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My eyes are blurred over as I walk--trying not to drag my feet--over to my room. In my exhaustion, I glimpse the carpet and my eyes glance over the walls, briefly capturing a sconce lighting the hallway.
I internally give a small sigh of relief when my sight latches onto a door--the door to my room--and pick up my feet off the floor. Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I’m glad that there’s no one in the hallway to see me slump against the wooden door, fumbling with the handle already half-asleep on my feet.
I think that maybe the door is locked but I’m not going to wait for my roommate to show up and open it for me. It’s a kind of lethargic impatience that has me picking at the lock. If my face wasn’t pressed into wood like a new kind of pillow, my movements could be described as blind boredom as pop the lock with all the fanfare of blowing a nose.
As the door is lightly encouraged to open by my hand, I half-slide half-roll my way around the frame so I can lurch my way into my room. I can’t be bothered to lock it as I push the door closed behind me. At some other time, I could claim that it would be to make it easier on my roommate, but really my only thought is going to bed.
The room is dimly lit by the moonlight filtering in through the far window. I manage not to trip over anything as I cross it in a few strides and have enough mind to tug back the covers before I flop listlessly into it. Face-down in a pillow, I half-heartedly struggle with my leather armor, only managing to open it down the middle for some breathing room before I give it up for a lost cause and pull the covers up over my body, tucking my boot-clad feet under. The travel dirt that I’m getting into the nice clean bed isn’t even registering on my mind as I start drifting blissfully into the state between waking and dreaming. It is just as I’m falling asleep that the door swings open with a loud Bang!
The sound reverberates almost painfully in my ears as it jerks me a little more than semi-conscious. I might have dismissed it to go back to sleep and grouchily complain about it in the morning had it not been immediately followed by a cacophony of noise. The jarring jangling of metal on metal and clomping of boots against floorboards prevented me from silently slipping back into my slumber.
“Varric,” I groan sleepily, trying and failing to place the individual sounds to name them for the nuisances they are, “Pipe down...sadistic dwarf…” My lackluster insult trails off and my mind starts to sink back down as the sound in the room dies down to nothing.
Perhaps that is what causes me to open my eyes, or maybe some sense of another pair of eyes boring into me. I blink blearily up at the face above mine. Long jet-black hair is drawn into a high ponytail that falls over one shoulder, accenting very thin, very pointed ears and pale skin. Black eyebrows angle down over dark eyes that rest on an angular face. The dim light plays perfectly across cheekbones and I am left with the impression of a finely chiseled marble statue, cold and beautiful and unmoving.
That is, until I blink several times to clear the specter from my sight and realize suddenly that this man is very very real.
“You’re not Varric,” I blurt, sleepy and confused. Later, I will curse myself for being very very stupid and wonder how on Thedas I came to be an agent of the Inquisition.
“No,” he replies, face not losing its stone-like quality, “I am not.” Briefly, I note the man’s armor and the assortment of daggers and knives in his belt--the source of the sounds I hadn’t been able to place earlier. They are all high quality armor and weapons--higher than mine--and I know instantly that he is among our spymaster’s top agents. In the back of my mind, I think I might recognize this man as one of the agents with a rather deadly reputation.
"What are you doing in our room?” I ask with no small amount of confusion though definitely not with the appropriate amount of trepidation.
“No, what are you doing in my room?” he asks still leaning over me, a frown on his face.
“No--I--what?” I lurch up onto my elbows, fully awake now as my head whips about, trying to find something--anything--with which to prove him wrong. My eyes widen as I find, in place of another bed, a large washstand along the wall and an assortment of vials, dagger blades and handles atop a dresser where various accessories for Bianca should have been laid out.
“Fucking nugshit!” I feel my face turning scarlet as I let out a string of curses. I flip back the covers and practically fly out of the bed like it’s on fire. I see but don’t register the slight curl at the corner of the man’s mouth as I begin apologizing profusely to him.
“I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to barge in on your personal space,” I say, moving from one hand gesture to the next at almost lightning speed as I edge around the man and back away toward the door, careful never to turn my back to him.
But for each step back, he took one toward me, silently stalking me with an unnervingly predatory grace.
“I was exhausted and I really thought this was my room,” I continue to blabber, in the most unagent-like way possible. I counted my steps as I babbled, hoping I could slip out the door before the agent before me decided to shiv me for his trouble.
