[ Nell has two hands, and rather than bother to wrench the one out of his grip (yet) she just pokes him harder with the other just out of spite, even more in his face than before. ]
Everything we've done was necessary to survive. I didn't lose control, I took it back, and we do not deserve to all be locked up for eternity just because you're as squeamish as a seasick nun!
Being in control does not make it—you are fucking impossible—
[ That last bit of hypocrisy might be referring to the finger jabbing into his chest as much as by the argument. Both at once, more likely, combining into a concentrated point of complete impossibility—immovability (hypocritical, as stated) that is, at least, not literal. Not physical. If he can't do anything about her opinions, he can do something about her hands. He grabs her other wrist, too, and he doesn't have to push very far forward to put it and the other against the wall beside her window, pinned at either side of her head, where they can't fucking poke him.
And then he pauses. Two seconds. A second to recognize that he's breathing hard, that pushing her back means his knee is against her thigh, that they have definitely been in this position, more or less, before. Another second to check her face for the kind of deep and repulsed fury that means he should, seriously, back off.
But, in the absence of that, zero seconds to evaluate whether or not kissing her is really the best way to try to win an argument. Obviously it is. ]
[ Oh. Alright. That's what he'll see in her face in those two seconds of consideration: the tail end of her surprise, followed by the beginnings of a knowing smirk that's fast-growing but not fast enough not to be interrupted by his kiss.
Whether this is any way to win the argument is something Nell would naturally dispute, but she can leave that to later. It hardly matters, winning and losing, when they were both arguing less out of actual principle than to try to sate a sort of restless, roiling urge that can only be contained so long without being vented on someone, somehow. This will do, says the look in Nell's eyes in that moment of realization, this will do at least as well.
She bites his lip almost immediately, not quite hard enough to draw blood, and fights against his grip even as the hook of an ankle pushes him nearer. When she rips a hand free its to get a grip on the back of his head, nails pressing into his neck. ]
[ Kostos recoils from the bite—not far, not in pain, just enough to give her a warning look—and gives up on chasing her escaped hand as soon as it would require bending his own arm too far. Trade the battle for the war, because it matters and he is winning. He focuses on the hand he still has, scraping it over the stone wall until it's above her head and shifting more of his weight to task of keeping it there, and pushing his tongue into her mouth because that withdrawal was only tactical and temporary, and using his free hand to pull at whatever laces are holding her shirt together.
He would be a little slower, with anyone else. He'd make sure. But they've already made sure twice, so. So that's a thought for later. Preferably never. Now all the irritated energy that had been snagging on everything it could reach smooths and narrows in focus, and he doesn't think about anything else.
(—and fine, it's not about winning—)
He only needs her shirt loose enough to expose one breast, because that's what he wants. The exposure, and a nipple to roll ungently between his knuckles, in the daylight, with an open window and a locked door. ]
Edited (realized if i was referencing their argument elsewhere people might look for it and i should warn, whoops) 2018-04-03 05:30 (UTC)
[ (But if it were about winning—) Nell lets him shove her arm above her head, no complaint about the drag of cold stone against skin. The last two times were different: the first practically shaking with adrenaline after a near-miss, boots caked with mud and blood still dripping from a wound on her shoulder; the second thoroughly drunk after the dullest sort of bad day. But the sobriety and the daylight are things to focus on ignoring later.
For now they hardly cross her mind, not when there is so much else to occupy it. That pale pink peak—skin and shade both strangely delicate compared to everything else about her—is caught and flushed red in his grip, and her own curls into the collar of his shirt. She hauls back and up until it catches at his throat, and in case that seems like a mixed signal, she pulls her head back to direct, smirking as she continues to strange him just a little: ]
Off.
[ She'll hook her leg higher around his hip as he does it, skirts pushed up around one stockinged knee. ]
[ If it were about winning then right now he'd refuse on principle. The principle being don't tell me what to do. Or maybe I'm busy. For a moment, slightly strangled by his own shirt and everything, he looks considering bordering on mutinous. Then his glare shifts into something better-humored and he pulls his hands away from her wrist and her chest, in that order of lingering reluctance, to peel out of his shirt and drop it onto the sill. He undoes his belt, too. While he's at it.
But from there his hand wanders to her knee and up beneath her skirt, first to jerk them both flush at the hips, and then to search for the upper end of her stockings, and then to be temporarily distracted from that goal by the prospect of pushing against her and crawling his hand further up to find bare skin at her side. Another place that's softer than most of her—and he's a fan of the harder places, too, objectively and aesthetically speaking, but there's less there to sink his fingertips into.
