Bounty on their head for Anders (from bad things bingo)! Very predictable probably, sorry 😅
@hoochieblues
Thank you both so much! I went A Direction with this but I hope you like it!!
(If you’d like me to write you a dragon age fic, send me a prompt from here!)
@dadrunkwriting
@badthingshappenbingo
Fandom: Dragon Age 2
Pairing: Kanders
Characters: Anders, Karl
Tags: pre-DA2, derogatory reference to sex work, casual reference to sexual abuse, graphic reference to sex / implied sexual abuse
Rating: Mature
“How much did they put on him this time?”
Karl is trying and failing to write an essay. He has been trying and failing to write an essay all morning. It’s supposed to be an article he’s hoping to submit to the Aequitarians on the use and limitations of Force Magic. It’s supposed to be good. He thinks it could have been. Except that Anders made his most recent escape attempt 52 hours ago and Karl has not been able to sleep, eat or write since. The pair of templars making no effort to keep their voices lowered where they’re standing against the wall opposite his table aren’t helping.
“Three. Gold. Pieces.”
The first templar lets out a low whistle that echoes strangely against the metal of his helmet, and Karl imagines Anders laughing at that and trying to hide it, and his heart clenches in a terrible twist in his chest. He keeps moving his quill above his long since abandoned parchment, the ink on its tip drying black like old blood.
“Aren’t they worried that’ll start a bidding war? Men have been killed for less.”
Karl presses his teeth together until they squeak to stop himself from crushing the feathers of his quill. He’s ruined too many, and Owain won’t forgive him another broken pen. The second templar speaks again - Karl thinks it’s Istyn, but it’s always hard to tell under the steel masks of their helmets.
“At this point, Greagoir’s counting it. Getting that piece of shit caught between two sellswords fixes his problems for him. And saves us another blighted trek through the bleeding wilds.”
Karl shuts his eyes, and images Anders with a rusty blade protruding from his chest, brown eyes as wide and young as they had been the first time he’d met him, when he was 13 years old and hadn’t spoken to anyone for a year. He puts down his quill. There’s the soft sound of cloth padded footsteps elsewhere in the library, and the sound of Annelise coughing. She hasn’t taken well to Fereldan winters.
Feeling as if he’s being puppeted by blood magic, Karl gets numbly to his feet and picks up his books, moving them to the wrong shelf and making a mental note to apologise to Tiffany later as he moves closer to the templars.
Number one, who Karl is beginning to think is Kay, makes a soft grunt of sympathy and leans back against the wall, folding his arms with a clank of armour. “As if we’d get that lucky. He’ll probably make them all his bitches and show back up with a fucking harem.”
Karl’s hand freezes, sweating, around the cloth bound cover of the book in his hands. He stares at the bookshelf, and tries to hear the sound of his breathing over the rushing of blood in his ears. Istyn snorts, and Karl tries not to jump at how close and loud it sounds. He does glance back over his shoulder, but neither templar is looking at him. The templars at Kinloch had long since decided that Karl was rarely a threat, and they paid him an according lack of attention.
“You kidding? Three gold pieces. You could retire on that, if your standards are low enough. Not even Anders gives head that good.”
Kay laughs. “Would you do it? Take the three gold, or keep him as your own personal cockwarmer?”
Istyn hums, and Karl tries to ignore the heat prickling up the back of his neck and the rising tension of his magic. The book in his hands is crumpling under supernatural force, hidden by the shelf.
Eventually, Istyn speaks. “I’d keep him. Not him, specifically, but hell. Anyone with an arse that tight. It’s like a wife who can’t complain.”
Kay clicks his tongue. “See that’s the problem with nobility. You forget, three gold pieces will get you a hundred whores. And no chance of them turning into a fucking demon.”
Istyn roars with laughter, then, startling a new Dalish apprentice who’d been brought in a few weeks back. With a scrape of metal on stone like nails on chalkboard, the pair of them push away from the wall and walk further into the library.
