Sometimes I'll be sitting there minding my own business and be overcome with a sudden raw, visceral need to see Bethany and Garret Hawke in a loose limbed sprawl, slick fingers trailing lazy paths across skin, across slopes and angles and shadows, exploring with the softest of touches places he already knew by heart, places that made her suck in a breath between her teeth, made her head loll back and her skin tingle and flash beneath his hands, beneath his heated gaze and his panted breaths and bean early him until she could barely stay still, until she had to touch him, had to press herself against him, press him back against the wall, tilting his head up and back with her chin to close an open mouthed kiss against his throat, her thoughts crowding on the edge of her tongue until she hardly knew which way was up or down or anything but where he was, where they met and drew apart and where his fingers pressed still against her, and she clutched at him, at those seconds spinning away between her fingers, near breathless with that heady mix of anticipation and desire and need and guilt, always ever guilt. She still couldn't quite bring herself to believe that she could touch him whenever she wanted, that he'd let her, that he wanted her to. That his face darkened with anything but disgust when she reached for him in the dark, hesitant at first but with growing confidence. The knowledge was settling in at the back of her brain more and more every passing day, but.

Still.

Still, sometimes that first guilty flush of shameful desire dragged icy fingers up her throat knuckle by knuckle until she shivered, until she choked, until she had to turn her head to press against the hollow of his throat to hide her eyes because she wanted to, because she could look at her older brother and feel these things, these urges, could feel her eyes slipping down to linger at his collarbone, his lips, the arch of a hip and feel anything but, at worst, a platonic admiration for how well he took care of himself, a distant, cool appraisal, where she only wanted to skip her hands beneath the folds of his shirt and count his ribs with her fingers, her mouth, whisper broken praises against his skin that she'd only ever pressed into her bottom lip with teeth that wanted only to close around his ear, his fingers, his everything.

Her face grew hot, and she turned her cheek to the shadow beneath his chin. He smelled like salt and skin and sex and that musky tang that sat heavy on her tongue and made her hips twitch restlessly until she forced them still.

His hands came up almost despite themselves to settle on her hips. He didn't grip so much as let them fall to line up with the faint pattern of brushing that rose in dusky reminder of what they'd just been doing, what she'd been doing, and she had to repress another shiver that turned sweet at the gentle pressure of fingers up the valleys and peaks of her spine, at the warm pass of his lips against her temple. Then he fell still, motionless except for the steady bellows of his chest against hers until her breathing slowed, steadied to match his, until she pulled back to look him in the eye, and what she saw there nearly made her turn her face from him again, it was too much, too steady and open and too, too much for her to bear. Almost. Because she couldn't be afraid of him, not really. Beneath that small, ringing voice shrill in her head that sounded like anxiety and felt like the first numbing pass of grief was warmth. Was the memory of this same, slow crooked smile peering at her between father's legs, steadying her, giving her something to brace herself against, to shore herself up when all the world trembled breath them.

She settled back on his lap without thought, expecting and finding that hand at her back, keeping her from falling. He still hasn't said a word, not since her sighed her name in the moment of his end. He was waiting for her lead, giving her the time to come to some sort of a decision, as he always had. Her brother was a natural leader, had raised her with a clasped finger around hers in the dark from the time when she was very small and had needed someone to, needed a voice and an arm to tell her what to do, but that time had passed. He let her make the decisions here. He seemed relieved, most times, to fall back against her wishes, let someone else lead, and there was something there, something that she knew was large and cracked and shifting with a restless groan beneath her gaze, something she'd started to notice, to pry out piece by piece in these last days. The first had been when he'd placed his wrists inside the close of her hands, and this look on his face was one other, was something new and something so old it made her chest feel tight. "I'm all right," she told him softly, breath warm against his skin as she shifted in his lap to press back against him. She felt that desire low in her belly but it had cooled somewhat, now, and she only made the smallest of noises when the length of him settled firmly between the v of her legs. He was half-hard, and she could feel him stirring, but he only looked at her and raised a hand to trace the curl if a damp curl against her brow. Bethany leaned into the touch, offering him a reassuring smile that only shook a little. "It still seems a dream," she told his brow, the furrows between where careworn lines carved themselves before her eyes, settling only at the press of her lips there, and here, at the corner of his eye, his cheek, his nose. "I-" She swallowed, hard. These next words were an effort. "I keep expecting all this to be a dream, or a, a mistake." He went still beneath her, but she pressed on, because if she stopped she'd never be able to start again. She couldn't quite look him in the eye. "For you to look at me the way the chantry sisters look whenever they speak of mages. You should. I ought to be ashamed, to bring myself before mother and beg forgiveness but I can't." She dared to look at him, and his eyes, so like father's, and was caught. Held. She could barely find the breath to get the next words out. "I can't, and I can't bring myself to be sorry, either." The words started off small, but grew in strength as she said them, until she was straightening, drawing herself up until her head was nearly even with his, and that didn't matter, never had, because he was looking at her the same way he'd used to look at father, at the sudden crash and fall of thunder before lightning and fire spat out in a wash of color and light, the way, she slowly realized, her always looked at her. "This is true, as real, as vital as the stones beneath our feet, and I can't, I can't bring myself to regret something that makes look at you, at all the tomorrow's with hope, I'm sorry, I-"
Garret's mouth was moving soundlessly. He looked like all the strength had left his limbs. His hands shook as they rose up to cradle her face, and she knew now that that curl in her belly was something much greater than she'd thought it was, thought she was, and fell herself falling without his hand ever once leaving her back, ever once leaving her.