For the DADWC, from the 'budding romance' prompt list: "you're very distracting, you know," perhaps for Solas/Eliana?
This was so fun, omg. I didn’t think I’d really ever write DAI Eliana/Solas but this really sold me on it. They’re just so cute and happy here…. ;A; Thank you for the prompt!
Eliana stirs the slowly bubbling stew, musing over the day’s events. They had spent most of it chasing down wild rams, eventually gathering enough to provide food for the refugees for the foreseeable future. It had been a struggle, with only Varric among them really suited to the task, but they managed.
All of this still felt like a bizarre dream - or nightmare, some days - to Eliana. She was regularly surrounded by more shems than she’d seen in her life, by their ‘chant’; isolated from even the non-Dalish elves by the mark on her hand. Her one comfort, so far, had been her talks with Solas. They speak about magic, spirits, the Fade and more, and it’s like she’s back home, listening to Deshanna. As her mind turns to Solas, her eyes do as well, leaving her careful watch of the stew to steal a glance at him. She’s surprised when they make eye contact, quickly looking back at the food. Still, Eliana can’t help but smile. Creators, I hope I’m not blushing.
After a moment, she finds her eyes wandering his direction again, almost as if she can’t help it. He’s leaning against a nearby tree, his sketchbook resting against his legs, and she watches as he adds a few quick, light strokes to the page. Solas’ movements are so gentle, so precise, and she can’t help but wonder if he’s always been an artist, in some way.
Eliana looks back at the fire, adding a little heat when she can be sure the Seeker isn’t watching. The other woman had seemed surprised the first time Eliana suggested using magic to cook. They’ve been making non-magical fires each night since then, but if she doesn’t do something they’re not going to have any cooked food to eat tonight. Thankfully, the Seeker is distracted, pouring over a map of the area in order to decide what to do next. She gives the stew a good stir, then lets it sit and continue cooking, pulling her long braids into her lap. Eliana runs her hands over them, checking for stuck twigs or leaves, but looks up suddenly when she feels eyes on her. She bites back a smile when she finds herself making eye contact with Solas yet again, trying not to laugh, or blush, but ultimately failing at both.
“You’re very distracting, you know,” she says, turning back towards the pot. She smirks at him from over her shoulder. “If this burns, I’m telling Varric it’s your fault.”
He closes his sketchbook, tucking it under his arm as he slowly rises to his feet. Eliana looks away for a moment, tossing her braids over her shoulder - away from the heat of the fire - and is surprised when he speaks from behind her.
“Perhaps I’ll tell the Seeker it burned because you used magic to heat it.” Solas’ voice is low, quiet enough that only she’ll hear it, and has a playful edge to it that delights her.
She whips around to face him. “You wouldn’t!” Her voice is barely louder than a whisper, and she’s fighting to hold back the grin that threatens to overtake her face. She checks to make sure neither of their other companions have heard them, feeling like a little kid again, whispering conspiringly with her brothers behind the aravels over some prank they had planned. Solas remains impassive, although the barely noticeable glint in his eye betrays his amusement.
“Then I’ll tell Varric you’ve never heard a single story about the Champion of Kirkwall.” She crosses her arms, playing at seriousness, despite the wide grin on her face and the slowly creeping blush on her ears.
“Hmmm..” Solas’ hands disappear behind his back, undoubtedly interlocked behind him as he pretends to think. After a moment, he makes eye contact with her again, his blue-grey eyes piercing her own. There is a rare smile on his face. “It appears we’re evenly matched. Also, I believe the stew is burning.”
It's ridiculous. Frivolous to be doing something so mundane as shopping when the whole world is threatening to come to an end. Particularly shopping for anything that won't immediately assist in avoiding that terrible outcome. That's what they'd told themselves while wandering through the night markets of Treviso, anyway. It was beautiful, sure, but unnecessary. Much as Tobias' eyes had lingered on it, the elf had stuck to the essentials, combing the market for any tradesmen or merchants that might have equipment, weapons, or materials to upgrade they and their companions existing gear.
It had come as a surprise then, the first time they visited their room in the Lighthouse after returning from the markets to find the windchime hanging in one of their windows, glass beads refracting the light, while a tiny golden charm striker and wooden tubes create a soft tinkling harmony on the breeze. It is every bit as lovely as they remember and imagined, and somehow makes their space feel more theirs.
Tobias smiles fondly, reaching out to slowly catch one of the golden striker and between their fingers, admiring the metalwork more closely. A soft tinkling, not made by their new decor comes from behind them and the elf's smile grows.
"I hoped you would like it," Emmrich offers with a small smile as Tobias turns to greet them. "I- I saw you admiring it in the market. You're so diligent about taking care of all of us, when you didn't get it for yourself, I knew I had to," the necromancer offers fondly.
There are a hundred things that Tobias wants to say. All of them, however, seem to stick in their throat as their blue-green eyes meet Emmrich's. He can't possibly know the reason why the chime had first caught their attention, that the gentle tinkle of metal and echoes of the wood striking against one another had reminded them of him and Manfred.
