Author's notes: Hi everyone, thank you so much for reading! I'm so thrilled with the response this little story of mine is getting!
As always, special, heartfelt thanks to my beta, Epiphany sola Gratia!
He had to tell her. Those three little words were burning up inside him, and he had to tell her now. It did not matter if he wasn't prepared, if he would probably just blurt it out and then make an inappropriate joke about it. He needed to tell her.
Where was she?
He located her, on the other side of the fire, kissing Leliana. Okay, so now he just had to get up and…
What?
He looked again. She was kissing Leliana.
He felt his heart sink all the way down to his boots. Had he been so wrong? Did he misread the signs that much? How was that even possible?
He looked in despair as she broke the kiss, then slowly shook her head from side to side, and despite himself he felt a surge of hope at the gesture. Was she denying the bard?
Leliana put a hand on her cheek and spoke softly to her. Kallian nodded wordlessly before getting up and walking to him. Oh… he was not ready for this.
"Sooo… you and Leliana, huh?" he said as soon as she was close enough to hear. He couldn't help himself.
"What? Oh, that… No, it's not… she was just showing me something," she said, sitting next to him.
"Showing you something?" he asked, snorting. "What? What her supper tasted like?"
"Eww!" she exclaimed, pushing him away playfully.
"All right, I'm sorry. It's just… well. I never thought I would see you kiss her, really. What was she showing you?"
She turned her head to look away from him, chewing her lip.
"I really don't want to talk about it."
"Kalli, it's me. What can't you talk to me about?"
She looked back at him, her expression thoughtful.
"She was showing me… how it feels to be kissed when the kiss is not forced on you."
He felt all the blood drained from his face.
"What?" he whispered.
"I guess maybe it's better if you know," she said, sighing deeply. "That day I told you about, my wedding day? It was not the first time Bann Vaughan looked to the alienage to find entertainment for his parties. He had sent someone with an offer for work, once. He was looking for elves to serve food and drinks and we were short on money so I went. There were three of us. They didn't… rape us or anything. Bann Vaughan had us stripped to our smallclothes and we walked around with trays of drinks and food."
She shrugged, as if trying to show it wasn't a big deal. Alistair reached out and took her hand, hoping that she would let him. She did.
"Some of the men… they were groping me, squeezing my ass or my breasts. Some of them kissed me, forcing their tongues in my mouth. Some of them… they wanted me to touch them." She shrugged again, but her lips were trembling. "I was lucky, I guess, most elves that went through this place had it much worse. It was not much worse than what the average tavern wench has to put up with, surely."
"Are you kidding, Kalli? It's… it's horrible!"
"Life is not that bad in the alienage, really," she assured him. "It's just that sometimes you learn some things the hard way. Some of the nobles, those who have power over us… they find us… attractive. Many a young elf learns about… about sex that way. I'm not looking for pity, it's just... I've never touched or been touched… you know… willingly. It's never been… pleasant, really. That's what I was explaining to Leliana. I'm afraid of how it will feel when I kiss y… when I kiss someone I care about. I was afraid that maybe I was… broken… so she showed me."
He squeezed her hand gently, trying to convey his compassion through the simple contact.
"And?" he asked.
She withdrew her hand and turned her head to look into the fire.
"I didn't feel anything," she breathed.
They sat side by side in silence for the rest of the evening, watching the fire. There was nothing else that could be said.
He remembers thinking that maybe he shouldn't tell her.
What kind of future could they really have together? He wasn't even sure of his own future anymore. He had nothing to offer her. Maybe she was just better off not knowing.
The object of his affection sitting beside him by the fire, looking dishevelled and more than a little pissed, interrupted his thoughts.
"Well, we're going to the Deep Roads," she said with a sigh.
She did not like the dwarves. They had a way of talking to her, imposing their will and acting as if everything was due them. She was sometimes halfway into performing whatever task they had asked of her before realizing she had been manipulated into doing so. When he pointed out that all she had to do was say no, she looked at him as if it was the craziest thing she had ever heard.
"He's going to be King," she said, as if that explained everything. Maybe it did.
In front of these pretenders to the throne, he could catch a glimpse of the person she probably used to be. She kept her eyes low, flinching almost unnoticeably when they raised their voices. She couldn't refuse them anything.
In spite of himself, he imagined her standing the same way in front of him and he felt sick.
"You know, in a way, I could be King," he said, careful to keep his tone light, flirty. "Are you going to do anything I want now?"
She burst out laughing and stood up, slapping him on the shoulder.
"Yeah, right! Thanks, I needed that!" She leaned over him and for a second he thought maybe, maybe she was going to kiss him and his heart stopped… but she only kissed his cheek.
"You're cute," she said with a wink, and walked away.
He sat there, slightly stunned, his fingers ghosting over the spot on his cheek she had kissed. His heart was hammering in his chest and his stomach was doing crazy flip-flops.
There was no way he could not tell her.
He was going to tell her, right there in the Deep Roads.
Maybe it was fate, or just oddly fitting, for a Grey Warden to declare his love for another Warden in the Deep Roads. Maybe… probably… it was mostly gross and unromantic. Then again, if he waited for a moment when they were all cleaned up and frolicking in a field of flowers, well he would never say it… would he?
She was cleaning her blades in a kind of very energetic fury. He knew she was enraged with the ever demanding dwarves and with her own inability to stand up to them, with the bloody Deep Roads and with the darkspawn that were always getting in her way. He gently took her weapons from her hands, ignoring her colourful words of protest, and started wiping the gore and blood from her face with a clean cloth. Keeping his hands busy was a good thing.
