"Skinny dipping plus?" she smiled, that old orneriness flaring up. It was a wonder that studious and dangerously smart mage that stumbled into the warden camp ever cast more than a glance over him. In truth, at the time Alistair doubted they'd have much of anything in common but whenever she'd pull out her sharp and witty tongue he'd melt into a puddle. It also helped that thanks to all her magic the woman had a set of nimble fingers that could tie and untie a knot one handed.
While rocking Cailan back and forth in his arms, Lanny leaned over. She didn't touch the baby, but she kept staring deep into his eyes as if trying to read his thoughts. "Here," Alistair interrupted. Before she had time to object, he plopped the boy into her arms.
"Wha...?" She stuttered, racing to cup his head. Cailan bore the change in scenery as unexciting, a yawn scrunching up those tubby cheeks. He'd gone from scrawny newborn to chubby rolls so fast, Alistair was surprised Marn could still walk around.
The happy father leaned over to tug the blanket flap out of the baby's face and smiled, "If you're going to have so many of these around, you might as well get used to holding one."
"I...there are mothers for that sort of thing," she sounded frazzled, the mighty Hero of Ferelden trying to swallow down panic at holding a tiny baby.
"Fathers too," Alistair sighed, before catching her eye and whispering, "and second fathers."
She looked about to ask something at that, but walked it back. With her usual gentle touch, Lanny inched her face closer to the baby and watched him. Enraptured as that tiny fist rose off the bed with a stretch, his gums smacked together and a bit of drool skirting down the cheeks, as sleep wrapped around him. "Do you ever wonder what they dream of in the Fade?"
"If it's anything like mine, constant terror in the most adorable form possible. I think I've had to suffer too many of Spud's cutesy books." There was one that involved mice drinking tea where absolutely nothing happened for thirty pages. The worst part, without an obvious ending, his daughter tended to assume their was more, and even Alistair took to flipping the book over as if the true story was hidden behind.
The panic of the uninitiated began to wear off and Lanny eased back against the bench. Her arms kept a slow rocking for Cailan but he seemed rather happy. After a moment of watching, her eyes darted up to Alistair and a far too dangerous voice innocently asked, "By the way, who's Reiss?"
"What?" Alistair started, "What do you mean, who's Reiss? I, uh..." He began to fidget in his seat, trying to not glance over at the woman in question haunting through the garden like a lost soul.
"You mentioned her name in your sleep, would often shout it across the room," Lanny coyly smiled up at him.
"Oh that," Alistair batted at the air and dug a hand into his hair, "She's my bodyguard. You know, the new one. Makes sense that I'd be calling for her, as I was dreaming about, uh, bad things happening."
For a beat, Lanny watched him, her face betraying nothing as she stared in anticipation of Alistair breaking down. But he had a good grip on his hair and intended to tug it up in case anything tried to slip out of his mouth. Accepting defeat, she turned down to the baby and he sighed, releasing his death hold.
"Alistair, how long have I known you?"
"Uh, too long," he admitted.
"And you don't think in all that time traveling together, sharing campsites, tents, sometimes beds, that I don't know the difference between your 'Ah, oh no!' dreams and 'Ah oh, do it again!' ones?"
Shit! Shittingshitshitontoastshit!
His cheeks ignited like the hot embers in a dwarf's lava pit and he tried to swallow while guilty eyes skirted around the garden. Rifling through his memory, he tried to remember exactly which dreams he had about Reiss and if he'd shouted anything incriminating. Was there anything to be incriminating about? Maker's sake, why was this so damn hard?
"So," Lanny continued, continuing to stretch out the rope for him, "let's try it again. Who's Reiss?"
"She is my bodyguard," he admitted, facing her down with the truth.
"Who..."
"Fine, fine, you and your shrewd, devious brain caught me. I have an attraction to her. In some capacity. That may involve occasional dreams and will you stop grinning at me like that!"
He paused at that and glanced around the garden to find a few curious eyes glancing over at the shouting King. Lifting up his hand, he cried out at the top of his lungs, "Sure is a lovely day today, isn't it?!"
