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Hawke was at the Viscount’s manor, but she wanted to leave.
There’d been an invitation. She’d answered yes. At the time, it had seemed awfully important. But a month ago—or had it been two?—she hadn’t had Fenris. Or—well, he’d been there. Right at her side; two steps behind and one to the right, as always. He’d been there with her, but he hadn’t been…
With her.
Hawke scowled down at her wine and took a sip. What a constant irritation it was, not to have hold of one’s own thoughts. For the last three days, it had been impossible to tear them away from him. It was bad enough when they were together, and far, far worse when they were apart.
Like—now. When she was at the Viscount’s Keep in her fanciest dress, overheated by wine and velvet, and Fenris was…was probably cozy in his derelict manor, reading a book before the fire. The fire soft in his hair, legs slung over the arm of the chair…maybe smirking in that way he had…
And she was here, desperately trying to patch the cracks in Kirkwall’s failing social structure. The Champion could do it if she tried hard enough; perhaps she was the only one who could. With a smile, a gesture, a joke—the Champion had no feelings. She was there to serve, to stand between this city and the abyss it stood on the edge of.
She stood at the periphery now, looking at the little huddles of people talking and laughing. They had stood here and watched her defeat the Arishok in single combat. They’d watched her hold her guts on the inside with her shaking hands. They’d cheered when she turned up to make a pretty speech—wearing this same red dress, in fact; red because she hadn’t known if she would bleed through her bandages and black was too solemn. They’d watched, and they’d cheered—
But Fenris had been the one to carry her home when she collapsed in that side hallway there. Fenris had been the one to tell her what an idiot she was the whole way, and he’d been the one to stay with her until Anders could be roused from the guest room to close her belly up again.
Fenris had been there, and Fenris had stayed.
It seemed like a good idea now to set her cup aside, so she did so, depositing it on an end table. Nobody was trying to talk to her anymore, so Maria began to slip through the crowds to the door without consciously planning to go.
Nothing could be worse than the thought of living without you, he’d said, just as serious as Fenris always was. It seemed impossible that someone could say such things aloud without a hint of irony; that someone could say them to her and mean it. And—and that it had been him saying so?
Fenris, whom Hawke had accepted she’d be pining for until she died?
Fenris, who’d melted away with the dawn like some sort of ghost story after their night together?
Fenris, who’d clutched her to him like a dying man given reprieve when she’d told him she still wanted him, who would’ve—
It had felt like too much three days ago; she’d been scared, though she hadn’t told him so. To have wanted him for so long and finally have him within reach…She couldn’t. She wouldn’t; not so soon. So they’d kissed, on and on, one or the other reaching out again when they should have parted and gone to sleep. She’d spent the night, and she’d been in his arms, but they hadn’t…not again. Not yet.
“I’m an utter fool,” she muttered to herself, and slid the footman a silver when he gave her a startled look. The man’s mouth made a little “o” and he held out her cloak to her with a flourish.
“Thank you,” she said, and waited until she was halfway down the front steps to go on.
“A fool, a fool; rubbing elbows with folk you hate while he knocks around that manor like a clapper in a bell? Foolishness.”
After a moment, she slipped off her delicate party slippers, dyed red to match the dress. She picked up the hem of her skirt, as she once had as a child running free through the fields with Bethany and Carver.
And Hawke ran.
|
There was no reason for it, but Fenris could not seem to make himself comfortable.
The skin between his shoulder blades itched and no amount of readjustment could dispel the discomfort. He grimaced down at his book, angled himself more fully towards the light, and tried again to focus on the words.
Fenris had read this book before. He knew what happened. Hawke had given this to him; had, in fact, taught him to read using it. Still, his eyes scanned the words with little comprehension, tracing the familiar shapes again and again even when they refused to resolve themselves into a discernible pattern.
