Chapter Text
He woke as one being reborn, blinking into the mage light.
There were spell wisps in the air, but they made Hawke feel a little uneasy. They were harmless, he supposed, but his father told him that wisps were essentially lower level spirits, like children of the fade. They lent a glow of eerie light to the room, on the side of light blue, without the full spectrum that gave a scene colour.
Like the layers of colour in Anders' hair, ranging from platinum to gold to red, now only gray bathed in a dim azure.
The mage was sprawled on the bed next to him, one arm flung over Hawke's chest with his hand resting on a shoulder. He weighed very little compared to Hawke, spare frame and whipcord muscles tight even in his sleep, under milky skin sprinkled with sparse freckles on his cheeks and the back of his hands. So pale. Living in the undercity wasn't any good for his complexion; neither was being a warden, probably, if his talk of spending weeks in the deep roads was anything to go by.
Hawke blushed, thinking of last night. That was - new - different, a sensation of panic and nervous butterflies that fluttered in his stomach, a tingling beneath his skin that prickled his scalp when he so much as looked at Anders. Fearless, that was what he was, since he turned eight and the twins were born. Hawke was unused to having someone that was able to get under his skin.
What was newer and more alarming was waking up next to someone. Specifically, waking disoriented, nude and vulnerable next to a spirit abomination. Those were logical constructs, words he dredged up from the part of his brain that planned strategy and formations, juggling moves in the tenuous world of Kirkwall politics. As long as he was dealing with vipers, the world made sense through that lens.
Anders was definitely not a viper. A bit of a cat, maybe, one that leapt before it thought things through, the kind that fumbled at the top of a fence and sometimes, on the rare occasion falling down artlessly.
Then he'd probably walk away with his tail held high and pretend he meant to do it.
Exactly that kind of a cat.
Hawke smiled, fingers itching to scratch him under his chin, covered with a dark stubble that looked like he hadn't shaved for half the week though Hawke knew it was only one day's worth. A moment's hesitation before his hand was over Anders' cheek, a little scratchy under the pads of his fingers, catching on his callouses.
Looking at him made it hard to breathe; such new reactions, each of them a revelation, raw and visceral and uncontrollable, and by their very nature dangerous. Hawke wanted both to hold the man close to him and run far, far away all at once.
He wanted to keep the mage with him, but he had no idea how to go about making friends. Hawke had business associates and enemies, sometimes both in the same person. He had family - Fenris was Family, capitalization intended - but that trust was built by drips and drops, not this hurricane of emotions that demanded his attention all at once.
A man wasn't a cat, he couldn't very well keep the mage as a prisoner, though he speculated that cats were just as unsuitable as pets.
But he wanted, how he wanted. Hawke was so alone and as much as he liked to call it solitude, that was only the truth as long as it was a choice. His solitude was never a choice; it was necessity. He had to stay logical, and investing emotions beyond the bare minimum muddled his mind.
Anders was already muddling his mind. It was obvious in the way his own body lain relaxed on the bed even though the logical response was the one he made yesterday. That very thought brought a sharp pain to his chest that felt as though his heart broke for real, not just metaphorically as described in the books Bethany used to keep under her mattress.
Hawke wasn't one for melodrama; he knew that whatever this was, he could live without, those Orlesian novels and their idea of love beyond the grave was not for him. There was always something to live for, his family to protect, and beyond that the work he promised his father to continue well after his death.
Waking unafraid next to someone he trusted, warm and tangled together; that was something he secretly wished for but couldn't afford. His parents had a wonderful love, but he never tried it himself, remembering how she grieved when his father died. If she hadn't three children to raise she might never have recovered.
He understood her a little better, he thought, with Anders' face under his palm, strong pulse beating against his hand. It wasn't her choice to fall in love; bonds formed without her volition and if she lost him the day after they met she would have been just as lost as she had done decades later. For her, time did little to dull or strengthen the sense of loss when her love was gone.
Hawke was so deep in thought he didn't notice that Anders had opened his eyes and was studying him in turn until he spoke, "good morning. I think."