Lanny couldn't hide the giggles shaking her body as she shook her head back and forth. "Anything else about her you'd like to share? While I'm trapped here with a baby. No rush now."
"She," Alistair felt weird. He knew Lanny knew about all the other women in his life, but they never ever talked about it. Sometimes to the point she'd pointedly ignore one in the room if the woman in question was being rather handsy at the time. But, that was before Lanny went and said those fancy words before a chantry sister. Before he finally accepted that whatever they'd had would never happen again. Maybe it could work.
"She's my bodyguard," he began again which got a slow glare from the woman. "Who is from Ferelden and served in the Inquisition no less. So your templar might know her."
"And you're okay with that?" Lanny asked.
"Amazingly, I think she's the only woman in thedas who didn't have a crush on him," Alistair grumbled to himself. After he returned from the Anderfells, he took a little poll of the women in his inner circle and by the tenth stopped asking before he ground his teeth so hard he broke something.
Lanny looked about to argue before she groaned and tipped her head back at the cloudless sky. "A lot of them tend to assume they know what he's really like. I imagine if they had to deal with one of his 'I'm going to fix this problem even if I have to head butt it to death' moods, they'd change their opinion rather quickly."
He felt an urge to keep listening to all of the templar's faults, in particular with long descriptions and hand movements, but Alistair let the moment waft away. Lanny was happy, sometimes deliriously so in her letters and who was he to try and wedge that apart. "Reiss is...she's not like many people I know. Tough as nails," Alistair stared at the chipped and broken ends of his fingers, "tougher than nails. Cute in that terrifying woman-who-might-break-your-nose next door kind of way. And..." he began to slide back and forth, a thought that'd been building at the back of his head bubbling up.
"She notices things, fast. I'd never seen anything like it before how she'll take like small things wrong and figure out that someone's about to shoot a few arrows at me."
"An intuitioner," Lanny said sagely.
"A what? I don't think that's a word."
That got him a slow pursing of the lips as if she wasn't ten times more pedantic in such matters. "There are certain people who seem to have a far more heightened sense of intuition. It's almost as if they know things before they're about to happen. You said she was in the Inquisition, in what capacity?"
"A soldier," Alistair knew that much. She didn't talk a lot about those days, but sometimes she'd let slip rather entertaining missions while tramping up and down through woods and swamps.
"Hm," Lanny twisted her lips to the side in thought, "someone must have missed her obvious skills. Soldiers are best when they follow orders, but that's almost an antithesis to an intuitioner."
"No matter how many times you repeat it, it's still not going to be a word," Alistair jibbed back. "Wait, how do you know all this army marching stuff anyway?"
That got him a snort as she shut her eyes tight, "Do you have any idea how many strategy and war books I've had to overhear in the past few years? At least at this point there's woodworking in the mix. And now I fear he'll devise some kind of wood golem army."
"I'd actually give good coin to see the templar try," Alistair said, imagining him strutting up and down across a pile of cut trees shouting them to fall into formation.
"This Reiss woman," Lanny broke him from his imagination flight of fancy, "I assume she's not a mage."
; "No, at least not to my knowledge. We're around each other enough I'd like to think I'd notice some magic."
Lanny eyed him up slowly before lifting her hand and drawing forth a small green glow. "As you say, so, not a mage and working for you. That's quite a change, Ali."
"And she's an elf," he said as if describing her hair color but a cloud drew across Lanny's brow.
"An elf? You, you've got an elf guarding you, the King, and then you bloody went and fell for her?"
"Yeah, what's the problem?" his eyes darted around, trying to find someone to come to his rescue.
"Maker's blighted sake, Alistair," she dropped her head towards her lap before remembering it was full of baby. "Think for a moment about what it would mean to the outside world. If..." whatever she was going to tell him that was so bloody obvious faded away. "Does she know your obvious attraction?"
"Kinda," Alistair plucked at his broken nails.
"What does 'kinda' mean? You didn't stand near her and break out into a spasm of giggles, did you?"