Karl stands next to the bookshelf for a long time. The thin letterboxes of light at the top of the bricked up windows have gone dark and orange on the walls by the time Annelise gently touches his arm, her nose red with what was either hayfever or a cold.
“Karl. Are you alright?”
Karl blinks, and becomes suddenly aware of the numb pins and needles in his hands and feet. He lets go of the book on the shelf. There’s a thumbprint shaped indent in the cover. “I’m - I’m fine.”
The worried frown on Annelise’s brow doesn’t ease. Karl follows her gaze to the floor beneath his feet, where the tile of stone on which he’s standing is fractured in a hundred fissure lines as if it had been hit by a sledgehammer. Karl assembles his features into an appropriate expression of surprise.
“Oh. How strange. I'll make sure to tell someone about that.”
Hey! How about a dialogue prompt if you like? "I don't think of you as a protector. More a distraction." Maybe for Serafina & Carver, or any character(s) you want?
FWOOP i wrote a thing.
---
She doesn’t see her brother much anymore. She could, if she dared to venture out to the Gallows, but the very thought fills her with dread. So she doesn’t. He writes occasionally, but more for Mother’s benefit than hers, she suspects. If he ever visits Kirkwall proper, it’s never to see her. It’s for the best, really. The last thing either of them need is someone taking too close a look at her. Still, walking around the city without him looming behind her feels odd.
After a particularly messy evening spent dealing with a new, uppity group of bandits in Lowtown, the last thing she expects to see when she finally returns to the estate is the silvery sheen of templar armor. She tenses as she steps through the front door and glimpses silver, but her dog brushes past her with a bouncy trot that is entirely unbecoming of a warhound.
Well, a warhound mutt.
She realizes it’s Carver when he turns to face her, his face cast in shadow but familiar all the same. Bear trots right up to him, and Carver offers her dog his hand to sniff without glancing down. “You look like you’ve been busy,” he says, and idly scritches Bear behind one ear.
“Something like that,” she allows, leaning against the wall as she strips off her boots and tosses them aside in the entryway. She’s told Bodahn a dozen times that he doesn’t have to clean up after her, but she doesn’t doubt she’ll find the boots dry and clean outside her bedroom door in the morning. She leaves her socks there, too; they’re drenched through and she’s too tired to waste her energy on drying them with magic. Barefoot, she follows her dog across the cool marble floor and stops a few paces away from her brother. Glancing up--the nerve he’d had, getting so tall so fast--she asks, “What are you doing here?”
He makes a non-committal sound and shrugs. “Checking in.”
Serafina snorts. “I haven’t seen you in a year,” she counters. Then, she pauses. “That door is kept locked. How did you get in?”
He lifts his eyebrows slightly. “Bodahn let me in,” he says simply.
That’s… fair. That is, after all, more or less the job she’d given him. “And you were… what, waiting for me?”
Carver nods, and crosses his arms with a faint clink of steel against steel. Bear whines softly in protest as her brother says quietly, “People talk about you, you know.”
“No thanks to Varric,” she replies.
Just for a moment, faint amusement flits across her brother’s expression before his Official Templar mask shutters back in place. “You need to be careful. If anyone reports you--I can’t protect you, you know. Not really.”
“Protect me?” she echoes with a laugh. “Carver, when have I ever needed you to protect me?”
Even if the room were pitch black, she’d be able to feel the defensiveness that pours off him now. He huffs and grumbles, “If you get caught, I’m dead too.”
“Mother would drag me back from the Void just to kill me a second time if that happened,” she says coolly. “Trust me. I won’t get caught.”
“Sera,” he hisses--oh, he must be worried. “I didn’t join the Order for fun.”
“Yes, yes, you did it because you think it’s your job to protect me,” she drawls. But as she inhales to continue, he cuts her off.
“Dad asked me to.”
Before she can stop herself, she says derisively, “You’re not my protector, Carver. Really, you’re more of a distraction.”
