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“They are wrong about her, you know. She’s not blessed. She’s bleeding fade-touched starkers.”
“I heard that!”
“That’s because you’re hiding behind the same rock as me— oh pants, oh pants oh pantsohshiiiiiiiite—”
“Crap!”
“Uhmph!”
“Is everyone alright?”
“Do we still have to fight the bleeding dragon?”
“You’re not giving up already, are you?”
“Yes!”
Bull’s laughter echoed as he helped the Inquisitor back to her feet. He looked down at the slim woman and grinned, eyes blazing with the light of a good battle. “How about you, katari? Ready to give up?”
She looked up at him and thought about the depths of stupidity she’d dived to in the name of a man. She’d gone pretty deep in the past, but probably never as deep at this. She could blame her mother for it— she’d been raised hearing about how the Keeper’s daughter had caught the eye of their healer by attempting to ride two halla at once. It had been impressive and ultimately ended in two broken arms.
Plan A never really worked for the women in her clan, but Plan “Fuck It, Why Not?” almost always did.
It had taken them days to just ‘happen’ upon another dragon, too. Ever since they’d watched a Visnomer take on a giant at the storm coast, she’d made it her mission to find another, (maybe smaller? She wasn’t totally suicidal,) dragon. It wasn’t really that she could help herself. Bull had been something else in his excitement after the fight, catching her up and spinning her around in a dizzying rush.
“Did you see that?!” he’d asked, eyes wild with an emotion she couldn’t name but wanted to taste. She’d grinned savagely back at him, wanting nothing more than to bite at his lip and see if she could tempt him into sharing some of that passion. “That. Was. Awesome.”
Since then, he’d fucked three kitchen maids and a stablehand, brushed off two of her better lines, and flirted with Dorian.
Luck or the old god of lost causes had helped her find this dragon, and she’d be damned before she gave up the chance to kill it for him.
She batted away the massive paw he was waving in front of her face and tossed her sweat soaked hair back, stooping to scoop up her staff. “Try not to fall down so much this time,” she said, gathering her energy until the air crackled around her and caught on the edges of her smile. In his eyes, she could see she looked like a wild thing, spattered with gore and sparking. “It takes forever to get you back up.”
She winked and spun around, racing back toward the howling beast, with him chasing after her, his laughter nipping at her heels.
Sera looked at Varric. “If we kill them do we still have to kill the dragon?”
***
“Go, go, gooh craaaaaap—”
She landed in a clump of bushes, out of breath and barely sure which end was up when she was hit with several hundred pounds of armored, sweating qunari flesh. Iron Bull slammed into her like his namesake, sending both of them tumbling further down the slight incline. She barely managed to thrust away her staff, keeping them both from ending up a frozen monument to how far a woman was willing to go to catch herself a man, and she wasn’t sure where his sword ended up except that she heard a dull clang and Sera take the time to curse more specifically at him.
They came to a gradual stop, her leg twisted under his hips, robes caught on some part of his armor, (how was that even possible, it wasn’t like he wore that much to start with,) and her cheek pressed firmly against the painted muscle of his shoulder. She felt, in a distant, muzzy sort of way, she should probably move her face before it melted, or worse, scarred, but the world was still spinning around her and she wasn’t entirely sure which way ‘away’ was.
“I think we’re getting our asses kicked, Boss” Bull observed, thoughtfully, his head twisted uncomfortably to the side. It gave him a nice view straight down her cleavage, but it was also the result of having one of his horns lodged into what felt like six inches of rock.
“Noooo,” she said, flapping a hand at his chest as if to wave the very idea away. “We’re definitely winning.” She tried to untangle her legs and ended up more firmly wrapped around him.
“Might not want to move around so much, there,” he advised her as certain parts of him started to respond to her wiggling. “I’m only mostly dead.”
“What? Oh. Oh!” She gave a startled squirm that he had to admit felt fantastic, even if it made the rest of him feel worse by comparison. He groaned.
“Do we have a plan here?” he asked.
“I don’t know, getting drunk and hoping that works, I guess?” she said, thoughtfully.
He tensed his shoulders and braced himself, pulling his horn free. Shaking his head once, he peered down at her. “What?” he asked.
“Oh! Dragon plan,” she said, blinking a few times until some of the fog cleared. “Hit it with things until it dies?”
He grinned and set his feet beneath them, standing up and taking her with him. “That’s my second favorite plan,” he said, setting her on her feet.
She was halfway to retrieving her staff before it occurred to her to ask what his favorite plan was. She trotted after him to catch up, only to be hit by Sera as she was flung back at them.