faderift | playing house on the road.

The kiss is--as it always is--very good. So good that Matthias could get lost in it, and does for at least a moment. Dizzy, delirious in how happy and perfect and overwhelmed he is, in the moment, when he kisses back, he also leans in to Laura. It's automatic, the lean of a man who has forgotten where he is, precisely.

To ground himself, he tries to-- well, he grabs hold of one of her forearms, and his other hand sort of does nothing productive, ends up landing flat sort of at her side, but as he's hardly conscious of either of his hands, that means nothing to him, really--not until he has to break the kiss to get a breath, and then he feels a twinge of self-consciousness, not enough to pull away yet as he says, with a little laugh, "All right."

Good. Maybe someday he'll be cool. His face feels very hot and his mouth feels warm, like an impression left behind from where her mouth had just been. Oh, yeah, and he's dropped the sticks. But who can blame him.

Edited (setting details v important) 2020-03-14 00:52 (UTC)

He touches her, kissing back, and she forgets about the blood (or forgets to care, more precisely) and grabs a handful of his shirt in one hand. The sound of their sticks hitting the ground is distant, the sound of a light wind coming through the trees even further away. Nothing in the world has ever been as pleasant as kissing Matthias, except possibly drinking chocolate or waking to find Philliam has been sleeping next to her--and even then, it's close.

She takes a breath without thinking, not quite so distracted as he is but not at all herself. Being near Matthias makes all of her feel softened at the edges.

Before she can say anything else, she has to take another little breath, and to remember what it is she was going to say. And then she can't remember what she was going to say (or, frankly, if she'd had anything planned in the first place), so instead, she tells him, "Stake them, and I will kiss you again."

"Yeah," Matthias says, as breathless as if he'd run from Kirkwall to Starkhaven and back again, "yeah, all right," and he's grinning like such an idiot as he stoops to grab the sticks. All of the sticks, hers and his.

It is a relatively simple task, and one Matthias has performed several times before. Even rebel mages living out in the wild have to eat. Even if the work were complicated, Matthias would manage it quickly, spurred by Laura's promise. There are some smears of brownish red on his shirtfront, blood that is drying quickly. He sees it while he is working the sticks into the little holes he'd scooped beside the fire, and it looks like a badge, some proof. He has a girlfriend and she likes him, and--

When it's done, he turns around to look up at Laura. Still crouched beside the fire, grinning up at her like a loony.

"Staked," he announces, proudly.

And she takes the long one, the one that isn't Y-shaped. Getting it through the nug carcasses has some familiarity for her, if not quite as much as for Matthias. Between the two of them, he's likely spent far more time living in the wilderness--but she has claws to assist.

She glances over at the holders for the spits and feels a strange sort of pride at his work. It might be, she supposes, like the way he compliments the things she does.

"Yes." Laura brings the nugs over and settles their stick between the two Matthias has stood up in the earth. Once she's certain it'll hold, she sits back down besides Matthias. Her fingers graze his cheek as she leans in to kiss him again.

The glow from the fire feels the same as the glow Matthias feels from the kiss. He covers her hand with his, pressing it to his cheek. And this time when they have to break for a breath he manages not to say anything stupid, and leans in straightaway to kiss her again--hard, happy, insistent but not exactly forceful.

If it was possible to stay here forever, he would. Locked in this moment that has a kind of impossible perfection to it, free and beyond anyone's purview or control. There's a headiness to it too, like standing at the top of a hill and feeling that tug forward. He could fall into Laura or she might fall into him and then what? It's unanswerable, a bit; for now he keeps kissing her.

And then what seems straightforward to her. There are three options available: sex, sleep, or something bad. The first is self-explanatory. The second means they decided not to have sex. The third means that not having sex was not something they agreed on.

The thing that becomes hard is the decision. Speaking--that's what difficult. There's no need of it now, when Matthias is kissing her like there's nothing else in the world worth doing, but at some point, that will change. But not quite yet. It's something, to be able to taste him, to feel his fingers covering hers. To take a breath and immediately kiss him again, content with this nearness.

(Maybe they can come to a conclusion without talking, but Matthias is made of words and sinew. Talking is inevitable. Not necessarily in a way she dislikes--she's only wary, too alert to the fact that she is not made of words.)

It's the scent of their dinner that finally makes her pull away, breathless. "Wait."

The nugs must be turned, or one side will be burnt and the other, raw. Laura leans forward reluctantly and adjusts the spit.

