Jaime and Brienne, Rated E for explicit sexual content. Spoilers for 8 x 04!
He’s sure that one look at him would allow no one to toy with or entertain the notion, but it doesn’t make the fact false. He’s not ashamed of it. At any rate, why should the fact that the Kingslayer has in the past, dabbled in reading novels of a more romantic sort be such a shame? It's not. Truly, no, not even if he feels like his thing with Brienne—if it can be called that, has played out a bit similarly to a novel. But he and Brienne are certainly not a romance. Two knights never get to fall in love in a romance, it’s always a lady and a knight. And Brienne, lady and knight, defies. Jaime too has always defied, save in different ways. Perhaps that was why they defied so well together in battle. Perhaps that’s why he feels she would like to continue to do so, albeit in another way.
Yes, Jaime defies. Perhaps because of that, his secret occupation of reader isn’t a habit he announces. He drank though when Tyrion pointed at him and made his guess during their little game. At least his little brother didn’t ask something along the lines of “Jaime Lannister looks at Ser Brienne of Tarth more than he has too.” The Northern wine was already too heady on his tongue, any more drink would have been too sweet. He was suffering under the crippling sweetness of her flittering glances toward him enough, though it did make his cheeks grow hot. But he drank readily enough, even though at first the wine wasn’t something he had a taste for. Once he preferred dryer wines and acidic meads, but he’s grown accustomed to the Northern fare. He doesn’t want things growing on him, he told Brienne as much when he came to her room. But maybe he can grow accustomed to many things. He does, after all, defy.
Jaime Lannister, accustomed to a certain woman, thought nothing of that sort of woman as he told Brienne that the rules were she had to drink. He was very much focused on the present situation he brought himself in. Too much, that the next thing he knew was meeting her lips with his. She kissed back, ardently so. In his interpretation of her glances in the hall, he interpreted right. She was also right earlier, when she said he sounded jealous of Tormund. Knights are usually right anyway.
He kisses because knows from a few romance novels, and living as well, that kissing is better than talking, especially when they’ve talked far too much in the past, and he’s said more than he should. Her present kisses in reply also spoke to that fact. Presently as well— and the present was what mattered—it’s warm in her room. Too warm, and the Northern wine is warmer still on his tongue. The clothes she helped him take off don’t really help matters, and Brienne really is quite tall. Armor makes her broader than she truly is, though she still takes up space, even if he’s naturally broader, though she’s of course she’s still taller. In general, she’s so much, but she’s not too much. She’s enough and yet she thrills while simultaneously she satisfies with the way she kisses him back. All these are things he can handle.
I got to do an art trade with @schoute! thank you so much for letting me write a smutty scene with your Piper Lavellan and Cullen! It was a blast :D
Summary: Post Corypheus’s defeat, Cullen and Piper spend some time alone by the lake.
Piper was the one that convinced him to take off his boots after they made their camp by the lake. Her natural aversion for shoes and footwear wasn’t something he could comprehend, for though he understood the joys of being barefoot in the home, he couldn’t imagine living life with perpetually dirty feet. Yet when he finally relented and pulled off his boots, and felt the soft grass against his bare feet, soon followed by the cool lake water after they sat at the pier, he was reminded of his childhood again. He recalled that as a boy, he would often do the same—take off his shoes and sink his legs into the water as he stole a moment away for himself to clear his head. Yet that was the thing about Piper. She made him remember those things that he had forgotten.
“See?” Piper asked. “Not so bad, right?”
He chuckled as he wrapped them both in his mantle. “Not so bad at all.”
She kissed his stubbly cheek. She made him feel new and she made him feel young, yet at the same time she made him aware of how old he was. Such a contradiction, but being with her was the thrill of her spontaneity and playfulness, mingled with the wonderful realness of planning for the years they would have together. He could revel in that sweet knowing now, that they would have many years together. Corypheus was gone, and though there was still work to be done and good the Inquisition could do, there was time to merely be together, doing nothing at all, save for holding hands, sharing kisses, and staring at the water.