"So," he said, half-smiling, "all of this time we've spent together… you know, the tragedy, the brushes with death, the constant battles with the whole Blight looming over us… will you miss it, once it's over?"
She groaned, holding still under his ministrations. "Makes me tear up just thinking about it."
Oh, she was in a real bad mood… maybe this wasn't the best of times. Then again, when would be the best of times? When were they not covered in blood and fighting for their lives to satisfy the whims of every single person in this country? Surely, though, there could be better times than this one… She was looking at him. Why was she looking at him? Oh, right, the cloth, he was washing her face. Oh, and the conversation, she was waiting for him to carry on with the conversation.
"There'll be no more running for our lives, no more darkspawn… urgh, no more camping in the middle of nowhere…"
"I like camping," she blurted out. "Camping is the one good thing out of this whole Blight thing. It's… it's nice. Cosy." A small smile played on her lips and she took the cloth from him.
All right, she was warming up. Maybe this was as good as it could get. Time to unleash the full-on, awkward Alistair charm.
"I know it… might sound strange, considering we haven't known each other for very long, but I've come to… care for you… a great deal."
Her lips parted slightly in surprise before slowly curving in an incredulous smile. Surprise, incredulity… huh, not really what he had hoped for.
"I think maybe it's because we've gone through so much together, I don't know… or maybe I'm imagining it. Maybe I'm just fooling myself."
He reached out to her and took her hands in his. The forgotten washcloth fell to the ground. She was staring in his eyes, her gaze hopeful and filled with anticipation. Now he might be new at this, but that looked like a good sign.
"Am I? Fooling myself? Or do you think you might ever… feel the same way about me?"
"I… I think I already do," she whispered softly, as if hoping he wouldn't hear.
"So I fooled you, did I?" he murmured, leaning closer. "Good to know."
He could sense her hesitation, her sharp intake of breath just before their lips met. Then he was kissing her, and after a second she was kissing him back, and nothing mattered but the soft feeling of her mouth against his, the sweet taste of her tongue stroking his own, the sensual sound of her breath coming in short gasps as she tried to breathe without breaking the kiss. It was only the thought that maybe this was all too much and too sudden for her made him reluctantly pull back.
"That… that wasn't too soon, was it?" he said, his voice hoarse.
She looked up at him with a dreamy expression, her fingers gently pressed to her lips.
"Andraste's ass, she was right," she whispered.
Alistair chuckled. "Well that's a… confusing reaction, to say the least. Andraste's ass?" He felt blasphemous just repeating it.
A burst of laughter erupted between her fingers.
"That's just… that's just something Shianni says. Leliana… Leliana was right. She told me that when I would kiss someone I love, I would feel it."
He felt as if his heart was going to burst out of his chest. He knew he must be grinning like a fool, but he didn't care.
"Someone you love?"
Her eyes widened and she clasped her whole hand over her mouth. "Damn it! I mean… I mean care about… you know, casually… care…" She shrugged. She actually shrugged.
He chuckled softly, gently pulling her hand away from her mouth and framing her face with his hands.
"I love you." There. No room for misinterpretation.
Her whole face lit up. "Yes?"
"Oh, yes," he said, nodding solemnly.
"But… but I'm sticky and dirty and disgusting and I probably have darkspawn bits in my hair…"
"You don't," he assured her. "… and I don't care. Maker's breath, but you're beautiful. I'm a lucky man." He lovingly ran his thumbs across her cheeks and she sighed in delight. "So how was that kiss? Was it… agreeable?"
She made an expression like she was thinking it over, biting her lower lip. "I don't know. I need more testing to be sure."
"Well I'll have to arrange that, then, won't I?" he said, laughing. She lifted her eyebrows in mocked surprise before smacking him on the forehead with her palm. She had taken a habit of doing this every time she felt he was being particularly daft and needed some help making obvious things fit into his head.
"Kiss me again now, you stupid man," she ordered, and he was all too happy to comply.
She was always kissing him.
She would jump into his arms after a successful fight, still all covered in blood (not that he cared… much). She would tug at his hand when they were walking and she felt bored. She would come to him before retiring for the night, smiling her little lopsided smile. It was always, always to kiss him.
The kisses were evolving, too. They were less and less chaste, more and more insistent. It felt like he could never kiss her enough. Every time she pulled back, she would look at him with stars in her eyes and that dreamy, slightly amazed expression on her face that made his heart skip a beat. Kissing her was unbelievable, better than anything he could have imagined. It was pure bliss.
It was sheer torture.
Every time their lips parted and she disentangled her hands from his hair, turning away with a last lingering look and a soft, satisfied sigh, she left him achingly hard, yearning for her with an urgency that left him gasping for breath. He might be a gentleman, but he was still a man, a man in love, and a man with a young, vigorous body unaccustomed to such teasing.
The worst part of it was that, since they were in the Deep Roads, everyone agreed that pitching tents each night and taking them down in the morning was an unnecessary loss of time. He didn't even have the semi-privacy of his tent to take care of things by himself.
Every night, as he lay awake trying not to think of her lips on his, he only had to turn his head to the side to see her asleep only a couple of feet from him, almost within reach, and it was driving him crazy. Turning his back on her was no help at all. His dreams were full of her, smiling, kissing, stripping, touching. He was awakened one night by the violence of his orgasm, ejaculating in his pants without even having touched himself. The nights when nightmares of the Archdemon plagued him were almost a welcome relief.
Yet each time she came to him smiling, he would seek her lips relentlessly, revelling in her sighs of contentment. He was torturing himself, but it was the sweetest kind of torture.