Tag: fictober18

Solavellan fluff: Cole

I love Cole, and I find it an interesting challenge to write from his first-person POV. Hence this little drabble of Cole hanging out with Elia Lavellan and Solas, based on a Fictober prompt: “If you cannot see it, is it really there?”

Fandom: Dragon Age Inquisition
Pairing: Solas/Lavellan, through Cole’s eyes
Rating: Gen

Read on AO3 instead.

***********

Crumbs crumbling in her fingers. She offers the scone to me. “Would you like some?”

I shake my head. “Thank you. But I don’t eat.”

Elia rubs her forehead, face twisting in a smile. “Right, of course. Sorry, Cole.” She breaks off a bite, chews, smiles again. “So what’s been going on lately? Anything that I should know about?”

I look out at the courtyard. It’s harder to hear here on the ramparts. The hurts hang low, hovering over heads as they move around the hold, but it’s quieter up here.

I answer her question. “I heard some people talking about me. ‘Just a story,’ they said. ‘The Inquisitor’s ghost makes her sound more scary than she is, but the boy doesn’t exist.’” I look at Elia. “They don’t think I’m real.”

Concern creases her brow. “Yes, I’d heard something about that too,” she says softly. “Cole… do you ever really worry that you don’t exist?”

I look at the courtyard again, thoughtful, thinking. “The dungeon in the Circle was dank and dark and deep with despair. I wasn’t sure then, not until Rhys saw me. But before that…” I close my eyes, memories moving close. “Alone, afraid, eyes slide past me like raindrops on the rafters. The only ones who see me are the ones whose eyes I close forever. If you cannot see it, is it really there?”

I blink and look at Elia. She shifts a little closer, eyes serious and sad. “There are lots of things that are there even though you can’t see them,” she says.

“I know,” I reassure her. “I didn’t know it then, but I know now. Spirits hide away, shrouded and shy. They’re invisible, intangible, but alive.”

She smiles. “You’re right. Spirits are the best example. But other things too. Like… smells! The smell of this delicious scone.” She takes another bite, sugar-sweet smile as it melts across her tongue. “Or memories,” she says. “Just because we can’t see memories doesn’t mean they aren’t real.”

“But Solas can see memories,” I say. I give her an example, lifted from his lips this morning. “‘I saw a mural made of stone, with graven glyphs from ancient times. A dwarf stood there, his chisel raised, but regrets were ringing in his mind. One can strike the name from stone, but it cannot be struck from the heart.” I tilt my head.

She bites her lip, tries to hide her smile, but it curls at the corners of her mouth. Rosy pink like a sunrise across her cheeks, a burst of warmth in her belly, his name like a bell in her mind: Solas.

“Yes, well.” She speaks softly, smiles softly, softness in her eyes as they drop to her lap. “Solas is special. He has a talent for seeing things in the Fade. Most people can’t see memories in that way, so… so memories are a good example. What else…” She straightens up and snaps her fingers. “Feelings! Of course. We can’t see them, but they’re obviously there.” She blinks at me, eyes bright and blue and open, echoing like the sky. “That’s how you know who needs help, right?”

I nod slowly. “Feelings. Yes. That’s how I know.” Worry, hurt, fear, anger, resentment – I don’t see them: I feel them. I follow them, and I soften the edges, sand the roughness away, erase what can’t be eased. She is right.

But I don’t feel any of those things right now. The courtyard is where those hurts exist, but here on the ramparts, there’s only Elia. And what she feels is love.

Solas. His name is still there, chiming in her mind. I wonder if he can hear it too? Maybe he does, because suddenly he’s here.

“Good afternoon, Inquisitor.” Solas joins us, standing next to Elia, his smile soft and sweet as the scone in her fingers. “Hello, Cole. Taking in the view?”

“Yes,” I say. “It’s quiet and calm. There’s agony in the undercroft, but it’s lighter here, lifted free. It’s nice.”

His eyebrows lift slightly: a smile tinted with regret, so faint I almost can’t feel it above the brightness of Elia’s joy. She beams at him, chin lifted high to meet his eyes, a tickling shiver down her spine as his hand traces the length of her back.

She is happy. And so is he. But there’s something else there: sadness in his spirit, a taint of tragedy, anchored to ancient obligations. If she dug deeper, picked and pushed, she would find it.

But then she wouldn’t be happy. And neither would he.

I don’t say anything. It would only hurt, and I don’t want anyone to hurt.

I sit a little bit longer. We talk about the kitchen staff and the cats and the spiders on the sill. I ask why Dorian dislikes the Iron Bull, and Elia laughs and says he doesn’t really, which is confusing.

I watch them as they talk: her laughter reflected on his lips, his words writing warmth beneath her ribs. His thumb strokes her cheek, and she presses her hands to his chest, and I wonder if maybe Elia is wrong.

Maybe I can see feelings after all.

Hey, friend, you should write #14 for fenhawke, “Some people call this wisdom” I can totally see a Hawke saying this about something stupid they did/ have done :D

HAH omg YES. I mean of course. And here it is – for @dadrunkwriting! 

Fandom: Dragon Age II
Pairing: Fenris x FemHawke
Rating: Mature

Read on AO3 instead. 

**********

Aveline sighed and rubbed her face. “Hawke…”

“What?” Hawke complained. “What’s wrong with that? It’s a gift! It’s nice! I’m sure he’ll see it in the spirit that it was intended.” She nodded pertly, then took a drink from her dented stein.

Fenris shook his head in exasperation as Aveline shot Hawke a chiding look. In a slow, careful voice, Aveline said, “You sent Carver a box of soil.”

“A box of soil containing seeds,” Hawke corrected. “They’ll grow into an embrium plant, and then he can use the flowers for healing. And it’ll remind him of Father, since embrium was his favourite!” She leaned into Aveline’s shoulder in a wheedling manner. “Come on, Av, admit it. I did good this time. Even Carver can’t interpret a gift like that as an insult.”

Then Varric piped up from the end of the table. “You probably should have sent the soil and the seeds in a pot. You know, for growing the plant? He’ll probably just think you’ve sent him a bunch of random dirt.”

Hawke opened her mouth to protest, then slowly wilted. “Good point,” she admitted. Then she perked up and shrugged. “Well then, it’ll be a test of his ability to problem-solve and put clues together! Nobody wants a stupid Templar, after all.” She winked at Varric and lifted her stein to her lips again. “See, some people call this wisdom.”

“Nobody would call this wisdom,” Fenris drawled. “Most people would, in fact, call this idiocy.”

She lifted her chin and shot him a challenging look. “And yet you all still spend your days following me from Sundermount to Darktown and back, so what does that make all of you?”

The whole table burst into protest and laughter, and Hawke jumped to her feet. “Time for another round!” she said loudly. “Drink up, everyone! Same thing as before?” She glanced around the table to confirm their orders, then drained her stein and sashayed over to the bar. A few minutes later, she returned to the table with two steins in hand.

“One for the sexy morning scruff and one for the sexy chest hair…” She slid the steins across the table to Anders and Varric, then returned to the bar and brought two more drinks. “One for the sexy ginger, and one for the sexy… everything,” she purred, handing them to Aveline and Isabela, then she returned once more for Sebastian and Merrill (“one for the sexy blue eyes, and one for the one who’s too damned cute to be sexy”).

Finally, with the last two drinks in hand, she sat next to Fenris and placed his stein on the table. “And one for… you,” she said quietly.

He met her twinkling bronze eyes. Everything about her expression screamed mischief, but Fenris refused to rise to the bait. “Thank you,” he said politely.

“You’re welcome,” she replied equally politely.

Fenris lifted his stein to his lips, then paused as the fumes from his drink reached his nose. He balked and peered into the stein, then looked at Hawke. “This is brandy.”

“Yes,” she said. Her lips were curled in a smirk as she drank from her cup.

Fenris frowned as she lowered her drink to the table. Then he reached for her stein. “What’s in your cup?”

She jerked the stein away before he could grasp it. “Hands to yourself!” she insisted. “Leave my wine alone.”

Wine. Fenris wilted in exasperation. “You switched our drinks.”

She cradled his wine in both hands and smiled. “It’s for your own good,” she told him earnestly. “You have to start getting used to drinking swill. You’re down to your last two bottles of the Aggregio.” She lifted the wine to her face and inhaled. “Ahh, Antivan red. Not as good as the stuff you have at home, but it’ll do.”

Her grin was wide and provocative, and Fenris refused to cede to it. He folded his arms and raised one eyebrow. “How do you know I’m down to the last two bottles?”

She tilted her head coyly. “I sneak into your house through the wine cellar to watch you sleep, of course. What else are friends for?”

There was a snort of laughter from the end of the table – probably Anders, he enjoyed this kind of puerile humour – but Fenris couldn’t smile. If he smiled, it would mean she’d won.

He kept a straight face and reached for her stein again. “Give that to me.”

She twisted away from him. “No.”

“Hawke,” he said sternly.

She lifted the stein over her head and held out her other hand to hold him back. “I backwashed,” she warned. “My spit’s in here.”

Aveline and Isabela exclaimed in disgust, but the threat wasn’t as off-putting for Fenris as she’d likely intended. A flash of a fantasy flickered through his mind: her lips on his, his tongue tangled with hers – a far more appealing way to taste the contents of her impertinent mouth.

He shunted the thought aside and lunged for the stein. “Give it back,” he demanded.

Then her hand was on his chest. Fenris stopped short at the touch and met her gaze.

Her amber eyes glittered with mischief. She jerked her chin at the abandoned cup of brandy. “Go on, try something different,” she purred. “You might like it.”

He swallowed, mouth dry as he gazed into her infuriatingly wicked eyes. Her face was a handspan from his own. Her fingers rested on his chest with barely enough pressure to hold him back, and he wondered if she could feel the sudden thrumming of his heart.

The tension was too much. The temptation to smile was gone, wiped away by a different and altogether more dangerous temptation, and Fenris expelled it the first way he could think of.

He pinched Hawke’s waist.

She squealed in surprise and flinched, tucking both her arms defensively in toward her belly, and Fenris plucked his wine from her now-accessible hand. “Benefaris,” he proclaimed, then drained the stein in four long gulps.

Hawke tutted. “Just don’t come whining to me when you run out of your fancy Tevinter vintage,” she said haughtily, then reached for the cup of brandy.

Fenris pushed it out of her reach.

Her eyes widened, and she grinned at him. “You wouldn’t dare,” she said gleefully.

He folded his arms and planted his elbows on the table, firmly between the mage and her brandy. “This is justice, Hawke. There are consequences for depriving a man of his wine,” he drawled.

