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“Is there never an uneventful day?”
You’re still grinning about Ser Blackwall’s gruff, blood-spattered gripe two days later, sitting lotus-legged in the center of your sprawling bed, all piled with its standard issue Free Marches wool blankets. A heavy, fleece-lined bear hide lies rumpled around your waist—the big blanket that Blackwall had “requisitioned” for you after you’d told him the breeze off of your balcony wakes you up with your bones turned to ice.
It wasn’t a lie. There’d been a cold front creeping up the mountain for a week and it felt like it was cresting right on the balcony of your quarters. The Warden burns hot as a hearth, though, and he couldn’t understand the need for extra covering until you’d shown your face in the War Room, flushed with fever and sniffle-coughing into your sleeve to try to hide it.
You’d gotten the job done, but the sheer state of you didn’t go unnoticed—not by Cole, not by Sera or Bull or even Krem who, you’d found, is quite observant.
It’d been Blackwall who really took notice. You never saw him take the stair corridor to your quarters, but the sight of the plush fur folded into fourths on the foot of your bed sent your heart into an affectionate little whirl. A torn piece of paper was looped with a length of twine around the neck of a flask-shaped, pot-bellied bottle of rum:
These ought to help break the chill.
Yours,
– B
You’d tossed back two fingers of the Fereldan rum and pulled the bear hide so tightly around you that night. You slept as soundly as though it had been the Warden’s very arms, encircling you like a barrier of protection.
You’ve entertained that thought before, too. Is there never an uneventful day? Will there ever be an uneventful day?
For a time, it seemed not. But now, the Inquisition has dealt an incredible blow to Corypheus and his forces. Even he will take weeks to recover his losses, and with the Grey Wardens tentatively finding their feet again… Stroud is working with Cullen and Solas to find ways to help them resist the Call, or any further corruption, and the reports you’ve received have been hopeful.
Under Cole’s mindful tending, the mages are settling in nicely. Your decision nearly led to this week’s heaping portion of infighting, but to you, the answer could have been no clearer if it had been chiseled in stone.
Enter: the uneventful day. Because you deserve it. Everyone deserves it. Ser Blackwall deserves it, and has longed for it. Morale is at a powerful high and if not now, when? The Fade may burst through the atmosphere above your balcony tomorrow morning, for all you know—for what little you have known, and all that you’ve discovered since you took up the Inquisitor’s mantle.
You pull your blankets up to your chin, stretching underneath them into the warmth. The bottle of Fereldan rum glitters on the mantel above your hearth. It’s dark, and rich, and warms the belly without the burn of alcohol. Sweet, almost—vanilla, cinnamon, cherry. Ser Blackwall knows what a lightweight you are; oh, how he must have had a chuckle with himself, perusing the selection with you in mind.
Your face warms over. The idea that he keeps you in mind from time to time gives you a fluttering belly and a bubbling urge to giggle and squeal, but no. You’re the Inquisitor. You’re firm. You’re diplomatic—sometimes not, but only when your hand has been forced.
But… maybe just once. Just this once.
Early in the morning, you bathe, pin your hair so that it’s not straying into your face, and sweep through the larder in search of the items that would compose your late morning meal with the Warden. A wheel of fine, sharp cheese; a vine of fat, black Orlesian grapes; a loaf of bread and a serrated knife with which to slice it; cured meats, and a delightful-looking pastry wrapped in parchment, sugar-glazed and dolloped with jam.
You do swing by the Warden’s stable loft as you’re headed back to gather the other pieces of your surprise Uneventful Day charcuterie. You’re power-walking with an irregular gait under the weight of your find, but you free one arm to wave it broadly to the Warden fastening his gambeson in the firelight, as if he might miss you.
“Don’t go far, Ser Blackwall!” Your calling out to him has him grinning, and he comes to lean his shoulder into the sturdy wood of the stables’ entryway, folding his arms over his chest.
“What’ve you got there?” he asks, indicating your load with a tilt of his head and a curious little gleam to his eyes, helped by firelight and the rosy glow of the coming morning.
“Oh, this? Don’t mind all this,” you tell him, readjusting your grip on a sack of apples. “Just meet me on the northeastern ramparts at midday. Or earlier, if you’re up to it. Alright?”
The Warden considers you with a gaze you can’t read—kind, but searching. He’s wondering what you’re up to, but you’ve learned that he enjoys the excitement, the mystery, of a little surprise now and then. “Understood, Madam Inquisitor,” he finally agrees with a boyish little grin. “Midday on the northeastern ramparts, sooner if I’m up to it.”
He sounds like he’s rattling off the instructions for some task he’s done a thousand times, his gentle patience disguised as long-suffering harriedness.
“Good,” you sing, shining a proud little sunbeam onto him, an approving almost-smile that illustrates your excitement. You can feel his eyes on you as you heft the apple sack up onto your shoulder and turn to leave. If your stride is a little more sinuous, a treat for Ser Blackwall’s hungering eyes, well. That’s your business, isn’t it?
⋅☾ ☽⋅
All this set-up would have taken you the very last minute to midday if it hadn’t been for Rowena, an amiable Tranquil mage you’d crossed paths with a number of times in the library and, sometimes, assisting Solas with his studies of the Fade. But now, the two of you are placing the finishing touches on a quaint little spread of apples and cheese, cured meat and bread and grapes, a crystal decanter of the rum Blackwall had surprised you with and glasses from which to sip it.
You’d found this little spot by chance—a rickety ladder over the outside of the rampart wall that saw itself repaired and usable within the week. It must have been an evacuation route at some point; the little tree-shaded clearing it led down to was nestled beside a stream, spilling over the edge of the cliff face some yards away, and deeper into the trees huddling against the outside of Skyhold’s walls, a cave or tunnel that may have served a purpose, now collapsed and overgrown. At the bottom of the ladder and a fair distance upstream lay the thick, heavy wool blanket the two of you will be lounging upon, and the lantern that you’ll light in case the rampart flames aren’t able to pierce the foliage over your heads.
“I couldn’t have done all this without you, Rowena,” you say to the Tranquil mage, the rampart ladder shuddering under your steps as the two of you climb.
“Oh, the pleasure has been mine, Your Worship.” Rowena smooths her robes as she reaches the top of the ladder and stands upon the rampart, fixing you with a humble smile. “Please don’t worry yourself with what’s left, Your Worship. I will be glad to gather it all for you and hold it to be sent for.”
