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]

Anders is not averse to being kissed. The past few days have put paid to the entire notion that Justice precludes an active sex life. No, love life, and that notion may have taken longer to dispel than the other, the idea that no mage should dare to fall in love.

He gives a good-natured groan. "Everyone knows where I learned to do all this. Isabela's already told you more than I ever knew she knew about my sordid history, I'd wager." Rolling onto his side to face Hawke, he yields to a less colorful temptation, allowing himself to tuck a stray wisp of hair behind her ear. How many times in the past three years has he longed to do that, something so simple? "I ought to ask the same question of you. You're far too good at, mm, a few things I could list, but I'm too much a gentleman to name them all. And I know you turned down Jethann, so I can't credit him for it."

[birdhousesoul]

That parallel has not escaped Anders, either, and he chuckles. "Turned the tables on me, to start with. Then I was on the table; hard to say whose victory that was. Neither of us, I think, after all was said and done. We couldn't afford to develop any obvious attachment, and we couldn't hide anything for very long, so the best expedient was for me to continue what I was already inclined to do." Chasing people, being chased, typical Circle games. "That made him only one of many, safer for him and for me, though he never asked it of me and I never spelled it out to make him hear. I think he knew anyhow, or else he didn't want to let himself care enough to object.

"The only time he ever said a word, I'd gotten involved with this apprentice transferred in from Orlais, she'd been a troublemaker where she was, fairly strong Resolutionist sympathies. Karl and I didn't see eye to eye, politically, and I thought that was the problem, or else that he didn't like my being with a woman, someone he couldn't match or best." They had a tacit understanding: No matter how many lovers I take, you're the one I want most, better than anyone else. Not love. Preferential treatment. "That was the one time he had to speak up. As pretty as you are, he said, you ought to know it isn't you she wants. I thought that was comical, really, coming from Karl; he had less interest in the Circle's romantic intrigues than anyone else I knew." Which was part of why Anders had to be the one to play the field, to confuse the trail.

Anders clears his throat. "This is something I did tell Bethany. Resolutionists, you know, want mages to be free of the Circle completely. They're the main faction supporting the mage underground. And one of the principles they have is, the more mages there are, the harder it will be to ignore their plight or suppress them. The more mage children are born, the more power we'll have to fight for what should be ours. I can't say Karl was right in what he thought or feared, but he could have been. In essence, he decided what she wanted was to ... carry my talents over to the next generation. Posterity, and all that, in a literal sense. It's ridiculous this should ever have come up, but it's the one time he ever asked me to stop seeing someone else. I did cool things off a bit with her, to keep him from worrying too much — he was a world-class champion at worrying. But I got to know other Resolutionists through her, and I wasn't in the Tower for much longer after that. Not as a permanent resident. Being in the cells doesn't count."

[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."

[birdhousesoul]

"Mm. This is a fascinating story. I was almost positive this was going to be about Varric Tethras, only you haven't mentioned any luxuriant chest hair yet, so I'm still being kept in suspense. Tell me more about this horrible person, because if he isn't Varric, he isn't already married to a jealous crossbow, and therefore his actions in this story have no justification whatsoever. Also, why did you become so deeply enamoured of a complete idiot, and how did your many admirers fail to distract you from this silliness, and where was Isabela during all this that she didn't contrive something outrageous to throw you into one another's arms. This is the most improbable part of your entire history thus far, Hawke. I think you're making it all up to tease me."

[birdhousesoul]

"Something about dreams," he repeats, mock-incredulous, still low and with the hint of a chuckle in it. "If you had any idea, you wouldn't ask. Wouldn't want to know any more than what I've already let slip, thoughtless of me to say even that much." They are pretending he's talking about some other woman, or aren't they? "Since you have asked, and so nicely ..."

It's convenient to have her lying atop him this way. He has so much scope for movement. His other hand makes an unhurried pass up her side, brushing the curve of her breast there before glancing off and over to her shoulder, the side of her throat, the line of her jaw, the kiss-stung swell of her lower lip.

"You know how dreams are," Anders confides. "Anything you've seen or felt or read in waking life is fair game, can come swimming up to haunt you. This woman I've been telling you about ... I worked with her very closely. Saw her every week, sometimes every day, for years, in a variety of circumstances and outfits and moods. And as we've discussed, I am no blushing ingenue. Awake, I knew I couldn't touch her. Asleep, all that reasoned certainty was gone. Everything I'd ever done with a woman, every moment that had ever snagged and caught in my memory, those belonged to her in my dreams, and she belonged to me. Her hands, her mouth, her arse, her breasts pressed together ..."

His fingers have been tracing lazy patterns at the verge of her inner thigh, but now without warning they wander in and up, the lightest ghost of a touch tracing the cleft there, not even granting enough pressure to part. "What I wanted most ..." If her breathing is labored, his is held a moment when he touches her there. He's teasing himself as much as he's teasing her. "Every way I'd ever taken a woman, I took her, in those blighted dreams. However maddening she was in life, in dreams she was most sweetly yielding, would do anything, would ask for more. I'd wake up throbbing or a mess."

He holds her face, cups her cheek, refuses to let himself take the kiss he wants, not just yet. "And that," he whispers, "was before I'd actually seen all of her. Imagine the torture after."

[questionablewit]

"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."

[birdhousesoul]

"Yes, well, it took a while to break me of the habit of headbutting people I disliked. And now you know how I developed the thick skull I have today." Anders shivers pleasantly at the feel of her fingers against his scalp. He could get used to that.

"That's my goat story, and I am owed a Ser Quackers adventure in return. What about it, hm?"