"No! I'm a bit better than that," he shook his head, trying to summon a dram of dignity out of his quickly emptying sack. "We kissed."
"You kissed?" she sounded incredulous, as if he couldn't manage something so simple on his own.
"Well, she kissed me and then I kissed her back."
"Then what happened?"
Alistair paused, his hand hanging in the air, "Ah, that's the knotted up tricky part. Mid-rolling around on the ground-- " That caused Lanny to roll her eyes. "--We were interrupted by Spud leaping out of bushes onto me."
"How romantic," she snorted.
"No kidding, and after that it was off to the Dalish to stand around with a bunch of nobles and elves to talk about nobly elf shit, then the flood, then I nearly tried to die, you appeared to save me, and now we're here. There wasn't really any time to talk about the after kiss part."
Lanny began to laugh silently, her shoulders shaking as she tried to hold Cailan sort of still, "Sweet Andraste, you do make things difficult. Though, I'm not one to go pointing the finger."
"At least there hasn't been any bringing back from the dead, taking down undead pirates while facing off against an ancient creature made out of old pastries," Alistair nodded sagely, happy to turn the finger back on her.
She laughed at his summation of her life, shifted the baby in her waning arms which roused him from his sleep, and spoke sweetly, "And in all that time you never once found an opportunity to talk to her about it? To move forward or see if you're on the same page?"
"Like I said, gentry everywhere, then mucus, and you," he gestured wildly at the woman unperturbed to have the blame placed on her head, "you've been around near constantly."
"Ali," he knew that sigh to his name. It meant she was about to drop a ten ton chest filled with common sense onto his head. Gritting his teeth, he braced himself for the oncoming onslaught. "If you wanted to you could make the time. You're the King, order people to leave you alone for a few hours and get out of your hair. How do you not already do that?"
"Usually I have to command people to stay around me instead of scattering away," he moped, wanting to feel sorry for himself. A pitiful existence was Alistair's safety blanket.
"You're scared, aren't you?"
"Who, me?" he gasped, a litany of the various monsters he'd faced head on filtering through his head. There were quite a few, even some Lanny had nothing to do with, but they all evaporated at the gentle concern in her eyes. "Yeah, all right, I'm a tiny bit scared. What if, you know...?"
"She doesn't like you back?" Lanny tried to stifle her laugh at the absurdity but she was always shit at a wicked grace face.
"I dunno," Alistair folded deeper into himself, wishing he could burrow into the earth and rest there. He was the sick one, after all. People should at least be nice to him while he recovered from a death plague, or wait to insist he man up until he could walk by himself.
"Maker's blasted bologna," he spat at himself, hands massaging up and down his face, "I'm behaving like a spoiled snot too scared to clean up the shattered vase, like a cad that can't be bothered to stick around for breakfast, like a..."
"Like a man with a pretty bad crush, who's worried about ruining it," Lanny interrupted. She nudged into him with her shoulder and turned her attention back to the baby in her arms. His baby, two kids plus a wife, oh and an entire country shoving its nose wherever it feels like it. Sweet Andraste, how could he hope for anyone to put up with that much of a mess?
Alistair tousled with the black hair across his son's forehead, "What am I going to do? What if it's too late? I mean, it went from awkward, to super awkward, to we might both burst into flames from the unending awkwardness filling the room."
"If she cares for you as much as you do her, she'll fight through the awkwardness. It's on you to do the same."
If there was one thing he figured out about that pretty elf, she was a fighter, a survivor of more than he could ever imagine. Maybe, maybe there'd be a chance to move this beyond one blushing kiss. Chuckling, he glanced over at his oldest friend, "When did you get so damn smart about all this?"
"Oh, I wouldn't call it wisdom so much as stumbling, painful experience. I had to turn a lot of men into frogs before I found the faith to risk my heart."
"Don't you mean kiss a lot of frogs?" Alistair asked.