Emmrich is, of course, always welcome in their space, but the older man seems... hesitant to intrude upon their space or time, rather as if he thinks their patience for him and his presence might be finite. It's a positively ridiculous notion, one which the elf would very much like to disabuse him of, but they aren't certain how without showing their hand. A man as accomplished as Emmrich must surely be spoiled for choice when it comes to a partner of a more... romantic nature. Perhaps he has one already he left behind with the Mourn Watch. There's no reason to think that he might be interested in them.
That doesn't stop their foolish heart from hoping, though. Or from little things, silly things like the sound of a particular wind chime, reminding them of him and bringing a smile to their face.
"Thank you, Emmrich," Tobias smiles softly, dropping the striker and listening as it knocks gently against the tubes once more. "It's beautiful."
"You deserve beautiful things, my dear. Yes, we're saving the world, but it's also important to remember what we are saving it for," Emmrich says returning their gentle smile with one of his own.
For DADWC: from the Florence + The Machine Prompt List list > "And the heart is hard to translate, it speaks a language of its own". You're my favorite fenders writer 💙, so fenders fic, pretty please!
Aaaaaaaah so I got this twice and I love it SO much so thank you both! @contreparry - I really hope you enjoy it!
(If you’d like me to write you a dragon age fic, send me a prompt from here!)
@dadrunkwriting
Pairing: Fenders
Characters: Fenris, Anders
Tags: canon-typical graphic depictions of violence, Anders was right, anti-chantry, fluff
Rating: Mature
“And the heart is hard to translate
It has a language of it's own
It talks in tongues and quiet sighs
And prayers and proclamations in the grand days
Of great men and the smallest of gestures
In short shallow gasps”
- All This and Heaven Too, Florence + The Machine
It started on a beach in 9:30 Dragon. It was raining, and Fenris, Hawke and the rest of their companions were hot and sticky with blood when the clouds had burst. They’d left a litter of broken slaver bodies in the sand dunes behind them, stumbling down to the grey waves of the Waking Sea beneath a cloudy sky.
And then it had begun to rain, and the mage: a foolish, willful man utterly ignorant of his own privilege, had yelped and begun to take his clothes off. Fenris can still remember the way the sand had felt between his toes, and hear the buzz of insects in his ears as he’d stared at the tall, blonde man, and the sand between them had grown dark with water.
Anders had stripped down to his smalls, blood streaked up his forearms in long vivid slashes, and dropped his staff carelessly into the long, stiff silver reeds. Admittedly, it was a cheap thing: clearly scavenged or stolen, and nothing that any self-respecting magister would have been seen dead with. Still. Fenris had never seen a mage just drop their staff like that before. Just to the right of Anders’ chest, half hidden by thick red-blonde hair, was a deep and jagged scar directly above his heart. His belly was almost concave, hip bones jutting in a way that could only be unhealthy. There were more scars, but Fenris barely had a chance to see them before Anders was running at the freezing sea.
From behind, Fenris saw that his long back was latticed with more scars than he had previously imagined. The mage yelped as he got into the waves, feet hopping as if the water were burning hot, not freezing cold. And then he got past the shallows, and dove in beneath the cresting waves. Behind him, somewhere between the beach and the horizon, seabirds leapt squawking into the grey sky. Anders had burst up out of the blue water, laughing, tossing his hair back from his face in a whip of antique gold, tipping his long, crooked nose back and shutting his eyes as he raised his face to the watery grey sunlight.
And then Isabela and Hawke, laughing, had pulled each other’s clothes off and followed him, and Fenris had been left standing uncertainly on the beach, watching them, unable to decipher the ache in his chest as he waited for them to rejoin him on the shore.
*
It started in the Alienage in 9:30 on Wintersend. Anders had just delivered triplets, which was a labour that was exactly as harrowing and arduous as he had worried it would be. He hadn’t slept in 48 hours, and for weeks after he’d ascribed the events of that night to a waking dream. The elvhen women whose children he’d delivered had attempted to press what silver they had into his hands, and Anders had pressed it back into the mother’s wife’s hands, dizzy with the expenditure of his magic and the sheer weight of fatigue. Then he’d taken his staff, more as a cane than anything, and slowly left the narrow confines of their home.
His knee had been blistering with pain: and he’d known before the first kiss of snow that the weather had changed. His worst scars always warned him before the sky broke. Still, the coat he’d armoured over the years with reinforced leather and what other supplies he could scavenge provided little warmth against the night, so Anders was shivering as his breath fell in white clouds into the dark. Around the Vhenadahl, candles flickered against the wind in a way that only magical fire could, and Anders sent a silent half-hearted prayer to the Maker that the templars would stay inside their barracks tonight, and not make any midnight excursions into Lowtown.