Startled, Matthias thinks first something must be wrong. There's not enough urgency to her tone for that, he realizes, second, and then, third, he smells what she must have smelled long before him. Food.

The rest of the world has begun to filter back again, now that they've broken apart for the moment. The potentials and possibilities are still there--sex, maybe, or something, what if that's not where this goes, what if that is where this goes, what if he is too terrible for her to like him anymore, it's all so hard to put it together--and then there's other worldly things as well. Like, as she reaches to turn the nugs, his stomach grumbles loudly. Matthias claps his hands over it, as if this might muffle the noise, and gives a sheepish little grin.

"Sorry."

That makes Laura smile, just this side of laughing--it's surprising and charming in that way Matthias always is, both the suddenness of the sound and his reaction to it. With the nugs turned, she sits back next to him. "I'm hungry, too."

Now that they've been interrupted, though, once by her and once by him, she isn't entirely sure what to do. The air around them feels different suddenly, and Laura can't quite place why. Little has changed, except that they are both (fortunately) closer to having dinner, but it isn't the same. Too much time, perhaps, between this moment and the last one in which their mouths were pressed together. It feels like kissing him would be something new again.

She isn't sure what to do about it, either, but she wants to do something--there's a kind of buzzing energy running through her that won't explain itself or be soothed by the quiet crackling of fire and nug skin. She'd kiss him, if it didn't have that sudden awkwardness making her hesitate. And unfortunately, that leaves her with fewer options than she'd like--and waiting is turning into a choice in itself, one of looking at Matthias expectantly but failing to say or do anything. It might be a little intense, accidentally so.

Matthias--hungry, yes, but also nervous in the moment--clutches at his own stomach and looks back at Laura. She looks fierce in the firelight, half-lit and looking right at him. Her green eyes look liquid and dark and deep, so deep you could fall into them and be lost. And she is waiting for him to say something, he has got to say something, take the lead here--

"I want," he starts, and frowns a little, "I mean, I do want to kiss you again. Right now. Very badly. Like, very, very badly. I keep thinking, though, that I-- I mean, I don't know how you feel. I know how you feel about me, I think, and I know how I feel about you--I definitely know that--I think you're brilliant, and I fancy you like mad, and, like, you're so pretty, prettier'n any girl I've ever gotten to kiss, much less--you know. I mean, we're a thing, right? You and me?"

Blessedly, his stomach refrains from growling again. A small miracle. Matthias unwinds his hands from where they're gripped at his shirt and his stomach, and then bunches them up again, to take his mind off of everything else.

She's grateful to him for speaking, because she doesn't know what to say. And perhaps Matthias doesn't, either, but he still says things.

Things that make her cheeks grow hot--but that isn't necessarily a problem, especially when they're already sitting there in the firelight. The shadows on Matthias' face shift with every moment, the light flicking over his cheeks; the same is surely true of her. You're so pretty. From somebody else, it'd sound different; it'd make her want something to hurt. But Matthias never sounds like he's trying to get something from her when he tells her things like this. He says things like I think you're brilliant as if he really believes it, as if he only thought to bring it up in that moment.

"We are lovers," she agrees, because that's the word for it--or close enough that it will have to do. There's a sort of bemusement in her voice, mostly born of the fact that he has to ask. This much, she'd thought, was obvious in the way they hold hands and kiss. But the problem is something besides affection, or he wouldn't have explained it the way he did: I know how you feel about me, I think. The I think part might be its own kind of worrisome later, but right now, she's mostly intent on how that can fit with I don't know how you feel, especially after describing his thoughts on kissing her (all very flattering). "Are you asking me if I want to have sex with you?"

If not, she has no idea what he's trying to say.

"Oh," Matthias says, quickly, filling in any empty space that might be left in the conversation after that comment, "yeah, that's," and what is it, how does he finish that sentence. Leave it to Laura to just say things with such plainness.

"I s'ppose that is what I'm asking, yeah," he manages, after a moment to get over the word lovers. Yes, that is what they are, more or less. Sort of. Potentially. Soon? Maker's breath. "I mean, I think it just happens. Right? As far as I've known, leastways. I know what it is, sex, and all. I've done it. But it wasn't... Shit."

