Chapter Text
Eilwyn was reminded painfully of the first time she’d happened upon Alistair looking for her in an inn. She'd found him in his room, hadn't she? With a list in hand and a mind running wild. They'd shared their first kiss there, pressed against a desk, breathless and surprised as they both were left wondering where it would go from there. Their time together at inns seemed to be a trend, one she was instantly excited for despite her insecurities. The tops of her thighs ached, her belly exuding a pleasant thrum of energy about her lap as she walked alongside her warrior up to the third floor.
There were far less rooms, and they were quieter. The doors seemed to be spaced out further apart, much larger than the ones they ended up sharing to save on space and gold. Eilwyn almost asked how much it had cost, but sensed that it would be an impolite thing to worry about at a time like this. She could go over their finances later with him, once they'd spoken of their feelings.
It took Alistair a moment to open the door. His fingers were trembling as he tried to place the key in the lock, just enough that it made things difficult. Eilwyn pretended not to notice; she'd want him to afford her that dignity if she was the one acting so tensely. Once they’d crossed the threshold, she thought he might tell her what was going on. Maybe offer her a seat. But Alistair instead seemed very preoccupied with lighting the sets of candles that stood in burnished candlesticks about the room. He didn’t let go of Eilwyn’s arm to do so, nor would she have let him if he tried, so they both ended up striding slowly around the circumference of the room as Alistair held up a taper to each wick in turn. It was slow, deliberate, and with every wick that hissed into flame, Eilwyn could feel her desire to make things right grow brighter and brighter as well.
How something could be so allaying and yet maddening at the same time, Eilwyn would never understand.
“Alistair?”
“Yes?”
He did not look at her when she called his name, so focused was he on his task. She was afforded a view of his profile, a shock of clarity arcing through her core as she drank him in.
The warm glow of the flames licked away at the fine lines of stress everyone seemed to be accumulating about their eyes with each horror they endured upon this journey, and at once Eilwyn was starkly reminded of how young he was. How young they both were.
If they’d met in a village, her without her magic, him without his lineage, they would have been fast friends. She was certain of it. Joking, innocent, and pure; it would have been beautiful.
They would have grown old, struggled together. They might have fought together in one of the wars, but Maker willing would never have seen reanimated corpses. Would never have seen abominations, possessions. They would have been free of the burden of what it feels to be impaled by spears smeared with darkspawn viscera. In an ideal version of their meeting, of their lives, they would have courted properly, with town dances, stargazing in the summers, and longing looks thrown across the yard.
She'd have fallen just as madly in love with him as she was now.
As I hope we both are still.
She realized that she hadn't said anything, and he was watching her expectantly.
"Something you need, my dear?"
The words hit her as a warm cloak, freshly dried from the fire, might feel being dropped about her shoulders. My dear. She'd been so preoccupied worrying about pushing him away that even that little closeness was enough to send her pulse racing.
"N-nothing. Sorry," she whispered, trying to hide her smile. Alistair waited a moment longer, as if he hoped she'd say whatever it had been outright anyway, but when she stayed silent he nodded and blew out the long matchstick he'd used to light the candles. Setting it aside, he led her to the center of the room by the fireplace. The ache at the apex of her thighs had yearned for the bed, of course, but Eilwyn chastised herself at the overanticipation. If he wanted to have her sit with him in the lounge chairs closer to the fireplace, there was something safe about that. Something distant, yet familiar.
She couldn’t help but be a bit surprised when Alistair had them both kneel on the plush bearskin rug before the hearth. As he situated and leaned over towards the fireplace, his eyes widened with realization.
“Oh, Maker, I thought they'd have a fire kit. Um, Eilwyn… could you…?” He motioned with his fingers towards the fireplace, and Eilwyn obliged. The logs set themselves ablaze with the merest hint from her mana, the cold of the stone floor through the rug immediately offset by the crackle of embers. He chuckled, the noise sounding swallowed, and murmured, “Might’ve been easier to have you do that in the first place with the candles, I suppose.”
“I didn’t mind taking a turn about the room with you. For an inn in the middle of nowhere, it is beautifully decorated,” she commented, hoping to ease his nerves and her own. Her fingers crackled with barely withheld anxiety, and she realized she was gripping the lining of his vambrace with alarming tightness. Her knuckles were white on the crisscrossed leather braiding where his gauntlet clasped over his forearm.
He glanced up at the heavy, illustratively embroidered curtains, at the mounted antlers over the mantle, and the stretched canvas in tarnished brass framing on the walls. She followed his gaze as best she could, trying to ascertain whether her statement had made her look foolish or not.
“It is. I especially like the amount of animal remnants we have surrounding us.”
His tone was teasing, playful. An invitation. Eilwyn grinned.
“Very Fereldan. Although one would think they'd have more taxidermy.”
He chuckled again.
“Did the Circle have stuffed ram strewn about their halls, then?”
“Not that I ever found. We were rather minimal,” Eilwyn said, happy to be able to speak of something she knew in the wake of the ignorance she’d confronted with Zevran. “There were many maps on the walls near my room. We had to learn history in the hall nearest to my dormitory, so we had portraits worth memorizing adorning the east. Some were so realistic that they gave me nightmares when I first came to live there.”
His hand twitched, as if to take her fingers in his, but he did not reach for her. She tried to quell her panic and continued.
“But mainly there were a lot of books and paintings, simple and floral.”
