[ He gets her with that last sentence. Til then, Nell is just about chomping at the bit to keep arguing, not even just with what he's saying but with a hundred more points she's come up with in the minute since she last spoke. There's some disappointment at having that chance taken away, but some weird pride, too. (She likes to think it's her influence that brings him round to that strategic finish, that her pragmatism has tempered and honed him. More like they've fumbled their way through all of this together and by now he knows what's most likely to move her, but whatever.) ]
A deliberate exception would look better than broken ranks, and there are too many with scruples. [ scruples, like it's a disease ] But it should be just that, an exception, for specific, narrow cases where lives are actually in danger and non-mages can't help. None of this stopping in stages crap, all that does is draw the whole thing out longer and make it easier to tell which of us is most replaceable.
[ He looks briefly surprised at the agreement (because even if it was meant to appeal to her, he hadn't thought it would work) before returning to a sort of subdued rebelliousness (because crap, because it's the smallest exception he would like carved out rather than the largest, because of the way she says scruples). ]
We will all be replaceable if enough mages are concerned about jeopardizing the fate of the entire world, [ he says, for lack of anything else to be contrary about now without going back and raising his own bar. ] And there are Loyalists at Skyhold—grown ones—who will not go along with destruction, whatever you tell them. If I had any sense left I would be say they should be secured in Val Royeaux until the new Divine can decide.
[ If he wanted to argue more that was perfectly executed, practically knocking Nell back as she rolls her entire head, eyes alone not being nearly enough. ]
Maker, save me from your self-loathing Loyalist bullshit. "Secured in Val Royeaux." I hardly know where to begin with that notion. Your balls really are in that vault and someone misled you about what the Hands of the Divine are for! [ Harder, not joking at all: ] There is no point in helping to save the world if they're just going to deny us a place in it again.
And there is no point to this. He might be able to say there was one later, that arguing against him is good practice for arguing against Loyalists who haven't given up later, but really it's just that he's always somewhat spoiling for a fight. ]
[ well he's COME TO THE RIGHT PLACE and the fact that the buttons he's pushing are incredibly obvious doesn't make them less effective, not when Nell's already riled up and having to rein it in to try to be diplomatic and not send everyone on the crystals running for the hills ]
So are the Abyssal Wastes [ she snaps ] so is a Tevinter slave pen. We would be better off letting Corypheus conquer this entire fucking world than going back to the way things were.
Edited (not nagging, just rethinking) 2018-03-31 22:54 (UTC)
First of all, plenty of Tevinter slaves are kept in conditions at least as nice as a Circle, are you going to tell me that doesn't really count as slavery now? And more importantly, at least they're honest! They admit that they own people and use them, while the Chantry insists they're out to protect us all while they do the same damned thing.
It's protecting themselves, not us. And the city guard is completely different! They don't steal children from their families and lock them up just because they have the chance of maybe someday becoming criminals.
[ I see your italics, and raise you some dramatic gesturing. ]
A tiny fraction of mages hurt people, just like a tiny fraction of people become criminals. Do you want to go round up everyone in Lowtown and stick them in a tower, because they're slightly more likely to kill someone than the general population?
Yes, [ Kostos says, with dramatic eyebrows instead of hand gestures, because he's folding his arms. ] Yes, that is exactly the same thing and exactly what I want. When do we start?
[ Do what? he asks, slightly via eyebrows but mainly via unfolding his arms to spread them at his sides, which has a bonus hint of come at me. ]
If we cannot admit that we are not like other people, you are never going to make progress with anyone but Libertarians, and everyone else will never let us go, because they are not stupid.
[ It's like he wants Nell to come shove him, which she looks increasingly likely to do. ]
You'd like that, wouldn't you? [ two can play at the shitty nitpicking game ] You'd like them to never let us go so you can go back to hiding in your Circle, enjoying your three meals a day and four-poster bed and patting yourself on the back for being a good boy who did what the Chantry said instead of actually trying to live in the world and take responsibility for controlling yourself without them there to hold your hand.
[ Two can play it, and right now she's better at it, even if she has no way to know exactly how good—a spot so sore he hides it even from her, especially from her, and covers it now by stepping forward instead of back. ]
Responsibility? I know what I am. I know what my limits are. And you can—fuck.
[ Off. But he's too angry, momentarily, for prepositions. ]
You can't fuck in your precious Circles, you'd think that'd be a dealbreaker for you.