This last word he mutters under his breath, and scrubs a hand over his face, as if this might banish nerves or whatever else he might be feeling at the moment. "Sorry. It's just that, what I really want you to know, is that I like you. I really, really do. And I know sex doesn't always have to mean something, or else it doesn't always, really, but--I like you. I want you to know that, before anything else. That's why I said all that before, about you being pretty, and brilliant, and all, I wasn't only saying it, but I meant it as well, and I want you to know that. Definitely. No matter what else happens, or doesn't happen. So." There. There's that. He lets out a breath, and looks up at Laura, pink burning in his ears and his cheeks and all. "And I didn't come out here with you just so we might. It isn't like that. If it happens, yeah, all right, brilliant," Maker, what an idiot, he's already wincing at himself, "but, yeah. So, there. That's all I wanted to say."

Matthias talks and talks, and all of it is reassuring. Laura finds herself ducking her head as he goes on, listening with slightly hunched shoulders. Everything he says always sounds true, tonight more than ever.

A part of her doesn't want to say anything--she wants to kiss him, to set a hand against his jaw, and let gesture speak for her. She could, she thinks, show him how she feels, what it means to hear him say things like I want you to know that, before anything else. But Matthias, she suspects, will still wonder. He might still want to hear words from her, and it might be harder if she tries to edge past the possibility of explaining herself out loud.

This is the problem, it seems, of growing so attached to a boy who's bursting with sentences, who understands the world as much by talking as by doing. But for Matthias, surely it's worthwhile to try.

So she tries.

"I am glad you have had sex before." There's not a whiff of irony or sarcasm there; as much as his compliments matter to her, the most important thing he's said is I've done it. It makes the whole idea feel less unbalanced; perhaps he'll be unsurprised, or at least less so, when it becomes clear how familiar she is with the workings of men's bodies. (At this point, now that she's brought it up, it feels like an inevitability that they'll do it, an inevitability she'll be pleased with once she is no longer talking about it.) Perhaps they can talk about everything once, in terms that give nothing of her history away, and Matthias will be satisfied. "I...I like you, too. And I know you mean the things you say."

The pink in his cheeks burns to red--I am glad you have had sex before, she says it and it's just out there, not that he's ashamed or even really proud beyond, you know, pleased that he's managed, two and a half times, even, and that's not counting the more minor versions of proper sex, proud if only so he hasn't got to lie and pretend he's done, and be any more of a child than everyone likely thinks he is--but he weathers it, and she keeps talking, and--

Well, now it's too late for him not to be blushing, but at least she's said that she likes him, she knows what he's trying to say--and there's a lightness in his chest at just hearing her say those words, I like you too--that's more of an acceptance than anything else. They like each other. They are two people who have come at this conclusion together, met on this road, so--

"Good," he says, and then he laughs, a little, at himself, "or brilliant, really, is what I mean--well, that's that, then, isn't it. We can keep going with it. I'm ready, I mean. If you are."

She's still right there, very close. There's only a moment of hesitation before Matthias thinks, Right, and then reaches out to take her hand. That's a start. They're connected again.

"Yes." She's ready, too, for whatever they do or don't do. Sex has never been something that just happened for her--tonight is the closest she's come to that, knowing they could and knowing they could choose not to, and even then, they've talked about it.

Holding his hand gives everything a greater feeling of inevitability. It's good, thinking of that, full of anticipation and curiosity and a sense of want low in her belly, but it does mean this is her last chance to say the things that need to be said. After this, it might feel like interrupting something, not simply talking beforehand. "Please do not make me use the claws on you. Or...or hurt you."

The other things she could say, like please do not tell me I am good at this, feel entirely too revealing. She cares for Matthias, wants to know all about him and hear every story he knows how to tell--but she doesn't want him to know all about her. If they're going to do this, she wants them to be Matthias and Laura, not Matthias and Laura Who Was Once A Whore.

So she doesn't say anything else. She just kisses him, this time with an intensity born of purpose, and of getting across everything she hasn't forced herself to say. Her free hand's at the nape of his neck, fingers twisting lightly through his hair--and though she might not be trying to get his shirt off right then and there, she's kissing him like she might later.

Her requests, in the moment, are baffling. If he was too rough, is maybe what she means. If he was cruel. Then she would have to defend herself, even against him. And he wouldn't blame her for that. There are stories that he could tell, things you say in the dark when no one can see you. He doesn't want to be thinking of his sister but of course he thinks of his sister--and then the Circle at Tantervale, the long corridor that wound around like a snake someone set loose. And in camps, and on the battlefield, there are things that get done and cruelties that get visited and no one cares, but they should.