The last person he had expected to see leaving Merrill’s home was Fenris, and he certainly hadn’t expected to see the elf wrapped in a mossy green, knitted woolen scarf. For a second the pair of them stared at each other, caught like apprentices out of bed past curfew. Then Fenris had flushed, ruddy against his dark skin, and marched past him. Anders had expected it to end there, but when Fenris got to the foot of the steps to the alienage he stopped, greatsword strapped like steel lightning to his back.
He turned on the steps, and frowned at Anders. “Are you coming?”
Anders had followed. Fenris said nothing for the whole journey, but he walked Anders to the door of his clinic, and when Anders swayed as he tried to heave open the heavy doors, Fenris had caught his elbow. Anders had stared at him, more startled by the unexpected gesture than he would have been by the Darktown floor, and Fenris jerked his hand back like he’d been burned. In one of the undercity taverns, a chorus of festival goers were singing. Fenris gave him a short, sharp nod. “Good night, mage.”
Anders nodded back, speechless. Through the broken walls of Darktown, snow drifted in silent clouds and disappeared into the blue ink of the Waking Sea. Anders was convinced for years that he imagined it when Fenris stopped again, on the staircase outside the clinic, and spoke in a murmur. “Happy Wintersend.”
*
It started on Sundermount in 9:33 Dragon. Fenris had fallen, feet slipping in the mud, right calf failing him thanks to a slice to his leg that felt like it had split a ligament. His leg was a screaming burn and the rest of him was little better. The fog on the mountain was thick and white as dragon’s breath, and much colder, seeping through his armour and into his skin, and making the lyrium sewn into his flesh numb the veins around it in a bruising ache. Fenris couldn’t see Hawke, or Isabela, and he did not trust the mage to be anywhere than at Hawke’s side, for all that she had clearly long since promised her heart to Isabela. It was with a grim certainty that Fenris had looked up into the bloody, snarling face of his would-be killer, even as his mind ran through every formal strategy and dirty tricky he could think of. His fingers scrabbled in the dirt for mud to throw into his eyes, but his fingers were weak and stiff with the cold. The slaver’s sword fell.
Which was when six feet two of mage tackled him. Fenris stared as Anders charged at the slaver who would have killed him, throwing him down into the dirt. The mage’s staff was nowhere to be seen, and his hair was almost brown with the rain. His pale face was streaked with blood, and his coat and shirt were torn and scorched in places, exposing his bare, newly healed skin. Fenris stared as Anders tackled the slaver down into the mud and then reared back and punched him, hard, breaking his nose before punching him again, and again, and then taking a dagger from his belt and slitting his throat with brutal efficiency.
When the act was done, Anders dropped the knife into the dirt and scrambled to his feet, long legs skidding in the wet mud like a newborn colt. Fenris almost laughed, but in the absence of mortal peril his injuries were attempting to set his nerve endings on fire. His efforts to sit ended in him collapsing back onto the hill and praying to a Maker he struggled to believe in that Hawke and Isabela had dealt with the rest. And then Anders was there, face covered in blood and mud, hair clinging like kelp to his newly freckled and faintly sunburned cheeks. “Oh no you don’t.”
Magic fell over Fenris’ ruined leg like holy fire, and Fenris’ pain evaporated, washing away from one heartbeat to the next until it was merely a distant, terrible memory. Slowly, stiffly, Fenris managed to sit up, and for the first time in three years, Anders gave him a warm, honest smile. “There you are.”
Then he’d stood, and Fenris had been dizzily reminded exactly how tall he was. And then there was a long, calloused hand, red with blood, fingers crooked with breaking, thrust into the foggy air between them. Despite himself, Fenris took it.
*
It started on the Wounded Coast in 9:33 Dragon. Aveline was attempting to woo her soon to be husband, Donnic, and Anders was struggling to understand exactly why that required Hawke and her friends to put their lives on the line. But the summer was late and hot, and the days were long, and Marian’s eyes were very blue. So he’d found himself in the shifting, midge-ridden dunes of the Coast, killing slavers and Tal-Vashoth, and only occasionally cringing with second hand embarrassment at Aveline’s attempts at flirtation.
They’d dispatched most the ne’er-do-wells stupid enough to show their faces between the sand dunes, and were waiting for Aveline and Donnic to catch up in an appropriately concealed spot beneath the hissing reeds. Soon enough, their voices came down the path, not quite smothered by the close crash of the ocean and the whistle of the wind.
“So I think it’s always best to start with a quick downward slash, and then follow up with a parry. It’s predictable, sure, but I think it’s good to get recruits started on what’s tried and trusted.”
Fenris had laughed, and for a second Anders thought the wind dropped. The elf’s voice was rough and low, and his laugh was too. He’d curled his lyrium-twined fingers at Isabela, and Isabela had rolled her eyes and presses a silver into his waiting palm. Fenris had pocketed it. Then he’d caught Anders staring, and cleared his throat, colour rising to his high cheekbones. Isabela had leaned across him, and Fenris’ flush had risen up the back of his neck and into the tips of his ears. Anders had tried very hard not to stare at it.
