SWTORpadawan

~~~~~~

Minthara was indeed beautiful. Forceful. Powerful. Direct. So maybe Gale should have been slightly less surprised when, not half an hour after they’d set up their tents and he’d wandered toward the tree-line to look at some fascinating mushrooms, he’d been powerfully and directly pressed up against a tree.

“Minthara?”

“Wizard,” she said calmly, as if pinning wizards to trees and busying herself with the laces of their shirts was a common everyday occurrence.

Surely it wasn’t.

“May I-” he said, desperately trying to keep his voice level as a hand briefly dipped under the fabric, “ask what by Elminster’s beard you’re doing, exactly?”

“I did not think you would need it explained to you.” Red eyes much too close, much too pleasantly heated. “Or did your goddess not concern herself with the mortal necessity of undressing a bedmate?”

“Mystra would- I. That isn’t-” Feeling too flustered by the suddenness of it all to come up with a proper retort, he batted her hands away.

“Now really, I must protest!”

“Must you?” she said dryly, resuming her unlacing. “To what do you object, wizard?”

There were numerous and equally valid variables in this situation to object to. The suddenness of it, the lack of asking whether he was actually interested, as if his willingness to participate was not a consideration- not that he was wholly unwilling mind you, nevertheless it was the principle of the thing- but as his mind spun for some excuse to get her hands off of him so he could have a single coherent thought, all he could come up with was “The location.”

She raised her eyebrows, fingers stilling as he willed some blood back to his brain.

Good. She was distracted. Now he could push her very warm and very appealingly muscled arms away and walk back to camp and they could all pretend this had never happ-

“We. Ah. Are much too close to the campsite and our companions. A tent might afford us more privacy in this particular situation.”

Gods damn it. He went on, mouth working incessantly to fill up the silence she was staring at him with.

“Visual privacy at the very least, though if we were further in the forest we would have less chance of being overheard. It would be rather less comfortable but perhaps-”

“Are you never silent?” she said in milder annoyance than he was used to. And then, much to his surprise, “Very well. Privacy you shall have.”

Quick and efficient, he was grabbed by the mostly open shirt front and dragged into her tent, still a little dazed to have been given this consideration.

Once the tent flap closed them in together, she looked him up and down with vaguely proprietary air. Had Mystra ever looked at him like that, or had he always read it as affection? Minthara’s gaze was certainly different, but similar enough that it made him bristle.

“A second objection, if your sole interest is a warm body to satisfy your needs then I am certain there are many others to provide.”

A flicker of surprise, and then, bafflingly, increased interest as she stepped forward into his space and resumed undressing up.

“You are a strange one,” she said, her voice almost… amused? “If my sole interest was a warm body I would indeed have sought out another to provide it.”

Gale let out a slightly hysterical laugh, and he did have to wonder precisely how they got from Minthara seeming to express only the deepest disdain for him to her fingers sliding under his shirt and pushing it off of his shoulders.

Perhaps in drow culture disdain was a step up from indifference? He had to admit, he was not particularly well read on the ways of the drow, though he was dimly aware that men were faced almost exclusively with those two emotions. A shame really, he had been most remiss in learning more about their companion, not asking her nearly as many questions about the Underdark and drow as he had asked Lae’zel about the Astral plane and the Githyanki.

Given that Lae’zel was always very responsive and Minthara stared at him like a slug she’d prefer to step on, that was not surprising. But he could find books. Truly there was no excuse besides neglect that he had been caught so short-handed in this- her hands were at the laces of his trousers now - very…. sudden and… intimate…. cultural exchange-

A smack on his cheek, surprisingly light, brought him back to reality and the chill air on his increasingly bare skin.

“I expect you to pay attention.”

“Yes ma’am.” He wasn’t sure if it was the smack or the authoritative tone that made the response tumble from his mouth so readily, but he was sure that despite her lack of expression, he saw the following in Minthara’s eyes:

Surprise again Delight Satisfaction An even greater increase of interest

Duly noted. He filed that away in his currently limited mental codex of drow culture. Or his understanding of Minthara, at the very least. It would be prudent to assume that she was merely a partial reflection, not a complete representation, of what was no doubt a very varied and fascinating- oh Gods. Warm and calloused hands in the right place were remarkably focusing when he was in danger of getting distracted again.

He tried very hard to formulate a coherent thought again.

“Perhaps you should-” he gestured towards her. “Allow for a levelling of the playing field, as it were?”

“An impertinent question,” she scoffed, but took his hand and directed it to the buckles of her armour, giving him a little room to get his mind in order. He glanced at her quickly as he worked, noting the amusement buried deep in her eyes. She seemed to enjoy a little pushback, alternating with plenty of deference, though he had yet to learn if that was a drow preference, a Minthara preference, or simply what she preferred out of him.

“We shall have to do something about that failing of yours. Kneel.”

Ah well, who was he to miss an opportunity for greater cultural knowledge? He grinned a little, all too rapidly falling into the rhythm of this little encounter like a newly learned lanceboard strategy.