“No bearskin rugs by the fire?” he asked, his tone playful.
“No,” she laughed. “Blankets and loom-woven rugs, yes. Furs, rarely. We might have been given them once we were no longer apprentices, but... I wouldn't know. I became a Warden instead.” Feeling a bit as if she should bring the subject back to the present, she absently ran her fingers along the fur beneath their knees. “B-but I do know that I’m very fond of decor like this.”
Alistair disentangled his arm from hers and began to slowly unbuckle the belting along his forearm. He cleared his throat, but his voice still broke.
“Good. Because I asked for the nicest room they had.”
“You didn’t have to do this,” Eilwyn whispered. It tore her apart to see his fingers tremble, to see him anything but confident and positive and himself. "Alistair."
His hand stilled at his wrist, his eyes seeking hers.
“I never meant to make you-”
“If you don’t want to, I can-”
They’d spoken over one another, both of their protests seemingly geared towards protecting the other. Eilwyn forced herself to take a deep breath, then another, reminding herself all the while that this was real, it was not a dream. She dug her fingernails into the palms of her hands, trying to remember what Zevran had said.
Let him take his time.
Let him explain to you.
“I wanted a chance,” Alistair whispered after a moment, “to speak with you plainly. And I think…” He paused, cleared his throat, and then raised his head to train her with a playful stare. “I think I’ll overheat if I keep this armor on any longer.”
She knew she was meant to laugh, but the thought of him undressing hit at that base desire of hers deep within. Breathless, she nodded.
“B-by all means.”
She waited, patient, until Alistair had divested himself of both gloves. He reached up to his shoulder and began to untie the leather that bound him, and as he did Eilwyn could positively smell the musk of him.
Shame coursed through her, to be so affected by the smell of someone’s unwashed body. It was primal, a connection one could not frame in any way other than animalistic, and it was undeniable.
Paired with the pleasure that came from being so close to Alistair after trying to keep up polite pretenses for so long came a tiny shock of pain. As she sat there, the muscles in her back sang with a soreness she hadn’t realized she’d been carrying. Without her staff there to encourage her posture, she was almost curling in on herself. Eilwyn straightened her shoulders, inhaling as inconspicuously as she could so as not to give away the sudden pain.
Andraste preserve me.
He smells amazing.
Unable to wait any longer, she moved forward, crawling on her knees so that she could kneel behind him and help undo the rest of his layers.
Miraculously, Alistair allowed it.
Some small part of her had held onto this distance they’d imposed on one another since leaving the Brecilian, had recalled the rudeness they’d echoed back and forth. She hadn’t been sure he’d want her help, or even want her near. But as she moved behind him, she heard him exhale in surprise.
Or possibly relief.
It was hard to tell.
Either way, divesting him of the leather armor was a task better suited for two. As he untied his plate, she undid his cloak and set it aside. When he began to unlace his left side, she helped him by tackling the right. Buckle here. Knot there. He shrugged out of his pauldrons, and she pulled him free of the more complicated plating supporting his spine. For every moment that her fingers worked together with his to free him of his armor, Eilwyn’s senses worked against succumbing to the memory of the way they’d smelled entangled together up on the cliff face.
He’d seen all of her, then, hadn’t he? He’d looked at everything she was, with no robes, no insignia, no protection. Just her skin and her braid hanging loose over one shoulder, so long that it draped close to her stomach.
She’d seen him too. Eilwyn’s bones ached with the thought of how good the tops of his bare thighs had looked, the way the hair grew on them. She’d loved the softness of his stomach, the way she could feel the muscles beneath only when his breathing drew deep and harsh.
And his voice. Oh, the way his voice gasped out, the way he’d moaned her name as she’d curled her fingers around the base of his shaft.
Eilwyn settled back on her heels, allowing Alistair to shed the rest of his coverings at his own pace. She didn’t trust her hands, or her mind, not to wander any further. Maker’s breath, she’d only just been loosening his pauldrons for him to shrug out of. One would think she’d been undoing his breeches, the direction her thoughts went.
I must be losing my mind.
Only explanation for why I’m struggling to control such thoughts.
Quick, count your fingers, list five things in the room you recognize, and make sure this isn’t the Fade.
Alistair’s touch startled her from her half-serious reverie. His fingers grazed the top of her knee as he readjusted himself to face her and set aside the last of his armor.
“Thank you,” he murmured. The light from the fire silhouetted his features, the way his jaw was set. His eyes were unreadable from this angle, shadowed in darkness as he dipped his head to push the pile of leather further from their spot on the rug, but Eilwyn knew her own expression was raw and immutable. Her desire would be written plain as day, caught in fire bright reflections from the hearth, desperate even as she sank away from him to save him from her touch.
“Anytime,” she whispered, or tried to. She wasn’t sure if any word managed to escape her parted lips, she could barely feel herself taking in air to the bottom of her lungs. She sat there on her haunches, her hands folded dutifully in her lap, her head held high and the mail of her armored robes digging painfully into the crease of her hips.
“Eila?”
“Mmm?”
“I have a… what I want to talk about isn’t… it’s personal, and awkward, and I don’t know how to bring it up without sounding like a complete arse.”
Her heartbeat tripled, or skipped? It did something wrong inside of her chest, anyhow, as if some fizzy carbonation from a potion brewed with powdered foxmint was caught just where her throat stopped. She leaned forward, caught herself, and forced her back to remain still where she was.