"Probably," Hawke said, pulling his hand back, the gesture too intimate - touching outside of sex - and his habit of creating distance stepping in.
Anders wasn't about to let him get away with it though, catching his hand and interlocking their fingers, mouth quirking into a smile as he saw the redness that crept up Hawke's ears. It was embarrassing how easily he blushed for Anders, each of his gestures so open and easy while his own felt stilted and forced.
Life would have been so much easier if there was no such thing as what they had to face now, the awkward morning after. Their meeting was simple - a kidnapping - and the planned end result easy - intimidation and a slap on the wrist along with a few threats - and predictable. Hawke liked plans. When Anders kissed him the first time he threw a wrench into those plans, and it nearly broke Hawke to decide what happened next and even those plans Anders did not agree with.
Like the day Leandra met her Malcolm, as he had heard the story between them before, a hightown lady meeting with an apostate in darktown through the tunnels that led out into the undercity, history repeated itself.
He couldn't run if he wanted to. If his mother had married the Comte de Launcet and lived in Kirkwall all her life in the lap of luxury, she would have always wondered how life could have been if she had taken chances and made unpopular choices. Compared to what she had to face, this was so much easier that it would have shamed him if he did not at least try.
"Will you stay?" Hawke gave the hand locked into his a tentative squeeze.
Anders did not pull away, but his gaze turned slightly wary, as though Hawke had asked him to stay down here in the dungeons. "What do you mean?"
"Work for me. I run a mercenary company and people get hurt all the time," Hawke was nothing if not manipulative - how else did a Ferelden dog lord get this far in life?
Anders seemed to mull it over, then he shook his head, his tousled hair rubbing against Hawke's arm beneath, "I'm needed in darktown. You can afford Circle healer rates, but the refugees haven't anyone else."
"I'm not asking you to close the clinic," the refusal only made him want Anders more, not for the challenge of it, but that he would turn down a job from Hawke because he was selfless. "Think of it as me buying it."
"You want to buy a free clinic in darktown that doesn't make any money." Anders said, suspicious suddenly, his tone biting, "if this is your bid to buy me I'll have to tell you that I'm definitely not for sale."
"Don't put words in my mouth," Hawke snapped right back. Then he slipped into business-talk. "Look, the operating costs are minimal. I already supply most of the potion reagents in the city, and I probably already fund the clinic anyway - I'm assuming Lirene is the one that gives you supplies - so the only thing that changes will be the level of protection you're entitled to."
"I don't need your protection," Anders half sat up pulling himself away from Hawke to lean against the headboard. "I was doing just fine before you came along. Actually, I was doing better before you came along because nobody was stabbing me with magebane!"
"Do you have any idea how difficult it is for a mage to stay free in this city? It's a fucking balancing act," Hawke didn't move to sit with him, giving Anders space. He propped himself up by digging his elbow into his pillow, resting his chin in his hand, letting the blanket fall away from his torso to pool messily around his hips.
"You think you have the loyalty of the refugees? Think again. The reward money for turning in an apostate can feed a family in darktown for a year. Sure, they're grateful that you saved one of them, but if they starve long enough they will turn you in. Desperate people don't make good friends."
It wasn't a passionate speech by any means, but it was a lesson earned by experience. Maker-fearing Fereldens would almost always turn in an apostate, and he could strike that 'almost' if there was reward money involved. It was a matter of time before someone turned Anders in.
The undercity gangs had probably turned up at his door asking for protection money he didn't have already. Anders was also unknowingly undercutting them on salve and potions, doubling his chances of templars showing up at his door.
"If you work for me," Hawke reached out, placing his hand over Anders' ankle, knee drawn up to his chest in contemplation. "You will never have to worry about the gangs or templars ever again."
"You can't guarantee that."
"Yes, I can, actually," he smiled in a way that was both cocky and reassuring. "My brother is a templar."
"Your brother is a -" Anders looked as though he was about to go on a tirade about familial betrayals, and Hawke cut him off with a squeeze to his ankle, moving his hand up his leg soothingly.
