Kiss Kiss Fall In Love
The inn is just your average side-of-the-Imperial-Highway affair, but it might as well be a seat at the Maker’s side for how happy you are to see it. You have to stay behind the others a bit to see the mounts into the stables; it takes a bit for you to convince the stable master that you need an elven stablehand, specifically, to handle the harts. Derreck might have absolutely no standards, but you know for a fact Ashi’lana would misbehave and Revas would probably maim if a human tried to get fresh with them. You walk the starry-eyed elven stablehand through the basics of hart care before heading into the inn proper to join the others.
To your amusement, it’s Blackwall that’s purchasing your rooms when you walk in. You suppose the others might be recognized… Eugene Trevelyan and Cassandra Pentaghast are very known names at this point. And Dorian is very obviously Tevinter. So yes, of course, it would have to be Blackwall. Maker only knows what they make of the group. You could be mistaken for a handmaid or servant of some kind, but Sera’s bow makes her hard to mistake for a servant. And Dorian and Solas both have staffs. Maker. At least you don’t have any Qunari with you this time.
You all stop by your rooms, briefly, to change out of your armor and various protective layers. You hadn’t realized quite how thoroughly frozen you were until you stripped out of damp layers and hung them up to dry. Fortunately, thanks to Seeker Pentaghast’s more effective cloak, your innermost layer hadn’t gotten completely soaked. No need to strip completely next to her and Sera. You change into a fresh tunic and then head back down for a hot dinner prepared by someone else for a change. Someone with access to an actual kitchen. You’re already salivating.
The men have already grabbed a long table by the time the rest of you get downstairs, and food is already starting to come out. You suppose it’s just standard inn fair, nothing special, but to you it tastes absolutely fantastic. You eat a very unreasonable amount of stew for someone your size, and Solas keeps passing you bread. By the time you’ve finished eating, you suspect your stomach is probably visibly distended. You flop back in your chair contentedly. You suspect you’ll sleep tonight, without Cole’s aid, so long as you can relax enough in a room with a Seeker in it. So, actually, scratch that, you probably won’t get a wink…
You eye some of the other guests in the tavern. A game of Wicked Grace has started up in the corner… New plan. You’ll stay down here all night, and separate some travelers from their coin. You have a lot to gamble with, thanks to Leliana. You glance over the table; half of your traveling party is gone. The Inquisitor, Sera, Seeker Pentaghast, and Cole seem to have vanished at some point, probably went upstairs to get early baths in or something. Your eyes slide over Blackwall, Solas, and Dorian in turn, before settling on Blackwall.
“Blackwall, do you know how to play cards?” you ask curiously.
“A bit vague,” he replies with a good-natured laugh. “Any game in particular?”
You gesture over to the other table. “What are they playing?”
Blackwall looks over, squinting. “Looks like Wicked Grace. Surely you’ve played it before?”
You shake your head. “I’ve heard of it, but I’ve never gotten the chance to play. Is it difficult to learn?”
“Not really,” Blackwall says. “Easy to learn, hard to master, or so they say. Are you interested in learning?”
You bite your lip, as if considering, then nod. “Sure! When will I get the chance again? It’s not like I do that much traveling, and I’d be too nervous to jump in on a game like that on my own… Wicked Grace in a tavern, that’s something everyone should do once, right?” You grin nervously. “Get the full experience.”
Solas is giving you quite the look, but Blackwall doesn’t seem to notice. Dorian isn’t looking at you at all, burying his face in a mug in a poor attempt to hide a grin.
“Well, why don’t we see if they’ll deal us in?” Blackwall suggests.
“Is it okay for me to learn on the go like that?” you ask, frowning, but standing up to follow him.
“Oh, sure,” Blackwall says with a nod. “No one ever minds playing against a rookie.”
Your beginner’s luck lasts you about fifteen, twenty hands before people start complaining, helped along by the fact you lost quite a few in the beginning to rookie mistakes. The benefit of having a lot of coin to start with. A few people surrender, a few more join in. Blackwall is still in, but he’s gambling wisely, grumbling something under his breath about having seen this before. That’s just as well to you; you’re not trying to rob him blind. You fold early when he has good hands to let him come out with some coin and some dignity still intact.
But not enough dignity for anyone to suspect he’s helping you cheat or anything. You don’t want to get him in trouble. Especially when you have no real need to cheat—it’s easy enough to remember what cards have already been played. It’s not that you can’t cheat; you learned a lot of shit in Antiva. You just don’t need to.
You’re a few pints in, although so is everyone else. You tend to get a bit sloppy when drunk, so you’re watching your intake more than you would if you weren’t gambling at the same time. That’s probably why you’re just “pleasantly drunk” and not “completely plastered” by the time you decide to take a break while you’re ahead. Very, very far ahead, with a coin purse that’s half again as heavy as it was when you started, and a very nice ring you haven’t decided whether or not you’re going to return to the idiot who gambled it.