“I’ll withhold arse-related judgement until you finish,” she offered, attempting to be coy. In her mind, however, the smallness of her voice only lent a fragility to the words that she’d been trying to avoid. She cleared her throat. “I like that we can talk to one another about difficult things. I don’t want to be shut out of what’s going on in your mind.”
Alistair’s jaw clenched at her answer, a quick flex that she caught in the outline of his face, and then he turned completely around so that his expression was hidden completely in shadow.
But she could see his body as he shuffled to be closer to her, the way his shoulders curved and the line of his neck met the shell of his ear. His armor gone, he was left in his layers of fabric shirts that seemed so thin in the candlelight. He’d not bothered to take off his greaves or his boots, and she could hear them scrape and catch against the fur beneath their knees as he shifted.
When Alistair was facing her completely, he reached out and caught both of her hands in his.
“I wanted to apologize.”
She tried to act as if she did not know what for. Putting on her best and bravest smile, Eilwyn shrugged.
“What for?”
“For…” Alistair stumbled on the word. “Being less than myself.”
“Winter does this to-”
“It isn’t from the weather,” he interrupted, “although it can’t have helped things. I’ve simply noticed that I’ve begun to feel differently since we…”
She wished he would finish the sentence. If he could finish it, then maybe she could talk with him about it, openly, and all of this would be-
“Did what we did on the cliff,” Alistair said, his voice small.
There it was.
Fear etching itself in clawlike cold down the back of her mind, she tried to remain calm.
“You… feel differently about me, you mean?”
The words caught thickly on the back of her tongue, tears stinging preemptively at the corners of her eyes, and Eilwyn found her breath was hitching in the center of her chest. She tried to breathe more deeply, averting her gaze as she leaned down and caught the fur of the rug between her fingers to try to stave off the frost building about her cuticles.
At once, Alistair’s hands were at her arms. They soothed a path up and down over her sleeves, light and reassuring. He was saying something, muttering under his breath, and Eilwyn sniffled hard.
“What was that?”
“I said, I’m an idiot,” Alistair breathed. Eilwyn looked up at that, caught between being accusatory and refuting such a claim outright. But as she watched him, she realized that this was not about her.
It was a stark, almost cold realization, in a way that cold water is refreshing when you’re practically dying of thirst.
Alistair’s eyes were brimming with tears, his expression somehow warm even though he seemed to be wrestling with his choice of words. He managed to chuckle, a brief exhale of air let out as if he thought himself to be ridiculous, and he sniffed as well.
“I could never change how I feel about you,” he said, his voice steadier than Eilwyn had expected. “I can see why you’d think I had, though. And I’m sorry.”
“There is no need-”
“Please accept it,” Alistair whispered. “It’s good for us, if you let me apologize when I’ve done something wrong.”
Eilwyn sat there, palms on the ground, inches away from her love’s face, and she marveled at how difficult it was for her to even admit that Alistair might have been the one at fault.
It’s on me to make things right with the people around me.
… isn’t it?
“I have begun to think differently about myself,” Alistair said, “ever since the cliff.”
Whereas she should have experienced relief, for some reason Eilwyn felt as if she'd been excluded.
Different, huh? Well. That’s news to me.
The rude thought came at her so quickly that Eilwyn was left blushing in its wake. When had she begun to snap in response to the unexpected? Especially where Alistair was concerned! That wasn't how someone should love someone else.
She took a deep breath.
"Can you tell me more?"
“I can try. We... we had to endure so much in the Brecilian so shortly after the cliff,” Alistair continued. “You more than anyone. And I felt as if-” he stopped to sigh deeply, as if gathering himself. “I started to feel as if I was clinging to you too tightly. I wanted to be around you more than I wanted to scout separately. I wanted to be on the same watch as you even more than I had wanted before, wanted to ask you about your childhood, about your dreams, wanted to tell you everything about myself."
"Is that bad?" Eilwyn breathed.
Because it sounds like everything I've ever wanted.
"Well, yes and no. Yes because I was worried you’d grow stifled under too much affection. And no because..." he scoffed. "You're so easy to love."
Eilwyn had no words. She wanted him to stop speaking, just for a moment, just so that she could commit that phrase to memory and hold it tightly protected in her heart, but Alistair had found his boldness.
"So I stepped back. Tried to think of how I’d seen relationships work in my life, how I’d seen men in love act before. Tried to figure out how I could keep you without crushing you, I suppose, especially because you'd had so much weight placed upon you by our circumstances.”
Eilwyn’s heart was in her throat. To hear him admit this was jarring, not just because she’d been utterly convinced an hour ago that the distance was her fault, but because Alistair was opening up to her so completely. Perhaps it was the privacy of the circumstances, or maybe Leliana had given him advice he’d taken to heart.
Either way, she waited with bated breath, both curious and afraid.
“But I realized,” he said with a humorless laugh on the edge of his words, “that these men I was emulating, the people I'd seen in my life... their wives didn’t seem happy. And that when I gave you more space, less affection... you didn’t seem happy.”
Eilwyn’s lip trembled.
She’d thought that all of this was her being overly sensitive. As a result, she'd told herself that she was fine. That everyone was just stressed. Just under a lot of pressure.
