all makes each day bittersweet. Every night, he says his goodbyes - soft, lingering things that vanish like wisps, ephemeral and easily forgotten. Maybe this is his last sunset. Maybe this is his last night. The way his life stretches on feels wrong, like it’s dragging itself out for no reason.
He wishes it would just end already.
There is one night when everything becomes impossible to manage. The petals stop coming altogether. There is only blood. Thick and dark. The crimson horror spreads across the floor, staining the walls, soaking into the sheets. It’s as if Rook has bled out the last of his strength in a final, desperate fight.
Death is no longer distant or quiet.
Viago comes in like a hurricane, breathless, as if he’d run the whole way. Rook doesn’t need to ask - someone must have heard the coughing. That awful, ragged sound that can only mean one thing.
Viago’s hands are on his face a moment later, holding him like he might fall apart if he lets go. His eyes search Rook’s, desperate, afraid, already knowing the answer before the question leaves his mouth.
“Who is it?” he asks again, still unaware that he’s the answer.
Death is still coming. Whether Viago knows or not.
Death is claiming him. There’s nothing Viago can do. Still, he grants the other man one choice.
Rook exhales, voice barely more than a whisper. “It’s you. It’s always been you.”
Viago goes still, as if the words have rooted him in place. His breath stutters, eyes wide with something between disbelief and grief.
“No,” he says, softly, like denial could undo it. “Rook...”
He doesn’t step back. He doesn’t let go.
His hands tremble where they hold Rook’s face, and his voice lowers to something ragged. “It’s me? All this time, it’s been me?”
He looks like he might shatter under the weight of it. His thumb brushes along Rook’s jaw, a grounding touch for both of them. But Rook lets out a hollow laugh - soft, bitter.
“I didn’t think someone like you could ever love someone like me.”
Viago’s jaw tightens. “I do not want you to die.”
Rook swallows hard, the taste of flowers rising in his throat. “I’m already blooming red, Viago. And it only ends one way.”
Viago’s voice cracks, but there’s steel beneath the tremble. “I refuse to accept that. I’ll tear the roots out myself if I have to.”
He presses their foreheads together, voice nearly a whisper, full of desperate resolve.
“Or I’ll love you loud enough to make them wither.”
“Don’t lie,” Rook whispers. “I know you don’t feel anything for me. If you did, I wouldn’t be dying right now.”
“Idiot,” Viago mutters - quiet, rough, pained - before leaning in and pressing a brief, trembling kiss to his lips. When he pulls back, his mouth is stained with blood.
“If you’d just told me I was allowed to love you,” he breathes, “I would’ve done it a long time ago.”
“You don’t mean it,” Rook says, voice cracking.
Viago exhales sharply, not from anger - but from the ache of being misunderstood. “The lingering touches. The way my voice changes when I speak to you - softer, only for you. Me asking you to stay in House de Riva when I’ve never asked that of anyone else.”
The older man looks at him, eyes sharp and hurting. “Was I just a fool all along, hoping you’d finally notice?”
The coughing eased, and the suffocating sense of inevitable doom lightened, if only for a moment. It’s still hard to breathe. He’s not out of the woods just yet. Something else blooms in his chest, a fragile shoot pushing through the shadow of death.
It was hope.
Viago didn’t deal in blood. He was precise in his killing, his contracts. Poison was his weapon of choice. There was blood everywhere. So much blood. Still, he kept kissing Rook. Harder, more urgent. The rhythm of a man making up for lost time. The more he pressed against Rook, the more death seemed to be distant.
Love is such a fickle, fragile thing.
But unrequited love was no more.