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."
Hawke hooks a leg around his and pulls herself closer. "Love, if the past week has proven anything, it's that you are most definitely not a gentleman. And thank the Maker for that." She grins, turning her head a bit to encourage him to continue the caress there.
"As for me, reading all over Varric's books, of course. He's a dwarf who does his research, those things are detailed. And you'd lose that wager; Isabela suspects a great deal and is all too pleased to come up with wild theories but candidly admitted she knew very little for certain." A few weeks ago, Hawke would not have been willing to admit pressing Isabela for information on the subject of Anders' previous sexual exploits. Now it's just something else they can laugh about. Hawke laughs a lot these days.
"From books." Anders' skepticism is plain. "I've been reading Varric's serials too, you know. I can't recall one where the hero's girl learns how to avoid scraping sensitive areas with her teeth. Varric's women always know what they're doing, except for the ingenues, and even they take to it like ducks to water. Like Ser Quackers to a bath." He cards through the soft short hair at the base of her skull, runs light fingertips down the back of her neck. "Like you, really, which tells me you're no blushing ingenue, love, since real life doesn't work like Hard in Hightown. Confess, now, you've spent at least the past year in intensive training for some sexual triathlon where only the most beautiful rogues can compete."
You get all the love for mentioning the duck. Seriously. *is too fond of that duck*try_winging_itDecember 27 2011, 22:58:04 UTC
Hawke mmms as he toys with her neck, almost purring. "Hardly that. Pity, it sounds like it would have been fun. I'd have dominated the flexibility and stamina sections but been beaten at the last minute by Isabela and her pirate wiles, because she would have seduced the judges before preceedings even began." She spends a minute with her eyes closed, enjoying his touch and fantasizing about what might have been involved in a sexual triathlon, particularly with him involved, or at least watching.
"Anyway, you know what I've been doing for the past year, you were there for most of it. Running around being Kirkwall's unofficial pest control service, spending a surprising amount of time dealing with the Qunari, and trying to convince you to give this a try." She moves her hips against his as she says this, a suggestion of a recent memory. Though it wasn't sex she'd been asking him for all that time, or at least not just sex, as he knows very well. "No time in there for intensive training. Though I'll grant you the not a blushing ingenue
( ... )
He thinks about it. "Fifteen maybe, depending on what counts. What achievement lifts a person from the ranks of ingenues, blushing or not? You start early, in the Circle, because there's nothing much else to do unless you really love books to a degree that's unhealthy. So, earlier than fifteen, for that, but does it really count if you're just sort of messing about with people just as inexperienced as you are? Making it all up as you go along? I wouldn't say I'd really even been properly kissed until ... oh, until Karl, and I'd done a lot more than kiss by then, just not properly."
It's still difficult to think of Karl, it will never not be difficult, and the banter loses its effervescence for a moment, Anders closing his eyes. Kissing Hawke's forehead, soft and chaste, nothing like the kissing that's been going on in this bed or the kissing Anders has just been recollecting. It would kill me to lose you. She promised he wouldn't lose her, and he's clinging to that promise
( ... )
The kiss on her forehead is more gentle, more sincere, the sort of moment Anders has a gift for, the ones that steal her breath for reasons that have nothing to do with arousal and everything to do with wonder. This is the rule I will most cherish breaking. He does make her feel cherished. That's not a sensation she's ever experienced, or imagined, and already she can't imagine living without it
( ... )
He chuckles at that, quietly, and stops petting her, lifts a hand to her face. Runs his thumb across her lips. "Our first kiss was not even close to proper. I ought to be ashamed of myself, attacking you like some starving thing. I hope I've made up for it, somewhat, since."
She lips at his thumb. "I was referring more to the second kiss, it's true. Though the first had its charms." The conversation demands a kiss of its own, and she takes one, slow and thorough and appreciative.
That in turn leads to a few moments of quiet contentment, just holding each other, though something still so astonishing and joyous can't be preceeded by just without its being misleading. But something he said earlier is toying with her thoughts, combining with old curiosity and suspicion, so she asks: "Tell me about Karl?" The arm wrapped around him presses; this is a difficult subject for him. "I know he must have been important to you."
It is a difficult subject, and also Anders needs a moment to string together this request with its likely catalyst, to get why Hawke is asking him about Karl. He's a little blurry with exertion and the general intoxication of new relationship energy love. He could have gone on happily enumerating the third, fourth, and fifth times he ever kissed Hawke, and so forth, possibly with reenactments.