“That’s considerate of you, Rowena. At your leisure.”
“Of course, Your Worship. Enjoy your evening with Ser Blackwall.” Rowena tucks her pale hair behind an ear and gives you a demure little half-smile and ceremonious curtsy in parting.
You stand atop the rampart and watch Rowena leave. Oh, you couldn’t have been so grossly obvious about it, surely. Why would she look at you that way? You recall mentioning lunch with the Warden, but beyond that…
Maker, is this a picnic ? Did you just have some poor, unsuspecting Tranquil mage lend a hand to you to set up a picnic for Blackwall—of all men, of all people?
For some long moments, you’re stunned and, frankly, appalled by your own behavior. You rub your face with two gently callused hands, exhaling for what feels like the first time since you hopped out of bed this morning, and before you can skim down the ladder and gather back up your silly little picnic, you hear heavy boots falling on the rampart walk behind you, and stopping just by your shoulder to clear his throat, a low, soft, unimposing sound.
You stifle the urge to whip around like a stupefied doe; you stifle the urge to hurl yourself off the edge of the rampart; you stomp down so many frightened little urges to face him calmly, your fists planted on your hips.
“Ser Blackwall,” you greet him, bowing deeply. He does the same, tickled by the notion of these formalities. You at least appear glad to see him.
“My lady Inquisitor,” Blackwall greets, still with that mirthful gleam in his eyes when he stands straight again. He’s traded his protective gambeson for a worn leather doublet that you’ve never seen him wear, straps buckling the vest flat over his belly, but not across his chest. No, the doublet leans hatefully open there , revealing his gold-cream throat down to the notch of his clavicle, and the tidy collar of his linen undershirt.
The sleeves are folded up his solid forearms. He's wearing familiar breeches and tall, sturdy boots. He smells of split cedar; honeyed oil and blackcurrant. You can’t pin every aroma—some of them may not even belong to Blackwall—but they melt together syrup-sweet and deliciously warm.
You smile despite the saliva all but evaporating, somehow, from your mouth, gesturing to the gap in the stone that can be passed through to access the ladder. “Shall we?”
“We shall,” he indicates the ladder with a nod of his head. You can tell he’s playing along, now, and it wasn’t even a game to begin with, not really. Lingering at the top of the ladder, you head down taking the rungs two-by-two, and your booted feet are on the soft grass below just as he’s swinging himself over onto the ladder to join you.
“I hadn’t a clue this was here,” he says as he steps off the second to last rung and looks around.
This morning, you’d hoped he would be impressed by your efforts, but now… Now, all of this feels like child’s play and though you wish—you desperately wish—that the humiliation wasn’t so bloody potent , but it is.
It aches in your chest, heavy as stone, and you’ve never felt like such a fool.
Better to get on with it—finish this stupidity and allow him to be on his way. Perhaps, if it goes by quickly enough, you won’t have time to wonder how often he’s propositioned with girlish whimsy such as this.
“Is that so?” Your voice is a curious chime over your shoulder as you walk. “Truth told, neither did I—we’d been here for some time before I realized there was a ladder here and that it needed repairing. Certainly didn’t want anyone getting hurt coming down to look.”
“Mm, and they might’ve,” Blackwall says, tolerating your small-talk, probably, and squatting by the stream to dip a big hand into the clear, cold water. He shakes droplets off his fingertips and stands to follow after you, exhaling a shuddery breath to demonstrate the chill.
Your little set-up is still mostly hidden by the trees closest to the two of you. When you pause mid-stride, Blackwall nearly collides with you, correcting his step with a puzzled grunt. You can see his question forming.
“Ser Blackwall, I’m—” It’s a sloppy entrance to a foolish thought. You lift your hands as if defeated, and notice Blackwall’s brow knitting at the center, pinched into a worried little furrow that presses you on as you turn to face him.
“I just—I didn’t realize how silly this all must look to you until I—well, we—I did have help setting things up. Now that I’ve thought about it, I just.” You swallow. You haven’t looked him in the eye since you started talking for the second time, and haven’t noticed him bending his head down to try to get a look at yours.
You pinch the bridge of your nose and press out a breathy laugh. “I feel so foolish.”
For a moment, it’s quiet. Blackwall says nothing despite the understanding that passes into his expression, and you can’t blame him. What should he say? What could he say?
“Well…” he begins, just so gently. “I wore my cleanest boots to come here to meet you. Be lying if I said I weren’t lookin’ forward to it.” His hands are on his hips, now, and he scuffs his boot around in the grass. “I’d still like to see what you’ve done. Been curious all day yet.”
You’ve been fiddling with a button on your vest, not looking at him until you peek from underneath your eyelashes and begin to smile, shyness like a veil over the excitement that threatens to spill over.
“Alright. I’ll show you.”
You don’t have time to be ashamed of how quickly your mood shifts once the Warden has shown his approval, intoxicated by the victorious little grin he shows you once you’ve perked up again. You lead him past the copse of trees to where your brilliant little spread lay all arranged for the two of you. He makes some soft, awed sound low in his chest and a pace ahead of him, you fold down to the thick wool blanket, seated delicately on your knees.
You busy yourself with the decanter while Blackwall gingerly settles his bulk down cross-legged opposite you.
“This is downright charming,” he says, and rewards your efforts with a smile that lights his eyes and frames them with ever deepening crow’s feet.
He seems awkward, as if he’s never been the kind of man to sit under a tree on a blanket with a lady. Perhaps he never has been, but he is today, and it looks good on him. You look up from pouring the rum and catch him watching as you do. The warmth of his gaze, the gentle affection you find there, slows your hands in their too-hurried task. You’re disarmed by the sudden intimacy of it, but not in the way that frightens you, sets you on edge like a prey animal—no, this is sweeter, softer. The crystal decanter sings a pretty little knell as you replace the stopper and set the rum aside.
“Your Worship, this is truly—“
“No, no, no. Shh, shh.” Quick. Swift. You hush him with a firm shake of your head and pass one glass of Fereldan spice-cherry rum to Blackwall and keep one for yourself, holding it up for a toast.
“To an uneventful day, Ser Blackwall.”
“To an uneventful day, my lady.”
Your glasses chime in sparkling-cheery unison. The two of you take your first sips in unison, too, with you watching the Warden over the rim of your glass, waiting for his reaction to the spirit. The surprised uptick of his brow doesn’t disappoint.
