Understanding
Title: Understanding
Game: Dragon Age 2
Pairing: Anders/f!Hawke (Ceridweth, mage)/Nathaniel Howe
Rating: M/AO
Wordcount: 6,136
Warnings: None
Summary: Anders is losing Ceridweth Hawke, but she comes alive whenever Nathaniel Howe is near. (Ao3)
Notes: A gift for AllTheChantry on tumblr; Ceridweth and the basic idea for the fic are hers.
Hawke came back to life when Nathaniel was nearby.
Anders noticed it immediately. Her eyes had lit up when he spoke, her shoulders straightened. Anders should have felt jealousy, or pain - but he understood. Nathaniel wasn't from Kirkwall. He wasn't wrapped up in the drama of it all, the struggle. He was something mythical and removed, gentlemanly, attentive. And he wasn't Anders.
That should have hurt, too.
But he understood.
Their relationship had been slipping, just a little, day by day and touch by touch, ever since the public declamations had started. He'd been able to set aside the worst of his fervor for three years, focusing on her even as Justice roiled and protested within him. He had worked quietly, had buried himself in her life as best he could to keep the world out. But when he couldn't run anymore, no matter how much she supported him, believed in him, he couldn't be there. Not enough. Not enough for- them.
And so he understood. Nathaniel was what she needed, an outside ear, a gentleman lover. He watched them speak as they trudged through the Deep Roads, heard notes in her voice he hadn't heard in months. It was subtle, but he could read her, had always been able to. Their hands brushed on occasion. Nathaniel helped her down a tricky patch of destroyed stairs.
Anders allowed it without a word.
Nathaniel had left without ever so much as kissing Ceridweth, without ever touching a straying hand to her waist or hip or any other part that only Anders knew the exact curves of, the exact feel. No lines had been crossed. Nothing had been promise or offered. But Ceridweth Hawke flagged again, beneath her strong exterior.
--
When the chantry was destroyed in a rain of rubble and fire, Ceridweth stayed by his side.
--
The change was quiet at first. She spoke less. Her idle jokes began to fail her. When he brushed her dark hair from her face, it felt thinner and she did not smile so broadly or so shyly as she once had done. She did not sleep pressed close to his back.
But he was losing her. With every step away from Kirkwall, another ounce of her faded away, and he began to fear that soon he would be left with only the memory of a ghost. He knew he was no better, a shell of who he had been when he met her all those years ago, but there was a fire that burned in him for her, for mages.
No fire burned in her eyes when he kissed her lips.
--
Nathaniel found them four months after Kirkwall.
They were an hour's walk outside of a small town somewhere in Green Dales when there was the faintest crunch of boot on leaf or twig. Anders felt the crackling of power rush down his arms in expectation. Five templar squads had met their ends in the dense forests and hills since Kirkwall, but they never came so close before he noticed, never came so quietly.
"Hold," Nathaniel's voice came, and the blue haze at the edges of his vision faded.
It was telling, he thought, that even before Nathaniel had spoken Ceridweth had given up. Or- perhaps not given up, but her fingers were not tight around the wood of her staff, her stance was not widened. Anders had turned to the noise, but Ceridweth only moved at the word hanging on the air.
Anders saw the change immediately.
Her lips parted and her green eyes fixed on Nathaniel with something like interest, like hope - things he hadn't seen in too long. The corners of her mouth tugged into a weak smile, as if she had forgotten where the muscles attached. They were small things, tiny things, but he drank them in like a dying man thirsting for water, for any touch of moisture, of rain. The bitterness or sweetness of it didn't matter.
Nathaniel stepped from the shadows into the more full dappled sunlight, his empty hands held out from his sides, fingers spread. "I come in peace, my friends."
"Thank the Maker," Ceridweth breathed.
"Do I want to know how you found us?" Anders asked, but the defensive bile that would have dripped from those words directed to anyone else was gone, as dried up as he was.
Nathaniel lifted a hand and tapped his brow. "The call. There weren't supposed to be patrols in this area aside from me. I thought... well. I was right." He looked beyond them a moment in the direction of the town. "How are you for supplies?"
Anders said nothing, unsure if it was an offer. Ceridweth stepped forward instead. "Poor," she said. "Our food will run out in three days at most." Each trip into a town to restock had been nerve-wracking. Ceridweth always went alone and Anders waited every time, sitting quietly and wondering if she would return, if this was the day she would disappear completely.
He had feared this town they approached for just that reason.
Nathaniel inclined his head in acknowledgement and thought. "Three days will not take you very far in these parts. The town nearby will hardly note travelers, they are so common. You have cloaks?"
"It's not safe," Ceridweth said, looking to Anders.
"You don't need to take me. I don't go in anymore," Anders said with a shrug. "... Sacrifices had to be made."
"So I understand," Nathaniel returned with a grim smile. "But I can assure you two safety, if you'll take it, and a warm bed. It must have been some time."
Anders said nothing. Ceridweth, he knew, had like him slept on the forest floor before, had lived on the run. But she had earned her luxury, her comfort, and he regretted daily taking it from her. She had fought hard by his side. This was not what he had wanted to give her.
He'd wanted to give her a home and a family, but that was beyond reach until the cause no longer needed to be fought for.
He knew she understood that, but he still regretted every night of hardship, every day of fear he had brought her.
Perhaps he should have doubted Nathaniel's motives - but those, too, he felt he understood. Nathaniel still looked at Ceridweth with the same quiet, contained desire that Anders had seen months ago in the Deep Roads, and Ceridweth gazed back with an echo of the same. Nathaniel was there for her, and only secondarily for an old friend.
So Anders turned to Ceridweth. "I leave it up to you, love."
--
The town was larger than Anders had thought it would be, a clearing in the woods where roads converged. It was no city. It had no walls. There was the smallest of chapels, no true chantry in sight. But there were four inns and a bustling market even as the evening drew on. Nathaniel bought them dinner there, skewers of roasted meat and cakes of honey and acorn meal. It was not the best food, but it was hearty and filling and warm.
They had not risked fire in weeks.
He wondered, as they approached the inn that Nathaniel promised would ask the fewest questions - that is to say, none - if he would step aside and let Nathaniel take Ceridweth to bed while he slept in another room. Her spirits were rallying with each step, with each wry comment. Jealousy refused to come, and the thought of a night alone - it did not scare him so much as it once had.
She would be safe and happy, and what else could he have asked for?
But when Nathaniel slid coin across the table, it was for a single room. Anders quirked a brow but did not ask, though he saw Ceridweth frown a moment, then blush and look away.
When Nathaniel turned to them, he shrugged. "I will feel safer with you both close at hand."
Anders wasn't sure whether it was a sign of affection or of distrust, but Nathaniel's small smile spoke to the former. He inclined his head and led the way to the stairs. Ceridweth hesitated until Anders touched her shoulder and nudged her forward.
"It's okay," he said with a small shrug of his own.
--
Nathaniel gave up the bed the first night.
First night, Anders thought with a wry smile. First night. There should have been only the one, but Nathaniel had a knack with words and Ceridweth was enchanted, and the promise of a warm bed for a single night became an offer for another. Ceridweth went out to the market again with Nathaniel, and Anders remained in their room to sit and think and give them space.
Nathaniel returned alone several hours later.
"She's down in the main room," he said as he walked to the wooden tub in the far corner of the room. It was a surprisingly open space that Nathaniel had found for them, but with a single door and a window large enough to escape through. Anders had checked.
Nathaniel set a series of vials down beside the tub and Anders frowned.
"Those are?"
"A gift for Ceridweth." He uncapped one and the scent of flowers - gardenia, Anders thought, with embrium and elfroot - began to perfume the room, rising above the lingering smells of grease and alcohol from the main room just below the floor. She'd like it. Her mother had filled the estate with flowers at least once a month, and Ceridweth had kept up the tradition ever after. He'd woken to petals in his hair more times than he could rightly remember, and the idea of her anointed with flowers once more, even if it was in the arms of another man-
Well.