[ The sound Nell makes is confused--on the one hand, there's his breath on her ear and the weight of him pinning her to the stone and his bare chest against hers and his hand making its way up her thigh, plenty to like in all of that--and then on the other there's what he says. It's something surprised and incredulous, like maybe she was about to make a pleased noise but instead has choked midway, which is about true. ]
Now you decide you like to talk?
[ Her stockings end not so very far above the knee, and her patience doesn't go much further than that, nails dug into the nape of his neck again as her grip tightens, jerking his head back by the hair so she can make sure he's unable to speak for at least a moment or two on account of her tongue in his mouth. ]
[ If it were about winning, if Kostos were keeping score, he'd give himself a point. He gets four smiles a week, max, and he wastes one of them against her lips, bared teeth and an inhale at the press of her nails, before he launches a counter strike on her mouth and slides his hand around her thigh, between her legs, to search for heat through the cloth and spend a few seconds working to draw out more.
And then that really has to go—the underwear, which requires pulling free of her hooked knee so he can pull them down past her thighs. The skirt gets in the way a bit, so it's next. The stockings he pauses to contemplate, fingers pausing at the hems for a moment, before he decides yes and leaves them there. It's cold. They're hot.
When he moves back in, it's with that same hand pushing between her thighs, curled not quite into a fist, definitely not meant to bruise, but not soft, either, and more knuckles than fingers. The other he uses on a handful of hair, to pull her head back, firm and abrupt, and move his mouth to her neck to suck hard on her pulse point.
He doesn't like to talk. He doesn't particularly want her to talk, either. But if she gets desperate enough to ask him, that's another point for the tally he definitely isn't keeping. ]
[ Obviously this is not about winning, or scoring points, or anything like that. Pitting mages against each other with scores and points and victories is just the Chantry's way of keeping them down. Or something. Nothing to do with the fact that Nell is losing.
And continuing to lose, too, kicking her skirt aside and then failing to swallow down the noise loosed from the back of her throat as he suddenly tugs her head back and keeps hold of that grip. The sound of it is still a near-silent humming in her throat when he sets his mouth to it, and it ticks up almost to audible at that first press of his hand between her legs.
For a few minutes she's content, hooking her knee back up around his hip, scraping nails through his hair and down the back of his shoulder blade, and generally just enjoying the blunt push of his knuckles and the sharp graze of his teeth. For a few minutes. And then it begins to get frustrating, just as he'd hoped, and she tugs at the fastenings of his trousers in unsubtle hint, and when that still does not take she finally reaches down to catch his wrist with a snarled: ] Maker, would you just--
[ She's stronger than he is—something he didn't believe, at first, but in the years since he's had proof—and it isn't actually easy for him to hold so far back, so he only puts up token resistance to her interference. But he also pulls harder on her hair, aiming to tip her head further back, and leaves her bruised neck behind to look her in the face. Not smiling, exactly, but it's nearly a smirk. Winning.
Winning, and taking the opportunity to pull his wrist free, to massage a bared breast again, and maybe push his good luck with a half-mocking— ]
[ The breath she's inhaling hitches as her head is yanked back, no doubt turning that smirk all the smirkier. She doesn't exactly fight his grip but her chin is swung to the side, jaw working in a kind of frustration and then grit in a grimace as he shifts his hand. She fixes Kostos and his mockery with a look. ]
Fuck you.
[ She stops fighting with a stuck button on his pants and leans back more firmly against the wall, maintaining unwavering eye contact as she reaches down between her legs and replaces the fingers he's withdrawn with her own. So there. ]
Edited (every time i reread this tag i put the emphasis on the wrong word in this sentence and confuse myself even tho i fucking wrote it so i'm changing it) 2018-04-21 15:36 (UTC)
For a few moments it's only interesting in his peripheral awareness, while he stubbornly returns her eye contact and doesn't quite manage to glare. Close, but he's a little too impressed, and a little too interested, and silently deciding whether or not to sacrifice some of his hard-earned points on looking down.
He does. He does it with deliberateness, a decision rather than a slip, but then an inhale, too, while he steps back to handle his buttons, and a self-bracing, disbelieving head tilt on the exhale, because of the open shirt and stockings, the bruises on her neck and her working hand. It's a good look for her. Next time—
It would be a good look for anybody.
