#carletoncolton

Oh what an incredibly lovely prompt, thank you so much!! I’m not sure how reverent it turned out, but it’s definitely tender, and I really hope you enjoy it

(If you’d like me to write you a dragon age fic, send me a prompt from here)

@dadrunkwriting

Pairing: Anders/Marian Hawke

Characters: Anders, Marian Hawke

Tags: post da2, the fluffiest fluff you ever did see

Rating: Mature

When Marian gets home, Anders is peeling potatoes. She steps inside quietly, and Dog follows her just as carefully as she crosses the small space of the kitchen to reach her husband. Marian curls her hand around the hand of his that has the peeler first, wary of him injuring himself. Then she presses a long, gentle kiss to the back of his neck, nose pressing against his hair. Anders stiffens, then relaxes, melting back into her arms with a sigh. “Marian.”

Marian smiles, leaning forward to tuck her chin over her husband’s shoulder, making him bend forward as she does so. “What’s for dinner?”

Anders laughs, softly. and drops the potato and the peeler into the sink, turning to catch her face with hands that are damp and sticky with starch. Outside, birds sing sweetly into the woods around their cottage. 

“That’s it? No, how have you been darling? No, I missed you love?” Even as he says the words, a dozen creases spread around the corners of his eyes, wrinkling his freckled skin as his nose crinkles with the force of his smile. Marian feels a sudden, fierce rush of affection wash up through her chest like a sunrise, and she moves her hands to clasp his face, pulling him down firmly for a kiss.

Anders makes a soft sound of surprise, but bends as easily as a sapling, hair falling forwards and over Marian’s fingers. His lips are warm against hers, and soft, and Marian dives into him fiercely, soaking in the wet heat of his mouth as she presses forward, nose bending against his cheek with the force of their kiss. With both hands, she winds her fingers up and around the back of his head, clasping him tightly as she shuts her eyes, feeling the point where their noses lock and their cheeks touch, breathing heavily against Anders’ lips. 

In one great, gentle, heaving shift, the world tilts back into place. Marian sighs, and keeps her eyes shut for a moment longer, relishing the easy golden warmth that is simply his body in her arms. 

Then she pulls back, still pressing their foreheads together, and pushes a kiss against the tip of his long, narrow nose. “I missed you.”

Anders’ lips twitch, and he pulls back to press a kiss to her forehead before draping his long arms over her shoulders, pulling her closer into an embrace. Marian lets herself be pulled, shutting her eyes as she presses her cheek against his warm chest through the rich cotton of his shirt, letting her husband curl around her like a willow tree, all long limbs and warmth. Firmly, Anders presses another kiss to the top of her head. “I missed you too, love.”

Marian squeezes her arms around his chest, and pulls back, leaning up to press another quick clumsy kiss to his chin. “Seriously though, what’s for dinner?”

Anders laughs, and bends to catch her lips in another kiss, arms falling as his hands run lightly over her arms, skidding along the curve of her biceps before slipping beneath her forearms to trace the lines of her hips. He tilts his head, and presses a long, chaste kiss to her cheek, pressing their faces together as he rests his head against hers, beginning to sway them in a slow, lazy waltz over the soft wooden floor of their kitchen.

“Well, I was thinking potatoes.”

Marian hums, and nudges him to step back, leading him in the small, simple steps of the dance. “I noticed.” Outside, the trees sway slowly in a barely perceptible wind. Anders presses another kiss to her head, hand falling to wind with hers and squeeze it gently. 

“I have carrots, from the garden, and parsnips. I’d been thinking of making some kind of stew? I could add dumplings. It is a special occasion, after all.” Marian sighs, and squeezes his waist, stepping closer to press her forehead against his chest. Anders stops moving, lifting his arm to curl around her shoulders and back and pull her close. Marian shuts her eyes, and lets herself be held.

Muffled by the fabric of her husband’s shirt, she murmurs softly, “That sounds nice.”

Anders laughs, quietly, and presses another kiss to her head, before releasing her hand and guiding her gently to the best chair in the living room, pushing her lightly to sit. Marian falls easily, but when he turns to leave she catches his hand, pulling him back firmly. Anders lets her pull him, though he gives her a crooked smile as he does, face half lit by the low gold of the early evening sun as it falls into their little home. “I need my hand to make your dinner.”