She would like it.
Anders rose from the bed. "I'll go find something to do with myself, then." There was no bitterness in his voice or in his thoughts, just the same melancholy understanding that had been there for months. "Should I have them send water up?"
"I've already asked for it," Nathaniel said. "But stay."
"Stay?" He was halfway to the door but he halted all the same, caught by curiosity as much as by the smallest flare of frustration. "I'm willing to step aside, Nathaniel. It's fine." He had wanted to make that clear before, when he let them walk together or did not interrupt when Nathaniel wove stories for her. "It's fine," he repeated.
"You don't need to step aside." Nathaniel did not approach, leaning instead against the tub and playing with the floral vial in his hands, his fingers just as nimble as they had been seven years before. So much had changed- and yet he seemed stable, a waypoint in the storm.
Ceridweth needed the waypoint, not the storm itself, and his brow furrowed. "I can see the two of you when you talk, you know. When you- look at each other. I'll step aside for the night." His voice grew more rough and his throat bobbed as he swallowed hard. "She deserves-"
"You," Nathaniel said, with more ease and poise than Anders thought possible.
"No." Anders knew her eyes. He knew her lips, her words, her kisses, and he knew, more than he had known almost anything else, that she didn't need him anymore. He knew that he only drove her away. It was obvious; he understood it from the first moment they shared a glance.
But Nathaniel did not move or frown or give in.
"Us, then."
"Us?" For the first time, anger flashed through him, a sort of confused lashing out. "Us? Nathaniel, she doesn't want me anymore."
"Yes, she does." Nathaniel finally pushed up to standing, uncoiling and striding towards Anders. He smiled faintly as he walked past, then went to open the door, just as the servant in the hall with her steaming buckets of water raised a fist to knock.
Anders watched as the water was brought in, heart in his throat and pulse thundering in his ears. Nathaniel spoke as if he was certain, but Anders understood Ceridweth. If he had nothing else of her, he at least knew her mind. He was focused on the thought as Nathaniel drew up beside him, settling a hand on his shoulder.
"She loves you deeply, my friend."
"But she wants you. You heal her. You don't know what she's like when you're not around. You put her back together. You make her-" He growled, rubbing anxiously at his stubble. "You make her happy."
"And you give her purpose. Do not doubt that." Nathaniel gestured towards the tub, now filled with steaming water. "I would not take her from you, and you would not stand in our way - so remain."
"Remain," he said, the words dry but faintly sweet on his lips. Stay. Watch Ceridweth slip into a bath of perfume and later smell the flowers on her skin.
"Help me put her back together. She's not the woman I met in Kirkwall." Nathaniel's voice had a note of sadness in it that Anders recognized all too well. It spoke to deep feelings carefully controlled over time. It spoke to restrained pain.
Maker, but he knew that note.
"She's not the woman I met seven years ago," he answered, voice thick with the same.
"Then help me heal her. You always were better at that than I." Nathaniel smiled, a small little thing, a peace offering, and Anders took it.
"How long until she comes back?" he asked, moving to shut the door before crossing the room to the tub. He crouched to take up the other items Nathaniel had set out. One held oil that smelled of spices from further up the Minanter River. Another, a wider, stouter vial, more a glass jar, held a light poultice that melted to nothing on his fingers and smelled of nothing. It left his skin softened and he set it back down gently.
"Not long. A few minutes." There was the rustling of leather and cloth, and Anders looked over to see Nathaniel tugging his boots free and working his doublet open. In town, he had shed his armor, and the slide of fabric over his arms revealed corded muscle and the uneven shoulders of a lifelong archer. He was all sinew and bone and power, covered in tanned skin and dark chest hair that meandered a path down to his waistband.
Anders felt small, and then forced the feeling away.
He undid the clasps on the simple jacket he wore, wishing he still had the feathered pauldrons that Ceridweth had teased him over and loved burying her face in - but that had been too recognizable. Everything he wore was so much less than Nathaniel's: coarser thread, more uneven weave, less careful fit. And when the warming air of the room touched his skin, it touched sallow skin traced with awkward tan-lines, ribs that stood out too much, a bow to his shoulders that had little to do with working his staff and more to do with his neverending exhaustion.
They both put their shed clothing aside, and Nathaniel added the floral perfume to the bath. The rest, he said, was for after, and Anders nodded. He knelt by the tub, trailing fingers through the water.
"She'll like this."
"I had hoped as much." Nathaniel leaned against the tub, looking down at Anders. "... This is draining you - this life."
"Of course it is," Anders snapped, though it was tired and tempered by warm water on his skin. "Of course it is," he repeated more softly. "But I knew it would. It's what I want. But her-"
"She will follow you to the ends of Thedas. Do not doubt her."
"But she would turn to you for comfort. And you- want to give it to her." Anders sighed, pressing his damp fingers to his head. "Do you actually want this, or are you just being polite?"
"Both." Nathaniel chuckled, and then the door creaked open and the soft step on the wood was familiar and almost needed.
"Oh," Ceridweth said, her eyes going between Anders and Nathaniel. She blushed, then smiled sheepishly, and Anders wanted to do anything in his power to keep that look of embarrassed excitement on her face.
"We drew you a bath," Nathaniel said when Anders couldn't find words. "It must have been a while."
"Oh," Ceridweth repeated, and Anders finally stood up and went to her. He took her elbow with one hand, rested his other hand lightly on her shoulder.
Leaning in, he murmured by her ear, "You can say no if you like, love."
She turned, close enough that he could feel the ghost of her exhale on his lips. "Both of you?"
He shrugged with a weak little laugh catching in his throat. "Er. Yes. His idea."
"And you're- okay with it?" Her eyes were wide, her cheeks rosy and lips parted. She hadn't looked at him like that in so long, and he found himself enfolding her loosely in his arms.
"Well, yes."
"... You're okay with it?" she asked, and he realized what she meant. Her eyes flicked and darted and he knew she was searching for hairline fractures of vibrant blue. But there was none. There was no tension within him. This- there was no injustice in this, not the slightest. Another man's hands on her was not a violation.
She never looked away from him, never looked to where Nathaniel waited, and he shivered with the force of it. She wanted him - and she wanted him to be happy. Nathaniel was right.
"I'm okay with it," he murmured, before trailing his lips lightly over hers.
Nathaniel remained apart until Anders had undone the laces and clasps holding Ceridweth's clothing on. It was when Anders bent to help her from her boots - Fereldan boots, she had told him with a sad laugh the night they left Kirkwall, made for running through muck and high water and fire - that he crossed the room, touching her shoulders lightly and then looping an arm around her waist. Anders saw his fingers, so steady and careful always, tremble at the touch and at how Ceridweth leaned back with a quiet, insistent noise.
Nathaniel took her weight as Anders bared the last few inches of skin and, lovingly, kissed the arch of her foot before letting her stand once more.
It was Anders' hand that she held as she stepped into the warm water, and they both heard her as she sighed and sank into it, the steaming water just barely covering her nipples and knees, her belly submerged far below. They both watched. Nathaniel was the first to trail his hand beneath the water, a gentle touch on her leg. Anders was the first to kiss the crown of her head and slip his hands along her shoulders and down her chest.
He watched her unfold with a pleasure he couldn't describe, could barely comprehend. The tension melted from her with the heat. Nathaniel's fingers worked the muscles of her calves, slid along her skin until her eyes closed and she moaned, and Anders worked the barest threads of healing through the water and through her breasts. They soothed her with what they knew best.
Nathaniel kissed her hand, her wrist, and Anders kissed her throat. Each touch of lips to skin became a blessing, a benediction, and he murmured against her skin that he loved her. He thought he heard the same from Nathaniel, but the words were distant, the tone the only meaningful, material thing. She smiled. Ceridweth smiled, and he stared at her, memorizing it for later, for dark nights alone on the road.