Shockingly, Carver doesn’t rise to the bait. Instead he says flatly, “I just wanted to warn you. That’s all. Goodnight, sister.” Then, without waiting for her reply, he nudges Bear aside and steps around her.
She flings out her staff to block him. It’s not much of a barrier, but he stops all the same. “Carver,” she says, deadly serious, “listen to me. I need you watching out for yourself. Don’t worry about me, okay? The Gallows is a fucking dragon’s lair. Don’t get eaten alive by the dragonlings because you’re too busy looking for the big dragon.”
He’s still as a statue for a few seconds. Then, quietly: “Point taken.”
Serafina lowers her staff and says, “It’s good to see you again.”
“You too.”
When the front door slams shut behind him, Bear whines again, more plaintively. She sighs and says, “Yeah, I missed him too. Little shit.”
Ooh, 29, 30 and 33 for the relationship asks if you haven't done them yet, please :)
Thanks for the ask!! I haven't done these yet. 30 is great. 👀
The biggest compromises Journey and Anders have to learn how to make for their marriage to survive the events of TPWIB actually have somewhat to do with the things that drew them to one another in the first place.
As I mentioned in the previous post, Anders adores Journey's particular brand of reckless bravery. She has a tendency to throw caution to the wind and just Do The Thing that really revs his engines so to speak. Unfortunately, her almost dying in his arms fucks that up for him a bit. She's always been sort of larger than life to him, untouchable almost, with this insane sort of luck that finally almost runs out one day. And that's the day he realizes after Karl he absolutely cannot handle losing a second lover to battlefield casualty. (Which. Ok. That's valid.)
This leads to him getting really controlling at times and making decisions for her instead of involving her in them, and it turns into a repeating problem because he convinces himself he's protecting her and then makes big dumb life choices without involving her (read: without her convincing him he's being a self sacrificing dumbass).
Their compromise is that she agrees to be a little more careful and think things through more, and he agrees to rein in his tendency to be really controlling and actually talk things through with her when decisions involve the both of them.
OH BOY.
The level of petty here is debatable depending on who you relate with the most in this scenario, but Journey and Nathaniel at some point discover they are on opposite sides of a bitter sports rivalry.
He's a diehard Denerim Mabari fan and she's been a Redcliffe Rams fan her entire life. Feral Dan the Fighting Mabari and Lord Woolsley the Demon Ram do not get along. The day these two teams play each other in South Regionals is the day poor Anders basically retreats into the kitchen and hangs out with (gets drunk with) Velanna and commiserates with her about being the Not Sports Fan in the relationship while his partners yell at the TV and each other in the living room and Sigrun watches with glee from the sidelines.
Anders and Journey are both very physical, fairly promiscuous people. It's one of the many reasons they're extremely compatible — casual sex is a thing they both engage in frequently. Shit, they started out banging casually before feelings happened. So even after they start dating and get married, they still hook up with other people separately and together and it's never really a Thing. They just discuss it with each other and are careful and respect each others' boundaries, but to be honest there aren't many outside of "tell me where you're going and how I can reach you in an emergency" and "use protection." This is a side of him that gets buried after Karl and Justice that she sort of quietly draws back out of him. It's something Justice frowns on at first but realizes is something that helps Anders and keeps him grounded and himself when shit hits the fan and begrudgingly accepts.
Emotional attachment is dicier. It's what makes finding out he and Nate were together while she was away kind of painful to accept at first, and also why it was so hard for her to admit she and Nathaniel kissed before she left. It's also part of what makes finding out about Karl so hard for her. Like, her husband kept the fact that he had a dead fiancé from her for ten years and clearly never intended to ever tell her at all had the secret not come out, which sucked enough, but then she's also having to contend with the idea that she's not the first person he's been this head over heels for. Because when it comes to emotional attachment, he was her first.
