Holy crap, a Dragon Age ficlet from Flutie? WHAT IS THIS MADNESS?
Just playing around with these two adorable lugnuts, trying to indulge some nostalgic feels and get a sense for their voices again. A sequel, of sorts, to this, an AU college!verse in which Merrill’s a science and public policy major,Carver’s an undeclared science major, and Marian’s the physics genius who’d wise-cracked her way into a 4.0. Enjoy!
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Unlike Marian, who’d scored a full-ride scholarship to U of Kirkwall, of course, Carver has had to bust his ass to pay for school. He keeps a couple part-time jobs: one slinging burgers at Meeran’s, another slinging lasers and spectrometers in the physics department stock room. They don’t usually give those jobs to kids outside the department, but in his interview Carver had apparently impressed the supervisor by knowing the difference between a lathe and a table saw, as if the distinction were some ancient Mayan secret, forever lost to the ages. Of course, to most of these spoiled rich kids, it probably is. But with a famous physicist for a father, Carver had seen his fair share of power tools and soldering irons, and he probably knows more about lab equipment than most of the professors. Those boneheads wouldn’t know their ass from an optical mount. No wonder Athenril hired him.
Of course it had nothing to do, nothing at all, with that one time Marian walked into Meeran’s, wrinkled her nose at Carver’s paper hat, and proceeded to blather on (and on, and on) about how for her baby brother’s sake, she might be able to pull a few strings with her department head.
Stupid Marian. Always helping, always having to be the center of the damn universe. Maker save him from his older sister’s help.
November 2012
This is the single most awkward dinner Sam’s ever had, and he grew up with Bobby so that’s sort of saying something. The discomfort isn’t even because they’re all crammed into Ash’s stupid attic apartment, which is freezing despite the bodies clustered together around the room. Hell, Sam doesn’t even think it’s because of the rapidly cooling pizza that no one but his idiot brother is eating or the random computer parts and video game controllers strewn about like landmines. No, Sam’s damned positive that all the strangling tension in the loft is entirely due to the twins sitting uncomfortably on the upturned milk crates at the center of this weird gathering of everyone in the Winchester inner circle.
DEAN NO. BAD DEAN. BAD. GO SIT IN THE NAUGHTY CORNER.
Anyone looking to write a deliciously real Dean should study the shit out of dean1911’s drabbles.
It happens in an instant.
Dick Roman is grinning like a maniac and that smug expression, the one that makes you want to punch until your arms give out and shoot until there aren’t any more bullets, just freezes in place. No one else seems to notice, so you glance over your right shoulder, instinctive like gravity, to Sam, but he’s not moving either. In fact, no one else in the room seems to be breathing, swaying, sweating—not the demon bitch to your rear, the new King of Hell beside her, or the mad fallen angel at your shoulder. The Leviathan aren’t attacking, Crowley isn’t giving a snappy rejoinder in his million-dollar suit, and Cas isn’t muttering to himself about bees in a broken voice that once commanded armies in Heaven.
Jesus Christ. Around the midpoint, right when foreheads were touching, I started bawling.
Carver and Merrill are university students that have to read the same book for their freshman English class. Late night study session. GO.
she’s just enraptured by the way your mouth moves, Carver
good thing you have coffee because I bet you’ll be up all night studying
Is she—
Yep, still staring. At me. Like I’m some sort of monkey, and she’s waiting for me to dance.
I grit my teeth and force myself to ignore her, because, dammit, Carver Hawke is nobody’s monkey.
“She gave me for my pains—“ She sighs, her breath making a little flutter against my arm, hot and brief. “A world of—“ Goddammit, she did it again. Wait. She’s not doing this on purpose, is she?
“A world of—what?” I slam my hands on the table and wheel on her.
Goddammit. She’s still staring.
“What?” Trust Merrill to make one syllable sound so innocent and yet so dirty at the same time.
“I can’t do this with you, with you,” the heat rises to my cheeks, “sighing all over the place.”
