Chapter Text
Rolan awoke feeling sick as a dog.
He pulled his legs over the edge of the mattress with a wince. The dull ache in his muscles was something he hadn't felt since those first weeks on the road out of Elturel.
He'd slept like hells the past few days; no doubt that was the cause. Once again, bizarre nightmares had left him gasping awake before dawn, covered in a clammy sheen of perspiration.
The dreams featuring Tav, however…
Rolan’s tail shuddered and flicked over the bedsheets behind him at the memory. He pushed those thoughts forcefully from his head. Tav was due back in Baldur’s Gate today—that was the last thing he should be thinking of when she arrived at Sorcerous Sundries.
She’d been away for over a week this time, gathering her materials in the Underdark. He wondered if that meant she'd have enough work to keep her in the city for longer, too. The thought encouraged him enough to rise and dress for the day. He should make sure her alchemy station was prepped and ready for her at the back of the shop, at least.
Down on the main floor of Sorcerous Sundries, Rolan’s improved mood was instantly tested. Cal took in his face wide-eyed.
“You look awful.”
“And good morning to you,” Rolan responded irritably.
“Is it?” Cal trailed after him as he unlocked and threw open the wide front doors. “Rolan, maybe you need a day off. You look like you barely slept.”
“I'm fine,” Rolan said, voice firm. “Where’s Lia?”
Right as the words left him, a teacup appeared at his elbow.
“Had a feeling you might need it,” Lia told him. “Looks like I was right.”
Too tired to combat both his siblings at once this early in the day, Rolan accepted the tea with a begrudging sigh of thanks. The smell of bitter herbs hit his nose before he took the first sip.
“Doctoring me with folk remedies now?”
Lia waved a dismissive hand as she moved behind the counter. “Yeah, yeah, we all know you'd rather get fussed over by Tav. Can't have you dragging your tail and embarrassing us in front of her, though.”
Cal walked off with a snort.
Rolan shut his eyes and wished he could return straight back to bed. Instead, he drank his tea down in silence and said a prayer for an easy day of work.
He did find himself perking up after a while. It was difficult to stay sullen on such a glorious spring day; clear sunlight streamed generously through the high windows above, and the flow of customers milling into the shop settled into a pleasant, familiar hum. Rolan fell into the rhythm of assisting them here and there, locating scrolls and giving advice on spellwork.
It certainly wasn’t the prospect of seeing Tav again that was improving his mood so much. That’s what Rolan kept telling himself, at least.
Another breeze drifted in through the open atrium behind him, bringing with it the fresh scent of spring wildflowers. Rolan was taken with a sudden fancy to move closer to wherever it emanated from.
“Lovely morning, isn't it?”
Tav stood beaming at him from the doorway, despite the full-to-bursting pack slung over one of her shoulders. Clearly he wasn’t the only one affected by the irresistibly nice weather.
“It rather is,” Rolan agreed. Ignoring her usual protests, he unshouldered the bag from her with a tug; its weight made him question whether she’d stuffed it entirely with minerals.
“Ugh…thanks.” Tav stretched her arms back appreciatively. She was wearing a lightweight tunic, carelessly laced, and the motion strained the fabric over her chest.
Rolan averted his gaze, feeling rather warm all of a sudden. He instead led Tav back to her workstation near the stairs.
“Looks busy in here,” she remarked with approval. “Business good?”
“Can’t complain. I take it your travels were as successful?” He punctuated the comment by landing her pack on the desk with a heavy thump. Tav laughed.
“Brilliant, actually. I've got a lot to show you, if you can spare the time.”
“Just give me a few minutes,” he answered, turning back to her.
Tav didn’t reply right away; she was frowning at his face. “Rolan, are you ill? You look flushed—” And she reached a hand as if to feel his forehead.
“Of course not,” Rolan answered, a bit too swiftly. Casting for an excuse to create some distance, he moved to the nearby reference shelves and began shoving the mess of books back into their correct cubbies. “Cal, could you grab another stack of the beginner’s Weave series? We’ve sold through.”
Cal looked up from his work rolling scroll pages. “Er, sure…which wing is that again?”
