The warrior had leapt across the room, scrambling over the pile of his armor and clutched at his sword with a wild-eyed panic. A gauntlet clatters across the floor where heâd kicked it. The lyrium lines on his skin burn through the darkness of the tiny, filthy tavern room that they could barely afford and his eyes glint in the dim light.
âFenris. You were dreaming.â Chiral shifts only enough to sit upright on the bed where Fenris had thrown him off, keeping a nonthreatening distance. He keeps his voice quiet and even, more than usual. Itâs perhaps too much to be comforting, but Fenrisâ experience in Tevinter did not involve tranquil mages.
The lyrium dims as Fenris calms and slowly, the snarl fades from the warriorâs face and he lowers his sword. The sound of their breathing seems to fill the whole room for a moment, before others trickled into the periphery. A loud snorting snore from another room, a muffled clink of something blowing in the wind outside. The two of them are silent and still for a time.
âIâm fine.â Fenris answers the look on Chiralâs face and moves to collect the armor and scabbard heâd thrown across the room in his haste, turning away from the mage as he collects it into a pile.
Chiral lowers the hand heâd held out when it becomes clear Fenris is ignoring it. The warrior said heâs fine, Chiral convinces himself, although it feels wrong. He turns away and lies back down on his half of the narrow, rickety bed they share and closes his eyes as if Fenris had told him the truth. He wonders, feeling like an observer when a vague dread fills him, if Fenris will decide that he neither needs nor wants company any longer. Chiral would not stop him if he wished to go.
The bed shifts when Fenris sits on it, and each time the warrior makes an aborted motion in his indecision, and when he finally lies down. An elbow presses against the back of Chiralâs ribs before he settles the space between them.
âIf the magister or the hunters reach you, you will kill them,â Chiral says when his disquiet leaves him- as if those are words of comfort. They are, in their stumbling, homicidal way. Fenris shifts. He is watching him again, in that way he does sometimes; Chiral doesnât know what for. He canât ask Fenris to stay, he feels, and appends instead, âI will help you.â
âTheââFenris trips over what to call the man and Chiral recalls the sleep-slurred mumble of master in Fenrisâ voiceââmagister is none of your concern.â
He opens his eyes in slits, considers a groove carved in the floorboards in his field of view and the lines of lyrium carved into Fenrisâ skin. He turns just so, Fenrisâ arm presses against his shoulder blade. âIâll help, if you wish,â he repeats (corrects) and feels Fenrisâ back move with his breath.
âGo back to sleep,â Fenris says instead of replying. They are still leaning against each other, a few breaths later. So he does.
