"No, I insist, you're sleeping here tonight, Daisy," Varric said. "It's too late at night for you to be walking back to the alienage on your own, and I'm too drunk to walk you myself at the moment."
"All right," Merrill said meekly. She knew she could take care of herself if she had to, but it probably was for the best if she didn't provoke some sort of anti-mage or anti-elf incident by using her powers against the street gangs that roamed Kirkwall at night. And it was nice that Varric worried about her safety the way he did.
As he'd done often enough over the years since she'd moved to the alienage and first begun attending these nights at the Hanged Man with Hawke and his friends, Varric pulled some extra bedding out of a chest against one wall and spread it out at the foot of his bed. The bed was sized to take two or three big humans, so there was plenty of room for him to sleep at the head and her at the foot, with room left over for more, though only rarely did anyone else stay here – Isabella once, and Hawke twice. The night with Isabella had been fun, the three of them sitting up and talking until the wee hours of the morning, Isabella walking her home afterwards in the beautiful dawn light. Hawke, on the other hand, had merely been passed out both times, too drunk to go home. He seemed quite a grouchy person in the mornings, though Varric told her that was likely due to a hangover.
As she arranged the blankets to her satisfaction – a nest, Isabella had insisted on calling it the time she'd stayed – she wondered what a hangover was like. She didn't think she'd ever had one. She'd gotten drunk here once and only once, and hadn't liked the experience at all, what little she could remember of it, which mainly revolved around how odd everything had seemed and how hard it had been to think. Anders had had several things to say about the inadvisability of mixing alcohol and blood magic, and while the others had spoken sharply to him about it, well... she had to admit a tiny part of her agreed with what he'd said. She hadn't liked how the alcohol had made it so much harder to ignore the seductive voice of the spirit linked to her blood magic, and had carefully stuck to only tiny amounts of small beer and cider ever since.
She yawned and curled up in the blankets. "Good-night, Varric," he murmured sleepily.
"Night, Daisy," he said softly back, and then blew out the candle beside the bed.
Varric woke and muttered an oath as he realized how full his bladder was feeling. Too much to drink the night before. He slipped out of the bed as quietly as he could, padding barefoot to the tiny crude washroom off of the main room of his quarters. Not much of a washroom by dwarven standards, there was no piping here, but at least he was able to make use of a regularly emptied earth closet in private, rather than having to rely on a chamberpot stashed under his bed as most humans did; a foul practise, in his considered opinion, and not exactly conducive to pleasant odours in the bed chamber.
He poured a little water out of a waiting jug into a basin and washed up afterwards, before tipping the dregs down a drain set in one corner of the floor, then returned to the bedroom, noticing in passing the pre-dawn greyness outside the one window set high in the wall of his main room.
"Varric?" Merrill asked sleepily, stirring in her nest of blankets. "Is that you?"
He smiled fondly at the young elf as he climbed back into bed. "Yes, Daisy. I just had to get up for a few minutes. You can go back to sleep if you want, it's early yet."
"I'm awake now anyway," she said, and sat up, crossing her legs. "Or do you mean you want to sleep more?"
He laughed softly. "No, I've slept enough. It's a cold morning though, I'd rather stay all nice and warm in bed for a while."
Merrill nodded, rubbing absently at her thin arms. "I suppose this is a little chilly," she agreed. Her stomach gave a little rumbling gurgle, and she giggled. "Oh! I guess I'm hungry," she exclaimed.
"It's too early to get breakfast," Varric said. "Everything will be closed and locked up tight."
She nodded, then suddenly smiled. "There's the cakes I gave everyone last night," she pointed out, and started searching through the nest of blankets for wherever she'd put hers down.
"So there is," he agreed, looking around, and spotted his on the nightstand beside the bed. "Light the candle, will you?" he asked as he picked it up.
Merrill nodded, and a tiny glow flared into lie at its tip, quickly springing up into a proper flame. She smiled, pleased at herself, as she finally found her own cake, carefully put down off to one side from her blankets so she wouldn't crush it in the night.
Varric took an appreciative sniff of the cake she'd given him. "This looks and smells delicious. You baked them yourself?" he asked, before taking his first bite.
She nodded as unwrapped her own cake. "Yes, it's a recipe we Dalish sometimes make for special celebrations. I haven't had any in years. I thought last night was a good reason to make them. I was a little worried, in case it turned out to be a silly idea and not appropriate for your party."
Varric warmly smiled back at her. "Well, I think it was a wonderful idea, and entirely appropriate. And this is delicious, by the way," he added, before taking a second big bite.
Merrill beamed, then took a bite of her own, closing her eyes in pleasure as she chewed. "Mmmm. I'd forgotten what they taste like. All sweet with honey," she said, and broke off a piece, frowning at it momentarily. "Seeds... I don't remember the seeds," she muttered, brow creasing in perplexity, then shrugged and popped the bit into her mouth, smiling again at the taste. She'd done a good job on these.
Varric finished off his, and leaned comfortably back against the pile of cushions at the head of the bed. "That was a nice breakfast," he said.