“Oh, I simply don’t know how you haven’t tossed back the entire bottle.” He does toss his rum down his gullet as one gulp while you try not to laugh around the second sip of yours. “Maker’s breath, it’s liquid candy. Fereldans know rum.”
“There’s never a day that I’m not torn between wanting to save it for a special occasion and wanting to upend the entire bottle, to be sure.”
The spread you’ve put together with Rowena’s assistance is arranged on a wooden serving board underneath a wicker cloche. You remove the cloche and pull the serving board between the two of you. Blackwall is already making himself more comfortable, easing out of the awkwardness that had, initially, made him seem a lumbering oaf attempting tea with picnicking nobles, hands too big and clumsy to hold the teacup. He leans against the tree behind him, stretches his legs out alongside the spread with a good view of the stream braiding over itself to reach the falls.
“I hope this is all to your liking,” you say, your voice soft with just the barest hint of pride.
“It couldn’t be more to my liking if I’d put it all together myself.”
Your face warms with a ruddy glow. You can’t help it. Sitting back, you shift over until you’re shoulder to shoulder with the Warden, and when he looks away from the stream to you, he shines that dear little not-quite-a-smile on you, more in the eyes than on the face. He nudges you, and you sway shyly, and he looks back out to the stream as he pulls you into his side with a thick arm, urges you closer still.
“Well, you should try this,” you tell him, pairing up an apple, a chunk of aged Orlesian white cheddar, and a slice of dense, soft bread. You show him the bite so he knows the blueprint for the perfect taste to portion to his own liking, and you place yours in your mouth all at once, making a show of your delight.
Blackwall follows suit and gives you an approving grunt. For a moment, you believe it possible that he isn’t quite as pleased with food and flavors as you are. Then he notices the pastry you’d brought to share and responds to the sight with narrowed eyes and a low, predatory sound, the likes of which you’ve never heard, not from him.
“Surely that one’s all for me?” He asks it as if you aren’t already considering hand-feeding it to him like some devoted servant. “How kind of you, Inquisitor. Truly a rare display of generosity.”
“ Maybe a bite for you,” you tell him at the sight of a roguish grin, demurely leaning a cheek into your shoulder.
“A single bite? Is this truly my worth to you, dear lady?”
Oh, he hasn’t dreamed his own worth to you. You look down at his hands, clasped neatly in his lap, and track your gaze back up to his face. “No,” you tell him in earnest, in a sudden surge of courage, your voice softer, lower than you’d intended. “I could spend the remainder of this age and a thousand more rolling pastry dough to try to make indulgences enough to amount to the goodness you’ve brought me since you first stood at my side, Ser Blackwall, and even then,” your voice trails, and its softness draws the Warden closer as if to better hear you. But you snatch the opportunity to breathe in the scent of him, cold leather and split wood, now with the honeyed warmth of cinnamon, vanilla, on his breath.
“Even then,” Blackwall cues you to go on, his voice a low, gravel-turning rumble.
“Even then, it wouldn’t be enough.”
The Warden shifts to focus the full force of those keen, clear eyes upon you. He seems surprised that you’d say such a thing—you’re never withholding of praise or compliment, not as a leader and not as a friend or lover. But, somehow, you’ve never articulated quite this thought to him.
“What? What is it?” You tilt your head in question.
“What you said. Is it true?” He asks after a moment of peering thoughtfully at you.
“Yes, completely.”
The Warden reaches for you, gently, touches the soft curve of your chin with rough, callused fingers. He drags his thumb just beneath the delicate pink edge of your lower lip, watches his finger as it goes, watches your flushed mouth fall open on a breath that’s lost in the sound of the stream hurrying past the viscous atmosphere suddenly surrounding the two of you.
Perhaps he’s going to kiss you. Perhaps he’ll climb over you, press you delicately down into the heavy blanketed earth beneath you and have you that way. No—what are you thinking? Not here, surely. But… maybe.
“And here I was, thinking I’ve brought you nothing but strife since then,” he says through a smirk, his voice a low, rough sound that seems to pass through your chest as it reaches your ears.
“Oh, Maker, no.” The words leave you on an airy sigh. “Anything but, in fact.”
“Mm?” You’ve snared the Warden’s interest inescapably and he shifts himself around, minding the serving board and nearby decanter. “Anything but,” he echoes, rolls it around on his tongue like he’s thinking on it, considering the ‘anything’ while his eyes drink their fill of your flushed face, your blushing ears, your rosy mouth and the fleeting glimpses of wet pink tongue inside.
“You darling little creature.”
Blackwall swallows. He’s not touching you anymore and he shakes his head ever so slowly, exhaling long and low. He seems to be collecting pieces of himself that may have chipped away while being drawn into your orbit, clearing his throat, breathing out a laugh and reaching for the fattest grape of the bunch to press to your mouth.
You’ve leaned so fully into his space that you can’t even contrive an excuse for it once the two of you snap free. You draw the grape into your mouth and feel the taut skin burst into your cheek. Sitting back, you stretch your legs, cross your ankles, and fan the collar of your shirt for cool air where everything suddenly feels thick and warm. The crystal decanter sings once more as you remove the stopper and refill the Warden’s cup, and then your own.
“Well,” you breathe, downing your two—three?—fingers of vanilla-sweet rum and delicately swiping the corner of your mouth with a fingertip. You mean to say something more, but Blackwall, having happily stuffed his face until now, snorts with muffled laughter. In a moment, you follow him over the edge.
⋅☾ ☽⋅
“Bring us in no butter, for therein are many hairs,
Nor bring us in no piggy flesh, for that will make us bears!”
If asked, you won’t be able to say when the awful, uproarious singing started. How, certainly, but not when you picked up the low murmur of Blackwall’s humming over the sound of water moving. Late afternoon— before sundown, but not before the sleeping ferns began folding themselves away? No, no; just at sundown. Twilight? It doesn’t matter, not really.
The Warden is a surprisingly patient teacher when it comes to all his favorite drinking songs. His voice is loud and big-chested, carries over the cliffside and likely up along the ramparts, too. He knows the words to these songs; he knows the histories. With each new one he teaches you, however ridiculous it is, he seems to pull a page from his own history book—a prostitute in some leaky Fereldan tavern taught him this one; an old battle mate taught him a drinking game to this one in the Orlesian countryside; he was just a lad, he’d said, still growin’ into my own co—er, shield.
All evening, you’ve been enamored with the Warden and his tales. Rapt; wondrous. A heavy flagon would have suited him better than the crystal cup you’d brought him to drink from, but he swaggers it around, all the same.