A peal of joyful laughter spilled from her lips, and Fenris swatted her away as she tried to reach across him. Then Isabela’s cheerful voice cut through their scuffling. “Oh, would you two just fuck each other already? I could watch.”

Hawke turned around and pinched the pirate’s arm. “I bet you would, you dirty bitch,” she said, and the two women promptly fell about laughing. Moments later, Isabela was dragging Hawke to her feet, and Fenris watched with a combination of exasperation and amusement as they began dancing to the lively tavern tunes.

Aveline groaned and rubbed her forehead. “What am I even doing here? I feel like a schoolmistress. One who is bad at her job.”

Fenris gave her a rueful half-smile. “You are not alone in that feeling,” he assured her.

She shot him a baleful look. “You’re no better, Fenris. You just goad her on.”

Fenris opened his mouth to defend himself, but Aveline was already on her feet. “I’m leaving,” she declared. “Please get home safely, everyone. And you two.” She pointed at Anders and Sebastian, who were watching Hawke and Isabela’s antics. “Keep your eyeballs in your heads. You’re making fools of yourselves.”

Fenris smirked at Sebastian’s blustering protests, but his amusement was cut short by a perky little voice to his left. “I’ve never known anyone who frowned so much when they were happy.”

Fenris turned and scowled at Merrill. “Excuse me?”

She propped her chin on her fists and tilted her head. “You like Hawke. But you’re always frowning at her. Why don’t you just tell her that you like her?”

Fenris narrowed his eyes. “Pray tell what miraculous event occurred that makes you think you can speak to me like this?”

Merrill sat up straight. “Like what?” she asked, wide-eyed and worried.

“As though we are friends and I don’t despise you,” he growled, then stood and went to sit next to Varric instead.

“Harsh,” Varric murmured, and Fenris shrugged irritably in response.

Eventually Isabela and Hawke pulled Merrill into their dance, and Fenris and Varric watched them quietly for a while, Fenris sipping Hawke’s brandy while Varric enjoyed his ale. Just when Fenris was feeling pleasantly relaxed, Varric broke the silence.

“Daisy makes a valid point,” he said quietly. “Why haven’t you and Hawke… gotten together? Not that it’s any of my business,” he added hastily as Fenris shot him a glare, “but… look, I hate to tell you this, but you’re not as good at hiding your feelings as you like to think.”

Fenris scowled and sipped his drink to stall for time. There was an uncomfortable writhing in his belly, part-pleasure at the thought of Hawke’s affection and part-discomfort at the apparent obviousness of his own, and he didn’t want to reply to Varric’s question.

Partly because he didn’t really know the answer.

Fenris couldn’t deny that he wanted Hawke. He often fondly imagined the shapes her body would make as she arched beneath him on his bed, or on the table in his mansion while he spread her wide. But somewhere in the past few years, his imaginings of her had taken on a certain complexity that he’d not anticipated.

It wasn’t just sex that he wanted. It was her. He’d think about Hawke’s sultry voice whispering more than just dirty words in his ear, and he’d fantasize about sharing more with her than sweat. But the mere idea of turning these thoughts into reality made Fenris feel… itchy. And hunted, somehow.

Eventually Varric spoke again. “Well, as I said, none of my business. And it is entertaining to watch. In a juvenile, he-pulls-her-hair-because-he-likes-her kind of way.”

Fenris grunted, then drained the dregs of Hawke’s brandy and rose from the bench. “I will follow Aveline’s example,” he said, then turned toward the door.

“You’re not going to say goodbye?” Varric said in surprise.

“You’re the storyteller. Make up an excuse for me,” Fenris said, then left the Hanged Man.

As he trudged back to his mansion, he brooded over Varric’s infuriating words. Why did the dwarf need to push and prod? Fenris just wanted to enjoy flirting with a beautiful woman and having her flirt back. It was satisfying and it was safe, and there was nothing wrong with that.

If only he could convince himself that flirtation was enough.

Fenris/f!Hawke: Why Can’t We Be Friends?

Another Fictober prompt fill for @cutieink! The prompt: “But I will never forget.” This little snapshot takes place during Act I and revolves around the sidequest Act of Mercy. 

Fandom: Dragon Age II
Pairing: Fenris x FemHawke
Rating: Gen

Read on AO3 instead.

*****************

Fenris watched as Grace and her ragtag group of mages ran away down one of the side passages, then spun toward Hawke.

“Did you not witness the same display that I just saw?” he hissed. He waved an angry hand toward Decimus’s mutilated corpse. “This mage becomes an abomination right before your eyes, and you allow the rest of his followers to simply flee?”

Hawke shot him a comical little grimace. “You know I can never get enough of your sweet talking, but can you hold it for just a few minutes? We should hurry back to Thrask.” She tapped Varric’s shoulder as they jogged back toward the passageway. “Prepare that silver tongue. I think we’re going to need it.”

“You got it,” Varric said, and then they ran into a group of undead.

Fenris snarled. A quick clenching of his fist followed by a flare of pain rippling across his body, and all at once his skin was alight with the cursed blue light of lyrium. He flung himself into the fray, his greatsword swinging and slamming into foe after foe. With every reanimated corpse that fell, Fenris hoped his rage would cool, but each strike only seemed to make his anger burn hotter.

Finally their foes were destroyed. Fenris panted heavily, sword dangling from one hand as he allowed his tattoos to fade back to a dull white. Then he realized his skin was lit by a second magical glow.

He raised his chin and met Hawke’s eyes. She waved her hand and lowered the barrier she’d raised around him, then offered him a tentative smile, but he pursed his lips and turned away.

They made their way out of the cavern in silence. True to form, Hawke and Varric tricked the Templars into thinking the blood mages were dead, and Fenris glared at Thrask as the Templar thanked Hawke for her compassion and her help.

He has one job, and he’s failing to do it, Fenris thought angrily. As Hawke led them to the road back to Kirkwall, Fenris fell back to the rear of the group in a clear attempt to avoid her.

Not clear enough, it seemed. A minute later, Hawke slipped to the back of the group to join him.

He clenched his jaw and avoided her bright copper eyes as she gazed at him. “Do you want to continue yelling at me now?” she offered. “I’m all ears.”

“No,” he snapped. “I want to be left in peace.”

“Peace and quiet. All right. I can do that,” she said, then fell silent.

Fenris scowled and waited.

Sure enough, ten seconds later, Hawke spoke again. “I had to make a decision quickly. Grace was scared, Thrask was waiting, those other Templars were on their way… We couldn’t twiddle our thumbs forever. Well, we probably could, but it would get quite boring-”

He cut her off with a glare. “You don’t know what calamity your decision will have wrought,” he said. “You think too highly of them, Hawke. Other mages are not like you. They could be cutting their wrists to prepare their revenge as we speak!”

“Or they could be, you know, running away to make a new life like they said they would,” Hawke replied. “Come on, Fenris, I’m not going to condemn people for something they might do. That’s hardly fair, is it?”

Her voice was light and breezy as usual, but her pretty face was twisted in distress, and Fenris was seized by a strange desire to stroke the anxious crease from her brow.

The urge was gone as quickly as it had come, overridden by his anger. “Do not come to me for help if the work of these blighted blood mages backfires in your face,” he told her, then sped up his pace to evade her.

She caught up to him. “Fine,” she said pertly. “I don’t need your muscles anyway. I’ll bring Aveline for that. And I’ll bring Anders along so I can stare at his fine ass instead of yours.”

Fenris growled at her and continued his rapid stride. Then suddenly Hawke stepped in front of him.

“Fenris, please,” she said. “What’s done is done. Life’s too short to stay pissed at me forever, right?” She tilted her head and gave him a pleading half-smile. “Let’s just get back to Kirkwall and have a drink or something. I’ll have forgotten all of this by tomorrow, honestly.”

That was her problem. Nothing was a big deal for her. As far as Hawke was concerned, their days were just a sequence of humorous capers with no real long-term consequences. This incident of blood magic might mean nothing to her, but to Fenris it was a clear sign of a sickness that was spreading through this blasted place more insidiously than the Blight.

He took one slow step closer to her. “But I will never forget,” he growled, then stepped around her and strode away along the path.

Hawke finally seemed to get the message: she didn’t try to speak to him again that day. Once they were back in Kirkwall, Fenris left the group with a terse word of goodbye, then shut himself in his mansion for the rest of the night.

The next morning, Fenris awoke at his usual time. Hawke usually arrived within an hour of his rising to chivvy him out of the mansion, and Fenris mulled over what to say to her while he pulled on his armour. He was still angry about yesterday, and he didn’t want to talk about it any further; their ‘talks’ always seemed to devolve into him yelling at her while she made stupid jokes, so there was no point.

As it turned out, he needn’t have bothered thinking about it, for Hawke didn’t show up.

Fenris was relieved. He didn’t want to see her, after all. He spent the day peacefully cleaning his weapons and oiling his armour.

The next day, Fenris woke early again, and was mildly surprised when Hawke again didn’t show. He spent the morning staring resentfully at the collection of abandoned books in the mansion library and wondering about the contents of their indecipherable pages. He spent the afternoon testing his weapons on the furniture in one of the spare bedrooms. Isabela arrived for a visit that evening, and the two hours they spent mindlessly flirting was a welcome break from the monotony of his day.

On the third day that Hawke didn’t show, Fenris wandered around the mansion poking at the dusty vases and the dilapidated furniture. He spent the morning thinking about cleaning the place, then spent the afternoon shattering almost all of the dishware in the house doing target practice with some throwing knives that Isabela had left behind. Varric showed up that night with a copy of Hard In Hightown: Siege Harder, and the dwarf’s oration was entertaining – and awful – enough to distract him from the agitation that had begun to churn in his belly over the past three days.

On the fourth day, Fenris awoke earlier than usual. He pulled on his armour and racked his greatsword on his back, then made his way Gamlen’s hovel in Lowtown.

Hawke’s eyebrows jumped high on her forehead when she answered the door. “Fenris!” she exclaimed, then opened the door wider to let him in. “What are you doing here?”

He cautiously stepped into their tiny home and looked around – none of her family were awake – then folded his arms and met her bright amber gaze. “I had an early start. What foolish shenanigans are on the agenda today?”

She stared up at him, her bright amber eyes wide. “I thought you didn’t want… er, you know, our argument and whatnot. Isabela and Varric said you were fine on your own…”

He interrupted her quietly but firmly. “I am not happy about what happened. But…” He trailed off, then sighed. “I understand your point about not punishing crimes that are not yet committed. I don’t agree with you, not when it comes to blood magic,” he clarified sternly, “but… I understand.”