He didn't know exactly how long they stayed there, working the scent of flowers into her skin, making her arch and gasp with light touches, except that the steam eventually cooled and his hair no longer clung slick to his forehead. She was flushed and he was beginning to ache in his trousers. Nathaniel's hands still stayed away from her center or her breasts, but his fingers worked in more intricate patterns on her thighs, and Ceridweth reached for him, her fingers on his darker forearms. Anders inhaled, then leaned down to kiss her fully again.
Nathaniel helped her step from the tub, and Anders dried her with the softest cloth they had, his lips catching droplets he missed. She smelled of flowers and sweets, with no hint of sweat or fear or exhaustion, and he breathed her in. He drew her towards him back to the bed, Nathaniel trailing after.
It was like a dance, and he found himself learning the steps more quickly than he had thought possible. He settled against the wall at the head of the bed and Ceridweth rested her back against his chest. Nathaniel approached from the side of the bed, sitting on the edge as he retraced his path along her leg.
Anders could feel her pulse jump, could watch as her nipples hardened and her toes curled, and it drew a low laugh from him.
"Don't laugh at me," she said, and what started as an embarrassed protest turned to a sighing gasp as Nathaniel reached between her legs. Ceridweth's head fell back onto his shoulder and Anders trailed kisses over the line of her cheek and along her jaw.
"Not laughing at you, love," he mumbled. But the laughter had loosened the last trepidation in him, and his hands began to wander, one sliding to cup a breast and toy with her nipple while the other trailed over her quivering stomach. Nathaniel urged her legs apart, bending down to press a kiss to her knee, then reached up for Anders' hand.
Anders stopped breathing for just a moment, until Nathaniel glanced up at him and led his fingers, wordlessly, between her folds. It was an almost unbearably odd sensation, to slide his fingers against his heat and feel the cage of Nathaniel's hand around him instead of Ceridweth's smaller fingers.
"What-" Anders asked, brow furrowing slightly even as he teased at her nub and felt her tremble and tense against him.
"Learning," Nathaniel breathed, and Ceridweth groaned as he settled his finger beside Anders', following the same motions. "Learning what she likes." His voice was muffled by her skin as he kissed a path up her thigh, his other hand planted on the mattress until he was stretched on his side, his breath warm against Anders' hand.
Anders stilled again. "That's-"
"Wonderful," Ceridweth gasped as Nathaniel nuzzled at her sex. "Maker, that's wonderful-"
That's odd died in Anders' throat and instead he simply drew his hand up to give Nathaniel more access, focusing on her nub while Nathaniel began to part her with his tongue. It was odd, but the way Ceridweth moaned and arched and grabbed at the sheets made it all worth it. No- it made him like it, too. It made him want to please her more, to take her to the point where she lost herself and then bring her back down between the two of them.
And he could only imagine what Nathaniel was doing to her to make her moan and writhe against him like she was. He moved his attentions to her other breast and bent his head to her throat to kiss a line to her shoulder, curling around her and holding her close. He drank in the sight and feel of her. When it was him working her up and making her sigh, he never got to see exactly how she responded. He felt it and heard it and glimpsed bits and pieces, but not like this. No matter how foreign and strange it was to see Nathaniel nuzzling at her, his hands playing patterns on her legs as he held them apart, Anders thrilled at how her knee bent, at where her blush made the skin of her chest patchy with pink. He watched, entranced, how her nipples pebbled and how her fingers wound into the sheet, then released, then clutched it again. He felt and saw her squirm against him, heard her cry out as Nathaniel hummed against her sex.
When Ceridweth found her first shattering climax at Nathaniel's mouth and Anders' touch, he held her and moaned in delight at how she shook. He kissed her, claimed her mouth with a needy tongue and branding lips, and she let go of the sheets long enough to tangle her hands into his hair and drag him closer. She kissed him like she hadn't since their first, blissful years together, and he held her tight, groaning her name and whispers of love.
Nathaniel kissed up her stomach, then touched Anders' elbow enough that Anders pulled away. Ceridweth looked to Nathaniel, pupils gone wide and lips reddened, and she smiled.
"Thank you," she said, voice small and sweet and relaxed, and Anders smiled at Nathaniel too.
Nathaniel bowed his head a moment. "More than welcome," he said, and Anders caught the faintest glint of Ceridweth's sheen on his lower lip. It made him throb in his trousers, pressed tight against her, and reminded him of himself - and of Nathaniel, too. Nathaniel, who looked just as hard as he felt and was touching two fingers to Ceridweth's chin, tilting her head up so that he could meet her eyes. "May I kiss you?"
Anders felt his heart swell near to bursting when Ceridweth's hands, no longer in his hair, went to rest on his legs. "If Anders-"
"Yes, Maker yes," Anders breathed, and Nathaniel chuckled, leaning in to kiss her. It was light and gentle at first, and then he bore her back against Anders' chest, one hand going to her hip and the other resting on her knee. Anders could feel his heat, could smell the scent of leather and woodsmoke still clinging to Nathaniel as it mixed with the flowery perfume still anointing Ceridweth. And behind it all, he could pick up the notes of lyrium and elfroot - elfroot from her perfume and from his skin.
Ceridweth sighed and Anders curled forward just far enough to kiss the shell of her ear, catch the lobe of it between his lips. His hands snaked between the two, trapped warm and firm against her chest, her belly. He felt it when Nathaniel rolled his hips forward and when Ceridweth returned in kind - and then she pressed back against his own arousal, and Anders bucked. It was undignified compared to Nathaniel's slow, burning need, but it made Ceridweth groan and break her kiss with Nathaniel to lean back and breathe in his ear,
"You. I need both of you. Maker help me-"
"You can have both," he answered, voice and hands trembling as she rolled her hips against him again - or was that Nathaniel making her move. He didn't know. All he knew was that he ached for her, his blood running hot again.
"Gladly," Nathaniel murmured from where he had begun to kiss down her throat. He sat up on his knees long enough to reach for the laces of his trousers, fumbling a moment. He fumbled. That, too, made Anders sigh with need. He settled his hands on Ceridweth's hips, then nudged her forward even while he wanted to draw her hard against him. He needed the room. He needed-
Her hands replaced his on the fasteners to his clothing and he let his head fall back against the wall with a barely stifled groan. She knew them well, even working blind while she arched at Nate's tongue and lips playing along her clavicle, and she soon had them rucked down around his thighs.
An answering rustle of fabric signalled Nathaniel casting away his clothing. Anders looked to him, expecting only another moment before they were all pressed together once more, but instead Nathaniel was bent low, suckling at one of Ceridweth's breasts. His hand kneaded the flesh above one of her hips. The other held something.
A vial, Anders realized as Ceridweth pulled him from his smalls. A vial that, when uncapped with a thumb pressed up against the cork, smelled of nothing much at all. It must have been one of the vials that he hadn't checked, or another vial that Nathaniel carried on him, but its contents were clear and slick. He would have watched as Nathaniel reached between her legs once more, but then Ceridweth settled herself back against him, the curve of her rear firm and over-warm against his length, and he closed his eyes and buried his lips against her neck once more.
He felt the flutter of Nathaniel's fingers, the back of his knuckles brushing against the fabric of his trousers, against the underside of his cock, and distantly, he realized what Nathaniel was doing. Ceridweth let out a little gasp and Anders imagined Nathaniel's finger slipping lightly inside of her. The idea shouldn't have made him burn so strongly with passion, but he suckled and nipped at her skin and toyed with her other nipple, breathing hot against her neck.
"Maker, Ceridweth," he gasped, releasing her pulse from his mouth. "I love you. Don't forget I love you."
"Never have-" Her voice was reedy and on the edge of being completely inaudible, a high, needy note dancing on the air. "Never will-" she added, and then she groaned and went rigid and whispered, "Ah, Nathaniel-!"
"Relax," Nathaniel said, nuzzling at her breast. "Shh, relax."
"He's right, love," Anders said, his laugh thin and half-groaned. He kissed her shoulder, where there were little freckles that never faded. "Trust us."
Us.
