Panic
The last shreds of the demons are caught between Blackwall and the charging warriors. They’re gone in an instant, no match for the twin onslaught. Which just leaves a lot of eyes on you, actually, kneeling on the ground surrounded by a little pile of throwing daggers, laughing hysterically with Sera.
It’s Solas voice that snaps you out of it, tense with fear. “Emma! Sera!” He’s still at a distance on his mount when your head snaps up, and then suddenly he’s in front of you, wisps of fade, whorls of steam, glints of ice, all at once as the world shimmers to recover from his step through the Fade.
“Look at her first,” both you and Sera say in unison, which makes you glance over, which makes you both start laughing again, this time a bit more shaky than hysterical.
Solas kneels down to have a look at you, before Sera. You suspect she must be more injured than you; although you’re slowly becoming aware that your back hurts, like… a lot. Sera, though, is bleeding; you’re pretty sure the uncomfortable damp sensation you have was caused by all that demon viscera. “Sera first,” you repeat, a bit more firmly this time, looking over your shoulder to glare at Solas where he kneels behind you, examining whatever is making your back hurt this much. He ignores you, at first, instead grabbing your hair—it’s come loose, no surprise there—and pulling it carefully out of the way and off of your back. His hand against the back of your neck as he does so is more gentle than is really warranted in the situation.
“Solas, I’m fine. Actually fine, I think, not me-fine,” you add, with what is probably a startling amount of self-awareness. “Look at Sera first.” He hesitates, and you glare a bit more firmly. He huffs, but shifts over to examine Sera more closely.
“Why is she injured?” you hear an unexpected voice demand angrily. The Inquisitor’s. You glance over, confused, as Solas begins to tend to Sera’s injuries, one hand on her shoulder supporting her and the other over hers on her wound. “Why was she in the fight at all? Three of you can’t keep one non-combatant safe?”
“She just rushed in,” Dorian explains. “Hart and everything.” Most of the horses are safely quite a distance away, half-hiding amongst the trees. Revas and Vhas, however, are standing nearby. Peacefully, for once, though that might be because Daine is standing pointedly between them.
The Inquisitor’s gaze shifts to you, giving you the exact long, tired, annoyed look you’re extremely used to seeing. “Rushed in,” he says flatly.
“Sorry,” you say, glancing away sheepishly. “I, um. Panicked.”
“There were terror demons,” Dorian offers up, by way of an explanation. “I sort of expected her to run away, but…”
“That’s what you do when you panic?!” the Inquisitor asks, caught somewhere between irritation, alarm, and, fortunately, a small amount of exasperated amusement. He gestures down at the puddle of knives you’re still kneeling in.
“…My fight/flight reflex may be strongly aimed towards fight,” you admit, trying your best to look embarrassed.
“I’ll say,” you hear Solas mumble irritatedly from nearby.
“It’s hard to say how someone will react to a demon if they’ve never seen one before,” Dorian provides. “Frantic, screaming stabbing is not actually that unusual of a reaction, to be honest.”
“It’s fine, it’s fine, stop hoverin’.” Sera’s swearing grows in volume as Solas heals her, providing a slight distraction.
“At least let me get you to the point where you can ride,” says Solas, clearly exasperated by having two elves to heal, neither of whom are great about being healed, apparently.
“Yer makin’ me look lame in front of the cute girl,” Sera complains, and you’re amazed at having been suddenly promoted from ‘that bitch’ straight back up to ‘cute girl.’ Not a strong memory span on this one…
“Are those throwing daggers?” This question is asked by Seeker Pentaghast, who’s approached you close enough to see the damage.
“…I panicked,” you repeat, rubbing under your nose sheepishly.
“Panicked and stabbed a demon to death with throwing daggers.” She also sounds like she’s caught between a desire to yell at you and a desire to laugh at the absurdity of a weedy little linguist launching off of a hart to stab a demon to death with something about as well suited to close-combat as a steak knife.
“Seeker, can you help me move her and Sera to the clearing up ahead?” Solas asks, interrupting her. “There might still be more demons in this area, but we should at least get them off the road.”
“Of course, Solas,” Seeker Pentaghast agrees immediately, and then next thing you know she’s throwing her cloak over your back like a blanket. It stings a bit, and you wince. “My apologies, but there is a lot of blood,” she says.