When he reaches for her again, it's to pull her away from the wall and turn her decisively around, using both hands to push her shoulders against the cold stone and then to position and pull her hips back to meet him when he presses inside her. It's a head-clearing relief, and after a few preliminary hard, shallow rocks forward he remembers he has an argument to win and moves his hands—not back between her legs, she can continue to take care of that herself or she can wait, but one to snake up her stomach and seize on a nipple again, and the other to her throat. ]
[ It's difficult to win when your opponent knows all your weaknesses. But also hard for Nell to feel like she's losing when exploiting those weaknesses means Kostos is giving her precisely what she wants. Doesn't that mean she wins, in the end?
She braces a forearm against the wall, holding herself back just far enough not to scrape her face on the stone and letting him do the work of moving, head hanging for a moment until his hand finds her throat. He'll feel her reaction to that: a clench of excitement around him, a breath sucked in in anticipation. The hand between her legs reaches back to his hip, slick fingers finding a grip where his pants are slipping down, nails like spurs dug into his flank. She lets his hands force her closer to upright and then leans forward eagerly into their grip. ]
[ Kostos doesn't need to see her face to know she's on board, obviously, but his grip on her neck doesn't tighten as much or for as long at a time as it would if he could—never mind that she can probably throw him off or light him on fire if it's too much. He'd rather things not end that way. Because he wins, in the end, definitely, if she comes apart in his hands. That's precisely what he wants.
He ducks his head in to keep an ear on her breathing, and to smell her hair, and to sink teeth sharply into her shoulder, once, while his hips go still long enough to keep his control from fraying, hard enough to leave stinging marks behind.
When he moves again, it's to slip out and back, to turn her around and back her by the shoulders toward her desk. It's less frenetic than last time, nothing knocked over on the way, deliberately paced. He doesn't have anything to say about it, charming or otherwise, but he smiles a little (again, it's a miracle) while he backs her onto it, encourages her legs to spread for him, pushes her shoulders toward the wall behind it, closes his hand around her throat again. Now he can see her face. ]
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no subject
Everything we've done was necessary to survive. I didn't lose control, I took it back, and we do not deserve to all be locked up for eternity just because you're as squeamish as a seasick nun!
no subject
[ That last bit of hypocrisy might be referring to the finger jabbing into his chest as much as by the argument. Both at once, more likely, combining into a concentrated point of complete impossibility—immovability (hypocritical, as stated) that is, at least, not literal. Not physical. If he can't do anything about her opinions, he can do something about her hands. He grabs her other wrist, too, and he doesn't have to push very far forward to put it and the other against the wall beside her window, pinned at either side of her head, where they can't fucking poke him.
And then he pauses. Two seconds. A second to recognize that he's breathing hard, that pushing her back means his knee is against her thigh, that they have definitely been in this position, more or less, before. Another second to check her face for the kind of deep and repulsed fury that means he should, seriously, back off.
But, in the absence of that, zero seconds to evaluate whether or not kissing her is really the best way to try to win an argument. Obviously it is. ]
no subject
Whether this is any way to win the argument is something Nell would naturally dispute, but she can leave that to later. It hardly matters, winning and losing, when they were both arguing less out of actual principle than to try to sate a sort of restless, roiling urge that can only be contained so long without being vented on someone, somehow. This will do, says the look in Nell's eyes in that moment of realization, this will do at least as well.
She bites his lip almost immediately, not quite hard enough to draw blood, and fights against his grip even as the hook of an ankle pushes him nearer. When she rips a hand free its to get a grip on the back of his head, nails pressing into his neck. ]
sexual content warning
He would be a little slower, with anyone else. He'd make sure. But they've already made sure twice, so. So that's a thought for later. Preferably never. Now all the irritated energy that had been snagging on everything it could reach smooths and narrows in focus, and he doesn't think about anything else.
(—and fine, it's not about winning—)
He only needs her shirt loose enough to expose one breast, because that's what he wants. The exposure, and a nipple to roll ungently between his knuckles, in the daylight, with an open window and a locked door. ]
no subject
For now they hardly cross her mind, not when there is so much else to occupy it. That pale pink peak—skin and shade both strangely delicate compared to everything else about her—is caught and flushed red in his grip, and her own curls into the collar of his shirt. She hauls back and up until it catches at his throat, and in case that seems like a mixed signal, she pulls her head back to direct, smirking as she continues to strange him just a little: ]
Off.
[ She'll hook her leg higher around his hip as he does it, skirts pushed up around one stockinged knee. ]
no subject
But from there his hand wanders to her knee and up beneath her skirt, first to jerk them both flush at the hips, and then to search for the upper end of her stockings, and then to be temporarily distracted from that goal by the prospect of pushing against her and crawling his hand further up to find bare skin at her side. Another place that's softer than most of her—and he's a fan of the harder places, too, objectively and aesthetically speaking, but there's less there to sink his fingertips into.