If he allowed himself—if he tried—he could still smell the faintest hint of Hawke on his pillow. It could be nothing else; she smelled of the anise oil she used in her baths and she haunted him. He could have sworn the scent conjured her into his dreams, for he’d met her there every night since she’d left this room.
Fenris snapped the book shut with a disgruntled little noise and set it on the table with a snap. Outside, the night was quiet for Kirkwall, with only the occasional sound of people wandering past or a guardsman's boots on the cobblestone. Inside, the fire crackled in the hearth and the wind blew through the cracks in the windows. Fenris drifted closer to the hearth, since he had little attention for anything else.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want him—either at her side or in her bed. He knew that very well. Some vital trust between them had been damaged three years ago, and desire was not enough to repair it. Nothing would fix it, in fact, except time—and he feared they had very little of that left.
Even less when she had not sought him out since then.
“I am a fool,” he told the fireplace. The fire inside crackled merrily.
He must be far gone indeed, that the happy crackle of flames reminded him of her, too.
Perhaps he would have dwelled on this thought further, would have berated himself for his lovesick imaginings. He did not have time to try, for at just that moment the front door swung shut with a bang.
Fenris did not reach for his sword. He didn’t call on the lyrium under his skin. He didn’t reach for armor, or search for a place to hide. He knew those footsteps all too well, and there was only one person in the world who let his door slam like that when she let herself in. Fenris closed his eyes as he heard bare feet on the stair, a quiet oath when she stubbed her toe on the tile she never missed, and then the slower steps when she neared his bedroom.
“Hawke,” he said a moment before she swung open the door.
A pause.
“How do you always know it’s me?” she asked, pushing the door open.
Fenris’s eyebrows lifted at the sight of her. Her hair might once have been twisted into one of those braided crowns Fereldens seemed to enjoy so much, but it had begun to come loose now. Curls had freed themselves from their constraints and several stuck to her forehead, her cheeks, her neck. She held shoes in one hand, and her breath heaved, pressing the upper curves of her breasts above the edge of her blood-red bodice. Even as he noted this in one amazed glance, Hawke tossed her shoes toward the corner and advanced.
“I’m a fool,” she said, and Fenris blinked down at her.
“I should’ve stayed the other night,” she said. He frowned.
“You did stay,” he said.
“No, but I—” frustrated, she blew a curl from out of her eyes.
Just that—the familiar, annoyed mannerism—was enough to break the surprise that had held him in place.
As Fenris set his hands on her shoulders, he remembered dimly that…he was certain that the same gesture, blowing a curl from her forehead, was what had first made him abruptly aware that he was attracted to her. Startled by the memory, Fenris laughed once and leaned forward to press a kiss to her forehead.
“What?” she said, “I’m—I’m trying to tell you something!”
“What are you saying?” he asked, and pressed a careful kiss to her cheek when she didn’t push him away.
“That I should’ve—should’ve let you—we should have—”
Fenris kissed her other cheek, then the tip of her freckled nose. Hawke, startled, stared at him with round eyes. Like a cat who’d been swatted on the nose, he thought with distant amusement.
“Do you want to?” he said, allowing his hands to slide lower and trace the lace edge of the gown along either shoulder. Maria opened her mouth, then closed it again.
“You aren’t upset?”
“No.”
“But—but everything you said—and then I just left the next morning like—like—”
“I know,” he said, and kissed her forehead again, “And here you are. Stay, if that’s what you want.”
She took a sharp breath, as if to dispute this, but sighed instead.
“Do you…want to?” she asked. Fenris drew back and examined her for a moment. She was pink about the cheeks, but her dark eyes held his without any of the worry they’d held several days ago.
But—though it would be easier to ask her what she wanted, for Hawke was good at letting one know when she wanted something…that was not what she needed now. So he spoke instead.
“Yes,” Fenris said, and rested his hand along her chin instead, “Yes. I do.”
The kiss was sweet, slow, and—though it was not as long in coming as the last one had been—Fenris savored every second of it.
To bed or not; the decision did not feel so weighty when he remembered she would be with him all the while.