“I’m so calm here. Happy,” Piper said. “Thank you so much for taking me back. I was hoping you would.”
It had been months since that moment, since he gave her his coin. So much had happened.
“I’m glad,” he replied. “I always felt the same when I was here. Calm and happy. No cares at all.”
She sighed contently. “Beautiful. Gorgeous. A masterpiece.”
The evening sun was a soft orange against the light blue sky, looking like colors merging together on an artist’s palette. “It is beautiful,” Cullen replied. “The sunset and the colors against the water is—"
She smirked, one brow curiously raised. “I wasn’t talking about the sunset Cullen.”
He stared, mouth agape. “Oh…”
She laughed into a long and deep kiss, and when it was over with he still couldn’t stop smiling. They were less desperate since Corypheus’s defeat, much more playful, yet still raw and hungry and wanting. He couldn’t get enough of her taste, couldn’t tell her enough with his mouth or with his hands how wonderful she was. She couldn’t stop touching him and kissing him, letting him know how loved and appreciated he was.
“Come on,” she suggested. “Let’s go back.”
Their camp wasn’t too far from the lake, and though Cullen asked if she was hungry, bending down to their knapsack, she shook her head and grabbed his wrists, linking his arms around her waist. She stood on his bare feet to give her more much needed height to take control, kissing him and wrapping her arms around him.
“Cullen…” She pulled at the wisps of hair at the base of his neck, enough for him to moan softly, “you know…I am utterly famished.”
“Is that so?” He brought her hip closer to his. “Perhaps we should alleviate that.”
“You should. Now…”
“Bread and cheese in the knapsack. Help yourself.”
“Cullen.”
“Yes, yes,” he said, teasing. “I know.”
“As Inquisitor I order you to alleviate this situation now Commander.”
“But Piper, should we not wait for reinforce—"
Nails scratched the nape of his neck, followed by a long and lingering press against the base of his throat. It compelled and brought forth a sharp intake of breath.
“Now,” she whispered, demanded. “Cullen. Now.”
He wanted. He wanted so bad. He gave in, and it was neither awkward nor mechanical as the time before the act itself could sometimes be with others before her. Piper was the first one that taught him there was great fun in removal of clothes before the act, reminding him again she led him to their tent and they rid themselves of all the unnecessary things. They laughed like teenagers as shirts wouldn’t come off and they helped each other frantically, and at last she was bare and he was almost bare, only his breeches remaining.
“Lay down,” she ordered, and he was glad to obey, his head resting on a bedroll. She was a lovely sight—skin kissed by the sun, pale hair falling to her shoulders. Her breasts were small but perfect for his hands, a trim waist that tapered to wide hips and rear. Her arms were toned from archery and her legs were lean from constant activity. Adorned on her body was the intricate design of an arrow on her sternum, and a smaller design was wrapped around her left arm. Slender yet strong, little but fierce. A minx in bed. He loved her ways. He loved her.
“Cullen,” she rasped, positioning her body on top of him, breasts and wisps of her long hair akin to the feeling of the softest silks and velvet against his bare skin.
“Piper,” he groaned, closing his eyes, moaning when she swiveled her hips over his half-hard cock.
“You’ve been so attentive lately.”
“Have I?” he asked, as if he didn’t remember how often he spent buried between her thighs of late, how often he worshipped and studied her entire body as if she was the Chant of Light.
“Let me take care of you.”
“You always take care of me,” he said as her lips grazed over an old scar on his abdomen. She loved his scars, where at the best he could laugh at the story behind them, and at the worst he flinched in shame. The scar on his lip gave him the most shame—a gift from Hawke, a reminder to all of the past and his failures. Piper kissed it—ran the tip of her tongue against it. She loved that scar, she often told him so. She healed and renewed it with her kiss again.