She brings a small hand up to her mouth, to hide a smile she thinks I can’t see. “Oh, Carver. Don’t be so literal.”
I frown. “What?”
“The line?” She leans against me and pokes a finger against the play in my hands. She’s warm. Firm. Pressed against my arm like it means nothing at all. “The line you’re reading? She gave me for my pains a world of sighs. See?“
“I see,” I grunt. Something on her smells like apples. Her hair, maybe. It’s like the stuff her friend Bela uses—not that I’ve been paying attention. “If you know this play so well, maybe you should read it.”
“Nah.” She leans back, the half-smirk still toying with the corners of her lips. “I like when you do it better.”
Quickly I look down at the play in my hands. Without her pressed against it, my arm feels cold. “But you’re not even listening to me.”
“Of course I am.” She pauses so long that I look up again. When our eyes meet, she lowers her lashes ever so slightly, and bites her curling lip in a way that goes straight down my spine, and I suddenly get the sense she’s been waiting for me to look up all this time, just so she could look at me like that. “Intently.”
“Then, uh.” I swallow. Words. Breath. Making. How? “Guess—I better keep going.”
She hesitates a moment, and I swear her eyes drop to my lips before whatever that expression is on her face dissolves, melting away into a full, wide grin.
“Guess so,” she chirps. She waves her hand. “Orate on, my good Othello.”
It takes me a moment to figure out she said orate and not something else.
Stupid Carver. No. Goddammit. Stupid monkey.
Work on this Sabrina!DA fic is slow, but steady. I’m still toying with this, but I thought iheartapostates might like to see a taste of what madness she has inspired with her beautiful artwork. So here’s the intro — which is a take off the monologue that opens the original movie.
(*”Sabrae-da” means “the little Sabrae” in elvish, where Sabrae is the [rather fortunate, don’t you think?] name of Merrill’s clan)
Sabrae-da*: The Prologue
Once upon a time in the Hightown district of Kirkwall, some 30 miles from Starkhaven, there lived a small girl on a large estate.
The Amell estate was very large, and had many servants. There were elves to take care of the gardens, and a tree spirit-healer on retainer.
There was an elf to hang the banners in the spring, and scrape the snow off them in the winter.
There were elves to take care of the grounds: the outdoor tennis court and the indoor tennis court; the outdoor swimming pool and the indoor swimming pool—and, oddly, a young dwarf of no particular title who took care of a small pool in the garden for a goldfish named Enchantment.
For all these servants on the estate, there was a Keeper by the name of Marethari, who had been imported from the Sundermount some years ago, together with a new landship. Marethari was a fine Keeper of considerable polish, like the eight Dalish landships in her care, in which she comported her employers about Kirkwall in the true Orlesian fashion.
And Marethari had a daughter by the name of Sabrae-da—but everyone called her Merrill “for short”.
It was the eve of the annual Feastdays, and as had been tradition for the past several years, the Amells were giving a party.
It never rained on the night of an Amell party. The Amells wouldn’t have stood for it.
There were four Amells in all — Mother, Uncle, and two sons – although three of them were of the modern sort, and insisted on going by their deceased father’s name, Hawke. Mother, in particular, would inform solicitors and houseguests alike, “We are a flock of Hawkes.”
Leandra and Malcolm were married in 9:06 Dragon. Among their many wedding presents was a town house in Ferelden, and this estate for weekends. But Malcolm died several years back, and the town house had since been converted into a Grey Warden outpost.
Carver Hawke, the younger son, graduated from Gallows University, where his classmates voted him the Templar most likely to leave his alma mater millions.
His brother, Garrett, followed more closely to Uncle’s example. He went through several of the best Marcher colleges for short periods of time, and through several marriages for even shorter periods of time. He is now a successful six-goal wallop player, and is listed on Carver’s tax return as a deduction.
Life was pleasant among the Amells, and the Hawkes—for this was as close to heaven as one could get in Kirkwall.
