questionablewit | Backthreading, nsfw

Entry tags:

Backthreading, nsfw

[[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?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The blatant teasing she was doing has gotten lost somewhere in the distraction of storytelling, and the stroking he's doing turns it to something less heated. Hawke interrupts him to take a kiss, long and sweet, because she can, because she couldn't before and still revels in this new permission. "Determined woman, then, if she refused to be put off by your warnings. Unkind of her to flirt with others when you were suffering, though."

He can't say She didn't know I was suffering, I was hiding it too well, or some such thing, though it would work best for narrative purposes. The way he tells the story, he's following the pattern she invented for this game: It started slowly enough, mild interest combined with sympathy and admiration, Hawke said, and he supposes that was the truth for her, and she's the character he has been describing up to now. But he can't rewrite their history to make the deepening of his feelings match the trajectory of hers, so he has to be more honest now, even if he keeps pretending he's telling a story about someone who isn't her. Hawke was there; Hawke will remember what he was like from the very beginning. More serious than he had any right to be, more serious than he really knew how to be, Anders' habit of flirtation colliding with Justice's inclination to undertake nothing lightly.

He remembers the conversation so well because he repeated it in his head, night after night, wincing at his own presumption and the unattractive neediness made naked in everything he'd said to her that time, practically at the outset of their acquaintance. Setting the tone for everything that followed, blight it all.

He started out well enough, the promising start Anders would have made before Justice. Kind, wise, and beautiful ... you must have made a deal with some demons yourself, but then rethinking, stopping himself, I'm sorry, I shouldn't presume, I just — we've hardly met and I feel like I know you. Am I making you uncomfortable?

And Hawke, lightly: Keep telling me I'm beautiful. You can't go wrong with that.

Oh, I'm sure I can get more creative — but stopping himself again, turning serious again, no, I shouldn't do this. I don't want to hurt you.

Again, her light reply: Hurt me? I might like it. Reciting it in his head afterward, Anders was certain she was trying to keep him from embarrassing himself further, trying to re-establish a playful and altogether risk-free tone.

Which Anders was too stupid, too singleminded, to pick up on. Concerned about hurting her, breaking her heart, as if there were anything on the table beyond some sociable banter. Presumptuous, this, embarrassingly so.

That didn't develop over three years of aching. That was at the beginning. It can't be reimagined or reconstructed to make Anders better at hiding his feelings, or to underplay the feelings he hadn't hidden. He knew from the outset that if he let himself get involved with this woman at all, he'd be involved to the fullest extent possible, whatever she thought she was getting into. He no longer knew how to go about it any other way. As long as the words were just words, she'd be safe, so words were all there could be between them, and the shallower, the better.

Perhaps that sometimes created the impression he wouldn't be averse to something more than words, provided it stayed as shallow as the little verbal skirmishes he did permit himself. He might have been the worst tease in the Free Marches. That was still better than the end he saw for them if she responded to the advances he wanted to make.

Which he's made, now, consigning them both to ruin. But he has such faith in her, he's certain if anyone can prevent him from destroying everything, that person would be Hawke. He wants to believe they can make this work. He does believe it.

Edited 2012-01-07 14:46 (UTC)

"My own fault," he says. "I told her not to tempt me unless she was ready for the consequences. That's as good as issuing a gilt-edged invitation. I wouldn't use the word unkind for her. Merciless, perhaps. That might suit. I did put a lot of effort into behaving above reproach, and refusing to respond, and all, so it's possible she lost the scent after a while, good tracker though she is. I can't really be sure. There were times I couldn't help suspecting she had every intention of making me suffer. With Isabela's assistance, damn that woman. A lengthy session of practicing how to sheathe a dagger, in front of everyone, really? Not that she needed Rivaini help to make me sweat."

He decides to requite her kiss with another of the same temper. Anders revels in it every bit as much as Hawke does. The fact he was the one preventing it from happening for so long doesn't make their new arrangement any less satisfying to him, or any less a relief.

"Not that she needed to try at all, in fact. I'm not sure she could have been aware, sometimes, of what she did to me, or even whether I was watching. This one I'm not proud of — on the Wounded Coast, with our warrior friend off glowering and our Dalish friend off gathering things, and I was supposed to be gathering things too, useful stuff, looking for a certain kind of flower. I swear it was by accident I came upon her washing off spider blood in a convenient spring. However, it was not by accident that I somehow failed to make my presence known, or to leave. And certainly not by accident that I ... hid behind a rock."

Edited 2012-01-07 01:20 (UTC)

Hawke remembers that day; it was several months ago, during a period when she'd been wondering why she kept throwing herself at Anders when he was so stubbornly determined not to touch her, wondering if she should leave the man alone and try to get over it, assuming she could.

That hadn't been on her mind at the particular moment in question, however; it'd been a long day of wandering the Wounded Coast accomplishing various tasks, and she'd run into a cave and found a nest of giant spiders. She hated those things. Not for their own sake but because they were so blighted messy when they died. Hawke wasn't one to fear a mess, but there were limits. She'd left the cave cursing under her breath and found a spring, intending to at least get the blood off her face and hands. Since she'd been on her own, she'd stripped to the waist as well. It'd been hot, and her armor was chaffing.

It was around that point she'd realized she was being watched. She hadn't needed to turn around; Anders was nothing special when it came to sneaking, which was one way she'd known it was him. Merrill could move as silently as any Dalish, and Fenris in his bare feet was almost as good, whoever it was wasn't attacking her and had no air of antagonism. It could only have been Anders. But she'd known from other things. The way Teo, spread flat like a mabari-pancake on the ground some feet away, twitched an ear but didn't otherwise react. The faintest sound of an indrawn breath, Maker, she could recognize him from his breathing, that was one of the things that had told her how far gone she was.