Right, he's just mentioned kissing Karl, and. That's why. "Er, that doesn't bother you, does it? That I've been with ...?" The line doesn't quite come out the way it might if Hawke were also a man. "Yes, he was. Important. Essential. I talk a lot of rubbish about Kinloch Hold - it's all true, mind, but it's not nearly as much fun as I like to make it sound, everyone kissing everyone. It's only a distraction, and a way to kill time, or curry favor. It's not enough. To have someone who cared for me made all the difference in the world." Cared for, not loved.
It isn't easy, no, but he will talk about it, with her, because he loves
( ... )
Hawke strokes his back as she listens, learning more about Anders, and about the man she met so very briefly a few years ago. She catches the distinction between cared for and loved, has an idea of its importance to him. No mage I know has ever dared to fall in love. It's not hard to see that in other circumstances, he would have loved Karl, been loved by him. Outside the Circle
( ... )
"Another woman, hm?" He's a little surprised; not too surprised, as it's not uncommon in Thedas and certainly nothing remarkable within a Circle, the issue is more that he's never seen any inclination of Hawke's in that direction. Flirting with Isabela doesn't count, since flirting with Isabela is basically an exercise in sport and wordplay, as much for the spectators as for Isabela's partner. Belatedly, it occurs to Anders that he's never seen such inclination because that would require his being present to see it, and that with him there, Hawke's inclination toward him would take precedence. He still can't really believe that he wasn't the only one of them who spent three years aching for the other, but he's accepted it on an abstract level, at least, as fact, because otherwise he'd be calling her a liar, and that's the last thing he'd ever think of her. Humorous exaggeration, maybe; lies, never
( ... )
Hawke chuckles. "Not Isabela, no, not for lack of her trying. There was one rather memorable kiss one night a while ago, but don't tell me she didn't do the same to you because I won't believe it." Good news, Hawke! He's not broken! She hadn't known whether to be mortified, relieved, envious as hell, or to laugh herself sick. Being Hawke, she'd gone for the last option. "No, it was back in Ferelden, when I was a soldier. And you're getting cold, where'd all your body heat go? I swear I didn't steal it." Obligatory theft jokes, part of being a rogue. "We're on top of the blankets instead of under them because we were doing deliciously wicked things to each other against the headboard, and if you've forgotten already we'll just have to do them again. Though perhaps not just yet." That would involve moving, and she likes being where she is, leg hiked up over his hip and arms entwined everywhere. No more than a breath away from a kiss at any given moment
( ... )
Anders laughs. "I won't deny I did some chasing. Not of Karl, though. He was a captive audience, you see: my tutor. If you're thinking I cribbed this out of Varric's stories, I promise I'm not. It all seemed very logical to me, only it took some time to construct an argument he would entertain. The sweetest man you could ever hope to meet, but give him a pot of red ink and a report to use it on, and he was an absolute terror."
A pause. He traces the line of Hawke's shoulder, his finger an imaginary pen, her skin the parchment. Idly he draws little glyphs on her shoulder blade. "He knew that it wouldn't be doing me any favors to go easy when the stakes were low. Even when he was being stern, he was really being kind. And I'd seen so little of that, in anyone, for ages," Anders admits, and there is not a lump forming in his throat, and he does not have to swallow hard. "I knew one way to show my gratitude. This will sound dreadful, but I was horrified when he was horrified. I assumed it was the done thing, you see.
( ... )
"You seduced your tutor?" Hawke does have to laugh, a bit. He's right, it's too much like one of Varric's tales. "And he resisted? A man of firm principles and iron willpower, then, in addition to compassion. Oh, Maker, I can just see it, the way your dismay would've turned into determination." She can, too. A younger, more callow Anders, lanky, his eyes narrowed with purpose.