“Nevermind,” Rolan sighed. “I’ll get them myself. Let me know if your station’s missing any supplies,” he added to Tav, letting his voice soften a bit. It earned him a dimpling smile.
Rolan strode away from her toward the portal, feeling that annoying ache in his legs return as he did.
Tav watched Rolan’s figure trudge up the staircase with another twinge of concern. Then she set to work connecting all the equipment on her alchemy station. Lia appeared at her side before long, asking after her week’s travels in the Underdark and catching her up on news and gossip from the Gate. It was so nice to have friends like Lia; ones you could pick up right where you left off with.
Tav had emptied her bag onto her desk and begun sorting the small mountain of herbs into separate piles as she listened. “How’s Rolan been doing with everything, really?”
Lia was turning over one of her shards of laculite, idly catching the sunlight in its facets. “Mostly happy. And stressed, and overextended. And completely neurotic about organizing every shelf in the library. You know, typical wizard stuff.”
“I just hope he’s looking after himself,” she said down to her work. The words left her mouth easier than she wished.
Lia leaned a hip against her desk with arms crossed. “You sound interested in helping with that.”
The quake in Tav’s stomach made her feel very caught out, then very stupid. She let out an exhale of laughter instead.
“Rolan’s made it pretty clear that he is not,” she replied. Her fingers began stripping the blooms from her pile of dried mugwort with more force than strictly necessary.
“Between you and me,” Lia mused, “I don’t think Rolan’s anywhere near clear on that subject. Smart people can be real idiots, you know.”
“Who can?”
Rolan was headed from the staircase with an armful of books; he stood behind Lia with a suspicious look. Tav immediately wondered how much he’d heard.
“Rich people,” Lia answered at once, still leaning casually against Tav’s desk. “Lady Whitburn’s handmaid keeps coming in asking for spell scrolls that I’m pretty sure don’t exist. You think she’d get the picture by now.”
Rolan let out a long-suffering sigh and held out the stack of volumes to her. “Take these. And just send Cal to help her next time, that’s why she keeps coming back.”
Lia threw up a hand as if that only proved her point. “Like I said, idiots.” But with one last glance at Tav, she grabbed the books and ferried them away to the front of Sorcerous Sundries.
For her part, Tav resumed the work of preparing the week’s ingredients—there were several large batches of antidote to get through this morning. Rolan took up his usual spot at the desk in her periphery.
Ever since the first week he’d offered Sorcerous Sundries to her as a home of operations for her alchemy, Tav found herself spending many hours at work beside Rolan like this. They spent the time talking about her travels, or his latest studies with the Weave, or just discussing the last books they’d read. On busier days, he was called away to help customers for most of her visit.
Today, however, Rolan stood unusually silent next to her.
“Sure you’re feeling all right?” She glanced at his back, again noting the tense line of his shoulders.
“Just a bit tired.” Rolan tipped open his massive record of the shop figures. “Haven’t been sleeping well.”
“I could make you something for that, if you like.”
He gave a low huff of laughter as he took up his quill. “From what I hear from my customers, I’d be out cold for days.”
“Really?” She couldn’t help a grin of professional pride, but focused on adjusting the flame under her distilling glass. “Glad they’re selling well.”
“I can barely keep them on the shelves, especially those remedial draughts you make. The last batch lasted three days.”
Though it was satisfying to hear, Tav felt a bit chagrined. “Damn…won’t have more of those for a while. I still need to track down a new materials trader in the Gate. My usual guy moved on to Neverwinter.”
There was a short pause in their little corner, filled only with the sounds of softly bubbling liquid against glass.
“You know,” Rolan said without turning, “you’re welcome to stay here, if it’s easier for you. The guest room’s always empty. That is, so you wouldn’t have to travel across the city on top of finding your new contact.”
“Oh—” Tav tried hard not to read anything into his offer. “Actually, I already left my things with Danis and Bex. But thank you, Rolan,” she added.
Rolan coughed lightly, back still turned. “Of course.”
There was another pause, longer and strangely awkward. Tav suddenly found she needed something more to occupy her thoughts than watching a flask boil. Reaching down for her pack, she pulled her research journal up to the desk.
It had been many weeks since Rolan brought up that subject. Why now?
