[ Master Post ]
Title: Rhapsody in Ass Major – Chapter 188
Co-Conspirator: 
MaverikLoki
Fandom: Dragon Age
Characters: Cormac Hawke ♂, Anders ♂
Rating: T (L2 N0 S1 V0 D0)
Warnings: Mild angst, tongue-tango, dick jokes
Notes: An awful lot of snogging.
Cormac was surprised when Anders interrupted him, sliding into his lap, and blocking his view of the book he was taking notes from. Usually, this went the other way. Cormac would head downstairs, in the middle of the night, and drape himself across Justice until he got Anders back. Still, he wasn't going to complain. Much. The book had seemed like it might be useful, particularly to him.
"Am I interrupting something?" Anders asked, stretching his arms over Cormac's shoulders. "Was it terribly important?"
"I'm not hanging any Orlesians out to dry. It's not that important. It's definitely less important than the fact that you need to move your right leg, because you're crushing my knob." Cormac grinned. "Not always a bad thing, but not really a good thing in this position."
Anders laughed and shifted his weight. "What are you doing, anyway?"
"Figuring out how to turn pain into magic." Cormac leaned against the back of the chair and smiled up at Anders. "I mean, literally. And no, I'm not taking up blood magic, but the principles might be related."
"Hmm, well, I know how to turn pain into magic a little less literally, but…" Anders glanced over his shoulder, twisted to take the book from Cormac's hand. He rested his arm on Cormac's shoulder and read the book over his head, skimming through the dense writing he found there. "Huh. Learning some new tricks are we?"
"Just trying some things out. These are on my list of things I won't be teaching Artie. The last thing he needs is something that'll make the earthquakes stronger or longer. Well, the actual earthquake part, anyway. The other part, I'm always interested in helping out with that." Cormac leaned in and nibbled the side of Anders's neck. "Little early for you to be interested, isn't it? Or is it later than I think it is?" His eyes darted toward the window, where the sun was just going down.
"I'm always interested," Anders purred, which was partly true. "The clinic was empty, so I called it an early night. Your gain."Â He dropped the book to the floor and wound both arms around Cormac's mage-shoulders, leaning in for a kiss. He still wasn't used to this, this kissing thing, but with Cormac, it was starting to feel natural.
A pleased hum slipped out of Cormac, and he nibbled at Anders's lip. They'd kept it simple, so far, just lips, never for more than a few seconds, but tonight felt different. Anders would tell him if he pushed too far. "Mmm, Justice isn't usually interested. Not at this hour," he muttered, flicking his tongue against Anders's lip. "But, you? You I'd believe that from." He let go and tried to put down the quill he'd been writing with, totally unable to see the desk past Anders's shoulder. "I'm feeling lucky, tonight. Exotic magic, a gorgeous magical unicorn in my lap, a night that started with experiments in pain and has progressed to kissing… I'm definitely appreciating this turn of events." He pressed another kiss to the corner of Anders's mouth.
"Feeling lucky, hmm?" Anders murmured against Cormac's lips. "And how do you feel about getting lucky?" Not subtle, and he was fairly certain he'd used that line on Cormac before, but he didn't care. He nibbled at Cormac's lip, a soft press of teeth that turned into a bite, a promise of things to come.
"You're the one sitting on my knob. How do I feel about getting lucky?" Cormac chuckled and kneaded Anders's ass. "I'm pretty sure I have ink on at least one of my hands. Consider it payback for all the ink you've gotten on me." He pressed his lips to Anders's again. "You going to let me stop being so careful with you? Maybe today, when neither of us has been sleeping or slamming unfortunate potions?" Morning breath and six-potions-later breath were problems for them, fairly regularly. On the other hand, they were both mages, and Cormac didn't actually care, but he let Anders put him off with whatever was handy. No sense in being difficult, most of the time.
"Maybe today," Anders agreed coyly, as though he hadn't already been thinking about it, as though that wasn't why he was here. "Though if you get ink on my coat, you better have it cleaned. Otherwise I'll never hear the end of it from Artie." Not that he minded the thought of being covered with Cormac's fingerprints, of being able to map out just where he'd been touched and how. "And you could always slam more 'fortunate' potions, if you like." Anders rocked his hips against Cormac's.
"Does that count as a potion? I'll have to drink more of it. Effects: It makes me happy. Side effects: If I drink enough, it makes you tired," Cormac joked, one hand moving up to untie Anders's hair. "Coat's mostly leather. It'll wipe off. Your hair, though… That might need washing. Feels a bit greasy, though. I'm sure it'll come right out." He laid a long, needy kiss on Anders's lips, parting his own just enough to pull a breath between. "Always wanted to kiss you, you know. Right from the moment you threatened to throw me out of the clinic, the first time we met. You were all bone and Justice, then. Still gorgeous."
Anders breathed a laugh into Cormac's mouth, lips quirking at the corners. "Still all 'bone'," he said with another rock of his hips. His lips didn't leave Cormac's. He wished he could say he'd always wanted to kiss him too, but… "I had to…" Another breath against Cormac's lips. "I think I had to say goodbye to someone, first." He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to lose himself in another kiss.
Cormac let him, lips parting as Anders pressed in, a little too hard. He caught the tip of Anders's tongue in his teeth and sucked it, licked at it, treated it as he would anything else Anders put in his mouth, which at this point included a surprising number of body parts. After a moment, he let go, not waiting for the pull, and just kept his lips in motion, fingers tangled in Anders's hair, but never quite pulling.