And how can he tell Laura, that he would never. Words could do it, he could say it all, tell her so much, but when she kisses him, it all melts away anyways. And here's how he can say it. He can kiss her back, meet that intensity and give it back to her. Firm, but not cruel. He can let that knot of feeling in his chest uncoil, a little, and put that into the kiss too. The grip of her fingers in his hair, a tug that pulls more out of him--Matthias lets it, he carries on, he kisses her and kisses her and when she pulls at his shirt he twists, shifts, scrawny and lithe and awkward in equal parts.

They have to break apart to get the shirt over his head, and then he's back to kissing her again, shucking off the shirtsleeves. His skin prickles in the cool air of the forest. He kisses her anyways. There are old scars on his skin, wrinkles that lasted even after healing. One curves across his back, and its twin sprawls on his left shoulder and onto his chest. All of this might be glimpsed in the firelight. Certainly it can be felt, her fingers on his bare skin. He shivers, grins into the kiss. His one hand has found her hair too, pushed back through it, brushed over the shell of her ear. He fumbles at her shirt as well, fair play.

Laura needs more than a glimpse of firelight and shadow, breaking the kiss again so she can turn her attention to his newly exposed skin. It's a strange feeling, the way so many things with Matthias have been, but it's stranger than most: for all the men she's seen bare-chested, possibly hundreds, she's never actually wanted to look. She wants everything at once now, to see him and feel him and kiss him and feel the shiver that runs over her skin when his fingers brush against her scalp.

She touches the biggest scar puckering her skin, even though she knows she shouldn't; she dislikes when people dwell on her most plentiful scars, the endless lines crisscrossing her arms and legs alike, and Matthias might feel the same about this one. But it's hard to deny the way it draws her eye or the texture under her fingertips. It isn't like her scars are, she thinks. It looks like he survived something. It looks like it matters.

She doesn't dwell on it, at least, moving past it to the smoother skin below it--and eventually back to her tunic, so she can pull it off as well. Under it is more black fabric, a band to keep her breasts from getting in the way, but she pulls that off, too. And then she waits, aware that he's likely to want to look and touch, too, before they kiss again. There's an old tension in her shoulders, a kind of muscle memory she hadn't realized she'd developed; when she notices it, she reaches for his hand again, looking for familiarity, the reminder to her body that Matthias is both new and entirely different.

These scars have pride associated with them. Quiet, secret pride, so no one would ever mistake him for a braggart, for someone that fought for glory and not for the cause. So he doesn't mind the scrutiny overmuch, the brush of her fingertips that breaks another shiver through him--and it does not last, besides, and then she's half-undressed as well, pale skin and bare chest and her hand gripped in his again.

Her arms are flecked with scars of her own, stripes both pink and faint. Even in the firelight, he can see them. Her hand still feels cool and dry in his, their fingers wound together. Matthias squeezes it as he looks at her, taking in the look of her, spare and narrow and beautiful, that's the only one word for her and he can't say it. He has to show her instead. If he touches her he might break the moment apart, but he wants to touch her, he wants to show her, and so he puts his hand carefully to her face, first, cups her cheek with his thumb just under her eye, and leans in to kiss her again, with their hands still twined together. When he leans close it puts their chests close together, bare skin and bare skin, the heat of each other radiating. He can feel her, just there. Like an aura.

This is the finest thing that has ever happened to anyone, at any time, in all of Thedas: the reassuring silence of being looked at--and seen, and not ogled--and accepted, all without comment.

Matthias' eyes move over her body, taking in her breasts and belly and the netting of scars on her arms, and some interior piece of her tenses like it always does. She's learned to wait, to let the other person see what they think and say what they want, but Matthias doesn't. Even though she can imagine the sound of it, all affection and excitement at the sight of her, he lets movement and touch speak for him. It's impossible to know if he's doing that for her sake or simply by instinct--she'd have to ask him, and right now, she can think of little she'd like less--but it hardly matters.

This is the language that she likes best, the one that relies on everything besides words to make itself clear. Laura kisses him, letting him cradle her cheek, letting that touch steady the parts of her that still feel like they're waiting for something to turn sour, her free arm coming around his shoulders. When she needs a breath, she angles her head down from his mouth, drawing a line of kisses up the edge of his jaw until she's at his ear, catching his earlobe between her lips, her breasts pressing up against him. Everything she does feels familiar, but it's Matthias she's doing it to--and that makes it something new. Something better than than it was.

