undwarfy | Open post

"Your powers of observation continue to dazzle," came the deadpan reply.

It was only a few more minutes before they came upon it: a small cave, out of the way, that overlooked the sea. Varric had loved this spot, as a rebellious, horny teenager: off the beaten path, in a place too desolate and untrod for the paths that attracted bandits, overlooking a shore too rocky and unfriendly for raiders to land a boat. Hostile or unworthy to raiders and bandits, but perfect for a young man looking for a spot to have a picnic. The shrubs around the entrance had grown large and wild in the intervening years, completely hiding the already hard-to-spot cave mouth from view, even up close.

"Here we go. Help me out here, would you?" He started pulling back branches - deliberately without breaking them - to make their way into the cave.

An exhale and she stepped forward. Her armour was better suited to this, and she could see what he was doing - so she got between him and the branches, pushing them far enough back that the both of them could pass. They'd make good cover, and by now were too wet to work as firewood. Unfortunately. Already, she was starting to chill and, as she stepped into the little cave, she muttered something about, "Horrible Southern weather."

But then she was looking around, eyes adjusting to the darkness enough that she could see a few dry roots, some driftwood branches-- too many, and in too much the same place to be accidental.

"So you've brought the elf to your secret hideaway." Sarcasm laced her voice, low as it was, proving that her words were, in part, intended in humour. She knew better than to think he'd intended this.

He followed her into the cave and started snapping off branches- from the inside, so he could let in light without making their location obvious.

"You caught me." Drily. "Now comes the part where I rip off your clothes, attempt to have my way with you, and you remove all my internal organs. You know..."

A grunt as he put his back into snapping an especially thick branch. The dwarf was stronger than he let on.

"Romance."

Fenris snorted under her breath, already partway through taking off her gauntlets, her sword propped against the wall. If he was going to attend to the branches, she was going to attend to how soaking wet she was. Unlike Varric, she wasn't wearing a coat, a shirt, a sash, breeches... Her layers were limited.

What she did do was lay her gauntlets on a ledge and follow them with her pauldrons. "As if ripping would happen." Her breastplate joined the pauldrons, and then she was fighting with her wet, sticking tunic. Keeping it on would only make her colder, especially if they were going to have a fire.

"Hey, this is my fantasy world, Broody!" he snapped, tone utterly devoid of any actual venom. "It's all ripped bodices and rippling muscles in here, I promise."

The branches he'd broken off already were enough for a fire- but on closer inspection, the wood was wet. All of it. Far too wet to even have the hope of getting it alight, without any mages around.

"Bad news, we're not gonna have-" Varric turned to give Fenris the bad news- only to see her completely fucking naked, kicking off her smalls. He dropped the branch, eyes going wide at... at that. "-Tits."

Oops.

She knew he was surprised.

That much was painfully obvious. But when she looked at him, only one answer came to mind.

Utterly expressionless, she said, "I'm aware of how flat my chest is, Varric. It isn't bad news if I already knew it."

Apparently Southerners were less... cavalier about these things. Hm.

"Give yourself some credit," he said to her chest. "There's still enough."

He knew he should be looking up. This was a fact- a simple one, even. Eyes up there. But for the life of him, he couldn't do it. He was a red-blooded man whose eyes still very much worked and he could not stop looking at very small, very well-formed, very lyrium-etched breasts.

"I also don't wear bodices."

Dumat's clutching claws, this was...

To be honest, it was hilarious. He was staring at her as if he'd never seen a naked woman before. And that made her wonder - had he not?

Surely he had. He showed too much chest and flirted too fluently not to.

Surely.

But in the meantime, the air wasn't getting any warmer. Her nipples were hard from the chill, and she was starting to get goosebumps. She'd seen some driftwood in the back of the cave, but the amount she'd seen would only do for a short-lived fire, and this storm seemed anything but short-lived.

Fasta vass.

Fenris didn't even realise she'd given a shiver. Damned Southern weather.

He had seen plenty of naked women, but none so very unexpectedly, and none who were covered in white lyrium tattoos. His gaze followed the tattoos down her body, taking in the swirls and loops and little dots, before going back up to her breasts. Nipples- her hard nipples, motherfucker, the world was conspiring against him.

