Random Hotel Room, Sunday Morning

[not_every_mage]

Anders woke up first, surprised by the now-unfamiliar rhythm of someone else breathing next to him. It took him the smallest fraction of a second before he realized the shape next to him was Kathy.

His head spun. He'd had too much to drink the night before; they both had. She might wake up and decide this was a one-off, that they shouldn't spoil fifteen years of mostly platonic friendship over a drunken mistake.

She might. But deep in his most selfish heart, he hoped that she wouldn't.

He curved closer to her, enjoying the moment as much as he could before what he feared would be its inevitable end.

[OOC: For one, please!]

Comments

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy sighed and snuggled closer to the warmth at her side. Like Anders, this had become unfamiliar over the years. She and Alex had separated over a year and a half ago and even before then, they'd started keeping different schedules between Kathy's flitting between worlds and her legal duties and Alex's life as Havok. If it had been more than two years since they'd had sex, it had been almost as long since they'd cuddled and slept together.

But if it had been two years since she'd woken up after a night of passion with her ex-husband, it had been even longer since she'd done so with Anders. And yet, when she finally rose up to consciousness, she wasn't confused at all.

"Anders..." she murmured, giving him a sleepy smile. "Mornin'."

[not_every_mage]

"Hi," he said, smiling bashfully back at her. It was hard to feel like anything was wrong when Kathy was smiling up from his arms. "How did you sleep?"

[spin_kick_snap]

"Better than I have in...well, years," she admitted, cuddling closer. "I needed that. A lot."

The drinking. The talking. The affection. The sex. Oh god, the sex.

[not_every_mage]

"Me too," Anders agreed, kissing along her ear. Her answer had him more relaxed as his worries she'd tell him it had been a mistake lessened. "It's been too long I was with someone I like this much."

[spin_kick_snap]

"I probably shouldn't say this aloud, but me too," Kathy said with a dreamy little laugh. "Far too long. An embarrassing amount of time too long.

Considering she'd been married and all.

She turned and caught his mouth in a lingering kiss. She might not have been ready ro run into his arms and declare herself or anything, but regretting the night before -up through the early hours of the morning before - was not happening. "Not still tired?" she teased. "I was rather--" Relentless. Insatiable. Starved. "--amorous last night."

[not_every_mage]

"Dante told me about Alex and missionary position," Anders said, and laughed. "All this time I thought the sex had to be good. Couldn't see what else made you pick him out of all the other arseholes in spandex."

He returned the kiss hungrily, tongue sparring with hers. "I'm fine," he said, a little breathless. "You couldn't wear me out when we were kids, and you still can't."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Maybe I was holding back so I didn't scare you off," Kathy said, cheeks flushing rosy. "Not until I finally made up for the past few years of abstinence."

She slowly slid her hand up his chest in lingering strokes--and then playfully thumped his nipple. "That's for gossiping with Dante," she informed him, immediately pressing forward to kiss it better. "You make it sound like I banged everyone with an X on their belt before deciding who to marry. Alex was--is!--very nice. Even through all of this, he's been very nice!"

Just...nice. And Kathy needed more than nice. Especially in bed.

[not_every_mage]

"Not what I meant!" Anders protested through a squirm. "I just meant, people don't get married for nice. I thought maybe he had hidden depths of depravity."

He kissed the top of her head. "Seriously, it's been years?"

[spin_kick_snap]

"I did," Kathy retorted. Maybe eventually she would explain that Alex's uncomplicated goodness had been a balm for her battered heart after that first initial rush of grief after hearing Anders had died and again, later, when he'd returned, but had been dealing with his own inner demons, the kind Dante couldn't kill. "It took me a while to realize that working so well together when heroing didn't translate to having shit in common when we weren't."

She'd been young and stupid and desperate to have somewhere to belong. Someone to belong to, really.

"And--well, yeah," she said, a touch defensive. "We were separated for almost eighteen months!"

So no sex while they'd attempted to 'work out their differences.' Or for more than six months before that.

[not_every_mage]

"I know, but I didn't know separated meant 'no sex with anyone, period,'" Anders told her. He'd assumed she and Alex still slept together sometimes,and hadn't really given Kathy's sex life too much thought. "It sounds ... dull. I'm glad I never got married."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Well...Alex and I..." Kathy looked embarrassed. "We weren't really compatible in a lot of ways. And the last time we started anything, it turned into an argument about kids and..." She trailed off, blushing. "It isn't marriage that's the problem. It was me."