Ceridweth nodded, her lower lip caught between her teeth, and let herself sink boneless against him. He held her up and stroked her stomach, murmured soft sounds to her. As Nathaniel gently, slowly worked her open with kisses dotted along her breasts, Anders caught one of her hands in his. On her fingertips he could feel the faintest sparks of ice and lightning, her need and tension pooling in the one part of her she could never fully relax. It made him smile, and he kissed her brow with a murmured, "Shh, love."
When he kissed her knuckles, he could taste the Veil on her.
"How does that feel?" Nathaniel asked, his hand continuing to shift against her as he lifted his head and moved closer to her, close enough to nuzzle at her cheek and jaw. "Will this be okay?"
Ceridweth nodded, though it was shaky, and Anders squeezed her hand. They'd done this before, a few times over the years, but he knew Nathaniel would want to know, wouldn't know yet exactly how to read her. "Say it out loud, love," he murmured. Nathaniel hummed his agreement, and Anders felt her take a deep breath.
"Yes. Yes, it's okay. I've- before- it feels good-"
Tension Anders hadn't noticed in Nathaniel's shoulders until that moment loosened, and Nathaniel chuckled. Anders felt the accidental - or perhaps not so accidental - brush of another finger just before Ceridweth gasped and whimpered, biting her lip again. And then her whimpers became ones of pleasure in place of discomfort, and Anders smiled, pressing a kiss to her cheek, the corner of her mouth.
"Please," Ceridweth breathed.
Nathaniel nodded, pulling back enough to meet Anders' eyes and search for understanding, for readiness. Anders could only quirk a brow in expectation, hands going to her hips once more, this time to urge her up onto her knees.
It was Nathaniel's hand that reached between them again, the vial once more out and uncorked, the oil slid this time onto Anders' length. He groaned at Nathaniel's touch, then sighed again as Ceridweth lowered herself back down, as Nathaniel held him steady while Anders guided her hips.
He was gentle. It had been so long, and though Ceridweth knew how, he didn't want to hurt her. Not now, not tonight. So he took her weight in his arms and only gently rocked into her, his tip nudging at her entrance. She gasped and squirmed and whispered his name, but still he did not pull her down on top of him. He waited until the tension, the resistance in her faded just as her weariness had in the tub, and then he pressed into her and let her sink down slowly, until he was seated inside of her, gasping for breath and clutching her tight.
When was the last time being inside of her had felt this good? When had it last felt like completion, like he truly knew her still, like it was an offering freely given and gladly taken, instead of habit and obligation? No, it had never left them that much - but it had flirted dangerously close.
"Maker, I missed you," he whispered against her skin, his voice a half-sob.
Ceridweth leaned back enough then to cup his jaw, to nuzzle against his cheek. "I'm here," she whispered back, and it was everything he remembered from before, from when things were new and glowing and, above all, happy.
When she shifted, thighs tensing as she raised herself just a fraction of an inch and then lowered herself again, he let out a laugh of relief, of love, and kissed her. The scent of flowers was around him, the scent of her and Veil just beneath it. And beyond her-
Woodsmoke. Nathaniel had withdrawn his hands from Ceridweth, from Anders, and he knelt close by, watching but not moving. His lips were quirked into a smile and he watched them both with fondness- with adoration, Anders realized. Nothing else would have made Anders take a hand from her, but he beckoned to Nathaniel.
"Come here," he said, voice rough around the edges but holding more ease, more joy than he had felt in months, years even, and against him, around him, Ceridweth nodded.
"Please, Nathaniel."
Nathaniel came as if to an offering, on bent knee and with his hands trembling as he reached to slide his hands again along Ceridweth's thighs, now splayed open across Anders'. His thumbs brushed Anders through the fabric still covering him, his palm against Ceridweth, and then he came close enough to kiss her, to reach between them and position himself against her.
"Tell me when you're ready," he breathed against her lips, loud enough that Anders could hear.
"I'm ready," she returned immediately, and was met with a low groan from Nathaniel as he pressed forward.
Anders thought he heard him murmur wanted you for so long, thank you, thank you, but he was lost in his own moan, his arms wrapping around the both of them as Nathaniel began to move in slow, languid thrusts, allowing Ceridweth to adjust and Anders to feel him. It set his skin on fire, and for a panicked moment he thought if he opened his eyes he might see blue. But all he saw was Ceridweth's dark hair, Nathaniel's tanned skin.
It grounded him even while it half-convinced him he was dreaming.
The weight of them bore him against the wall, and it was Nathaniel who set the pace, Ceridweth responding in the rise and fall of her hips, her chest, her breath against Anders' skin when she rested her head back against his shoulder once more. He only guided and groaned and whispered to her that he loved her. She breathed his name, and then Nathaniel's.
And then Nathaniel sharpened the pace, and Anders couldn't help but twitch up into her in return.
His fingers tightened on her hips and he helped move her, took her weight even as Nathaniel leaned back and up, giving her air and himself space to bend down, kiss at her shoulders, at the tops of her breasts. Anders could see as much as he could feel the rolling of each of Nathaniel's thrusts and could time it with his own, learned the pattern, the rhythm, the intensity and complimented it. He focused on that, beyond and over his own pleasure. Ceridweth was between them, and the three of them moved like one, her crying out when they would draw her up tight as a line, then slow and let her recede once more.
Anders kissed the corner of her mouth, and for just a moment, Nathaniel kissed the other corner. Their breaths mingled, and that was all it took for Ceridweth to come undone between them once more, crying out and bucking, driving them both deep. Her fingers clutched at Nathaniel's shoulder, Anders' hair, as her body shuddered and her breath caught and rushed in uneven bursts. She went all but limp between them, and it took Nathaniel only a few more sharp thrusts to follow her over the edge, hips flush with hers and knees pressing hard to Anders' thighs.
Nathaniel continued to rock inside of her, even past his own spending, until Anders caught the rhythm again and taught it once more to Ceridweth. She whined, wordlessly, but her legs flexed and she rolled herself back down against him. Nathaniel withdrew with light kisses at her breasts, her belly, and Anders urged her forward onto her knees, seeking just a little more freedom, a little more fervor. Nathaniel caught her in his arms and held her as Anders pressed into her with increasing ardor, head bent and lips trailing along the top of her spine. His hand slid around to her belly and down between her legs and met Nathaniel's.
This time, he didn't hesitate. There was no trace of awkwardness left, and he worked in tandem with Nathaniel to bring her back up the edge a final time, longing for her breathy gasps and her twitches, her curling toes and the uneven spread of her blush. He was consumed by her in the final thrusts, his gaze fixed on her, his lips tasting the perfume and her sweat and the lingering traces of Nathaniel.
And then she tumbled fast over her peak once more, and he lost himself buried deep inside of her, crying out her name against the nape of her neck.
--
Nathaniel was the first to rise from the bed, what seemed like hours or days later, untangling himself from Anders' arms and Ceridweth's legs. He went only as far as the tub, soaking a cloth and bringing it back to clean the two entwined lovers with gentle touches. He kissed Ceridweth's lips once more, then pressed a brotherly kiss to Anders' brow with a soft chuckle.
Anders couldn't stop the smile from touching his lips.
Ceridweth slowly stretched, rolling onto her stomach with a sigh, hand splayed a moment against the rumpled sheets. "Thank you," she murmured again, what had become her refrain as they had laid there curled up together. "Thank you," she breathed as Anders propped himself up on his side, running a hand over her skin and beginning to massage her tired muscles.
"Thank you," she said once more as Nathaniel brought the jar of lotion to the bed and helped Anders work the remaining tension from her body.
The room smelled of the three of them - woodsmoke and lyrium, flowers and sweat - and as Ceridweth sighed and let the last of the tension leave her body, Anders realized he didn't want it any other way.
--
Nobody gave up the bed on the second night.
--
The third night, they took their leave of the small town. Ceridweth smiled wistfully as they lost sight of the smoke trails from a dozen hearths and homes, but her hand found Anders' and her shoulder bumped Nathaniel's and she continued on.