Marian huffs, and tugs him harder, catching him when he half stumbles into her lap with a soft yelp and bundling him against her in the chair. She feels the shaking of Anders’ laughter through his slender chest, and grins as she presses a kiss to his stubbled cheek. “Dinner can wait. Cuddles first.”

Anders snorts, and tilts his head to press a kiss to the base of her jaw. “Your wish is my command.”

Marian nods, and presses another kiss to his hair. It smells lightly of elfroot. It always does. She takes a long, deep breath, and shuts her eyes, arms curling around her husband’s back. 

8) Something you love to see in dialogue and 14)  What aspect of writing have you had the most growth in? from the fic writer asks

8. I have a weird soft spot for characters who become bad conversational partners when their emotions are high. Yeah, yeah, “reality is unrealistic” when it comes to dialogue, but when two people are upset and yelling at each other they don’t politely wait their turn in the conversation! I have an enormous amount of fun writing characters just bawling at each other at the top of their lungs, cutting each other off or shouting over each other to make themselves heard or just flat out refusing to listen  to what the other is saying.

14. I’d say I’ve gotten better at original characters? At least I hope so! I started out One Elegant Solution with the explicit goal of developing my OC skills more, since it’s one of my weakest areas of writing. I think I improved some, though not entirely to the level I want it to be at.

I will say that one thing that I think is an important distinction, that most writing guides don’t really make, is the difference between an OC who is a main character  and an OC who is a supporting character.  A lot of the writing advice guides going around for OCs focus on making each character a fully realized and developed entity unto themselves, what’s their birthday, favorite color, mom’s name, etc. I found this both an exhausting and ultimately unnecessary task for most of my supporting  character OCs. 

Other fills: #1, #2.

“There you are! So, what are your plans for tomorrow?" Albert’s heading for the coffee maker, his mind on the latest John Doe on his slab, when hurried footsteps come up behind him and an arm is hooked through his. By the time he’s recovered enough to mount a defense, his assailant has already solidified her grip and steered him into the nearest briefing room.

He glares down into the face of Diane, which is a study in amusement. “Tomorrow?” he mutters. “Work, what else?” This whole week has been an organizational nightmare: old cases dropped into his lap without warning and new ones seeming to materialize out of thin air. Albert’s already pulled a couple of all-nighters; he’s not counting on tomorrow to be magically better.

“Come on. Don’t tell me you forgot?” He blinks when Diane starts digging through her purse, then dramatically pulls out a card. It proclaims, in florid red script: ‘Will you be my Valentine?’

“I…” Albert shakes his head, struck dumb for a couple of moments. Diane knows his type, doesn’t she, and that there’s a rock-solid reason why it doesn’t, and never will, include her? So there’s no way she could mean…  

The sound of Diane’s laughter ricochets off the walls. “Silly man,” she snorts, more affectionate than mocking. “This isn’t for you, it’s for Gordon. He’s been flirting with that agent from the DEA for months. And I’m pretty sure she’s interested, so figured I’d… you know, give them a little push in the spirit of collegiality.” She lowers her voice to a whisper. “Faking handwriting is a specialty of mine. In case you ever need a favor.”

Albert struggles to wipe the smirk off of his face. “Gordon? You sure? I hadn’t seen him as the type to…”

“Dabble? Flirt? Fall in love?” Diane purses her lips. “Trust me. I’ve got a nose for these things. Speaking of which…” She reaches for his arm and pats it gently. “I’m told that Dale doesn’t have a date yet.”

“Dale Cooper?” Albert feels like an idiot the moment he says it, because of course there’s only one Dale they both know. And Diane does, in fact, have a nose for these things, as she’s proving even now. “Can’t be for lack of opportunities, can it?” he grumbles. “I can think of half a dozen women in our department alone who’d love to get their hands on the guy. Could you blame them for trying?”

“No. Could you?”

“I… No,” Albert says, hurrying to sound affronted, but the second or so between the question and his answer might already have betrayed him. “Why should I?”

Diane flashes him a far-too-knowing grin, then stands on her tiptoes to straighten his tie. “Want my opinion?” she whispers. “I think he’s just waiting for the right person to come around.”

RIP �� That's an old Bethesda trap, goes back a ways.

You wouldn’t happen to have fic recs along these lines tucked away somewhere, would you? ��

Thank you for asking! These are honestly some of my favorite new pieces. Something about 8 bothers me still, after five days of editing and re-editing, but you always find a way to make me look deeper at my own work when you review it, so I’m interested to see what you might think. At any rate, whether or not anyone else likes it, I am WEAK for 47. They’re my own ship, dammit; one would think I could write them without having to take a break every few minutes to de-fluster myself. Anyway, enjoy. Everything’s below the cut.