"His twin's a mage, and when the templars came to take her," Hawke's eyes narrowed and darkened at the memory, not the first time he felt so powerless in the face of the chantry. "He told the Knight Captain that he'd kill them all unless they took him too, the stubborn git. Good thing Cullen's reasonable, otherwise I'd have lost both siblings."
That drew a smile out of Anders; most families were all too glad to be rid of an apostate. "So he's your man on the inside?"
"I'm not going to divulge the number of templars on my payroll, but suffice to say that he is one of them. And for your information," Hawke threw in the last bit of detail that he knew could cinch the deal, wording it just so. "There are already free mages in my ranks."
It was a business proposition; he was good at those, right at home in the nitty gritty details, crafting an offer and padding it with enough personal details that Anders couldn't possibly say no. The smugglers in Kirkwall led by Athenril had half merged with the collective by now, Hawke the mastermind behind it all and the man every free mage wanted to work for, even before they learned his name.
Though it was not an innovation on his part; both Athenril and Meeran hired the Hawkes knowing that one of them was a mage. The coterie hired apostates, as did many of the undercity gangs, and all of them provided a kind of security. But only the Red Irons treated them with respect, and not to mention the lowest casualty rate.
Anders was looking at him with a faint smile, "you have siblings. That's the first personal thing you've ever told me."
Leave it up to Anders to spot the least important details. Hawke rubbed at his forehead dreading the return of his perpetual migraine, "um, that's not exactly - you're impossible to talk to."
"You're propositioning me," Anders touched a finger to Hawke's chest, pushing him on to his back. He followed the movement, rolling himself on top of Hawke, and soon Hawke found himself being loomed over, "in all the wrong ways. So say that I do work for you. Are you going to expect me in your bed?"
"Well, no. I just," wanted to keep him close and had no idea how to go about asking for it, "want to make sure you're taken care of. You can live in the barracks, or stay in darktown. It's up to you, but if the templars do show up at the barracks they'd have to get through an army of skilled mercs."
"Who's impossible to talk to?" Anders huffed out an exasperated breath. "You've just laid out what your company wants for me. I asked you what you wanted from me."
Hawke stared ahead of him wordlessly, having an idea of what he wanted but it was formless, and a part of himself considered it unattainable. He stroked his hands up and down Anders' sides, touching affectionately without a goal of something more in mind, looking down to avoid that burning gaze and biting his lower lip raw.
"Don't clamp up on me, Hawke, not after last night. Tell me what you've already told me."
Anders planted his hands to either side of Hawke, definitely looming - he didn't mind, and that in itself was a surprise - with his hair lightly mussed with oil and wax from lying on Hawke's chest, face shadowed, a slight furrow between his brows.
"I want," Hawke licked his lips. "I want you to stay."
"Better," Anders gave a soft brush of lips as a reward for small concessions, a ground of his hips that caused both of them to moan softly promising more to come if he'd only give a little.
"I want you with me," he wrapped his arms around the mage, not pulling him closer, just adding his presence, always aware of his strength. Even now he did not lose his ability to bargain to sweeten the pot, "for as long as you want to stay."
A quick way to drive the mage away would be to demand his presence or even ask for a commitment. An apostate's life was always a cage, and he learned that growing up with his father running from town to town. The most he could do for Anders was to give him a cage of his own with the door wide open.
"You do make it hard to say no," Anders grinned against his mouth. When he pulled back enough for them to see each other, his eyes were sparkling, "and where do you want me to stay?"
The barracks, he was about to say, within sight but not too close, but he knew Anders would settle only for all or nothing. Some people did not negotiate very well, idealists, the lot of them, but he surmised that was what he wanted from Anders, some idealism to counter his own inner cynic.
"With me. In my house, in my room," Hawke kissed a line up Anders' jaw, letting his teeth travel over the rough stubble until he reached the soft earlobe, where his tongue snaked out to swipe against its tip. He whispered hoarsely, warm air brushing against the shell of the ear, "in my bed."
Anders shuddered against him, the well spring of control he had over his mind not applying well at all to his body, and when Hawke moved a hand down to the cleft of his arse, brushing a finger against the sensitive rosette, Anders lifted himself in offering. His cock, already half-hard, filled out the rest of the way to rub roughly against Hawke's hip.
