Sorry About the Blood

"Sounds like a personal problem." Nate didn't look up from his book.

"You should let me buy you a drink. You should let me buy you several drinks. We should get drunk."

"And then you'll be drunk and bored." Nate turned the page, not quite registering the contents of the last two paragraphs, in his growing irritation.

"I won't be bored if you're drunk. I bet you're an interesting drunk. Like Sigrun. Sigrun's fun after the first five pints." Anders grinned and twisted himself around until he was curled up in the chair, leaning on the arm with both hands, still watching Nate.

"Then why don't you get her drunk?" It seemed like a perfectly reasonable solution to this problem.

"She's out killing things. You're not." Anders's shoulders bunched and he squinted. "You're also not actually reading. Your eyes aren't moving right."

Just like a fucking cat, Nate thought. Always directly in his way. He gave up and threw the book at Anders. The end of the spine bounced off the healer's forehead with a satisfying thump, and Anders just grinned wider.

"Brandy?" he asked, paying no mind to the slowly-bruising red mark on his face.

"Whiskey." No, that wasn't what he'd meant to say at all. Nate scowled as the mage poured himself out of the chair.

"We'll walk and drink. Tell how drunk we were by where we wake up, in the morning." Anders held out his hand to Nate.

"I'm not getting that drunk," Nate grumbled, ignoring the hand as he heaved himself out of the very comfortable arm chair. Why was he getting up? How had he gotten talked into this? He didn't remember agreeing to this at all, but his body had decided for him.

"You say that now, but after the first six drinks, it all gets a little fuzzy." Anders laughed and led the way into the safer parts of the cellar, searching for the wine cellar that was mostly not wine, given the way the Commander preferred to drink, and the fact they already had two dwarves living in the keep.

This room… a dim memory flickered through Nate's head and he wished it were dimmer. He pressed his fingers against the curve of his eyesocket and shook his head.

"Memory lane?" Anders asked, smacking an open bottle into his free hand.

"Memory swamp. Let's not." He took a long swallow and tried to hand the bottle back.

"Hang on to it. I've got an unfortunate habit of drinking people under tables." Anders held up another bottle of the same. "Let's take a walking tour. Show me all your favourite things. You lived here a long while, didn't you? And every time we hit something you wish you didn't remember, double shot. Shouldn't be much, if we're doing places you liked."

Shouldn't be. Except half the time it was the halls, and not just the rooms. Still, the first chance he'd had to drink himself stupid in these hallowed halls, without worrying what his father was going to say about it. And that was a double shot, in itself. He took another swig and held out the bottle, almost companionably. "Done."

Anders tapped his own bottle against it and drank to catch up. "Where do you want to start?"

"We could start down here and work our way up, but I don't think I want to be that drunk on the roof. I think I can get us to the top of the keep in four drinks or less, and then we can work our way back down." Really, it was sounding like a less terrible idea, with every passing moment.

"Four drinks just on the stairs? Holy shit, Howe." Anders covered his mouth and giggled. "One of these years, I'll take you on a drinking tour of Kinloch Hold. They can't keep me, now. I'm a Warden. … You don't think the Commander would let them keep me, do you?"

"The Commander? No. Me, though? I might." Nate headed back up the stairs.

"A drinking tour of the tower. We'll have alcohol poisoning before we make it out of the basement." Anders laughed. "I bet this place has some good basement stories, too."

"I wasn't allowed to play in the cellar," Nate said, stiffly.

By the time they'd reached the top of the stairs, they were five drinks down, and Nate had sunk into a monosyllabic sulk, shoulders hunched like he wanted to be anywhere other than he was. By the time they'd reached his sister's old room, he'd rebounded far enough to be snarling angry stories about both his parents, while Anders snorted and laughed, something like sympathetically. By the time they'd reached Nate's old room, neither of them were quite sure where they were, any more, and they were carrying on in that way that one needs to be sufficiently drunk to follow.

"Howe?"

They leaned in the doorway, trying to figure out what they'd been doing, and whether it was important. They'd lost the empty bottles several rooms ago.

"Hmm?"

"Got a pretty smile." Anders couldn't get his eyes to focus worth a damn, but he was sure of that fact.

"Liar."

"'M not."

"Got a face like a brick," Nate slurred, scowling.

"A sexy brick." Anders grinned drunkenly.

"Mage-Warden Anders, specialist in the sex appeal of bricks," Nate scoffed.

"Do you have to be difficult?" Anders groaned. "I'm trying to get you naked."

"Because that's going to end well."

"You're a Warden, I'm a Warden… At least we can keep up."

"If you can get it up at all."

"Up is the least of my problems."

Nate licked his lips. "Prove it."

