Work Text:
Act II
“Forgive me, Maker, for I have just killed quite a few men.”
Despite the solemnity of the act, Sebastian cracked a smile at Marian’s words and playful tone, eyeing her silhouette through the gauzy veil separating them. He broke form to reply, “I know, I was there, wasn’t I?”
“Yes, you were,” she replied with similar lightness, before her voice took on the dutiful cadence of the ritual. “It has been four years since my last confession.”
Sebastian felt his heart * ker-thump* in a funny off-beat. She’d asked to do this with him, not trusting to the discretion of the other, more senior members of the Chantry after her experience with Mother Petrice, but knowing her...Oh, Maker, perhaps this had been a bad idea.... Aloud, he said in a voice that caught in his throat, “Why so long, my child?”
“There was no one here in the Kirkwall Chantry that I took a fancy to like I did a lay sister in Lothering.”
“A...’lay’ sister?” She’d given a particular emphasis to the word that made his mouth go dry.
“Yes,” Hawke murmured. “She seemed to have particular interest in the confessions I made.”
“What kind of confessions?” he asked. He had this irrational sensation of being caught in the quicksand he’d heard of that dotted the beaches along the Wounded Coast farther from Kirkwall, but was determined to do his duty and hear her through this. She was his friend, even if there were times he wished it could be different.
She teased, “Do you want me to tell those, or my new ones?”
Sternly, he schooled himself. “The new ones, of course. Andraste will have already heard and interceded with the Maker for the old ones.”
“Very well,” she said, and her outline leaned back in the chair, her hands lacing behind her head. The posture accentuated her breasts, thrusting them outward from her body, and he licked his lips. This wasn’t the proper mindset for the confessional. Her next words didn’t help. “I have fornicated with Isabela.”
He gulped, eyes going wide. “Marian, I don’t--“
She cut him off, “These are my sins, I must confess them, right?”
“Yes, but--“ he protested.
Ignoring it, she went on. “It was after I gave her that toy boat, you remember the one? After some playful banter about the really special part of it being down below,” her hips tilted upward from the seat as she re-positioned herself, and he closed his eyes briefly, praying to the Maker for strength, “she came by my house that night. Threw herself at me, in fact. She was really a little minx, wrapped her legs around my waist and I carried her to the bed. It really was a new experience for her to cut my pants off.” She sniffed with amusement. “So eager, she couldn’t be bothered to unbutton them. Maker, she knew how to fist,” she said in a dreamy voice. “It’s making me hot just thinking about it.”
Sebastian shuddered and counted to five before he said in a strained voice, “And what else, my child?”
“Then there was Anders,” she said. He choked on his objection, letting her continue. “After that ‘Tranquil Solution’ business, and he nearly killed that girl mage. He was all kicked puppy dog and begging for my forgiveness, then he said he was burning for me and I was a tease.” She sniffed with irritation. “I never tease. Tease implies I wouldn’t follow through with it. He wanted me. Badly. And dear Maker, that kiss,” she sighed happily and dropped a hand to her chest, running it down her belly in a drawn out gesture. “I think he could have stolen Andraste away from the Maker himself, if he’d kissed her.”
“Marian!” Sebastian said in a shocked voice of reproof, shivering. “That’s sacrilege!”
“Sorry, love,” she said, only sounding the slightest bit contrite.
“And don’t call me ‘love’,” he said disapprovingly, although he quivered a little inside for her doing just that. “I’m your brother, in this.”
“Maker, I hope not,” she said fervently. “Carver was a complete stick in the mud. You’re not a stick in the mud, are you, Sebastian?” she all but purred.
Sweat began popping out on his forehead, and he lifted a hand to wipe it away as quietly as possible. “No, but I think we’re getting sidetracked.”
“Oh, right. Anders. I don’t think he’d ever been with a woman,” she continued. “I had to be gentle with him, show him the best ways to please me. You know, how to suck on a nipple, how to use the tongue to swirl around it, that biting gently--or sometime’s hard--“ she corrected with a laugh in her voice, “felt really good. About finding a woman’s pearl, and--“
“I get the idea,” Sebastian interrupted her. Her head turned to face the veil, and he was glad that the candles on the other side would make her unable to see through it as he did, because he wasn’t entirely certain his growing erection wouldn’t be visible. “Do you have any other sins to confess?”
“Of course,” she said. “I’m really a very bad girl. Merrill was next.”
His voice strangled in his throat. “Merrill?”
The idea of innocent, child-like Merrill and Marian...oh, Maker. His pulse throbbed through his veins, his manhood pressing uncomfortably against his pants as his mind painted images of what she described. “She was so pretty and shy, all uncertain about sex, but so wanting to learn. Varric was right, naming her Daisy, her petals were so pretty and pink, and she tasted like honey. I showed her how to do it to me, too, and her face, all slick with my juices...”
She trailed off, but Sebastian was barely aware of it. His breath rattled in his chest, and a bead of sweat trickled down his cheek. Realizing she wasn’t speaking, that he could hear her breathing noisily through the thin fabric, he asked, voice husky, “Is that all?”
“One more,” she said, voice suspiciously thin. “Fenris.” Sebastian groaned, eyes closing as he snatched at the shredding wisps of his self-control. “You’ve seen the anger in him, the sheer intensity...Maker, when it’s directed at you, and he wants you, it’s like being a candle in an inferno. I couldn’t even make it to the bed, I had to have him up against the wall, right there in the study, his cock buried in me to the hilt, banging so hard, Andraste’s symbol fell right off the nail. Sorry,” she apologized in a sigh. “I screamed so loudly when I came, I’m surprised you didn’t hear it up here.”
His hand shook as he brought it up to his face, pressing thumb and fingers against his eyes, squeezing them shut as tightly as he could. She did this on purpose, he finally realized, torturing her with the descriptions of her indiscretions as...some sort of payback. He should never have agreed to this. “You’re mocking the sanctity of the ritual,” he snarled. “If you can’t take it seriously, then we’re done.”
“Then I guess we’re done,” she said as she stood, stretching langurously, one arm going high over her head, the other running down her front from breasts to thigh. “For now.”
Later that night, in the sanctuary of his cell, his hand slid into his smallclothes and found his shaft. Touching himself, stroking, he imagined what it would feel like to have her thighs wrapped around his waist, kissing her, as he carried her to bed...