[ Master Post ]
Title: Rhapsody In Ass Major – Chapter 185
Co-Conspirator: 
MaverikLoki
Fandom: Dragon Age
Characters: Cormac Hawke ♂, Artemis Hawke ♂, Anton Hawke ♂, Anders ♂, Cullen ♂, Donnic ♂, Fenris ♂, Isabela ♀, Merrill ♀, Varric ♂
Rating: T (L2 N0 S1 V1 D1)
Warnings: A lot of kissing, a little slapping
Notes: A game of Wicked Grace turns into a game of spin the bottle.
The game was going as it tended to, and most of the coins were piled in front of Anton, Isabela, and Fenris. Fenris had that devastatingly smug look he got after a few wins in a row and several glasses of wine, and he tossed another copper into the pot. Up the table, Isabela had her cards in one hand and an empty bottle in the other, bouncing the bottle off the soft wood of the table and catching it. Her eyes darted to the coin, and the bottle popped up over her fingers, landing on its side and spinning. When she reached to pick it up, the neck pointed to Varric, who sat next to her.
"Well, the bottle spun!" Isabela declared, grabbing Varric's scruffy cheeks with the hand not holding her cards.
"Rivaini, what—" Varric managed, before the rest of the sentence was cut off by her lips.
"I always wanted to do that!" Isabela laughed, letting go. "Spin the bottle. If it points to you, whoever spun it has to kiss you. It's good fun. A party game. Don't tell me you've never played!"
"You didn't even spin it on purpose!" Varric pointed out. "Of course I know the game, but you weren't spinning the bottle, you just dropped it!"
"So, I'll spin it, this time." Isabela shrugged, face a moue of hard-won concession. She set the bottle further out and twirled it.
The bottle spun and knocked against the pile of coins in the middle, earning an irritated huff from Fenris. When the bottle stopped, its neck pointed between Cullen and Anton. Izzy waggled her eyebrows at Cullen, but the Knight-Captain scooted to the side, eyes wide. She shrugged and looked at Anton, who laid his cards face-down on the table and laughed, holding his arms out wide.
Rather than walking around the table, Isabela climbed over it, further upsetting the pile of coins in the middle, and dropped into Anton's lap. "Cheater," he teased just before she laid a kiss on his mouth. It was little more than a peck, surprisingly chaste from Izzy, and Cullen smirked and shook his head, trying to focus on his cards.
"Please," Izzy huffed, poking Anton in the chest with one finger. "If I knew how to cheat with that, I'd've kissed all the Hawkes by now."
Artie looked up, wide-eyed, as Varric cackled.
Anton patted Isabela's rump, and she jumped up from his lap, walking over the table to return to her seat. Anton picked up the bottle, twirling it in his hand. "It's been a while since I've played this," he admitted, to Cullen's relief. "Is it my turn to spin?"
Donnic looked up from his cards to see that most of the rest of the table had abandoned theirs. "Hold on, are we done with Wicked Grace?" he asked, brows knit. Not that he was complaining, with the hand he had. At this rate, he'd end up owing Fenris a kidney.
"Don't think you can win around the bottle?" Anton joked, spinning it. "Of course, knowing you, you might finally take back some coin, with all the distraction."
The bottle pointed straight across the table at Cormac.
"What?" Cormac looked at the bottle and then at Anton. "Oh, gross. No." One brother was more than enough. At least Anton didn't look much more thrilled about it than he was.
"Andraste's holy twat, what have I done to so displease the gods, today?" Anton groaned, resting his head on Cullen's shoulder.
Isabela grinned wickedly. "You spun! It's on you, now! Do it! Do it! Do it!"
Down the table, Merrill clanked her tankard against a plate of cheese in time to Isabela's chanting. Cullen looked torn between amusement and horror. This was what he should have subjected Bran to, he decided, all at once. The rowdy little shit deserved it.
Anton groaned, dragging himself to his feet, face sagging in the most unenthused possible expression. He hiked one knee onto the edge of the table and leaned across it. "Kiss kiss, you hairy bastard," he muttered.