She eyed him cautiously, her fingers toying nervously the slim red scarf around her neck. “So that means…?”

He shifted restlessly, then unfolded his arms. “It means I am at your disposal,” he said. “If you have need of my sword.”

She gazed at him for another second. Then a slow, mischievous smile began to creep across her face, and Fenris wilted slightly as he realized what he’d said. He knew precisely where this was going.

As expected, Hawke bit her lip flirtatiously. “Oh Fenris,” she purred. “I would be a fool to turn down your sword. It’s so… long and hard and steely.” She ran her salacious gaze over his body from head to toe.

Fenris rolled his eyes and reached for the doorknob. “I rescind my offer. Farewell and good luck.”

She laughed and held up her hands in surrender. “All right, all right! Maker’s balls, you’re so broody. Give me five minutes to change, and we’ll head out to get the others. Hang out with Toby while you’re waiting. He really missed your company.”

Her shit-eating grin was gentler now, and Fenris smirked faintly as he crouched to scratch her mabari behind the ears. “It’s good to see you too,” he grunted.  

She chuckled and squeezed his shoulder, then disappeared into the room she shared with her mother. Fenris settled onto the threadbare carpet to wait, his fingers idly running through Toby’s fur.

Hawke was infuriating. Fenris disliked half the things she chose to do. But at least her logic and her reasoning were sound, even if her final choices weren’t. And she listened, unlike Anders or Merrill.

Fenris sighed. Aggravating though it was to admit, it seemed that he preferred to spend his days arguing with Hawke than to spend them alone.

Only time would tell if that was a good thing or a bad one.

A prompt for you: 27. “Remember, you have to remember.”

Ooh, this one just screams Fenris, doesn’t it? :3 Thank you for the prompt!

Fandom: Dragon Age II
Pairing: Fenris x femHawke
Rating: Mature

Read on AO3 instead.

**************

Sleeping with Hawke would be a bad idea.

Not that Fenris was really considering it. Of course he wasn’t. She was a mage, after all, and mages couldn’t be trusted – especially not the ones who lived outside of Templar control. All they cared about was power: gaining it, keeping it, growing it. No, Fenris wasn’t at all interested in getting involved with a mage.

Except Hawke wasn’t that kind of mage.

As the months went by, Fenris waited for her to fall into temptation, but she never did. She never lashed out in anger. She never lost her temper and flung fire from her fists like he’d seen far too many times in the past. Her eyes didn’t glow with demonic rage like Anders’s did, and she didn’t cede to the power in her veins like Merrill was wont to do.

But her magic abilities weren’t the only reason that sleeping with Hawke would be a bad idea.

She irritated him. She never took anything seriously. From the moment they’d first met, she was being flippant when they all could have been killed. And the jokes never let up. Couldn’t she see that the world wasn’t just one big rotating platter of jokes waiting to be cracked? There were slavers, murderers, Carta, rapists, and blood mages lurking around every corner of this blighted city. But Hawke just smiled and laughed and joked around with every person she met, like nothing worse than a bruise or a scrape could ever happen to her.

Except her unwavering sense of humour wasn’t really that annoying.

As the months went by, Fenris stopped being bothered by her incessant tomfoolery. He found himself smiling when the others laughed, and laughing when the others were wheezing with mirth. Instead of shrugging off her silly repartee, he found himself returning it quip-for-quip. Maybe he was relaxing with every month that Danarius didn’t show up at his doorstep, or maybe she was just wearing him down, but the city didn’t seem so bad when he saw it through the lens of Hawke’s constant comedy.  

But her facetious attitude wasn’t the only reason that sleeping with Hawke would be a bad idea.

Fenris didn’t know if he’d ever slept with anyone else before. It seemed… wrong, somehow, to think about stretching her naked body on his bed if he didn’t know his own sexual history. Maybe he’d been with a hundred people before. Or maybe he’d never been with anyone, and the roguish boldness he felt when they locked eyes was completely misplaced.

Except… he didn’t think Hawke would even care.

As the months went by, he enjoyed her flirtatious banter more and more. When he was feeling especially reckless during their seemingly endless badinage, he would risk an implicitly sexual remark, and he would watch with rising satisfaction as her lips curled in a suggestive smile. If he succeeded at bringing a blush to her grinning cheeks, all the better.

Now, Fenris found that he was forgetting half the time why he shouldn’t sleep with her. He would study his reasons sometimes while sitting alone in his mansion, and the more he mulled them over, the more uncertain he became.

Had his rationalizing always been no more than flimsy excuses to keep his distance? Or was he really that much of a slave to the desires of his mutilated body that he would discard logic for lust?

When Fenris was feeling really honest, he recognized another possible reason that he was keeping her an arm’s length away. As the months went by, it was becoming increasingly clear that any liaison he had with Hawke would be more than just sex.

Hawke was a blasted mage. She befriended the worst kinds of mages. She was irreverent and glib and often completely absurd, and she was always picking on him.

And Fenris liked her.

In the five years since he’d left Seheron, there was no one else he’d really come to like. There was no one else he’d really come to… trust.

For some reason that he wasn’t entirely certain of, this was a problem.

So Fenris sat at the table in Hawke’s huge fancy house playing cards with her and the others. He trailed after her with a long-suffering sigh while she ran errands for her mother. He grudgingly accepted the creeping magical touch of her barriers when they got attacked on the Docks at night, and he watched her lithe body twisting and twirling in the candlelight when she danced with Isabela in the Hanged Man. And all the while, Fenris would tell himself over and over that there were valid reasons that he shouldn’t sleep with Hawke.

Remember. You have to remember, he told himself. Getting involved with Hawke is a bad idea. But as the years went by, he had a harder and harder time remembering why.

Hawke strolled through his reveries with her jaunty little saunter. Her raucous laugh burst across his mind like ripe berries, and memories of her clever tongue cut through his thoughts.

And Fenris couldn’t remember why he should stay away.

Fenris/f!Hawke: Always Smiling

A Fictober 2018 prompt fill for @cutieink! The prompt: “I hope you have a speech prepared.”

Thanks for this prompt – it’s helping me to move my Fenris series forward, which is exactly what I hoped these prompts would do! XD 

Read on AO3 instead.

************

Hawke’s saunter was slow and casual as she led Fenris, Anders and Varric into the Blooming Rose. Once they reached the main room, she shifted her weight to one hip and folded her arms.

“Ah, Uncle. Always a pleasure.” Immediately she wrinkled her nose and shot Fenris a regretful grimace. “Ugh. Terrible choice of words, here especially.” She turned back to Gamlen and raised one eyebrow. “I hope you have a speech prepared to explain all this. Or better, a dramatic soliloquy in three parts! I do love a good melodrama.”  

Gamlen glared blearily up at her from the floor. “Rynne? What the hell are you doing here? I don’t want to see you!”

“You should’ve thought of that before you picked a fight with a group of angry dwarven moneylenders in the middle of Kirkwall’s finest whorehouse,” she replied smoothly. She tipped a friendly wink at Porfiria, who was passing by.

“He was shouting up a storm as well, Serrah Hawke,” Porfiria murmured. “Very unkind things indeed, about… about you, and Missus Amell…”

Fenris watched silently as Hawke continued to smile. “Ah, that’s just his way of expressing his affection,” she replied. “If he starts throwing things around, watch out: that’s when things really start getting mushy.” She bent down and reached for Gamlen’s elbow. “Now come on, Uncle, let’s get you-”

“Get off!” Gamlen snarled, jerking his arm away from Hawke’s touch. “Nobody asked you to come here! In fact, nobody asked you to come to Kirkwall at all. You should have stayed in Lothering with the bones of your good-for-nothing father. But no, you had to come here, leech off of my hospitality and then leave me alone in the dirt!”

Anders scowled. “It was either Hawke or the City Guard,” he said sternly. “Guard-Captain Aveline tipped us off that you were making a scene. You should be happy to see Hawke.”

Hawke shook her head. She was still smiling. “Don’t bother, Anders. The only part of me he’s ever happy to see is my backside when I walk out the door.” She wrinkled her nose again and elbowed Fenris. “Ugh, poor choice of words again. Somebody stop me.”

Fenris waved a careless hand toward Gamlen’s disheveled form. “Shall I?”

She batted her eyelashes at him. “So chivalrous. Yes, please, that would be helpful.”

Fenris unceremoniously hauled Gamlen to his feet, ignoring the older man’s attempts to struggle against his grip. As he marched Hawke’s uncle toward the door, he overheard Hawke making some playful crack to Madame Lusine about getting a discount the next time she visited.

He shook his head in exasperation. Always with the jokes, he thought. Even in the most dire situations, she never stopped cracking jokes.

He shoved open the brothel door and pulled Gamlen outside. “Breathe. Try to clear your head,” he said.

Gamlen twisted his arm in Fenris’s grip, then stumbled back as Fenris abruptly released him. He glared at Hawke as she strolled out of the Blooming Rose to join them. “You tell your pet elf to keep his fucking hands to himself,” he yelled.

Fenris took a deep breath, his shackles instantly rising at the slur, and Varric took a step back. “Oh shit,” he muttered.

But before Fenris could move or speak, Hawke stepped between them. Then she took two slow steps closer to her uncle. “He is not my pet,” she said. “He is nobody’s pet. Never call him that again.”

Still she was smiling, and her voice was light and friendly. But Fenris watched with vindictive satisfaction as Gamlen shrank away from her.

She slapped her uncle on the shoulder – ostensibly a friendly pat, but Gamlen jolted forward from the impact and his own inebriation. “Come on, a nice little nighttime stroll home,” she chirped. “Your stink will keep the bandits away.”

Gamlen muttered resentfully to himself during the walk back to Lowtown. Occasionally he lashed out at Hawke, spearing her with insults and pointed commentary about Carver joining the Templars and Leandra wishing Bethany was still alive. And still Hawke just smiled, deflecting her uncle’s words with flippant replies and somehow making Anders and Varric laugh despite the fug of awkwardness that hovered over the group.

Fenris followed in silence, watching carefully in case Gamlen decided to strike her with his fists instead of his tongue. He was glad that Anders and Varric were laughing, because he couldn’t bring himself to be amused.

It was enraging, in fact. Gamlen’s insults, the unfair accusations, the abuse – Fenris couldn’t understand how Hawke was still fucking smiling. By the time they bundled Gamlen back into his Lowtown hovel, Fenris’s jaw was aching from the effort of holding back his anger.