Cal and Lia constantly reminded her of the long-standing offer of a room in the Tower anytime she had need of it. For unspoken reasons, she’d always found polite ways of declining.
It wasn’t that Rolan had made her feel unwelcome in any way. After all, he’d opened up the expansive resources of Ramazith’s Tower to her use, lending her all of the delicate and expensive alchemy equipment that she’d never be able to cart back and forth in her travels. She owed much of her current success to his generosity.
But Rolan had proven himself a generous patron for all kinds of arcane arts as Master of Ramazith’s Tower. Really, what made her think she was any kind of special case?
The fact that she’d very much like to be that to him…well.
That was something Tav tried not to think about. It only led her to dangerous territory, such as staring at his hands while he worked a spell and wondering what else they might be good for. Hardly conducive to a friendly, professional relationship.
And if she was any good at reading signals, friendly but professional was how Rolan wanted to keep things.
Tav shuffled through her notes a bit too briskly and almost scattered them. That was enough dwelling on that subject; clearly, Rolan had plenty to think about without worrying about unwanted advances in his own home. The least she could do to repay his generosity would be to continue respecting his boundaries.
“Noblestalk propagation?”
She glanced over her shoulder. To her surprise, Rolan had moved closer to peer down at the top page in her hands with curiosity.
“Most valuable thing in the Underdark,” she told him. “Even more than mithril. Actually, this is what I wanted to show you—”
Noblestalk fetched a high price for its alchemical power, certainly, but also for its rarity. The delicate mushrooms were notoriously picky about where they grew; it was part of what made them so hard to find.
Truth be told, she’d been running a little experiment on them down in the Underdark over the past few months. She ran a finger across the charted results as she explained them to Rolan, whose tension seemed to vanish as he listened on with keen interest.
“Obviously the spores took faster in high humidity. But look, they actually did better when I transplanted them in a really cold spot near the river here—which is so odd, most fungi need a bit of warmth—
“Have you tried recreating these artificially? Carrying a sample back to the surface?”
“Not yet.” She scratched her chin in thought. “I’d need to find somewhere underground to propagate it. And I’d rather not spend any more time in the sewers, after that little cult business.”
“Just do it here,” Rolan dismissed, as if it was the plainly obvious solution. “We’ve got quite a few empty vaults now. Shouldn’t be too hard to repurpose one as a greenhouse of sorts.”
As she turned her head to respond, she was caught up short.
Rolan was still peering intently at her writing. But in his concentration, he’d angled his body very close beside her. His chest nearly brushed her shoulder. She could’ve counted the freckles dusting his nose.
When he reached forward to flip over the page, she felt his other hand actually rest on the far side of her waist—the absent way you might touch someone very familiar to you when moving past them. Heat rose in her cheeks at the gesture.
Perhaps Rolan felt her tense. He blinked, and she watched realization dart over his features. He stepped back at once.
“Apologies.” Then he cleared his throat to add—“Your work is quite engaging.”
Coming from him, the words sounded much nicer than they had a right to. She felt her flush deepening, and quickly turned back to reorder her notes.
“Thanks,” she laughed, praying it didn’t sound as awkward as it felt rising in her throat.
Behind her back, she heard Rolan return to his desk on her left. Presumably continuing his work on the Sundries inventory; more likely trying to ignore her obvious fluster.
She clenched her jaw in an attempt to shove that same stupid, fluttery feeling out of her stomach, and returned to the practical work at hand.
Rolan stared down at last week’s sales in his ledger. The figures were a blur of meaningless scribbles in front of his eyes.
Was he feverish? Seriously ill? There had to be a sound explanation for the way he’d just…laid hands on her like that, unthinking.
He clenched the guilty right hand responsible, feeling its sharp nails press crescent moons into his palm. Idiot. He took a deep breath to regain his composure.
It only caused that lovely wildflower scent from before to fill his lungs more completely, pulling at his other senses. Perhaps it was emanating from one of the many strange ingredients Tav was always carrying back from the Underdark. Was that what had muddled his mind this way?
He found himself glancing back over his shoulder to where she was bent over her alchemy scales. The pink tip of her tongue was visible between her teeth, a gesture she often made when concentrating.
