"Hawke," I say, "come here."
Hawke looks at me with such suspicion and for a moment, I can see the family resemblance between him and Junior—which is saying a lot, since the two don't look anything alike.
"Why?"
"I recall you telling me one of the previous complaints from your past dalliances was a lack of attention. I feel like proving that assertion wrong."
He turns to look at me sidelong, eyes wide with wariness.
"...How?"
"Such mistrust! You wound me, Hawke. And here I was, all ready to tell you about how I met Bianca." I motion towards my lovely crossbow that rests on her weapon rack just within easy arm's reach of my seat.
The man actually gasps like Saturnalia had come early.
"Really?"
"Well now I just don't feel like it. Carry on as you were." I sit down and return to my papers, shuffling them in a make-work manner.
"Aww, Varric, I'm sorry. Please tell me? Pretty pretty please?" He closes the distance in a twinkling from one end of the room to the other, kneeling to wrap his arms around me, nuzzling my cheekbone with his nose like some overgrown pup.
"You spoiled my set-up Hawke. Why tell the punchline if the audience doesn't appreciate the build-up?"
"Is there some way I could make it up to you?" he implores, chin nestling into my (magnificent, if I do say so myself) chest hair.
"You're not actually looking to make amends, you're just here for my chest hair, you little liar you," I scuffle his hair, smirking affectionately.
"That too, but I really am sorry."
"Hmm, I suppose you seem contrite enough." I tilt his face up with one hand tucked beneath his chin while scrutinizing his far too innocent expression. "Very well, but you have to do as I say, when I say. Are we clear?"
"Crystal."
"First, close the door. This is a private story. Then pull up a chair, directly in front of me."
He does so, and seats himself close enough our knees touch.
"Now lean forward, and put your forearms on the armrests of my chair."
He gives me that wise-guy "What are you up to?" look, but I just beckon him forward with a hand, never doubting that he'll comply.
Once positioned, I sit back and relax, steeple my fingers, and simply admire him. He's handsome enough, by dwarven or human standards. It's his eyes that are remarkable—I've never seen such eyes. I've described them in the stories to be the color of a good whiskey, and in some respects that's accurate; I find them to be intoxicating in a similar manner—pretty and smooth at a first glance, but then the impact hits you hard when you aren't expecting it—a punch wrapped up in a velvet glove that leaves you wondering what just happened. Fitting, for a rogue. But it's more than that. There's a gleam, almost a glow that the word "fire" just doesn't come close to. He's got so much energy wrapped up in that lean frame of his, it leaks out—in his movements, in his words and in his smile.
"If this is one of those stories told in body language, I gotta admit I'm sadly not up to date on my linguistic skills, Varric." Hawke smirks.
I smirk right back. The smart mouthed brat just gave me the opening I was waiting for. Patience was never one of his virtues but it sure as the Stone was one of mine. The difference in a suspenseful plot and a droning rendition is all in the timing, as Hawke was about to find out.
"Don't fret yourself Hawke. You won't have any trouble understanding me." I shake my head, indulging him in a last moment of rest.
"You know how much work goes into caring for something as complicated as an automated crossbow?" I ask, taking off my gloves, one fingertip at a time.
Hawke raises an eyebrow, watching my hands. I can see him putting two and two together, and there's an edge of anticipation in his manner as he plays along with me. "How much?" he asks.
I chuckle. "About as much as managing a high-maintenance relationship with someone like you." I stroke a few fingers along the underside of his jaw, just light enough to tickle.
"I get the feeling you're trying to tell me something here, Varric," he drawls, unaffected by my precursory attentions. Which is fine. I'll have him burning before long.
"There's no other way I'd want it, Garrett. You keep it interesting, even when you're just having some down time. This," I wave a hand at yet more Merchant Guild forms piled across the table in stacks as strictly regulated as their policies on red tape, "is just the bland everyday drudgery that brings out the contrast in the fun. Makes us appreciate the good stuff in life."
"I don't do any of that dull stuff and I appreciate the good stuff just fine."
"Oh I'm sure you appreciate a bit of contrast from time to time, Hawke. You're a man made of contrasts and contradictions," I lean in and casually flick open his belt buckle, working a hand up and under his shirt, "it's in your nature."
"Mm-hmm," Hawke swallows visibly. He's getting much more interested now. "So what's this got to do with Bianca?"
"You ever notice how few crossbows you see out here in the Free Marches, Hawke?" I tuck a few errant strands of hair behind his ear, letting the touch linger long enough to turn it into a caress.
"Bianca's one of a kind, certainly."
"Oh absolutely. But have you seen a crossbow of any other kind in Kirkwall? Any at all?"
