Okay, how about this one for Casswall? :D Trapped together somewhere in the Winter Palace, against a wall while still clothed?
You got it! (and so did @rosered282 , same brain)
Blackwall/Cassandra, “Just You and I” (AO3) [Mature]
“Where are we going?”, Blackwall asked Cassandra as they broke off their dance, with the Lady Seeker leading him up the stairs to the Royal Wing where they had put the final pieces of Florianne’s plot together, defeating the Venatori agent’s henchmen just in time to make the dramatic entry of the century.
She turned to him with a glint in her eye, saying, “You’ll see soon enough.”
Blackwall scratched his head, hoping that all his talk of spontaneity and the half-dozen glasses of Antivan wine she’d been sipping between fights in the Winter Palace (not to mention the additional ones after they’d foiled the assassin) hadn’t gotten to her own. She certainly wasn’t behaving like she had been for the entirety of the night beforehand.
He ascended the stairs from the study into the hallways overlooking the atrium, noting the corridors leading to the courtyard in the far corner where Florianne had revealed herself to be the chief malefactor in the night’s intrigues, and the doors behind which the Empress and her relatives had been hiding their secrets—secrets which the Inquisitor had employed in her last-ditch efforts for peace, which thankfully had borne fruit.
For that matter, it was one of those very doors which Cassandra was opening, with the window still wide open from when Rivka had—
Letting his voice finish his thoughts, Blackwall asked, “Isn’t this the room where we found that harlequined assassin threatening…”
“Yes,” he heard Cassandra’s voice behind him say, along with the sound of the door closing, “This is the room which the former Grand Duchess used to live in.”
Turning around, he asked her, “Is there some reason you’ve brought me here?”
“Well,” she said, adjusting the top button on her uniform, “I knew full well that it would be the one room in the entire palace which would be unoccupied tonight.”
Looking at its four walls, he said, “That’s true enough. So, what is it that you had to show me which warranted us coming here?”
“Nothing that you haven’t seen already, to be honest,” Cassandra said, exposing her bra-bound bosom to him and letting the flaps of her uniform hang by her sides.
Blinking as he tried to keep his eyes focused upwards of her throat, Blackwall asked carefully, “Are you perhaps feeling feverish, Cassandra? I was getting concerned about all that Antivan wine you were—”
She crossed her still-sleeved arms under her breasts, interrupting him, “I am certainly not, and I don’t see a point to you being so obtuse, Blackwall. When are you ever going to get the chance to have a tryst in the Winter Palace?”
“Cassandra,” Blackwall began, “When I teased you about spontaneity, I didn’t quite have this in mind.”
“Did you not?”, she asked, closing the distance between them and turning him so his back faced the bed. “If you’ve truly been taking notes from Varric and his works, how else am I supposed to interpret you filling my ears with talk about romance late in the night, after a grand ball, in this setting of all places?”
Finding there to be no space left between the bed and his calves, he sat back and down upon it, Cassandra’s statuesque figure towering over him more so than she usually did.
Looking down on him as though a mile away, she continued, “For so long after I dared to love once again, I’d read such things, dreaming of someone to enter my life and sweep me off my feet. We have come too close to danger, separately or together, for me to leave such affairs to chance anymore.”
“I…” Blackwall stammered, “I…don’t know what to say.”
“Then stop thinking,” Cassandra responded, ordering, “And just kiss me.”
She leant in and he tilted his head up, and the familiar feeling of her lips on his filled him with a sudden warmth and passion. He eagerly nipped at her lip as her tongue danced upon his, the two of them breaking away and coming back together once, twice, then too many times to count easily.
He felt her weight lean into his as he came to lay on the Grand Duchess’ bed, their lips still locked together as he sank backwards. Cassandra came up for air for a moment. Spotting the long scar upon her cheek, Blackwall set several kisses upon it, causing her to tremble just a touch.
“You know me, and what I enjoy so well,” she said between hoarse breaths. “I couldn’t very well let this opportunity go to waste, could I?”
“No,” he answered, “Not at all.”
She smiled, cupping his face with her hands as she stroked the sides of his beard with her thumbs, then planting them on either side of him as she leant forward, drawing her knee up between his legs.