"Yes," Anders couldn't decide which he wanted more, the friction to the front of him, steel core wrapped in velvet soft skin a gritty rub without oil, or to push back against the finger that teased at his entrance.
"Is that a yes you'll stay, or yes you want some more of this?" One arm still clutching around Anders' back, Hawke spoke softly into his ear, and Anders realized too late that he had unwittingly allowed the man to have the upper hand again.
Neither of them wanted him to concede, so Anders tucked himself into the crook of Hawke's neck, nose nuzzling against his pulse and stuttering out, "more."
"Wrong answer," though he did not sound displeased, the grip he had on Anders' arse tightened ever so little, and in one smooth, vertigo inducing motion, Hawke flipped them together to pin Anders under him.
He slid his hand up his thigh and away from where Anders wanted him, and Anders whimpered in protest until Hawke's hand moved to cradle under his knee, opening him wide and hooking that leg above Hawke's shoulder. The head of his cock rested squarely against his entrance, its wide tip nudging him, slick only with precum and naught else.
Anders shivered in both anticipation and fear, not knowing what to expect yet from him, and Hawke turned his head to kiss the inside of Anders' knee.
"Should trust me enough to know I won't hurt you by now," he concentrated a moment, and the oil candle, whatever grease left inside congealed to a gel and cold, flew into his hand in a line from the floor. "Telekinesis. This and basic fire are the only spells I know."
To demonstrate, he first lit the sconces around the room, then he allowed heat to seep through the bottom of the candle tin, melting enough wax to coat both his thumbs. Anders groaned as he was breached, four fingers and palm firmly on his arse as one thumb pushed into him, recalling that Hawke had big hands but a thumb was just short of long enough.
Hawke was out to torture him; his free hand slipping under between his thigh and his balls, thumb rubbing the ring of muscle where it was so sensitive, outside, as he clenched against Hawke's other thumb on the inside.
"You fucking tease," Anders cussed, fingers digging into the pillow and pushing against Hawke trying to get him to move deeper, but his legs were trapped and the angle of the thumb inside him was all wrong.
Without warning, Hawke's hand tightened even more over his arse, gripping and pulling him open to one side, and he slipped his other thumb inside. Instead of using his mouth to curse now, Anders wailed, feeling full and stretched as Hawke slowly pumped both thumbs in as far as he could, then slipping them nearly out.
"Are you saying you want more?" The pumping motion stopped, and the hands were pulling Anders open, rough calloused pads rubbing against his walls inside, while the backs of his fingers brushed along the sensitive skin of his sac.
Anders' entire lower body was seemingly taken prisoner, locked between those large hands. He could technically reach down and touch himself, but he was too enveloped in those hands to want to find out the consequences of such an action. One thumb started sliding out of him independently of the other, and he whined at the loss.
It was infuriating how pliant he became in Hawke's hands, literally.
"More it is, then." Hawke smiled, shifting and turning one hand.
Anders wanted to call him an arrogant bastard - cocksure was the word here but he didn't want to voice it, it'd only give him ideas - but he was cut short and the knuckles nudging under his balls turned into fingers brushing over his cock. He moaned instead, instinctively thrusting, but his arse was held with a steely grip and the thumb inside him was still anchoring him in place, exactly where Hawke wanted him.
"Maker's breath, the faces you make. I can do this all day." Hawke began to move, his thumbs pushing into Anders alternating with each other to create an unending roll of sensations, both in and out at the same time, while his fingers only went along for the ride, on one side buried in his cleft, sliding, and the other fanning up his cock from side to side.
Anders could only submit to this feeling of being entangled by Hawke, both surrounding and invading. Hawke stared at him with his mouth slightly agape, the fascination there matching his words, his own need weeping slightly, lying atop Anders' thigh.
"I want you inside now," Anders pleaded, wording it like a demand but his tone was lined with so much want it quivered.
"If you're worried about me, don't. I want to watch you fall apart in my hands and I don't want," his hands stopped suddenly as he shifted again, this time slipping two fingers inside to replace one thumb, long enough and at the perfect angle crooking to reach his spot. "Don't want any distractions."