Any finesse or pretense that he might have known what he was doing in a greater way than he does is given away by the sharp sudden noise Matthias makes--not when Laura pushes up against him, though that's very good--and not when she begins kissing along his jaw, though that is very very good--but when she takes his ear into her mouth and everything sort of goes white and seizes and he's made some stupid noise, and made it so suddenly he almost laughs at himself. Manages not to, by some minor grace.

She's moved close enough that he hasn't been able to maintain a hand at her cheek and has moved his hand instead to, well, somewhere, not very conscious of the where, but suddenly he knows where all bits of himself are, and he's sitting on his knees, sort of, legs gone numbish, and he ought to do something a bit more, well, gentlemanly, or clever, something that shows he knows what he's about here. One of his arms is sort of about her shoulders, curved around behind her like the back of a chair might give support. Having tipped his head a bit, unconsciously, to give her space to kiss him, Matthias leans sort of down and over--not far to go, she's right there, so fully in his space that he can smell her even with his plain old sense of smell, and he can feel her, all warm in his arms, and against him, her breasts pushed soft and stiff both at once against him--he leans down to press a kiss at her throat, right at the place that you could feel a pulse if you pressed your fingertips there. And perhaps he feels something of it, that beating of her heart, and perhaps it is not so steady--his own isn't certainly, galloping away like mad--and he lets the kiss linger to feel for it, before he moves down, one jot closer to her collarbone, all tangled up against her.

Her breath catches around the edges of his kiss, her throat stopping for a moment. It's unexpected, even if she'd felt him moving, her face buried in his hair--it feels purely spontaneous and affectionate as only he can be. And the sensation of it, the heat of his mouth where her blood's already starting to pound beneath her skin, makes her heart stutter. He kisses her again, lower this time, and she realizes she's got his hair in a tight grip, knuckles buried in it up against the nape of his neck. She needs something to clutch.

This is new, this sense of give and take. The awareness that they can share this moment, that she isn't simply bracing herself and waiting for her turn to give him the things he expects. She isn't sure how to navigate it, exactly, but she's not at all opposed to that feeling of he is going to kiss me and I will not mind it. (And unless she's missed the mark, she's guessing this isn't the most familiar territory for Matthias, either. They'll have to find a way together.)

The hand not in his hair has drifted down along his back, getting to know the bumps of his spine and ribs and the way his scars bunch his skin. The large one is by far her favourite, her fingers still drawn traitorously its way. And in a moment when she thinks she can steal another kiss, she dips her head until her mouth finds his shoulder. This is how it should be, she thinks: a kiss for a kiss, or perhaps two, until they've exhausted themselves.

His turn again for breath to catch, skin prickled under the push of her fingertips against his back, scalp prickled where her hand is gripped. They might keep it up for hours, this give and take, exploring what this means between them. Familiar and not familiar, with each other. Instinct and old experience makes Matthias want to be hasty. But there's no reason for haste. It's only the two of them, no one and nothing around.

It's when he's kissing Laura again, hot and a little desperate, her collarbone a hard ridge and her chest moving when she breathes, right there--it's then that he smells the nugs, which are still spitted and roasting over the fire. Past roasted now, burnt, likely to burn more. He tries to care. He does care. But Laura is here, far more interesting than supper--and who would have thought he would think that, ever--but she is, and he has a hand on her breast now, clumsier than he would like but he will figure it out--and the smell of burning is really thick, so he breaks away for at least a second, to look over and see if their supper has turned into a bloody column of fire yet.

It hasn't. The nugs are blackening, though, and Matthias sucks in a breath.

"We," he says--his mouth feels sore, he wants to kiss her again, he doesn't want to bother talking-- "Erm, wait--"

She smells it, too, and cares no more than Matthias does. Dinner doesn't matter; it never matters to her in quite the same way it does to Matthias, but it especially doesn't matter now. They've eaten many times and will do so again. They have never done this before.

But Matthias' mouth is no longer at her collarbone, his callused palm no longer brushing rough-gently over her nipple, and that means they must care about dinner. If only for a moment.

"Oh," she says, looking at what was supposed to be their dinner. What still can be, she thinks, if she scrapes off the burnt parts with her claws. The meat will have the acrid taste of too much smoke, perhaps, but it should be edible. And she isn't hungry for anything that can actually be eaten. Words come to her more slowly than usual, but eventually, she makes the effort. "They...the meat will be too hot."