“Do you want in? Fenris thinks it won’t be until the third path.”
Anders had spoken, as he so often did, without stopping to think. “I wouldn’t have figured you for the romantic type.”
Fenris had met his eyes, then, and the elf’s were deep and green and beautiful. “There is a great deal that you do not know about me, mage.”
Anders had not been able to think of anything else for the rest of the night.
*
It started in 9:37 Dragon. They were in The Hanged Man, and Fenris was staring at the monster that wore the face of his nightmares. Corff was nowhere to be seen, nor were Maraas or any of the tavern’s other regulars. Fenris was trying to beat back the tide of cynicism in his mind telling him that he should have known they would betray him, all of them. That he should never have trusted anyone but himself.
His sister stepped back, and his blood roared so loudly in his ears that he barely heard what Hawke said. But he heard his domi - Danarius - talking about his affection and his skills. It took everything Fenris had not to vomit on the tavern floor, and his mind revolted in a dizzy kind of horror as the impulse conflicted with memories of merrier disasters on these same stained floorboards. Then there were demons, and his mouth was thick with sulphur, and Fenris was fighting for his life.
It was like being back in the Provings again. Danarius had found his way onto the wooden staircase of The Hanged Man: the staircase that led up to Varric’s rooms, the staircase on which Fenris had once kissed Isabela and been pleasantly surprised by her response, the staircase where he’d found her kissing Hawke and told them it didn’t matter. Danarius had desecrated this place that despite the best efforts of Fenris’ anxieties had become like a home to him. Danarius had stood there, and watched, and Fenris had heard his friends’ screams as his master’s demons had ripped into their flesh.
Fenris had lost track of time, arms burning with the searing remnants of dismembered spirits, hands slippery with sweat and blood. But at some point the familiar relief of healing had disappeared, and he had belatedly looked up through sweat-stinging eyes to see Anders’ body arched in a translucent prison of blue light. Danarius had been watching the mage with an expression of terrible curiosity that Fenris knew well and feared more. His expression had been almost impassive as the mage shuddered and spasmed, blood oozing from his ears and flowing from his nose and down over his chin.
Isabela was clutching a gash in her side that was turning her white canvas tunic cherry red, and Hawke was dragging a mangled leg through the broken furniture as she made her way towards her. Fenris stood frozen in the smouldering wreckage, trapped like the butterflies his master liked to collect on pinned boards in his study. Anders had collapsed in a heap at Danarius’ feet, and Danarius had stepped forward. Fenris’ heart lurched.
But then Anders had surged abruptly to his feet and punched Danarius in the balls.
Fenris laughed, a shocked bark that was too loud in the tavern following the battle, and Danarius had wheezed, and blood had spun about his fingers, and Anders had grabbed the back of his head with one hand and slammed his knee into Danarius’ nose with a jarring crunch, chest heaving as he panted.
Then he’d picked up Danarius with all the strength promised by his tall, muscular frame, his training as a Grey Warden and the hearty meals Varric had spent nine years coaxing him into. Anders hurled Danarius down the stairs, where he landed in a heap at Fenris’ feet. Anders had looked at him, beard red with blood, body trembling with fury or pain or both.
“He’s all yours.”
And just like that, Fenris was free.
*
It started in 9:37 Dragon. Hawke and Isabela had fled across the sea, and Anders didn’t blame them. The Chantry was gone, and he was still getting used to the idea that he was meant to survive this. He still wasn’t entirely sure that he should, and Justice had been all too silent on the subject. So he spent his days in a waking dream, trekking for days and then weeks into the Vimmark mountains in the vague direction of Nevarra.
He hadn’t seen another living person for three weeks when an elf emerged from the fog, wreathed in white light like a ghost. Anders had stopped. His body and mind had long since become stretched too thin with hunger, horror and grief. Fenris’ countenance, for all its grim finality, came as an abrupt relief. At least he could stop running, now.
He’d dropped his staff, slowly, and held up his hands. “If you’re here to kill me, I won’t stop you.”
Fenris had not drawn his sword, but he hadn’t let the light die in his lyrium, either. When he stepped closer, he didn’t make sound, and for a moment Anders thought perhaps he really was a ghost, summoned by his imagination and too many nights in a decade spent longing for a man he couldn’t have.
Around them, birds had sung in the early morning, and not far off a stream made its laughing way down the cliffs. “Why did you run?”
Fenris asked the question as if it held the secret to the restoration of the Golden City itself. Anders laughed, stepping forward and stumbling over his own feet and the thick mass of pain that was his long since ruined knee. Fenris moved toward him through the long, dew-soaked grass, but didn’t quite breach the space between them. Anders swayed into a mostly intentional sitting position on a moss-covered boulder. “Does it matter?”
Fenris had met his eyes, and his own were dark and green and beautiful. “It does.”