Neither of you are stumbling, but neither of you are sober. There’s a sweet spot in between that you’ve only just found tonight, sitting shoulder to shoulder around a burning lantern. Your cheeks are colored with warmth. The barest flush creeps up to the apples of the Warden’s cheeks and in the lanternlight you can see the flush on his chest.
“But bring us in good ale! Good ale! Bring us in good ale!
For our blessed Lady’s sake, bring us in good ale!”
You shirk your harmonizing duties at the end, your lungs too tired, now, from shout-singing. Somewhere in the commotion, Blackwall had gotten to his feet and pulled you up to yours to teach you some dance in the clearing; you held his hand and let him twirl you like a tiddly little ballerina. When he let you go, he collapsed on the blanket by the lantern with a bearish groan while you spun some feet away, stopped quite elegantly on your tiptoes, and flourished into a bow.
This earns Blackwall’s riotous laughter and the sound of his big hands coming together in a round of applause which belongs only to you. Out in the clearing, you take a breath of cold, clean air and exhale it in a cloud of fog that whorls nimbus-like in the moonlight around your head of dark hair before you go to the Warden and plop your rear onto the blanket beside him.
“I never would have taken you for such a skillful performer, my lady,” he says to you, sniffling in the chill.
“Nor would I have taken you for such a skillful balladeer, Ser Blackwall.” You’re still catching your breath. The lingering warmth from the rum—several hours gone, by now—is the only thing keeping both of you comfortable enough to continue to sit here in the near-freezing dark.
When you pull your hair away from your face to govern the flyaways with the hairpin that had sometime fallen loose, you look up to him to find him watching you, your long legs folded into an angled lotus, your vest riding higher on your waist, exposing your tucked linen undershirt.
Once you’re finished, you get to your knees, smoothing your hands over your thighs, and sidle over to the Warden. He watches you as though musing over you, unafraid to look you in the eye; unafraid to drop his gaze to your blushing throat and then dart back up in a glimmer of hazel made gold-green in the lanternlight.
“That the Maker would lend his own hand to the creation of a woman whose beauty rivals Andraste herself,” the Warden praises, hushed, his voice coarse from singing. He sounds as if he’s reciting poetry now and, at first, you’re stunned into doe-eyed silence. Within moments, your expression crumples to some gentler twin to annoyance, and you push out your lips to make a sound of rude disapproval at him.
“Pish, you. Now I know that rum’s gone to your head,” you grunt. While you’re shifting to find the right place for your bottom beside the Warden, he catches your wrist in the gentle clasp of one big hand, and you pause. It isn’t rough, or even firm. It feels as delicate as a paw-like mitt can feel, and you go still, laying your hand into his when he releases you and turns his own hand palm-up.
“Has it?”
There’s something weighty in the Warden’s tone. He’s no longer smiling, stroking the rough pad of his thumb across your knuckles, and when he draws your hand up to his lips to kiss them, he watches you all the way as if reading your expression—shock? fright? Even you can’t tell right away if the heat rushing up your neck is a good thing or some wave of anxiety, fight or flight.
He looks you directly in the eye, drawing you closer inch by inch. Warm, soft mouth against the inside of your wrist; dark eyes hooded, sedate. You swallow around sandpaper and get to your knees again, shift yourself until you’re right against his side and he’s guiding your hand to his chest, leading it around the back of his neck.
“Has it, my lady?”
The low, heady grind of his voice is softer now that you’re nearer. You rake your fingers through his hair and clasp your hands behind his neck, and along with his gentle urging you go, crawling over his lap to sit astride him.
Then, breathlessly: “Perhaps not.”
You feel powerful, settled over him like this. It’s not fright at all. It’s all cold-washed heat; his abortive breaths trembling with restraint as he grazes his mouth past yours, promising a kiss that doesn’t come yet. Your head swims over again, delirious with the sight of the Warden’s eyelids fluttering, eyelashes quivering pitch-black crescent moons against his cheeks as you wind your fingers into his hair and grasp, pressing your chest to his, your belly to his.
Once Blackwall gets his hands on the soft slope of your hips, he’s lost in it, gingerly untucking your shirt to slide his hot, rough hands up the strong line of your back to hold you to him. Your skin prickles, every inch covered in a rash of fleeting chills, flushing hot wherever his hands touch. He lets his head tip back to drink in the sight of you: flushed as a rose and biting your lips and watching his mouth. You yearn so hotly for his kiss that it feels as if your blood is turning to steam in your veins. If he denies you now it will undo you fiber by fiber, you’re sure of it.
Your fingers curl into his hair, grasping it in fistfuls as if you’ll come away from solid ground without anchoring yourself there. Panting, overheating; your pulse is pounding everywhere. The mewling plea that escapes you may have drawn your modesty, your insecurity, around itself as a cloak of night had you been at the helm of all your senses. As it is, though, you’re not. You’re rocking your hips trance-like in the Warden’s lap, making little nuzzling bids for his mouth; sometimes he nearly lets you have him. It’s not enough; it’s maddeningly not enough.
You seem ready to lash him for his overdelicate attention, on the verge of misbehaving to get what you want from him when he hushes you with a soft sound, gentles you like some frantic quarry. “You have me,” he tells you—a warm reassurance. “You have me.” The Warden tips his head to kiss the corner of your mouth, just so gently. He revels in it, withholding that small and significant pleasure from himself, so much that when you try to snatch a kiss from him, he makes some low warning sound and cups your chin, holding you still.
“You’ll find much greater pleasure in exercising the littlest bit of patience here, dear one.” He kisses again at the corner of your mouth, once more before he’s fully kissing you, nuzzling you into it, the eager, gasping heat of your mouth parting for him. You’ll die of nerves at this rate, but Blackwall wasn’t wrong. You’re aching in your need for him, aflame and burning white-hot already.
The Warden kisses you slowly, sweetly. He won’t have it any other way—he holds you firmly until you can rein in your urge to bite him into it, bully him into kissing you deeply. You can barely stand it, this damnable pace, but it’s easier, somehow, once you’re no longer being guided by his hand. Without having to wrangle you into submission, Blackwall’s hands are free to map your skin in swathes of rose-pink where his hands and your flesh meet in heat like a brand.
“Isn’t this better?” he asks, sliding his hands up along your rib cage to tease at cupping your breasts.
“You’re a horrible tease,” you bite back at him, arms tight around his neck. “I should have predicted it. When have you ever given me exactly what I want, when I want it?”