[ She may not know precisely why, but Nell has a sense for blood in the water and pushes forward, jabbing a finger in the center of his chest in time-honored, incredibly-irritating fashion as she intentionally misinterprets his exclamation. ]
What are you so afraid of, Kostos? You know your limits. You've been out in the world for years now, when are you going to man up and stop crying for a fucking nanny to come hover over your shoulder?
But the quip isn't important, save for how obnoxious it is, especially coupled with the jabbing. He grabs her wrist and drags it aside, shoulder-height and out from between them, and doesn't let go, but not in, like, a cute way. He assumes she'll poke him again otherwise. He also knows she's enough stronger than him to do it anyway if she wants to, but at least there will be some distance to cover on the way. ]
Maybe when it's been more than two years since we— [ Not you, at least. Not even in his head. Whatever issues he may or may not have with responsibility generally, he's pretty good at taking blame. ] —proved why we need one.
[ 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. ]
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A deliberate exception would look better than broken ranks, and there are too many with scruples. [ scruples, like it's a disease ] But it should be just that, an exception, for specific, narrow cases where lives are actually in danger and non-mages can't help. None of this stopping in stages crap, all that does is draw the whole thing out longer and make it easier to tell which of us is most replaceable.
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We will all be replaceable if enough mages are concerned about jeopardizing the fate of the entire world, [ he says, for lack of anything else to be contrary about now without going back and raising his own bar. ] And there are Loyalists at Skyhold—grown ones—who will not go along with destruction, whatever you tell them. If I had any sense left I would be say they should be secured in Val Royeaux until the new Divine can decide.
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Maker, save me from your self-loathing Loyalist bullshit. "Secured in Val Royeaux." I hardly know where to begin with that notion. Your balls really are in that vault and someone misled you about what the Hands of the Divine are for! [ Harder, not joking at all: ] There is no point in helping to save the world if they're just going to deny us a place in it again.
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And there is no point to this. He might be able to say there was one later, that arguing against him is good practice for arguing against Loyalists who haven't given up later, but really it's just that he's always somewhat spoiling for a fight. ]
The Circles were a place.
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So are the Abyssal Wastes [ she snaps ] so is a Tevinter slave pen. We would be better off letting Corypheus conquer this entire fucking world than going back to the way things were.
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Ah, yes, the Tevinter slave pens, with their three hot meals and four-poster beds.
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[ That's worth standing up over. ]
Us, and everyone else, for a thousand years. It went wrong, but you don't say that because the city guard is corrupt there should be no guard.
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It's protecting themselves, not us. And the city guard is completely different! They don't steal children from their families and lock them up just because they have the chance of maybe someday becoming criminals.
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[ Italics. Oooh. ]
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[ I see your italics, and raise you some dramatic gesturing. ]
A tiny fraction of mages hurt people, just like a tiny fraction of people become criminals. Do you want to go round up everyone in Lowtown and stick them in a tower, because they're slightly more likely to kill someone than the general population?
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If we cannot admit that we are not like other people, you are never going to make progress with anyone but Libertarians, and everyone else will never let us go, because they are not stupid.
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You'd like that, wouldn't you? [ two can play at the shitty nitpicking game ] You'd like them to never let us go so you can go back to hiding in your Circle, enjoying your three meals a day and four-poster bed and patting yourself on the back for being a good boy who did what the Chantry said instead of actually trying to live in the world and take responsibility for controlling yourself without them there to hold your hand.
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Responsibility? I know what I am. I know what my limits are. And you can—fuck.
[ Off. But he's too angry, momentarily, for prepositions. ]
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[ She may not know precisely why, but Nell has a sense for blood in the water and pushes forward, jabbing a finger in the center of his chest in time-honored, incredibly-irritating fashion as she intentionally misinterprets his exclamation. ]
What are you so afraid of, Kostos? You know your limits. You've been out in the world for years now, when are you going to man up and stop crying for a fucking nanny to come hover over your shoulder?
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But the quip isn't important, save for how obnoxious it is, especially coupled with the jabbing. He grabs her wrist and drags it aside, shoulder-height and out from between them, and doesn't let go, but not in, like, a cute way. He assumes she'll poke him again otherwise. He also knows she's enough stronger than him to do it anyway if she wants to, but at least there will be some distance to cover on the way. ]
Maybe when it's been more than two years since we— [ Not you, at least. Not even in his head. Whatever issues he may or may not have with responsibility generally, he's pretty good at taking blame. ] —proved why we need one.
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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!
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[ 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. ]
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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. ]
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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. ]
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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.
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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. ]
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