“Then,” he said, “I have wanted to take you out of this since the party. May I?”
“Yes,” she said, and turned in his arms. Her breath caught when he traced the back of the neckline, the draping lace dotted with seed pearls that shone lustrous in the firelight.
A fortune of a gown, it was; she’d purchased it when she’d been formally named Champion, and every single one of her friends had protested her wearing it.
Fenris had been especially strenuous in his objections.
Hawke had been on the verge of death only weeks earlier. She shouldn’t have been on her feet at all, let alone in such a restrictive garment. But she’d wanted to wear it, and she’d wanted to go, so that was precisely what she’d done. Not one of them could stop Hawke from doing precisely what she wanted to do; all of them knew that.
And he’d had to all but carry her home when she’d collapsed in a hallway after the speeches. He’d convinced himself he resented the thing because of that day—and he did—but a large portion of his discomfort with the garment lay with the way Hawke wore red.
Like it was meant for her. Like the color had been created for her sake alone
Now, Fenris removed the catches that held the lace on and set it aside. The velvet was almost luminous in the firelight, warm against her skin. There were hidden laces on the back. He undid each of them slowly, fingers nimble on the soft fabric. Each lacing that came undone revealed more of her back, and each empty eyelet saw her breath coming a little faster, the pulse in her neck a little harder.
When the bodice came loose, he smoothed his hands over her shoulders once.
“Yes?” he said.
“Yes,” she murmured, and turned her head to kiss him.
It was difficult to kiss her like this, over her shoulder, but the position allowed him to untie the skirt, too, much simpler after the complexity of the upper lacings. The rest of the dress fell to the floor in a sigh of fabric and Maria turned at once to put her arms around his neck. It was good to kiss her—it was always good—but it wasn’t enough to feel the ridges of her stays through his loose sleeping shirt. He wanted more.
Three years; she hadn’t been alone for all of them. He knew that well. But Fenris had been, by his own choice. The thought of someone else touching him had been…It hadn’t appealed. It required a level of trust that he simply couldn’t summon by will or determination alone, and though he hadn’t begrudged her seeking comfort elsewhere he wanted…he wanted.
A novel experience, desire for desire’s sake.
Fenris found the laces to her stays and tugged at them until they came loose. She made a soft noise against his mouth as her hands found his hips, the hem of his tunic, the bare skin beneath. Hawke sucked in a breath.
“Oh,” she said, “Oh. Fenris, I forgot...”
Whatever she’d forgotten, he did not hear it; the sound of his name on her lips in that particular tone was like fantasy made sound. He abandoned her underthings and pulled his tunic off in one swift motion, tossing it away carelessly and setting her hands back on his chest.
“Touch me,” he told her raggedly, and she obliged at once. There was a knot in the laces; he fumbled with it, his hands unaccountably graceless, and after several minutes she pulled back.
“You’re going so slow,” she said, “It’s killing me. Is it not killing you?”
Fenris scowled at the laces, undoing the knot at last and tugging several loops free.
“Hawke,” he said, “If not touching you could kill me, it would have done so years ago.”
She snorted at that, her eyes rolling up at the ceiling, and as she did so he finally loosened the last of the stays. Hawke caught them as they fell, and for a moment they stayed pressed against her chest.
Fenris met her eyes. Hawke took a breath, then shrugged the underthing off and set it aside on the chair. He gave her space to untie the waistband of her smalls, and when that fell away she was entirely unclothed before him.
It hadn’t been like this last time. They’d been desperate for each other in a hungry, animal way that night, stripping as quickly as possible before colliding again. He hadn’t even known until later that it had been the first time she’d lain with someone; and that had only been because Isabela had made a ribald joke about Hawke being “recently deflowered” weeks after the fact. There had been little time for exploration, for soft touches, and there certainly hadn’t been time to admire her as she deserved.
