#some well deserved fluff for the magnificent owner of hotel california on her special day

[medusanova]

Andylind + Andreas walking around half-naked to make Roz lose her poker face

My humblest offering for Andylind April xx

Happy, happy birthday Anne!!

Interference

She comes across him sparring with a few of the newer battalion members on the outskirts of their camp early one morning. She’s on her way back from the forest where her scouts had reported a few stretches of displaced soil, citing Burned One activity. And, while Rosalind had made sure her troop had become the best-trained lot any general could ever want, it was always better to double-check. That, and she’d never be daft enough to place her full trust in any man’s observational skills. 

She’s just cleared the edge of the forest and started toward the small clearing she’d stationed them at for the foreseeable future, focused on getting back to her quarters to write out her reports when she hears the scrape of metal, a few scattered grunts of exertion, and a deep, commanding voice she wishes her ears didn’t attune themselves to so fervently. 

She stops just out of sight of the group of early-morning sparrers, stopping close enough to be seen, but far enough not to make herself a distraction. A general taking stock of the soldiers under her command. One soldier in particular. 

Minutes pass and a few glance over, tipping their heads in deference before they continue their spar, listening all the while to Andreas’ sharp directives to correct this stance or redo that parry. He doesn’t notice her though, and she’s relieved, intent on starting back to write those reports when she hears him lecturing them about the importance of shooting accurately and aiming to kill — even in the midst of more than one distraction. And she can’t help herself. 

“Can you?” She breaks in, striding toward them. Andreas looks round at the sound of her voice, a strange combination of surprise and satisfaction flashing through his expression before it melts back into its usual visage of cocky confidence. 

“Can I what, General?” he asks, his self-assured smirk firmly in place. 

“Can you shoot accurately when you’re distracted?” She clarifies, coming to a stop, settling her hands on her hips. 

He cocks a brow. “‘Course I can.” 

No doubt the soldiers that surrounded him had heard stories about his legendary fights with Burned Ones and his fearsome reputation protecting his people; it was probably why they kept looking at him with those slightly awed expressions.

“Perhaps a demonstration will help us learn how it’s done then,” she suggests innocuously, crossing her arms over her chest. Andreas’ fan club sees her recommendation for the order it really is though and exchange gleeful looks. 

It’s obvious there’s some sort of hero worship he’d been able to instill in them. That they find him intimidating. But Rosalind never has, of course. 

She made it her life’s mission to turn the intimidating into the intimidated, and she wouldn’t stop at Andreas of fucking Eraklyon. 

“By all means then, General,” he answers, a challenging gleam in his eye. 

She turns to the soldier closest to her, Richard, and holds out her arm in silent demand. Unable to contain his smirk, he unstraps the bow from his back and hands it to her along with an arrow from his quiver. Rosalind steps up to Andreas to hand it to him, making their hands brush. 

He looks at her with a slightly bemused, but still confident expression, as if wondering what she’s hoping to prove. She just raises her brows expectantly. 

As Andreas prepares the bow and arrow to take a shot at a target they’d carved into one of the trees, his group of admirers starts to shuffle about, shouting and making noise and making themselves distracting. One particular jeer, something crass about cocks and over-compensation she’d heard one too many times in her years among bullheaded men, almost has Andreas turning and pointing the arrow at him instead of the tree. The perpetrator, David, winks at Rosalind and an unbidden smirk tips up the edge of her mouth as she turns her gaze back to Andreas. 

All it takes is the barest sigh to pass her lips. A teasing caress of her magic to push a few tendrils of hunger and heat and longing into his mind at the moment he’s about to fire his shot… 

And it goes wide, missing its target entirely. 

Andreas’ group bursts into jeering laughter as Rosalind strides away, slipping back into camp, the fading grey of her eyes dancing with satisfaction and mischief. 

~*~*~*~*~*~

She should’ve expected he’d take his revenge. 

A few days later, she’s somewhere in the depths of the supply tent, tangled up in a pile of half-made explosives — a general never leads her troops into battle without an artillery of backup plans at her disposal — trying her hardest to finish assembling the final few in preparation for their mission tomorrow. 

She’s engrossed in the wiring, twining the jagged edges around each other, focusing on each and every little movement to make sure she doesn’t blow up half her bloody battalion and herself along with them. 

Her hands freeze abruptly when she feels his presence. 