Anders shrugged, and shut his eyes, leaning his head back and up into the fog. Water kissed his cheeks, and he thought: it would have been worth it, for this. It would have been worth it, to feel the weather again.
Something skittered in the bushes, and Anders opened his eyes and watched Fenris turn, bristling, to scan the trees. After a moment Fenris’ shoulders lowered, fractionally, and he turned back to Anders. He’d asked the question again, patiently, persistently. “Why did you run?”
Anders shook his head. “Because I didn’t want to bring you down with me.” Fenris’ eyes had widened a little, and Anders hurried on. “Any of you. I knew what I was doing, but the consequences were mine alone. I wasn’t going to subject you to them.”
Fenris had tilted his head, and the lyrium in his skin had sent shimmering refractions of light dancing iridescently through the fog. “I did not think you bore me so much good will.”
“More like I didn’t bear you so much ill.” Anders had corrected, before sitting forwards, feeling abruptly the weight of too many decades of exhaustion lying heavy on his aching shoulders. “It’s alright. I think killing me is the best decision, too.”
The glass had rustled, then, and Anders thought it must have been deliberate. But then Fenris’ feet were in front of him, stained green with the grass, and the light of his lyrium faded, leaving them both wreathed only in the sunlit fog. Anders looked up at Fenris, and he looked like some ancient king, backlit by the bright sky, skin dark and olive against the shimmering silver of his lyrium. “I’m not going to kill you, mage.”
And then there was a dark, calloused hand, silver with lyrium, fingers slender and elegant, thrust into the misty air between them. Anders stared at Fenris, and Fenris’ poker face cracked as he gave him a small, crooked smile. Despite himself, Anders took his hand, letting Fenris pull him easily to his feet.
“I’m going to help.”
*
It started in 9:40 Dragon, when the Circle of Dairsmuid was annulled, and over five hundred mages between the ages of six and seventy were murdered because they were allowed to see their families. It started in 9:40 Dragon, with the rebellion of the White Spire. It started in 9:40 Dragon, when Lord Seeker Lambert declared an end to the Circle of Magi.
It started in a tavern in Nevarra, at a meeting of former slaves and runaway mages. It started with elves, and second-hand weapons, and an apostate with a Fereldan accent who looked like an Ander. It started with an elf from Tevinter with white tattoos that looked like Vallaslin.
It started with rebellion. But that isn’t where it ended.
*
“No, words are a language
It doesn't deserve such treatment
And all my stumbling phrases
Never amounted to anything worth this feeling
All this heaven never could describe
Such a feeling as I'm healing, words were never so useful
So I was screaming out a language
That I never knew existed before.”
Welcome to the DADWC! Here's a prompt for you- A Fenders kiss prompt! 26. …as an apology.
Fenris, the Lyrium Ghost, the scourge of many a slaver, who could punch through a man's sternum like paper to collect his heart, had been banished from the clinic for almost a whole day now.
In his defence, even the damn cat had gotten over it five minutes after it had happened and it had been an accident besides. Anders had too many of the damn things milling about the mansion now, and although they were cute some, the elf had to admit, he couldn't have expected the latest addition to run under his feet at the exact moment he was literally putting his foot down. Their tails were too damn long.
But Anders had been running on fumes after a three-day stint at the clinic without a break, to the point where Fenris could see the cracks appearing around the edges letting Justice shine through. He'd exploded, shocking his lover silent for the time it took for Anders to finish his rant on clumsy elves watching where they were going and slammed the door behind him as he stormed out.
Fenris has been left with half a dozen judgement cats' eyes staring at him as he stood shocked in the middle of the downstairs parlour. In a few hours', he'd ruminated on it, decided to take a small picnic lunch bought from a street vendor on the way and try to placate his lover, try to coax him back to sleep.
But he'd found the clinic empty of one apostate healer, the girl Anders had to help him giving him a filthy look as he shuffled the basket awkwardly in his hands, trying to think of a further plan of action.
'He's in the back,' she sniffed as she rolled some bandages. 'But he doesn't want to see you.' She put the last of the muslin rolls into a small box near her feet and walked forward to take the packed lunch from Fenris. He must have looked suitably chastised as her expression softened a little and offered, 'I'll see to it that he sleeps and I'm sure whatever it is will be forgotten when he's caught up on his rest.'
Fenris reluctantly withdrew, with a last lingering glance at the back of the clinic. He nodded, sighed a little internally and went back to his house, to spend a lonely night drinking until he was almost crying to Anders' cats about his troubles.
In the morning, there was still an empty spot beside him, but he felt a little more optimistic about the day. He fed the cats in the manor, and left for the clinic, picking up a decent breakfast for two along the way.
He was relieved to see Anders as soon as he unlatched the door to the clinic and entered silently. The mage was sitting at one of the tables not meant for patients, nursing a small cup of something that steamed between his hands. He looped as as Fenris came in and attempted a sheepish smile. He still looked tired, but much less so than the previous day and Fenris thanked the Maker that Justice had not taken advantage and forced the healer to stay up all night working on his manifesto.
