An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
I’ve already listed this on my DA Smutquisition Exchange masterpost, but here’s the separate fic post for those who prefer to reblog that 😊
My other gift for @charlatron for the @dasmutquisition 2021 event! ❤️
Rating: Explicit
Chapters: 3/3
Word Count: 8,420
Pairing: Carver Hawke/Merrill
Other characters: Male Mage Hawke, Tallis, Duke Prosper de Montfort
Other Tags: Templar Carver Hawke, Mark of the Assassin DLC, Accidental Bonding, Accidentally Setting The Bed On Fire During Sex, Body Worship, Woman on Top, PIV, Love Confessions, Silence Kink, Templar Kink, It's canon that Merrill is sexually curious and adventurous
Merrill discovers she has a templar kink, where she gets off on being Silenced or having her mana drained. Since no-one else seems to want to do “dirty things” with her anyway, she decides Carver will be the man – and the templar – to indulge her.
(Note: Title adapted from Carver’s line about Tallis in “Mark of the Assassin”.)
Like most things in her life, Merrill discovered this one completely by accident.
Usually Merrill found things out by getting hopelessly lost in Kirkwall, and ending up in places where she wasn’t supposed to be. The humans often said “curiosity killed the cat” – but thankfully Merrill seemed to have nine lives, and had so far managed to escape from even some quite risky situations completely unharmed.
Isabela, of course, had nicknamed her Kitten – but Merrill had now been in Kirkwall long enough that she was not the kitten-like, wide-eyed innocent she used to be; and, as much as she loved listening to Isabela’s wild stories of her sexual exploits, Merrill wished dearly that she could experience some wild sexy times of her own. Merrill wanted to get her claws into someone… if only someone would let her.
It was so frustrating! Among the people she knew best, or liked best, it was highly unlikely to ever happen. Isabela and Garrett Hawke were nice to her, sure, but they clearly saw her as nothing more than a naïve, cute little sister, never to be corrupted. Varric was kind, but his mind and heart were elsewhere; Aveline was occupied with her new husband Donnic; Sebastian had taken a vow of chastity, and Anders and Fenris didn’t like her very much.
Creators, even when she’d got lost and ended up in Anders’s clinic that one time, she’d found his grimoire and got the bright idea to look in it for dirty spells to make things more exciting for herself. If this had been one of Isabela’s novels – or even Isabela’s own friend-fiction – Anders would have appeared, caught her looking up dirty spells, and exciting dirty things might have happened. However, this wasn’t Isabela’s erotic fiction, so nothing happened at all.
And it wasn’t like Merrill could look beyond the people she knew best, either. Her clan left Sundermount after the Keeper died, the alienage largely ignored her; and the Qunari – who had been nice to look at even if they didn’t say much – had departed Kirkwall in disgrace after Hawke killed their Arishok. The Blooming Rose was probably an option, but Merrill felt uncomfortable in there even when on missions with Hawke.
But if curiosity had supposedly killed the cat, it hadn’t harmed Merrill; and eventually, her curiosity – and her propensity to walk into places she shouldn’t – was always going to turn up a new discovery in the end.
