Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh for kiss roulette 25 (kiss that's an accident) would be really fun, especially if it's pre-relationship
I am so sorry it took me so long to answer your ask! I'm so happy I could post this (a day after) Valentine's day!!
I hope you enjoy!
Rolan x f!Tav - Accidental Kiss
Content warnings: Accidental kiss, over the clothes groping, under the clothes groping.
“I thought I’d find you out here.”
Tav glanced over her shoulder. Rolan stood in the doorway, his yellow eyes bright and his silver mantle gleaming in the moonlight. His tail, usually snapping a peeved beat behind him, swayed to and fro as he approached her.
She rubbed her arms, desperately trying to pull some warmth back into her frame. Of all the things the Shadow-Cursed Lands needed to be, cold was absolutely not one of them. She would tolerate the zombies and the wraiths and the life-sapping curse… but did it have to be so damn frigid?
It didn’t help that the Last Light Inn sat on the riverbank--though Tav wasn’t improving on the situation by lingering on the second floor’s outdoor dining area.
“Did you need something?” she asked Rolan. She leaned against the stone railing, taking in the fellow as he paused beside her. Rolan looked out on the river, his posture pensive. He flicked his tail, cutting at the air with its barbed tip.
“I mostly came out here to ask you why my money isn’t good enough for you to take,” he said with a snobbish lilt to his voice—one that he further accentuated by turning his nose upwards.
Tav quirked a brow at him. “Careful how much you flare your nostrils—a bug might try to make its home in one of them.”
He scoffed. “Cute.” The curl of his lip indicated that he found her comment anything but endearing. “That, however, fails to answer my question.”
“Is it so hard to just accept that I helped you and your family without needing a reward?” she asked. The stone railing bit into her hip, but she still relaxed into it.
Rolan turned to face her. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“You expect me to believe that you didn’t have any ulterior motives? None at all?”
“You can think whatever you like,” she said with a shrug. “I’m still not taking your money.”
He glared at her. “I take it that you intend on wringing a favor out of me then? Your wizard companion was quite interested in me introducing the lot of you to Master Lorroakan when you reached the city.” Condescension practically rolled off of him.
He braced one hand on the rail—Tav was vaguely aware of how the stone seemed to shudder with the added weight.
She disregarded it.
No, she was more keen on setting the record straight.
“Gale wanted to meet Lorroakan, yes,” she said. “I’m content to never put a face to the name.”
“I don’t believe—“
“Rolan.”
He paused, his lips still shaping his rebuttal.
“I care about you,” she said. “And I care about your brother and your sister.”
She laid a hand on his elbow, half expecting him to pull away.
He didn’t.
“You don’t have to believe me,” Tav said. “I didn’t do any of this to prove a point to you or to them or anyone else for that matter. I just…”
“Just what?” The demanding edge in his tone had softened to an impatient query.
She exhaled softly, preparing herself for a cutting dismissal. “I… I see how the three of you laugh together. How you joke and rib and bicker. And… it reminds me of how I used to talk with my family when they were alive.”
Rolan’s eyes widened.
Tav pressed forward. “I only have memories,” she continued, “and as time has passed, those have faded. I… I don’t even remember what my mother’s voice sounded like. I most certainly don’t remember my father’s laugh.” She swallowed the salt-thick lump forming in her throat. It stuck in her chest. “It’s silly and it’s sentimental and ridiculous and it very likely makes me a bleeding heart of a person… but if I can make sure that you have more than memories, even if it’s just for a little longer, then I will.”
A chilled wind stirred the trees beyond the moonlight-cast barrier that enclosed the inn and its grounds. Tav shivered, drawing away to rub warmth back into her arms.
She waited for Rolan to say something—anything. He’d have some acidic remark to make, she was sure.
But… nothing came.
She didn’t know what was worse—the silence or the promise of a biting reply.
Rolan’s eyes glowed a pale yellow in the moonlight.