8: I found you, moonlight reflected in your eyes, balcony overlooking the sky.

It’s the same thing every night: dinner, conversation, a glass of wine, and then up to the penthouse to stand on the barely-there balcony outside and stare at the Strip. When Arcade found out, he told Kate the wind would sweep her right off one day. With the penthouse’s altitude, it’s hard to tell if he was exaggerating or not.

So tonight, Boone steps out onto the ledge and the desert wind, cold as death and darker than that, lashes at his face. How she stands it is beyond him, but he’d rather bear it for an evening than let her fall off—purposefully or not.

Gently, like whispers of touch and little else, she feels his arms about her waist and his breath stirs her hair as he mumbles, “Feel like coming inside?”

“I… don’t know.” She leans back against him. “I’m so tired of this.”

“Me too,” he says, though he knows she doesn’t mean her new routine. “Come on. You’re cold.”

She sighs. Instead of relenting, she sits down on the edge. “The city’s back to normal. NCR boys are back in the casinos. House says Legion’s back, too. I… I don’t wanna fight them anymore.”

Despite the heaviness in the pit of his stomach, he sits beside her and lets his feet dangle. It’s sickening, but he knows she’ll come inside soon. Probably.

She turns her head to face him and a glimmer of moonlight shines in her eyes. “What if we left?”

“And go where?”

“Anywhere. East? Far east. Somewhere the Legion can’t get me. Somewhere the NCR can’t get you.”

He grips her icy fingers when she reaches for his hand. “Anywhere,” he repeats in a low rumble. “Heard there’s a place on the coast. Lots of people. Couple of cities. Lot more rads. More rads means more ghouls.”

“No more Legion.”

“That a good thing?”

“Of course it is.” After several moments of heavy silence, she sighs again and leans into him. “I… don’t know anymore.”

“House still needs you.”

“He only needed me when Benny and Caesar were alive. Now… now I’m not important anymore.”

“You wanna be?”

She rests her head on his shoulder. “…No.”

He shifts his thumb back and forth across her knuckles, letting her tighten her grip and curl up closer. “You wanna go inside now?”

“Not yet.” She keeps her head turned toward the Strip, eyes afire with the reflection of its lights. The wind, laced with sand and nighttime chill, stings her cheeks and she tucks her face into his shirt. “I don’t want you to do… what you do anymore.”

He scowls. “Makes money.”

“I hate what it’s doing to you, Craig. You used to be happy.” Following a pointed stare from him, she hastily adds, “Happier, anyway. Now you always look tired and bitter and you always sound angry and you haven’t kissed me since Tuesday and we haven’t been—”

“People die,” he interrupts. “Doesn’t matter if I do it or not. You told me that.”

She pulls herself away from him and shouts, “Mierda!” Then she lowers her head and exhales sharply, pausing for a moment before speaking again. “I said that so you’d stop punishing yourself for what you couldn’t control. This is your choice. It’s different.”

“Doesn’t seem too different from here.”

“You can’t kill people for caps forever.”

A long silence colder than the air lingers between them until he answers her. “Stop doing this every night. Then I’ll quit. We’ll go somewhere else.”

She picks up her head and looks at him. She has hope in her eyes, and it makes him sick. “You mean that?”

His throat closes. He swallows the dryness in his mouth and says, “Yeah.”

Bracing herself against the wall, she stands up. “Okay. You win. I’ll go inside.”

“You gonna tell House?”

As she steps back inside, she shrugs. “I guess. We’ll plan first.”

He stands up too, wobbling a bit on the edge before his fingers find purchase on the wall. She offers her hand and he takes it again, then slips back through the window and shuts it behind them.

“What’s to plan?” he asks. “We go east. Far as we want.”

She looks up and smiles, something he hasn’t seen her do in days. He wonders just how much of that is his own fault. “And you’ll really stop taking those jobs?”

“Yeah.”

She hugs him tighter than armor two sizes too small. “This’ll be good, you’ll see.”

Slowly, he runs his fingers through her hair. He doesn’t say a word, but she’s used to that now. Used to him.

She closes her eyes and dreams of a house on the beach, toes in cool water, and absolutely, positively no murder. And now, it finally seem plausible—even if it takes them the rest of their lives to get it.

