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?"

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"I...hadn't thought of it like that," Hawke says slowly, thinking it over. There's something to what he says. To her, it felt like Marian was someone she left behind when her father died, when she went to war with Carver, when they fled Lothering. It wasn't entirely a conscious rejection on her part so much as not feeling as though she was Marian anymore. Marian hadn't really known what she was going to do with her future, she was a tangle of enthusiasm and curiosity about the world. Hawke had a single, very clear focus, and the name pretty much stated it. Carver's death had only reinforced what her father's death had begun.

She'd failed her family twice over; three times, if you included Bethany, which she did. Bethany was still alive, yes, but that was no thanks to Hawke, only to Anders. And she was lost to them, and unhappy in her new life as well. Not exactly a win. It makes Hawke more determined than ever to protect not just her mother, but her mother's happiness, what of it is left with her husband and two children gone.

But Leandra's in no danger. They've recovered the estate, the Amell name, the Amell fortune, even. Aside from grief for the twins, they're doing well. Hawke has space and time, for the first time in years, to have something for herself. Just for herself, not because it benefits anyone else, but because she wants it. Though to say that she wants this relationship is seriously understating the case, because her life has somehow rearranged itself around being in love with Anders. She didn't do it on purpose, and she wouldn't know how to undo it if she wished, but she doesn't wish it. It was unsettling, at first. In a way she's being as selfish as Anders is, being with him, allowing a distraction to her own cause. It's not one as politically or sociologically significant as his, no, but it's as sacred a trust, at least to her.

That's why she's done all she can for her mother, everything possible. And despite Carver and Bethany, Leandra is happy nowadays, keeping an eye on the family she still has (even the impossible Gamlen), mingling with society, reclaiming the heritage she left years ago. Moreover, Leandra likes Anders, is pleased that Hawke is happy. She's made that clear.

It gives Hawke a freedom she hadn't realized she was lacking, hadn't known she needed or could have. The same freedom she feels whenever she's with Anders, the chance to be completely herself, parts set aside long ago as irrelevent now regained, rejoined, made whole.

"I don't think I mind, coming from you," Hawke finally says. "Though it's strange to hear. Might take some getting used to." She smiles. "I'm not sure it fits me as well as that rosey outfit does, given how much I've grown over the past several years. It may require some tailoring."

Edited 2012-01-11 12:25 (UTC)

Anders, whose use-name is nothing more or less than an abbreviation of the geographical region where he was born, should know very well what it's like to Have Issues surrounding nomenclature. And he does, and he's sensitive to it.

"It's only ... things are different now," he tries to reify it by putting it into words, and finds that words won't do the job they're needed for. "You're Hawke, to me, always. It's how I first knew you, how I'll always know you. But now you're something else as well, and I come home to you at night, and your mother's here and telling me about you, Marian's in the study, Marian's gone out, or ... this is a secret, mind, but she may have volunteered a tale or two about your adorable toddler years."

Something else as well is a nice way of putting it, and she'd comment on that, but the thought is almost immediately derailed by what follows. "Oh no." Hawke groans, and finds the energy to remove the pillow from under her head and press it on top of her face, hiding. Anders will then hear a rather muffled, "She told you about Ser Quackers and the buried treasure, didn't she."

He laughs at her pillow-dive, and lets her have that shelter from scrutiny — for now. "Not that one, no. Sweetheart, I love your mother, but there are some things I think she doesn't need or really want to know. The fact I've met Ser Quackers falls into that category." Her face may be under the pillow; the rest of her is not, and Anders walks mischievous fingers up her side, half a tickle, half a caress. Reminder of his introduction to Ser Quackers.

She would have found out he's a little ticklish. And it would be in a blighted bathtub.

"Now you've mentioned it, however, I demand to know the story. I shall not rest until this adventure is unfolded."

Anders isn't the only one who's a little ticklish; Hawke is as well, particularly just before or after sex, so she laughs and squirms in a largely futile attempt to protect herself. "Your meeting him is harmless enough, so long as we leave out some of the details of the introduction. Though I think you'll find that very little escapes Mother. She's frighteningly observant." Hawke hadn't actually had to tell Leandra that Anders was moving into the house with them, she'd known without a word said on the subject.