Anders, who'd said over and over that he couldn't be with her, no matter how much either of them might want it, hiding and watching her sitting topless by a stream and splashing water on her face and chest.

It'd been an oddly vulnerable moment. Hawke wasn't used to feeling vulnerable, in any context.

So she'd courted it. Stood, stripped off the rest of her armor and clothes. Not artfully, because if she made too much of a show of it he might realize she knew he was there and run off. Stepped into the stream, shivering at the cold of it, which did feel wonderful in the afternoon heat, and washing off sweat and grime felt even better. And clearly, her shivering had had nothing whatever to do with wondering what might be going through Anders' head, if he liked what he saw. Nothing to do with being a bit flushed, a bit breathless, a bit tempted to look his way and see if she could catch his gaze. A bit tempted to run over to the rock and push him against it, see if he was still able to resist her when she was wet and naked and pressed against him.

She'd sat down in the slow-running water, only a foot or so deep. Stretched out, splashed water over herself and ran hands over her skin to make sure everywhere got attention. Lay down and let her head go back, rolled over. Again, not too much, not too overt. Not too sexual or suggestive, even though she was trembling, because it was still one of the most erotic things she'd ever done in its way, for all that it was understated. Exquisite in its unacknowledged intimacy. She'd been watched while bathing before, not just as a child but as a soldier, when privacy was impossible and chances to get clean were too few and far between to not grab when you could. It hadn't been like this. Not at all like this.

Edited 2012-01-07 12:26 (UTC)

Eventually she'd left the stream, sat on another rock for a few minutes to let her skin dry off, sure he was still there but unable to look for fear of shattering the bubble they were in. Then she'd sighed to herself and gone back to the pile of her belongings, pulled on still bloody-and-grimy clothes with clear reluctance--couldn't wash them yet, unfortunately, wet cloth below armor would lead to new and improved forms of chafing. Rebuckled her armor and whistled for Teo. Walked off slowly in a direction that didn't go by Anders' rock, and also didn't go in the directions where Fenris and Merrill should be, because she'd need a minute to compose herself and either an innocent question or a raised, disapproving eyebrow would not be welcome until she had her aplomb back. Hadn't said a word about it when they all regathered later, or ever.

Had stopped wondering if she should leave Anders alone.

Oh, Hawke remembers that day. So she looks not at all surprised or taken aback by his admission, and instead smiles slowly, a bit wickedly. "So, how was the view?"

She did know, then. The smile's what gives it away for certain, though Anders had his suspicions at the time. The complete disrobing was what made him wonder — the shirt, he understood, but the rest of it, he thought less likely under the circumstances — and he had no will to question that, because he couldn't have kept watching if he'd questioned, and he could afford to entertain no suspicion strong enough to tear his eyes from Hawke or flush him from concealment. Justice hadn't cared, surprisingly; it was all part and parcel of the ongoing distraction that offended the spirit's sense of priorities, not troubling in any other aspect; all the guilt attached to this particular indulgence belonged to Anders. Likewise, all the reluctance to relieve the consequent tension ~~in his trousers~~ belonged to Anders. Justice has neither interest nor distaste for bodily functions beyond the inconvenience they can pose.

"The view? Not clear enough to suit me, more than clear enough to keep me transfixed. I couldn't turn away if I'd wanted. I had to savor every moment, every inch of skin revealed, even knowing what this would do to me, the dreams I'd have, worse than before." The amount of laundry the dreams would occasion. "It was over far too quickly for my liking, and when she'd gone, I couldn't rejoin the group, not in that state. There was a tent, not far away ..."

Another of the little camps that raiders and apostates had a habit of leaving in place, what with sudden death preventing them from breaking camp, whether that death came from mercenaries or rival raider troops or Hawke's friends themselves. Merrill found it, that day, and it demanded a cursory looting although everyone knew it'd probably been well picked-over. The most they found were a couple of coppers, and they not too proud to pick those up, Deep Roads wealth notwithstanding. Those, and some of the typical assortment of torn trousers and the like. A silk headscarf torn beyond darning, not the right stuff to be sold for rags. These weren't worth taking, the pack growing full with richer pickings found earlier.

"What could I do? Took refuge there and, ah, took matters in hand." His hand has better tasks now, creeping round the back of her thigh and to the softer flesh inside. His voice is low, conspiratorial. "I came so hard I thought I might pass out. That would've been difficult to explain."

(With his luck he'd have hit his skull on the way down. The others would've come looking for him and found him in what could be euphemistically termed a compromising position, breeches open, a conspicuous wad of old silk fallen nearby.)

Edited 2012-01-08 05:21 (UTC)

Hawke's breath catches audibly at I came so hard I thought I might pass out; she has a sudden vivid mental image of him, frantically working at himself while imagining her, what the look on his face would have been as he desperately sought release and found it. The picture sends a rush of heat through her, heightened by the direction his hand is taking. For all that she's on top at the moment, has been toying with him as they share all these things, she suddenly feels that the balance of power has shifted. Which makes her even more breathless.

Picking up the thread of conversation is difficult. "So you did like the view." Very difficult. Well, eloquence is overrated at times like this, or at least Hawke devoutly hopes so. "And the dreams you'd have? You mentioned something about dreams." He's barely touching her, it has no business being so effective.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only