Once back on the street, Hawke sighed, then smiled at them. “All right, boys, it’s been a ball, but you should all go home,” she announced. “I know, I know, I treat you so well – dragging my drunken uncle home from the whorehouse, so much excitement! – but I don’t want to spoil you with these scintillating side trips.”

Anders frowned. “Are you sure? We could have a drink at the Hanged Man, if you like. This was…” He winced and shook his head.

“Good idea, Blondie,” Varric piped up. “Come on, Hawke, it’s on me.”

She shook her head. “Ah, no, there’s no need. Look!” She reached into the back of her trousers and pulled out a bottle with a triumphant flourish.

Fenris inspected the bottle: it was whisky. He raised one eyebrow. “You took this from Gamlen?”

She blinked up at him. “It was for a good cause,” she said innocently. “We don’t want him drinking any more, do we?” She unscrewed the cap and took a swig, then grimaced. “Tastes like paint thinner. But it’ll do the trick.” She took another gulp, then waved the bottle dismissively at them as she turned and headed back toward the street to Hightown. “Go on home, you lovely specimens. Rest your gorgeous heads. I’ll see you all tomorrow!”

“Hawke, wait-” Varric called.

“It’s all right,” Fenris interrupted. “I will make sure she gets home. We’re heading in the same direction.” He jogged after her without another word.

She blinked in surprise as he caught up to her, then affably linked her arm with his. “Fenris! What are you doing here?”

He gently disentangled his arm from the warmth of her fingers. “I’m following your suggestion and going home. We are practically neighbours.”

“Right, right,” she drawled, then took another sip from the bottle, and Fenris noted that it was already one-quarter empty.

She must have noticed his gaze, because she offered the bottle to him. “Drink?”

He hesitated, then took the proffered bottle and took a cautious sip. And promptly sputtered in disgust. “This is vile,” he announced.

“I know,” she crowed. “It’s terrible, right? Come on, come over to mine. I can offer you something better. I know how much you love that fancy Tevinter wine…”

Fenris pursed his lips, but he couldn’t deny her claim. And one glass of wine couldn’t hurt. “Fine,” he said.

She beamed at him and hooked her hand around his arm again, and this time Fenris permitted the friendly touch as she led them through the quiet streets of Hightown.

She kicked off her boots the second they stepped through her door, then waved her hand at the bench in the foyer. “Hang out here for a second, okay? It was a bit of a mess when I left. Sandal was doing some… interesting experiments. I just want to make sure it’s not a total disaster before I let you in.”

It hardly mattered if her house was tidy – most of Fenris’s mansion was a mess of cobwebs and dust, after all – but Fenris sat on the bench anyway. “I’m not staying long,” he told her.

She threw him a smile over her shoulder. “What if I give you a really, really big glass of wine?” she said. Then she disappeared around the corner.

Fenris smirked and shook his head, then leaned back on the bench to wait. But when a full five minutes passed and she didn’t return, he started to wonder.

He rose to his feet and cautiously made his way into the main room. The main hearth was dark and cold, but a gentle fire-orange glow spilled through the door of her study.

Fenris quietly approached the study, then stopped in the doorway. Hawke was sitting silently on the floor in front of the fireplace, her face obscured by the dark curtain of her hair and her shoulders shaking.

Fenris froze. A chill rippled through his chest, almost like a cold spill of panic, and an instinctive voice told him to back away. This was not the Hawke he knew. This was private. If she wanted him to see this – if she wanted anyone to see this – she would not be crying silently in the back room of her house. If Fenris was in her place, he would hate to disturbed like this.

He stood in the doorway for a long moment. Then he slowly entered the room and crouched at her side. “Hawke,” he said quietly.

She jumped, then hastily wiped her face. “Sorry,” gasped. “Sorry, Fenris, I was just – I didn’t forget you were here, I was just…”

Her voice was thick with tears, and the cold feeling in his chest throbbed painfully. He slowly sat beside her and pretended not to notice as she surreptitiously wiped her face on the slender red scarf around her neck.

“He is a drunk,” Fenris said eventually. “His words hold no value.”

Hawke sighed tremulously. “He’s not usually that bad, you know. It’s just…” She trailed off, then ran her fingers through her hair. “I’m tired, Fenris,” she said softly. “When we first came here, I kind of hoped… I don’t know. That he’d be more helpful. Someone to share the load. But he’s just another person to look after. One more worry to add to the pile.”

She reached for the abandoned bottle of whisky, and Fenris watched sadly as she took another deep drink. She exhaled, then turned to him with a tiny smile. “Maker’s balls, what kind of host am I? I didn’t even get you that glass of wine.” She started to push herself to her feet.

He reached out and took her hand before she could rise. “Leave it,” he said. “It is not necessary.”

She stopped in a half-risen position as she met his gaze. “But then I’ll have no excuse to keep you here.” Her tone was playful, but her smirk didn’t quite meet her amber eyes.

“I’ll stay. For a short while,” he assured her.

Fenris watched as the corners of her eyes crinkled with a smile. Then he realized he was still holding her hand.

Hastily he released her, then stretched his legs out in front of the fire. She settled herself beside him and stretched her own legs out. “I’m glad,” she said. “Because, well, I have to tell you something.” She lifted the whisky bottle to her lips again and shot him a little smirk. “I have no wine.”

Fenris shook his head. “You’re a terrible host,” he drawled. “And a liar. I shall never come back.”

She swallowed her whisky, then groaned dramatically. “Oh come on. Then who will I stare at during our card games? You’re my favourite eye candy.”

He snorted. She really was irrepressible. Except… perhaps she wasn’t as immune to the harder edges of life as Fenris has thought.

They sat in front of the fire for some time, making idle chat and passing the bottle of disgusting whisky back and forth until it was almost gone. Hawke’s voice began to slur as time went on, and when she leaned her head against his shoulder, he didn’t move away.

Eventually she fell silent, her head becoming heavier on his shoulder, and Fenris nudged her gently. “Hawke.”

She murmured softly in her sleep, but didn’t stir. Fenris sat quietly for another moment and mulled over his options. Finally he shifted away from the weight of her head, then lifted her carefully into his arms.

Halfway up the stairs, she slung her arm around his neck. “So strong and manly. You can carry me anytime,” she muttered. “How ‘bout the next time we go to the Bone Pit?”

He nudged open her bedroom door with one foot. “No,” he said flatly. “That blasted place is dangerous enough without carrying you around like a sack of gold ingots.”

She chuckled lazily as he laid her on the bed. “That would hurt my feelings if you hadn’t said ‘gold’. I’ll take it as a compliment.”

Her voice was so muffled with sleep and spirits that she was barely comprehensible. He positioned her on her side and propped a pillow behind her to stop her from rolling over, then pulled the blankets over her. “Go to sleep, Hawke.”

“‘Kay,” she muttered, then promptly fell unconscious.

She looked so serious in her sleep. It was odd to see such a somber expression on her face. Her ever-present smirk used to infuriate him, but he didn’t mind it anymore.

He was quite fond of her little smirk, actually.

Finally he left, closing her bedroom door behind him and slipping out of the silent mansion. But his mind remained with Hawke as he padded through the quiet streets of Hightown.

Always smiling, he thought. She was always smiling, always joking around with everyone. She was always quick a glib remark when she was threatened, always armed with a snappy comeback when anyone insulted her. Her levity had irritated him when they’d first met, but over time it had become one of the things he most appreciated about her. If he was completely honest, it was one of her most attractive traits.

But somehow he’d never really thought to question whether there was something darker beneath her jocular demeanour.

A little pang of guilt jolted at his belly as he stepped into his house. He’d known Hawke for some three-odd years. It had been long enough that he could now admit that he’d been attracted to her for most of that time. But somehow it was only now occurring to him that they barely knew anything about each other.

Maybe it’s time to change that, he thought. But he wasn’t quite sure how. Hiding had become so natural to him, it was simply… easier.

But tonight, Hawke had shed her tongue-in-cheek veneer, whether she’d meant to or not. Tonight, she’d let him see a glimpse of something more – of someone who might understand him better than he thought.

Maybe Fenris could try to do the same.

For your f!hawke/fenris prompts… number 19

Haha yesss I was hoping someone would request this one! This Fictober dialogue prompt is: “Oh please, like this is the worst I have done.”

Fandom: Dragon Age II
Pairing: Fenris x femHawke
Rating: Teen/Mature? (for slightly lewd language lol)

Read on AO3.

***************

Fenris watched with faint amusement as Aveline paced back and forth, her freckled face creased with a scowl as she read off the charges. “Public indecency – thanks to the pirate whore, no doubt – obstructing the duties of the city guard, and… animal abuse? Hawke!”

“Hey, I want to contest that,” Hawke protested. “There was no animal abuse! The cat was perfectly fine. It came out of the fight better than your guard! You know Anders would have murdered me otherwise.”

Aveline exhaled sharply through her nose and fisted her hands on her hips. “Hawke,” she snapped, “you’ve gone too far this time. I can’t protect you from the consequences when your only goal was to cause mischief!”

“Oh please, like this is the worst I’ve done,” Hawke said breezily. “Don’t you remember that time in the Chantry with the blueberry pie and the…?” She trailed off as Varric subtly shook his head. “Oh,” she said sadly.  “No. You, er, weren’t there that time. Um…”

Aveline threw her hands up, then headed for the office door. At the threshold, she turned and pointed a stern finger at Hawke. “Stay here,” she ordered. “I can probably get you off with a fine if I get to the Viscount before that injured guard does. But I don’t want to hear about anything like this happening again.” She slammed the door behind her.

Isabela yawned and leaned back on the bench in Aveline’s office where she and Hawke were seated. “Well, she gave us a loophole at least. We’ll just make sure she doesn’t hear about it next time.” She nudged Hawke playfully.

Hakwe sighed and propped her chin on her fists, looking for all the world like a chastised child. “It’s not fair,” she complained. “We spend most of our time running around and killing baddies and making sure everyone in this Maker-forsaken city is all right. A girl’s got to have a little fun now and then, don’t you think?”

“I’m with you, sweet thing,” Isabela said. “You don’t need to tell me twice.”

Hawke glanced pleadingly at Varric, who lifted his hands innocently. “Hey, don’t look at me. I’m not getting involved in an argument with Aveline.”

Finally Hawke lifted her plaintive gaze to Fenris’s face. He shrugged and folded his arms. “Don’t look at me either,” he drawled. “I’m just paying off my debt.”

Hawke scoffed and gave Fenris a deeply skeptical look. “You are not just here because you owe me. You’re having a good time. I saw you smiling when that guard’s trousers hit the ground. You almost laughed.”