She shivered. He shrugged out of his coat immediately, knowing that the inside, at least, would (hopefully) be dry. He'd had it enchanted years ago- every other article of clothing he was wearing was soaked through, but the inside of his coat, at least, could keep her a bit warm.

"Here, take this. You're gonna freeze your- well, you'll freeze something off, anyway."

"I'll manage," she tried to protest, but already, her shivers had grown noticeable. Enough that she was starting to get concerned. She'd never been this cold before, and for all she'd protested, she ended up accepting his coat and pulling it on.

The change was immediate. It was still warm from his body heat, and just having that warmth against her was enough to have her exhale a heavy breath, her eyes closing. That was nothing if not delicious. Her breathing came easier, shoulders dropping as the tension ebbed.

And then, looking at him with a gaze both apologetic and grateful, she said, "Thank you."

"Don't mention it," he waved dismissively. "I can't have you freezing your glowing tits off, now can I?"

With that inappropriate comment done, he started shoving the entirely useless wood outside- getting nothing for his efforts but a couple scratches and an even sharper chill. By the time he finished, he was shivering noticeably, his wet clothes seeming to hold onto the cold.

She'd watched - and then she'd come to a conclusion. Even if all they had were smouldering embers, it would be warmer than nothing, so she had made a small pit and, using some flint from her belt pouch and the blade of her sword, she built a tiny, slow-burning fire. It wouldn't put out much heat, but it would be more than they had.

"Varric - you're going to freeze your chest hair off. Take off your wet things and come over here." There was no hesitation. It was sheer statement of fact. He was shivering, soaking wet, and neither of them would come out of this in good condition if they let each other stay that way. The fire would help. Proximity would help more.

"It's just cold, I'm fine," he grumbled, for once in his life actually passing up the chance to complain about something.

Of course, that wasn't entirely the truth. The temperature was dropping rapidly- in fact, now that he thought about it, it had been getting steadily colder for the past hour or two. He sat next to her, holding his hands over the tiny little fire, having leaned a couple of precious dry leaves and twigs over it. They caught, and he tried desperately to get some warmth into his fingers.

A few minutes into this effort, he saw his breath. A little cloud, apparently existing just to prove him wrong. He sighed and hoped Fenris wouldn't notice.

"My legs are turning into ice," she answered. "Your fingers will soon follow. Stop being a Southern prude."

She'd seen it. She was also running out of patience, which is why she added, "You're one of the few I like. Don't get ill and make me put up with the rest of them until you're better. I will strip you if I have to."

Of all the things she could have said, she had to go with the one thing guaranteed to make this even more awkward. He swallowed thickly and tried valiantly not to imagine her actually stripping him. Better to focus on the fact that apparently, she likes him- as a friend, you dirty old man, he reminded himself sternly. Then he sighed.

"Fine. You win, but next time, you better buy me dinner first."

Getting the tunic off proved harder than he expected. The material didn't seem to want to part from his wet skin, and it took a bit of undignified flailing to pull it all the way over his head. The pants came next, and socks and boots, but he kept his smalls on.

"Alright, how do you wanna do this? Are we sharing the coat, or spooning, or what?"

He seemed reluctant to come any closer without some kind of express permission. In fairness, Fenris was terrifying.

The flailing - how could she help but snort a laugh at that? But then, when he came back...

She couldn't avoid it anymore. It was going to hurt - it always hurt - and so she took a breath to steady herself before she pulled the coat off. "We'll put our backs to the wall of the cave and drape this over the both of us," she said. "I'm thin enough that it should reach."

She hoped.

All she had to do was get through the initial contact between them without wincing. They needed the warmth. That was more important.

He noticed the reluctance, and it just made the situation worse. The last thing he fucking wanted was to press himself against a naked woman who profoundly didn't want to be there. Maker.

"Don't worry, elf, the chest hair won't bite." Maybe a joke would help? Undermine the reality of him sliding into place behind her and holding the coat over them both. "I promise."

He was freezing. He was damp and freezing and--

Had surprisingly impressive arms and--

And she wasn't breathing, she realised. She wasn't breathing. Why?