“You’ll be thanking me before the night’s out,” he promises between hungry little kisses, content to whittle down your frustration. He’s sitting up straighter, arm around your middle back, firm as a vise. “You’ll draw tight as a bowstring, my love. You’ll beg me to ease your ache and when I do, you’ll be singing my praises.”
“ Praises —out here? In the cold?” Your every sentiment has become a challenge in hopes of spurring him into action, but the Warden’s pace simply doesn’t budge, and that he only laughs against your throat at your feigned belligerence sets your thrashing heart aflame.
“Inside, eventually. Where it’s warm.”
“At your leisure, Ser,” you gripe, trying to retain some of the bite in your tone and simply failing. Finally— finally he passes each thumb over the tight points of your nipples, so desperate for touch that it’s almost a shock.
“Yes, my darling. It will be. I’ll happily spend the rest of our evening dining on that dear little cunt of yours if it will help you to forgive me.” You suck in a breath; he grins like a wolf against your throat and you can feel it. He lays a path of hot, open-mouthed kisses down the curve of your neck. “I’ll happily spend it so, even if it won’t help at all.”
The swell of your breasts is just enough to fill the Warden’s hands and then give a bit more still. He touches you like a precious thing, the flinty shadow of his gaze dropping to watch his big hands move beneath your shirt. You yank open the buckles of your vest and slide it down your arms and off to let him look.
“Let’s go inside,” you plead with him. You had every intention of issuing it as a command, but it sounds needful and strained and you look at him to find his mouth tipped into the littlest smirk.
Infuriating. Infuriating.
“So soon?” he clucks, delicately arranging your hair away from your shoulders.
“We’ve been here for hours.”
Blackwall rumbles with a low, thoughtful hum. “Oh, Maker,” he says, laughing that warm, soft laugh. “Is it driving you mad, my lady?”
You look him in the eye, incredulous, and your expression of absolute disbelief triggers fleeting surprise in the Warden beneath you. His eyebrows hike up, and in the space of a half-breath he’s bursting into laughter.
“Are you—?” Oh, that’s enough. Indignant, you gather yourself up and start to push to your feet. Maker, but he doesn’t make it easy, crumpled against the tree trunk and shaking with breathless laughter, one hand over his belly, the other waving your upset away, or trying to.
If you desperately rue the press of his erection’s trouser-clad swell against you once you’re stood up, you don’t make it known. Your hands ball into fists to perch on each hip. If you could set him aflame with a look, he’d be burnt to nothing but ash, here and now.
“Oh, come now,” you hear him saying, placating, as you turn your back and start to leave. “You must know I’m going to follow!” The carry of his voice is lessened by the trees, the distance, but you can still hear him tack on, “Soon as I can stand,” and puff out a last belly-shake of laughter. But he must not be terribly concerned with whether or not you forgive him for the humiliation, because you don’t hear him getting up as you stomp the ladder rungs on your way to the top, freezing now and clutching yourself in a half-hug as you hurry, almost jogging, back to the Keep.
No one you pass within Skyhold’s corridors dares to ask what’s got you so red-faced. You wouldn’t seem out of place with smoke billowing from your ears. It takes more strength than you have just now—cold, flustered, and slightly inebriated—but you manage to haul your chamber door shut so soundly that it echoes through the vaulted ceiling, louder than it should have been.
“Maker damn that man,” you growl, hands moving to make short work of unbuckling your vest, only it’s back where you’d left Blackwall and his insufferable—darling—no, fucking insufferable laughter—and your shirt is untucked. You’re truly in a state, pressing your hot hands to your face and exhaling the embarrassment of having stormed all through the Keep, looking like this.
After a moment or two of steady breathing, you shuck your clothes into the wicker basket near your wardrobe and the chill air of your quarters adheres like a veil to your skin. There are afternoons when the hearth is just too hot to stay lit, and today was one of them. You’d been out longer than anticipated and hadn’t instructed anyone to light it before sundown, and now you’re paying for it in physical comfort.
You wrap yourself in a floor-length robe of lambswool and silk, pulling the fennec fur lapel snugly around your shoulders and setting about lighting the hearth.
You take your time, reflecting on the ache between your thighs and the devil who caused it. Briefly, you consider it—you settle gently on your knees before the hearth, graze your inner thigh with your fingertips, feel the silk of your robe and the warm wool against your skin.
Not for long, though. The fire is just coming to life when the knock at your door startles you to attention and the fire iron in your right hand clatters to the stone floor.
You whip around to shoot a sharp glare at the door. “Unless you want to spend the rest of your days with the Inquisition as a scullery boy, you should leave.”
Blackwall’s voice is soft from the other side, reverberating against the heavy door. “Come now, Inquisitor. No need to show teeth. I’ve got a garment to return to you.”
“Leave it at the door,” you tell him, setting the fire on its way and putting back the fire iron. You pull open the stained glass windows just enough, letting the midnight chill in to mingle with the warmth from the fire—not too hot; not too cold.
“It wasn’t my intention to upset you,” the Warden says after a time. The chamber door creaks audibly as he leans against it and you know he isn’t leaving without something. All is silent, then, but for the crackle of the hearth and a lone, mournful nightdove calling out from somewhere on the ramparts.
His apology draws you close to forgiveness. You’ve never really perfected the art of holding a steady grudge.
“Is that an apology?” you call to him, standing by the foot of your bed, a little closer to the door.
“Yes,” Blackwall answers. A few beats pass before he speaks again. “Let me make it up to you. It’s my fault—you let me in and I laughed. It was unkind. And I’m sorry.”
You hesitate, swallowing hard around the hint of a lump in your throat, but crossing the room to the door isn’t as difficult as you thought it would be. You open it just an inch, at first, to find the Warden blocking the way; he peers in at you, flushed and candid, and that’s all it takes for you to step back, opening the door to let him in.
“I shouldn’t have gotten so angry,” you tell him once he’s in the room, shutting the door behind him, latching it.
“There were… contributing factors,” he says, still standing just inside the door. You notice his gaze dropping for a quick glance at the smooth fur lapel of your robe, but he’s as polite as pie otherwise, handing over your vest and then clasping his hands behind his back. You take the garment and worry it, folding the well-worn leather over in your hands.
“I did promise I could make it up to you, my lady,” the Warden dares with the hint of a suggestive grin. He must not want to push too far, you think, finding his mischievous affection infectious.
