Chapter Text
Alistair falls laughing through the door to his— no, now their— chambers, too tangled in the skirts of her gown to do much more than roll into the fall and try to protect his new bride. Her own laughter wraps around him as they fight the fabric to find one another again, (he’s lifting yet another layer when she spies him and places a kiss on his ear, then another on his cheek when he turns.)
“Maker, whose bright idea was it to wrap brides up in oceans of fabric?” he complains, pushing aside yet more of her gown in a bid to get closer, or at least find a part of her that isn’t… he pauses, runs his hand up, over, and around the bit of her he’s found. Her knee. He has found and fondled her knee, lovingly, right up to the point where he encounters what feels like—
“More fabric?” he asks, incredulously, and ducks his head under her skirt to see a silken garter tied to what appears to be an overlong breastplate made of satin and lace. She pulls him back up by the hair.
“You’re the one who made me a queen,” she reminds him, and he can’t help but smile back at her, chasing her lips as she sprawls back across the acres of silk and satin. (Really, is there any left in his entire kingdom?) He runs his hand up her leg again, but this time finds the dainty bow and pulls, freeing her stocking from the ribbon and pushing his hand up, until it meets firm resistance at the—
“Is this armor?” he asks, breaking the kiss to sit back and stare at her. “I know we’ve been through a lot, but you didn’t need to wear armor to our wedding.”
He has to wait until she stops laughing long enough to give him an explanation, but even after he’s stripped her of it, he fails to see significant difference between her stays and her breastplate.