“I… am grateful,” he said slowly, “that you would risk your life for us. Thank you.”
The ghost of a smile skirted across her mouth. “You thanked me once already.”
He huffed a laugh. “That I did. Well, I suppose I can manage one more—one good turn deserves another after all.”
The tension left Tav’s frame. “Your altruism knows no bounds,” she teased.
And, to her pleasant surprise, Rolan broke into a grin.
Her heart stuttered in her chest.
She’d always thought that he was dashing—even while he was scowling. But when he smiled so genuinely and without restraint? Tav couldn’t put words to how lovely he was.
And then, as she rested the brunt of her weight against the rail, her attentions fully devoted to Rolan… the sickening sound of stone fracturing and crumbling caused her to tense.
And the rail, buckling as it tumbled away, sent her lurching out into empty air.
Tav grasped Rolan’s arms, whose gaze remained trained on her face—on her lips. He seemed almost oblivious to the risk at hand… and more intent on closing the space between them.
He took a step towards her, setting her further off kilter, and as Tav desperately plucked at the strands of the Weave, urging it to slow her descent to the ground below, Rolan kissed her—
—only to find himself dragged off the veranda, falling with Tav.
Tav held Rolan close, one hand pressed to the crown of his head as she urged the Weave to buoy them up, to make them as light as feathers knocked loose from a wing.
Were it not for her heart slamming in her chest, she would have suspected that the spell had emptied her insides, leaving her as hollow as the core of a bird's bone.
Their fall slowed from a plummet to a smooth, steady glide.
They were deposited into one of the hedges running the length of the inn, and their combined weight returned, crushing the dead brush beneath them.
“Are you hurt?” Tav asked Rolan. His face was pressed to the crook of her neck—were it not for his tail slicing an agitated tempo into the air, she wouldn’t have known anything was amiss.
“I’m fine,” he snapped. Rolan drew up, his cheeks a heady wine red. He tried to rise to his feet, but dried branches held him fast, their thorns snagging into his robes. “Zurgan!”
He thrashed about, which served to only entangle him deeper into the hedge and draw him down against Tav.
“Stop laughing,” he snapped.
Tav pushed her mouth into her palm. “Sorry.” She smothered a small giggle.
Rolan glared at her. “I suppose that this is all rather amusing to you?”
“Getting caught in a bush together? Well, it is a little funny.” She shrugged, and the spindly branches held her fast in place, digging into her exposed skin and raising welts. “But I imagine that isn’t the whole of what you’re referring to, is it?”
Rolan’s mouth snarl twisted up into a grimace. “The kiss--that was a… foolish misunderstanding,” he said. “I would appreciate it if you treated this entire ordeal, including my momentary misstep, as an accident. And I would beg your forgiveness.”
As much as she wanted to tease him, as easy as it would be with him all but disheveled and pinned in place on top of her to easily reach for a well-placed, and very suggestive, comment, the mortification was written clear on Rolan’s features.
She didn’t want to be cruel.
But she also didn’t want her affections to go wholly unknown either. After all, there was the distinct possibility that, once they were out of this bind, Rolan would retreat into hiding and she would see neither hide nor hair of him when she reached the city.
Tav bit her lower lip, searching for the proper words. “No apologies are necessary,” she said. “It was an accident, after all.”
The tension left Rolan—marginally.
Tav pressed forward to say. “Though… I wouldn’t have been upset if the kiss was entirely intentional.”
His eyes widened and the intense flush of red returned to his cheeks. “I—what? That is to say—“ He sharply cleared his throat. “You—you’re mocking me. I think it goes without saying that I—“
She tugged on the front of his robes, drawing him down so that she could gently press her lips to his cheek. The warmth emanating off of him was utterly delicious, and it was so tempting to let her mouth linger.
But she laid down, settling back into the bed of dead foliage. She couldn’t exactly free herself until Rolan got off of her…
…and he was frozen in place.
He opened his mouth only to close it again, caging a strangled sound in his throat. His eyes were bright with confusion…
…but was there something else caught in the facets of his stare?
