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?"

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[birdhousesoul]

"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."

[questionablewit]

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.

[birdhousesoul]

"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."

[questionablewit]

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."

[birdhousesoul]

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."

[questionablewit]

"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.