Anders staggered forward and leaned against the wall, forehead on his forearm, looking down at Nate, all of an inch between them. He grabbed Nate's hand and pressed it to the front of his robes.

"It's listing," Nate snarked.

"You're still dressed," Anders shot back.

"You must be desperate, if you think that's going to help."

Anders slipped his hand into the leather faulds of the armour Nate pretty much lived in, cupping his hand around Nate's surprisingly interested knob. "Ohh, Nathaniel," he purred, "your naked body would definitely help. And what would help even more is if you got naked and put this inside me."

Nate squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed hard. "Oh, Anders, don't tempt me," he warned.

"I want it, Howe." Anders looked insufferably smug. "I want you to fuck me like only a Warden can."

"Fuck," Nate choked out.

"Yeah, fuck. Take this fine, thick piece of meat and shove it into me. Fuck me until we can't get it up." Anders shuddered. "We can do it. We can finally find the end. How(e) many nights —" he giggled drunkenly "— have you spent with your hand? It's not enough, is it?"

Eyelids fluttering, Nate writhed against the wall, grinding into Anders's hand. "Shouldn't…"

"Shouldn't you? How long's it been since you've had someone wrapped around your throbbing knob? How long since getting off didn't just get you even more on?" If Anders hadn't been achingly hard at the beginning of the conversation, he sure was, now.

"Never in the house," Nate breathed, struggling to maintain the tiny ghost of composure he imagined he might still have. "Never where anyone would know."

"There's no one left who cares."

Anders's ass bounced off the stone floor, as Nate threw him to the ground, before clawing at the buckles that held his own armour together. Leather thudded dully to the floor. Eyes wide and gaze hungry, Anders watched the rogue strip.

Down to nothing but his smalls, Nate crawled up between Anders's spread thighs, hiking up his robes. "You'd better only still be dressed because you're not wearing any smalls."

"Oh, shit, Howe, you know better than that by now. I'm never wearing any smalls." Anders glanced around for anything to stick under his head, and came up with nothing he could reach. That was fine. He didn't figure this position would last.

"So, all the times I've seen your ass are my fault for standing behind you?" Nate spit in his hand, before Anders grabbed it and cast a grease spell into it.

"No, that's my fault for flashing my ass at you. It's a nice view. I was hoping you'd take an interest." Anders gave up any pretence at sitting, as Nate leaned over him and started to push in.

"I kept hoping I'd find something a little less well-used."

"Well, that sounds boring," Anders panted. "I've got all the talent, and none of the cost."

"You're disgusting," Nate grumbled.

"And you're fucking me." Anders raised his eyebrows, pointedly.

Hours passed in a haze of spunk and sweat and salty remarks. Nate kept fucking and Anders kept healing — frenulum tears, scrapes, bruising, falling off of things, falling onto things. Nate rutted like he meant to end the world by fucking it to death, which was going well for him, until it wasn't. He slowly went soft, ignoring it until he slid out, in the middle of a thrust, and couldn't get back in.

"No! Why does it think I'm done? I'm not done." His entire body trembled with tension and exhaustion.

"So, don't be done." Anders rolled over, sweeping a handful of healing over his own body, invitingly, his own knob still distinctly interested in the proceedings.

Nate moaned appreciatively and leaned forward to press his face against Anders's neck. "Maker bless you and your kinky mage shit."

Anders applied a grease spell and held himself up, as Nate so very slowly lowered himself down.

Halfway down, Nate paused. "Am I out of practice or is this going to come out my mouth?"

Anders laughed and Nate's eyes rolled back in his head. "It's not as big as you think it is," Anders lied, massaging healing down through Nate's back.

"Nnnngh. That. Do that. Feels incredible." Nate's hips rolled and he throbbed almost painfully against Anders's belly, without so much as a drip to show for it.

And so began the next few hours, which were slower and more painful than the preceding ones, but just as good, if not even better.

The first thing Anders noticed, when he woke, many hours later, was that he had no idea where he was. Slowly other pertinent facts returned to him. He was naked. That was Nate Howe's bare ass pressed against his crotch. There were blood smears on everything, along with substantially less-savoury things. His knob was glued to Nate's ass with … he decided not to think too much about that, but he pressed a hand to Nate's belly and healed him, all the same. The body in his arms relaxed, with a relieved sigh, and kept right on sleeping.

Extracting himself from the tangle of limbs and apparently a sheet? Anders dragged himself to his feet. Oh, this had once been a bedroom, now covered in a decade of dust. He hoped it hadn't been Nate's sister's, as he pulled on his robe and chased off the wicked hangover. Anders tossed the sheet over Nate and left a note on the pillow.

'Sorry about the blood. I took care of it. You're fine.'