Dorian moves in to take your spot; he’d been sort of circling the table on and off for a while. You’d caught Solas looking, as well, though he’d never joined in, which is both a good thing and a shame. You would have had a really good time playing with him, you suspect, but it would have been hard to concentrate on fleecing people without getting caught.
You idly scan the bar for him, not for any real reason. You don’t even know what you’d do if you found him. Pester him, maybe. You have a pretty good track record for that. But he’s nowhere to be seen; probably already upstairs. Probably already asleep, because he’s boring and does nothing but sleep, which is actually really perfectly understandable now that you know he’s a Somniari. What does this world really have to offer, compared to the Fade? You wouldn’t know, since you can’t really explore it the way he probably can.
You throw on your nice cloak, the one from Val Royeaux, and head outside with a full bottle of wine you’d purchased from the inn just to be a prick about how much coin you’d made in a night. It’s still raining, but there are much worse things than wine in the rain. Music and the sounds of people spill out of the inn, muffled by the steady pounding of rain on the ground. You take a long swig from the wine bottle, letting your hood fall off as you lean back. Satisfied, you run fingers through your hair, pulling it down from its bun and letting it pool in your hood and spill down over your shoulders.
Feels nice. As does the cool rain on your wine-flushed skin. You meander over towards the stables, boots splashing through puddles, not really caring if you get soaked. There’s a bath upstairs with, as far as you’re concerned, your name on it. You can get as cold and wet as you damn well please.
You walk around behind the stables, enjoying the relative quiet, and considering walking further, wandering into the fields or towards Verchiel. It would be very easy to get lost right here, actually, just take your huge pile of coins and head off into the darkness. You could just go into the stables, get on Revas, and be gone. It’s not like your friends could spare much time looking for you when they have places to be.
The thought circles idly around your mind as you work your way through the bottle of wine. It would be nice to be free of the Inquisition, in some ways. You don’t appreciate the way you’re getting pulled back into both danger and a bardic sort of lifestyle. They’re currently taking you to the Western Approach, into a damned blighted desert, and you have no real indication that they intend on taking you back to Skyhold in any sort of reasonable time frame. It’s very much not what you had in mind when you headed for Skyhold in the first place. You’re right in the middle of Orlais. You have contacts in Verchiel and a lot of coin. You could vanish into the rain and they’d never fucking find you again.
But on the other hand, if there really are ancient ruins out there like Cole said, it’d be nice to have a first-hand look at them in a situation where you’d have half a dozen armed warriors watching your back. Chances like that are hard to come by without paying a lot of coin, and this time, you’d be the one being paid. If you bolted now, you’d have to abandon the Alix Gagnon name for at least a few years, long enough for the Inquisition’s potential pettiness to run its course. That would be a huge pain, you don’t have an infinite surplus of people to be in Orlais, and Alix is your favorite. And Seeker Pentaghast aside, you don’t really hate your company, either.
Solas is, of course, his own list of pros and cons, but the danger ultimately loses out to the promise of knowledge. It always seems to, with you, because you’re a fucking idiot and also your mother’s daughter no matter how much she tried to teach you better. So no, you won’t be running off into the night, burning all your bridges for no real reason. But the thought still circles, endlessly, offering suggestions you never asked for on how best to accomplish a goal you’ve already decided you don’t want. It becomes a background hum as you get further into the bottle of wine.
“You should thank me for stomping the smile off that arse! He was getting in your head!”
You freeze in place, then automatically take a few steps backwards. Sera’s voice…?
“Thank you?! You’re the one who fucked up!”
Aaaand the Inquisitor. Why do you always overhear the Inquisitor getting reamed by his inner circle?! The voices are coming closer, too. In a panic, you stumble backwards before seeing a window in the side of the stable. You scramble in and flop into a pile of hay, flattening out so they hopefully won’t see you when they go past.
“I’m sorry, what are you on about? Because that excuse for a person was a fully vetted arsehole,” Sera snaps, sounding dumbfounded. “You’re sure as piss not putting me next to him.”
The voices have stopped getting closer, but they’re not getting further away, either, which is arguably the worst thing that could have happened. They might be right outside the window, for all you know. You glance around, wondering if you can risk crawling away and finding another exit.
“Forget him, I’m more concerned that your ‘friends’ didn’t know what they were getting into. You risked their lives for this scheme, and they didn’t even know what they were part of.”