But now that Alistair was openly admitting it, she could see it clearly in afterthought. He’d begun joking less among the group, had taken up double watches, and had admitted discomfort when Eilwyn had leaned in for a kiss when they were in front of their companions. She’d taken it that he’d been wrestling with his feelings for her. Could it have been, instead, that he had been struggling with what to do out of respect for her? Out of love for her?
She'd never navigated this sort of thing either, it was why she confided in Leliana and had asked Zevran what she had. But once again, she was left wondering, who did Alistair have to ask such things, save for her?
“It was wrong of me to try to emulate what I thought was propriety when really… I just want to be who I always am with you,” Alistair continued. "I see that now."
“And…” Eilwyn swallowed past the nervousness. “Who are you when you’re with me?”
He smiled, then paused, as if saying it aloud was going to be embarrassing. She watched him wrestle with how to phrase it, his eyes darting away and then coming back to her with a hopelessly fond expression on his face.
“Myself.” He grinned, and seemed to push past the shyness. "You remember when you talked to me about your mother? About how she sent you away to the Circle?"
Eilwyn nodded.
"In that moment, I think a part of me fell in love with you. Stupid as it might sound, I just... I've struggled to find friends who see me for who I am. Not just a fool, not just a Warden or a Templar, or a bastard. Even Duncan, I think, saw me as someone to hide for my own good. But with you-"
“You’re Alistair first,” she agreed, her voice a breathy whisper. She hoped he could hear the relief therein, could hear how happy she was that he was sharing. He cleared his throat, and nodded.
“I apologize for… working my insecurities to death, I suppose,” Alistair finished. “For trying to deal with everything without letting you in.”
“To be fair, there wasn’t much opportunity. Inside of that forest even the trees tried to kill us,” Eilwyn offered up weakly. “And I don’t know that I was in a great place myself, either.”
Alistair’s eyes met hers, looking so hopeful for a second that she could feel the breath flee her lungs.
“I was cross about my situation,” she continued. “For not having prepared better for winter, for not having known what I would need as we traveled. As a leader, I should have set an example, yet everyone seemed to just pity me instead of holding me accountable.”
“You can’t beat yourself up about the boots, though. You lived your life in the Circle, you-”
“I was aware of the seasons even in the Circle,” Eilwyn interrupted. "There's no excuse."
Her tone had done it again, dipping into annoyance without her heaving meant it, and it clung to the air between them as smoke from a snuffed candle would. Alistair glanced away, seemingly chided into agreement, and tendrils of shame bloomed in Eilwyn’s chest.
“Hey. I'm sorry.” She scooted forward until their knees touched, until she could rest her hands on his thighs. At her touch, Alistair stiffened, his shoulders drawing up as he straightened his back. She could hear his gasp of surprise, however small. She tilted her head until she caught his gaze once more. “I’m struggling with some insecurities, too. And… I think if I’m to accept your apology, I’d like for you to accept mine.”
“I’m not quite sure what you’re apologizing for, exactly,” Alistair murmured. “For being too wonderful? For leading us fearlessly, despite the frostbite? For trying to keep the peace between our band of misfits-”
Eilwyn reached up, intending to catch his words on her thumb, but she hesitated. Her hand hovered meekly by his cheek, uncertain if such things were too intimate for him in this moment. But before she could let it fall, his palm covered the back and her hand and his eyes fluttered closed. He rested his cheek in her hand, pressed it there, and she could feel the heavy exhale of another sigh as Alistair leaned into her touch.
“You do so much for us,” he whispered. “I feel selfish, constantly imagining time alone with you.”
Her heart doubled its pace. So easily did he affect her, so effortlessly that just the idea that he would think of her in that way made her feel giddy with excitement.
“I think of having you to myself, too,” Eilwyn replied.
His eyes opened, and the expression mirrored so much of what she was feeling herself that Eilwyn’s lips parted in surprise. Soft, he looked so soft in that moment. It was hard to imagine him wielding a sword and shield as if they weighed no more than feathers.
Wouldn’t be hard to imagine if you touched his arm.
Thoughtless and eager, Eilwyn traced her other hand up from his thigh, along the outside of his waist, up over the broad expanse of his chest. An exploratory touch, light and unassuming, it nonetheless seemed to elicit something within him. His eyes shut tight once more, and she could feel him tense beneath her fingers as he unsuccessfully tried to withhold a moan.
Immediately, she withdrew her touch.
“Too much?” she went to ask, but the words were lost against the brush of his lips. It was all she could do to let out a gasp of pleasure alongside his own desperate inhale as she leaned forward into the kiss.
It was different than the ones they’d shared before. He’d kissed her under starlight more often than anything else, the embraces stolen away in the privacy they made for themselves away from the group. He’d kissed her at the back of the party, whenever everyone else had scouted ahead.
But kissing behind closed doors felt different.
When he’d kissed her in Denerim, it had felt this way. When he'd told her she had to sleep in her own room, but she'd just kept holding him. He’d lain beside her on the bed, exploring her mouth with his, curling close to her as if he never wanted to let her go. It offered a freedom they very rarely had when traveling, one that felt precious and very, very adult.
It's what we deserve.
His tongue traced gently along the curve of her lip, and for some reason a trill of anxiety shot through Eilwyn’s chest at the touch. She flinched without thinking, and Alistair’s hand moved away from hers.
Together they recuperated, and Eilwyn was relieved to hear his breathing coming fast as well. It was a relief to know she wasn’t the only one affected by such a thing.