"Nnnnnnope. Can't say that I have." At this point I'm massaging and running my hands across his shoulders, switching between the texture of callused fingers and soft pads. He's starting to need to work a little at listening to my minstrelsy instead of leaning into my ministrations.
"That's because Marchers don't appreciate the power and mechanical elegance of dwarven ingenuity. They even tried to ban them! Can you believe that?" I nip at the sensitive flesh just behind the point of his jaw and draw a slow line of love bites down the slope of his neck. A very light tremor runs through him, so light I wouldn't have noticed if I wasn't touching him. I'm feeling awfully smug at this point, knowing I've got him right where I want him.
His head dips forward as he says, "No..."
"You sound a bit breathless Hawke. Do you need me to stop so you can step outside for a minute?" I smile sweetly.
"No, I'm good," He knows I know that he knows exactly what I'm doing to him and is giving me his most amused glare.
It's a shame his shirt and gloves are still on, the man's got the most sensitive arms and hands. But stay on they will, for the duration of the story at least. Heh.
"There are those who claim it takes no skill to operate a crossbow, that any clod with one hand's worth of fingers can shoot one. And that's true." I lean back and look him in the eye.
"I disagree," Hawke says. "you just make it look easy."
Oh, how sweet. I reward his compliment with a kiss, smiling all the while. It's nice that he appreciates a dwarf's talents. Bianca's always had a soft spot for him and he treats her with the respect due to a lady of her calibre.
I continue. "Any clod can operate a weapon but it takes skill to wield one effectively and then use it to paint a swath of destruction across a battlefield."
"And it takes a charmingly suave and handsome dwarf with a quick tongue and an even quicker mind to narrate it so prettily." Hawke bats his eyes at me.
Tsk. Can't have him trying to derail me from the story, now can we? I laugh to myself when he jerks in surprise once he feels where my hand has arrived. Really, you'd think the man would expect it, seeing how he and I compete for points over who's got the deftest fingers when it comes to picking pockets. And his trousers are nowhere near as difficult to get a hand into as his various pouches and pockets are. It's a bit surprising he doesn't trap his pants too, but such as it is, and I'll be a nug's uncle if I don't take advantage of it. A twist and roll of the fingers that drag the calluses down his length pulls a surprised groan of pleasure out of Hawke before he can clamp down on it. Not to be deterred, I continue—gotta keep my wrists in good working condition, you know. All this activity has Hawke biting his lip, eyes closed, moving in time with me. Another hard, slow press of the fingers gets me a soft moan. Thing about Hawke is, he vacillates between incoherence and lucidity when it comes to conversation when we're getting down and dirty. It does wonders for the ego when the only coherent word he can remember how to say is my name. Ah, but the things he can communicate with just that one word...
"You're being distracting, Hawke," I tease, and it's true even if it's my own thoughts he's doing it in.
His eyes open and I can see him gathering focus to string together an apology, so I squeeze. I can see his eyes rolling up before he shuts them and I feel him shuddering as his breathing halts for a moment, mouth agape. It'll take him longer to get his head back on straight with the added lust swirling about his brain, which makes him a better listener.
"Now where was I?" I muse as I trail my fingers in small provocative circles along his navel, all the pressure and friction from earlier replaced with light, tickling touches with just enough presence to keep him enflamed.
"Varric." Ooh, what a groan.
"No, I'm sure it was something to do with skilled handiwork..." I give him a quick tug, just to see him buck, "Ah yes, I remember now. As you know, I was born up here. Kirkwall's been my hometown ever since I first set foot outside my mother's womb. And as you've astutely observed, there aren't many crossbow wielders or merchants about. Certainly isn't traditional among the dwarven nobility. Mother was flat out shocked when she first found out about my new weapons training. But, being the younger son of an affluent member of the Dwarven Merchants' Guild tends to leave one with a lot of free time and not a lot of interesting things to do with it. So, I found my own fun."
I draw these last words out in time with a few slow, languid strokes just tight enough to encourage Hawke to start rolling his hips in tandem, trying desperately to muffle those pretty little sounds he makes that tell me just how good it feels. My armrests creak under the pressure Hawke's fingers are exerting. He's close to the edge now. I stop, and give him a moment to breathe. His eyes slowly refocus on me as his breathing creeps back from jagged to just heavy.
Feeling a little devilish, I lean forward and murmur "Ready for more?" just close enough to brush up against the shell of his ear. Got a big jolt out of him that time. The man's all tied up and tense, right back on the edge. I start tracing patterns up and down his neck on one side with a hand, and keep my lips pressed against the other side to feel his pulse.
Hawke presses his face into the lapel of my duster, trying to bury the little begging noise he's making, full of want and need and lust, even as his back arches up into my touch.