Turning around to look at him, she’s relieved no one would ever be able to see her heart stutter in a rare moment of surprise. Because there, in the middle of a tent intended for taking or leaving supplies, not loitering around like an imbecile, stands Andreas with his most arrogant, cocksure smirk and… nothing else. 

Well, almost. If the threadbare towel barely covering his muscular Adonis Belt — which is chiseled into that familiar but disgustingly ostentatious V-shape — can even be considered a covering. 

When she’s able to refocus on his face once more, all the while painfully aware that any sudden tremble or slip of her fingers might mean the end of them all, his smirk widens into a full-blown grin. 

That’s when she realizes; the scoundrel’s preening like a damn peacock. 

“Oh so sorry, General. Please, don’t let me distract you.” She can practically hear the smirk in his voice, painted in vengeance and challenge. 

She turns defiantly back to the munitions in front of her, her barely steady fingers sliding back along the wiring. When he merely continues to watch her from a distance, she eventually relaxes, brushing the fleeting moment from her mind. Rosalind even almost forgets the nuisance of his presence entirely — at least, that’s what she tells herself — as she loses herself in assembling the final explosive once more. 

This is just what he wants, though. Andreas is a hunter, a pursuer of weakness. He’s spent years tracking Burned Ones and all forms of other enemies in forests, mountains, and every landscape imaginable. He’s as silent and stealthy as someone can be. And if her entire focus wouldn’t be on piecing together something that could literally kill them, on trying to get the vision of his sculpted muscles and inviting eyes banished from her thoughts, she would’ve beat him twice over.

He starts exactly how she did, with a small sigh she can feel brush against her temple. His lack of magic isn’t a hindrance either. He doesn’t even need to push a tendril of pure, unadulterated want into her mind as he traces his nose around the shell of her ear. 

Nuzzles the side of her neck. 

Paints a hot, wet trail against her neck with his tongue. 

She inhales a sharp breath, stilling the motion of her hands again as she embarrassingly feels them start with a slight tremor. 

She recovers it as quickly as she lost it, twining the wires again. 

“Hm, very good, General,” Andreas whispers, smirking as his hands snake around her waist. 

But he’s far from finished. 

His lips continue their siege: gliding along the edge of her ear, tracing again ever so slowly, ever so sensually, down her neck. 

Irritatingly, her breathing deepens as air becomes scarcer to take in. Even more irritatingly, she finds her head tilting to the side, ever so slightly, of its own volition, exposing more skin, more vulnerability to his plundering lips. 

She can’t remember the last time her body’s instincts weren’t perfectly in sync with her mind. 

But still, her hands fiddled on, fingertips never faltering. 

Andreas hums a noise of admiration at that and smiles into her neck. He’s almost reached the base of it now, and when he does, he pauses a moment, lets the tension, the apprehension build as she wonders, waits, wills him to carry on. 

The graze of his teeth and swirl of his tongue along her collar bone undoes her. 

With a rough few twists and turns of her fingers, her hands fall away from the explosive, dropping it to the table in a whole, stable, safe piece. 

Andreas grins triumphantly. There wasn’t an audience to witness her defeat, but there is a red imprint marking her pale skin when she pulls away. 

He opens his mouth, to blather on some extraneous comment she’s sure, when she whirls in her seat, yanks him abruptly down by his beard, and kisses him. 

He instantly responds. This isn’t a game either of them can compete in any longer as self-control is something they both seem to lack where the other is concerned. 

She is still pulling him and before he completely loses his balance and sends the both of them crashing backward onto a table of literal bombs, he twists and drops down onto the seat, barely breaking contact with her mouth. She moves into his lap and he can barely contain the groan as a shudder runs through him at the feel of her there. His arms wrap tightly around her and hers are around his neck, hands deep in his hair. 

Rosalind can't help but think that the tent is wide open for Christ’s sake, and anyone could walk in. But still, neither seems to be able to stop themselves, to care as their lips crash furiously against each other in a kiss that’s been building for a long time, possibly since they first met. 

Their bodies shift trying to get closer. She gasps into his mouth and his tongue slides past her own.

Luckily they have some warning of being interrupted. They hear a call from the entrance of the tent and approaching footfalls as they near Andreas and Rosalind.

Rosalind barely manages to extricate Andreas from below her, but their lips don’t break contact until the last possible second when Andreas dives behind a shelf loaded with disassembled weaponry and uniforms. 

“You alright, General?” She hears David ask with concern. 

“Yes, fine,” she answers. “Now get what you need and get out. This tent is meant for supplies, not loitering around like an imbecile.”