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draw-you-coward · 10 months

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Laranthir decides to pay the ex-Marshal and Commander a visit. Just as his friends. Set post-game/out of game.

(this won't make much sense if you're not familiar with my roza series' canon but you're still welcome to read! :)

ao3

He hadn’t really been expecting the house to be so… nice.

Of course, he feels bad about thinking so a second after he does, and his guilt slips through in a reflexive wince. Even if it had been less than nice, it isn’t Trahearne and Roza’s fault that they’ve never really had a moment in their lives to reflect on the finer points of interior décor. Laranthir has been to many an ex-soldier’s abode in his time, and they tend to look rather… barren. Or when they are decorated, it’s the partner’s work, the one who stands in doorways on the precipice of being seen and watches them interact with uncertain eyes. He doesn’t know which of his friends in this pair is the one with the haunted memories—by all accounts, it should be both. And yet…

He steps past the threshold of the ‘Ghost House,’ as it has been dubbed, and finds it rather cozy, of all things. The kitchen at the entrance is tidy, if not completely free of clutter. There are pots and pans that look well looked-after hanging on hooks. There is a homely little painting of a flower on the wall. There’s even a rug.

Past the kitchen is the living room, and that is where Laranthir halts. From the corner of his eye, he catches a grey blob peeking out at him before retreating behind the stairs. The furniture doesn’t quite match, but there is furniture, and the siege weapon-turned-dining room table Roza had once told him about has been replaced by an actual table, complete with actual chairs. What truly catches his eye, however, is the large painting hanging proudly on the far wall, in full view of everyone who enters.

“I apologize for Harley. She doesn’t like strangers.” Trahearne speaks up, scratching the back of his neck. “Not that—you’re not a stranger, of course! But, ah… to her you practically are. Sorry.”

“That’s fine,” Laranthir says absently. He is still staring at the painting.

Roza, on his opposite side, puffs up his chest. “That is Cadwaladr. We liberated him.”

Laranthir slowly turns his head, keeping an eye on the giant erotic portrait of a naked sylvari looking coquettishly up at the viewer that is absolutely impossible not to notice. “‘Liberated?’”

“He is free now,” Trahearne supplies helpfully.

“Right,” Laranthir says. “That… explains nothing.”

Roza sighs and hoists himself up on the back of the sofa, apparently already tired of how long it is taking Laranthir to put things together by himself without so much of a crumb of an explanation to go by. “There was an auction some time ago to bid off the last remaining pieces of the late Confessor Caudecus’s estate. We stole Cadwaladr under cover of night, freeing him from the greedy hands of the human nobles and giving him shelter and a name to call his own. He knows he is safe here.”

“He’s a painting,” says Laranthir.

Roza slides down the sofa until only his shins hang off the back. “Then don’t go upstairs,” he says, his voice muffled. “Gods.”

Laranthir decides he doesn’t want to know what he means by that. Thankfully, Trahearne draws his attention by stepping back into the kitchen.

“Do you want tea?” he asks.

Laranthir takes a moment to reflect on how absurd it is that the first of the Firstborn is offering him of all people tea. And how additionally absurd it is that he can reply, “I would like some, but only the real stuff. None of this ‘book tea’ I’ve heard about.”

“Roza truly has been filling people’s minds with fancies,” the oldest sylvari in all of life and death’s existence complains, and pouts.

Laranthir shakes his head. It is difficult to orient himself in such an overwhelmingly domestic environment. The image—the very notion of the three of them together—invokes battle, strategies, a war map spread across the table. Roza’s face set grimly in Commander mode, an acceptance of death in his eyes and wrapped around his very soul in a way that Laranthir will never truly empathize with. Trahearne, with much the same look moments before their airship had crashed. That… had been why Laranthir had left, in a sense. Roza is right. His soul is made of too soft a stuff to be willing to grapple with such a violent life on a daily basis.

“Not chamomile, then?” Trahearne murmurs. His eyes are sharp for a moment, ancient, and he looks into Laranthir as if despite his lack of a Dream connection, he knows all that he is feeling and more.

“Um.” Laranthir blinks, kicking away the pebbles of wartime from his mind. “Do you have rooibos?”

“From… a recent trip to Elona…” Trahearne searches in a tall cabinet, arching on his feet. “Yes, we do.”

Laranthir remembers a stolen sip of mulled wine in a dark office, the clink of glass tumblers held between two fingers. He sweeps the fleeting memory with its cobwebs away, and goes to join Roza on the couch.