All of his scars had stories. She created new ones that reminded him of the times of laughter before, like during the time with Mia in his youth when she whacked him hard with a wooden sword. She softened old burn wounds from Kirkwall, took away the pain. She held his hand as she layered new stories on top of old stories before she kissed and nipped softly at his wrist. She sealed it all with a long and lingering kiss against his open mouth. Their tongues glided, their fingers wove through hair, and he hardened further, leaking and needing. He gripped her hips and he barely ghosted over her mound and her folds, treasured that soft gasp as he barely touched her clit.
She helped him take off his breeches. She was over him but not inside him yet, locking their palms together. She moved her hips, wrapped him in her warmth. He wasn’t inside her but she was all around him all the same. Encased by her warmth and softness, he groaned, rolled his head back against the bedroll.
“Yes,” she muttered, “Cullen….Cullen, you’re beautiful.”
Words brought him back to life, the feeling of her sinking on top of him down to the hilt and connecting and joining their bodies a soft spell that revitalized. He traced her waist with his palms, her hands held onto his hips and reached around to skim through the coarse hair of his thighs.
“Piper,” he said, reaching out and circling the pad of his thumb around her clit, “Come for me.”
She came moaning his name, came and he felt her orgasm around his cock. She won her battle and then surrendered, so he rose and cradled her body, laying her down on the bedroll so he was the one in control. He nipped at her shoulders and at her breasts, kissed a line up her neck as he moved. He was frantic and not gentle as he thrust again, but she wasn’t a delicate flower that would break. She begged faster. He gave faster and he gave harder, their joining a slick and sinful sound that he loved. Her moans joined in the sound, his moans mingled with hers. She rubbed at her clit and she came again. Already knowing his own end was nigh she asked him not to hold back. He came. He came hard and quaking and his body and soul was burning, the woman below him quivering and kissing him softly. Beautiful paradise, beautiful story they created. Beautiful end and beautiful death, only to come to life again.
How he loved her.
“You always make me feel so good,” she said, kissing the tip of his nose, kissing his scar. She took away the pain from that day he got it, but she created a new story for him as well as she always did, one that was infinitely better.
He kissed her again. “You make me feel alive,” he said.
She giggled and he giggled as he she pushed him back down, so she was in control once more. And once more and again, they joined and they were alive.
When he first kissed her it was soft and gentle. Lips against lips, a brief moment of togetherness before parting. He didn’t know how. She was his books and his teacher and canvas to practice. She doted him with love, her stains of red and pink on his cheek and chin. He kept them there long.
Then he thought of living lips against other places of her. Her forehead, her cheek, her chin, her hand, her shoulders. He peppered her face and every part his lips could touch.He liked the way she encouraged him, holding him tighter and keeping him close, making him feel a man. He liked the way she looked at him and saw the entire universe. It was everything and it was overwhelming but if he could tell her in a way without words...
He learned how to kiss with more than his lips, with his hands and with his words. He liked to tell her sweet things as he held her face in his hands, of how she was glittering like gold and silver, vibrant like a wildflower. He liked to caress her cheek with his fingers, break the space between them and travel to another universe with the exchange of mouths, and then eventually, a little tongue. Noses bumped a little, it made him laugh and it made her lips sweeter. She took his wrists and kept his hands their. She hummed and he found his religion and holy book. Her lips were his texts, her body his temple. Her his being, soul.
A kiss was a lifetime in an instant. Her kiss was her soul transcending to him. She called him “Connor” after they parted and he was alive.
small thank you drabble with Ashe Cadash and Cullen for @cirinefennec! Thank you for the support <3
She had never seen snow fall before, Cullen realized as he saw Ashe lift her hands up to catch one of the snow flurries in her palm. Snow was rather mundane to him, in fact it was mostly a nuisance when it got in his hair.
Yet with Ashe, her eyes lit up. For the first time since he met her, he realized, she had smiled. She was taken. She may have even danced to an un-played melody if someone asked her.
Well. Maybe snow wasn’t so mundane after all, he thought as he looked around at the dancing flakes. Maybe it was rather pretty.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
Caught, he could only chuckle. He should have known she would have known he was there. “Maybe,” replied.
She turned. “Maybe?” she repeated. “It is.”