Game: Dragon Age 2
Pairing: Anders/f!Hawke (Ceridweth, mage)/Nathaniel Howe
Rating: M/AO
Wordcount: 6,136
Warnings: None
Summary: Anders is losing Ceridweth Hawke, but she comes alive whenever Nathaniel Howe is near. (Ao3)
Notes: A gift for AllTheChantry on tumblr; Ceridweth and the basic idea for the fic are hers.
Hawke came back to life when Nathaniel was nearby.
Anders noticed it immediately. Her eyes had lit up when he spoke, her shoulders straightened. Anders should have felt jealousy, or pain - but he understood. Nathaniel wasn't from Kirkwall. He wasn't wrapped up in the drama of it all, the struggle. He was something mythical and removed, gentlemanly, attentive. And he wasn't Anders.
That should have hurt, too.
But he understood.
Their relationship had been slipping, just a little, day by day and touch by touch, ever since the public declamations had started. He'd been able to set aside the worst of his fervor for three years, focusing on her even as Justice roiled and protested within him. He had worked quietly, had buried himself in her life as best he could to keep the world out. But when he couldn't run anymore, no matter how much she supported him, believed in him, he couldn't be there. Not enough. Not enough for- them.
And so he understood. Nathaniel was what she needed, an outside ear, a gentleman lover. He watched them speak as they trudged through the Deep Roads, heard notes in her voice he hadn't heard in months. It was subtle, but he could read her, had always been able to. Their hands brushed on occasion. Nathaniel helped her down a tricky patch of destroyed stairs.
Anders allowed it without a word.
Nathaniel had left without ever so much as kissing Ceridweth, without ever touching a straying hand to her waist or hip or any other part that only Anders knew the exact curves of, the exact feel. No lines had been crossed. Nothing had been promise or offered. But Ceridweth Hawke flagged again, beneath her strong exterior.
--
When the chantry was destroyed in a rain of rubble and fire, Ceridweth stayed by his side.
--
The change was quiet at first. She spoke less. Her idle jokes began to fail her. When he brushed her dark hair from her face, it felt thinner and she did not smile so broadly or so shyly as she once had done. She did not sleep pressed close to his back.
But he was losing her. With every step away from Kirkwall, another ounce of her faded away, and he began to fear that soon he would be left with only the memory of a ghost. He knew he was no better, a shell of who he had been when he met her all those years ago, but there was a fire that burned in him for her, for mages.
No fire burned in her eyes when he kissed her lips.
--
Nathaniel found them four months after Kirkwall.
They were an hour's walk outside of a small town somewhere in Green Dales when there was the faintest crunch of boot on leaf or twig. Anders felt the crackling of power rush down his arms in expectation. Five templar squads had met their ends in the dense forests and hills since Kirkwall, but they never came so close before he noticed, never came so quietly.
"Hold," Nathaniel's voice came, and the blue haze at the edges of his vision faded.
It was telling, he thought, that even before Nathaniel had spoken Ceridweth had given up. Or- perhaps not given up, but her fingers were not tight around the wood of her staff, her stance was not widened. Anders had turned to the noise, but Ceridweth only moved at the word hanging on the air.
Anders saw the change immediately.
Her lips parted and her green eyes fixed on Nathaniel with something like interest, like hope - things he hadn't seen in too long. The corners of her mouth tugged into a weak smile, as if she had forgotten where the muscles attached. They were small things, tiny things, but he drank them in like a dying man thirsting for water, for any touch of moisture, of rain. The bitterness or sweetness of it didn't matter.
Nathaniel stepped from the shadows into the more full dappled sunlight, his empty hands held out from his sides, fingers spread. "I come in peace, my friends."
"Thank the Maker," Ceridweth breathed.
"Do I want to know how you found us?" Anders asked, but the defensive bile that would have dripped from those words directed to anyone else was gone, as dried up as he was.
Nathaniel lifted a hand and tapped his brow. "The call. There weren't supposed to be patrols in this area aside from me. I thought... well. I was right." He looked beyond them a moment in the direction of the town. "How are you for supplies?"
Anders said nothing, unsure if it was an offer. Ceridweth stepped forward instead. "Poor," she said. "Our food will run out in three days at most." Each trip into a town to restock had been nerve-wracking. Ceridweth always went alone and Anders waited every time, sitting quietly and wondering if she would return, if this was the day she would disappear completely.
He had feared this town they approached for just that reason.
Nathaniel inclined his head in acknowledgement and thought. "Three days will not take you very far in these parts. The town nearby will hardly note travelers, they are so common. You have cloaks?"
"It's not safe," Ceridweth said, looking to Anders.
"You don't need to take me. I don't go in anymore," Anders said with a shrug. "... Sacrifices had to be made."
"So I understand," Nathaniel returned with a grim smile. "But I can assure you two safety, if you'll take it, and a warm bed. It must have been some time."
Anders said nothing. Ceridweth, he knew, had like him slept on the forest floor before, had lived on the run. But she had earned her luxury, her comfort, and he regretted daily taking it from her. She had fought hard by his side. This was not what he had wanted to give her.
He'd wanted to give her a home and a family, but that was beyond reach until the cause no longer needed to be fought for.
He knew she understood that, but he still regretted every night of hardship, every day of fear he had brought her.
Perhaps he should have doubted Nathaniel's motives - but those, too, he felt he understood. Nathaniel still looked at Ceridweth with the same quiet, contained desire that Anders had seen months ago in the Deep Roads, and Ceridweth gazed back with an echo of the same. Nathaniel was there for her, and only secondarily for an old friend.
So Anders turned to Ceridweth. "I leave it up to you, love."
--
The town was larger than Anders had thought it would be, a clearing in the woods where roads converged. It was no city. It had no walls. There was the smallest of chapels, no true chantry in sight. But there were four inns and a bustling market even as the evening drew on. Nathaniel bought them dinner there, skewers of roasted meat and cakes of honey and acorn meal. It was not the best food, but it was hearty and filling and warm.
They had not risked fire in weeks.
He wondered, as they approached the inn that Nathaniel promised would ask the fewest questions - that is to say, none - if he would step aside and let Nathaniel take Ceridweth to bed while he slept in another room. Her spirits were rallying with each step, with each wry comment. Jealousy refused to come, and the thought of a night alone - it did not scare him so much as it once had.
She would be safe and happy, and what else could he have asked for?
But when Nathaniel slid coin across the table, it was for a single room. Anders quirked a brow but did not ask, though he saw Ceridweth frown a moment, then blush and look away.
When Nathaniel turned to them, he shrugged. "I will feel safer with you both close at hand."
Anders wasn't sure whether it was a sign of affection or of distrust, but Nathaniel's small smile spoke to the former. He inclined his head and led the way to the stairs. Ceridweth hesitated until Anders touched her shoulder and nudged her forward.
"It's okay," he said with a small shrug of his own.
--
Nathaniel gave up the bed the first night.
First night, Anders thought with a wry smile. First night. There should have been only the one, but Nathaniel had a knack with words and Ceridweth was enchanted, and the promise of a warm bed for a single night became an offer for another. Ceridweth went out to the market again with Nathaniel, and Anders remained in their room to sit and think and give them space.
Nathaniel returned alone several hours later.
"She's down in the main room," he said as he walked to the wooden tub in the far corner of the room. It was a surprisingly open space that Nathaniel had found for them, but with a single door and a window large enough to escape through. Anders had checked.
Nathaniel set a series of vials down beside the tub and Anders frowned.
"Those are?"
"A gift for Ceridweth." He uncapped one and the scent of flowers - gardenia, Anders thought, with embrium and elfroot - began to perfume the room, rising above the lingering smells of grease and alcohol from the main room just below the floor. She'd like it. Her mother had filled the estate with flowers at least once a month, and Ceridweth had kept up the tradition ever after. He'd woken to petals in his hair more times than he could rightly remember, and the idea of her anointed with flowers once more, even if it was in the arms of another man-
Well.