“You did indeed.” It takes another half-moment of consideration, but then you’re stepping carefully closer to him. You smooth your cool hand over his bearded jaw and crane your neck up to kiss him and he reciprocates gently. He exhales through his nose, measured and careful.
When you pull back from him, still delicately grazing your thumb over the angle of his jaw, the space just beneath his ear, he’s watching you with dark eyes, waiting. Whatever you wish, he’ll give it in an instant, and you know that. You lean past him to toss your vest into the heap with your discarded clothes and boots before returning your attention to the Warden, cradling his face between your hands and looking him in the eye.
“Are you afraid of me now?” Your words brush his mouth in the hair’s breadth of space between you. The next breath Blackwall takes is unsteady on the exhale and you can hear it the barest quiver.
His voice is so low that you can feel it. He tenderly circles the end of your nose with his own, nuzzling into you while his feet shuffle almost imperceptibly closer. “No. I’ve no reason to be.”
Pulling back, you make a gentle bid for his hands and he unclasps them, holds them palm-up between you. Your fingertips graze his palms and you encircle one thick wrist, drawing his big hand to your side. Instantly, you feel his fingers gather the fabric of your robe, feeling the smooth slide of it over your skin beneath.
With your silent permission, he steps closer to you, urges you with his hands now at your waist to meet him in the middle so that the two of you are pressed flush. He bends down to kiss you, and you slide your hands around the back of his neck, and he engulfs you fully, then. He’s all that you see and hear and smell, all that you feel but for the gradually warming chill of stone beneath your bare feet.
He holds you firmly to him and breaks your kiss, and slowly, ever so slowly mouths his delicate way over your jaw, a trail of worshipful kisses meandering down your throat. It only takes the barest coaxing of his nuzzling affections to slip your robe down over a shoulder and expose it, allowing the heat of his mouth room to press there, too.
You gasp, some fluttering sigh of easy pleasure, cradling the Warden’s head to your neck as he works his way around—slowly, sweetly. His hands heat your skin underneath the robe and leave a phantom brand behind as they move away—down, smoothing over your bottom and squeezing, pulling your hips tight enough to him that there must be no doubt in his mind that you feel the warm, solid length of his erection pressing against your lower abdomen.
You’re overheating quickly—the hot flush of arousal touches every inch of you with ruddy pink glow. He pauses underneath the curve of your jaw, suckling a little red mark into your skin. He feels your galloping pulse—he must. It’s thrumming around the edge of every one of your senses, and it must be pounding against his mouth, too.
“Shall we go slowly, my love?” he asks, easing his grip on you and pulling back, placing an inch or two of breathing room between you.
“I’m—I don’t know. I feel—I feel—” You feel like you could faint. He kisses away whatever you might have said—you couldn’t get it out, anyway.
“Shhh. Darling,” he whispers, pulling up your robe to cover your shoulder, just long enough to coax you gingerly over to the edge of your bed, where you seat yourself on the foot and take a deep breath. When you exhale, you can tell by how he grins at you that you sound nervous. He cradles your face, presses a kiss to your forehead; your nose’s bridge; the bow-shaped groove of your upper lip.
The Warden doesn’t take his eyes from yours as he kneels at your feet, perhaps watching you for signs of discomfort, a shift in demeanor, a change of heart. You curl your hands into fists, tangling your fingers into the bear hide spread across your bed, plush underneath you.
The heat of his hand cradles your right ankle and he gently lifts your foot, watches your eyes as he bends his head down to kiss the tops of your toes, the top of your foot, the front of your ankle; a tortuously lazy trail of warmth. Though you’ve calmed considerably, your heart still races; you still can’t help your white-knuckled grasp on the bear pelt, and watching the Warden’s pink tongue peek from his mouth and lead his lips to the inside of your ankle in a kiss isn’t helping you to hold yourself together.
Your robe falls open over your knees, your thighs. Blackwall’s big hand cradles your heel, idly kneads it, and he sits up higher on his knees to position himself between your feet, following the edge of your robe. Always watching—he’s a gentler lover than you would have imagined, brutish as he seems.
Kneeling before you is a man who moves in pure plate armor as easily as if it were a suit of tweed; hefts his shield and sword as though they weigh nothing. You’ve watched him cut down your foes one after the next, a charging bull with the heavy-handed grace of an ancient and practiced sentinel, calculating his swings for efficiency and motion. You’ve watched him withstand the thousand-pound blows of lyrium-boned goliaths and return the pain with twice the vigor.
Yet he kneels before you now, docile but not timid; controlled but not afraid. He handles you gently, not in fear that he may break you, but in knowing that tenderness, gentleness, is a keystone of intimacy. He knows these things as he knows Fereldan folk songs, or Thedan history, or Andrastian canticles that all Fereldan children are raised knowing.
At his urging, you shift your hips forward, closer to the edge of the bed, and earn the smallest rumble of praise from him, hushed, throaty. “That’s better.”
“Ser Blackwall,” you half-sigh, half-plead. Your arousal has grown to a white-hot, steady throbbing at your very center, thumping sweetly in tune with your pulse.
He’s kissing his way up the inside of your knee, then your thigh, up, up; then the inside of the other. Too much, too slowly. You can’t bear it, and in the same needful hand you can’t imagine a sweeter pleasure than the anticipation, your body thrumming with need. You hold on tightly to the oak footboard and assist the Warden however you can with arranging your legs over his shoulders—that is, you press your teeth into your lip and watch him in terrible suspense, rose-flushed mouth falling open.
You whine. He slides those big hands over the soft curve of your belly, rests one on your abdomen and the other low on your pubic bone. The Warden looks up at you and you don’t give him a moment to ask permission, spurring him on with a frantic nod, a breathless yes, yes.
He’s laughing, low and soft, when finally, finally he presses the scalding heat of his mouth to you with a hungry sound. The first filthy-wet stroke of his tongue through the fever of your cunt opens you like a blossom; your legs fall open around him and the more you give, the more he advances, slowly, and wetly, and sweetly. There’s a furrow in his brow as he hums his encouragement to you, low, growling praise. The Warden slides two thick fingers down to frame the hooded bud of your clitoris, pressing from each side, but just so gently; suckles the tender pearl there and kisses, suckle-kiss, suckle-kiss. The sensation shoots up your spine, rushes you with chills, and you curl your feet against his shoulders and reward him with a whimpering keen, thighs quivering by his head.