Roza coils into him like a cat. “Say you’ll take the house,” he purrs, continuing a conversation they’ve been having on and off these past few weeks. “Not from me, but at least with me. You are the one who forced me to buy it, and thus it is the least you can do. You can think of it as a vacation home. A winter getaway. What say you?”

Laranthir wonders if he likes being pet as well as held, and then remembers that one time he’d caught him with a collar on and quickly stops wondering. “Yes, alright,” he agrees.

Roza’s eyes shine with hope. “Really? You will?”

“Darling, do you want tea?” Trahearne calls from the kitchen. “I’m making a pot.”

“Yes, please. Thank you, love.” Roza arches his neck, looking over Laranthir’s shoulder. For a second he watches the two of them interact, cradling the care that goes into but a few simple words. Darling. Love. Of course. Whatever you need. It’s a far cry from what they were in the Pact, from Do you think he even likes me? and I don’t know. I’m not sure. I’m not sure. I want to bite into my heart and rip it out.

Laranthir feels a fierce pang of something—longing, perhaps, or grief, if they’re not both the same—and rides it out. Roza catches his gaze and smiles, just a little, which is something he would have never done ten years ago without threatening to hurl himself off the roof just to counterbalance it.

Roza touches his forearm. “Are you alright?” he asks. Even that is something he would never have done, leaning forwards just enough to be genuine. The feeling is grief, then.

“I’m just thinking about how we met,” Laranthir replies.

“Oh.” Roza pauses. “Naught… to do with the house? I haven’t alarmed you with my demands?”

“Asking me to take partial ownership of a luxury mountain lodge with no caveat is hardly a demand.” Laranthir leans back, throwing an arm around the back of the couch.

“Perhaps… in the way I speak, then.” Roza looks at him almost cautiously, though without any serious wariness. “Shall I rephrase myself to be more… humble?”

That makes Laranthir laugh. “It wouldn’t be like you at all,” he chuckles. “I don’t mind your manner, Roza. It has its charm.”

Roza looks off to the side, and Laranthir remembers a conversation they’d had not too long ago, when he had come to his house in the Grove with a piece of paper and trepidatious eyes, and had slowly read off to him what can be summarized as, Hello. I love you, but sometimes I feel like you speak to me as if you don’t love me. I am afraid to lose you. And that is a moment worth reflecting on, one Laranthir still thinks about often. He thinks he needs to, for both their sakes’. Roza isn’t the only person in the worlds who needs to be humbled from time to time.

He touches the hand that had touched him. “You haven’t upset me,” he reassures. “Don’t worry overmuch about your wording.”

Roza eyes him. “And are those all of your thoughts?” he asks.

“Mostly,” Laranthir replies. The question isn’t a dig—he apparently keeps a little more to himself, especially when in conversation with his former protégé, than he perhaps should. He tries not to anymore, not since he had discovered that Roza can catch himself on even invisible barbs.

Roza’s large eyes are beseeching. Laranthir is almost amused—he has truly perfected how to put on that look when he wants something. “It’s just you and Trahearne,” he elaborates. “You never had this when you were young. I think you should have.”

Roza nods. “You gave me a lot,” he offers, a suggestion in his eyes.

Laranthir takes it with a gentle smile. “I did the most I could. But what you really needed was security.”

Roza combs his hair behind his ear with his hand. Trahearne comes in with the tea, wedging the extra cup to his chest in a way that is just mundane enough to make it tragic to think about what he sacrificed his existence to. He smiles in a way that makes it even more tragic, full of ease and warmth.

“You like just a hint of sweetness, right? No milk,” he asks Laranthir.

He takes the cup. “That’s right. You’re very observant.”

“I made a note of it once. My memory nowadays is exceptional.”

“Once,” Laranthir muses. “Pale Mother, when did we ever even have the time for tea?”

Trahearne sits back in his armchair, crossing his legs. “We stole a few cups… in between meetings, wasn’t it? And during breaks? Not in the mornings—breakfast was too short.”

“And too early,” Roza pipes up. “I still don’t know how anyone made it down on a regular basis.”

“Coming from the dawn bloom?” Trahearne raises an eyebrow in a manner that is more teasing than provocative.

Roza waves his hand dismissively. “Come off with the bullshit, darling. You know, the only reason I ever came down was because it was the only guaranteed chance I had to gossip with you two cretins. You never let me say anything fun on the clock.”

“And yet you still said many ‘fun’ things,” Trahearne recalls. He sips at his tea, staring up at the ceiling. “Strange, that.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever been called a cretin before,” Laranthir reflects.