She would like it.
Anders rose from the bed. "I'll go find something to do with myself, then." There was no bitterness in his voice or in his thoughts, just the same melancholy understanding that had been there for months. "Should I have them send water up?"
"I've already asked for it," Nathaniel said. "But stay."
"Stay?" He was halfway to the door but he halted all the same, caught by curiosity as much as by the smallest flare of frustration. "I'm willing to step aside, Nathaniel. It's fine." He had wanted to make that clear before, when he let them walk together or did not interrupt when Nathaniel wove stories for her. "It's fine," he repeated.
"You don't need to step aside." Nathaniel did not approach, leaning instead against the tub and playing with the floral vial in his hands, his fingers just as nimble as they had been seven years before. So much had changed- and yet he seemed stable, a waypoint in the storm.
Ceridweth needed the waypoint, not the storm itself, and his brow furrowed. "I can see the two of you when you talk, you know. When you- look at each other. I'll step aside for the night." His voice grew more rough and his throat bobbed as he swallowed hard. "She deserves-"
"You," Nathaniel said, with more ease and poise than Anders thought possible.
"No." Anders knew her eyes. He knew her lips, her words, her kisses, and he knew, more than he had known almost anything else, that she didn't need him anymore. He knew that he only drove her away. It was obvious; he understood it from the first moment they shared a glance.
But Nathaniel did not move or frown or give in.
"Us, then."
"Us?" For the first time, anger flashed through him, a sort of confused lashing out. "Us? Nathaniel, she doesn't want me anymore."
"Yes, she does." Nathaniel finally pushed up to standing, uncoiling and striding towards Anders. He smiled faintly as he walked past, then went to open the door, just as the servant in the hall with her steaming buckets of water raised a fist to knock.
Anders watched as the water was brought in, heart in his throat and pulse thundering in his ears. Nathaniel spoke as if he was certain, but Anders understood Ceridweth. If he had nothing else of her, he at least knew her mind. He was focused on the thought as Nathaniel drew up beside him, settling a hand on his shoulder.
"She loves you deeply, my friend."
"But she wants you. You heal her. You don't know what she's like when you're not around. You put her back together. You make her-" He growled, rubbing anxiously at his stubble. "You make her happy."
"And you give her purpose. Do not doubt that." Nathaniel gestured towards the tub, now filled with steaming water. "I would not take her from you, and you would not stand in our way - so remain."
"Remain," he said, the words dry but faintly sweet on his lips. Stay. Watch Ceridweth slip into a bath of perfume and later smell the flowers on her skin.
"Help me put her back together. She's not the woman I met in Kirkwall." Nathaniel's voice had a note of sadness in it that Anders recognized all too well. It spoke to deep feelings carefully controlled over time. It spoke to restrained pain.
Maker, but he knew that note.
"She's not the woman I met seven years ago," he answered, voice thick with the same.
"Then help me heal her. You always were better at that than I." Nathaniel smiled, a small little thing, a peace offering, and Anders took it.
"How long until she comes back?" he asked, moving to shut the door before crossing the room to the tub. He crouched to take up the other items Nathaniel had set out. One held oil that smelled of spices from further up the Minanter River. Another, a wider, stouter vial, more a glass jar, held a light poultice that melted to nothing on his fingers and smelled of nothing. It left his skin softened and he set it back down gently.
"Not long. A few minutes." There was the rustling of leather and cloth, and Anders looked over to see Nathaniel tugging his boots free and working his doublet open. In town, he had shed his armor, and the slide of fabric over his arms revealed corded muscle and the uneven shoulders of a lifelong archer. He was all sinew and bone and power, covered in tanned skin and dark chest hair that meandered a path down to his waistband.
Anders felt small, and then forced the feeling away.
He undid the clasps on the simple jacket he wore, wishing he still had the feathered pauldrons that Ceridweth had teased him over and loved burying her face in - but that had been too recognizable. Everything he wore was so much less than Nathaniel's: coarser thread, more uneven weave, less careful fit. And when the warming air of the room touched his skin, it touched sallow skin traced with awkward tan-lines, ribs that stood out too much, a bow to his shoulders that had little to do with working his staff and more to do with his neverending exhaustion.
They both put their shed clothing aside, and Nathaniel added the floral perfume to the bath. The rest, he said, was for after, and Anders nodded. He knelt by the tub, trailing fingers through the water.
"She'll like this."
"I had hoped as much." Nathaniel leaned against the tub, looking down at Anders. "... This is draining you - this life."
"Of course it is," Anders snapped, though it was tired and tempered by warm water on his skin. "Of course it is," he repeated more softly. "But I knew it would. It's what I want. But her-"
"She will follow you to the ends of Thedas. Do not doubt her."
"But she would turn to you for comfort. And you- want to give it to her." Anders sighed, pressing his damp fingers to his head. "Do you actually want this, or are you just being polite?"
"Both." Nathaniel chuckled, and then the door creaked open and the soft step on the wood was familiar and almost needed.
"Oh," Ceridweth said, her eyes going between Anders and Nathaniel. She blushed, then smiled sheepishly, and Anders wanted to do anything in his power to keep that look of embarrassed excitement on her face.
"We drew you a bath," Nathaniel said when Anders couldn't find words. "It must have been a while."
"Oh," Ceridweth repeated, and Anders finally stood up and went to her. He took her elbow with one hand, rested his other hand lightly on her shoulder.
Leaning in, he murmured by her ear, "You can say no if you like, love."
She turned, close enough that he could feel the ghost of her exhale on his lips. "Both of you?"
He shrugged with a weak little laugh catching in his throat. "Er. Yes. His idea."
"And you're- okay with it?" Her eyes were wide, her cheeks rosy and lips parted. She hadn't looked at him like that in so long, and he found himself enfolding her loosely in his arms.
"Well, yes."
"... You're okay with it?" she asked, and he realized what she meant. Her eyes flicked and darted and he knew she was searching for hairline fractures of vibrant blue. But there was none. There was no tension within him. This- there was no injustice in this, not the slightest. Another man's hands on her was not a violation.
She never looked away from him, never looked to where Nathaniel waited, and he shivered with the force of it. She wanted him - and she wanted him to be happy. Nathaniel was right.
"I'm okay with it," he murmured, before trailing his lips lightly over hers.
Nathaniel remained apart until Anders had undone the laces and clasps holding Ceridweth's clothing on. It was when Anders bent to help her from her boots - Fereldan boots, she had told him with a sad laugh the night they left Kirkwall, made for running through muck and high water and fire - that he crossed the room, touching her shoulders lightly and then looping an arm around her waist. Anders saw his fingers, so steady and careful always, tremble at the touch and at how Ceridweth leaned back with a quiet, insistent noise.
Nathaniel took her weight as Anders bared the last few inches of skin and, lovingly, kissed the arch of her foot before letting her stand once more.
It was Anders' hand that she held as she stepped into the warm water, and they both heard her as she sighed and sank into it, the steaming water just barely covering her nipples and knees, her belly submerged far below. They both watched. Nathaniel was the first to trail his hand beneath the water, a gentle touch on her leg. Anders was the first to kiss the crown of her head and slip his hands along her shoulders and down her chest.
He watched her unfold with a pleasure he couldn't describe, could barely comprehend. The tension melted from her with the heat. Nathaniel's fingers worked the muscles of her calves, slid along her skin until her eyes closed and she moaned, and Anders worked the barest threads of healing through the water and through her breasts. They soothed her with what they knew best.
Nathaniel kissed her hand, her wrist, and Anders kissed her throat. Each touch of lips to skin became a blessing, a benediction, and he murmured against her skin that he loved her. He thought he heard the same from Nathaniel, but the words were distant, the tone the only meaningful, material thing. She smiled. Ceridweth smiled, and he stared at her, memorizing it for later, for dark nights alone on the road.