She heard stories of snow in books, she said. The stories she read in childhood always had a grim view of the surface, it was almost as if the stories actually believed when snow hit your skin it would burn and make marks.
Cullen chuckled. “No, nothing like that,” he said. “Though the sight of snow when it’s supposed to be spring during after a long winter isn’t exactly what I would want to see.”
“Well, this is all still new to me,” she said. “Let me have some simple pleasures, Commander.”
Simple pleasures. Cullen sighed, thinking of warm elderberry tea, soft blankets, a decent night’s rest. Those were his, though when Ashe glanced at him and saw his dreamy, far off eyes, sarcasm dripped from her words when she asked him if his simple pleasures were badgering orders at troops.
“Firstly, I do not badger,” Cullen said. “Secondly, no.”
She raised her brows. “What are they then?”
“My focus must be the Inquisition. Not--”
“Cullen. Tell me.”
She never had to prod long with him. He told her. Tea, soft blankets, good rest. He thought some more, about his childhood, about the first sun after winter.
“Laying down in the grass under the sun after winter,” he said. “Those are my simple pleasures.”
She grinned at him. “Good to know.”
He went back to his tent after hours of planning and debating rations and soldiers and spies between Leliana and Josephine. In his tent was a single cup of tea, and a new blanket the color of his mantle. There was also a note.
Cullen, it said. I can’t help with the decent night’s rest, but this might. Enjoy your simple pleasures. Ashe.
PS. When the sun comes up, we should indulge. I know a good spot.
“Nothing,” she says, inconspicuous, a leg draped over him.
“Really?” He’s still in the afterglow of making love to her, but his eyebrows raise. “It looks to me like your playing with my chest hair.”
She laughs. “Well, it’s golden!”
“And you find it amusing?”
“It’s also curly--just like your hair.”
“Would it be any other way?”
“I don’t know... straight? Either way...” She props herself up. “It’s cute.”
“Cute? Lydia, you’re crazy.”
“I’m crazy?” she repeats, matching his laugh. “Fine, I am and I’m proud of that, but this crazy woman wants you on your back Commander.”
The voice she uses is husky and low, he does what she wants with a devilish smirk she matches. Her head still propped up with one hand, the other travels down his chest. She uses the back of her hand to caress the plains and shapes and the hair there as well. She is right, much of it is curly.
“Lydia, I--”
“Shh.”
She leans over and she kisses him. “I like it,” she promises.
“It...”
“There’s not a part of you I don’t like, beautiful, radiant man.”
He succumbs to the words and she makes him believe, and what small part still doesn’t is rectified by kisses here there, everywhere on his chest.
There’s not a part of him she doesn’t like. Even the small parts he himself never thought much of. But that was the thing about Lydia, she was always making him appreciate the small things.
She was crazy and he loved her precisely because of that.
I needed some happiness so I wrote this Cophie drabble. It was going to be smut but they were softer today <3
Connor didn’t realize tears were for anything other than sadness until Christmas morning.
Sophie woke up and peppered his jawline with kisses. In their nakedness, a reminder of the night before, they laid and giggled together, his hand skimming down her back until she rose from the bed and threw back on her ugly Christmas sweater with the reindeer on it, tossing his at him that read Santa, I can explain. She took him to the living room. He poured her some eggnog, and she put on the music. They danced under the tree.
“I have something for you,” she whispered after the second song, the two twirling together. From under the tree, she pulled out a package.
“I told you, you didn’t have to,” Connor said. “This is enough.”
She protested. “I wanted to,” she said, and when Connor opened it the red package with little santas on it, in his hand, he held the most beautiful wonderful thing.
“I knit it,” she said. “I thought you would like the dark blue, and the tassels were kind of a pain, but...oh Connor I’m sorry it’s not perfect but--”
“It is,” he said. “Sophie. It is.”
She wrapped it around his neck. He had never worn anything finer, never worn anything that was made with such love. It made his gift pale in comparison, and when his face feel, and Sophie cupped his jaw and asked him what was wrong, he made his admittance.