The elf padded in further to the room and set the basket next to Anders' elbow, unloading the contents. Anders gave an appreciative sniff of the bacon sandwiches and turned a penitent expression on his lover.
'I'm sorry,' he said and Fenris laid a finger on the other's lips to stop him.
'We both did wrong,' he said, putting down his roll to lean across the table and give Anders a peck on the lips. Anders smiled and deepened the kiss and Fenris could feel all the love and apology in it and hoped he was expressing the same.
They both may have started off fighting like cats and dogs, but there was nothing like being able to resolve their disagreements like this, a soft golden moment with a man he had grown to like and then eventually love. Fenris thought he must be the luckiest person alive in these moments.
@dadrunkwriting
Hope you like it! It's always a hot minute in between writing something but you enjoy this!
Welcome to the DADWC! Here's a prompt for you: “You could have warned me!”
thank you so much for the prompt! I decided to do Anders/Fenris for this one. for @dadrunkwriting
Fic: Sub Rosa
“You could have warned me!”
“Warned you about what, exactly? I did not know Hawke was still here. I believed she left the mansion an hour ago.” Fenris watches as Anders drops his face in his hands and sighs, setting down his bottle of wine. He swallows around a suddenly dry mouth, taking a long moment to coax his tongue into working again. “Is it so bad that Hawke knows?”
“No, no, of course not, it’s just–” The mage sits up, pulling his hands away from his face to finally look Fenris in the eye. Even in the low firelight, Fenris can see the blush staining Anders’ cheeks. “We’ve been keeping things sub rosa so far.” Fenris’ mouth quirks up at the mage’s mangled Tevene accent. Anders continues, “I didn’t know if you’d be alright, with the whole group finding out about, well, us. And anything Hawke knows, Isabela knows, and she’s never going to shut up about it.” The last is said with a hint of fond exasperation.
Fenris hums in response, leaning further back in his chair.
“I have no doubt this will end up in the dwarf’s book.”
That makes Anders laugh, and finally something coiled tight in Fenris’ chest unwinds with the sound. When he next looks at Fenris, the skin around his eyes crinkles with the force of his smile.
“I’d forgotten about that bloody thing. If we’re really unlucky we’ll end up as a B plot.”
Fenris, who’s listened to Varric and Isabela talk more than enough about their ‘friend fiction’ to understand the literary reference, snorts and finds himself smiling back against his better judgement.
“Five silvers Isabela makes a voyeuristic request in the first hour.”
Anders laughs again, and Fenris is pleased to see his shoulders starting to drop from their previous protective hunch.
“I’m a sucker for gambling, but even I know that’s a fool’s bet,” Anders says obstinately. The mage stands from his chair, leaning his hip into the table where Fenris is seated. It forces Fenris to crane his head back to meet the man’s eyes, and it says something about how far they’ve come that he doesn’t feel threatened by a mage – a possessed one at that – looming over him like this.
“I will not name any more explicit acts she might request, then.”
“It’s just as well. I’d probably lose that bet, too.” Anders’ smile drops then, indecision passing over his face. Fenris waits, keeping his silence – the mage almost always speaks his mind sooner or later. “Our arguments–”
“Your points are getting better, but there are still gaping holes in your reasoning. We can be more civil during them, I suppose.”
“Civil, ha! That’s one way to put it.” Those soft brown eyes study him for a long moment, before Anders reaches out to tuck the hair covering his eyes behind one ear. The motion is gentle, and so familiar now that Fenris leans into it without thought. “And this?”
It takes a second for his meaning to sink in. Fenris thinks for a long moment. “Demonstrate physical affection as you like, though refrain from anything beyond kissing when we are in front of others.”
“You’d let me kiss you in public?” he sounds surprised and pleased, and Fenris doesn’t get another word out before Anders is leaning down to seal their mouths together. He reaches up to cup Anders’ face – the mage makes a pleased sound, deepening the kiss. He nips a little at Anders’ bottom lip, both out of habit and from a desire to hear him groan. It’s a long minute before they pull apart, but when they finally separate they’re both panting and Fenris’ heart is starting to pound. Still he masters himself enough to ask a question, murmured in the barest space between their mouths.
“And you?” Anders only hums in a questioning tone, and Fenris elaborates. “You obviously approve of kissing. Is there anything from which I should refrain in front of the others?” The words fall awkwardly from his tongue, but he forces them out anyway, finds it too important to leave unspoken. Anders pulls away a few inches, blinking, but his pupils are still wide and dark as they scrutinize Fenris.
“Well-” he starts, then stops, still looking at him with a hesitance Fenris has rarely seen. Fenris doesn’t break eye contact but finds himself stroking along the man’s cheek with his thumb until Anders blinks rapidly.
“Tell me,” he entreats.
“You could call me by my name, in front of the others, instead–” he cuts himself off, but they both know what he means when Fenris has only referred to him as “mage” for years. “Abomination” made its appearance early on, but less often over time, and Fenris is very conscious of the fact the word hasn’t left his lips since the night Anders first kissed him. It is an ongoing choice.