He didn't know exactly how long they stayed there, working the scent of flowers into her skin, making her arch and gasp with light touches, except that the steam eventually cooled and his hair no longer clung slick to his forehead. She was flushed and he was beginning to ache in his trousers. Nathaniel's hands still stayed away from her center or her breasts, but his fingers worked in more intricate patterns on her thighs, and Ceridweth reached for him, her fingers on his darker forearms. Anders inhaled, then leaned down to kiss her fully again.
Nathaniel helped her step from the tub, and Anders dried her with the softest cloth they had, his lips catching droplets he missed. She smelled of flowers and sweets, with no hint of sweat or fear or exhaustion, and he breathed her in. He drew her towards him back to the bed, Nathaniel trailing after.
It was like a dance, and he found himself learning the steps more quickly than he had thought possible. He settled against the wall at the head of the bed and Ceridweth rested her back against his chest. Nathaniel approached from the side of the bed, sitting on the edge as he retraced his path along her leg.
Anders could feel her pulse jump, could watch as her nipples hardened and her toes curled, and it drew a low laugh from him.
"Don't laugh at me," she said, and what started as an embarrassed protest turned to a sighing gasp as Nathaniel reached between her legs. Ceridweth's head fell back onto his shoulder and Anders trailed kisses over the line of her cheek and along her jaw.
"Not laughing at you, love," he mumbled. But the laughter had loosened the last trepidation in him, and his hands began to wander, one sliding to cup a breast and toy with her nipple while the other trailed over her quivering stomach. Nathaniel urged her legs apart, bending down to press a kiss to her knee, then reached up for Anders' hand.
Anders stopped breathing for just a moment, until Nathaniel glanced up at him and led his fingers, wordlessly, between her folds. It was an almost unbearably odd sensation, to slide his fingers against his heat and feel the cage of Nathaniel's hand around him instead of Ceridweth's smaller fingers.
"What-" Anders asked, brow furrowing slightly even as he teased at her nub and felt her tremble and tense against him.
"Learning," Nathaniel breathed, and Ceridweth groaned as he settled his finger beside Anders', following the same motions. "Learning what she likes." His voice was muffled by her skin as he kissed a path up her thigh, his other hand planted on the mattress until he was stretched on his side, his breath warm against Anders' hand.
Anders stilled again. "That's-"
"Wonderful," Ceridweth gasped as Nathaniel nuzzled at her sex. "Maker, that's wonderful-"
That's odd died in Anders' throat and instead he simply drew his hand up to give Nathaniel more access, focusing on her nub while Nathaniel began to part her with his tongue. It was odd, but the way Ceridweth moaned and arched and grabbed at the sheets made it all worth it. No- it made him like it, too. It made him want to please her more, to take her to the point where she lost herself and then bring her back down between the two of them.
And he could only imagine what Nathaniel was doing to her to make her moan and writhe against him like she was. He moved his attentions to her other breast and bent his head to her throat to kiss a line to her shoulder, curling around her and holding her close. He drank in the sight and feel of her. When it was him working her up and making her sigh, he never got to see exactly how she responded. He felt it and heard it and glimpsed bits and pieces, but not like this. No matter how foreign and strange it was to see Nathaniel nuzzling at her, his hands playing patterns on her legs as he held them apart, Anders thrilled at how her knee bent, at where her blush made the skin of her chest patchy with pink. He watched, entranced, how her nipples pebbled and how her fingers wound into the sheet, then released, then clutched it again. He felt and saw her squirm against him, heard her cry out as Nathaniel hummed against her sex.
When Ceridweth found her first shattering climax at Nathaniel's mouth and Anders' touch, he held her and moaned in delight at how she shook. He kissed her, claimed her mouth with a needy tongue and branding lips, and she let go of the sheets long enough to tangle her hands into his hair and drag him closer. She kissed him like she hadn't since their first, blissful years together, and he held her tight, groaning her name and whispers of love.
Nathaniel kissed up her stomach, then touched Anders' elbow enough that Anders pulled away. Ceridweth looked to Nathaniel, pupils gone wide and lips reddened, and she smiled.
"Thank you," she said, voice small and sweet and relaxed, and Anders smiled at Nathaniel too.
Nathaniel bowed his head a moment. "More than welcome," he said, and Anders caught the faintest glint of Ceridweth's sheen on his lower lip. It made him throb in his trousers, pressed tight against her, and reminded him of himself - and of Nathaniel, too. Nathaniel, who looked just as hard as he felt and was touching two fingers to Ceridweth's chin, tilting her head up so that he could meet her eyes. "May I kiss you?"
Anders felt his heart swell near to bursting when Ceridweth's hands, no longer in his hair, went to rest on his legs. "If Anders-"
"Yes, Maker yes," Anders breathed, and Nathaniel chuckled, leaning in to kiss her. It was light and gentle at first, and then he bore her back against Anders' chest, one hand going to her hip and the other resting on her knee. Anders could feel his heat, could smell the scent of leather and woodsmoke still clinging to Nathaniel as it mixed with the flowery perfume still anointing Ceridweth. And behind it all, he could pick up the notes of lyrium and elfroot - elfroot from her perfume and from his skin.
Ceridweth sighed and Anders curled forward just far enough to kiss the shell of her ear, catch the lobe of it between his lips. His hands snaked between the two, trapped warm and firm against her chest, her belly. He felt it when Nathaniel rolled his hips forward and when Ceridweth returned in kind - and then she pressed back against his own arousal, and Anders bucked. It was undignified compared to Nathaniel's slow, burning need, but it made Ceridweth groan and break her kiss with Nathaniel to lean back and breathe in his ear,
"You. I need both of you. Maker help me-"
"You can have both," he answered, voice and hands trembling as she rolled her hips against him again - or was that Nathaniel making her move. He didn't know. All he knew was that he ached for her, his blood running hot again.
"Gladly," Nathaniel murmured from where he had begun to kiss down her throat. He sat up on his knees long enough to reach for the laces of his trousers, fumbling a moment. He fumbled. That, too, made Anders sigh with need. He settled his hands on Ceridweth's hips, then nudged her forward even while he wanted to draw her hard against him. He needed the room. He needed-
Her hands replaced his on the fasteners to his clothing and he let his head fall back against the wall with a barely stifled groan. She knew them well, even working blind while she arched at Nate's tongue and lips playing along her clavicle, and she soon had them rucked down around his thighs.
An answering rustle of fabric signalled Nathaniel casting away his clothing. Anders looked to him, expecting only another moment before they were all pressed together once more, but instead Nathaniel was bent low, suckling at one of Ceridweth's breasts. His hand kneaded the flesh above one of her hips. The other held something.
A vial, Anders realized as Ceridweth pulled him from his smalls. A vial that, when uncapped with a thumb pressed up against the cork, smelled of nothing much at all. It must have been one of the vials that he hadn't checked, or another vial that Nathaniel carried on him, but its contents were clear and slick. He would have watched as Nathaniel reached between her legs once more, but then Ceridweth settled herself back against him, the curve of her rear firm and over-warm against his length, and he closed his eyes and buried his lips against her neck once more.
He felt the flutter of Nathaniel's fingers, the back of his knuckles brushing against the fabric of his trousers, against the underside of his cock, and distantly, he realized what Nathaniel was doing. Ceridweth let out a little gasp and Anders imagined Nathaniel's finger slipping lightly inside of her. The idea shouldn't have made him burn so strongly with passion, but he suckled and nipped at her skin and toyed with her other nipple, breathing hot against her neck.
"Maker, Ceridweth," he gasped, releasing her pulse from his mouth. "I love you. Don't forget I love you."
"Never have-" Her voice was reedy and on the edge of being completely inaudible, a high, needy note dancing on the air. "Never will-" she added, and then she groaned and went rigid and whispered, "Ah, Nathaniel-!"
"Relax," Nathaniel said, nuzzling at her breast. "Shh, relax."
"He's right, love," Anders said, his laugh thin and half-groaned. He kissed her shoulder, where there were little freckles that never faded. "Trust us."
Us.