“There is?” you twist, trying to see instinctively despite the fact there’s a cloak on you. And also you’re wearing a jacket. And… wait, did it tear through the jacket and your armor?
“Yes,” Solas says, sounding very irritated. “Although you can clearly move just fine, so I believe the damage to be primarily superficial. If it had hit your spine, we would both be very aware of it by now. Sera, if you don’t hold still, I will levitate you the entire way. You can’t walk like this. You might tear something.”
“It’s fine!”
“I can see your ribcage.”
“You can see her what?!” you yelp, as the Seeker locks an arm around the back of your knees. Before you can even protest, you’re up in her arms, one arm under the backs of your knees, the other under your ass. You instinctively wrap an arm around her shoulders for balance.
“He’s bein’ a drama queen. You can see like part of one rib.”
“Because it’s broken!” Solas huffs. “You’re not supposed to see any part of any ribs at any time, Sera.”
“For the love of the Maker, Sera!” you exclaim. “Let him fix your fucking rib!”
“Fine, but then you’re gettin’ worked over too, an’ I don’t wanna hear you complain,” Sera… complains.
“Great,” Solas says irritatedly, hand still on Sera’s side. “I’m overjoyed that the two of you have managed to settle that.”
You, Sera, and Blackwall all do need some healing, though Blackwall least of all thanks to his armor, which held up significantly better than yours has appeared to. Solas gets Sera to a point he’s comfortable with, and then beelines straight to you.
The Seeker has landed more firmly on “lecture” now that things have settled down a little, standing in front of you and chiding as Solas runs cool hands over your back. The Inquisitor seems more than happy to let her do the scolding, and is instead talking to Blackwall about the possibility of a nearby rift, and if they have time to go find it.
“—no combat training, and do not try to tell me that wrestling a Qunari counts, because it does not; that is more foreplay than it is combat practice,” she’s saying. “You cannot simply run into combat! You could have been killed!”
“Sorry,” you repeat for the third time. You know what to do, having been lectured by angry mothers before… for this exact sort of tomfoolery, throughout your whole life, actually, now that you stop to think about it.
“She does have this sort of tendency,” Solas says with a sigh. “And no training to back it up,” he lies bluntly, and you can’t decide if you want to smack him or kiss him. “The last time I witnessed her getting angry, she tried to punch a Qunari.”
“He deserved it!”
“You said you’d sodomize his mother-figure.”
“He deserv—wait. How did you know what I said?”
“Don’t change the subject!” the Seeker scolds. “You can only be proud of an instinct to protect others if you have the skills to back it up. This is hardly the place for bravado, and we are hardly the ones who need it. In fact,”
Her lecture continues. You let it wash over you, apologizing at random intervals, and begin to pay more attention to what Solas is doing. Out of necessity, as much as anything else, since your aura is getting full and happy off of lyrium and sleep lately. He winds up just cutting your jacket off of you; you can see why after he does. The entire back of it has been shredded away into basically nothing. Your armor, as well, has huge tearing gashes through the leather, as well as just looking like a pack of bears went to town on it, in general.
Your back, ultimately, could be a lot worse; it took the creature a long time to claw through your layers, and you’re just gashed in a few places, you think. You hold the front of your armor and shirt in place as Solas heals your bare back. You think one of the stray claws may have actually slashed through your damned bra band. You’d liked this one… casualty of war, you suppose, along with the jacket and chest piece. You’re going to owe Skinner—and the whole of the Chargers, in fact—a drink when you get back to Skyhold. If you get back to Skyhold, which is frankly very questionable at this point.
Still, despite the Seeker’s lecturing and the risk to your cover, you can’t bring yourself to regret your actions. Especially after hearing the severity of Sera’s injuries. How much worse might they have been if you hadn’t jumped in? What if you hadn’t been on this trip at all? Would she have been horribly injured; would she have been healed? Would you have never learned of a near-death experience, back in the safety of Skyhold’s walls?
“There,” Solas announces. Finally. “You weren’t as injured as you could have been, thanks to that armor.”
