Backthreading, nsfw

[questionablewit]

[[Backthreading nsfw romantic history post for birdhousesoul. Set not long after they hook up, before All That Remains]]



Hawke falls back on the bed, sweat sticking her hair to her forehead, skin flushed. It's the middle of the night, but the fire in the fireplace still burns enough to cast more light than shadows on her skin, and on the skin of the man next to her. "That was amazing." Still breathing hard, she smiles brilliantly at him, then decides that's not enough and rolls towards him for another kiss. She can't seem to stop kissing him now that she's finally able to. Not that she's tried hard to resist the urge for the past...week, maybe two weeks? It seems longer, and not long enough. "Andraste's flaming pyre, Anders, where'd you learn to do all this?"

Comments

[birdhousesoul]

Now that Anders hears the details, the mental image is considerably less exciting than he would have expected. "Like a naughty sort of obstacle course," he muses. "In the mud. In Ferelden." He's well acquainted with Fereldan mud. It holds no sensual appeal. "You're only confirming my deepest suspicions about female rogues, you do realize. Intensive training in the erotic arts, with the end goal to sweep all categories in the triathlon of lockpicking, trap-springing, and the Orlesian kiss."

[questionablewit]

"I don't know about intensive training," Hawke muses. "She was experienced, but she went about sex the same way she went about everything. Thoroughly, with impressive skill, but without fanfare or art. It was still good. Better than good, at times. Frantic grapplings against trees just after finishing off a sortie, during those moments when all you can think is I'm not dead, and want to do something to prove it."

She turns her head to grin ruefully. "It was certainly a rush at the time, but I doubt we made a pretty picture, so I'm afraid your suspicions fall down there. Do you know, she and I never even spoke about it? Not much, at least. It wasn't really about either of us. It was about knowing how to stay alive, in more than one sense."

[birdhousesoul]

"I'm afraid the last thing I think of after finishing off a sortie is grappling against trees," says Anders, bemused. "There's usually lots of other people's blood, which is not sexy, or darkspawn blood, which is even less sexy. Aside from any bleeding your allies are doing, of course, but that's the healer's problem, I suppose." He tries to imagine being a rogue, a female rogue (that is important; it might be different for women, and this story is about women), who does not have to worry about healing anyone, and who may be inspired to fierce arousal by a light rain of darkspawn blood. The closest he can imagine is Sigrun, but he thinks Sigrun would laugh at the idea. Sigrun would point out that trees have scratchy bark.

Sigrun might not find all the blood excessively offputting, though. She was always very practical.

Why is he thinking about Sigrun, again? And why is he imagining Velanna trying to convince her that trees are sexy? Crazy Dalish woman. Velanna would be into trees.

Focus, Anders. "Well, anyhow, her lessons must have stood you in good stead, where all the lockpicking and rogue things are concerned. You're brilliant at it." Compliment the lady! Do not breathe a word about dwarf-on-elf-on-tree action!

[questionablewit]

"It required specific circumstances," Hawke agrees. "Neither of us being injured, for one thing. But we were all pretty aware at the time of just how short life is, and determined to make the most of whatever moments we could grab." Her mouth quirks. "That, or I was just a sex-crazed teenager. One of those." Not quite a teenager by that point really, nineteen or twenty, but close enough.

"But yes, those lessons--the lockpicking and rogue ones, not the ones that involved trees--were the basis for a lot of what I do now. It was a solid grounding in the basics. After that it was mostly a matter of practice and opportunity, and Maker knows I get chances for that here." He gets a quick kiss for the compliment. Too bad she doesn't know what he's really thinking, jokes about wood and unfortunately placed bark would abound. It would unhinge the conversation though, which would probably be a pity.

Though the conversation now goes problematic places, because what had ended her 'relationship' with Lara was Ostagar. Not something Hawke intends to make pillow talk about, to say the least.

He'll fill in the gaps. She sighs and stretches her arms in the air above her chest. "Anyway, after that I came to Kirkwall, and had a charming year of indentured servitude working for smugglers, as you know. It could have been worse, at least most of them had senses of humor." She's pretty sure the mercenaries who were her other option had none. "There was a bit more experience in there, but nothing really noteworthy, to be honest. Casual friends passing time."

[birdhousesoul]

Ostagar, he knows, and will not ask about. He opts to make her laugh instead. "Casual friends passing time," he repeats, mock-skeptical. "With half the Coterie panting after you, and the entire staff of the Blooming Rose, I'm sure. A paragon of chastity, yes, because you knew you were going to meet me in a few months' time, and no woman can resist the prospect of a possessed Grey Warden who really knows his way around the Deep Roads." He makes Deep Roads an innuendo. He also pinches her bottom as he says it.

[questionablewit]

Hawke does laugh, and rolls herself back on top of him, crossing her arms on his chest and resting her head on them. "Honestly, you make it sound as though everyone in Kirkwall has been secretly pining for me. Just because you were and not letting yourself act on it doesn't mean the entire blighted city was." She deliberately glosses over her one and only trip to the Blooming Rose as an actual patron, though. She wasn't very pleased with herself after that one.

"And you're spoiling the end of the story." She mock-pouts. "I didn't get to the part where I got to lead you on with tales of my terrible yearning unrequited crush on a man who I'd first thought might be another friend to pass time with and then couldn't stop thinking about. Especially at night." She moves suggestively against him, and that pout starts to look rather more like a smirk. "All alone in my cold bed with only my hands and imagination to keep me company..."

[birdhousesoul]

"I didn't say the entire city," protests Anders, who is perhaps unwittingly giving her a reason to smirk, as those suggestive movements have their inevitable effect. "I only implied most of the city. Far be it from me to spoil the end of any story, especially one so sweetly told. Hereafter I shall listen most intently. What about this terrible, yearning, unrequited crush, and leading me on with tales, and ... the rest of that part?" She's taking unfair advantage, really, dulling his wit with her charms, what is that, some kind of rogue thing? What name does that technique get, and how many trees got their bark all abraded in the teaching of it?

[questionablewit]

None, in point of fact; Lara had had many talents but charm wasn't one of them. That's Hawke's own, or perhaps learned from her father, though not with this sort of use in mind if so.

She stops undulating against him for now, undoes her crossed arms so she can toy with the hair framing his face, looking at that rather than meeting his eyes. It's a pleasure to be able to look at him this closely, from this vantage, to examine minute details such as the curve of his hairline. It's an intimacy she found bemusing with past lovers, and now cherishes. "Well, as I was going to say, all my experiences had still left me fairly heart-whole. One or two brief crushes over the years, particularly when I was younger, but nothing that lasted or was realized. One or two people I know of who were interested in me, but nothing mutual. All my experience was...experience, nothing more."

When she'd been a child, she'd been determined to settle for nothing less than what her parents had, a full, loving partnership. With that example in front of her she couldn't accept less. But then she'd locked the possibility aside when she accepted other responsibilities and concerns, stopped looking, stopped considering it as a possible future.

"And then..." Her eyes crinkle at the edges. "I suddenly found myself just fascinated by this one person I'd met. It started slowly enough, mild interest combined with sympathy and admiration, and then even friendship as we got to know each other better. But all of it shot through, the whole time, with this incredible attraction unlike anything I'd ever felt. Threw me for a loop, I'm afraid. I made a complete idiot of myself, flirting outrageously every chance I could find or make, even when it was thoroughly inappropriate." Her tone is not in the least bit sorry. "Given half a chance I'd have been shameless as a dog in heat, so it's perhaps just as well I wasn't given half a chance. I was completely head over heels."