log: seradaar WHO: Asala Adaar + Sera WHEN: Friday, September 11 WHERE: Outside! WHAT: Asala and Sera work on the cleanup efforts outside, but it turns into mud wrestling and a heart-to-heart. WARNINGS: N/A
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Sera didn't like the woods, but she didn't like living down in the tunnels, either. It was one of two choices: live like an elfy-elf or live like a dwarf, and she didn't like either of those choices. Things weren't going to feel really real again until she had a proper city to run about in, and their efforts to build one (or at least build a few houses) had been thwarted by more bloody werewolves. They needed help to clean up the mess before they could build again, and Sera needed a break from washing knickers in a cave.
She'd been hauling off broken beams, tugging them across the ground to another pile, grunting and groaning about it the whole while. She wasn't quite complaining, but she wasn't the strongest, and this sort of heavy lifting wasn't easy. She tried, though, the weight making her sink into the dirt and getting mud in her shoes.
Eventually, she gave up, tossing up her hands while the others dispersed. Sweating and breathing hard, Sera collapsed on the grass with a groan. "So. Bloody. Much. Shit."
Asala was doing better than most of her peers. Her skin was thicker and harder to hurt already, and she was immune to the werewolf curse, making it much easier to heal her up enough to get her out of the hospital. Hawke had used a spell and sent her on her way earlier than some others, and by now she was well enough to be outside, helping with the clean up.
In the heat, she saw no reason to overdress, hauling around fallen chunks of housing and the smaller fallen trees in as little as she could get away with: trousers, boots, and a Qunari-style wrap that resembled a bra, keeping her chest flat and out of the way. She had some new scars, but nothing so serious as to need attention anymore.
"Too much nature for you, love?" Asala dropped another plank on the pile.
Sera groaned, rubbing her hands over her face. "Bloody trees and shit. Werewolves are tits, yeah? Messing up everything we worked on. What's to stop new things from tearing down what we build again? How does anything get built?"
She had to admit that she really only wanted to be out here in order to watch Asala as she lifted heavy things while wearing next to nothing. So she chuckled a bit, resting her head on her hands. "Don't answer that, Shiny. Just look pretty."
"Nothing's stopping it. Things get torn down, we build them up again." Like it was that simple. "Sorry, would that be easier to hear if I was bending over? Bet it would."
Sera crooked her finger. "It'd be easier to hear if you got on all fours and crawled over here," she said with a smirk. "You're so tall, I can't hear a word."
"Maybe your ears aren't working." Leaving the wood pile, Asala took a few steps closer before she crouched, crawling the rest of the way over to Sera so they were level. "Is this better? The weather's so much hotter down here."
Sera purred, reaching out and pulling Asala over her. "That's definitely just you," she said, leaning up to give her a kiss -- and then another, for good measure. "Forget work for a bit. You're sweating and mostly naked and that sets off all sorts of bells in my head that says it's time for something else."
She grinned, kicking up her legs to wrap around Asala's hips.
"We're in the mud..." But Asala kissed her again anyway, her long legs stretched out in the dirt. "I'm going to get it all in my boots."
"Yeah? That's what bathing's for. Getting you naked and wet." Sera scrunched her nose and reached up to run her hands over Asala's horns.
Things had been hard between them. They'd been fighting for what felt like weeks, though they'd finally smoothed things over. They were used to little spats, not big blowouts that lasted more than a few minutes. It had been a rough patch, and Sera had even considered leaving. But she couldn't, love didn't work like that and Asala was still good people even if she'd been stupid and thoughtless. Sera did stupid, thoughtless things, too.
Other people working outside may see them, but they were used to Asala being professional and responsible. They would forgive her some fun. Asala loudly kissed Sera's cheek, comically overdoing it. "I want a bath. That shower is too short." Washing her hair was practically an acrobatic feat now.
Sera had come to love showers. It was one thing they didn't have in Thedas that she loved here, standing naked under hot water and getting all soapy and clean. She could stay in there forever, just stretching and happily letting the water bounce off her bare skin.
Asala, however, was considerably taller and it didn't quite work out the same way for her.
"So, you'll take a bath, I'll soap up your hair and give you a good rub-down, wash all of that mud off of you." She grinned, thinking of suds and bubbles and crawling into that bath with her to do more than the expected amount of rubbing down. "But you look good dirty. You look good clean, too. Basically, you just … look good. Aren't you lucky."
