Prompt: Morning
Summary: After finishing a job together during her time away from Treviso, Fenris and Rook bid farewell.
Read below the cut, or on AO3!
The dawn comes grey and heavy. A cool, salted breeze carries the crackling scent of a coming storm in through the window where Daphne stands watching the market stalls as they squat — still and silent — in the streets below her. They’ve woken earlier than expected, then, if even the merchants have not arrived to busy themselves with preparations for the rain. Behind her, she can feel Fenris where he sits on the bed, perched next to a plump, freshly organized pack with his elbows braced on his knees, and if she had to guess, his tongue between his teeth.
“We have time,” she insists. She’s not ready to face him, so she crosses her arms over her chest, stops just shy of hunching in on herself against the falling temperature. Neither of them has any real schedule to keep to these days. She certainly doesn’t, and she knows Fenris could delay his departure. If he chose to.
The breath he lets out at her words tells her already that he won’t. It’s strained; they’re both carrying the weight of last night with them still. He’d asked her to come with him, again, and again she’d declined. It’s happened before, but this time, he’d pushed back. Accused her of falling into old patterns, avoiding attachments the same way she always did in the Watch, when they’d felt like a yoke tying her to the dim halls of the Necropolis.
“We do,” he says, finally. Daphne turns to face him, his voice pulling at her. “If we want to do this the hard way.”
She almost stops herself from responding, but she knows he’ll feel it in the air between them anyway, so she says, “Is there an easy way?”
There might have been, if not for the evening’s events. Or at least, there might have been a way to part that was not quite so difficult as it feels now, with her latest refusal still haunting the corners of their room at the Lords’ inn, with his response lodged like a splinter in the walls of her heart.
Fenris stands, rounds the end of the bed and strides towards her and despite her best efforts — gritted teeth, white knuckles, tight shoulders — something in her chest swells and aches as he approaches. Tells her maybe he had a point, begs him silently: ask me again, ask me again.
But his hand finds the edge of her jaw, and the pad of his thumb wanders too close to the dimple at the center of her chin. She turns away from the touch.
After the Final Blight, she’d left the Mourn Watch at last, told herself she was chasing the freedom she’d longed for during every hour spent bent over a dusty tome while her blood sang with the desire to move, go somewhere, do anything else. She’d spent her whole life afraid that opening her heart would mean getting stuck. And then, when she’d finally let someone in, Treviso had happened. She’d wandered the First Talon’s halls like a house cat; looking for a hunt that could not be found among the villa’s mahogany and velvet and marble. Agreeing to keep working with Fenris feels a little too close to following him, to mistakes she's made before.
Wordlessly, Fenris moves his hand, fits it against the back of her neck and pulls her in until the length of their bodies are pressed together. He tilts her face up to meet his, and when their lips meet, when she tries to pry his apart with her own, he resists. Holds her still against him, yields only when she’s about to draw back. Kisses her quick, a breathless sweep of his tongue against hers, and then he withdraws.
Says, “Isabela will know where to find you,” and it’s a demand, not a request. Keep the captain informed, leave herself room to change her mind.
Daphne nods, swaps a final breath with Fenris before he’s shouldering his pack and slipping out into the hall.
When the rain starts a moment later, she moves to the window, runs a hand through the moisture slicking its frame, and closes it without even a glance to the street below.
The mere notion of standing roused a taut, insidious from its slumber within her stomach. It did not strike with fangs, but coiled instead, tightening with cruel precision and slow, deliberate pulses. Lingering testament demanded flesh, to the strength ripped away, to what happened lost. Hard and knotted, filling space for vitality once thrived.
But that thought came louder now, the bud of the rose cut to fall.
Get up.
A bitter laugh caught in her throat.
And do what? What was there to do, locked in the Fade, a grotesque parody of reality, forced to sustain the Veil alongside an ancient Elvhen God?
... Well.
When framed that way? If she asked herself in that manner? There were plentiful options.
happy dadwc friday! how about fenris/rook: unsure fingers braiding hair
Thank you for the prompt!
for @dadrunkwriting | divider credit
Fenris braids Val's hair, slowly and nervously.
T | 319 words | CWs: references to character death (Hawke), age difference
Fenris had never been good with hair. Other slaves took care of his, and as soon as he ran away from Seheron he'd cut it off with his sword and kept it short since then. But as Val looked up at him and fiddled with his long thick locks of black hair, he felt he couldn't refuse him, even if he didn't know what he was doing.
"You'll forgive the mess, will you not?" Fenris asked as his fingers twisted the strands of hair, slowly creating two strands of braids on either side of Val's head, ready to pull them together when they were longer. "I have never done this before."
Val smiled. "I'm surprised. Never had a lover with long hair before?"
Fenris' fingers paused for a second, thinking of Eli and his hair that fell down to his shoulders, his sunny smile, how he joked around even as he infuriated him so, saying things that Fenris did not want to accept as true. It had been ten years, but the loss still stung. "He didn't braid his hair," he said. "Kept it loose."
Val smiled and sighed. "I am glad to be the first you do it for, then. It doesn't matter how it looks."
Fenris scoffed. "You'd think how it looks would be the point of it," he argued goodnaturedly.
Val turned to face him as deft fingers locked the strands of hair together and pulled him into a kiss. "It is more about getting a excuse for your hand in my hair, Blue Wraith," he purred, his ears twitching with desire.
Fenris breathed out right into Val's mouth. He was getting too old for this, maybe, but the kindred spirit in this former slave with a hard head and a rebellious streak made him feel like being foolish again. He never thought he could love after Hawke—but he was trying to learn how to again.
someone wanted to know how Fenris would react to Solas 1) using blood magic on rook and (my addition) 2) banishing Rook to Fade Jail and my gut instinct is Not Well