36: I found you, your eyes heavy, nightmares robbing you of sleep.

She awakes with a start, chest heaving with each shuddering breath and hands damp with chilly sweat. Her back is pressed to his, and she feels his muscles tense and release a few times. She knows that movement—it means he’s awake.

“Boone?”

“You okay?” he asks in response, little more than a rumble from his chest.

She takes a moment to consider it. Is she? She turns over so she’s facing him and presses herself against his back before shaking her head.

“I dreamt about them again,” she whispers eventually. “The Legion.”

He doesn’t speak, but she can tell by his breathing he’s awake enough to listen.

“I was in that tent again, and Caesar—” here, she stops herself and says his name again, the way Boone does. Retraining herself to say See-sar instead of Kye-sar. “He said my name, my full name, said I was one of them, had his men…”

Boone’s voice comes out colder than he’d intended. “You can stop.”

“No. Arcade said I need to tell you about this stuff. Get it out of my head.”

And into mine, he thinks grimly. “Okay.”

“They tried to kill me this time, instead of the other stuff. But I woke up again, in Cottonwood Cove. And then I saw you, up on the ridge, and… you really did kill me. For good.”

His muscles tense again, and they don’t relax this time. He shuts his eyes and prays she doesn’t know he’d thought hard about it when he first saw her, bloodied and bruised and still fighting back in the heart of the Fort.

“Boone?”

“What?”

“If the others weren’t there, would you have?”

Shit. He opens his eyes again, and with a slow, measured exhale, he relaxes. “Yeah.”

She twines her arms around his chest. “I… I think I hoped you would, when I was there. But I’m happy you didn’t.”

He tries to say I’m sorry but it catches in his throat and comes out as a weakened grunt instead. He shrugs her away and sits up, rubbing a hand across his face, feeling the scrape of his wedding ring across his cheek. And then he turns and pulls his arms around her, lying down beside her again with her head tucked under his chin.

“Boone…”

It’s more of a breath than anything. Still, he doesn’t answer it. Only tenses again—around her now, not against her—and closes his eyes.

Sometimes, she wishes he had shot her. But then she sees his face, sees the pity in it, and realizes he sometimes wishes he had, too. Tonight, they can agree they’re glad he didn’t. She just doesn’t know how long that’ll last.

47: I found you where I should have been looking in the first place.

Veronica catches him by the north gate and flags him down with a smile and a wild wave. “Kate went out,” she says after a hug so quick and tight it draws the breath from his lungs. “Gave us some caps and said the Strip was ours. We weren’t expecting you back for a while.”

“Job fell through,” he mutters. “She say where she was going?”

Veronica shrugs. “Not to me. She did tell me to lock up the suite if she wasn’t back by two, though.”

Boone checks his watch. 4:29.

With a clap on the shoulder and a chipper “Good luck!” Veronica walks toward the Lucky 38 and disappears inside.

So Boone looks in the Tops, and Kate isn’t there. He looks in the Ultra-Luxe, and Kate isn’t there. He looks in Gomorrah, and a nearly-nude man tells him with a purr that a girl “about that tall, brown hair, drunk as fuck and probably high” had staggered through that night.

He punches a wall on his way out. Just another bruise he’ll find in the morning. His other hand reaches for the bullet casing dangling next to his NCR tags—9 millimeter, one half of the scars on Kate’s forehead—and he curses quietly before shaking out his stinging fist.

A trio of drunken soldiers stumble down the sidewalk, laughing and slinging slurred insults at each other. One falls—the others leave her. He’s seen it too often. He’s been the one left behind, too… only he was sober enough to walk back to the monorail station. So boring, said the others. Go find someone else’s party to crash. It makes him think of the night he met Carla, and thinking of Carla makes him think of Kate, and he scowls at nobody but himself as he sighs and walks toward the Tops again.

Swank’s shift starts at midnight, so if Kate was there, he’d have seen her. So, as Boone stands at the desk of the Tops, he demands, “Has Katerina been here tonight?”

Swank says no. The Chairman beside him says yes, but she left. The cashier upstairs says no. The bartender says yes, and she was drunk when she came in, and she mentioned “the cannibal casino.”

So, as Boone stands at the desk of the Ultra-Luxe, he demands, “Has Katerina been here?”

Marjorie says yes. “She was with two men and another woman. They had a wonderful time at the blackjack table.”