Ceridweth nodded, her lower lip caught between her teeth, and let herself sink boneless against him. He held her up and stroked her stomach, murmured soft sounds to her. As Nathaniel gently, slowly worked her open with kisses dotted along her breasts, Anders caught one of her hands in his. On her fingertips he could feel the faintest sparks of ice and lightning, her need and tension pooling in the one part of her she could never fully relax. It made him smile, and he kissed her brow with a murmured, "Shh, love."
When he kissed her knuckles, he could taste the Veil on her.
"How does that feel?" Nathaniel asked, his hand continuing to shift against her as he lifted his head and moved closer to her, close enough to nuzzle at her cheek and jaw. "Will this be okay?"
Ceridweth nodded, though it was shaky, and Anders squeezed her hand. They'd done this before, a few times over the years, but he knew Nathaniel would want to know, wouldn't know yet exactly how to read her. "Say it out loud, love," he murmured. Nathaniel hummed his agreement, and Anders felt her take a deep breath.
"Yes. Yes, it's okay. I've- before- it feels good-"
Tension Anders hadn't noticed in Nathaniel's shoulders until that moment loosened, and Nathaniel chuckled. Anders felt the accidental - or perhaps not so accidental - brush of another finger just before Ceridweth gasped and whimpered, biting her lip again. And then her whimpers became ones of pleasure in place of discomfort, and Anders smiled, pressing a kiss to her cheek, the corner of her mouth.
"Please," Ceridweth breathed.
Nathaniel nodded, pulling back enough to meet Anders' eyes and search for understanding, for readiness. Anders could only quirk a brow in expectation, hands going to her hips once more, this time to urge her up onto her knees.
It was Nathaniel's hand that reached between them again, the vial once more out and uncorked, the oil slid this time onto Anders' length. He groaned at Nathaniel's touch, then sighed again as Ceridweth lowered herself back down, as Nathaniel held him steady while Anders guided her hips.
He was gentle. It had been so long, and though Ceridweth knew how, he didn't want to hurt her. Not now, not tonight. So he took her weight in his arms and only gently rocked into her, his tip nudging at her entrance. She gasped and squirmed and whispered his name, but still he did not pull her down on top of him. He waited until the tension, the resistance in her faded just as her weariness had in the tub, and then he pressed into her and let her sink down slowly, until he was seated inside of her, gasping for breath and clutching her tight.
When was the last time being inside of her had felt this good? When had it last felt like completion, like he truly knew her still, like it was an offering freely given and gladly taken, instead of habit and obligation? No, it had never left them that much - but it had flirted dangerously close.
"Maker, I missed you," he whispered against her skin, his voice a half-sob.
Ceridweth leaned back enough then to cup his jaw, to nuzzle against his cheek. "I'm here," she whispered back, and it was everything he remembered from before, from when things were new and glowing and, above all, happy.
When she shifted, thighs tensing as she raised herself just a fraction of an inch and then lowered herself again, he let out a laugh of relief, of love, and kissed her. The scent of flowers was around him, the scent of her and Veil just beneath it. And beyond her-
Woodsmoke. Nathaniel had withdrawn his hands from Ceridweth, from Anders, and he knelt close by, watching but not moving. His lips were quirked into a smile and he watched them both with fondness- with adoration, Anders realized. Nothing else would have made Anders take a hand from her, but he beckoned to Nathaniel.
"Come here," he said, voice rough around the edges but holding more ease, more joy than he had felt in months, years even, and against him, around him, Ceridweth nodded.
"Please, Nathaniel."
Nathaniel came as if to an offering, on bent knee and with his hands trembling as he reached to slide his hands again along Ceridweth's thighs, now splayed open across Anders'. His thumbs brushed Anders through the fabric still covering him, his palm against Ceridweth, and then he came close enough to kiss her, to reach between them and position himself against her.
"Tell me when you're ready," he breathed against her lips, loud enough that Anders could hear.
"I'm ready," she returned immediately, and was met with a low groan from Nathaniel as he pressed forward.
Anders thought he heard him murmur wanted you for so long, thank you, thank you, but he was lost in his own moan, his arms wrapping around the both of them as Nathaniel began to move in slow, languid thrusts, allowing Ceridweth to adjust and Anders to feel him. It set his skin on fire, and for a panicked moment he thought if he opened his eyes he might see blue. But all he saw was Ceridweth's dark hair, Nathaniel's tanned skin.
It grounded him even while it half-convinced him he was dreaming.
The weight of them bore him against the wall, and it was Nathaniel who set the pace, Ceridweth responding in the rise and fall of her hips, her chest, her breath against Anders' skin when she rested her head back against his shoulder once more. He only guided and groaned and whispered to her that he loved her. She breathed his name, and then Nathaniel's.
And then Nathaniel sharpened the pace, and Anders couldn't help but twitch up into her in return.
His fingers tightened on her hips and he helped move her, took her weight even as Nathaniel leaned back and up, giving her air and himself space to bend down, kiss at her shoulders, at the tops of her breasts. Anders could see as much as he could feel the rolling of each of Nathaniel's thrusts and could time it with his own, learned the pattern, the rhythm, the intensity and complimented it. He focused on that, beyond and over his own pleasure. Ceridweth was between them, and the three of them moved like one, her crying out when they would draw her up tight as a line, then slow and let her recede once more.
Anders kissed the corner of her mouth, and for just a moment, Nathaniel kissed the other corner. Their breaths mingled, and that was all it took for Ceridweth to come undone between them once more, crying out and bucking, driving them both deep. Her fingers clutched at Nathaniel's shoulder, Anders' hair, as her body shuddered and her breath caught and rushed in uneven bursts. She went all but limp between them, and it took Nathaniel only a few more sharp thrusts to follow her over the edge, hips flush with hers and knees pressing hard to Anders' thighs.
Nathaniel continued to rock inside of her, even past his own spending, until Anders caught the rhythm again and taught it once more to Ceridweth. She whined, wordlessly, but her legs flexed and she rolled herself back down against him. Nathaniel withdrew with light kisses at her breasts, her belly, and Anders urged her forward onto her knees, seeking just a little more freedom, a little more fervor. Nathaniel caught her in his arms and held her as Anders pressed into her with increasing ardor, head bent and lips trailing along the top of her spine. His hand slid around to her belly and down between her legs and met Nathaniel's.
This time, he didn't hesitate. There was no trace of awkwardness left, and he worked in tandem with Nathaniel to bring her back up the edge a final time, longing for her breathy gasps and her twitches, her curling toes and the uneven spread of her blush. He was consumed by her in the final thrusts, his gaze fixed on her, his lips tasting the perfume and her sweat and the lingering traces of Nathaniel.
And then she tumbled fast over her peak once more, and he lost himself buried deep inside of her, crying out her name against the nape of her neck.
--
Nathaniel was the first to rise from the bed, what seemed like hours or days later, untangling himself from Anders' arms and Ceridweth's legs. He went only as far as the tub, soaking a cloth and bringing it back to clean the two entwined lovers with gentle touches. He kissed Ceridweth's lips once more, then pressed a brotherly kiss to Anders' brow with a soft chuckle.
Anders couldn't stop the smile from touching his lips.
Ceridweth slowly stretched, rolling onto her stomach with a sigh, hand splayed a moment against the rumpled sheets. "Thank you," she murmured again, what had become her refrain as they had laid there curled up together. "Thank you," she breathed as Anders propped himself up on his side, running a hand over her skin and beginning to massage her tired muscles.
"Thank you," she said once more as Nathaniel brought the jar of lotion to the bed and helped Anders work the remaining tension from her body.
The room smelled of the three of them - woodsmoke and lyrium, flowers and sweat - and as Ceridweth sighed and let the last of the tension leave her body, Anders realized he didn't want it any other way.
--
Nobody gave up the bed on the second night.
--
The third night, they took their leave of the small town. Ceridweth smiled wistfully as they lost sight of the smoke trails from a dozen hearths and homes, but her hand found Anders' and her shoulder bumped Nathaniel's and she continued on.