Anders had forgotten how good kissing could be, as a prelude to something else or even just an act on its own. And Cormac was good at this, he decided. He wished he hadn't taken so many years to find that out. Anders smoothed his hands over Cormac's cheeks, reached around to tangle in his hair, and he pulled Cormac to him like he wanted them to become one person.
Cormac made a surprised sound that might have been words, under other circumstances, but the only thing conveyed was how little he'd expected that and how much he wanted it. Which, he supposed, had really been the point, anyway. He pushed aside his wariness, how cautiously he'd handled Anders, when the issue of kissing came up — and it had always been an issue, if one rarely raised — and kissed Anders like he'd always wanted to, passionately, demandingly. If he fucked up, he'd get bit, he knew, and that would be warning enough.
And Anders lost himself in that kiss, in the feel and taste of Cormac, and for a moment, he remembered kissing somebody else, someone who didn't taste like copper, who didn't use his tongue and teeth to such devastating effect. He let out a shaky exhale through his nose, and it was the sort of sound that would have been a moan from someone else. But he couldn't hold his breath quite as long as Cormac, and he pulled back, gasping for air, hands still tangled in his hair.
"You loved him, didn't you." It wasn't a question. It never was. Cormac, as bad as he was at the idea, had a pretty good eye for that particular sort of adoration, in other people. 'Friends you do' didn't drag out like this, and he knew it. Even when he'd found out that Gantry really hadn't made it out of Lothering, it hadn't hit him like this. On the other hand, he also hadn't killed Gantry, but he'd always had a feeling about Anders and Karl — the way they'd looked at each other in that tiny sliver of time when Karl had come back to himself. He'd never seen Anders look at anyone like that again.
And Anders couldn't roll his eyes and blow off that question — that statement — like he usually did, not this time. His hands slipped to Cormac's shoulders, his stare to Cormac's chest. "I… suppose I did," he admitted, finally. "As much as a mage in the Circle could love, anyway. And that was… well. You saw how that ended." He conjured a smile for Cormac's sake, though it came out hollow. Karl was gone, and it had taken him this long to come to terms with that.
"I said it then, and I'll say it again. If it had been my brother, I'd be no better." Cormac kissed Anders's cheek, unwilling to push his luck after something like this. "You still sorry we got you out?" he asked, running one hand through Anders's hair. "Because I haven't regretted it once. Not even that time, I know you're thinking it, stop."
Anders squeezed his eyes shut and rested his cheek against Cormac's forehead. "No, I'm… I'm glad," he said, and he almost sounded like he believed it. "There was just… there was a part of me that kept wondering, that still wonders, what would have happened if I'd gotten there sooner. If I'd come to Kirkwall sooner, if I'd met with him sooner." Anders shook his head, rubbed his forehead with two fingers and a thumb. "But wondering doesn't change anything, does it?" He smiled weakly. "But I made him a promise that I'd come back for him. That I… that I wouldn't kiss anyone until I kissed him again. And that's ridiculous, isn't it? Terribly sappy of me, and there I went, missing out on some fantastic kissing."
"You have been missing out on some fantastic kissing. Mostly Isabela's. The things that woman can do with her tongue…" Cormac grinned and shook his head, as he pulled Anders's hand down, pressing kisses to the knuckles. "Gorgeous magical unicorn, randy tomcat, sylvan. Nice to see I'm not the only one getting sappy. But, I wish you'd gotten one last kiss. It's not right. But, nothing is, I suppose. It's not right, it's Kirkwall." Cormac rested his forehead against Anders's chin, for a moment. "So, ah, sucking face with the Knight-Captain, the other night… Do I get my brother a congratulatory bottle of wine or a bottle of brandy in which to drown his sorrows? In your professional opinion, as a connoisseur of kisses and an accomplished tongue-tangoist."
"Ah, an accomplished tongue-tangoist?" Anders replied, skin crinkling at the corners of his eyes. "I didn't realise my mouth-manoeuvring was so highly considered. And, I think, a congratulatory bottle of wine for Anton. Maybe some brandy for Cullen, since he won't get to kiss me again. I'm assuming. What about Fenris?" He grinned down at Cormac.
"Ask Varric." Cormac shook his head. "That wasn't so much a kiss as it was getting my face smashed into something warm and elfy." He grinned back up at Anders. "You're assuming he won't get another chance? You're not going to let him, or you think Anton's going to object?" There was a brief pause, and the grin lost some of its amusement. "Not that I would blame you if you never wanted to put so much as a finger on another templar for the rest of days. Looked like you really wrecked him, though! I'd have thought he'd be immune to that sort of thing after so long with my brother! Unless, of course, there was some extra sparkle in there, that I missed."
"No extra sparkle," Anders said, hand over his heart as though swearing an oath. "Just the normal, non-magicky sparkle I bring to every occasion." His grin broadened. "And I just assumed he'd rather be kissing your brother. By which I mean Anton. Possibly a different brother if he ever got that drunk again. So maybe a no on that brandy after all." Anders toyed with Cormac's hair. "You know, we could either keep talking about kissing or we could do some more actual kissing."
"Yeah? You want to kiss me, do you?" Cormac smiled up at the gorgeous mage in his lap. "After all these years, and all this fucking, and all the other pleasures I've given you with my mouth, now you want to kiss me?" he teased, tugging at Anders's hair, which had finally started to get a little long. It wasn't even that Anders had been cutting his hair, before — the tips never squared off — it just hadn't been getting any longer. But, now, there was enough that it hung in a loose wave to just below his collarbone, and Cormac took a minute to appreciate the way it framed his face. "Well, my body and my bed are all yours, for the night. Possibly also my chair, considering we're still in it. So, show me your long-hidden non-magical charms, my gorgeous magical unicorn."
