Chapter Text
It had taken them a fortnight to get this far west, and each mile the trip had only gotten worse. She’s never been to the Hissing Wastes before and she’s not coming back voluntarily. Ever. It’s a miserable place, with absolutely no selling points, and she doesn’t know how anything survives in a climate so volatile.
An unclouded day had boiled leather, had boiled her and her nose and forehead and her ears-- her ears of all things! The cowl wasn’t just there for decoration. It promised protection. She feels cheated.
Oh, balls. She’s already peeling. Leaving bits of skin behind as if she was molting. Like a lizard. She wasn’t a lizard, okay Big Absent God-Creator-Spirit-Entity in the Fade-Stone-Sky-Gold/Black Place? Skin is supposed to stay on her person. At all times.
But that’s fine. She mightn’t appreciate the trail of skin-flakes left in her wake like she was a blossomed tree hit by autumn wind. (Which is a better way of putting it than thinking herself a lizard, but only just.) She could still deal with it.
Really, she could.
Even when Vivienne used the last of the sun balm and was all: “Oh, I’m sorry my dear, were you needing this specialized crème from the absolutely brilliant Orleasian inventor so-and-so?”
And she could even understand Iron Bull and Dorian just walking around like they were lizards, soaking in blistering sun and heat and looking not one bit uncomfortable. They had the background for it and if she was jealous, then it was only situationally so and extended no further—as if onto their lack of heavy clothes, or their ridiculous non-armor, or the way they glistened with sweat.
Because her companions in this heat? Sexy. Sexy sweating was a thing, apparently. It highlighted muscle and all those broad shirtless shoulders and those strong, strong arms. Okay, Dorian was sexy. But Iron Bull? Mmm. She even caught Vivienne throwing admiring glances, but then sexy sweating had to have been in the court approved repertoire because the Circle Mage was working it, too.
It must be a skill. Like crying pretty. Trevelyan could never manage that either.
But she could deal with it. Deal with all of it. And had. Rather gracefully, thank you, right up until they made camp and she tried to get out of her leathers. Tried, because the metal fasteners had melted the ties and she was stuck.
“I could cut you out of it, Boss. Might even like it.”
She took back every positive thing she ever thought about the Qunari. She was hot, and sticky, and smelled so strongly she offend herself and all she really wanted to do was wash up in the puddle of an oasis they didn’t have and then sleep away a sen’night. She was not feeling sexy, not feeling the over-the-top flirting, and she was so not feeling like responding to him with anything more than a glower.
So she did. Glower, that is, because she was miserable here and come tomorrow she would have to get up and do this all over again.
Balls.