Oh, that clears things up a bit. But did the Inquisitor seriously not know how Red Jenny worked? Even you knew that. Although you suppose that’s actually not really a fair comparison. You worked in similar circles, whereas the Inquisitor is a human noble. He’s not really supposed to know how these things work. Still, wouldn’t Sera have explained? …Er, actually, that might explain it; she’s not really the clearest teacher in the Inquisition.
“Don’t turn this around!” Sera exclaims. “Yes, they got hurt for talking. But what were they supposed to do? They were already being hurt. And who made it necessary to speak up? That noble arsewhole, that’s who. And that was just the one we flushed out. There’s always more just like him.”
“You had me march my people through his territory. That provoked him. If we’d done it differently, it might’ve stayed peaceful,” the Inquisitor argues.
“What?” says Sera, straight back to dumbfounded. “I don’t even know what to say to that! ‘Let the bad man do what he wants, or he’ll get worse’? What kind of lay-down-and-take-it shite is that? You’d rather do nothing than try to make this better?”
“It’s not about that! I did something, and people died, that puts those deaths on my hands. On our hands. I have to think about the Inquisition and how all the bigger pieces fit together. I have to think about minimizing harm everywhere overall, not just right in front of me.”
“See this eye? You’re making it twitch. Because that’s stupid. Sometimes I cock things up, right? But at least I’m doing something. The ‘greater good’ can frig it.”
Well that’s… a stance. Not necessarily yours, but then again, you never really had the greater good in mind to begin with, just your greater good.
“Something? What have you done for anyone? How are you making things better?”
You bristle where you lay hidden in the hay, teeth clenching. Oh, that’s fucking rich from him. You resist the urge to pop up and join into the fight. It’s none of your business—even though that’s not stopping you from listening—and you finally got to the point where the Inquisitor doesn’t seem actively hostile towards you. This isn’t your fight. But you kind of wish it was.
“I make sure these arseholes pay!” Sera exclaims, which isn’t the most poignant point she could have made, but fair enough.
“While filling your pockets.”
There’s a light thud where your fist automatically hits the ground. That’s fucking rich! Oh, that’s so fucking rich! Like the Inquisition isn’t doing the same damn thing! They have a fortress and an entire army, there’s no way there isn’t a lot of coin flowing into their coffers. Fuck, you know there is, because Leliana threw gold around just to ensure you didn’t quit rather than march across Orlais.
“Well, maybe, but… but…” You can hear the hurt in Sera’s voice, and see her expression in your mind clear as day. You seethe quietly in the hay. “Know what? You go suck frigging eggs.” YES GO SERA. “I take back. No, I don’t change the world, but that’s hard, right? Even for Heralds, or you’re lying!”
“That’s exactly what I mean by the big picture!”
“So the ‘big picture’ includes letting some arsehole get people killed just on the off chance he might kill more people later if you stop him?! Pissing me right off, Inquisitor. We keep up like this, it’s… Well it’s not good, right?”
You hear a long, frustrated sigh from the Inquisitor. “I need all the help I can get, but consider this a warning.” You feel your breath catch in your throat. Would he seriously kick Sera out of the Inquisition? What in the Void had happened out there?
You don’t have very much time to consider it, because the Inquisitor walks right by the window. You freeze in abject terror, mentally willing him to just keep walking and not look down and to his left. Mercifully, he seems preoccupied, storming off with an expression of intense frustration.
There’s a brief moment of silence, and then you hear a loud thud against the side of the barn. “Barking arse… ugh! So hard to get? Stupid… everyone.” You wince at the sound of another thud against the barn, mind slipping back to times you’ve taken your frustration and self-loathing out on the side of buildings, trees, rocks… whatever was handy. You imagine Sera with hands bloodied like yours, and bite your lip.
Maker… damnit, and damn your stupid emotions.
Cautiously, you crawl to your knees and poke your head out of the window. Sera seems on the verge of tears, repeatedly kicking the side of the barn. “Um,” you manage, but it’s enough to make her head shoot up.
“…Fuck!” she swears loudly. “How long’ve you been there?”
“Uh… the… the whole time, actually.” You hold up your bottle of half-drunk wine with a sheepish grin. “Not to be contrary, but the barn didn’t do anything. How ‘bout a walk and a drink and a good long complaint session where we shittalk the Inquisitor and laugh about how he needs to shave and always kinda looks like he’s hungover?”
“It’s raining,” she says huffily.
You shrug. “When has that ever stopped us before?”
The two of you wind up on the roof of the inn, which is inevitable really, especially since you involved an entire bottle of wine. Sera had quite a bit of the half that was left, but you’d been pretty well tanked before you started so you don’t particularly mind. Seems like she needs it more, anyway.
“And then he just stopped the battle after we’d basically won anyway and was just talking to this absolute prick who’d just killed someone in front of him!” Sera rants. “Asking him what he could add to the Inquisition and shit! And it just kept pissing me off more and more!”
