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]

"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?"

[not_every_mage]

"Swallowing me? What, like a pill?" Anders asked, brushing back against her. "And would you believe I don't remember? I was trying not to read into things."

[spin_kick_snap]

"No, more like oral sex, but I guess your imagery works too," Kathy snorted. "And good. I'd like to pretend that I wasn't painfully obvious about it. My teenage ego is soothed."

[not_every_mage]

"Oh, then I like the oral sex image much better," Anders told her easily. "Go back to talking about that. In as much detail as you can manage. It'll help build up my ego."

[spin_kick_snap]

"What, have you forgotten last night already?" Kathy teased. "I thought I'd done a good job of having actions speak louder than words."

[not_every_mage]

"You have, but I like it when you use your words," Anders said, laughing. "Or is that your way of asking for another round?"

[spin_kick_snap]

"You up for another round?" Kathy asked, leaning into him for another kiss. "...Granted, I might need a little bit of healing before I am."

It had been a long time. Even longer still since Kathy'd gotten the kind of hard use he'd given her last night. She was a little sore and it was perfect.

[not_every_mage]

"Oh, no, where are you going to get that?" Anders asked, tenderly returning the kiss. "...not that I'm not sore, too. Fucking on the ground might be for the young."

[spin_kick_snap]

"And following that up with however many more times afterwards definitely is," Kathy said, grinning. "Totally worth the soreness, though."

She stretched like a cat against him. "So what do you think? Are we too old and tired to spend half the morning that way, too?"

[not_every_mage]

"Absolutely not," Anders said immediately. "We're making up for a lot of lost time. Since whenever the last time I visited you at college was."

He barely remembered the last encounter; it hadn't seemed special, beyond the way Kathy was always special. He hadn't known it would be the last. And then ten days later he was through a portal to Thedas, cursing his luck.

"Did you ever think about me when you were with Alex?" he asked. "I tried not to, with other people, but sometimes ... sometimes my brain went where it wanted to go, and that was usually you."

[spin_kick_snap]

"I felt guilty every time," Kathy said. "And one time, New Year's Eve and I'd had too much champagne, I called our your name. That was unbelievably awkward."

There had been a moment when she'd thought Alex hadn't heard, but then he'd rolled over off of her. And the first thought she'd had was Thank god he's off.

"Apparently I dreamed about Dante sometimes, too," she admitted. "Said his name in my sleep. Alex brought it up during one of our fights, though for all I know, I could have been yelling at him to not be stupid or freaking out over some imaginary demon battle in my head." Though Alex had been certain that was not the case. "Neither of you were very far from my thoughts. And you were never far from my heart."

[not_every_mage]

"I should have tried my luck," Anders said brightly, so he wouldn't cry at all the wasted time. "We could have had a tawdry affair right under Alex's nose. Damn my morals."

[spin_kick_snap]

"I want to say that I wouldn't have," Kathy said softly, her hand mapping out his skin because she couldn't touch him enough. "I'd like to think that I'm a good enough person that I would never have betrayed his trust like that. But...I really don't know. Not for sure. Not if it were you."

She would have spent their whole affair feeling conflicted as hell, though.

[not_every_mage]

"I'm not equipped to be the other man,anyhow," Anders admitted. "For one thing, it wouldn't have been enough, and for another, I don't need the X-Men trying to kill me."

He nestled against her, head on her chest, and kissed a rosy nipple. "But if you'd given me the slightest hit you were interested ... I would have tried."

[spin_kick_snap]

That nipple perked under his lips, standing at attention in hopes of more. For a moment, Kathy was tempted to just shelve all further talk for another few hours but...no. She shouldn't. She needed to make sure they were on the same page. Hell, she needed to figure out what page she was even on.

After ten years, everything was happening both too fast and not fast enough.

"How much is enough?" she asked, eyes swirling with emotion. "I couldn't give Alex enough, either."

[not_every_mage]

"That's not what I meant, love," Anders said, and lifted his head enough to talk properly. "I just mean I don't want to be your secret. The man hiding in the closet when the fellow whose ring you wear gets home. I would have been in second place, and I've done that enough to know it only makes me sad."

He propped his head on his hand, thoughtful. "What's enough for you?"

Could he fill her needs? Some part of him wondered if she would have stayed with Alex so long if she'd believed that he could.

[spin_kick_snap]

"I... don't know," Kathy admitted. "I don't fully know yet what it is that I want. I mean, I'm not going to stop working with Leverage. Eliot, Hardison, and Parker are my family." Eliot had walked her down the aisle, dammit.

"And even as tense everything is with Alex, I want to keep doing my work there, helping mutants get rights. And I don't want to have to fight about doing these things, or be made to feel that I'm being selfish for those times I want to be with them instead." She looked down at the comforter. "I want a lot of things, I guess."

[not_every_mage]

Leave it to Kathy to view wanting to help a lot of people as selfish somehow. Anders rolled his eyes.

"And even after I graduate, I'm going to be working a lot for the next few years," he told her. "We haven't chosen easy lives, Kathy. I don't have any problem with what you're doing with yours except that I want you to come home to me. Just -- try not to run into burning buildings if you don't absolutely have to, all right?"

[spin_kick_snap]

That's how it had been presented to her for the past decade. Her flitting across multiple worlds had taken away from the time she could have spent on his.

"I'll try not to," Kathy said. "Most of my do-gooding happens in the courtroom now, rather than random alleyways." And when she went off to pick fights with Sentinels or demons, she had a team to back her up. "I want to come home to you," she said. "And have you come home to me, too. I want to bitch about my day at the office and have you complain about patients and have nights when we're both so tired we just order in and fall down on the couch to veg out in front of terrible TV."

Part of her was yelling Too fast! Too fast! You just got divorced, too soon! but she was ignoring it. They'd been waiting ten years for this; making them wait longer just to satisfy convention was stupid. And selfish. And wrong.

And speaking of defying convention, she blurted out, "But I want us to share that with Dante, too. Not just the terrible TV, but the everything. Us."