"I can wait, if you need a moment, Hawke." I'm still feeling a strong sense of mischief twisting together with my own arousal, enough to egg me on to trace the curve of his ear with my tongue. I can feel Hawke sucking in a hurried breath, and when I bite down on his ear, his entire body surges forward in response even as he tries to stay in position.
"Fuuuuuuuuck...you...Varric," He manages to say between breaths. "You tease."
Aha, and we're coming along quite nicely. Or at least the frustration and frenzied desire are; Hawke, not for a while yet. This'll mean we'll be busy for a much longer time tonight. But I'm feeling randy, and we can afford to sleep through tomorrow morning.
"On my list of possibilities for later." I say airily with another smile before drawing him into a kiss and a bit of tongue wrangling. The best kind of distraction when working an operation is one that the target wants to be distracted with. As such, Hawke's too far gone to notice my delicate toying with uncorking a vial of oil one-handed. Tipping the glass sideways, I drip the whole thing onto my hand, tilting it this way and that for a good coating before quietly discarding the vial. I slide the other unoiled hand up into his hair, grabbing a handful and locking him into the kiss as I slide the oiled hand into his pants (he's going to be making a mess in them later anyway, so why shouldn't I?).
Hawke jerks back and moans into the kiss, torn between the two points of stimulation. He gets real pliant in these moments where he's just shaking with sensation, so I'm more than happy to lave the soft insides of his mouth with only a token contesting effort from Hawke.
"So you can imagine," I pull back and continue on chatting in my the-in-laws-are-over-for-tea-and-isn't-it-just-delightful tone of voice, as if I hadn't just been kissing the stupefied man in front of me, "that it was easy for me to start chatting it up with one of the other dwarves that aren't considered eminent enough to sit in on the meetings, but are required to show up anyway, much as I was. That's how I met Dirkson, who piqued—" I slid my wandering fingers farther back, spreading the slick like a bribe, "—my interest in the idea of a compact form of ranged fighting."
Hawke's eyes are closed at this point, too rattled to respond beyond a soft hum as he tilts forward to sit up on his hamstrings, granting me better back room access.
"Still listening Hawke?"
"Mm-hm." A slight nod.
"Alright then, tell me what I just said," I draw a soft hiss from him as I press a finger inside, "in detail."
"Bastard..." he hisses.
"I've got all night if you need time to collect your thoughts Hawke," I say merrily, knowing he knows that the longer he takes, the less likely he is to have any thoughts left at all, "I'm perfectly content to just sit and twiddle my fingers."
And of course I'm perfectly happy to demonstrate said twiddling-with emphasis on the plural of fingers, among other things.
"You...had a lot of free...time, on your hands and talked to others who were stuck..." he swallowed hard as I brushed just shy of his sweet spot, "...stuck at the Guild...meetings."
"And the name of the fellow I met?" I encouraged him.
"I..."
"Having trouble recalling? Here, let me give you a hint." I withdrew the one finger and added a second one before continuing my—snrk—twiddling.
"That'snotahint," Hawke said in a breathy rush, arching his head back as far as my grip on his hair will allow him, his arms straight and taut.
"It is, if you think about what does this sort of motion," I made a series of short thrusts with my fingers.
Hawke groans loudly in response, and bucks back against my hand, nearly undone.
I still my hand, to keep from ending our little tale too early. "Tsk tsk, Hawke, where did your mind go, to elicit such a reaction?" Hm. That came out a bit huskier than I intended. But fuck, he puts up an excellent show.
"Your pants." He manages to rasp.
I snicker, leaning forward to have a taste of his enticingly exposed neck.
"Fuh..."
Hah. He can't even remember how to swear!
"Still waiting to hear the man's name, Hawke."
"Ah...Varric..."
"No, I'm Varric. But I can understand if you forgot that just now." I worry his throat with my teeth, working my way to the juncture where his neck meets his shoulder.
"Well, Hawke?" I pause, simply breathing over the sensitive skin.
"Duh...Dirk! Dirksen!" Hawke shivers, trying to shy away, even while his hands remain locked on the armrests.
"Dirkson, Hawke. Close..."
I pull hard, curling my fingers inside him like my hand's wrapped around a trigger, but I don't fire. Hawke, to his credit, doesn't utter a sound. There's a staggered huff, his mouth lax and open, eyes closed, spine arching up like a compound bow, his whole body trembling from the strain. Then he flexes, uncurling his spine, turning to look at me with my favorite, fiercely single-minded "I'll get you for that, you bastard" look.
"...but not close enough."