Tav wondered.
He cupped the line of her jaw in his shaky hand.
“You…” he whispered, the yellow of his gaze warming to a honey gold, “are impossible. Infuriating. Impulsive.” He huffed softly. “And I’m still the bigger fool of the two of us.”
And he pressed his lips to hers.
At first, his kiss was soft, tentative. And so warm.
As the darkness pressed in upon them, as the curse threatened to snuff out this one pocket of light, and as a cold breeze lifted off of the river and stroked a finger down Tav’s spine, she found herself set alight by Rolan’s touch.
She whispered his name, and he swallowed it.
Try as they may to be slow, furtive even, it took one well-placed moan from Tav and a smothered whimper from Rolan before they were grabbing at each other’s clothes—he pushed his hands under her shirt while she tangled one of hers in his hair and palmed his cock through his trousers with her other. He moved into her touch, rolling his hips. The bush shuddered and crackled around them, swaying with their movements.
“Gods,” one of them whispered—or perhaps neither of them did? They didn’t particularly care.
Rolan’s lips were hard on hers, as if he wanted her to remember how he felt against her when they finally parted. His breath was hot. His soft gasps were honey-sweet. She was content to lose herself in his touch.
But their reverie was cut short by the sound of a door flying open and slamming into stone.
“Hurry! I heard it come from over here”
Tav’s eyes snapped open.
Shit—of course someone would have heard a stone rail break.
And here they were, tangled up in a hedge.
“Rolan, we need to move,” Tav hissed. She pushed against his shoulders, but instead of prising himself free, he dug into his spell components pouch.
“Just a moment,” he murmured.
“Rolan—“
Invisibilis
The spell unfurled itself, cloaking them in a shifting illusion.
Though she could still feel the comforting weight of Rolan on top of her, all she could see was the moonlit sky. Her hands, once braced flat on his chest, were gone as well—as was the rest of her body.
Two Harpers rounded the corner, looking around for the source of the disturbance. And then, with slow and assured steps, Jaheira followed several paces behind.
“I could have sworn I heard something,” a Harper insisted, her eyes catching on the bush before shifting to the chunks of crumbling rail that, were strewn about it. “Was it the…”
“It is an old building,” Jaheira said. “Isobel’s magic may protect us from the curse, but natural decay? Not so much.”
“Better safe than sorry,” the second Harper said, patting their comrade’s arm.
Jaheira was silent. She looked to the broken rail on the veranda above before her trailing her gaze down to the somewhat flattened hedge below. Her eyes narrowed and her mouth quirked.
“I’d rather too much caution than too little—especially after Marcus attacked,” she said. “Get back to your posts for now. Keep your wits about you.”
The Harpers moved past Jaheira, who remained a moment more before she, too, departed.
With a shaky exhale, Rolan’s spell fell away. His eyes were bright with relief.
“That was awfully close,” Tav said, biting the inside of her cheek to keep herself from laughing.
He rolled his eyes. “Far be it from me to protect our dignity.”
She pushed herself up and planted a kiss on his cheek, her lips lingering. “You know… there is a loft over the forge. Shall we make our way there? Pick up where we left off?”
“Even after—why am I not surprised?” Rolan snorted.
“Is that a no?”
“Hardly.”
Rolan wrenched himself free from the bush, its thorns snagging in his robes and its limbs snapping like kindling as he drew away. “Well, are you coming?”
For all his bluster, he offered Tav his hand and, as she rose, he freed her from the hedge’s grasp.
“Thank you,” she said.
In the moonlight, she wasn’t quite certain, but she could have almost sworn that he blushed, his cheeks burning a wine-dark red.
He cleared his throat and gestured to the staircase mounted to the side of the forge. “That the way?”
Tav nodded, weaving her fingers between his. “Shall we?”
They would have liked to think that they managed to keep their voices down while enjoying each other’s company.
They were wrong.