“Sorry,” he murmured coyly. “Too much?”
“I just… we haven’t kissed in a while.” She swallowed hard. “I want to make sure we don’t get carried away before we’ve said all we need to say.”
“Right,” Alistair nodded and cleared his throat. “Did you, uh, want to go next, then?”
Eilwyn smiled. She couldn’t help it. But then she felt a bead of sweat trickle its way down the length of her spine, and she was suddenly and starkly aware of how overwarm she was. Her chest, though meager, seemed to have accumulated a dampness beneath her breasts that made her flush with embarrassment. Her thighs, the inner part of her knee, oh Maker she had to get cooled off or else-
I’m going to smell like McWhistle.
“I would.” She pulled her hands back to her own lap and attempted to look more in control of herself. “But before that, can I take off my armor?”
“I- of course,” Alistair answered. She watched as he pressed his lips tightly together, his eyes wide, and she could practically feel the heat radiating from him as he stammered, “Shall I leave you alone, or-”
“I don’t need help, if that’s what you’re asking,” Eilwyn said, unable to suppress the slight tremor to her voice. “But you’re fine where you are. No need to go anywhere.”
“Would it be so bad,” Alistair breathed, “if I wanted to help?”
Exhilaration surged through her every fiber, her every nerve. Feeling her cheeks glow with the combination of delight and shyness, Eilwyn shook her head. For a moment, Alistair’s brows drew together, and she hastily tried to clarify.
“No as in, it wouldn’t be so bad, and that I want- I mean, if you want-” She gave up with a flustered little growl and tried again. “Help me with my bodice.”
“Your desire is my command."
Carefully, their fingers clumsy when together, Eilwyn began to undo the lacing of the bodice that held the thin layer of mail against her sternum. She’d done this for him quickly before, back in the Brecilian when she’d bared her chest to him in the woods.
Ugh, that was so poorly planned.
And again, on the cliff face, she’d undressed herself, hadn’t she? Just as he had slipped out of his leather, so too had she undone her armor without involving him.
It’s different when you’re trying to let someone else undress you.
Kind of inconvenient, but Andraste’s arse he’s so close, and smells so good, and his knuckles are pressing against my skin through the fabric.
Alistair’s fingers helped to gently tug the leather straps from their eyelets in order to loosen her front. He slid his hands down her waist to crush the velvety material down away from her chest as she undid the bodice structure of chain mail beneath it. Soon, with Alistair’s hesitant help, she’d managed to undress her torso down to her shift.
Trying not to look ungainly as she did so, Eilwyn stood on shaky feet and shimmied the rest of the dirtied, blood-spattered garment down past her hips so that it crumpled to the floor. Before she could kick it aside, Alistair took it and began to fold it to set with her chain mail.
As she knelt once more before him, it was Alistair’s turn to stand. He seemed to be suffering from the same love-induced vertigo as she, swaying slightly as he got up. He found his footing very quickly, however, and stooped to begin to work at his boots.
“You said they had too many laces, remember?” he chuckled. “On the cliff?”
“I remember,” Eilwyn said with a grin. “And I’m not wrong. Your armor has a lot of ins and outs to it, frightfully inconvenient. Not sure how you dress yourself every morning.”
“The trick is to just sleep in everything when you bed down," he muttered, as if giving her a well-guarded secret to success. "Then you have less to ready before breakfast.”
"That can't be comfortable."
"It isn't." He smiled. "I appreciate your help. It's much faster with your hands."
She tried not to think about what else that could mean, her mind in a different space than his it seemed.
“When you were a Warden, did you all get ready together?” she asked him as she continued to work on his left. Alistair, attempting to detangle the knot on his right laces, glanced at her and nodded.
“You were expected to do most of your armor up yourself, but we helped one another where we could. There were no squires, after all. And some of us had sustained injuries that limited our range of motion. You learn to undo many a knot despite the limitations.”
“Is that why you’re so good with your hands, then?” she whispered, trying her hand at the compliment. She heard him exhale helplessly, but he didn’t answer. She glanced over, noted that he was smiling to himself, and counted it as a win regardless.
After only a matter of minutes, they were both divested down to their simplest of layers, their armor lying in heaps side by side at the foot of the bed. She sat there, more comfortable now that they were once more on even ground, and sighed happily.
“Feels better without all that heavy stuff,” she said, her tone light as he knelt before he once more.
Alistair seemed distracted. He reached for her, his palms grazing over her shoulder, so big in comparison to her own that they sent warm trills of arousal pulsing down and across her chest. Even her fingertips seemed to tingle with potential energy as Alistair reaquainted himself with her through the shift. His eyes were heavy-lidded, but she recognized the look in them as one her own must have encapsulated.
“It definitely feels better, yes.”
He likes this.
“Alistair?”
“Mmhmm?”
“Can you hold me?”
She didn’t mean for it to sound plaintive, but also hadn’t expected it to come out as sultry as it did. Alistair gulped, his jaw dropping open for a half-second, but then he recovered and drew his lower lip between his teeth. He opened his arms to her with a smile.
“Cross your legs,” Eilwyn whispered.
He hesitated, then did as he was asked, settling more comfortably on the rug. As soon as he seemed stable, Eilwyn crawled over and onto his lap.
“Eilwyn,” he whispered, his voice cracking. But even as she was about to ask if she should stop, his arms tightened about her waist and he dragged her fully onto himself. Her arms resting on his shoulders, she hugged him close as he buried his face in her neck.