Those two fingers turned the skin-deep touches into molten, white hot pleasure at his core down his spine, and his cries soon turned into incoherent calls and whimpering. He was aware, remotely, that Hawke was chuckling against his knee, but those hands were overwhelming all else making it hard to focus on one part of his body or another, one thumb anchoring and stretching him, two fingers rubbing circles gently right over that spot, exposed by the angle and the expert way he was held open.
And all the while, Hawke gazing down at him in wonderment and affection, as though his pleasure and his wants were the most important things in the world. Anders let himself be pulled along by it, a torrent of something unnameable and warm, liquid heat pooling at the base of his cock, spreading through his veins and reddening his ears.
As if he needed any more evidence that sleeping with Hawke quite possibly ruined him for anyone else, the thumb inside him and the fingers over his cock both withdrew, instead, Hawke's hand smoothed up over his abdomen. Before he had a chance to whine about it, finger and thumb ghosted over one nipple, and came down to pinch with a slight twist.
It must have been hard enough to hurt, but he only felt a shot of almost-pain that flared and connected with the pressure already building all along his insides, lighting a slow burning fuse, and his body jerked involuntarily while his orgasm rippled soft and long and gentle, no real dividing line, an undulating blanket of sensations slowly moving from one end of the spectrum to the other.
When he thought the aftershocks had ended, another pinch to his nipple set it off anew, like his electricity trick, but it wasn't a shock to nerve endings, just an intuition that knew exactly how to keep the pleasure running as long as Anders was willing to let go.
When finally Hawke decided to set him free, he could barely focus or move, his limbs leaden as Hawke's hard body came down to drape over his own. Kisses rained down along his jaw, mouth nipping along his lower lip reminding him that he still had his mouth open, and he snapped it shut, Hawke chuckling at his reaction as he did so.
It took him more time to calm down enough to find his voice again, Hawke making no move at all to push for more of anything, as if his own needs were easily forgotten if Anders was sated, body curling behind his in a protective cradle of warmth.
"You said you want me to stay," Anders said, voice rough from screaming out his pleasure.
"No," Hawke said, his tone flat and enigmatic, causing Anders' heart to beat faster, anxiety heavy in his gut. He turned, and seeing the small smile crinkling Hawke's eyes, Anders was bewildered.
He echoed, "no?"
Hawke kissed the space between his eyes, pressing his lips reverently to one temple, the tip of his nose, the edges of his cheekbones. Lastly he kissed Anders' mouth, chaste and nearly disappointing, pulling away to grin at the pout framed by dark stubble that silently asked for more kisses.
"I want to give you," my, he paused, eyes darkening with unnamed emotion, leaving one word unsaid and hoping that his meaning came across without being demanding, "everything."
Anders' mouth opened, but all that came out was a choked sob that he would deny to his dying breath. Blinking away the tears that blurred everything into halos, he kissed Hawke back, hoping to distract him from his lapse of control, but if the tenderness in the arms that encircled him was anything to go by, he already saw how Anders reacted to his words.
It was never answered, though Hawke never phrased it as a question. It was another bartering trick, that, but he didn't even mean to lock Anders into his gift of himself, only that he meant it with every pulse in his veins.
He could see their future before him, the days of work and nights of simple and not so simple pleasures, pictures flashing against his eyelids. Time was a fluid thing, undefinable and strange, and this suddenly felt familiar, deja vu, a point in his past travels. Hawke was hit with a strong, overwhelming sense of oneness, when he realized what he wanted finally, not to take, but to give; the moment ineffable.
Then Anders was looking up at him, a hand at his cheek. Hawke leaned into the touch, where his words fell short he could at least give this, reassurance of everything he felt with touch.
"Hawke," the tears were at the corner of his eyes and his voice was rough still, with a panic that wasn't there before. "Can I ask you for something?"
"Anything you want," Hawke said, earnest.
"I want," Anders' tears flowed freely, before he clenched his eyes shut as though in prayer. "I want you to come back. Please, wake up."