“I seem to recall that you liked this very much,” she said, gently rolling her knee towards his groin and feeling him get harder with each stroke.
Any answer was lost as his breath caught in his throat, Cassandra wantonly stroking him through her trouser leg and his, kissing him again then diving further forward and filling his view with her bosom.
“Your hands are free, are they not, Blackwall?”, she gasped, glancing at the bra still restraining her breasts. “Use that clever tongue of yours as well.”
Blackwall practically ripped the gloves off his hands, casting them into the far corners of the room as he slid his fingertips along the curves of Cassandra’s ribs, causing her to shudder momentarily, tracing them to the clasps that held her bra together. He got them to separate with some little fiddling, and he slipped the whole thing off her chest, discarding it to the side where it joined one of his gloves.
Taking her command, he lapped at her pert nipples gently at first, then again and again as his hands moved down her sides, snaking their way into the gap between her trousers and the seat of her smallclothes. Cassandra hurriedly got up to undo her belt and the button at her waistline, giving his hands just enough purchase to grasp a cheek each, groaning his name as he did so and feverishly massaging him with her knee.
His breath ragged, Blackwall gasped, “Wait. If you keep this up…”
Cassandra looked down and below at him, a smirk on her face. “Oh. I see the fabled Grey Warden stamina is rather over-vaunted?”
Shaking a drop of sweat off his brow, Blackwall said, “Something like that. Besides, you’ve barely given me the opportunity to undress myself.”
“It’s hardly my fault,” Cassandra retorted, “but very well. I might perhaps do without this jacket as well since we’ve come this far.”
She released him, standing up to let the sleeves of her top slide off her arms, the jacket landing on the floor with a gentle flumph as Blackwall sat up, removing his own and leaving himself wearing only his trousers—much the same as when they’d run into each other in the corridors of the villa where they’d freshened up prior to this very ball, on reflection.
And much like then, she was now as bare as the day she was born, albeit with no towel in sight this time. Her boots and pants, too, had been discarded, and she was now slipping her smalls down one of her long legs.
Blackwall gazed upwards at Cassandra, taking in the sight of her figure as though he’d never see it again, not like this anyway. Internally he gave thanks to the Maker for bringing this woman into her life, and for her to consider him worthy despite…well, time enough for that later. He was sure that he was mirroring the desire which filled her eyes as she gazed at him whilst unhooking her panties from around her toes, carelessly throwing them away.
Realising that he’d only gotten half the job completed, Blackwall reached for his belt before he felt her hands on his wrists.
“Wait,” he heard her say. “Let me.”
Idly thinking that this was going beyond his wildest dreams now, he released his grip and placed his hands on the edge of the bed. The tongue of the belt slipped ring by ring past the clasp, and soon he felt it loosen from around his waist, the only thing keeping his trousers on being the buttons running down the front of them.
She reached for them, saying, “Imagine this, Blackwall. If we could be like this forever…”
Asking through ragged breaths, his pulse hammering in his chest, he said, “What do you mean?”
Looking up at him, she said, “Just the two of us alone, ignoring the rest of world, making this instance last for eternity, without a care at all, of course. Is it not tempting, even momentarily?”
Letting silence descend after the question, Blackwall perked his hearing, realising that it was total silence—not even the ambient noise of the partiers or minstrels who had been providing the music for the drunken revellers after the successful conclusion of the peace forged at the Winter Ball sounded anywhere around where they were.
Sensing his discord, she asked, “Is something the matter?”
“Nothing, I…”, Blackwall trailed off, unable to put words to his uneasiness.
Smiling, she continued her work working off button after button, saying, “I don’t think we need worry. We aren’t liable to missed, not for now. Perhaps for a while yet, even?”
A deep chill running through him, Blackwall reached for her wrist, firmly guiding her hand away from the fly of his trousers. Surprised, she glanced up at him again.
“Is something truly wrong?”, she asked.
Thinking for long seconds and praying to the Maker he was wrong, mouthing for Him to forgive him should he simply be asking this question misguidedly, he eventually forced it out, feeling his eyes water at the implications of what he was about to discover.
“Who are you, and what do you want?”
The woman bearing Cassandra’s likeness stood above him, hurt. “What do you mean?”