It was pure heaven, to be touched in such a way. To have one’s body flush against another’s, curving together in a way that every angle and curve completed the other’s.
“When I asked to spend the night with you,” Eilwyn whispered against the curve of his throat, “this was what I wanted. To feel close to you.”
He squeezed her closer for a brief moment, as if to acknowledge that he’d heard her, but didn’t say anything. Eilwyn took it to mean she could continue.
“I’m sorry for putting pressure on you,” she whispered. “For assuming you didn’t want this too. Assuming you didn’t want me.”
“That is another thing that I hoped we could talk about, actually.” Alistair sounded nervous, even though his words were quiet and low.
“My pressuring you?”
“No, no, that was fine,” he said quickly. “I mean not fine, but you didn’t- I didn’t take it that way. When you asked to spend the night, I didn’t want you to feel like we had to… spend the night .”
“I didn’t want you to take it that way either!” Eilwyn could have laughed in relief. She shifted in his lap, pressing against him as she snuggled even closer. His thighs tensed beneath her hips, and his hand drew down along her leggings to catch in the curve of her knee. He pulled her legs closer to his back, effectively wrapping himself up in her body before his palm made its way back to her spine. Withholding a groan at the sensation, Eilwyn tried to continue. “I was so scared you thought I meant that we needed to continue where we left off on the cliff, that you’d think it was me asking you to join me in my tent again, even though you asked me to wait and-”
Her words were lost.
Alistair’s mouth found her shoulder, and she could feel the rough warmth of his tongue as he gave a light, licking kiss to the curve just above her collarbone. Shivering, Eilwyn could feel a pulse of arousal ache between her thighs, and she crossed her legs together even as she curved herself around Alistair’s waist. She clung to his shoulders, the sensation of being so close to him completely overriding what she’d meant to finish saying.
But more than that, she could feel an insistent press against her bum that she knew meant he was grappling with exactly the same thing as she was.
It was almost as if he could sense it happening at the same time as she did, because Alistair stiffened once more. He pulled away, clearing his throat, and gently eased her off of his lap and onto the floor. Eilwyn disentangled herself from him, and soon they sat there facing each other, both of them looking simultaneously steamed and shamed.
“I’m sorry,” she blurted. She was, in that she wished he hadn’t pulled away, but Alistair seemed to grow exasperated at her apology. She rushed to explain. “I didn’t meant to tease you.”
“You didn’t-” he cut himself off, then finished clumsily, “This is on me, Eila.”
“Do you want me to put my robes back on? I can-"
“No, wait, please,” Alistair held up a hand, his words tumbling forth in an overwrought blur. “I just... I guess I really don’t know how to ask you this.”
“Ask me what?” Eilwyn repeated. The word felt thick on her tongue, like floral, vicsous mead. "Are you sweating?"
“Yes. No. Maybe a little but- oh, how do I say this?” he muttered to himself, quick and low. “You’d think it would be easier, but every time I’m around you I feel as if my head’s about to explode. I- I can’t think straight.”
“That’s sweet of you to say.”
“Sweet?” Alistair protested. She nodded, grinning. “That’s not exactly a compliment. I’m aiming more for honest than-”
“It’s kind of exciting, knowing that I have that effect on you,” Eilwyn clarified. Her smiled faded at the corner, the heavy emotions from before still weighing on her exultation at the turn the night was taking. “It’s better than thinking you don’t want anything to do with me anymore.”
“Maker’s breath. Never think that. I want to do everything with you.”
She averted her gaze from the rawness of the comment, and Alistair’s fingertips touched her cheek with the barest of pressure. It was just enough to get Eilwyn to raise her chin so that she could look him in the eye as he spoke.
“Here’s the thing. Being near you… makes me crazy.” He breathed the last word as if he wished he could laughed, but hadn’t enough air in his lungs. It hit her like a combined force of wonder and worry, but before she could answer, he’d added, “But I can’t imagine being without you. Not ever.”
She wanted to move, to kiss him, to agree, but Eilwyn found herself frozen in place. All of the doubts from earlier, the days of wondering whether or not she’d angered him, whether or not she’d crossed a line when they’d lain naked side by side, they all dissipated one by one with every word Alistair uttered.
“I don’t know how to say this another way,” he said, shaking his head as if it were lunacy to try. “I want to spend the night with you. Here, while we can. And then any other night you’ll have me, if you’ll have me.”
Had she not already been kneeling, the combination of alarm and attraction at the prospect of spending a night alone with Alistair might have brought her there.
“Maybe this is too fast, I don’t know,” he murmured, still talking in the wake of her stunned silence. “But… I know what I feel.”
“This… but you didn’t seem to want that at all, back when I asked you in the forest,” Eilwyn protested.
You idiot!
You finally have what you want, why are you reminding him of the opposite?
“I was taken by surprise,” Alistair hurriedly replied. “At first, I was more than happy to agree because, plus side, we’d get to have a bed! Better than a bedroll by far.” He gestured to the large mattress behind them, and Eilwyn tried not to let on how cute she found it. “But then, I got to thinking, maybe I was taking things the wrong way. Maybe you actually only wanted to sleep next to me. I could barely handle that when it was all of us in one tent, you were so precious and I wanted nothing more than to hold you to me. If we were alone…” he trailed off.