“You are mistaken,” Fenris replied smoothly. “I wasn’t smiling at that. I was imagining the moment when I’m no longer being dragged into these kinds of debacles by a certain flippant mage.”

Hawke smiled and tilted her head in a coquettish manner. “Oh, Fenris. Always pretending you’re here under duress when I know you like hanging out with us. Deep down in that armoured chest, you love us, really.”

Fenris pursed his lips and didn’t reply, but Hawke only smiled all the wider. “It’s okay, you don’t need to admit it,” she said. “I know the truth.” She winked at him, then turned to Isabela and began whispering.

“Right,” Varric said quietly – but not quietly enough that Fenris couldn’t hear. “That’s why you’ve stuck around. Because you love us.” He placed an ever-so-slight emphasis on the word us.

Fenris narrowed his eyes at the dwarf. “If you have something to say, just say it.”

Varric shrugged innocently. “Nope. Nothing to say. I’m just… observing.”

“Observing and commenting,” Fenris murmured resentfully. “If you have opinions, go home and write them in your book.” He turned away from Varric, and incidentally back toward Hawke and Isabela.

Hawke looked up as Fenris turned to face them. “A cat in a man’s trousers,” she announced. “What’s another way to say that?”

“Don’t,” Fenris warned.

As always, she grinned and ignored him. “Pussy in your pants. It rolls off the tongue, no?”

Stupid, Fenris thought. It was such a stupid joke. Not even a joke, really – and it wasn’t even funny. But the corners of his traitorous mouth twitched.

Isabela grunted in annoyance. “Damn. I was sure he wouldn’t smile at that one. You always get him to smile.” She pulled a silver from the pouch on her belt and slapped it into Hawke’s outstretched palm.

Fenris frowned. “You’re taking bets on what will make me smile?” he demanded.

“Yep,” Hawke said pertly. “Isabela’s lost a lot of silver today.” She flipped the coin jauntily before tucking it into her own coin pouch, then smiled up at him again. “What Isabela doesn’t realize is that I’ll do anything to make you smile. Including coaxing a randy cat into a guard’s carelessly dropped trousers.”

Isabela burst into laughter, and even Varric began to chuckle, but Fenris ignored them as he studied Hawke’s smiling face. The suspicion in his belly was instinctive, but there was something else there too, something warm and pleasantly jittery that was both familiar and foreign.

She grinned more broadly when he didn’t respond. “Pussy in your pants,” she said again.

He shook his head. “You’re an idiot.”

Her bronze eyes twinkled brightly. “Only for you, Fenris,” she said. “Only for you.” Then she suddenly gasped and elbowed Isabela, and the two women resumed their furiously whispered conversation. Fenris heard the word ‘cocks’ before deciding there was no point trying to listen in.

Stupid, he thought. Then he turned away to find Varric watching him appraisingly.

Fenris forced the smirk from his face and scowled. “Shut up,” he muttered.

Varric shrugged complacently and tucked his hands in his pockets. “I didn’t say a word, elf,” he said. “Not a single word.”

Fenris shot him a skeptical look, then folded his arms and leaned against the wall to wait for Aveline’s return.

Varric was wrong. Fenris didn’t love Hawke. He didn’t love anyone.

At least not that he remembered, which wasn’t saying much.

But maybe his reasons for sticking around in Kirkwall weren’t just about paying a debt anymore.

Blackwall smut: “Her Perfumed Sanctuary”

Self-prompt for @dadrunkwriting inspired by this amazing codex entry which proves that fanfic existed in the world of Dragon Age. A+++. 

Also used a Fictober prompt: “I know how you love to play games.”

Fandom: Dragon Age Inquisition
Pairing: Blackwall x Lavellan
Rating: Explicit

Read on AO3 instead. NSFW. 

***************

A bright bark of laughter floats out of the bookshop.

Blackwall almost smiles – an instinctive response to the sound of his Dalish lover’s mirth – but he forces his face to stay stern as he surveys the courtyard. Even here in Val Royeaux, he’s Arya’s shield and her shelter, and he needs to ward any potential enemies away. These rich Orlesians may wear a veneer of civility, but Blackwall knows all too well that they’re just as vicious as any common criminal.

A moment later, Arya saunters out of the shop, a jaunty sway in her step and a scroll in her hand. “Look what I found,” she crows.

He takes the scroll from her outstretched hand, and his eyebrows leap high on his forehead at the title alone: Her Perfumed Sanctuary. “What is this?” he asks incredulously.

“It’s hilarious, that’s what it is,” Arya says gleefully. “Go on, read it!”

Blackwall obeys, and amusement wars with embarrassment as he reaches the end of the scroll. He raises his eyes to Arya’s face, and he can’t help but smile at her glowing grin. “You paid good coin for this?” he asks.

“Of course I did! Something like this is priceless!” she exclaims. She takes the scroll back from him and tucks it into her belt. “You Andrastians are so strange,” she says. “What kind of odd person describes a woman’s nether regions as a ‘perfumed sanctuary’?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Blackwall hedges. The language might be overly fancy, but if he’s perfectly honest, he finds the description rather apt.

Unfortunately, his equivocal response only serves to snatch his impish lover’s attention. “Oh my. Oh, Blackwall,” she croons. “You like this description, don’t you?”

He flushes. “No,” he says gruffly. “I don’t like it. I just – it’s not completely – I can see where the writer… I mean…”

He trails off, flustered by the widening of her shit-eating grin. She sways toward him until she’s leaning into his chest. “Come on,” she teases. “You don’t think it’s even a little bit of an exaggeration? I mean, please. Perfumed? That’s simply overkill, don’t you think?”

“Not really,” he mumbles, annoyed that the growing heat in his cheeks is giving him away. “It’s… All right, the phrase is silly. I’ll give you that. But… there’s something nice about the, er, smell. That’s all I mean to say.” To his shame, the more he thinks about that particular feminine scent, the more he agrees with this mysterious raunchy writer: if a perfume is meant to entice the object of one’s desire, to reel a person in and seduce them, then that’s exactly what Arya’s private scent is to him.

At the mere thought of his Dalish lover’s scent, an image sparks in his mind: her legs spread wide, her slick and shining folds crowned by the swollen little bud of her clit, looking for all the world like the perfect petals a dew-kissed rose.

A flush of heat rolls from his cheeks down through his chest to settle low in his belly, and he swallows hard to quell it. Then he realizes that Arya hasn’t replied.

He finally lifts his eyes to her face, and another jolt of embarrassment and heat pulses in his abdomen. Her amethyst eyes are scorching with intent, and her lips are curled in a provocative little smirk. She shifts slightly against his chest, and he clenches his jaw as her pelvis brushes lightly against the front of his trousers and his obnoxiously hardened cock.

After a few long and loaded seconds, Arya finally speaks, and Blackwall almost wishes she hadn’t. “Something nice, you say?” she purrs in a sultry voice. “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

Blackwall knows her game. He knows exactly what she’s after. And he really shouldn’t indulge her, not here in Val Royeaux where anyone could be watching.

But the thought of Arya’s ‘perfumed sanctuary’ won’t get out of his mind. He imagines his hand dipping down those plump and rosy petals, savouring her slippery heat on his fingers before leaning close and breathing in the hot and visceral musk of her. Then, when he drops his lips right between her legs, the sweet and salty taste…

He inhales slowly and takes a step back. He gently takes the Inquisitor’s elbow and leads her away from the bookshop.

They walk in silence for some time: up a few flights of stairs, along a bright and airy street, around a corner and then another, down a neat but narrow alley that’s overshadowed by two large and opulent buildings on either side –

Suddenly he spins on her, pinning her against the wall with his hands on either side of her head. “You want to know what I mean?” he growls.

Her excited little gasp is all the encouragement he needs. He crowds her body firmly against the wall and presses his lips to her cheekbone. “I like your perfume,” he tells her. “I like to get my nose right in it before I taste you with my tongue.”

“Fenedhis,” she gasps. Her chest rises against his own with her desperate intake of breath. “So… so it’s not an exaggeration then.”

She’s trying for jocular, but she’s failing spectacularly; her voice is wavering, pitched high and pleading, and the tense arch of her spine brings him an odd sense of satisfaction.

Roughly he pulls off his gloves and drops them on the ground, then pushes open her coat and tugs at her belt. “Not an exaggeration, my lady,” he confirms. “You know what else I like? Carrying your perfume in my beard after we’ve done the deed. Especially at night. I like waking up in the morning and having that sweet smell to remind me that you were screaming my name the night before.”

“Falon’Din’s fucking balls, Blackwall,” she whines.

He drops to his knees and drags her trousers down. Before she can say another word, he shoves her thighs apart and buries his face between her legs.  

Her cry of delight is muffled by her fist, but Blackwall doesn’t mind; his attention is solely focused on his Dalish lover’s scent. It’s warm and animalistic and raw, and he breathes her in with gusto while delving his tongue into her delicate flesh.

He laves her swollen clit with long and hungry licks, lapping and languishing in her fragrant flavour, taking every last drop of her to coat his lips and tongue and chin. When her thighs go tense beneath his hands, he devours her more hungrily still. He swirls his tongue over the bead between her legs until she jerks against his face.

Her body shudders as her climax courses through her, and her cries of rapture are stifled by her own hand. As her trembling grows still, Blackwall wipes his face on her bare thighs to remove her excess juices from his beard.

She laughs tiredly and leans her full weight against the wall, her chest heaving with the strength of her orgasm, and Blackwall carefully rolls her trousers back up before replacing his gloves and rising to his feet.

She grins at him as she buckles her belt. Her desperate submissiveness is long gone, replaced by her usual roguish attitude. “I’m surprised at you, Ser Blackwall,” she whispers. “Such behaviour in a public place!”

Her tone is rounded with mirth, and he shakes his head at how utterly irrepressible she is. “I know how you love to play games, my lady,” he drawls, then gently takes her hand. “Come, we should find Solas and Cole. They’ll be wondering where you’ve gone.”

She cackles as they jog through the alley back into the brightly lit streets of Val Royeaux. “Oh, they won’t need to wonder,” she says. “Cole will know exactly what we’ve been up to. You have a very hard time hiding your thoughts from him, I’ve noticed.”

Blackwall grunts, but Arya’s tinkling laugh wipes away some of his dismay. As they reach the lower market, she smiles up at him and squeezes his hand.

Her expression is sweet and fond, and he smiles back before leaning down to give her a chaste little kiss. But before he can pull away, she twines her fingers around the back of his neck.

“I can smell my perfume on your face,” she whispers.