As Rolan watched, a lock of her hair slipped forward over her shoulder. She swept it absently back behind her ear. The innocuous motion caused another wave of something floral to brush past his face, stronger this time.
“Are you wearing scent?”
Tav glanced up from the powder she was weighing out, brows raised in question. “What?”
“Nothing,” Rolan said swiftly, shaking himself back to rights a bit. He felt very lucky she seemed to have misheard. He turned back to his work before he could say anything else strange or embarrassing.
With effort, Rolan forced his attention back to the comforting logic of sums and figures.
The time passed with blessed uneventfulness after that. The soft sounds of glassware and bubbling liquids from Tav’s alchemy faded to an idle lull at the back of Rolan’s consciousness. Nevertheless, he pushed through the past month’s numbers with more difficulty than usual, scratching through multiple errors as his quill moved over the page. He occasionally had to pause to rub at an uncomfortable crick building in his neck.
A laugh came from behind him. “Do you mind?”
Rolan raised his head to look. Tav was gesturing at the corner of her alchemy station with a bemused expression.
To his own confusion, he found that his tail had traveled there of its own accord sometime in the past minutes. It lay coiled on the wood, its tip flicking back and forth in her direction, as if seeking her attention.
With another chuckle, Tav’s fingers closed around it and lightly dropped the appendage off the edge of her desk.
An involuntary sound caught in Rolan’s throat. The moment her hand connected with his skin, a shock of blood rushed to his groin. He nearly tipped forward in alarm at the feeling.
The rapid redirection left his legs wobbling and bloodless. His knees almost buckled under him; he gripped sharp claws into the edge of his wooden desk to steady himself.
As the ringing in his ears cleared, he heard Tav reading under her breath behind him while she ground something against her mortar. Praise the gods that whatever just happened to his body had escaped her notice.
“Need a book from the library—”
Without a backward glance, Rolan stumbled toward the stairs.
Spurred on by the knowledge that any customers who might notice his urgent departure would certainly see the reason for it, he strode on double-time for the portal. Only once the swirl of Weave closed behind him, depositing him in the quiet of the Tower, did he release the breath caught up in his lungs.
Seeking to ground himself, Rolan glanced up to watch the golden dust motes drift through a beam of sunlight. It was the strangest sensation to be standing completely still and feel a sweat break out over his brow.
How did he not realize days ago? Muscle aches—difficulty sleeping—heightened senses. All clear indicators that his biology had finally caught up with him, albeit a solid year later than it should have.
Rolan gripped a hand to the back of his head with a groan of realization. Not perfume—it had been Tav herself he kept catching scent of this morning. That sweet smell that practically made his mouth water to recall now was nothing but raw instinct laid bare.
Well, he had no right to complain about the timing. Apparently many frantic months of escaping the Hells, surviving on the road, and battling back an invasion from the Astral Plane had done a lot to delay the inevitable.
But inevitable it was, and as of today, very much inescapable. There was never really a convenient time for this sort of thing, was there?
It could be worse—as the new keeper of Ramazith’s Tower, at least he found himself with private quarters to retreat to for the entirety of it. If he was lucky, it would all be over in a week, and then he could go on ignoring this unfortunate side effect of his Infernal heritage for a few more uneventful years.
Lia and Cal could manage the shop for a week without any major calamities, surely?
As Rolan paced the silk carpets of the Tower floor, he forced his feverish mind to finish scrabbling together the plan. His gaze fell on the desk by the window. In the next second, he was putting shaking quill to parchment. Something simple, just enough they’d understand—
Bad week for visitors. Please mind the Sundries while I recover. Tell Tav
The tip of his quill skipped as he paused, letting a droplet of ink bleed into the page.
Tell Tav what, exactly? That he was in his room rutting his brains out like an animal in heat? Likely thinking of her while he did?
That line of thought brought a series of unhelpful and very stimulating images to mind. He swallowed down a humiliating sound as the stiffness between his legs grew painfully hard in reaction. Merciful, bloody hells.
Tell Tav nothing, he finished in a scrawl. Rolan folded the note and deposited it on the floor just in front of the portal, where it would be impossible for his siblings to miss.
Then he turned for the staircase to his bedroom, already mad to rip these chafing gods-damned robes off his skin.