“Is she still here?”

Marjorie says no. When Boone asks the newly-appointed room manager, she says no, too.

So he goes back to the Tops. “Are you sure Katerina left?”

Everyone he asks says the same thing. “Yes.”

Once again finding himself in the heart of the Strip, thinking of Carla and thinking of Kate and thinking of why he isn’t enough to save either—one from the world, the other from herself—he looks at his watch again and finds it reading 5:11.

He shuts his eyes. He stands still and breathes, just for a moment, before turning toward the Lucky 38 and dragging his feet up the steps.

He remembers a Vegas proverb one of the other soldiers told him once. A hotel elevator goes slower if your bed is empty. And the Lucky 38’s elevator seems to barely move. When it finally reaches the presidential suite with a ding and a whirr, he finds a pair of shoes and a wine-stained sweater tossed on the floor.

He opens the door and sees Kate, curled up in a knot of blankets and too much skirt, clutching a stuffed dinosaur and mumbling something in her sleep. She frowns, her face wrinkles up, and she reaches out for someone who isn’t there.

He hasn’t even taken off both of his socks before he’s in bed behind her, arms tightly wound about her waist, face tucked against her neck. She barely stirs—just smiles into her pillow and hums with drowsy delight.

She smells like warmth and the bed and herself, not casinos or makeup or another man’s cologne. She snores, and he catches the alcohol on her breath, but her skin isn’t clammy and her mouth isn’t dry and the tracks on her arm are from years ago. She’s been here longer than he’s been searching for her, and her only vice tonight was wine.

He presses a kiss to her skin and brushes the pad of his thumb across her cheek. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, muffled against her shoulder. And softer still, barely a breath: I love you, Katerina.

Thanks for the ask! My notifications have been wonky lately so I didn’t get this earlier but here I am!

17: A fact about my life: The first three video games I ever played were Fable, Jade Empire, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic—all on the original Xbox. We bought it when my mom had foot surgery. I was seven. I still play KotOR sometimes thanks to Xbox 360 backwards compatibility. I beat Darth Traya in The Sith Lords for the very first time last year.

13: life goal(s): Becoming a voice actress is the biggest one right now, rising above my ever-present goal of making money with my writing. Some smaller but no less important goals are finding good friends and a stable, healthy relationship.

Who made the first move: There wasn’t really a “move.” A relationship between them just sort of happened. One day, he was reading, she was trying to ignore the radstorm outside, they sat together as they often did, and somehow ended with them curled up naked on the couch.

Who said ‘I love you’ first: Cherry. Deacon doesn’t like saying it (I wrote a oneshot about this, actually, and it’s right here!) but she mumbled it one night while they were just drifting off to sleep. It kept Deacon awake all night.

How often they fight: The first part of this post explains it well!

Who’s big spoon/little spoon: They switch out a lot! Deacon likes being the little spoon, but he knows Cherry does too.

What their nicknames are for each other: They use their code names, their “real” names, and the names of whatever cover they’ve adopted.

Who’s the better cook: …Cherry? Neither of them are really good at it.

Their song: @mind-your-helmsmen gave me a song rec a while ago called “I’ll Be Good” and it fits Deacon a lot. As for him and Cherry, they don’t really have “a song,” but they’ll dance to DCR sometimes when they’re feeling playful.

Who remembers their anniversaries: Neither, since they didn’t really have an anniversary to begin with. Like I said, there was no certifiable beginning to the romantic aspect of their relationship. Deacon, however, quietly celebrates the day she joined the Railroad: November 17, 2287.

Their favorite thing to do together: Definitely read. Comics, novels, textbooks–whatever Deacon can get his hands on, he’ll read. They always curl up together on the sofa, chair, floor, bed, or wherever else, and Cherry usually falls asleep.

Who ‘wears the pants’ in the relationship: Neither. They have a very good balance of “power” and neither one of them likes to dominate the other.

How they would get engaged: They probably wouldn’t, but if they did, Deacon would be the one proposing and he’d do it one evening while she’s propped against him, reading. “You wanna get married?” he’d say. “Maybe something informal? A chess party to celebrate? I could break out my accordion.” He’d make a lot more jokes than usual, say more weird things than normal, to distract from the fact that he’s incredibly nervous to be asking at all. He never thought he’d ask again.

What their wedding would be like: Quiet and informal, just like Deacon said. Just… without the accordions.