Rebuttoning his trousers and keeping his gaze fixed on the face of the stranger before him, Blackwall said, “No matter how besotted she was with someone, there’s no chance that Cassandra would ever consider a dereliction of her duty like this—certainly not whilst playing the part of a coquettish Chantry sister. And finally, we never…consummated…until after this night. Maker knows why I even went along with this charade in the first place. I’m going to ask you again, woman. Why are you pretending to be the Lady Seeker?”
“I don’t know,” she asked. “Why are you pretending to be the Warden-Constable, Thom Rainier?”
He stood up to confront her, his boots letting him reach her eye level—the real Cassandra otherwise stood a good inch taller than him—explaining, “Warden Blackwall dies two days from now, as does Thom Rainier. Once again.”
“It doesn’t have to be this way,” the woman said, her eyes briefly flashing a demoniac purple.
“What do you mean?”, Blackwall demanded, adding, “And for the Maker’s sake, put some clothes on. I don’t need you wearing her skin so vulgarly.”
She conceded by simply wrapping the jacket around herself, exposing the rest of said skin to the rest of the world—which seemed to solely comprise of Blackwall at the moment.
“It’s hardly so complicated, Rainier,” she said. “All you have to do is sleep in too long and you’ll simply never make it to Val Royeaux on time the day after. Your secret dies with Mornay, and you can just lie when the Inquisition catches up with you here.”
Anger rising within him, Blackwall spat, “That’s all this is? Your great temptation is just the truth never coming to light?”
“No,” she said, “I had simply been offering you one final chance to experience a night with your love, without her suspecting you or your identity in the least. She certainly will be turning the meaning of that note again over and over in her head every night from now till when…when your lives go the way all things go. Why ruin this, Rainier? You seemed perfectly eager minutes ago after all, Blackwall.”
“But it’s a lie!”, he protested.
“So too has your life in all of its aspects for nearly half a decade,” the apparent demon with Cassandra’s face retorted. “What does it matter?”
“It matters. Maker forgive me for taking so long to realise this, but the truth matters. It matters to the men I’ve left to hang for my cowardice, but it matters because…because the woman you’re masquerading as deserves the truth,” he said. Bitterly laughing, he added, “It’s in her job title, after all.”
Realising he couldn’t control his laughter, and realising it wasn’t laughter at all, but the grief of years finally erupting in terrible sobs, he collapsed back onto the very bed where, if his imagination and this woman had reigned supreme, would’ve been witness to the multitude of pleasures the flesh was heir to, but now just seated a miserable shell of a man.
“Maker, forgive me,” he begged, “Cassandra, forgive me. Not for what I’ve done but for…not even then. Forget me, Cassandra.”
The spirit with her visage, now fully dressed in the same armour he’d seen the Lady Seeker wearing when they had first met on the shores of Lake Luthias, stepped forward, gently grasping his temples and planting a kiss on his forehead.
“Only the Maker knows how His children will decide to act, but I think I understand something now that I didn’t before, Thom Rainier,” she said gently. “You know your purpose, and I now know mine.”
“Purpose?”, he asked blandly.
“I…now remember a time before this,” she said, continuing, “Your fitful sleep practically screamed out to me, and I thought you to simply be easy prey at first. But this…is different.”
“I don’t understand.”
Shaking her head, she said, “I don’t either, and we may never truly do so. But I’ll see to it you have a full night’s rest and see to your own purpose, Blackwall, or Rainier. You’ve a long ride ahead from here to the capital, after all.”
With that, she stepped out of the door, the walls of the palace, along with the floor under Blackwall, breaking apart and floating through the ether as he felt himself falling, falling and falling…
=
…and waking up in cold sweat on the hard bed in the tavern. Refusing to let himself piece together the strange and disturbing dream which he’d just experienced, Blackwall threw his clothes onto himself, vaguely remembering tossing a sovereign to the innkeeper and saddling Princess Mairyn after doing so, half-dazed and half-aware as he went through the motions of leaving the place.
On the road leading out of Halamshiral he stopped at the crest of a nearby bund, turning back to look at the horizon and the dim outline of the Winter Palace for some long moments, before galloping at full speed towards Val Royeaux, where his destiny lay.
@dadrunkwriting