She’s a cheeky little minx, but Blackwall isn’t embarrassed anymore. “I’m glad to hear it, Your Worship,” he says softly. “I’ll wear it as a badge of honour.”

Her laughter is low and knowing, and Blackwall grins before kissing her again. Arya honours him every time she gives him her body. If anyone notices the evidence of her esteem in his beard, he’ll take their disapproval in stride.

Arya Lavellan’s approval is all he really needs.

I’d like to see you do either prompt 11, 20 or 23! X3 Although if you want a off the list idea i have one! Fenris and mage hawke finding out their child is also a mage! Can’t wait to read whatever you decide to write! x3

Ayyyy thank you for the prompts! Honestly I will probably fill them all (except the child one – I generally don’t “do” fics with children lmao), but I’ll start with #23: “This is not new. It only feels like it.” (It was easy to incorporate into the Fenhawke oneshot I was already writing! 😉) 

For @dadrunkwriting, and also for Fictober 2018.

Fandom: Dragon Age II
Pairing: Fenris x femHawke
Rating: Mature

Read on AO3 instead. 

****************

With all the care of a mother laying down a child, Hawke laid her cards on the table.

The party instantly dissolved into an uproar of laughter and jeering. Varric chuckled and shook his head, and Sebastian absolutely roared with mirth while Anders pounded his fist on the table. Merrill wrung her hands and dithered about Hawke taking poor risks; meanwhile, Isabela began insulting the Fereldan mage with gleeful relish.

Aveline, on the other hand, shook her head in dismay. “Hawke, why would you raise the stakes so high with such a terrible hand? What were you thinking?” she scolded.

Hawke smiled sheepishly and shrugged. “I tried to bluff! Bluffing normally works so well when we visit the Gallows. Cullen still believes that Anders is just practicing voices for an independent opera production at the Blooming Rose.” She winked at Fenris.

Fenris just shook his head and folded his arms. “You don’t have enough coin to pay off the raise, do you?”

“Nope, she doesn’t,” Varric interjected. “I’ve been counting.”

Hawke shot him a mock-offended look. “You’ve been counting my coin? Isn’t that cheating?”

“It’s only cheating if he counts your cards, not your coin,” Sebastian replied. “And that’s only for certain games. I still can’t believe you don’t know this, Hawke.” He grinned at her as he sipped his water.

She threw her hands up in exasperation. “I’m a late bloomer with this game, all right? So sue me!”

“No one’s going to sue,” Fenris drawled. “But you have to pay your debt to me. I am winning, after all.” He raised one challenging eyebrow at her.

Her bright coppery eyes darted to his face, and Fenris fought back a smile at the mischievous smirk that dimpled her cheeks. “Well, Fenris, as you so smugly pointed out, I’ve got no coin left,” she said. “So what do you suggest?”

“Give him the shirt off your back,” Isabela interrupted. Her arms were folded and her smile was broad and wicked, and Fenris watched curiously as Hawke abruptly elbowed the brazen pirate.

“Bels,” she hissed.

Aveline rolled her eyes. “Of course you would suggest making it a stripping game. Trollop,” she said primly.

“Prude,” Isabela returned absently, but her eyes were still on Hawke. She elbowed the mage in return and jerked her chin in Fenris’s direction. “Go on, Hawke, give him your shirt. That’s sure to balance the scales. Isn’t that right, Fenris?”

Varric grumbled something about a perfectly good card game being dragged off the rails, and Merrill began twittering to Aveline about humans and cards and getting naked, but Fenris ignored them; he was too busy watching as Hawke’s cheeks warmed to a rosy pink.

Finally Hawke scoffed and rolled her eyes at Isabela. “Fine, I’ll give him my shirt. But only if you take yours off too, you cheeky bitch.” Fenris noted with interest that Hawke wouldn’t meet his eyes.

Isabela cackled, then pushed back from the table. “Done,” she declared.

Aveline groaned. “Oh Maker’s breath, Hawke, don’t encourage her…”

It was too late. Isabela had already pulled off her thigh-length tunic, leaving her practically naked except for her boots, bright blue brassière, and leather shorts that were hardly more than smallclothes. The brazen pirate carelessly tossed her tunic at Sebastian, then turned to Hawke with a complacent smirk. “There. Your turn, sweet thing.”

Sebastian abruptly rose from the table, almost knocking his chair over in the process. “I have to go and, er, pray. Thank you for the hospitality, Hawke, I’ll see you tomorrow-” He bolted from the table, chased by another wave of laughter and jeering from the rest of the group.

Fenris, meanwhile, kept his eyes on Hawke. She’d finally deigned to meet his gaze, and now it seemed that neither of them could look away. Her expression was more than just the usual mischief. There was something intense in the cant of her eyebrows or the heat of her dark golden eyes, and Fenris simply watched her, waiting to see what she would do.

Finally she rose to her feet. In one smooth motion, she pulled her loose silk tunic over her head.

Isabela and Anders hooted encouragement, and Merrill giggled and covered her face while Varric and Aveline shook their heads and groaned. Without breaking from his gaze, Hawke tossed her tunic across the table and into his lap.

“Satisfied?” she said.

Fenris wasn’t satisfied – not by far. The blood in his veins felt like it was pumping too fast, a surge of heat and something undeniably feral that started low in his abdomen and burned up into his chest.

Without moving his eyes from her face, he studied her half-bared body from the periphery of his vision. A wicked-looking pattern of black ink traced back from her left collarbone over her shoulder, and he could see hints of the tattoo curling around the edge of her ribs. Her breasts weren’t nearly as generous as Isabela’s, and her simple leather bustier was nowhere near as ornamental as the pirate’s blue lace, but that simple leather bustier was the sole focus of Fenris’s attention.

His mouth was dry. His pulse pounded in his ears. He liked her simple bustier. He wanted to see the curves that lay beneath it. He wanted-

“Rynne, darling? I’m home!”

Fenris jolted out of his salacious reverie as Leandra Amell’s voice drifted up from the foyer. Varric snickered as Hawke’s expression transformed from a look of heated challenge to sheer panic.

“Shit!” she squeaked, and Merrill gasped as Hawke suddenly lunged across the table toward Fenris.

Fenris froze. Her supple body, her maddeningly hidden breasts coming closer, the subtle cleft of her cleavage as she surged toward him, her left hand on the table, her right hand reaching toward his lap-

She grabbed her silken tunic from his lap, then scrambled back toward her chair as Isabela crowed with delighted mirth. “What in the Maker’s massive balls is she doing home? I thought she’d be gone all night,” Hawke hissed as she roughly hauled her tunic back on. She ran her fingers through her chestnut hair, then pointed at the still-cackling Isabela. “Can one of you get this one to put her top back on?” she demanded, then ran off toward the stairs. “Mother! I thought you’d be with Uncle Gamlen until…”

Her voice disappeared to the lower level of the house, and Varric sighed happily. “I guess the party’s over, then,” he said. He started gathering the cards as Aveline began collecting their many empty bottles.

“There’s never a dull moment with her, is there?” Anders chirped. He rose to help Aveline with the bottles as Merrill scurried off, muttering something about a rag to wipe the table.

Fenris slowly rose from his chair and wandered toward the liquor table. He knew he should probably help the others to tidy the detritus of the evening, but he felt oddly off-balance.

He leaned his elbows on the railing and gazed vacantly down at the fireplace. This is not new, he told himself. It only feels like it. But it was hard to convince himself when this was the only attraction he could recall.

A moment later, a fully-dressed Isabela sidled up to him. “We’re heading out,” she said. “But you should stay.”

Her tone was innocent – which, for Isabela, indicated that she meant to be nothing of the sort. Fenris frowned. “No. I’ll leave as well. There’s no reason for me to stay.”

Isabela scoffed and cocked one graceful eyebrow. “You’re even stupider than Hawke,” she announced. She then lowered her voice to a murmur. “Listen, Fenris, I only say this because I care.”

Fenris scowled more deeply at the serious expression on Isabela’s face. She pursed her lips. “If you don’t fuck Hawke soon,” she said, “then I will.”

A wicked little smile lifted the corners of her lips, but Fenris was not amused. The Rivaini rogue was so damned nosy, always sticking her nose where it didn’t belong. Isabela didn’t know what she was talking about. Fenris couldn’t be sure that Hawke meant it with the flirting. She flirted with everyone. Cullen could barely make eye contact with her without blushing like an untouched youth.

But it wasn’t about Hawke, not really. It was Fenris himself. He must have been with someone before; he was almost sure of it. But that was the problem. He wasn’t sure.

The surging of lust, the impulse to reach out and stroke her unexpectedly tattooed skin – it was like breathing, easy and confident and good, but he couldn’t be completely sure that he’d… done this before. He couldn’t fucking remember.

Isabela made it sound so simple, when the truth was anything but.

Fenris didn’t want to tell Isabela that. He didn’t want to tell that to anyone. It wasn’t anyone’s business but his own.

He took a quiet, deep breath to calm his frustration, then shot Isabela a little smirk. “I admit I’m surprised you haven’t already,” he retorted.

Isabela winked. “Who said I haven’t?” she drawled. Then she nudged him playfully with her hip and sauntered away.

Fenris rolled his eyes, then followed Isabela and the others down the stairs.

Hawke was hugging Merrill goodbye while teasing Aveline about staying out so late, and Fenris slowly joined the others as they bade her farewell. Isabela kissed her noisily on the cheek and laughed raucously as Hawke playfully slapped her on the ass, and then only Fenris was left.

He nodded politely. “Hawke,” he said.

She nodded politely in return. “Fenris.”

Her eyes were like flames. They danced with brazen orange heat, and Fenris could feel the tips of his ears warming as they gazed at each other. He watched the movement of her throat as she swallowed and the slow rise of her chest as she inhaled, and he remembered the sight of her simple leather bustier…

He wanted to touch her. She was less than an arm’s length away. He wanted to peel back his sleeves, slide his hand beneath her thin silk tunic and up along the golden skin of her midriff.

Such a simple thing to want. Or so it would seem.

He took a step back. “Goodnight,” he said.

She exhaled, then smiled ruefully at him as though he’d bested her somehow. “Goodnight,” she said. “Don’t get kidnapped on your way home. I can’t be bothered to make any heroic rescues tonight.”

Fenris snorted. He could feel his shoulders relaxing and his stomach sinking at her light-hearted levity. “I’ll bring you the eviscerated hearts of anyone who dares to try,” he replied.

She grinned. “Lovely. We’ll make them into a nourishing stew for Toby. Though it’s probably a bad idea to give a mabari a taste for human flesh.” She knelt to scratch her faithful hound behind the ears.