"Blame my parents. I come from good stock." Asala ruffled Sera's hair, tugging at the uneven locks on the back of her head. "You are getting shaggy. I like it a lot." Tightening her fist, she tugged again. "More to grab at."
Sera squeaked, laughing. "Yes, please!" she exclaimed, curling her toes. "I like it when you grab my hair." Her voice had gone down to a low little rumble, just so that no one else who happened to be around would hear. This sort of stuff was for Asala only. Private stuff.
"I like pulling your hair." Asala leaned in for a kiss, long and affectionate -- before pulling back so she could smear mud over Sera's face.
Sera shrieked. "Euggh!" She shoved Asala off into the mud. "That's it!" she exclaimed, tackling Asala and reaching for her own handful of mud to shove down Asala's bra.
"No no no--!" Asala shrieked in return when her bra squished the mud against her skin, squirming in her attempts to get it out.
No luck, though. Her own hands were dirty, leaving her just caked in mud.
Sera cackled, sitting up. "Got you! I don't know what you were thinking, like I wasn't going to get you back." She wiped at her face, but that only meant spreading more mud over her skin.
"Dirty!" Asala exclaimed, grabbing another handful of mud and splattering it over Sera's front. "You were asking for it!"
"I was asking, but not for that!"
When was the last time she and Asala had really laughed like this? It had felt like forever, between their fights and Asala's amputation and all of the werewolf shit. Sera had been feeling rather lost without the things that made them special -- the laughing, mostly. So she threw herself into this, wrestling Asala down into the mud and grabbing her lover's wrists, pinning them up over her head.
"I love you," she said, nipping at her nose. "We're good, yeah? We're right, together. We fit."
Asala let herself go down, flopping back into the dirt and leaning up enough to kiss Sera's cheek. "We do, when I'm not being stupid."
Sera raised an eyebrow. "You mean, you admit to being stupid?"
"If the shoe fits…" Asala squirmed a little, and not entirely in the fun way. "I've been an arsehole lately. I know."
Sera squinted a bit. "Do you?" she asked, running her fingers over one of Asala's horns. "Do you really know, or are you saying that to make me feel better?"
"Does it seem like I need to make you feel better right now?"
"Feel pretty good, so no." Sera squirmed, getting used to lying on top of Asala and making herself comfortable, settling the whole of her weight upon her. "But yeah, Shiny. You've been an arse. And I put up with lots of your shit. You know why? Because I'm your lover, and putting up with shit is what lovers do. But it's also fun, and good, and … shit. Words, and stuff."
"Keep talking like that and you'll make us sound serious or something." Asala grinned, almost ridiculously. Sera was telling her what a jackass she'd been, but all she could hear was I love you, I care about you, you're stuck with me.
"We are serious," Sera insisted. "I mean, we're not serious people, but I'm seriously in love with you. You're my person. You're my … my other half. And when you went off and made decisions without acting like I mattered, I thought …"
She trailed off, frowning. "I thought I wasn't your other half at all."
"I got caught up in trying to do everything right that I stopped listening." Asala rested her hands on Sera's thighs and squeezed affectionately. "I can't just be another person in the crowd here. I had to make it impossible for them to dismiss me. And I just… I tried too hard. I thought if I asked you, you'd tell me not to do it or try to make me stop. So I just didn't ask."
"Well, that's stupid," said Sera, huffing. "Even if I did say that, I'm not hard to convince. I stayed with you when you ran the frigging Inquisition." She rested her arms on Asala's breasts, and her chin atop her arms. "You're a good leader. You're the kind of leader more people should be like, and you don't make me hate you. But if we're together, we're together. And that means that the big things, you need to pretend like you care what I think. I'm not your toy or something, yeah? I don't just look pretty on your arm. We matter to each other."
Asala leaned in for a short kiss, pulling back before craning her neck for it got awkward. "Why are you so smart?"
Sera squirmed a little, her smile softening when Asala called her smart. She knew she was smart, she knew she was smarter than a lot of people, but no one seemed to think she was. No one really seemed to acknowledge that perhaps she knew more than people assumed.
"I pay attention to shit," she said, with a proud tilt of her chin.
"More than I do, most of the time," Asala admitted, reaching up to scratch behind her horn. "So are we okay?"
Sera smiled, giving both of Asala's breasts a nice good squeeze. "Yeah, Shiny. We're okay."