"A man of principle, indeed. He kept on resisting up until he wasn't my tutor anymore. Can you have any idea how long that took?" Anders is amused despite himself, remembering. It's Hawke who does this for him, lets him see what's good amid so much that could be painful. "It wasn't as though I could tally the days on a chart, or count down how many left, because he didn't tell me he'd be all right with it when he wasn't my tutor anymore. He should have done; I'd have worked even harder. I've always been gifted," he says this as a fact rather than a boast, "and I had two strengths, healing and elemental magic. My natural inclination might even have been more strongly toward the latter." Burning down the barn, that was an accident, best not to allow that memory in to taint the rest. Fire and lightning and ice, the sheer delight of releasing those forces, letting everything burn, sizzle, crack ... "It was Karl's work that made a healer out of me. I was very good at it, and he was a good tutor, so soon enough I was advancing to
( ... )
Two strengths, elemental magic and healing. She likes that. It's not something she can put into words, but being a refugee changed something about Hawke. She's a fighter, always will be, knows someone must be, but it's not enough. It's not even what's most important, to her mind. What matters is what happens after the fighting, the rebuilding process. That Anders is capable of both causing and healing damage is something she envies.
Though perhaps she has some healing abilities of her own after all; perhaps that's something she can give him. Or if not healing, at least comfort, understanding. She listens, feels the moment of tension as he speaks, the deliberate release of it, the way he uses her skin and presence to ground himself to now. Eventually she takes his hand from her hip and brings it to her mouth, kissing it in silent, brief gratitude that he's here, trusting her not just with this story, but with himself. That he's finally let himself love her despite all of this
( ... )
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."
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"As for me, reading all over Varric's books, of course. He's a dwarf who does his research, those things are detailed. And you'd lose that wager; Isabela suspects a great deal and is all too pleased to come up with wild theories but candidly admitted she knew very little for certain." A few weeks ago, Hawke would not have been willing to admit pressing Isabela for information on the subject of Anders' previous sexual exploits. Now it's just something else they can laugh about. Hawke laughs a lot these days.
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"Anyway, you know what I've been doing for the past year, you were there for most of it. Running around being Kirkwall's unofficial pest control service, spending a surprising amount of time dealing with the Qunari, and trying to convince you to give this a try." She moves her hips against his as she says this, a suggestion of a recent memory. Though it wasn't sex she'd been asking him for all that time, or at least not just sex, as he knows very well. "No time in there for intensive training. Though I'll grant you the not a blushing ingenue ( ... )
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It's still difficult to think of Karl, it will never not be difficult, and the banter loses its effervescence for a moment, Anders closing his eyes. Kissing Hawke's forehead, soft and chaste, nothing like the kissing that's been going on in this bed or the kissing Anders has just been recollecting. It would kill me to lose you. She promised he wouldn't lose her, and he's clinging to that promise ( ... )
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That in turn leads to a few moments of quiet contentment, just holding each other, though something still so astonishing and joyous can't be preceeded by just without its being misleading. But something he said earlier is toying with her thoughts, combining with old curiosity and suspicion, so she asks: "Tell me about Karl?" The arm wrapped around him presses; this is a difficult subject for him. "I know he must have been important to you."
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Right, he's just mentioned kissing Karl, and. That's why. "Er, that doesn't bother you, does it? That I've been with ...?" The line doesn't quite come out the way it might if Hawke were also a man. "Yes, he was. Important. Essential. I talk a lot of rubbish about Kinloch Hold - it's all true, mind, but it's not nearly as much fun as I like to make it sound, everyone kissing everyone. It's only a distraction, and a way to kill time, or curry favor. It's not enough. To have someone who cared for me made all the difference in the world." Cared for, not loved.
It isn't easy, no, but he will talk about it, with her, because he loves ( ... )
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A pause. He traces the line of Hawke's shoulder, his finger an imaginary pen, her skin the parchment. Idly he draws little glyphs on her shoulder blade. "He knew that it wouldn't be doing me any favors to go easy when the stakes were low. Even when he was being stern, he was really being kind. And I'd seen so little of that, in anyone, for ages," Anders admits, and there is not a lump forming in his throat, and he does not have to swallow hard. "I knew one way to show my gratitude. This will sound dreadful, but I was horrified when he was horrified. I assumed it was the done thing, you see. ( ... )
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Though perhaps she has some healing abilities of her own after all; perhaps that's something she can give him. Or if not healing, at least comfort, understanding. She listens, feels the moment of tension as he speaks, the deliberate release of it, the way he uses her skin and presence to ground himself to now. Eventually she takes his hand from her hip and brings it to her mouth, kissing it in silent, brief gratitude that he's here, trusting her not just with this story, but with himself. That he's finally let himself love her despite all of this ( ... )
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