Granted, Hawke had (no doubt still did) radiated blissful gratification, and it didn't take a genius to connect the dots. The point was true nonetheless. Leandra Amell was sharp, and very rarely disconcerted, because often she'd thought of whatever embarrassing thing was at hand or possible before you did, and already recovered before it happened.

"And Quackers features in a number of my most infamous incidents, especially before Teo came along, so the subject will come up sooner or later." The knighting of Quackers is a fairly recent event, so Hawke is a bit inconsistent about whether or not she uses the title, which is largely Anders' fancy. "In short, I'm doomed. Tell me which stories she told you first, so I know how deeply to blush."

Anders, for his part, will continue to use Ser Quackers' title stringently and without exception. However, he'll let Hawke's omission thereof go unremarked ... this time. (Watch him start trying to make towel animals, just to create tableaux for Ser Quackers to nestle in. The man has too much whimsy to contain, and needs to bleed some off, every now and again.)

"No ducks in these at all. She's far too gracious a lady to go out of her way to tell me these scurrilous tales, you know; it's only ever when something reminds her, which means a prompt from some little household object I've remarked upon or tried to do something with. Tried offering to do the dishes, once — three days ago, you recall, you got called away from dinner to talk to that silly person who wanted to start a Hightown Estates homeowner's association — and that put her in mind of the time you tried to wash dishes in a mud puddle. Nothing was broken, she's proud to note, only the job to do over again, her first clue you'd never make a domestic goddess. Which wasn't much of a story, in itself, but reminded her also of the time you decided to set the table, very helpfully, and apparently you felt the job wouldn't be complete until you'd also provided the meal ..." He pauses to see whether she recognizes the anecdote yet. It's from before Bethany would be old enough to remember; perhaps it hasn't been rehearsed much en famille.

Anders continues. "She'd not finished cooking the actual meal just yet, so you rather got the drop on her. Your father was the one to find it, he'd been in the house working on something; what appetizing mud pies you had made! And you were sitting there, quite patiently and proudly, at your place, waiting for suppertime. And you didn't catch trouble for it in the least. She says, your father pretended to take a bite, to see what you would do; he'd learned some sleight of hand." Real magic isn't always the showy stuff the Viscount's parties demanded; one of the ironies of bringing trained Circle mages into court functions as entertainers was that half the magic couldn't even be real. "Declared it was delicious. And you were just delighted — she was watching from the doorway, facing him, she could only see the back of your head, but she says she could hear the grin — and informed him that you'd put an extra earthworm in his, because you liked him specially."

Edited 2012-01-13 17:35 (UTC)

The pillow is back on the face before he's halfway through, and it's never coming off again. "That's worse. I'd forgotten that one." She'd been what, five, six? It's a long time since she thought of that event. Extra earthworms for supper had become a household joke for years; Carver in particularly had loved insulting her cooking whenever she took a hand, rock pie and sandwiches aren't supposed to be made with real sand, you know, though he'd been frustrated that his taunting hadn't disturbed her much. She was used to Carver, and anyway it'd been more than counterbalanced by the way it made their father laugh.

She misses her father's laugh. The thought doesn't have a sting in it, at this particular time; it's a sad thought, yes--Malcolm Hawke and Anders would have gotten along extremely well, and she wishes they had met--but she's happy in the memory, that it lives again, that it's shared. Sometimes when she looks back at her life, it's strange to think that Anders wasn't there as it was happening.

"There are clearly perils to your living here that I never considered. Is it too late for us to move into your Darktown clinic instead, and spare me the humiliating death of childhood anecdotes?"

"You'd rather risk the chokedamp than have me learn these things? That pillow can't protect you from your past, sweetheart. I already know about the time you tried to water the flowers patterned on the rug, so they'd grow bigger." Hiding her face means she can't see him coming; he takes advantage of this to tickle her again, not aggressively, just a swift light dance of fingertips across her ribs. "And the time you got woodworking glue in your hair, and had to have it trimmed short to even out the place where the glue was cut out, and you weren't pleased until your mother told you all the noblest knights in Kirkwall wore their hair this way. At which point you not only liked the cut, but got the shears and snipped off all the twins' wispy baby hair, to make them match. You wanted them to join your battalion."

