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I saw Anders with his hair down today. I suppose he’d just bathed, as it was wet and plastered to his neck, looking a shade darker than normal, brown instead of dirty blond. I didn’t expect that it would have such an impact, seeing how long it was, seeing it sticking to his skin.
My thoughts get away from me.
Does it look like that when it’s humid? When he’s sweating? Does he take it down when he sleeps? When he’s undressing? Could I push it away and kiss the back of his neck? His neck is always bare; why am I so attracted to it now that it’s not?
I’m staring—I think that I’m looking at him the way he looks at me, and now it’s not just questioning and curiosity but warmth pouring down my spine and gooseflesh raising on my arms. It comes in a flood. It wasn’t a matter of admitting so much as one of understanding and pushing through the bramble and undergrowth to stumble, clumsy and out of practice, into clarity. Now it’s no longer a question of attraction—it’s there, it’s just been buried under the misconception that I was too broken for it to be of any consequence.
My mouth is dry because my lips are parted and he’s looking at me with one eyebrow cocked. He winks, and I’m walking away. Not because I’m embarrassed, not because I’m shy, but because I am flattened by the speed of my pulse and the intensity of my desire. I want to be alone with my thoughts, but I can feel them on my lips and the tips of my fingers.
Suddenly I’m thankful for my claustrophobic room with its high windows and latching door, because I need to be alone with myself, with the cloying filth in my head, to decide what it is that I want from him, and whether or not it’s the same thing he wants from me.
It’s immediate; it’s physically mechanical like nocking an arrow, and I know what I want from him. I want to feel small in his hands, and I bet I would. He’s taller, thicker, and now it’s not his neck that I’m daydreaming about, but his fingers—on my ears, on my throat, in my mouth.
Part of me is telling me to stop unbuckling my armor and go downstairs to return that wink. But I’m fickle and nervous, so I’m miming it instead, tilting back my head, and sliding my own fingers between my lips. I think about what it would be like to kiss that scruffy chin. I wonder if he’d smell like elfroot and what he’d call me. Would he say “Theron,” or would he smirk and say “Warden-Commander” as if it were some great, private joke? I’m wishing I would have taken the chance to go to The Pearl when I was in Denerim, so I wouldn’t feel hopelessly green, so returning his flirtation wouldn’t feel so much like a first time.
Hindsight is always such a smug bastard.