“So that held you back from agreeing to sleep by my side?” she pressed. “Worrying what the others would think?”
“No,” Alistair shook his head, a tone of exasperation seeping into the syllable. “I just knew that, if we were alone together… things might lead somewhere new. And I… find myself wanting to follow you there, to see what we can discover together.” He drew his hands down her shoulders until he was holding her fingers in his. “I find myself hoping that we can do more than sleep, Eila.”
Her stomach dropped as if she’d reached the pinnacle of a long staircase in the dark and had expected for there to be one more step. The falling sensation, however brief, was coupled almost immediately with excitement and horror.
He wants to do more?
How much more?
Is what he wants-
“Are… are you alright?” he asked, interrupting her.
“Y-yes,” Eilwyn blurted, forcing a grin. “I just want to, uh, to make sure we’re on the same page. Are you asking for us to…?”
They both waited for the other to finish the sentence, silence hanging between them almost as thick as how Eilwyn’s tongue suddenly felt in her mouth. Finally, after swallowing so hard that Eilwyn could hear it from where she sat, Alistair nodded.
“I’m ready.”
All of the air seemed to leave the room, everything fading away from them except for the way Alistair was looking at her. Eilwyn was in awe of the confession. Her lips parted, her mouth dry, and she could do no more than nod. It seemed to be enough, because Alistair took a long, steeling breath and then continued.
“But I can see you didn’t expect that. And why would you?” he shook his head. “I gave you no indication I… you must understand, it was never not on my mind. I mean, not in the sense that it was all I thought about. But, the more I did think about it, the more I wanted to wait, not because we weren’t ready, but because nothing was good enough!" His words came so quickly that Eilwyn struggled to keep up. She felt she wanted to interject, to add to this, but Alistair didn't give her a chance. "Especially after the cliff, the way the rocks dug into the skin of your back. I could see marks from where you’d imprinted gravel in your wrists. It couldn’t have been comfortable, and I wanted to make sure that if we were ever together again in such an… intimate manner, that we could stay somewhere warm. Somewhere soft. Somewhere you wouldn’t feel the need to rush to dress, or run off, or explain yourself to our nosy friends-”
“But you didn’t seem to want to share a room here , when the inn has all of those things,” Eilwyn urged, managing to fit a word in. He seemed taken aback that she still couldn't see why, that she'd ask him to explain his thoughts.
“Because of how close we are to the tower,” Alistair blurted.
He seemed surprised he’d said it out loud. It might have been because he was already divulging so much that it had come naturally, but neither of them seemed to know how to respond in the wake of it. They sat there, staggered by the admission.
“I would not wish for the trauma of your past to seep into something that I had hoped would be a beautiful thing,” Alistair finished once he found his words again. Regret traced about his whisper, cutting Eilwyn with its sincerity. “I would never want you to look back on our love and wish for it to have been different.”
She felt tears come forth again, but this time not from fear of being abandoned. Truthfully, she wasn’t sure why the urge to weep overcame her at such kindness. It was something Alistair had shown her time and time again, something she was beginning to think she would never get used to.
He clasped her hands to his chest, and she splayed her fingers across the open collar of his tunic.
“I wanted to wait for the perfect time, the perfect place. I thought, maybe if we can wait until Denerim, there would be better privacy, better food, better… everything,” he confirmed shakily. “But who’s to say that even that would have worked out? What if things will never be perfect? If things were, we wouldn’t even have met.”
Eilwyn laughed despite the tears, thinking back to her fantasy of two simple villagers. It was true. That was never to be who they were; they only had the flawed reality they lived in at the moment.
“We sort of… stumbled into each other,” he murmured. Eilwyn leaned forward at his words, and Alistair’s hand found the nape of her neck, soothing circles into the nerve endings there as he spoke. “Despite this being the least perfect time to love someone,” he whispered, “I still found myself falling for you, in between all the fighting and everything else.”
“In between the back and forth?” she teased, her words husky despite her smile. He nodded, his gaze barely leaving hers to take in the parting of her lips before returning.
“And the frostbite,” he teased, “and the darkspawn.”
“The stolen kisses,” Eilwyn murmured.
“Eila.” Her eyes drifted closed at her name, at the way he breathed it with a reverence she wasn’t sure she deserved. “If you want to share a bed and only sleep side by side, I’d be perfectly happy with that. But if you want more… you aren’t alone. I’m done waiting, if you are too.”
She pulled away, her eyes opening with difficulty as if awakening from a spell he’d put her under. Anxiety coursed through her primarily, its heels sharp with arousal, and was followed by so intense a wave of tenderness that she scarcely knew how to put it into words.
“Are you saying…”
“I’ve…” he laughed. “I’ve never done this before, you know that. I want it to be with you… while we have the chance.” His smile changed, a hint of sadness creeping into his voice. “In case…”
In case... what?
The winter takes one of us.
The Blight rushes forward before we can gather the treaties.
In case we succeed and Arl Eamon asks him to return to his side as a knight. Or worse, as Cailan’s true replacement. A place where mages can’t follow, if Alistair would agree to such a thing.
The more Eilwyn thought about it, the more things she realized could come between them at any moment. They’d existed side by side, in love through the impending doom and disaster, trudging through Ferelden dutifully yet positively, as if it were one horrific sleepover. She realized with stark, cold fear that she’d been ignoring the very real fact that either of them could die at any moment.