He’d spent the last three years making up for the latter; Fenris could mark her every gesture now even if his attention was divided. It had been very easy to convince himself he did this to make combat easier or safer, but he could admit he’d been wrong now. Perhaps he watched her because he wanted to understand her; perhaps he watched her simply because he wanted to. It mattered little now.
What mattered was that they were here together now—and Fenris could take his time.
Her shoulders seemed the best place to start. They were dotted with freckles the same color as the ones on her nose and he kissed them one by one, each caress of his lips placed as carefully as the brushstroke of a master painter. Hawke touched his hips, his back, sighing occasionally when he sucked the warm skin into his mouth or nipped at it. His hands rested on her hips, gradually drifting higher and higher until his thumbs skimmed either side of her breasts. Hawke turned her head at that, pressing chaotic kisses to his ears, his cheek, his jaw, until he gave in and kissed her mouth instead.
One of them was backing toward the bed—or maybe both of them were—and when he’d been focused on the weight of her breast in his hand she’d gotten his leggings untied and halfway down his hips. Fenris paused to shove them down and out of the way, never pulling away far enough to break the kiss. When her calves hit the bedframe, they paused, neither quite willing to break the embrace, but at last Fenris kissed a line to her ear and murmured directly into it.
“Let me,” he said, and took a shaky breath, “Let me. I want to touch you.”
“Touch me,” Maria said at once, reaching blindly for the bed behind her and sinking down on it, then pushing herself up to the headboard. She held out a hand to him and he took it, allowing her to pull him to his knees. Her legs were spread; he knelt between them and kissed her again, lowering himself to his hands on either side of her shoulders, and then his elbows. Hawke’s knees nudged his hips until he pressed closer, then wrapped around his back when he pressed against her.
This; he wanted this to last for ages—perhaps even forever. Her fingers did not linger on the lines of tattoos, faintly raised from his skin, but on the muscles of his back. She did not use her leverage to press him inside her; instead, her hips moved restlessly beneath him, bucking occasionally when his mouth found her nipples or the sensitive spot at the joint of her neck.
“Fenris,” she gasped after several minutes of this, and he had no idea what she might have said next; the sound of his name on her lips in that breathless tone was too much. He had to kiss her at once, had to know how the word tasted there, too, and when he traced the seam of her lips with his tongue she opened to him readily.
He’d intended to go slow; intended to touch her carefully and thoroughly, to run his fingertips and lips over all the places he hadn’t properly appreciated before. The longer his bare skin pressed against hers, the foggier the plan became until he couldn’t remember why he hadn’t intended to slide himself home inside her, but only that he shouldn’t.
Not yet, he told himself, setting his teeth along her shoulder; not yet, he told himself, gripping her hip and grinding himself against her slickness; not yet, when her fingernails dug into his back, when her generous thighs tightened around his hips and her voice cried out beneath him.
“Please,” she said at last, her lower lip loose and trembling, “I can’t take anymore, Fenris, please.”
“I can’t,” he said, setting his forehead against hers, trying to catch his breath, “I—it will be over if I—”
“We’ll have other chances,” she said, and let go of his back to cradle his face in her hands, “Fenris. There will be other nights.”
He looked into her eyes for a moment, the deep brown flickering with the light behind them.
“If—” she said, and bit her lip. When she let it go, it was dented and discolored in that spot.
“If you…still want—”
“Yes,” he said at once, and when he kissed her mouth it was soft, gentler than he had been, to make up for the pain she’d inflicted on herself, “Always. I am at your side as long as you will allow it; I am yours. Do not doubt this.”
She surged up, catching his mouth with her own, and Fenris pressed her back into the bed.
It ought to have been more difficult; they’d only done this once, after all. Fenris should have needed to situate himself, to find the right angle. He didn’t, though; he pulled back, just a little, and slid inside her as easily as if they’d been made for it. She was slick—much more so than last time, he was almost certain—but Hawke gripped him tightly within and without when Fenris slid inside, and she cried out when he hilted himself at last.