Fenris grunted in amusement, then left Hawke’s mansion without further ado.

The nighttime air was cool as he slunk through the shadows back to his mansion. Fenris breathed deeply as he walked, thankful for the crisp air that cleared the heat from his cheeks and the confusion from his mind.

There was no reason to worry about the blurry fog of his unknown past, because Hawke was simply flirting. It was what she did. The heat in her amber eyes, the intensity of her stare as it hooked into his chest and held him in a tense and breathless stasis: that was just what she did.

He would convince himself of this, in time.

Perhaps.

for dadrunkwriting “good morning kiss” with blackwall and arya?

Yay a Baewall prompt for @dadrunkwriting Friday! I doubled up and used a Fictober dialogue prompt as well: “I know you do.”

Read on AO3 here. NSFW smut, because that’s how we do. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Fandom: Dragon Age Inquisition
Pairing: Blackwall/Lavellan
Rating: Explicit

***************

Heat. Pressure. Darkness. Too comfortable, can’t move…

The warm hand travels up Blackwall’s back, sliding over his bare shoulder blade. A shifting of the mattress as another body climbs onto the bed.

He smiles sleepily into his pillow as Arya climbs on top of him. She straddles his hips, settling herself comfortably on his bum, and he feels her shifting weight as she leans forward to kiss the spot between his shoulders.

“Good morning,” she says.

Her voice is pert and bright – far too bright for how dark it is. “What time is it?” he mumbles, his mouth thick with sleep.

“No idea,” she chirps. “But it is morning. Technically.” She kisses his ear, his hair, his shoulders, sliding her palms across the muscles of his back.

He sighs contentedly and nestles his face into the pillow. He wants to ask what kept her out so late; when he’d left her in the Great Hall, she was deep in cahoots with Varric about a ‘special commission’ he was writing for one of their companions, and he can’t imagine that that would have occupied her for hours.

The question forms on his tongue, but then her hands start to knead his back. Her warm weight is just so nice, and he’s too bloody cozy…

The vague query fades to the back of his mind as the lull of sleep returns to the fore. Arya massages his shoulders, the heels of her hands pressing into knots he didn’t realize were there. Blackwall’s body is here in bed, anchored by her solid heat on his back, but his mind is floating and free, loose and wandering in the darkness of very early morn.

Arya smoothes her hands up along his spine, across his shoulders, soothing him with heat and pressure until he’s more asleep than awake. She leans forward, pressing her chest against his back, and with the last kernel of wakefulness in his mind, he realizes that she’s topless.

She rolls her hips slightly, pressing her pelvis more firmly into his bottom, and a slow stir of interest uncoils in his groin. Her hands move up along his arms, sliding under the pillow until she finds his wrists, and when she wraps her little elven fingers around them, the stirring between his legs pulses more strongly.

She rolls her hips against his bum, and her breath ghosts against his ear, and now he’s conflicted: he’s still cozy, still comfortable, but Arya’s eager body is calling him, cajoling his cock into alertness. If only he could find the energy to reciprocate…

She leans low, brushing her breasts against his back, and he shifts restlessly to let his cock straighten against his thigh. “Mmm,” he grumbles.

She chuckles softly, then lifts her chest and slides off of his back. “Come on. Roll over,” she whispers.

He presses his face into the pillow for a moment more – crystal grace and apples, it smells like her – then, without opening his eyes, he slowly rolls onto his back.

The mattress shifts again, then Arya is straddling him once more. She pushes the blankets away from his waist, and when she lowers her weight onto his hips, he realizes with a jolt of happy surprise that it’s not just her upper half that’s nude.

She’s fully naked and she’s wet, and Blackwall groans with sleepy appreciation as his shaft comes to rest in the snug embrace of her slick cleft. She slides her hands over his biceps and along his forearms to capture his wrists again, and as she leans her weight into his wrists, pinning him to the mattress, his languid lust intensifies from a simmer into a boil.

He lifts his hips, pressing his cock more firmly into her heat. “I like this,” he mumbles, then immediately regrets it. It’s vague and insufficient praise for how she makes him feel. Blackwall loves this. He loves the solid reassurance of her small and slender body splayed across his own. He loves the dominant grip that she uses to hold him down, even though he could flip her over in a heartbeat.

She chuckles, a bright and vibrant sound that rings like bells in the dark. “I know you do,” she purrs, then undulates her hips, sliding herself along his length, spreading her slippery arousal over them both.

Then suddenly he’s inside of her, sheathed in the heavenly tightness of her, heat and pressure and pleasure of a different kind than her hands across his back. She rocks against him slowly, a rhythmic in-and-out like the breath that fills his lungs, and Blackwall simply breathes in this bliss. He’s blind in the darkness of the bedroom, but he doesn’t need his vision anyway; every scrap of his mind is focused on the feel of her, her heat around his cock and her weight on his hips and her fingers biting into his wrists as she takes him deep and slow.

Her right hand leaves his wrist and she slows down even more, and without even looking, Blackwall knows exactly where her hand has gone: it’s between her legs, her fingers pressing against her swollen bud. He listens with drowsy satisfaction as her breathing grows jagged and sharp, and when she gasps, he gasps as well, his pleasure rising sharply as she contracts around him.

Her hand pins his wrist again. Her lips crash against his own in a ferocious kiss, and Blackwall moans into her tongue as she rolls against him, fucking him hard and fast as she rides out her rapture.

A few long, delicious moments later, she slows and pulls away from his lips with a gasp. “Don’t mind me if I help myself to your cock,” she quips, then laughs breathlessly against his cheek.

“Not at all, my lady,” he breathes. He’s more than happy to be her thrall, the object of her passion and the recipient of her torrid touch. Her pleasure feeds his own, bleeding into him through her skin and her slickness and her sweat.

She presses his wrists into the mattress. She rides him slow and careful, then fast and hard when he thrusts toward her. When he gasps out a groan of ecstasy, she catches his pleasure on her tongue, kissing him deeply as he shudders helplessly beneath her.

Finally Arya releases his wrists and flops onto the bed beside him, and Blackwall doesn’t hesitate: he rolls toward her, slinging his arm around her waist and gathering her into his body.

He tucks her head under his chin, and she laughs and pushes gently at his chest. “Wait, wait,” she urges. “I want to clean up first!”

He wraps his arm tightly around her. “Stay,” he mumbles. He’s dozing off already, both sated and sedated by their sex, and the comfort of her body is all he wants before falling back asleep.

She ceases in her wriggling, and he feels her happy sigh against his chest. “All right, you big brute,” she whispers. “I’ll stay.”

He can hear the smile in her voice, and it makes him smile in return. He nestles into the pillow, enjoying the scent of her hair and the heat of her body tucked into his own. “Good night, Arya,” he mumbles.

He hears the brightness of her chuckle. “Good morning, you mean,” she retorts.

A half-smile is all he can manage before sleep snatches him away. Morning, night, or afternoon: it truly doesn’t matter.

With Arya in his arms, everything is good.

Hey there awesome one, can I request for prompt #7 (“We still have time”) for Niloy? Pretty please and thank you! 😍

Hey there darling one, you most certainly can! Here you go! 

Read on AO3 instead. Smut warning. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Since this is a prompt fill for Fictober 2018, here are the basics about this piece:

Fandom: Horizon Zero Dawn
Pairing: Aloy/Nil
Rating: Explicit

***********************

“Nil!”

A firm grip shook his shoulder, and he jolted at the rude awakening. Blearily he cracked open his eyes. It was barely past dawn, and he could just make out Suntress’s slender shape as she moved around their little tent.

She glanced over her shoulder at him while rifling through her belongings. “Wake up. We’ve got to get moving or we’ll be late.”

She handed him the water canteen, and he peered fuzzily at her as he took it. “You’re no Oseram, Suntress,” he grumbled. “Why do you act like a cog in a clockwork if you haven’t the need?”

He drank deeply from the canteen, and Suntress took it back with an exasperated smirk. “We barely stick to a schedule and you know it. This is a one-time thing. Now come on,” and she crawled over to his side and shook his shoulder again, “get up. Avad and Vanasha are expecting us around noon.”

Nil rolled onto his back and lazily stretched his arms. “‘Around’ noon, you say?” he drawled. “I like this word ‘around’. So much leeway to let us linger.” He reached out and captured her hand.

She tried to pull away from him. “Oh no you don’t,” she warned. “Not today. We have a long ride ahead, and – Nil, come on!” Exasperation sharpened her voice as he reached out banded his arm around her waist.

She struggled as he pulled her down beside him, and Nil smirked as she petulantly kicked her bare feet. “You’re always making us late,” she railed.

He burrowed his face through the mass of her flaming hair until his nose found her throat. “The sun has barely even risen,” he purred. “No worries. We still have time.” He nibbled happily on the fragrant skin of her neck.

She jerked her head away from him and dragged her nails along his bare shoulder and arm. Faint lines of pain flared in the wake of her nails, and Nil hissed with pleasure. Now he was really awake, roused in more ways than one by the sting of pain across his skin.

He nuzzled her neck more roughly then bit her, and the gasp that burst from her lips was as telling as the sudden curve of her spine. “Mmm, there’s my Stormbird,” he smugly.

She shoved at his arm again, and finally he released her. She folded her arms over her chest and glared at him as he propped himself up on his elbows. “We don’t have time for this,” she said sternly.

And yet, she was making no move to rise from her supine position. Nil bit back a smirk and released a musical little sigh instead. “All right, Suntress. You break my heart, but you get your way.” He tilted his head winningly. “A kiss to make amends?”

She narrowed her eyes at him, and he blinked benignly at her until she relented. “Fine,” she said. “Then we’re leaving.”

“If you insist,” he purred. Then he leaned in and brushed his lips over hers.

It was more of a light caress of the lips than a true kiss, and an intentional contrast with his earlier roughness. From the corner of his half-closed eyes he watched as her chest rose with a sharp little inhale, her hips tilting slightly as she arched her lower spine.

His palms itched to touch her, but he kept them to himself. Her lips were parted in welcome, but he resisted sneaking a taste with his tongue, settling instead on taking her plump lower lip between his own in a very gentle tug.

A tiny hint of a sound slipped from her parted lips, a sweet little whimper, and Nil closed his eyes in satisfaction. This was what he liked to hear. More than the ring of a fingernail flicking against a blade, more than the solid punch of an arrow through leather plate, this was the sound he loved the most: the beginning of his Suntress’s bliss when her eager body betrayed her beneath his callused hands.