He’s tasting you on his lips when he pulls back to look at you, still half-clad in that damnable robe; strokes a thick finger through your folds and borrows from the wetness he’s helping create to push inside you until his palm is warm against your skin and he needs to switch his angle, just so—an inch that way, or, no, perhaps this way, and—
“Oh, Maker,” you gasp in a fevered rush, bearing your weight on your hands to rock your hips toward the firm come-hithering of first one finger, and then, effortlessly, two. His free hand, Blackwall hooks beneath the back of your knee to lift it, press back to deepen the stroke of his fingers, bending over you in your fervent need and sealing his mouth against you again.
This must be a practiced skill among human men, you think, eyes fluttering open for a half-second to study the heavy velvet canopy of your bed and then squeezing shut. He’s found something in you—some tender spot inside that he’s gunning for, rolling his fingertips against it in firm, easy circles. You can’t help rocking your hips into it, pressing up into the ravening heat of his mouth and down onto his knowing fingers, turn after turn.
Blackwall persists though your thighs clasp around him and make every movement difficult—your orgasm collapses around those callused fingers and the sound you make is desperate, tremulous. You’ve leant back onto your elbows, though you don’t remember when, and as you settle onto your back, your chest heaves. In the last few pulses of your orgasm, the Warden softens his mouth, lets it rest wet and supple against you. He’s breathing hot against your skin, wrestling with his own restraint.
Your legs are still unsteady as you ease them from around Blackwall’s solid shoulders and let him to his feet. For an instant, you worry you might fold to the floor—he has you, arms under your knees, hands under your hips to scoot you safely toward the middle of your bed. Easy.
“Maker, but you sing like a bird,” he breathes, shrugging out of his vest. You spare a moment of clarity to look at him, unashamed of the state of you—legs akimbo; chest heaving, but slower; your robe sliding open over your breasts, milk-and-honey pale. You cover your face in the crook of your arm and stifle airy laughter—elated, relieved, giddy. When the Warden crawls over you in your bed, he’s bare but for his linen smallclothes, and those are a futile bid for modesty.
“Do you think so?” You try for the flirtatious edge that he sometimes lines his own teases with, but you’re still catching your breath. He makes some affirmative sound against your neck in response, a grunt.
Opening your legs to let the Warden lay between them feels as second-nature as taking a breath or blinking; you slip your arms around his neck, his shoulders, and cradle his hot-flushed face up to your neck, scratching your fingertips through his hair. “Perhaps I’ve missed my calling. Perhaps I should join Maryden in the tavern,” you muse, tipping up your chin to expose your throat to his roaming mouth. “We’d be quite the pair.”
You can feel him laughing, the warm thrum of it vibrating through your chest. “You’d need a loyal footman to haul all the coin around,” he tells you, only half-committed to the humor of it as he props himself on his elbows, caging your head between them, minding your hair.
The sheer power of the Warden’s physique is unlike the sleek, nimble build of the elvhen who have courted you before—hairless, and elegant, and pretty, not at all like the man atop you, with coarse, dark hair grazing your half-bared chest and the sensitive curve of your throat when he tips his head there to kiss you. He’s holding some of his bulk away from you, weighty and warm between your thighs, careful that the press of his hips isn’t too forceful, too heavy.
“Lucky for you,” he murmurs, voice low in his chest, “I would be willing to attend to you at all times, my lady. No compensation necessary.”
You laugh—half-snort—and feel him shift to lean onto an elbow, his thumb tracing the hem of your robe where it lays across your breast, the only scrap of modesty you’ve left. When you open your eyes and look up at him, he’s hungrily watching you scrape your teeth over the rosy swell of your lower lip. He leans down to kiss the reddening curve of it, tasting a gasp from your mouth as he draws the robe aside and molds his hand to your breast, the toughened pad of his thumb tracing your nipple.
“Teach me to please you,” you sigh to him, apropos of nothing but how he has taken you apart piece by piece and, you suspect, he’s going to do it again.
“My love, you please me every moment of every day,” he gently croons against your temple, helping you shrug your way out of your robe and replace your arms around him.
“It isn’t the same.” You can’t help the last of your words trailing away on a sigh as the Warden cups his rough hand against you, sharing the heat of it.
“Isn’t it?”
“I feel as though I’ve been unmade. It’s your doing.” You grasp for his hair when he sinks his two thick fingers inside of you again, opening your thighs for him to press deeply in, kneading upwards.
“Yes, and I intend to unmake you again,” he promises, looking down on you as his fingers churn in firm, steady strokes. You feel him drinking in the sight of you, your eyes shut tight, your head pressed back into your pillows, your hands grasping at him, for him. You feel delirious.
You open your eyes, crane your neck up to kiss him as his fingers work you, the muscle of his brawny forearm undulating in disciplined cords. He’s so busy peppering your face with reverent little kisses that he doesn’t notice you slipping your arm into what little space remains between you, skating your fingertips over the length of his erection. The thin material of his smallclothes leaves nothing to be imagined, by touch or by sight.
Blackwall presses a kiss to your temple and rests his lips there on an unsteady exhale. He swallows hard, puts forth the effort to steady his voice. “Found your way, have you.”
“Seems so,” you chirp. The shift in his demeanor delights you. Perhaps he hadn’t expected you to be so bold. Perhaps he hadn’t expected you to know how. Or, perhaps, he’d been waiting for it and now is awash with the relief of having you finally touch him. You push at the waist of his smallclothes, loosening the garment around his hips and easing them down without ceremony to take him in hand.
“Proud of that, mm?” he rumbles against your ear, teeth grazing the blushing earlobe. He eases his fingers from you to stroke you open and add another and suddenly you’re so full of him that you can’t imagine opening even a fraction more to take him. The messy-wet sound of his fingers slowly beckoning inside you; the hot press of his palm’s heel against you; you’re delirious with sensation, unwittingly clawing at the back of the Warden’s neck and determined to stroke him, delicately, carefully.
“A bit,” you pant. “Does it please you?”
“Oh, yes,” he says, and you feel his legs shuffling to kick away his smallclothes, repositioning so that he’s seated upon his knees with your legs open around his hips. “Unimaginably, my love.”
It’s a better angle for both of you—he deepens his stroke, hooks his fingers up into you, kneading until your hand goes still on his weeping cock and your head falls back, and from you quivers a keening cry. This is his intention—he rumbles his low, growling approval at your delirium.