Merrill reward him with another beaming smile as she finished off her own. She looked around, wondering what to do with the bit of cloth and ribbon it had been wrapped in.
"Here, give me that," he said, leaning forward and holding out his hand. She passed the things to him, and he put them aside on the nightstand with the wrappings from his own cake before settling back against the cushions again. "So. We didn't have time to talk much last night, did we? How have you been lately?" he asked.
"Oh, the usual," she said, shrugging and looking down at her hands. "Busy with my reading and my work."
Varric grunted, and listened to her talking about her life, things her neighbours had gotten up to or said to her recently, little adventures of her own in the city. For Merrill, even something as mundane as going out to buy groceries was an adventure, fraught with worry and laced with tiny triumphs as she struggled to get by in the foreign environment of a big mixed-race city after spending her entire life up until three years ago living within the communal security of a Dalish clan.
Merrill, he knew, was an intensely lonely person, separated from her clan, largely shunned by the other elves in the alienage. It was only Hawke and his friends – and not even all of them – who ever took the time to visit her, to speak to her, to invite her to spend time with them. And that not nearly often enough, as Hawke himself was leery of her use of blood magic and only rarely took her along on his adventures. Really, of all the group, it was only himself and Isabella that gave much thought to the young elf at all.
Really, the others didn't know what they were missing in not befriending the girl. She was quite sweet, and while almost painfully ignorant of the realities of city life, not to mention astonishingly innocent in many ways, she was also kind, thoughtful, intelligent, and quite charmingly beautiful. Nothing like the beauty of a ripely curvacious dwarven woman, of course, but her slight form had a delicate beauty of its own. And he knew from watching her in battle that she wasn't nearly as fragile as she looked; that was lean muscle under her chain mail, with not an ounce of spare flesh. He'd seen her swinging around her sizable staff with much the same careless ease with which Fenris handled the massive two-handed sword he favoured; elves may not look as obviously strong as a dwarf or human did, but they were certainly considerably stronger than an equivalent sized human would be.
He realized Merrill's conversation had trailed off, and looked up to find her looking at him oddly, head tilted a little to one side, eyes large and almost luminous in the reflected candlelight. He was about to say something – apologize for his own wool-gathering, if nothing else – when she leaned forward, and crawled on hands and knees up the bed toward him, the motion of her narrow shoulders and hips disturbingly lithe.
"Merrill?" he said, and felt his mouth go dry as she smiled slightly, licking her lips.
She sunk down beside him, curling her slender legs up under her, and leaned forward, reached out with one hand. "I've always wondered what this felt like," she said, and then touched her fingers to his chest hair. She brushed upwards, against the grain of it first, startling a surprised gasp out of him, and then stroked her hand the other way, sleeking it back down.
"Merrill!" he yelped in shock as her hand continued down beneath his shirt.
She turned her head and gave him a little smile. "Don't you like it?" she asked curiously.
"That's not the problem," he said. "I think I'd like it just fine. Bianca, on the other hand..." he trailed off.
They both turned and looked at the crossbow, leaning against the wall in one corner, the candlelight gleaming off her well-oiled stock.
"I'll talk to her," Merrill declared, and rose from the bed, taking the few steps necessary to walk over to the crossbow and then hunker down on the floor, balanced on the balls of her bare feet, crossed forearms resting on her knees. He could hear a faint thread of sound, like she was whispering quietly. Then silence, then another murmur. He watched her, fascinated by both her actions and her appearance. Then she giggled and rose to her feet, padding off and coming back with her staff, which she leaned against the wall beside the crossbow, before rejoining him on the bed. "She says it's all right this once," she said complacently. "As long as she has some company while you're busy."
Varric looked suspiciously at her, then at the staff. "Does, err... does your staff have a name?" he asked suspiciously.
Merrill giggled again. "No, of course not, that would be silly! It's just a staff," she said, and then she leaned forward and kissed him, her hands reaching out to run through his chest hair again. She drew back after a moment, licking her lips like a cat after finishing off a plate of cream, a pleased smile on her face, then peered back down at his chest hair again. "I've always wondered about just how much hair you have," she said. "I know Hawke has it all over his chest and his legs and arms, even his back! Is it the same for dwarfs? Elves aren't anywhere near as hairy, you know, apart from on our heads. We have almost none, in fact. I wonder why, sometimes." As she talked she started unbuttoning his clothes, stopping at intervals to reach out and brush her hand over his chest again.
"Wait. How do you know how much hair Hawke has everywhere?" Varric asked suspiciously as she started unlacing his leggings.
"Well he doesn't exactly cover up when he's bathing after a battle," she pointed out. "There was this one time we were out on the Wounded Coast, and he was dripping with gore, and insisted on bathing right then and there. So he stripped down to his smallclothes and just waded right in. I'd never seen so much of a human before. Are they all so big?"