“I should have gotten you something else,” he said. “But...”
“Connor,” she said, scolding. “I told you not to get me anything!”
“And I told you!”
She giggled. “I’ll love it, I promise.”
It was a simple band, and he asked the jeweler to engrave little plumerias and hibiscuses on it, so she may always be reminded of home. It wasn’t made with his own hands, but her eyes lit up anyway, even more so when he showed her the engraving.
To Sophie, it said. My soul.
“Soul?” she asked. “Connor...”
“I doubt there’s a heaven for androids,” he admitted. “But Sophie...you’re...”
She wrapped her arms around him, “No Connor,” she said. “Heaven is right here.”
She stood on her tiptoes and kissed his tears away.
Before, Sophie called Connor a “man with a thousand thoughts.” Connor knew he took on the appearance of young man. He also knew, truly, he was neither a man nor a boy. He was an android. He was designed to take the appearance of a man, neither old nor young, but somewhere between. Human appearances were random, the result of genetics and genes and DNA and other matters. He was made to look a certain way because someone somewhere dictated it. Every part of him was someone’s choice.
Before he never thought to question why he looked the way he looked. He would catch himself across reflected surfaces and see his serial number and his series and the blue triangle that denoted he was an android on the jacket they made him wear. He would see the tie he picked himself, adjust it. There was a lock of hair that hung on his forehead. It remained to that day, after he broke from their hold on him.
Connor, the android sent by CyberLife, used to look in the mirror and reflected surfaces and take in those things that made him feel more like a real person and not only a thing and tool. He wasn’t satisfied with everything back then. He had the thought, brief as it was with the things he did for them, but he didn’t stop to question. Not really. Don’t think, just do and compute. Until he met Hank. Until that night at Jericho. That night made everything fall.
He told Sophie he fell once, but that wasn’t true. It was two times he fell. He was trying to pick himself up, he realized as looked at himself in the mirror in the bookshop. He could stand where he fell, and after he stood, he could be anything he wanted. A man, an android, a friend. Whatever he wanted to be, he could. So long as he had the want, and the will to see it through.
It was almost too much yet it was exactly what he wanted, to be what he wanted. Even if he didn’t know what the want to be was. He was looking forward to finding out what Connor was going to be.
--From Chapter Sixteen of Our Immortal Longings, “Metaphor”
His mother once said that everyone had their own miracles. If that is the case, and he has a reason to believe it is, his miracle is morning light streaming through his unfixed roof, painting her in it’s rosy light. His miracle is that she stays. She’s his miracle, if everything she is can be encompassed in one word.
He doesn’t wish to wake her, not when there are so few moments where she doesn’t have to put on the mantle of the Inquisitor. He wishes there were more moments where she could simply be, and exist with no burdens and simply live. She tells him the same in their time together. She saw the Commander, and though she grew fond of him, cared for him even, she fell in love with the man beyond that. She fell in love with Cullen. The woman beyond the Herald and Inquisitor, she loves Cullen. Miracle.
He stretches a little, tilts his head. She moves frequently in sleep but often ends up to her side, facing him. When he tells her still sleeping form he loves her, he finds she isn’t sleeping at all. A smile curves, and he chuckles. They move to each other in a dance still somewhat new, but practiced. Arms wrap unhurriedly and limbs entangle. Kisses are soft, lazy and slow. She moves to her back and the long line of his body covers hers. A leg wraps over him, beckoning him closer. Warm lips are soft against her neck and make her murmur. Miracle. Every morning he is with her and she is not away, he writes poems in his mind about how she is his miracle, and how he loves her so. One day, perhaps he’ll give her all of them, every one he has ever written. Today he settles on kisses and caresses, holding her hand. Today, that’s how he gives her his poems.
Her lips are swollen from his kisses, her cheeks flushed. “Good morning,” she says.
“I love you,” he replies, and her kiss is her I love you too. Miracle, he thinks, as he knows that someday, this will be their every morning.
dedicated to @inconspicuous-cupcake. Thank you so much for the support! :)