“Very well,” Fenris finds himself saying, easily and simply. “Anders.”
He’s gratified by Anders’ soft smile, how easily the man leans into him for a kiss without another word.
For the DADWC: Awkward Neighbor AU's- "you happen to be an amazing chef and every day there’s this amazing waft of good cooking coming from your place into mine," with the pairing of your choice!
I was trying to finish this last week, but apparently I passed out in the middle of it. But I wrapped it up today and I hope you enjoy! It’s a bit sappy and silly, but here it is nonetheless
for @dadrunkwriting
Anders sat down, mug of afternoon coffee in hand, and glanced out the window. He could smell the lavender outside, and hear the birds. It was a beautiful afternoon, so peaceful. He sighed happily.
Beneath him, Anders heard a window open. He glanced at the clock. If that neighbor is cooking yet again, I swear…
Anders stared out the window, daring his neighbor to start cooking dinner for the fourth day in a row now.
Sure enough, before long, the most amazing smell came up from the lower apartment, assaulting Anders’ nearly empty stomach with empty promises of delicious food. He glared outside, and then glared at his own kitchen.
Whoever that was making food every day that smelled so good, Anders needed to have words with them. But he couldn’t have words empty-handed. He gulped down the rest of his coffee and strode with purpose into the kitchen. Anders was not good at cooking, and had ruined many a pot of “easy” pasta, but he could make some amazing cookies.
Fueled by the delicious smell of garlic coming in through his window, Anders mixed up a batch of chocolate chip cookies. They weren’t just any cookies. They were his amazing chocolate delight cookies, with a dash of sea salt added just before he put them in the oven, so they had that delicious salty sweet flavor. He pulled them out before they got brown on the edges so they would be soft and perfect. A taste test proved that they were. Perfect, Anders thought, smugly.
Now that it came down to it, he felt petty and somewhat nervous going to knock on his neighbor’s door. But he filled a plate with warm cookies and ran into the bathroom to make sure his hair was in order. He put on some deodorant and a fresh shirt with his nice jeans and sneakers, turned off the oven, and headed out with his plate of cookies.
He knew exactly which door it was, the apartment just beneath his, a quick trot down the stairs and he was standing in front of Number 32. The smell of food had faded a bit, so whoever was inside was probably eating, or had just finished. Anders felt a bit bashful, but he knocked anyway.
There was a long pause.
And then the door opened. Anders stared for a moment. The elf who opened the door was one of the most beautiful people he’d ever seen. White hair, smooth olive skin with pale tattoos down his bare arms, and stunning green eyes. He looked at Anders with baffled confusion.
“‘I do not remember ordering anything,” the elf said, glancing at the plate in Anders’ hands.
“Oh.”
Anders held the plate out.
“I live above you,” he said. “I have been smelling the food you’ve been cooking and…” He realized that perhaps he would sound upset. “It smells really good. I thought I’d…bring you something.”
“You want some?” The elf asked. A bit blunt, perhaps, but Anders did want to sample it.
“I—well— only if you have extra.”
“Come in then.”
“Come in?” Anders swallowed nervously, clutching the plate of cookies.
“You would like some food, yes?” The elf quirked an eyebrow back at him and Anders lurched into motion.
“Yes,” he squeaked. “Thank you.”
“I have more than I can eat,” the elf said, taking a plate from his cupboard and scooping up some of the fragrant food on his stove for Anders.
Anders stood awkwardly waiting, and then handed over the plate of cookies when the elf slid the food onto the small dining table tucked in the corner.
“I hope you aren’t allergic,” Anders said, dropping into the chair beside the food.
“Not at all. I am Fenris, by the way. You are?”
“Anders. Nurse, magic-user, and cat-lover,” Anders said. Best to get the important facts out of the way first.
“A mage?”
“We’ve been called that, yeah,” Anders said, taking a bite. “Oh, this is heavenly. Even better than it smells.” He waved his fork at Fenris. “And that’s saying something.”
The elf snorted a laugh.
“You are not what I would have expected a mage to be like.”
“We’re not all dismal, stuffy folks,” Anders said, shrugging. “I mostly use mine at the hospital to help when we’re short on doctors. Which is… always.”
“I see.”
Anders watched as Fenris finally picked up a cookie.
“They are very warm,” he said, a bit surprised.
“They just came out of the oven.”
“I suppose,” Fenris said. “Not magic then.”
“Not magic.”
Fenris set the plate between them and took the second seat at the table. “I do not think I have ever had a warm cookie.”
“Wait,” Anders frowned at him. “Never?”
“Not that I can remember, at least.” Fenris took a bite. His eyes widened.
“Good?”
Fenris quickly ate the rest of the cookie in a single bite, licking his finger where some melting chocolate had touched it.
“They’re my chocolate delight cookies,” Anders said proudly. “With sea salt.”