[not_every_mage]

"I can't believe you were the problem," Anders said firmly. "At least not in bed."

He propped himself on his elbow, and now it was his turn to look embarrassed. "Do you want kids?" he asked. "Not right now, but in general?"

[spin_kick_snap]

"I do," Kathy said with a quiet intensity. "Though by this point, I doubt anything but adoption is the answer. I am almost forty after all." She tried not to look disappointed, but Anders knew her well enough to see the emotions she hid. "The problem was that Alex and I both wanted kids, but I refused to raise children in that world. Any child we had would almost certainly be a mutant and I'd be damned if I raised a child of mine in a world that immediately saw them as being lesser because of a trait they were born with."

Anders probably remembered her using a similar argument when they'd talked about Carys, back when she visited the island.

"I said I'd rather raise a child at DMC with demons running around than in Xavier's paramilitary academy facing off against Sentinels before they could toddle. He scoffed and said something about how that wasn't a surprise, I demanded to know what he meant by that and it just spiraled from there."

[not_every_mage]

"It'd have to be adoption for me, too," Anders said, not sounding much happier about it than Kathy was. "Most Grey Wardens are infertile. Something about drinking darkspawn blood throws a lot of things about your body out of whack."

He ran his fingers through Kathy's hair. "I had no idea you and Alex were going through that," he said. "He wouldn't consider moving, even part-time?"

[spin_kick_snap]

"His work with the X-Men was too important," Kathy replied, managing to sound bitter and defensive at once. "And the more I flitted between the three worlds, the more entrenched he became in his. In fairness, though, his brother was there, his cause was there, his life was there. And he didn't think I worked hard enough to make that true for me, too."

[not_every_mage]

"Besides going to college there, marrying him, and risking your life every other month because something terrifying was going to happen if you didn't," Anders said, sour. "No, you made no sacrifices at all."

[spin_kick_snap]

"He said I lived with one foot out the door," Kathy said softly. "That even when I was with him, my attention was somewhere else, with someone else. Whether it was DMC or Leverage, there was always something going on that was more important than making a life and a family with him." She sighed, throwing an arm over her eyes, and rolling away slightly, back on the bed. "I can't say he's wrong, either."

[not_every_mage]

"That's like what I've heard from everybody I've dated for more than six months," Anders said quietly. "That no matter what was going on with them, they felt like you and Dante always came first. They weren't wrong either."

[spin_kick_snap]

"We both should have known that it wasn't going to work out when I blew off his brother's graduation and the first big Meet The Parents thing when I ran back to DMC because you'd come back," Kathy said, dropping her arm to glance over at him. "Remember, I spent like two weeks hovering over you and generally being a pain in the ass?" She smiled at him, all wistfulness at the memory.

[not_every_mage]

Anders smiled back, though the memory brought some pain to his eyes even now. "I remember," he said. "I appreciated it, even if I wasn't much company."

He'd still had healing bruises from the last battle when he moved in with Dante, and it was years before he slept properly without a darkspawn poking its ugly head into his dreams.

[spin_kick_snap]

"You didn't have to be," Kathy said. "You were alive and that was enough."

And if he'd been in any fit state to resume their relationship, Kathy would have left Alex in a hot second. But he hadn't been and Kathy didn't want to potentially hurt Alex on the chance that maybe one day he would be (and would want to) and so she'd gone back and time had passed and their relationship had progressed.

"I've missed you," she murmured, kissing his chest. "Not just this but you. We've been holding ourselves apart, haven't we?"

[not_every_mage]

He petted the back of her head, relaxing bonelessly against her form.

"We've had to," he said. "You were married, and ... it was hard, figuring out how to just be your friend again. I'm not sure I ever got the trick of it."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Now you know how I felt way back in...what? 2015? When you were with Nathan and I was trying very hard not to give away how much I was crushing on you," Kathy said with a rueful smile. It hadn't been love back then--probably--but she'd been seventeen and pining and probably absolutely ridiculous.

[not_every_mage]

"Except I was with Nathan for eighteen months, and you were married a decade," Anders laughed. "But we were teenagers. Eighteen months of swallowing a crush probably felt like ten years."

[spin_kick_snap]

"It absolutely did," Kathy said. "Especially when I was fantasizing about swallowing you." Her fingers brushed against him, saying hello. "Not that I was all that great about being subtle about said crush. How long did you know?"