As Fenris reminded herself to inhale, she found herself curling back toward him, but she couldn't figure out what it was that was different until it crashed into her like one of the thunderclaps outside.

Everywhere he touched - no. No, not quite everywhere. There was fabric between them there, and she could feel it now that she thought about it, but--

But everywhere their skin touched, the pain she'd been used to for so long was fading away. Oh, Maker, what was this? It couldn't be anything he'd planned; he'd not had a chance. So what... what was it?

Confused, Fenris still curled back against him, confusion vivid in her expression as she tried to puzzle out just what was going on.

"Do you... use some kind of skin balm?" It couldn't just be elfroot, whatever it was. That had never worked.

"Um... no?"

Okay, he had expected some awkwardness, but her freezing up for a good sixty seconds, then suddenly cuddling into him? With a look on her face like she was trying to do complicated math in her head?

"You alright?" Varric uncertainly let his arm, previously sort of hovering uncomfortably, settle on her shoulder.

"I'm..."

How could she explain other than bluntly? Other than confusedly? Her eyes closed and she sighed - but furthering her confusion, it was less a sigh of frustration and more one of comfort as his arm contacted a few more of the markings and nearly instantly soothed them. This couldn't be magic. It was too good for that.

"I'm confused," she managed at last.

"Since Danarius gave me these markings, my skin has... ached, for lack of a better word. Any type of contact, physical or magical, makes it worse. Or it did, until--"

Fenris broke off, glancing toward him, suddenly finding herself shy. It felt so good to lack that pain that the temptation was there to wrap herself around him and soak in the contact, which was something she'd never, in her memory, craved.

"I'm... trying to figure out why," she finished at last, gaze averted.

Varric had to close his eyes when she made that sound; it wasn't exactly a sex noise, but it was enough to be awkward with her naked body pressed against his chest. Sodding ancestors, this was definitely a punishment for... for something.

"So- so the markings hurt constantly, is that right?" Okay, concerning and terrible. "Until now? Let's see..."

He moved his hand on her shoulder, found a new mark.

"How about that?"

"Mmm. That made it stop." With the initial rush of pain relief becoming a new sort of normal, it was easier for her to speak, but it didn't much lessen the impulse to turn around and wrap all of her limbs around him. Only her own self control was holding that back. "It's why I asked about the balm. I can't remember not hurting."

And if it had been a balm, she was going to buy as much of it as she could find when they got back to Kirkwall and she was going to bathe in it. But without the balm, that meant it was him somehow.

How, she had yet to figure out.

But an inkling came through after her mind supplied the image of his fingers tracing one of the lyrium lines. "Aren't dwarves resistant to lyrium?"

His finger was, in fact, tracing a lyrium line. One of the few he could see, just far enough up her shoulder (close to her neck, her chest, her-) that he could see the faint white and his own fingertip tracing it.

"Yeah," he said, a bit distantly. "I can sort of..." His voice fell away again in concentration. There was something- the harder he tried to chase it, the more it slipped away. But he finally figured out what it was he was feeling. "I swear I can almost hear it. Feels weird, makes my teeth itch."

It was a very, very hard sensation to explain to anyone who wasn't resistant to the stuff. Surfacers, all they knew was this insane rush and apparently ridiculous series of sensations, but to dwarves, it was something subtle and strange, something that pulled at the bones and pulsed like heartbeats.

Made his teeth itch. And here she was practically--

Fasta vass, she was being crude.

She kept herself from sighing with resignation, or even whining, so she could say, "I'm sorry - I didn't even think that the markings would bother you. I've been selfish. I'll move."

If they sat side by side, they could still share some warmth. Not quite as much, but less of her lyrium would be touching him. There would be less to disturb him.

So damned selfish to not even think.

"No!" He winced. Too eager by half. "I mean- no need, it's fine. It's hard to explain, but it... it's weird, but it doesn't bother me. I think it's a dwarf thing."

True to form, that finger kept following its lyrium line, curving over the shoulder, swooping down to her collarbone.

"Sorry, getting kind of.. distracted." He blinked and pulled his hand back, aware of how close he came to just wrapping his arms around her. "Say the word, and I'll stop."

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