"Don't talk about our mother like that!" Cormac shot back, before reaching out and slapping Anton across the mouth. "A smack on the lips. That's what this needed, right? I choose the literal interpretation. Keep your lips off me. Maker only knows where they've been," he huffed. "Give me the damned bottle, before I do something I'll regret more than spinning it."
Anders watched all this over the lip of his tankard, quietly amused but unsure how he felt about this. 'Kissing' was something he'd only started doing again recently, and only with Cormac, but with any luck would avoid him altogether.
The bottle certainly avoided Anders this time, and everyone at the table watched as it slowed its spinning. For one terribly amusing moment it looked like it was going to point at Artemis only to slide past him and point instead at Fenris. Rum shot out of Artemis's nose.
Fenris's ears twitched. "What."
Izzy hooted with laughter while Varric threw his head back and cackled at the ceiling. Cormac patted Artemis's back as he continued to laugh-wheeze around his drink.
"I don't like this game," Fenris growled. "I was winning the other game! I was winning the other game, and I didn't have to kiss any magical bears!"
"Suck dicks in the Abyss. I am not a bear, Fenris, we've been over this," Cormac huffed, glaring at the bottle. "First my brother and now this? Balls!" He slapped a hand on the table and then turned his head and muttered something to Artie that was worth another dribble of rum down said brother's chin. "Holy Allfather, what have I ever done to deserve th… yeah, okay, not something to ask an elven god, with this on my face." Cormac paused and turned back to Artemis. "Artie!" he whined. "Do something!"
"Sure, sure," Artemis said between coughs, wiping his chin and schooling his expression. He scooted his chair back so that he was no longer between his brother and his fiancé, and then he put a hand behind each of their heads. Before either of them could figure out what he was doing, Artie pushed their faces together.
"Thrff n'wrt r mnt!" Cormac protested, trying to pull his lips between his teeth.
"Amatus— Amatus, if I do this, will you please let go of my hair?" Fenris sounded mildly panicked by the entire affair, obviously forgetting that he could extract himself from Artie's grip with a minimum of effort.
Cormac sighed. "Balls," he muttered, touching his lips to Fenris's.
"No, lips, thank all things great and good," Fenris grumbled.
Anders looked on in frozen horror, certain he should be doing something, should have done something, but with no idea what. Getting in Artemis's way, where Cormac and Fenris were concerned was rarely wise, as both of them would defend him and their decision to do as he demanded. It wasn't something to get into, in public.
Artemis let them both go, and Fenris grimaced, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. Artie scooted his chair back into place at the table, looking altogether far too amused. He pressed a kiss to his elf's cheek to smooth over the scowl he saw there, and for a moment he almost did the same for Cormac, only to remember that this was not the place. He patted his brother's leg under the table instead.
"So it's my turn to spin this damnable thing, is it?" Fenris grumbled. He paused to take another long drink. It had just been lips against lips, but he still imagined he could taste Cormac's mouth. "Right." He set down his drink with a heavy thunk and spun the bottle, hard enough that it almost spun right off the table.
It slowed, slowed… and stopped, pointing right at Varric. Artemis had made a point not to take a drink during the spinning, but he still almost choked on his laughter.
Varric looked momentarily terrified before he schooled his expression, looking instead at Fenris with a mischievous glint in his eye. "Pucker up, Broody."
Fenris looked horrified, first. Resignation followed shortly, as he stood up and walked around the table. "At least you're not Cormac," he sighed, before grabbing Varric's hair and tilting the whole chair back, with the dwarf in it, to deliver a kiss Isabela could have taken a lesson from.
In fact, Isabela did take a lesson from it, eyes wide and wolf-whistle quick to follow, as Fenris stood up, wiped his mouth, and tipped the chair back up. Applause followed immediately.
"Holy shit, Broody, are you trying to get on Bianca's bad side?" Varric stared at the cards on the table in front of him, hands stiffly spread against the edge of the table.