At last, he allowed his callused hands to touch. He shifted his weight to one elbow and slid his other hand under her soft Nora undershirt.

Slowly, carefully, his fingers crept up along the smoothness of her belly, and he smiled against her lips when she unfolded her arms to permit his exploring fingers to rise along her ribs.

“That isn’t a kiss,” she whispered harshly.

Nil lifted his face to gaze down at her. “No, it’s not,” he purred. His eyes drifted down along her body; her knees were bent and her thighs pressed together, almost as though to hold her own traitorous desire in check, and the beaded hardness of her nipples was apparent through her thin shirt.

He lifted his complacent gaze back to her face. “Do you want me to stop?” he asked.

He held his breath and the position of his palm as he waited for her response. Finally she sighed sharply, and to Nil’s delight, she reached down to grab the hem of her shirt and peeled the garment off.

His cock pulsed hotly in the smooth silk of his pants as she lay back and glared at him. “I never want you to stop,” she said.

Her brows were crinkled in annoyance, but her words lifted a smile to his lips. “Good. It seems the rolling storm of time will hold off after all,” he murmured, then lightly brushed his thumb along the swell of her bare breast.

Suntress tutted in annoyance. “Oh, just shut up and…” She broke off with a breathy exhale as he nuzzled her nipple.

He braced his hand on her hip and focused his attention on the softness of her breast as it traced across his face. He brushed her nipple with his nose, his upper lip, between his lips to flick his tongue out and taste the rosy peak, across his cheek and down to his chin…

Her hand slid into his hair to tug his head more firmly to her breast. She tried to lift her hips, but Nil held her down with one firm hand.

She writhed and twisted her chest against the torturously gentle caresses from his nose and mouth. Broken little gasps of impatience escaped her parted lips until finally she scraped her nails through his hair, inflaming a bloom of lust deep within his belly. “Nil,” she gasped. “Come on, you’re being so…”

“So what?” he purred, then suckled her nipple firmly until she mewled her pleasure. He released her nipple with a smile. “So charming? So thorough? So-”

“Obnoxious,” she interrupted loudly.

Nil tutted. “Such impatience, Suntress. You know that the subtle slices from a dagger can be more satisfying than an outright stab.” He slowly moved his hand from her hip down toward the waistband of her leggings, and another rush of satisfaction tugged at his cock when her knees slid apart to welcome his hand.

“You’re drawing this out on purpose to torture me, aren’t you?” she complained.

He shuffled closer to her, shifting his weight on his elbow to slide his fingers along the back of her head, then tugged her hair as his other hand delved into her leggings. She gasped sharply, her eyes squeezing shut and her fingers clenching against the bedroll, her hips rising smoothly to press against his fingers.

But before he could feel more than a hint of the tantalizing heat between her thighs, he pulled his hand out of her leggings.

She released a high-pitched little keen of distress, and Nil lowered his lips to her ear. “What a crude suggestion you make,” he growled. “I’m no torturer. I’m an artist.” Slowly, lazily, he slid his fingers back into her leggings to rest warm and still against her damp curls.

“Mmmmh,” she whined, her eyes still shut, her teeth pressing hard into her lower lip. Her hips tilted and jerked as though to coax him to movement, and after a long moment of watching her writhe beneath his hand, he finally deigned to press two fingers into her cleft.

She spread her legs wider to accommodate his touch, and Nil gazed raptly at her face as he slid his fingers through her slippery heat. He watched the tension creasing her eyebrows, her cheeks flushing as he lightly rolled the pad of his finger over her clit, the harshness of her staggered breaths when his fingers dipped low to stroke along her lower lips. When he teased her entrance with one finger, she mewled and arched her neck, exposing the creamy length of her throat.

It was a sight he couldn’t resist. He dipped his head to suckle the skin of her throat while sliding one finger inside of her, and her guttural moan vibrated across his lips and forced another surge of want through the hardness of his cock.

He crooked his finger inside of her, carefully stroking the smoothness of her inner walls. When she cried out and jerked her hips against his hand, he abruptly removed his fingers from her leggings again.

“Nil!” she sobbed. She braced her feet on the bedroll and thrust her hips high, and Nil watched with an almost vicious satisfaction as she shoved her leggings down to her knees. Her desperation was so obvious and so delicious, and to think she’d planned to rush out of their tent first thing this morning…

He pushed himself to his knees and peeled her leggings off, then grasped her hips and shoved her back down onto the bedroll. He leaned in low, inhaling deeply of the sweet musky scent that greeted him from between her thighs.  

His nose brushed against her clit as he breathed her in, and she jerked toward his face. Her whole body was a line of tension now, from her taut belly to the peaks of her nipples, straight up to the tendon in her neck as she craned her head back and twisted her fingers in the bedroll.

Nil chuckled smugly, then laved her pussy with a long, hot stroke of his tongue. A visceral cry burst from her lips, and he forced himself to quell his grin as he played his tongue across her clit. He wanted more of those sounds, more of that confirmation that this was where she wanted to be, right here in this tent with his face between her legs and his hands stroking her tender skin. Her cries were his evidence, his proof that this was what she really wanted: his tongue lapping at her taut little bud, his fingers sliding in to stroke the moisture of her flesh before piercing deep.

She gasped and cried out as his fingers sank into her welcoming warmth, curling inside of her as his tongue swirled around her swollen clit, and within mere moments she was shuddering beneath his mouth, her cries strangled and tight as they poured from her throat. Still he didn’t stop, didn’t ease off with his tongue or his fingers until she reached down to stroke his face.

“Nil,” she whimpered, shifting back toward the head of the bedroll, and he sat back on his heels and roughly wiped his face on his arm. He barely had time to toss her a smug grin before she was crawling toward him, her hands on his shoulders and pushing him back, one of her hands bluntly shoving its way into his silk pants to grab-

He gasped as her fist wrapped around his cock, and then her lips were at his ear. “You want to hold us up?” she whispered harshly, and her fierce tone sent a thrill spilling down his spine. “I’ll give you a hold-up.” She stroked his cock once, one single teasing pump of her fist, then pulled roughly at his waistband.

Eagerly he lifted his hips to help her pull off his pants, and then she was pushing him back onto his elbows, straddling his lap but facing away from him. Her fiery hair tumbled down her back, and the divot at the base of her spine was like a shadowed void begging for his touch. She spread her legs and sank low over his cock, and a surge of excitement blossomed in his abdomen, a rush so hot and sudden that he was rendered lightheaded. His eyes were glued to the rounded globes of her ass, then the heat of her – the creamy heated feel of her, fire and fucking blood-

She sank onto his length slowly, taking him inch by torturous inch, and Nil gritted his teeth in agonizing bliss as she hilted herself completely on his cock. His eyes were fixed on her back, drawn to the sight of her slender fingers as she raked them through her hair and arched her spine.

“Oh yes,” she groaned. She canted her hips forward, then rolled her hips over him in a slow and sinuous circle, and all Nil could do was stare. He was transfixed by the undulating swirl of her body as she ground her pelvis down on his cock, hypnotized by her slow and smooth movement as her sleek heat embraced the hardness of his shaft.

He reached forward and grabbed for the backs of her thighs, eagerly waiting for her to start her rapid rise and fall like she usually would, but she pushed his hand away. “Nice try, Carja,” she breathed, then forced him to watch in breathless anticipation as she continued to roll and grind slowly on his cock, never once rising him to give him that hot and sliding friction that he was swiftly growing desperate to feel.

“Suntress,” he growled.

All he received in return was a sultry snicker. “You think you’re the only one who can slow things down?” she teased.

He exhaled heavily as she pressed down hard, vaguely noting her own gasp at the depth of his cock inside of her. He dragged in a breath before answering. “Yes,” he said bluntly. “You’re a firebomb, Suntress. You rage through sex with all the force of an inferno. Of the two of us, I’m the slow and sneaking little death.”

“Ahh, that’s a challenge then,” she said, and Nil grinned.

But the amusement was wiped blank from his mind when she finally lifted herself from his hips, then held fast above the tip of his cock.

She paused, then pulled her hair over her shoulder and tossed him a sly little look, and Nil shook his head in exasperation even as the urge to fuck rose desperately through his abdomen. It was a relentless pressure between his legs, a desperate need thickening in his throat until-

“Please,” he burst out, and she laughed. The flame-haired little vixen laughed.

She slammed down onto him hard, and he groaned with bliss and then with longing as she resumed her slow and wavelike circling over his cock. One of her hands was braced on his thigh, and he knew her other hand was busy between her legs, stroking the bud that his tongue had been so thoroughly tasting only a few minutes before.

Nil gritted his teeth and fisted his hands in the bedroll, fighting to maintain control as the circling of her hips grew jerky. He bided his time, waiting with barely leashed impatience as he watched her back jerking with stuttered breaths as she brought herself closer to her peak.

Finally she jolted, her spine arching and her head craning back as she found her pleasure, and at the moment that she gasped in a shaky breath of climax, he dragged his nails from her shoulder blade down along the length of her spine.

The scream that tore from her throat was pure feral pleasure, and Nil’s patience shattered. He shoved himself upright, throwing her off balance and forward onto her hands. He dragged his legs out from beneath her and pushed down on her shoulder, pressing her flat onto the bedroll, her ass in the air and her legs spread wide-

Triumphantly, victoriously, he thrust himself hard into her willing heat.

Her pleasure cry was muffled in the bedroll, but Nil wasted no time to glory in it. Her hips were hot under his hands, almost as hot as her thoroughly dripping pussy as he fucked her hard. He dragged the air in through his bared teeth, savoured the slap of skin-on-skin and the sweet smooth friction of her heat, her gasping moans as they mingled with his own untamed sounds of pleasure until finally the roiling storm of rapture exploded through him.

His breath left him in a gasp, and he shuddered as he curled over her prone and supple form, but he refused to slow his pace until her silken heat had wrung every last drop of his pleasure from his sweat-soaked body.

When he finally slowed to a stop, Suntress lifted herself onto her elbows and gave a breathy laugh.

Nil grinned through his exhaustion, then collapsed onto his back beside her. She pushed herself back to sit on her knees, then shoved her damp hair away from her flushed and lovely face. “There. Now we’re definitely going to be late. Are you happy now?” she drawled.

Nil beamed at her, then grabbed her wrist and pulled her close until she was splayed on top of his naked body. “Yes,” he said smugly. “And you are too. It’s all right, Suntress, you can admit it. We’ll take your secret to the grave.”

She laughed again, and Nil relished the sound of her mirth and the heated press of her body against his own. The passage of time meant nothing to him, as long as it was spent by her side.