Seeing as they've burnt. But that might be a good thing, considering her mission has shifted away from catch and cook dinner. And if her mission is now get Matthias' breeches off, solving this problem is a necessary step to reaching her goal. And not necessarily a difficult one. Untangling herself--reluctantly--from Matthias' arms, she leans over and begins pulling one of the Y-shaped stakes from the ground. "We should move them someplace they will not burn more."

And then we can ignore them.

"Yeah," he agrees, somewhat breathless thanks to both the activity they've just paused on and the sight of Laura half-naked in the firelight, all the movement of muscle under her skin. That almost gets him to forget the nugs altogether--but he might as well help her, he's the one that made such a thing of them--so he moves to help her, pulls at the other stick, careful to keep the spitted nugs from falling straight into the fire.

"They'll cool," is what he manages, lamely, as he leans the spit up against a nearby rock to keep the meat from getting gritty with dirt. The nugs are sizzling even off of the fire. And now he has to find his way back to Laura, work out a way to pick up where they left off. The whole of the supper rescue had been conducted without getting up, grubbing around in the dirt because Matthias hadn't trusted himself to climb to his feet. Now he scrubs his hands against his breeches to get any dirt off of them--not that it matters--and looks back over at Laura.

She looks great, still. Very much a person he wants. Almost unbearably, he thinks, as his gaze darts down to her breasts, and back up to her face.

"I'll, um--" He grins, self-consciously. None of their various shifting around has put him very far from her, and he scoots over to bridge what little distance is between them. "Yeah?"

Laura had thought to set the stakes up again someplace else, but Matthias' plan takes far less time. She watches, more focused on the flex of his arms and back than the reason he's moving them; when he turns his attention back to her, she doesn't draw her gaze back up to his face right away. There's an extra moment, a little drag to the way her eyes move over his chest and throat and then to meet his gaze.

By the time her eyes are on his face, his are on hers, and he looks...happy, she thinks. Hopeful. And she thinks that might be what's hiding inside her ribcage, taking up space somewhere near her lungs usually are. Pleasure and anticipation. The overwhelming desire to touch him, twined up with something in her working to keep this night something separate from all other nights, walling it into its own little world.

"Yes." She tries to remember exactly where they were, just which patch of his skin her fingers were acquainting themselves with, then decides it doesn't matter. What she wants to touch is his scar, where it bites down into the skin and lean muscle of his chest--so she does--and to kiss him. But first, led by an instinct she doesn't have words for: "Matthias. If I change my mind--"

It isn't a question, exactly, or a sentence. A prompt, perhaps. As she says it, she realizes this is the other thing she hadn't already requested of him. Please do not make me hurt you. Please do not tell me I am the best at this. And please do not forget to listen.

He could get used to this, the feeling of her eyes on him, an echo of what he feels looking at her--and the push of her fingertips, again getting a little shiver out of him, and a grin--and his fingertips as well, callouses and bitten-down nails, tracing a pattern along the line of her shoulder, the little dip of her throat--

He looks up, quick, when what she's said sinks in at last. "I haven't cocked it up, have I? Spoilt it, I mean, not-- If you've changed your mind, 'course, that's--" Awful, not what he wanted, should have done more to avoid, maybe not brought her to the woods, maybe not stopped kissing her so he could stop bloody supper from burning-- "That's all right."

Then again she's just there, looking at him, with her face half-lit by the firelight. The glow of it makes her skin look like it's glowing as well, turns her eyes dark. Her fingers have traced along the line of the flail scar and they are there again, or maybe still. Time is funny. Matthias swallows, hard. His fingertips are pressed to her skin, right near the spot he'd been kissing her.

"Have you? Changed your mind?"

"No," she says quickly, her chin tipping down until it touches her neck. That was the wrong time to say it, the wrong way to say it--something about it must have been incorrect, or the answer would have been different. Matthias wouldn't be looking at her like he just spotted a storm cloud above them. "You have done everything right. But if I do--"

That's all right. Perhaps that's all that needs to be said; her throat rebels at the thought of offering an explanation, tightening all the breath into her lungs. But it doesn't feel like enough. Laura inhales again, with some effort.

"If I change my mind, I will tell you." She has to finish the sentence herself, say this is what will happen and wait for him to agree. And he will, she thinks--she has to believe that much, that Matthias will say yes, of course. "And we will stop."

And that will mean this really is different from every other time. She waits, her hand resting atop his heart, absorbing the thud of it, and keeps her eyes on his. This is an agreement she needs.

Oh.