You nod in agreement. Then shift, wincing. You feel sore with phantom pain and stiff and filthy, covered in blood and demon grime. Although there is no actual demon grime. It dissipated with the demon itself, to drift back into the Fade, but as with the pain, you can feel the ghost of it still on you. And it is disgusting.
“I’m finding a creek,” you decide. Phrasing it like a question seemed far too open to protest that you had no intention of listening to. “I feel disgusting.”
“That doesn’t seem particularly wise,” Solas comments, in a tone of voice that says, to you, he’s already accepted that you’re going to do it anyway. Smart man! Or maybe he’s just known you long enough, now.
“I’ll stay close. Within screaming range,” you say dryly. You bite your lip as you stand, stifling a groan of pain. You’re still stiff, your body screaming at you about injuries that are no longer there. This is one of the reasons they recommend bed rest after healing. But instead of that, you grab your bag, pleased you thought to keep spare clothes in it. “If I don’t find anything,” you inform Solas. “I’ll come right back.”
You’d known there was a creek nearby; you memorized every inch of this journey since you might have to run away at any moment. For once, however, that’s not really on your mind. Despite today’s… events… it seemed your cover was still completely intact. Surprisingly. Sometimes you wondered if there was anything you could do to make these people actually suspect you of deception. Perhaps you had been severely over-estimating the Inquisition. Perhaps Solas, Leliana, and the Iron Bull were the only ones you’d ever needed to look out for.
Shame you’d met them all on your first damned day, then.
The creek you remembered from your maps is near enough that you don’t think anyone would fuss at you. Or should, anyway, since you’re beginning to accept “would” as an inevitability. A side effect of having to be thought relatively helpless… and therefore harmless. You’re trying not to let it annoy you, to mixed success. You’re pretty sure the Seeker thinks that you’re just a damned moron where demons are concerned, at this point. You suppose she’s not as wrong as you’d like her to be.
You’re intending for a short bath. Contrary to popular opinion, the idea of being naked and alone in woods that might have a few stray demons in them isn’t particularly appealing to you. You’ve stacked your clothes off on a rock a safe and dry distance away and are halfway through scrubbing—it’s really hard to wash blood off your own back—when you hear a crunch of underbrush. Hand already going to the dagger you’d left within arm’s reach specifically because you’re not an idiot, you swing around to find…
Sera, throwing off her last article of clothing with significantly less care than you’d showed your own clothes. The breast band lands, haphazardly, in a bush.
This isn’t the first time you’d seen Sera nude, but it had been embarrassing then, too, and you hadn’t kissed her a few days prior that time. You avert your eyes quickly. Of course, she got covered in blood and demon goop too. She’d need to wash up just as much as you, if not more. You decide to just go back to awkwardly scrubbing dried blood off of your back and try to face the opposite direction, wishing for the thousandth time in your life that shyness with regards to your own body was more widely accepted when involving multiple women. Let any man walk in on you like this and he’d be horrified and you’d be given full freedom to yell at him and/or throw things. But make it a woman, and you’re supposed to be 100% okay with it.
You’re still mentally complaining about double standards that don’t take into account hot elven women when you’re suddenly and abruptly aware that Sera has gotten closer to you than even bathing standards would dictate acceptable.
“Want some help with that?” she asks, and you glance back over your shoulder at… yes, a very nude, wet Sera, who’s probably offering to wash your back. One woman’s sapphic dream is your sapphic nightmare. But you’re glad she’s apparently stopped hating you.
“Oh. Um.” There has to be a polite way to say no. “…Sure,” you say instead, like an idiot. You hand her the soapy cloth you were using… and you have to admit, it’s a lot easier to have someone else to wash your back for you. And it feels good, the rough cloth scratching places you didn’t even realize you needed scratch. Better still when she puts her hand on your shoulder for anchorage. You’re reminded suddenly and strongly of the massages you’ve gotten from Solas, and the idea of asking one flits through your mind before you remember that you’re both naked, and naked massages are basically just foreplay.
“Gotta say,” she says, snapping you out of your reverie. “Never thought you’d be th’ one tacklin’ demons.”
You laugh weakly. “Yeah, that makes two of us.”
“It was somethin’ to see, though. You looked half out’cher mind. How come?”