He dips his head, mouth near her ear. ]
Seasick nun.
no subject
Now you decide you like to talk?
[ Her stockings end not so very far above the knee, and her patience doesn't go much further than that, nails dug into the nape of his neck again as her grip tightens, jerking his head back by the hair so she can make sure he's unable to speak for at least a moment or two on account of her tongue in his mouth. ]
no subject
And then that really has to go—the underwear, which requires pulling free of her hooked knee so he can pull them down past her thighs. The skirt gets in the way a bit, so it's next. The stockings he pauses to contemplate, fingers pausing at the hems for a moment, before he decides yes and leaves them there. It's cold. They're hot.
When he moves back in, it's with that same hand pushing between her thighs, curled not quite into a fist, definitely not meant to bruise, but not soft, either, and more knuckles than fingers. The other he uses on a handful of hair, to pull her head back, firm and abrupt, and move his mouth to her neck to suck hard on her pulse point.
He doesn't like to talk. He doesn't particularly want her to talk, either. But if she gets desperate enough to ask him, that's another point for the tally he definitely isn't keeping. ]
no subject
And continuing to lose, too, kicking her skirt aside and then failing to swallow down the noise loosed from the back of her throat as he suddenly tugs her head back and keeps hold of that grip. The sound of it is still a near-silent humming in her throat when he sets his mouth to it, and it ticks up almost to audible at that first press of his hand between her legs.
For a few minutes she's content, hooking her knee back up around his hip, scraping nails through his hair and down the back of his shoulder blade, and generally just enjoying the blunt push of his knuckles and the sharp graze of his teeth. For a few minutes. And then it begins to get frustrating, just as he'd hoped, and she tugs at the fastenings of his trousers in unsubtle hint, and when that still does not take she finally reaches down to catch his wrist with a snarled: ] Maker, would you just--
no subject
Winning, and taking the opportunity to pull his wrist free, to massage a bared breast again, and maybe push his good luck with a half-mocking— ]
Just—?
no subject
Fuck you.
[ She stops fighting with a stuck button on his pants and leans back more firmly against the wall, maintaining unwavering eye contact as she reaches down between her legs and replaces the fingers he's withdrawn with her own. So there. ]
no subject
interesting.
For a few moments it's only interesting in his peripheral awareness, while he stubbornly returns her eye contact and doesn't quite manage to glare. Close, but he's a little too impressed, and a little too interested, and silently deciding whether or not to sacrifice some of his hard-earned points on looking down.
He does. He does it with deliberateness, a decision rather than a slip, but then an inhale, too, while he steps back to handle his buttons, and a self-bracing, disbelieving head tilt on the exhale, because of the open shirt and stockings, the bruises on her neck and her working hand. It's a good look for her. Next time—
It would be a good look for anybody.
When he reaches for her again, it's to pull her away from the wall and turn her decisively around, using both hands to push her shoulders against the cold stone and then to position and pull her hips back to meet him when he presses inside her. It's a head-clearing relief, and after a few preliminary hard, shallow rocks forward he remembers he has an argument to win and moves his hands—not back between her legs, she can continue to take care of that herself or she can wait, but one to snake up her stomach and seize on a nipple again, and the other to her throat. ]
no subject
She braces a forearm against the wall, holding herself back just far enough not to scrape her face on the stone and letting him do the work of moving, head hanging for a moment until his hand finds her throat. He'll feel her reaction to that: a clench of excitement around him, a breath sucked in in anticipation. The hand between her legs reaches back to his hip, slick fingers finding a grip where his pants are slipping down, nails like spurs dug into his flank. She lets his hands force her closer to upright and then leans forward eagerly into their grip. ]
no subject
He ducks his head in to keep an ear on her breathing, and to smell her hair, and to sink teeth sharply into her shoulder, once, while his hips go still long enough to keep his control from fraying, hard enough to leave stinging marks behind.
When he moves again, it's to slip out and back, to turn her around and back her by the shoulders toward her desk. It's less frenetic than last time, nothing knocked over on the way, deliberately paced. He doesn't have anything to say about it, charming or otherwise, but he smiles a little (again, it's a miracle) while he backs her onto it, encourages her legs to spread for him, pushes her shoulders toward the wall behind it, closes his hand around her throat again. Now he can see her face. ]