I love it when he snaps like that. Anyone else I know would've simply been reduced to a gibbering wreck begging for release, and I know a lot of people. But not Garrett. Head sunk low between his shoulders, eyes half-lidded, pupils dilated, lower teeth bared as he breathes through his mouth in forcibly slowed pants, it never ceases to remind me of a big predatory cat caught in the midday heat. He never looks like that for anyone else. Knowing that it's me that brings this out in him, I take a certain amount of pride in my handiwork. It's a similar sensation to feeling Bianca's firing mechanisms go off, a satisfying impact that resonates through me, watching that shift from mind-numbing pleasure to sudden, intense focus. The man becomes the embodiment of sexual tension, every muscle taut with frustration and lust.
I can tell he wants to lean forward, and if I let him get close, it'll be a savage kiss, full of teeth and lovebites and deliciously frantic, friction-filled grappling. But neither he nor I are done with the build up for the rising action just yet; there's no need to rush to the climax, after all.
"Now now, Hawke, remember you promised to do what I said?" I've got one finger pressed against his lips in censure, perversely amused that this is all it takes to keep in check the unyielding physical sensations that are riding him roughshod, demanding every last ounce of his control.
He gives me a lovely deep growl from the back of his throat while looking up at me through his lashes. Void take me if I lie when I say it goes right through me like a bowstring's shiver after a perfect shot.
I bring my face right up to his, separated only by that one finger I haven't moved from his mouth. "Behave, Hawke," I purr, knowing he can just taste me on those exhaled words, can feel my breath on him as surely as I can feel his. Another crank to the mechanisms to tighten him up.
His eyes flicker as he lets go another too-short breath, but he leans back.
I lean back as well, hands steepled in self-satisfaction. The man won't be calming down even when I'm not touching him now.
To prove my point, Hawke gives a gruff, angry growl at the loss of contact. But he doesn't move.
I chuckle. This is a game we both love to play, even if he's chomping at the bit to fuck me senseless while I play hard to get. So I string him along a bit more, to see how long he can wait before he breaks.
"So, Dirkson introduces me to a whole new way of fighting, beyond the traditional dwarven method of run-in-and-pummel-the-other-bastard-into-a-pulp. It was something I could get behind,"—Hawke just twitches, and glares—"using poisons, grenades, a pin-point precision shot to the head from the shadows, you know. My usual, underhanded tactics." There's nothing I can do to stop the oh-so-smug, fit to crack grin on my face. He loves listening to me talk, in more ways than one.
"It was some time after that he introduced me to Gerav, who was looking for an investor. Those poor bastards in Orzammar don't know what they missed when they simply lumped him in with the rest of the casteless surfacers. The man is brilliant. At the time he was busy trying to build an automated ballista launcher, to fire at the same rate a longbowman could, or faster. I talked him into scaling it down into a crossbow, more portable, and with better handling," I pause as he takes a slow breath, stretching his shoulders back while trying to keep it together. I can't help but laugh inwardly. He's never going to be able to outwait me.
"So he brought me a lovely little prototype that I got attached to immediately. She wasn't as prettied up as she is now, but it was all there—" I raise my hands to illustrate the lines I knew so well, "—the sleek curves, the solid strength...the tension." I drop one hand while raising the other to stroke Hawke's cheek.
"Varric." Hawke can roll those r's in a way that'd make Choir Boy proud. Or blush. "Tais-toi et baise-moi. Maintenant." Shut up and fuck me. Now.
Oh, and he cheats! There's just something so dirty about a Fereldan speaking Orlesian, it sends shivers down my spine and blood to my nether regions.
"Hawke, I'm shocked. Absolutely shocked, to hear such things issuing forth from your lips. Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?"
"Doesn't matter, since you're not my mother, and I want to kiss you."
And I'm perfectly happy to oblige, since storytime is over, and a good storyteller always knows when to give his audience what he wants and when to withhold it. When we finally pull away from the kiss, he's pinned my hands down to the arm rests, with a feral grin that just screams vengeance-is-nigh-and-you-shall-pay-for-that-most-dearly.
"My turn," he says, coupled with a look that contains far more craftiness and patience than I normally would credit him for in these circumstances, "and I have just the story in mind for you, my dear dwarf..." I can't keep from jerking at the sensation of his thigh coming up to press between my legs while he mouths one of my earrings.
"A very long story."
A/N: Many thanks to Easternviolet for betaing! If you haven't already, I strongly suggest going to read her lovely short story "Pilgrimage". This whole little one-shot idea sprouted up from her bearskin scene. :3 And thanks to the Monkeys over at the CMDA forums for their kind words of encouragement! This was my first try at smut-writing, and I think it turned out well, probably from exposure to all the good smut my fellow Monkeys write. XD Thanks for reading! (And reviewing, if you're so inclined. :D)