“Hey,” he whispered, sounding suspiciously as if he were very close to tears once more himself. “I didn’t mean to scare you by-”
“Don’t talk like that,” Eilwyn said brokenly, still hoping to hold onto that last shred of denial. She took in a shaky breath and let it out. “Look how well we’ve done. Two treaties down, and I’ve not lost any of you.”
“My dear-”
“No. You don’t have to rush this. There will always be time later.” She stated it with a finality that she hoped he’d agree with, that she begged for him to reassure her with.
“But you don’t know that, Eila,” Alistair murmured. “I don’t know that.”
Grief at their predicament surged forth. It wasn’t fair! For them to be so in love, yet so destined for it all to fall apart, it wasn’t fair at all!
“I don’t want you to make love to me because one of us might die,” she blurted, her words terse and petulant. As her own plea hit her ears, it was so difficult to screw her eyes shut and keep tears from escaping. She didn’t want to cry during what should, by all accounts, have been a very lovely confession. She didn’t want to ruin the mood, but she also didn’t want him to treat this act as if it were something to tick off before they gave their lives up for-
Alistair’s sniffle brought her out of her thoughts.
Glancing up, she saw him bring a hand up to cover his face, and he realized she’d noticed him. Pitifully, he tried to smile, despite his tears and despite the fact that his face was hidden. Eilwyn’s heart shattered as he mumbled an apology, tiny and breathless, beneath his palm.
“Sorry.” He swiped at his eyes with his thumb and forefinger, as if trying to pinch the tears away. “I’m a little overwhelmed by all of this. Hang on.” He took a deep breath and made a sort of vibrating noise between his lips, kind of like what Leliana did when she was warming up to sing. It seemed to give him a bit of stability, and he dropped his hand and trained her with honest eyes. “Maybe I should’ve said it differently. I didn’t mean to imply that that’s the reason I want to do this with you. But it is something I think about.”
“Alistair…”
“We go into the Order knowing that it shortens our life,” he said, his voice regaining some of his strength as he tried to breath more deeply past tears. “Even if we make it past the Blight. Even if we somehow survive, we as Wardens are not afforded the luxury of ignoring our mortality for very long.”
Eilwyn nodded, somehow frightened both at the prospect of dying, and at how loosely she’d tried not to think about it until this moment. Even when faced with imminent danger, with attacks and brutal weather, she somehow still didn’t think one of them would fall. Not truly.
Even when he was poisoned, I knew, in my heart, it wasn’t the end.
Is that stupid of me?
“I’m not good at this sort of thing,” Alistair murmured. “But I was hoping to show you that I'm not frightened anymore. And I’d like to be able to say that I threw caution to the wind, just this once. Together, with you.” He reached for her hands and she gave them willingly, and their fingers intertwined in twin desperation. If they could just hold on tight enough, it seemed they both thought it would ground the other with them for longer. Eilwyn nodded, her heart full to bursting with emotions she hadn’t thought herself capable of.
“You don’t have to say anything else,” she said, smiling through what felt very much like adoration and anguish mingling. “And for the record, I think you're very good at this sort of thing.”
“Yeah?” Alistair’s voice was so surprised and pleased that Eilwyn couldn’t help but laugh. “So... does that mean you're not nervous?”
“Oh, I'm very nervous,” she giggled. “About everything! From the way my body looks naked to the way I smell underneath of all my armor. I’d be pressed to find a thing I’m not nervous about, but it doesn't mean I don't want to do it.”
“Well,” he leaned forward and tilted his head, his tone playful. “I’ve seen you naked. And let me say, you shouldn't feel anything but pride in that department.” Eilwyn wasn’t sure if she wanted to swat at him to get him to stop, or ask him to explain further. Both seemed equally as silly. He continued. “And as for the smell, let me assure you, I smell twice as horrible as you do- maybe even three times as horrible.”
She laughed at that.
“I like how you smell.”
“Oh really? Please tell that to Wynne, then, so she stops bothering me about my socks,” Alistair muttered. The last syllable muffled as Eilwyn leaned forward and brushed a tentative kiss across his lips. He sighed into her, his hands tightening almost imperceptibly over hers, and when she pulled away he was left with a dreamy expression on his face.
“You know,” he mused quietly. “I did have water drawn earlier tonight.”
“Did you really?”
“I had this… plan,” he said. “That I would bathe, get the bed ready, get everything nice and warm for you, and then we’d have this talk. But then, with everything playing out how it did-”
“With us snapping at each other, yeah.”
“Then with me getting all in my head about everything,” Alistair owned, “it all kind of fell apart.” He cleared his throat, his eyes darting down to her lips as a roguish smile split his lips. “I still have the water, though. If you’d like to take a bath before we continue.”
“I don’t really want to be apart from you for one second if I can help it,” Eilwyn confessed, even though she knew it must have sounded needy. She was thoroughly enjoying the way Alistair couldn’t seem to get enough of her, how his eyes were taking in every detail about her. His hands had moved back to her wrists, roving up towards her elbows, and hers were left resting on his thighs. Maker, how she wanted to-
“I didn’t say you should bathe alone.”
His eyes came back to hers, hopeful and a touch frightened. The telltale spark of lust and affection began to bloom within her belly.
I’ve never washed someone else before.
Eagerly, foregoing the shyness she no longer wanted to dictate her actions, Eilwyn nodded.
“A bath sounds awfully nice.”