Varric choked. No, he decided, he was not going to try and find out in what sense she was using the word 'big' in relation to Hawke. "Not all," he said, then decided to shut her up by leaning forward and kissing her. That worked remarkably well, keeping them both pleasantly occupied while they co-operated in removing the rest of his clothing.
He frowned at her when he was down to his smallclothes. He was next thing to naked, and she was still fully clothed, covered from neck down to wrists and ankles in her close-fitted suit of mail. He picked up her arm, and nuzzled into the soft skin exposed on the inside bend of her elbow, lapping his tongue against her skin. She tasted good, clean and just slightly salt-sweet. He ran his hand along the armour. "Doesn't this ever come off?" he asked teasingly.
She laughed again. Her laugh, he decided, was even better than her smile. "Of course it does," she said, and and shifted back on the bed, raising her legs and then stretching them out across his lap. "Take care of my leg armour," she told him, and then started unfastening the belts holding on her striped tunic.
He obeyed, undoing all the little straps holding on the two leather plates that covered her from foot to mid-thigh on each leg, carefully putting them aside. Meanwhile she stripped off her scarf and tunic and the leather armour over her forearms, leaving her in just the chain mail garment. It proved to have a row of small fastenings up the front, and once she'd undone those, she slipped it off over her shoulders and down. And then he had an armful of naked, enthusiastic elf, busily running her hands over him to explore just how hairy he was. He smiled, and did the same, exploring her smoothness. There was just the lightest dusting of fine short hairs dusting the folds of her labia, giving them a wonderfully velvety texture, and apart from that and the hair on her head she was smooth everywhere. He felt shaggy as a bear in comparison.
"So do I have as much hair as Hawke?" he couldn't resist asking.
Another giggle. "No! Or maybe it's just that yours isn't so dark, so it doesn't stand out as much. No, I think he has more, your back isn't at all hairy, is it?" she said, squirming around to peer over his shoulder. Which put her breasts in an entirely delightful position relative to him, and he took full advantage, leaning forward and suckling gently on one nipple, reaching up to tease the other one with one hand.
Merrill made a pleased, surprised sound, and a moment later her hands were grasping his head, holding him to her and making needy little sounds that seemed to shoot right down into his groin. If he hadn't been hard as the Stone itself before then, he certainly was now. A few minutes passed in relative silence, the both of them just making occasional sounds of pleasure as they explored each other's reaction to the touch of hands and mouths.
He forced himself to stop after a while, pushing her gently away. "Merrill. Have you... done this before? Made love?" he asked hesitantly. Ancestors knew, he didn't want to hurt her, and if it was her first time...
She smiled shyly, and blushed. It started at her face and went downwards, colouring her right down to the upper curves of her pert little breasts. "Yes. Just once though," she said. "I'm not... very experienced," she admitted hesitantly, then bit at her lower lip. "It hurt, a little. Is it supposed to?"
"It can at first," he reassured her quietly. "And I don't want this to hurt you at all. So we're going to take our time and make sure you enjoy this, all right?"
"Yes," she said, and gave him a heart-stoppingly glorious smile. "I trust you, Varric."
He repositioned the two of them first, her sitting back upright against the pillows, then kissed her for a while, one hand stroking over her body, her arms, teasing her breasts, while the other reached down between her legs, gently stroking the soft velvety folds there for a while before dipping between them, exploring the hotter, moist interior folds. He stroked his fingertips gently back and forth, teasingly, until she was making little frustrated sounds of pleasure, squirming for more.
He moved back, and lifted her buttocks up slightly, sliding a cushion in under her, then lay down her legs. She watched with puzzled interest as he gently spread her apart and leaned in, then ran his tongue up, tasting the salty moisture there. She gasped and shivered, and he smiled, then angled in so that he could tongue at the hard little nub of flesh hiding near the top of her slit. He concentrated on stimulating it for a while, then slid one finger up to probe for the entrance to her vagina, pressing slowly, gently inward, just a little bit at a time.
She was crying out softly and repeatedly now, head thrown back and eyes shut tight. He worked his finger slowly in and out a few times, then withdrew it, and then pressed in again, this time with two fingers. He sat up a little, changing the angle of his hand so that his thumb took over from what his tongue had been doing, his two fingers pressed deeply into her, curling and uncurling as they rubbed gently in and out, as he kissed his way slowly back up her body, pausing to pay special attention to her navel, her nipples, the base of her neck. Her arms rose and locked around his shoulders, her body arching frantically against his as she ground down on his fingers, a string of wordless cries of pleasure bursting forth from here, then a louder cry as she came, muscles clamping down hard on his fingers. To his surprise he came as well, spending himself on her belly. He hadn't realized he was so close to the edge himself.
He retrieved one of the scraps of cloth from the nightstand, and wiped them both clean, dropping it on the floor to dispose of later.
"I liked that," Merril said breathlessly, beaming happily at him, and leaned forward to kiss him again. "What else can we do?"
Varric laughed and pulled her into his arms, cuddling her close. "I'll need a bit of time to recover first, Daisy," he told her. "And then why don't we find out?"
She smiled warmly back at him, then kissed him again.