“Is it—” he began, but she was kissing his face urgently, whatever she could reach. His nose, his cheek, the corner of his mouth—she found them all, the heat of her lips brushing against them for the briefest of instants before moving away again.
“Please,” she was saying, “please, please, please—”
“Don’t,” he told her, and caught her mouth once, twice, hard and fast, “Don’t say that. Look at me.”
She did, her eyes heavy, and when he thrust into her they were surrounded by each other; not just her legs and arms wrapped around him, his hands on her face, but the scent of her rising from her skin, the sound of their harsh breathing in the air, their gasps mingling between them.
“Look at me,” he said again, voicing aloud the thought he’d been suppressing for the last three years, “Look at me, Hawke. Maria.”
Fenris kissed her again and again and Hawke watched him all the while, eyes heavy-lidded with wanting, until at last she arched against him and cried out and they finally, finally, closed again.
|
They cleaned up in near-silence, both of them heavy-limbed with satisfaction. She ought to gather up her clothes and walk home. It was the smart thing to do; no doubt any one of her busybody neighbors would have something to say about her walking home in the morning still wearing her scarlet gown from the night before.
But the thought of leaving him now pained her, and from the way he kept touching her she thought he might feel the same. She made room for him on the narrow bed instead, shifting onto her side and holding out her hand. Fenris took it, braiding their fingers together and sliding back beneath the ragged blanket.
She ought to say something; “saying something” was what she was best known for. But cleverness eluded her now and there was only Fenris; his hand in her hand, his lips pressing tenderly and carefully to her forehead. When he finally settled in, his nose touched hers and their legs twined together, bare beneath the sheets.
I love you, she wanted to tell him. It was an easy thing to say to others; she’d said so to Isabela when her friend felled an unusually hardy foe in battle. She said it frequently to Merrill when the elf said something especially poetic about the sunset or the way people passed each other in the street.
Flames, she’d said it to Varric just yesterday when he’d paid her tab at the Hanged Man.
But Fenris was different. Fenris had always been different. The things she’d said to the others without a thought— lovely form, clever shot, I could kiss you for that —died on her lips when it came to him. The problem, she’d known for years, was that it mattered too much to tell him such things. If she’d given any hint that she thought he was beautiful when he fought, beautiful and fierce and brutal, the whole farce would have been over and he would have known at once the depth of her feelings.
She’d been saying nothing at all for so long that she could not find the words now. So instead, Hawke tilted her head up to kiss the tip of his nose and nestle closer to the warmth of his body.
She could not find the words, but she could borrow his instead. Fenris would understand; she was sure of it.
Maria’s thumb stroked the indent at his hip and she opened her eyes when she spoke.
“I am yours,” she told him softly. His eyes flared with understanding, and when he shifted closer to kiss her it was deep, running with undercurrents of emotion that neither of them could voice aloud.
“You should rest,” he said, several long minutes later. She huffed.
“You should, too, I would think,” she said, “You did most of the work.”
“Work,” he scoffed, but he set his head back down on the pillow, “Are you going?”
His eyes searched hers for a moment and carefully, as if not sure he’d been given leave, his knuckles ran along the angle of her jaw. Maria leaned into the touch like a cat arching into a friendly hand.
“Will you stay?” he said a moment later.
“If you’ll let me,” she told him, eyes drifting closed. Fenris tugged his blanket higher and kissed her forehead one more time.
“Stay,” he told her, his voice low and deep.
“Alright,” she told him, her words sleep-slurred and heavy.
By the time his arm wrapped around her waist, she’d already drifted into sleep.
Since her mother’s death, she hadn’t slept through the night once. That night, the night they chose to stay together, she slept in his arms without waking. Even her dreams were unusually gentle, as if his very presence had warned the demons away.
When she woke the next morning, Fenris still held her close; at her side, just as he’d promised he would be.
Hawke smiled, snuggled closer, and went back to sleep.