"Is it so easy as that?" Fenris asked, heading back to his seat as if nothing had happened. "I would have thought it would take something a little more interesting." His eyebrows twitched up, as he sat down, and he wrapped an arm around Artemis's waist.
"That… is… Give me the bottle." Varric held out one hand, still staring dazedly at the table. "And a full one, too. I need a drink. I need three drinks."
Cormac grabbed the empty and rolled it up the table, and Isabela produced another bottle of something that passed for rum from somewhere no one was going to ask too much about. Varric took the full bottle first, pouring three fingers into the beer already in his tankard and taking a long swig, before he picked up the empty and spun it. After a few revolutions, it pointed mostly toward Merrill, just a bit shy of Donnic, who was occupying the spot Carver usually had.
Merrill giggled, and Isabela whooped, patting her on the back. Varric made a show of smoothing back his hair and straightening his jacket. He swaggered over to her seat with a devilish smirk, and Merrill set down her drink, turning towards him. Wrapping an arm around her waist, Varric pulled Merrill half out of her chair as he kissed her.
Her face was bright red as he pulled back, and she pressed a hand to her mouth to stifle the giddy laughter bubbling up her chest.
"As you were, Daisy," Varric said, offering her a wink as he pressed the bottle into her hand.
Merrill cleared her throat and fanned herself as she turned back towards the table. "My, it suddenly got warm in here," she said as she spun the bottle.
With his head on Fenris's shoulder, Artemis watched the bottle spin and slow, watched it pass over Anders, Cormac… and point directly at him. He looked up at Merrill to see the same round-eyed look of surprise on her face. Next to her, Isabela cried out, "That's not fair! Andraste's flaming knickers!"
"Oh, it's fair," Fenris said, returning the pout Artemis gave him with a smug smile.
"This? This is what you get for not helping your brother, Artie." Cormac folded his arms and looked on in amusement. "Just kiss the girl and take the bottle. She's cute. She's even an elf! And you are pretty cute for an elf, Merrill. I say that with exactly no intention of ever sleeping with an elf. Just… not my thing."
"Which is why you have vallaslin," Merrill teased, standing slowly and picking up the bottle. "Because elves are 'not your thing'."
"Hey, hey, there's two kinds of appreciation of elven culture in this room, and I do one, and Artie does the other. Extensively. Every chance he gets." Cormac elbowed his brother as Merrill came around the table, still looking at the bottle in her hand, as opposed to Artemis.
"This seems terribly foolish," Merrill apologised, setting the bottle on the table, in front of Artemis. "Isn't this foolish, Fenris?"
"Utterly. But, you spun the bottle, and if I didn't get out of it, neither do you," Fenris drawled.
"Oh! No, I… it's not me. I don't mind at all. He just looks so uncomfortable." Merrill eyed Artemis sympathetically.
"Just kiss the man, Kitten!" Isabela shouted down the table. "And then tell me how it was!"
"It's all right," Artemis reassured her with a pained smile. "Better you than Anton." He wondered what Carver would say about all of this if he were here. It would probably involve a great deal of swearing, whatever it was. And Cormac would probably end up getting punched again.
And, really, that wasn't half as reassuring as he thought it sounded, but Merrill kissed him anyway, just a quick peck of her lips against his.
"Aw, what, no tongue?" Isabela whined. "You disappoint me, Kitten! This was a once in a lifetime opportunity!"
Merrill and Artie offered each other awkward smiles before looking at anything but each other. Merrill went back to her seat, and Artemis went back to his drink.
"It's your spin, Amatus," Fenris sweetly reminded him, as if he needed to be reminded.
"Yes, yes," Artie sighed, waving his hand and reaching for the empty bottle. He gave it a whirl a prayed it didn't land on Izzy. Or Anton.
Instead, it rolled just past Fenris, past him, to point at Cormac. This time it was Fenris choking on his drink.
"No," Anton said simply, reaching for Izzy's questionable rum. Izzy shushed him, staring at the pair of Hawkes in question.
