Life was hard, but quite bearable, really.
We had saved Arl Eamon from the Loghain's poison and I may have been so ecstatic about the whole thing – being in the presence of Andraste's ashes, watching my Hero get the final blow on the High Dragon, saving the man who had repaired my mother's necklace – that I may have swooped down and kissed her right in front of Teagan, Isolde, Eamon, Leliana (who giggled, the brat), Wynne, and even Connor. Aliara had calmly been telling Teagan it was, "No big deal," or something equally stupid and really, had she been dropped on her fool head when she was young? "No big deal, I eat cults and High Dragons every day! Delicious and nutritious!"
So Aliara was blushing furiously and Wynne was snorting behind her hand; Leliana had to hold the bedpost to stay standing and the rest were just gobsmacked. Oh Maker, Irving – First Enchanter Irving – was there, too, smirking like a demon. Connor asked if we were married and I was choking again and Aliara was glaring at me but smiling at the boy and saying something like, "We're a bit busy for that right now,"and glaring at me again and Eamon was laughing and saying it was clear that the Blight had better get a move on and hide so we could get married or she'd take it and me over her knee.
That thought was equal parts true, frighteningly so, and hot. Maker, see what you did? All those years of repression and now I'm a grown man looking forward to a spanking.
Leliana was on the floor now, clutching her sides, and Wynne was crying from laughing so hard, holding onto Irving's arm as he guffawed along with her and I REALLY needed to work on that brain to mouth thing and my Hero, Warden, Love agreed through the hand covering her half-mortified, half-laughing face. Two dimples, Maker, save me!
Eamon hugged me after everyone had gone, even Aliara, because she'd pushed me into his study with a soft smile, telling me to show him the necklace. I had lost Duncan and my heart still hurt and cried out for Loghain to pay, but I had Eamon – had never lost him – and her and that was so much that I still pray to the Maker to thank him, every day. I wasn't that religious when I lived day in and day out with the required prayers of the Chantry because I hadn't had all this love to be so ridiculously grateful for.
She asked me as we were enjoying a night's rest in the castle – no, perverts, not that kind of enjoying; I am a gentleman and a coward – if everything had gone well with the Arl. Knowing that she cared was going to make my heart fall out of my chest, so I made some witty comment about her being better glue than what was holding my mother's necklace together and her happy eyes just begged me to kiss her. Forced me, I tell you.
I brushed some of her hair off of her face and the look she was giving me. Wow. I was hoping my pants were just cruelly magicked to shrink and not that I was, uh, reacting, but unless she could detect magic now, well, she seemed to notice. Or at least her eyes were still looking at me like that, but her mouth was twisting in a sweetly wicked way, both dimples and a smirk, goodness. She was trying to kill me, clearly.
She had mistaken me for a darkspawn with shrunken pants - that mental image almost helped, but then she was so much closer and touching my neck and kissing me and nothing was going to help against that onslaught. "Maker's breath, but you're beautiful."
Maybe it was all that sword-fighting that trained her to parry and thrust so well with her tongue. I'm not sure, honestly, because I'd trained with a sword and in this arena sometimes felt as though I were still that fumbling teenager, with limbs too long for the rest of me. But she hadn't complained yet, so maybe I wasn't doing as poorly as I imagined? Maybe my spirit counted as much to her as it had for Duncan?
Then she was sighing, but not the kind that I really liked hearing, and her eyes were less I want you and more I want to smack you. "You're thinking so hard I swear I can hear it, Alistair." Huh. No one had every accused me of that before. "No one's had their tongue in your mouth as you were doing it, I imagine," came the tart reply to my unknowingly spoken comment.
"And really, you wouldn't blurt things out so often if you didn't think so much," she added, rather helpfully, actually. "You think so many things that eventually your brain must get tired and tells your mouth, 'Just say something already!' so it can get a moment's peace." She wasn't looking all that mad, I noticed, just bemused. And flushed. Kissable.
"Ah, and now you're finally not thinking," she had her hands on her hips and looking down at them was such a bad idea, because mmm those hips… "If you don't kiss me again, I will rip off your arm and beat you to death with it!"
Threats had to be responded to with equal force, or I had learned as much from her. So she shouldn't have been so surprised when my hand lightly squeezed her delicious posterior. I got smacked, but it was the You tease! kind and not the scary kind.
It was good to be me.
Until I had to walk halfway across the damned castle to my room with…my predicament, as it were. Everyone was grinning or smirking at me the next morning and all I could think was: It sucks to be me.
She didn't need to be so smug about it, either, especially at breakfast, when Leliana innocently inquired: "Would you like a large sausage today, Warden?"
Innocent? My arse.
Aliara replied, straight-faced, but I could hear the gargantuan smirk in her voice: "No thank you, I've already got one."
At least Zevran choked on his breakfast sausage at that, Sten beating on his back so hard he blacked out for a minute. Wynne excused herself from the table, but we all heard her laughing her head off in the hallway. And Aliara? She just smiled at me and kept eating. Cheeky wench.