Those ornery but compassionate eyes flared at him and he tasted the bite of the veil ripping to shreds. "No," Lanny threatened in her booming Hero voice before fading it all away with a whisper. Something in the fade slicing into their world stirred Cailan and a cry began in that tiny throat. Tears tumbled off of those still ocean eyes while Lanny tried to soothe him by awkwardly rocking the baby back and forth.
"Here," Alistair reached over, already using his greatest father trick at his disposal. With one hand upon Cailan's back, he cupped the squealing mouth against his shirt, letting the warmth of his body connect with the angry baby. It took a few more sways and "Oh come on, it's not that bad" before the cries quieted down. The whole time he felt Lanny watching from the side, her calculating expression on. She wore that whenever brewing up potions or was about to rain fire down upon a horde of darkspawn. Seeing as how no bottles or hurlocks were in the area, Alistair was fairly certain it was aimed at him.
"What is it?"
"You, so easily calming a crying baby, I'm trying to think of that twenty year old I met in the Kokari Wilds attempting it and it's beyond me."
He shrugged, uncertain what to say. There was a learning curve with Spud, but he kept stepping up to the line and trying no matter how often her tiny foot managed to take out his jangling coin purse. "It's not so hard once you figure it out. Like finding the weak point between a shriek's ribs and jabbing up through the heart."
"I'm glad that you're happy, with your children," she smiled brightly and he felt the conviction of her words. Struggling to find any way to respond to the woman who'd been a constant in his life, even when she was out of it, Lanny took over for him. "Figure out your bodyguard issue and maybe you can fill out the rest of your life too."
"It's that simple?" he asked sarcastically while secretly wishing it was. All the missteps and failures, the broken hearts, and empty nights somehow solidifying together to finally give him a peace he never thought possible.
Lanny glanced out at the garden falling still as the sun finally dipped below Fort Drakon, rendering most of the palace in shadows. It wasn't the creeping chill of night but a gentle waft into a slumber before the new day. With a soft smile, she whispered, "You won't know until you try."
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
And You Two...?
Reiss tried to not stare at the woman that'd been by the King's side for nearly a week, the woman that appeared as if by a gift of the Maker to save him and save her in the process. The woman that she knew was dead.
Alistair was quick to rebound once the mysterious mage healed and tended to him. Some of it was magic, but the way they interacted Reiss
sensed that her mere presence was affecting him perhaps better than any salve could. She rarely left his side, Reiss often waking to find her already up and trying to quietly shuffle around the room without waking the snoring disaster still in bed.
For the moment, the King was all but hogtied to his throne and forced to give court. He began with a terrible flow of mucus gushing out of his nose, which the woman said could be stopped up for a few hours with a potion but he waved it away. If he was going to have to sit in front of people and listen to their complaints for hours on end, they'd have to suffer his ooey gooey body. At first Reiss stood at the back of the room, doing her best to not fall asleep. They seemed to have saved the dullest of issues for the King's first day back. At the moment two people were arguing over which was owed back taxes for a cart sold at a slightly higher mark up than what it should have been due to the current legal standing of things that drew her eyelids ever lower. Afraid that she'd pass out on her feet and smash chin first to the stone floor, Reiss wandered out the door and spotted the mage sitting quietly at a clerk's desk.
No one else was around, most wandering eyes skipping past her as if she was part of the furniture, but Reiss felt her mouth dry every time she spotted the woman. They couldn't have less in common if they actively tried. With dark spirals and an even more beautiful shade of rich brown skin, the mage was the elegant shadow to Reiss' lanky candlestick. She was shockingly short too, barely skirting above the King's chest with the ample kind of curves that would have had Lunet saying something smart in seconds. Perhaps most debilitating of all was her mind. She was always reading, the books stacked high with titles Reiss couldn't make heads nor tails of. If she tried to read one, it'd probably shriek at her non-understanding and slap shut or burn her to ash or something.
She was everything Reiss wasn't and while that jabbed a thorn into her ego knowing who she was and what she truly meant to the King, it wasn't what drew her tongue to a stand still every time. The jealousy was dead as dust in favor of a far stronger emotion.
Love's Blush Page 45