The twin-pronged attack of more childhood anecdote humiliation and further tickling is just cruel. Hawke curls into a ball on her side in a largely futile attempt to hide her ribs, keeping the pillow firmly over her head. As a defense, it's all rather lacking in finesse. Or effectiveness. "I take it back. I'm not telling you any Quackers stories. You know too much already."

She'd worn her hair short ever since that event, once she realized how useful it was to not have it falling in her face whenever she was doing things. And trying to convince baby Carver and Bethany to be her lieutenants had been an exercise in futility, which perhaps had been a good lesson for later life, some to think of it. How to deal with recruits who tried to do what you said despite not understanding it, or who flat out refused to do anything you said, period.

"Oh, come now," Anders pleads, wrapping his limbs about the ball she's curled into, curving his body around hers, trying not to laugh. "If you tell me more of Ser Quackers, I'll tell you ... hmm ... I haven't got any childhood stories worth the telling," which means, none that are amusing, "except for the phase in which I wished to become a goat when I grew up."

He rocks her back and forth a little, quieting. "Of course, I haven't got to know your past," he reassures her, since turnabout is fair play and he doesn't particularly care to delve into his own younger years, not anything before the Tower, not the rage thereafter. "It's only I adore the tales of little Marian. I'd say I would have liked to have such a sister, but then you'd be my sister, and I really wouldn't prefer that at all."

Edited 2012-01-13 18:45 (UTC)

Hawke can't resist the embrace, and emerges from under the pillow looking rather pink but wearing a resigned grin. "No, no, you may as well know all the worst of them. But if any word of these is breathed outside these four walls to any of our friends, especially Varric, who would find a way to publish them, then I will find new and unique ways to make you suffer. Be warned." She kisses him briefly. "Besides, if you adore them, well, that's another matter entirely. But you'll hear no more from me until I find out why you wanted to be a goat."

He's wearing that particularly Anders look that's not half a smile, more a quarter-smile, with dancing eyes and both brows fractionally lifted. "Who wouldn't want to be a goat? I'd think it self-explanatory." He's teasing, though, and kisses her nose to show it, then her cheek. "Mmm, where to begin. You know the Anderfels aren't the most hospitable of terrain. Subsistence farming supplemented by herding, and nearly all the inhabitable land too steep for your soft rich lowland cattle. No, it's goats for us, and sheep. Well, we had goats, like everyone, and you've got to follow them about. Grey or white or what we called blue, sturdy ordinary goats. Great shaggy things, at least seen from a child's height, with horns and attitude. They liked me well enough" (one day he'll chat with Ged about goatherding), "which was a mercy, as my life would've been miserable had they taken exception to me. Anyhow, goats are not a bad example to aspire to, if you've not seen much of the world that's not got goats in, and you're looking for a vocation that gives you greater freedom than being tied down to a farm. They're surefooted, they can go anywhere. They can live off anything. And no one gives them trouble, if they know what's good for them, because they've got their horns, you see."

Anders twists two locks of Hawke's hair into goat horns as he speaks. It doesn't matter that the twists won't stay.

"I knew from early on that I was different, somewhat. Smart enough to keep it to myself as best I could. I wasn't a quiet child, or especially given to self-reflection, mind. I didn't keep myself to myself, just didn't talk about some things I knew." Learned that early on, from mother's warnings, but he won't talk about mother. "Somehow I got it into my head that I could turn into different things. Later on, when I learned there were such things as real shapeshifters, I realized how laughable that was; I never showed one sign of such a talent, thank the Maker. It was an idea I'd gotten from fireside stories, the child who's always different because he's descended from some animal, and doesn't find it out 'til later on. It's usually a bear, you know, but me, a bear? Not bloody likely. Fancied myself more the goatish type." At that age the double entendre would've been quite beyond him. "Able to leap crevasses in a single bound."

"Mm, you do have certain goaty qualities." Hawke's eyes sparkle, and she deliberately avoids the obvious innuendo. "You'll eat absolutely anything, to start. And a certain shagginess." She runs her hand through his hair. "Perhaps your ambitions weren't so far off the mark as all that. Though I'd see you more as some overlarge cat thing, the sort they have up in Rivain." Which she's never seen, but has heard stories about, tigers and panthers.

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