“It was an honest mistake. I’ll just be on my way and out of your hair, if you don’t mind.” I was maybe four steps away from the door, ready to reach out and bolt, when the man suddenly surges forward, grabbing me by the shoulders and pushing me against the wall. The skin all over my body quickly heats, my arms scalding where his hands grip me through my leather jacket.
He leans in close, a wicked smirk playing across his lips, as he whispers, voice rumbling low in my ear, “But you have not yet paid for your intrusion.”
My breath catches in my throat ever so slightly. Several images flash across my mind as I whip through the possible implications. I expect the man to lick the shell of my ear or to draw it between his teeth, to press one knee between mine, to pin me to the wall with his body--not that he needed to, the strength of his hands and arms do the job thoroughly enough.
He does none of the above and instead pulls me away from the wall a couple of steps. My mind just kind of stutters and is utterly unable to react. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I notice that his grip is strong but not hard or forceful--I could possibly break free if it occurred to me--but my feet follow automatically.
He stops us halfway between the bed and the door. I just kind of look up at him, stupefied, as he looks down at me, considering for the briefest of moments. I should gauge his expression, gauge what he’s thinking about doing and what I should be doing, but all I see is how the silver light feathers down his ears and over the sides of his cheeks as it lights him from behind. Creators, he’s breathlessly beautiful.
If the redness coloring my face had left in the span of time it took him to guide me from the wall to this spot, it’s back now for an entirely different reason.
His hands slide up and over my shoulders toward the base of my neck. As they unhurriedly glide under the collar of my jacket, the man smirks. His hands are warm and the bare hint of mischief in his eyes makes me feel as if lava pools where his fingertips rest, dripping lazily down into my belly.
A small part of me tells me to leave now, before it goes further. It says he won’t stop me, just bolt for the door and get out. It tells my arms to push, my feet to flee, my mouth to say, “stop” but I do none of the above. Caught in his unwavering gaze, I am rooted to the floor, heart beating fast like it’s trying to run for me.
My thoughts split into a thousand different directions. Hands, lips--
I stop myself there as his fingers drift up and my breath catches in my throat. My thoughts are quickly turning heady and I fight to breathe under them. Encasing my neck with his hands, he does the last thing I expect.
He presses down with the fingertips of both hands, dragging them down from just inside my hairline to the top of my spinal column. My eyes widen as his thumbs pull down my neck, rubbing circles with a kind of into tense muscles. I suppress a groan of approval as tendons I didn’t even know existed loosened under the man’s insistent massaging. I have the distinct impression that, had I not been caught in his gaze, my head would have fallen forward in bliss and, from the look on his face, he knows it too.
I blow out a shuddering breath as his hands slide down to where my neck slopes into my shoulders, alternately rubbing and kneading the muscles along the juncture. The part of my mind that tries to remind me that I have to leave is getting smaller and smaller, though it does resurface momentarily when his hands begin to draw over the curve of my shoulder.
His thumbs push casually back toward the curve of my neck, as if that had been the plan all along, but it’s forgotten as his fingers find and begin working through a particularly hard knot along the junction at the back of my neck.
A small grunt makes it past my lips before I can lock the sound down as dexterous fingers work just under the collar of my cotton shirt, softening and smoothing the muscle out into pliant flesh with a touch that is almost electric. Though his expression, which had settled into something that could be described as “professional,” does not move, I catch the trance of a glint in his eyes. That look, the kind of smug look victors get, seems to settle just inside his eyes, but as his hands work their way slowly across my shoulders, I begin to find that I no longer care.
I soak in the delicious heat of the man’s fingers so much that, by the time his hands graze over my shoulders again, I’ve forgotten that I wanted to leave in the first place.
The man’s hands graze over my skin as he leans forward to shrug my jacket down to my elbows. He never breaks eye contact and I feel as though I might drown in his gaze if he comes any closer. I might be perfectly okay with that. Fleetingly, it crosses my mind that if he were to strip me bare and push me down into the bed, I would be much more than okay with that.
When he removes his hands and leans back away for a moment, the feeling of being left bereft lodges in my chest. But they aren’t gone for long as hot fingers trail down to first slip one arm out one sleeve and then the other, eyes never leaving mine. As my leather jacket falls to the floor with a soft clink and his gaze flickers down, beginning to work loose the leather ties of my bracers, I remember an expression I’d heard used before, one that I find dangerously accurate for this man.