“You are both very welcome.” Roza tosses his hair. “You would have been miserable without me.”

It’s probably a little true. Laranthir knows he was miserable by himself in the Pact without the two of them, but that came after knowing them. Without knowing Roza at all? There would have only been one hole in his heart instead of two. But then there would also not be this.

Trahearne has wrapped both his hands around his mug. “Thank you both,” he says quietly, “for being my friends back then. There were few who were truly willing.”

Laranthir makes a noise in his throat. “People liked you,” he assures.

“Yes, but liking and befriending your boss are two very different things.” Trahearne’s mouth twists in a sly smile. “If not for your unique view on interpersonal relationships, Laranthir, you would have done much the same as your fellow soldiers. I greatly appreciate that you chose not to.”

His ‘unique view?’ Laranthir blinks at him, trying to decipher what that means. On his right, Roza hides a smile in a sip.

Trahearne catches his expression and offers up one that suggests he has caught himself in his own net. “You, ah… were never truly one for formalities.”

“I have them where it counts,” Laranthir says cautiously.

“In the Vigil, perhaps. But I don’t think you were ever keen on that sort of thing. You were always quite chatty when you were in a good mood, you know. Freely offering your opinion without asking for permission, and telling me about this and that. It was when you quieted down into the ‘Yes sir,’s that I knew something was off. It was very helpful in gauging your mood, actually. Roza, for one, gave me practically nothing to go by.”

“Damn straight,” Roza mutters.

Laranthir opens and closes his mouth. “I…” Was he truly like that?

Trahearne smiles at him reassuringly. “I welcomed it, even if I never said so. Thank you.”

That eases him a little, although the soreness of embarrassment is still warm. Then Roza pipes up, “You were even worse with me.”

“What?” Laranthir squeaks.

“You always spoke to me as if we weren’t working, even in front of Trahearne! He would send me off to investigate a cursed swamp or something and then you’d go, ‘Don’t forget to bring an extra change of clothes.’ Like I was a child! Honestly.” Roza huffs.

“I didn’t always do that. I sometimes did it, and it was because you needed the reminder! You were a year old, Roza.”

“If we are thinking of the same swamp,” Trahearne murmurs, “You actually did forget to bring spare clothes, darling. Apologies.”

Roza scoffs. “W—I am being ganged up on. This isn’t fair,” he declares. He crosses his legs dramatically, spilling tea over his lap and making a small noise when it hits him.

Trahearne looks at him in some concern. “Did you hu—”

“Nope,” Roza says in the tight manner of someone who just spilled a scalding hot beverage over himself.

Trahearne sets his mug down on the coffee table, getting up and reaching for Roza’s. “Let me see. Come.”

Roza hands it to him with miserable eyes. Trahearne kneels down in front of him, hissing through his teeth in sympathy when he sees the size of the spill.

“Laranthir, do you mind going upstairs and fetching a spare pair of lounge pants?” he asks. “They should be in the third drawer of the large dresser.”

“Of course.” Laranthir puts his tea down and rises. “Do you have ointment?”

“It’s in the kitchen—we’ll grab it.”

“Don’t mind the wall art,” Roza says, peering over Trahearne’s head. “And, ah—Laranthir. I really did appreciate it, back then. The way you checked in on me. Thank you.”

Laranthir smiles at him and heads for the stairs. Beady eyes watch him as he nears, before Harley mewls and patters off towards her keepers. Decorating the stairway wall are… ah. Cadwaladr’s friends, it looks like, in equal states of propriety (or lack thereof).

The bedroom is warm, lived-in, and feels overwhelmingly private. Laranthir moves with haste, half because he feels as if he is intruding, and half because there is another portrait on the wall, one that they must have commissioned this time, because its subject is currently downstairs suffering from a mild burn. It’s at least tasteful, cutting off at his hips, but while Laranthir loves Roza dearly, he absolutely doesn’t need to see him with that expression. He hurriedly locates the drawer, grabs a handful of soft grey fabric, and leaves the room before he takes in any additional details, such as what may or may not be lying on the nightstand.

He pauses on the stair landing. Harley is licking Roza’s thigh, and he is giggling at her while Trahearne is trying to gently pull her away. Laranthir feels something in him soften at the scene, and he shares a look of accord with a nearby painting of a sylvari running naked in a field before he continues down the stairs.

#roza #laranthir #trahearne #gw2 #writing #drabble #i hope people think about this little canon sometimes and smile :)#i still remember that ask i got about trahearne and his ghost house with his ghost cats... treasure it

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