“So what happened?” you ask, all sympathy.
“Well, I threw a knife at him!”
“You? Threw a knife? You’re almost as bad at that as I am shooting arrows,” you point out, which probably wasn’t the most tactful thing to say, but hey, you’re drunk.
“This is my story, so if I say it worked, it worked!”
“Which side of hit him?”
“The blunt side, and you can shut right up.”
“It’s probably just as well, I mean, it would have been really messy if you’d just killed him.”
“Well, I still did!”
You pause, blinking in surprise. “Really?”
“Of course! He was a certified ass and if the Inquisitor hadn’t stopped to be a prick we would have killed him anyway!”
You nod, as if this is the most relatable thing in the world and not kind of alarming. You mean, you’ve done the same thing, but like… not really when people were looking. You always forget how comfortable your newfound companions are with casual murder. There’s a difference between warriors and everyone else, you suppose…
“And the Inquisitor gets all pissy at me! It’s not right, he was going to just ally with that absolute horse’s arse just because he has money, it’s like he doesn’t even care what’s right!”
You wrap what you hope is a comforting arm around her shoulders. The two of you are sitting under the overhang near one of the chimneys, half out of the rain, although your legs are getting soaked.
“He’s an ass,” you say. “We knew that.”
“He didn’t have to be that much of an ass! He seemed pretty good at first! I mean, you know, he was a noble, but he didn’t seem all… noble-y about it!”
“I’ll take your word for it,” you say, although thinking about it, he’d seemed okay the first time you’d met him, too. You hadn’t even realized he was the Inquisitor; you’d thought he’d been one of Leliana’s people. The second time, though, he seemed like a right prick. Arguably because he’d been talking to Solas.
“I dunno what I was thinking… They’re always all the same.”
You can’t argue, and wouldn’t want to. You’d met nobles that you’d thought were better, and nobles that you might still, on your good days, argue were good. But on most days, you know what an illusion that is. They’ll turn on you in a second. Sera had been in this life probably as long as you had; she knew as well as you did. Especially if she’d been in Val Royeaux this whole time…
“I guess I just… just thought maybe this time…”
“Maybe this one would be different?” you suggest. “He showed some of the signs, right, thought maybe he knew better than the rest of them?”
She lets out a sigh, then takes another long swig of wine. “I must seem like a fuckin’ idiot.”
You shake your head vigorously. “We all want to believe that.”
“Is it ever true?”
You shrug, uncomfortably. “Some are better than others…”
“But none of them are good.”
You smile sympathetically, and she pounds her fist against your thigh in frustration. You catch it with your hand when she goes to hit the roof instead, not wanting her to hurt herself. She yanks against your grip once, and then seems to think better of it, instead sighing and lacing her fingers with yours.
At some point, you realize, you’d gotten very close. Part of it is just the nature of huddling under such a narrow overhang. Your hip is flush against hers, and you’d thrown your arm around her to comfort her, but that’s just… that’s a hug, you’re hugging her. Now that you’re holding her hand in yours, it’s all very apparent.
She looks up at you, your scant inches of height suddenly very obvious when your faces are this close. Oh, wait, shit, this is bad, you’re drunk and she’s drunk and you really didn’t think this through—
You have just enough time, as she’s leaning up towards you, to jump away, to roll down the fucking roof and just let yourself hit the ground, limp and useless.
You had enough time. You did.
But instead of bolting like you have every other time this came up, you just sit there. Like an idiot. You let it happen.
And then her lips are on yours and any thought of stopping this shit before it could start flies out of your mind. You lean into her, pushing your lips against hers harder, and when they part slightly in a gasp, you barely hesitate to deepen the kiss.
Her spare hand goes to your waist, pulling you close, the empty bottle dropping from her grip and clattering down the roof. After a moment, you just shift over so you’re straddling her lap, pushing her back against the stone of the chimney and kissing her with a fierce hunger. She tastes like expensive wine, the taste of it still bursting on her tongue as it slides against yours. The voice in your head screaming that this is a mistake is momentarily hushed, and all you can feel is the heat of her against your chest and lips while your back soaks and freezes in the rain.
So good. She tastes so good; she feels so good. Why did you not want this? You can’t remember. Whatever reasons you had were probably really stupid and not worth it.
And then she pushes you off her for a second, so she can gasp in a breath of air that you hadn’t realized you needed too. She looks up at you, hazel-green eyes blown wide, lips and nose red from the cold and the kissing. Her breathless expression turns into a smirk; she bites her bottom lip as her eyes slip to your mouth and then back up to your eyes.
“We shoulda done that ages ago,” she says, and you can’t decide if you agree or need to revisit the “throwing yourself off the roof” plan.