You pause, considering. Then you chuckle again. “You get used to it, out on the field. It’s not, like, a big heroic thing like it is when a normal guy jumps in to save another normal guy,” you quote at her, glancing back over your shoulder.
She blinks in confusion, and then seems to remember. She laughs. After days of anger, it sounds amazing. “Yer a normal guy,” she quotes back at you.
“Nah,” she says, and then suddenly she’s turning you around, and you don’t know why. “Yer really not.”
She kisses you.
She kisses you, again, and you need to shove her away, because you’re stone cold sober and this was a mistake then and it’s a mistake now, and you just told her no, why tell her no if you’re just going to kiss her back, shitfuck you’re kissing her back.
Maker, why does she taste so good even when you’ve both just been fighting demons? Why does the pressure of her body against yours feel like everything you’ve ever wanted, the answer to all of your prayers? Her fingers against your hips are smooth with water and soap, and she’s just so small and perfect and you’ve never leaned down to kiss someone like this before.
All your reasons for saying no are seeping out of your mind, until you can’t remember why it was such a big deal to begin with. So you’re lying to her. Why does it matter, if she never finds out? And you told her you couldn’t have a relationship, and here she is still kissing you, so maybe she just wants sex, anyway, which is fine, sex is fine, to the void with it all. Weren’t you just saying you were touch starved and needed to do something about it? Why pester Dorian or Cole with odd questions when there’s someone right here who clearly really wants to touch you?
She smells like honey, probably the soap she’d been using a few seconds prior. Her hair is short but long enough to grip between your fingers, and when you pull it just right, just moans into your mouth, and that by itself is more intoxicating than the entire bottle of aqua magus had been.
*~*~*~*~*
One of her hands has found your breast, the other has a surprisingly firm grip on your ass. Rough callouses on her fingers made soft by water and suds. She pulls your lip into her mouth, and bites down, just barely. You let out a little huff of a growl, pushing back against her. One hand still in her hair, you let the other trail down her side.
It’s been a long time. The last time you had bare skin under your hands—
You force the thought out with the same roughness Sera uses to shove you backwards. You nearly lose your footing on the slippery rocks at the bottom of the creek, and Sera takes advantage, pushing you into stumbling backwards until the back of your legs hit a much larger boulder along the side of the creek. Still she pushes, as if she intends to kiss you harder and harder until you simply fall.
She might, at that.
Her leg shifts between yours as she kisses you, a trick you’re very used to, having employed it many times yourself. However, you’d never before experienced it while naked and wet, and you have to say the difference is startling. You gasp a little into her mouth, and she grins into the kiss, lifting her knee a little to push more firmly between your legs.
Your hands had, up until this point, remained remarkably chaste, unlike hers. As if you were scared to touch her, which you suppose is at least partially true. But instinct kicks in that feeling of pressure between your legs, and one of your hands slides down between hers. This should be fine. She started it, she’s the aggressor, and if you just pleasure her, than there’s no reason for her to be angry with you. It’s not like you’re taking something from her. It doesn’t have to be a thing, the two of you don’t have to be a thing.
She groans against your lips as your fingers slip nervously between folds, exploring blindly to find familiar spots, things you know how to use to your advantage. You rub her clit between two fingers, first gently, then with more force as her moans grow in volume. Her lips leave yours as you slide two slick fingers into her, neck arching to send her cries upwards to the grey sky. You lean forward to kiss and nip at it, fingers still working inside of her, searching to find exactly the right spots. You’re rewarded with an increase in volume when you do, and pick up speed enthusiastically.
Her leg between yours as she squirms is a constant low pleasure, and you indulge yourself by letting your hips thrust down against it ever so slightly, her knee pressuring against your clit. Enough to feel good, not enough to accomplish much, which is perfectly fine. You’re too busy watching her expression as her own orgasm grows closer, lips noiselessly mouthing words before more senseless little cries slip out and echo down the river.
Her legs clamp down around your hand so powerfully when she comes that you can’t move it at all, but you can still twist your fingers inside her, massaging against the spot you’d been so enthusiastically abusing. She almost collapses down on top of you, and you kiss her red, red lips again, marveling a little at the fact she’ll let you. She probably wouldn’t, if she knew you a little better.
But then again, if she finds any of that out, her feeling used will arguably be the least of your problems anyway.