Matthias, feeling very stupid, closes his mouth. Then he lifts his hand and lays it atop hers, pressing it to his chest. She'll be able to feel so much from that, he thinks--or maybe hopes--how hard and fast his heart is beating, how hot his skin is--and she'll know, too, how badly he wants her, to kiss her and to push her back onto the blanket he'd had the good sense to lay out in the dirt near the fire--or let her push him back, it wouldn't matter either way.

"Yeah." She's tipped her face down and Matthias stares down at the top of her head, willing her to look back at him. "'Course. I wouldn't want to do anything if you didn't want to. That's-- that's what this is, right? Both of us wanting it. So--if you change your mind, you only have to say. I swear. All right?"

"Yes." Matthias is a good person. Matthias is kind, and he's gentle, and even if he has a funny comment for everything in the world, he understands when she needs him to be serious. He doesn't ask for anything else from her; he gives what she asks for, and he does not complain. Laura looks up at him, her eyes finding his. "That is what this is."

It is something else--something different, walled off from everything else either of them have ever done. The way that choosing to fight is different from being told to, the sensation of eating something spicy after a lifetime of porridge and suddenly understanding a new sliver of the world. It is new.

And his heartbeat is so strong under her palm. Everything smells green and smoky, and Matthias is looking at her with a kind of intensity he usually saves for breakfast and practicing magic.

"I do not wish to talk anymore," she informs him, scooting over until their sides are touching. And when she kisses him, it's with an intensity to match his. Her hand travels down from his chest, away from his heart, over his ribs and further down. To his stomach, his skin soft under her fingertips, knuckles just brushing against his breeches.

There are people that he has loved and people that he loves and people that he has slept with, and those circles have often overlapped--but this is still different, and maybe everyone thinks that, always, or frequently, maybe if he knew anything he could say that for certain--but he wouldn't want to. It should be something different. Him, and Laura.

He'd released her hand when she moved it. Barely conscious of his hands, in turn, one sort of vaguely at her arm, the other might well belong to someone else, if they weren't side to side he can think of a hundred places he would want his hand, all of them on Laura--so, too, the light pressure of her fingertips is almost distant, all his focus in the push of her mouth against his, teeth and, he'll try it, tongue, a little, and then her fingers are pressed to his stomach, knuckles, and Matthias makes a noise against their kiss, half an inhalation and half something else. He thinks then to shift, a little, if only to take some pressure from himself, breeches too tight and her hand like a brand, heated, and he's moved against her but it's good, as blindly he kisses her, it's still good, better than anything else.

"I can," he starts to offer, "these, um, off," maybe, he's got to say it all between kisses, and between breaths, spare that they are.

Laura nods intently, nearly swallowing up the words as he says them. Her breath spills over to his cheek, and a little kiss as well--she could spend all night kissing him and still feel she hadn't kissed him enough. They could do nothing but curl up naked on a blanket in the new spring-scented dirt and kiss and she would fall asleep content, her arms around him.

But given the choice, she thinks she would rather save contentment for later. The taste of his mouth and the sounds he makes when she touches him, the heat that clouds under her skin when he touches her--she wants that first.

He will need some space, since she isn't removing his breeches for him; she will have to let go of him, at least for a moment or two. (She could take his off--wants to, even, to touch his thighs and shins and all of him--but he might want to do the same with the hosiery still clinging to her body. And that, she would prefer to do herself tonight.) Reluctantly, she draws back, giving another decisive little nod.

Pulling off her hose takes little more than a moment, as they land with the rest of her half-forgotten clothes, and then she's turning back to Matthias to see how he's managed with his breeches. Her legs are as scarred as her arms, especially at her thighs, but her self-consciousness is second to the desire to touch again. As soon as he's naked, she's reaching out again, a hand sliding over his hip and brushing lightly against his cock as she kisses him. It's little more than a tease, at this point, but there's a promise of more.

He has a moment to look at her, naked--and he does, a quick look--and he would keep looking except she moves in toward him again, and there's nothing at all between them now. Her mouth is already on his when her hand brushes against him, and Matthias makes a sound against her mouth, somewhere between gasp and groan. Every bit of him jolts toward her. He wants or else needs more of that, burning and fraught with desire--he wants her, Laura.

And they're still kissing, fevered, he's almost mindless with it, but it's good, still, it's Laura and he knows that. And that does make a difference, all the difference in the world. At some point he's fit his hand back to one of her breasts--and when he breaks their kiss it's only so he can breathe--but instead he presses another kiss to her throat--and another lower, burning. She wants him too, or else she would tell him to stop, but she hasn't, and if he touched her he would find her wet, surely, and he will, but for now he's kissed down her sternum, and now at the swell of the top of her breast, shifting his hand to make space.