“Is it important that it is from the sea?” Fenris asked, his brows furrowing. “I could taste the salt.”
“That’s my special trick to bring out the salt flavor,” Anders said, “but it’s more the size of the salt flakes than where it comes from. Sea salt just sounds fancy.”
“You are welcome to bring these cookies at any time,” Fenris said, reaching for another. “I do not know how to bake, but perhaps I should learn, if it can taste this delightful.”
“Oh, I can make many delightful things,” Anders said, unable to contain his grin. “Would you like to try some other treats sometime?”
“If you will accept some food in return,” Fenris said. “I think this would be an acceptable trade.”
“Oh, I think I’m getting the better end of the deal,” Anders said, “but I would love to.”
For the DADWC: The way cold glass fogs when you press your hand against it, for the character of your choice!
Thank you for the prompt! Here is Circle!Bethany as I imagine her in my unwritten Shipwreck AU @dadrunkwriting
~
Bethany idly chilled the glass windowpane while staring into the courtyard. It had been three weeks since Meredith confined her indoors—a punishment for her sister, not Bethany, who hadn’t broken any rules in years—and now she stared and she watched and she glowered at the people who walked around like the right to do so was Maker-granted.
She’d chosen this window because the panes fit poorly, and air slipped in around the cracks. The harbor wasn’t exactly her favorite smell in the world, but her options were limited to her roommate’s dirty socks, the slop served at supper, and the books in the library. She’d had her fill of old paper. She longed for something else. Fresh bread or lilacs or even the homey smell of a mabari, but all she could get was stolen whiffs of the harbor and the muffled sounds of the people below.
There was a new templar in the courtyard. Lost by the look of it. Helmet under one arm, fingers in his hair as he looked around, his entire body shaped into an apology for existing. Bethany watched as he tried one direction, then disappeared into another which she knew was a dead end blocked off by a large gate, and he shuffled back into view a moment later. His hand met his hair again, but he relaxed when he caught sight of Cullen.
Bethany hated him for that. Not because Cullen was any better or any worse than any of the others, at least he didn’t appear to enjoy his role of jailor, but this wrong-footed stranger lived a life that Bethany would never understand, one where a stone-faced man in a suit of armor could provide comfort instead of fear and submission. The stranger actually smiled.
She felt her control over the spell slipping, frost accumulating on the windowsill, and if the glass chilled too much, the bubbles in it would pop and she would lose her favorite window and possibly even her permission to look through windows at all. Then she might really go mad.
She pulled her hand away and wondered that no one would know the glass was on the verge of shattering. It was still glass up until it wasn’t, still serving its function of letting her look through it. At least until Bethany put her palm against the center of the pane, and the glass fogged around her. It was at that moment that the new templar looked up in her direction. And she was too far away for him to possibly be looking at her, she knew it, but she still drew away from the window entirely, leaving only a palmprint behind.
thank you! A little melancholy for @dadrunkwriting
Fandom: Dragon Age. Words: 366
Iwyn Lavellan x Solas | Post Trespasser | angst
Rating: Teen. Melancholy, a tad angst, reference to sex
Oranges
The air on her balcony is cool against Iwyn’s skin, crisp inside her lungs. The sunrise colors the mountain peaks pink, the everlasting snow glowing in the morning light. It’s always cold here, no matter the season, far enough above the Skyhold courtyard and it’s unnatural warmth.
Once, on a quiet evening in the Tavern, they’ve talked about summer. In the Marches, the summers can be warm and sticky, but Iwyn’s clan always move to the summer pastures in the mountains. She hasn’t experienced real heat, other than the awful deserts on the Orlaisian borders. Cassandra had told Nevarra was much the same, acrid, sand blowing through deserted streets and stinging your skin.
But later, when she’d had another beer, she’d also told of warm nights, her fingers sticky with dates she’d shared with her brother.
Josephine told of Antivan ports in the summer, the streets alive with street theater, the air scented with oranges and cicadas singing all night. Iwyn hasn’t heard cicadas, and she only had an orange once at the market in Wycome. Dorian said cicadas and fireflies were in the countryside in Tevinter, but the noise and lights of Minrathous drowned them out. He told of evenings where the warmth of the day lingered and darkness fell swiftly, chased away by thousands of magical floating orbs of light.
Solas said very little, only that he was used to both warm and cold climates. Later, when they were alone, he offered to show her the North in the Fade – oranges and dates, fireflies and cicadas. She loved every bit of it. They often went there, holding hands in olive groves while the fireflies danced, kissing in the dark heat until their need took them to the real world.
She hasn’t found him in fade, not yet, and her attempts to do so often leads to snow-filled fir forests and howling wolves.
Most days, though, she can’t really control the fade.
Most days, she can’t really remember her dreams, but she remembers the cicadas singing, and wakes with the scent of oranges in her nose. Those days, like today, she throws the doors open, and breathes the cold, crisp air until her lungs burn.
