log: sera+adaar WHO: Asala Adaar + Sera WHEN: Evening, May 21 WHERE: Sera and Adaar's room WHAT: Sera's made a present for the Inquisitor and wants some alone time with her girlfriend. WARNINGS: None! STATUS: Complete!
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Sera was at her the moment she walked in the door.
"Hey, you!"
She had that look on her face like she had a secret, and that secret was hidden behind her back, clasped in both hands. She was barefoot, dressed in her plaideweave leggings and something the people here called a bra, soft gray fabric over her breasts with a little bit of white lace. It left her belly exposed, muscular but still soft in places, with a few freckles and a scar to the right of her navel that puckered her skin.
Her toes curled against the floor and she grinned. "Made you something."
"Hi." Asala had to duck to get in the door, but actually being in the apartment was much easier since Peter had magicked the ceilings. It meant she liked being there more, and being home usually meant more time curled up with Sera.
She was homesick. Maker, she was homesick.
"What'd I get?" Asala tried to look around Sera's back, expecting her to hop away to hide it.
"Mm — mm-mm, not until I say." Sera didn't jump back, but instead leaned in, pressing herself up against Asala and smiling. "Why?" she asked. She was more than a foot shorter than Asala, and she pushed herself up onto her toes in some attempt to get a little height. "You want it?"
"I want to see it." Asala smiled, making a half-assed attempt to keep looking and kissing Sera on the cheek in the process.
Sera turned and caught her mouth, kissing her soundly. "So take it," she teased, leaning in for another kiss, and another. She bit at Asala's lower lip. "It's right here, so take it."
"I will." Another kiss, and she was pushing Sera back toward their bedroom. "I'm going to." And another one. "I'm working on it." And another---
And then her horns clacked hard against the top of the doorframe, jerking her head back.
"Oh! Shit—" Sera gasped, cringing and jerking back. "Oh, Shiny, no…"
She loved that Asala was tall. She really loved that Asala was tall. There was something that was so hot about Qunari women, tall and broad with those horns … but that height, sexy as it was, got in the way when it came to door frames that weren't meant for her.
"All right, love?" She cupped Asala's cheek, caressed her jaw, and while she was cringing in sympathy she was trying not to giggle.
Asala whined, ducking down under the doorframe and getting into their room. "I'm okay, I'm okay…" Even if Skyhold was for human-sized people, everything in it was huge, all high ceilings and gigantic doors and vast hallways. Here she banged her head on everything.
Taking Sera's hand, she wandered to the bed and flopped down, taking Sera with her. "Do I look sad enough to get a present now?"
Sera gave her a shove down onto the bed, crawling over her. She was pushy and clingy when she was around Asala, hanging on her or climbing on her or otherwise draping herself over her and claiming her space. Now, she straddled the other woman's hips and flopped down on top of her. She placed a tin can on Asala's chest and tapped her fingers on it.
"Made you this."
She guided Asala's hands to the can and then pushed herself up, climbing off and giving Asala space to look. Just in case Asala didn't like it, like she was putting a little distance between them in case she got teased.
Picking up the can, Asala turned it over in her hands before twisting off the top and sniffing. It smelled like lavender and wildflowers and butter.
"Oh… ohhh, did you make me horn balm?" She reached for Sera with her free hand to pull her back in. "This is the best present, I love you. You made me stuff, come here."
Sera bit her lip, trying to hide her smile. She was bashful and uncertain when she was vulnerable, and she'd really thought that Asala wasn't going to think much of it. "You said you were itchy, and you've been banging your head, so I thought I'd make you some, yeah? I dunno what they put in it, but I asked about for what'd be nice. Smelled some stuff. Thought about what I'd like to smell on you."
She climbed back onto the bed, but instead of sitting on Asala's lap she crawled behind her, pressing herself against Asala's back and hugging her from behind. "Thought flowers, herbs …" She rubbed her hands along Asala's shoulders and kissed the back of her head. "What's it do for you, anyway?"
Asala kept her head bowed to avoid knocking Sera with her horns. It was the one really complicated thing about having them; nothing killed the mood faster than her partner getting smashed or stabbed with heavy bones. "I get itchy right where the bone meets the skin. And it gets dry. The balm keeps me from scratching, otherwise my forehead looks rashy."
Sera reached around Asala and dipped her fingers into the salve. "Well, come here, then." She got a large dollop of it and rubbed it over her fingers. "Won't have you be rashy, you're the Inquisitor and shit."
She settled in, resting her weight against Asala's back as she rubbed the balm over the place where her right horn joined her head. "Does it hurt?" she asked after a moment, her fingers gentle as they caressed Asala's forehead and the top curve of her horn. "When you bump them into stuff." She'd touched Asala's horns before, she knew that they connected to her skull, to her face, and she had to think that getting them smacked around had to hurt.
"Only if I hit them a lot." Which she had recently, but she was getting better about it now. "Normally it's just like being thumped. Not pleasant, but it doesn't hurt unless it's hard or happens often." Sometimes getting smacked was just embarrassing. It was difficult to be sexy when you were smashing into the architecture.
Sera kissed Asala's horn, taking a moment to brush her lips over the ridges and bumps. "They're beautiful, you know," she said quietly. Quiet moments like this with Sera were rare. She was chatty, she was giggly, she liked to joke around and shout and laugh. Sex was usually loud and playful, and while she was content to wrap all of her limbs around Asala and snuggle in for sleep, soft conversations like this were often few and far between. "You're beautiful."
"You're beautiful." Asala kept her head still and let her eyes drift shut. They bickered and didn't always understand each other, but it didn't matter, especially not now.
"Are you homesick too?"
Sera was quiet, reaching down and smearing more of the balm on her fingers so she could continue working her way down Asala's horn. "Where's home, though?" she said after a moment. "Home's where I am, where I want to be. I make home, it doesn't make me."
"No, but…" Asala sighed, picking at a stray thread in her trousers. "I've been on the run my whole life. Skyhold feels… alive sometimes. But it's not the building, it's all those people, the cause we built. Maybe I'm selfish enough not to want to start over again." Not that she had a choice. Fate had a habit of deciding when her life would change course.
Sera chuckled faintly. "Yeah, because you're Inquisitor. You're the big hat, yeah? You built something." She paused, her fingertips light on Asala's horn. "We built something. We did that."
"We did, yeah. We saved the world, Sera. Now what do we do?"
Sera kissed the top of Asala's head, scrunching her nose. "Whatever we want," she said. "That's what it was for, yeah? Saving the world, so the rest of us could go back to normal. The world's not worth saving if we can't get back to the small stuff."
"I know, I was just hoping the small stuff would happen at home." Carefully turning her head, she leaned in to kiss Sera's mouth, nudging with her nose. "At least I have you. That's the important thing."
Sera had to duck to avoid getting smacked in the face with Asala's horn, but she leaned in immediately for the kiss, nipping playfully before nuzzling her. "Yeah, you've got me," she breathed. "And I'm not going anywhere."