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“Be honest Hawke, is there anything better than this? Tell me this ship isn’t the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen in your miserable life.”
Marian hums thoughtfully, the sun warmed wood pressing against her back bordering on too hot for comfort, as she gazes up into the rigging. The ropes creak, and the sails stand stark white, like great billowing clouds, against the seemingly endless blue of the sky above them, snapping as they catch the wind and casting strange shadows over the deck. It was beautiful, in it’s own way, she supposed. Though she still couldn’t quite wrap her head around the rapturous look in Isabela’s eyes every time she took in her new domain.
“It just looks like a boat to me,” she says with a shrug, mostly because, well, it was true, and a little just to be contrary for the flush of annoyance it always seems to bring to Isabela’s cheeks.
“Pah!” she huffs with disapproval. “You Fereldans wouldn’t recognize a good ship if it flipped you ass over tits and spanked you.”
Marian stifles a snort. “How colorful.”
Isabela grins in reply, teeth a dazzling slash of white against her dark skin, growing darker still and gaining constellations of new freckles with every new day spent in the sun.
“Well it’s true,” she says. “I mean just look at her. She’s marvelous. Even a blind man could find it in himself to appreciate a thing of such tremendous beauty.”
Marian resists the urge to roll her eyes. They’d been at sea nearly a month – a month since leaving Kirkwall in barely more than smoldering ruins, a month of running, a month of guilty conscience to eat away at everything that makes her herself (not that she spends much time thinking of about it of course) – and nearly every day had been accompanied by some variation of this same speech. However, Marian had to admit, it was much easier to put up with Isabela’s seemingly incessant need to wax poetic about their getaway ship than the thoughts rattling around in her own head. She shivers, suddenly cold despite the heat of the day, and shakes her head once to cover it up.
“The way you talk, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think you liked this ship more than me,” she teases.
“Well – ”
“Isabela!”
“Turn up with a taffrail half as sexy as hers is, sweet thing, and then maybe we’ll talk.”
“Ha ha,” Marian drawls, trying for indignation despite the grin that tugs at the corners of her mouth. Isabela pouts and reaches out to tweak the closest part of Marian she can reach, which ends up being her ear. She snickers when Marian jerks away.
“Oh don’t be jealous, Hawke,” Isabela says, shooting Marian a wink and giving the wheel in her hands a slight jerk to the right. “You know your aft end will always be my favorite.”
When Marian still refuses to answer, Isabela turns to pouting.
“Come on, give us a kiss and make up,” she clucks, tilting her head to the side, obviously waiting. Marian thinks briefly about leaving her in the lurch altogether, Maker knows she deserves it, but in the end the thought of Isabela’s lips on hers is simply too much temptation to ignore. She pushes off from her perch and closes the distance between them on still wobbling feet, the deck rolling beneath her. Isabela’s arm reaches out to steady her, grabbing her about the waist and hauling her in close enough that the entire line of their bodies press together invitingly.
“I think having a ship under your command again has gone to your head,” Marian tells her after she drops a quick kiss to Isabela’s waiting lips, tasting salt. “I’m not sure I like it.”
Isabela hums at her disinterestedly, chasing her mouth for another, longer kiss.
“Careful,” Isabela warns, smiling into the kiss. “I could have your smalls strung up the jackstaff for talk like that.”
“Hmm, too bad you wasted that punishment last Tuesday on a lark.”
Isabela lets out a loud cackle at the memory, tossing her head back and leaving her long neck exposed to Marian’s wandering mouth. She only gets a quick nip in before Isabela is nudging her back out of the way.
“I could arrange for a flogging instead,” she suggests, a wicked twinkle in her eyes. Marian just laughs.
“You insatiable tart,” she says through a grin. “And if I were to contest such unfair treatment?”
Isabela’s arm around her tightens, the hand resting on her hip moves and gives her a light tap on the rump, making Marian jump and Isabela smirk.
“Well, now, that could be considered mutiny,” Isabela replies, mouthing at the spot on Marian’s jaw just below her ear well known to make the mage weak in the knees. She is rewarded with a barely bitten off a moan, and grins her victory into Marian’s neck. “And as your Captain, I couldn’t possibly condone such behavior.”
Ignoring the half-baked threat, and the current state of her breathing, Marian wraps her arms more firmly around Isabela’s waist. A pleasant, telltale warmth blooms bright in her chest and makes her head feel lighter than air. Almost like magic, she thinks distractedly; that first moment when she opens herself up to the Fade and feels, for just the barest flash of a second, invincible. It isn’t magic though, or at least, not any magic she’s called from the Fade or anywhere else. It’s love, in its most pure and undiluted form; a feeling she has yet to take for granted when it comes from Isabela. Odd that after so many years of fighting it – fighting for it – hanging on tooth and nail for every scrap, it seems to come so easily now.
“My Captain,” she muses, cocking her head with an easy smile. A ray of late afternoon sun lands across Isabela’s face, turning her eyes molten. “You know, that I do like the sound of.”