She's prepared to spend the rest of the evening focused on him, getting to know his body and seeing what reactions she can draw up from him. There's a familiar sort of intellectual challenge to it, combined now with a much more insistent longing that comes of the fact that it's Matthias she's touching. Laura wants to see what happens to him, which places he likes best to be kissed and how close she can bring him to coming without actually doing it--and the sounds he makes, more than anything.

But Matthias isn't content to lie back and be explored and toyed with. He kisses her, finds her neck and collarbone and chest and makes her breath disappear from her lungs. Being touched in return isn't new by any means, but knowing it's Matthias changes it; the heat of his mouth isn't something to endure but to want. (Somewhere in the back of her mind, the lack of discomfort is almost discomfort in itself, but it's a discomfort she can think about later. I am used to this feeling bad, but it doesn't. She pushes it away.) She makes a small noise, pleased, as his lips come to her breast, a hand tangling in his hair. Her other hand, the one at his hip, tightens its grip slightly as she buries her face against his scalp, breathing in deep.

Eager as always to please, good at hints--especially hints that are too blatant and clear to be hints, really, and still, a reward of their own--Matthias keeps up. His hair prickles where her fingers have twisted, and that feeling spreads all the way down his neck, his spine, while her grip at his hip is like a heat, and he doesn't let himself get distracted, not yet.

He's on this now, as he presses his neck kiss to her. Her nipple has gone stiff from his hand has been--stupidly his chin brushes against it, first, clumsily, and that nearly throws him off before he thinks of what he knows, what he's heard, and he puts his mouth there, next--careful, a little cautious but trying to act sure of himself--listening for her reaction, either she'll like it or she won't, and then he'll know.

It's a sharper sensation than any of the rest so far; if his mouth on her collarbone is heated, here it's a blaze. The light pressure of his lips on her nipple draws a throb from her clit, makes her fingers pull in slightly more against hip and scalp.

Her head's still tipped down toward his, and she kisses his hair, the most encouraging response she has at that moment. It feels as if she should be doing things, more than simply sitting there and being kissed, but she wants him to keep kissing her more than she's ever wanted anything out of sex.

That's good enough to know he's chosen right, and good enough encouragement for him to keep it up--so he does, with his skin all prickled from the pull and the pressure of her fingers. A little more firm now, assured--and when he pulls away, it's only so he can press a kiss between her breasts, right on that hard line of the bone, before he skips over to the other one, and tries it again--firmer here than even before, with confidence, mouth and tongue and all.

It's strange, all this familiarity--there is nothing so familiar as this, after all, tangled up against Laura, gripped to her, with his mouth on her breast, nothing at all between them. Stranger still is all this time that they have. Before sex was a rush and Matthias still feels that impulse--eager, wanting--but there is nothing better than this, he thinks, now (in what capacity for thought he has). He can feel her breathing, he can, if he thinks of it, hear her heartbeat, even, maybe, and her every reaction telegraphed by the grip of her fingers--and if he licks instead of kisses, that does something different, and then he can switch back again. This could be hours, and hours, and time is theirs, out here in the woods.

The strangest thing--for Laura, at least--is how unconcerned he is with himself. It feels as if they could be here forever, sitting here in a quiet corner of the forest, and he'd still be focused on her. He hasn't moved her hands where he wants them, hasn't asked anything of her. (She knows him better, at least, than to think he'd demand.) It's enough, apparently, to hear the hitch in her breath when his tongue flicks over her nipple; he can guess, perhaps, how the wet empty heat has its match between her legs.

It becomes overwhelming, slowly and then entirely, to realize it. She doesn't know what to do with the feeling--it lives someplace between fine and claws--but she has to do something. It's becoming too much. Not in the way coming is--this is more like the day he'd caught her following him, the sensation of his gaze alighting on her in the shadows.

"Matthias," and her voice is almost entirely breath as she tugs lightly back at his hair, trying to draw his eyes back up to hers. (A strange feeling, the conviction that feeling him looking at her will be less to bear than his singleminded focus on her body.) When his head's tipped up, she'll kiss him, taking refuge in the familiarity of his taste as her fingers find his cock again, this time stroking down the length of him in what's decidedly not an accidental touch. There's safety in familiarity, especially when so much of this still feels new.

playing house on the road.

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