“Maker’s breath. The desperate sod you make of me.” He tries on a breathless laugh, easing his fingers from you and closing his big fist around your hand, squeezing; he strokes himself, hand over hand, and when he lets go you memorize the stroke, the pace, the tightness.
“Have me, then,” you plead with him, feeling the hot pulse of his cock in your insufficient hand. The upstroke is slippery now, and you toy your fingers through it, curious, experimental, wanting to look but wanting to hold his gaze, too. “If you’re truly as desperate as you say. Have me until you’re sated. Please.”
“You’d have me ruin you,” he growls, sinks his fingers into the meat of your hips and pulls you close enough that, if he wished, he could slide right into the mess he’s made of your cunt.
“Would you think me ruined?” You’re shimmying into place for him, knees hiked up to his waist. You scratch your fingers through the dark hair of his chest and he rumbles with delight, bending down to be close to you, to bury his face in the crook of your neck and kiss, suckle, inhale.
“I will still think you precious, my love,” he says against your skin. You feel his hand dip between you, rough knuckles grazing your tender skin; then his fist around himself and the head of his cock stroking you, hot as fever. “I will still think you a gem more brilliant than any other.”
His words push past the clench of his jaw as he presses into you, spreads you open like a bloom around him. He’s careful—so careful it’s as if he worries he’ll break you, and perhaps he will, you fear for a moment. Thick; hot; gloriously rigid.
“I’ll still think you beautiful beyond words. Lovely beyond imagination.” He gathers you up and holds you so close to him, soothes and calms; helps your arms around his neck and your legs around his waist, an anchor, as though he knows what this sensation will do to you. Perhaps he does. No, he must. When he stills inside you, fully seated, you feel his thrumming pulse.
You’re unable to manage more than quivering exhales, as though grounding yourself. He fills you so completely that it aches, and the time that he takes to let you adjust to the sheer size of him is maddening.
Then, when he collects you completely into his arms and lifts you, sits back on his feet and lets your weight settle onto his lap, it’s as if you’re some slip of a thing though you’re not. You’re a lifelong archer—an assassin with a fatal draw, no bird-boned wilting flower. But anyone would think it, the way he handles you, a thick arm around the small of your back to hold you in place while he grinds into you, stifling a feral sound into your throat.
Blackwall is strong, and though there’s no way you could out-muscle him, you can nearly match him in some ways. Like now, as your legs tighten around him—he’s hooked his arms beneath your knees to hold you open wide, and he’s so solid, unmoving, that it’s easy to use him for leverage, to grind your hips against him, let him deepen an already dizzying thrust.
Slowly, and deeply, and churningly. He digs his fingers into the plush fat of your hips and fucks you in grinding gut-deep thrusts, in and up, in and up. In this toe-curling ecstasy you clench your fists into his hair and pull, baring his throat to your gasping mouth. You taste the salt on every inch of skin that you can reach before the line of his beard blocks your path. Lick, suck, bite.
The sound of it is filthy—the wet heat he’s drawing out of you on every thrust; abortive snap of his hips to yours. But you’ve no thought to spare for reservation and you’re focused on sucking a purpling bruise into the Warden’s cowl muscle to stifle your tearful moans. He’s still holding you close, tight, when he covers you with his body, pressing your back to the bed, folding your legs back. He’s heavy, laying his weight behind his hips on each thrust, not daring to pull out of the desperate clutch of your body more than an inch before grinding back into you.
Either you’re satisfied with the bruise you’ve left or you simply can’t afford to spend the brain power on it anymore—you break your mouth apart from his skin and find the shell of his ear instead, sloppy and misaligned. Your legs quiver against the Warden, bulwark that he is.
“Make me yours—yours alone,” you demand, between the lewd stroke of your tongue against his earlobe and the scrape of your teeth in its wake, earning a heated growl. “Fill me, Blackwall. I want to drip with you for days—”
Oh, but the filth is barely free from your lips before he buries himself crushingly deeply and obeys—fills you until his hips are stuttering into the hot slick of his own seed. He’s holding his breath until the first two, three vicious pulse-kicks of his orgasm have passed, and then he unclenches his jaw and moans his ragged relief into your neck.
“Maker’s balls,” the Warden manages on a breathless laugh, once long moments have passed, pushing himself up to look down at you.
“Indeed.” You’re all aglow, a soft pink radiance to every inch of you. The Warden’s crassness takes nothing away—you’re helpless to stop the affectionate grin tugging at your mouth. Your chest heaves. Your cunt sweetly aches. You can’t keep your hand from waltzing up the Warden’s dark-haired belly and back down again, fingers encircling the base of his cock.
“You’ll feel this tomorrow, I’m afraid.” Blackwall has the decency to look just slightly ashamed. He eases out of you to lie close at your side, pulling your body against him, loose-limbed and overheated.
You throw your leg over his belly and your arm over his chest. “Oh, I’m counting on that, Ser Blackwall.”
“Is that so?” He manages to pull the bear hide up and over the both of you—mostly you, for he is hot as a furnace, flush blazing across his chest and shoulders.
“Yes. And when there’s no longer an ache to remind me of how thoroughly you’ve taken me, you’ll need to do it again.”
The Warden hums low, musing. “This is an intimidating task, my lady, but I believe myself more than capable.”
You make some thoughtful, amused sound and the two of you go silent to catch your breath, surrounded by the rush of mountain air outside and the crackling hearthfire inside. The next time you find yourself able to speak, you’re not sure how much time has passed.
“I had every intention of making today as uneventful a day as possible,” you confess.
“Oh? Uneventful?” The Warden’s callused fingertips drag across your forearm in surprisingly delicate trails.
“I don’t suppose you recall being absolutely covered in Darkspawn viscera some days ago. You said,” (and here, you pitch your voice as low as you can, though it’s nothing close to the thundering register of the Grey Warden’s voice) “‘ Is there never an uneventful day? ’ So, I… wanted to try to give you that.”
For a moment, Blackwall watches you in some amalgamation of affection and disbelief. Then, he bursts into peals of roaring laughter, dabbing at the corners of his eyes when he’s finished—a few moments later. You prop yourself onto your elbow to bask in his glow, and shine your own onto him.
“Well. Close race, my darling, but I suppose I’d rather lie with you than crack open Darkspawn in some gods-awful ruin any day of the week.”
“Mm. Never underestimate the simple joy of an uneventful day, Ser Blackwall.”
“Oh, never again shall I, my love.” The Warden squeezes you close to him, pressing a kiss to your sweat-dampened hairline. “Never again shall I.”