As his fingers graze my skin, I think his touch feels like sin.
Heady, intoxicating, addictive, I already feel starved when his hands leave mine to let one bracer fall to the floor, only to feel something akin to euphoria return when they return to remove the bracer from my other forearm. His fingers have done nothing less than ungentlemanly and his hands have strayed nowhere unprofessional and yet I wonder who had turned this room into a hothouse.
He looks up through his eyelashes and the angle is just right, hair brushing against the bottom of his ear. I suck in a breath as my fingers ache for him. I want to touch him, to run my hand along his jaw, to pull him up to me, to--
I can’t decide what to do!
The thud of the other bracer hitting the floorboards jolts me out of my reverie. He straightening up and maybe I should--
His hands are on mine again, holding one gently with his thumb pressing down on my palm as the other traces up my arm. My sleeveless cotton shirt provides the perfect access and as he kneads my bicep, dragging the tendons down with his thumb, I become drunk on his hot coal-like touch. I struggle not to flex as he massages the muscle at my elbow and proceed to drag his thumb down the skin of my inner forearm. He captures my eyes again as he repeats the process to my other arm and this time I can’t help the blissful whimper that escapes my lips as my fingers twitch involuntarily.
Then he steps in close, our bodies separated by a scant few inches as his hands go to skim down my waist. Touch me, touch me, touch me, my body sings as his hands languidly decide where they want to be. The man eyes smirk down at me as my expression turns blatantly wanting and his hands, instead of going down, go up and begin massaging my back.
A strangled protesting whine leaves my throat as I stare indignantly up into his eyes. His hands aren’t even under my shirt! I want his hands on my skin, damnit! What had only moments before made my body hum happily now is insufficient and I lose the will to hide it.
The smirk reaches down and tugs the corners of his lips up as his fingers press in and down on my muscles torturously slowly. Circles and swirls, a long press down, a short press out, smoothing and grasping and gasping--
The heat building up south of his hands is increasing drastically as he works through a knot in my side, replacing stiff tendons with fire and coal. I lick my lips. My mouth is parched and he’s water and--
Now he’s working on my hips, smoothing out aches that my body had long since omitted from its repertoire of complaints, and the only thing my mind is dizzily chanting is, lower, Lower, LOWER as my body burns.
But suddenly, as his hands crest the part of my body I want him to go, they’re gone. Dazed and confused, try to communicate that to him but where’d he go damnit?! I look down and wonder, How’d you get down there? I’d been staring at him the entire time!
He stands just as quickly as he’d crouched and I blink owlishly, following his movement up so that my head angles back. I open my mouth to say something, make a demand or protest, but my words evaporate like water in a hot spring. Up I stare at his face as he gives me a predatory, mischievous, rakish smirk. I think I need to pee.
Into my arms leather is pressed--my jacket and bracers, I dimly realize--as he leans in close, mouth next to my ear and breathes, “Paid in full.”
How I end up outside the man’s door, I don’t remember. I just stand there, staring at the wooden object dazedly, body flaming with a kaleidoscope of jumbled emotion. Only the sound of other people coming around the hallway is enough to shake me awake.
As if pursued by a pack of wild bears, I half-bolt to the next door over--the correct door--opening it quickly and slamming it behind me.
“Hey, where’ve you been, kid?” Varric asks by way of greeting from his place at the writing desk. I stride across the room, heading for the obviously unoccupied bed. “Thought you’d beat me here,” he says as he turns around, “I brought your bag--Maker’s breath! Should I change your nickname to Sunshine?”
Wordlessly, I chuck a bracer at his head as he laughs. He ducks before it can hit him and, for whatever reason, he starts to laugh even harder. “I’m going to take a bath,” I growl at him as I dump my things on the bed and turn to head out the door.
“Maybe you should ask someone to keep company,” comes Varric’s teasing.
I spin on my heel, picking up the first object within reach--which just so happens to be a leather-bound compilation of all of the Swords and Shields chapters the dwarf has written thus far--and hurling it at the back of his head. There’s a shout as it hits him with an audible THWACK. I close the door behind me as he yells at me about injustice, books, and poor old dwarves.