So I guess jealousy tends to come up more between them when things get hidden, and part of the implication is that these things are worth hiding in the first place.
With Nathaniel, as the third partner who comes into the relationship four years after Anders and Journey have been married, he's got a bit of insecurity about his place between them that makes him actively push Anders away for a while when Journey gets back. He can handle pulling away from Anders and remaining friends. He can't handle the thought of being a token in their marriage or coming between them or eventually being thrown aside for the sake of an established relationship, and it takes him realizing he's in love with Journey too before he's willing to admit he could make it work with the two of them.
Eventually they take advantage of shady Warden legal loopholes and effectively add Nathaniel to their marriage legally and are like congrats loser you're stuck with us forever now 🥰
🦄- What fictional animal would you be if you could choose? Why?
🧐- Share a random useless fact that you know.
✏️- Share a no-context line from a current WIP you’re working on.
for the ask game if you want :)
thank you for asking! and to @lilyaceofdiamonds for also asking 🦄!
🦄: miyuki from atla. i am sure this is asking for, like, a species and not one actual specific, individual animal, but i'd be miyuki. because she's a cat who is well loved and cared for, and that's what i want to be in real life anyway, and who is also apparently some kind of insurrectionist and i love that for her.
🧐: i saw this and of course then magically every single snippet of useless trivia i possess instantly left my brain and has yet to return, lol, except that the name of the continent on which dragon age takes place is called thedas because in planning it stood for "the dragon age setting" and then they just never changed it, and i do enjoy that little tidbit very much
✏️: “So this is gonna sound weird but…I’m really proud of you for being so upset with me.” (next chapter of Where I Want to Be, which i swear will happen…eventually…i mean, depressive episode-fueled writer's block can't last forever, right?)
Ooh! Bad Things Happen Bingo sounds amazing! Could I suggest If I Can't Have You for Negative FenHawke (esp. Red/Evil m!Hawke) and/or Bounty on Their Head for Kanders, please, if I'm not being too greedy?
(If you’d like me to write you a dragon age fic, send me a prompt from here!)
It’s only ten years of torture under Danarius’ hands that stops Fenris from falling, fatally, down the stone steps to darktown and cracking his head open. As it is, his feet slip down the hot, dry stone, tripping until he gets his purchase, mind reeling from the sheer force of the punch that had connected with the side of his head.
If Hawke is surprised that Fenris isn’t dead, he doesn’t show it, marching down the staircase to pick up Fenris easily by the armour on the front of his chest. His face is a mask of fury, eyes dark with anger under the craggy cliff of his brow, teeth bared as his lips pull back in a snarl. He shakes Fenris, hard enough for Fenris to feel something crack in the back of his neck in a way that sends nauseating pain up into the back of his skull and down into his back. “Did you think I wouldn’t know?”
Hawke raises his arms and hurls Fenris onto the stone steps, and Fenris barely has the time and sense in his aching head to wrap his hands around his skull as his body bounces against the staircase.
His ribcage connects with the edge of a step with a blistering, splintering crack and Fenris doesn’t have time to thank the Maker that the broken bone miraculously misses his lung, because Hawke is still coming after him. Bruised and wounded and, he is beginning to suspect, concussed, Fenris gets to his feet. The few people who’d decided to traverse the Kirkwall evening scatter out of the way, staring at the tattooed elf and the Champion of Kirkwall, who’s coming after him with all the fire of Andraste herself.
Fenris tries to settle his weight, and feels himself wobble. He has the chance to think Shit before Hawke’s foot is connecting with his stomach, and Fenris’ broken ribs are buckling further beneath the metal weight of Hawke’s armoured boot as he shouts in pain, feeling hot tears springing uselessly to his eyes.
In the shadows by the staircase, a cat hisses and scatters into the darkness of the Undercity with a thump of paws. Hawke’s gauntlet sinks into Fenris hair and pulls him up by it, sending needles stabbing sharply across Fenris’ scalp as Hawke lifts him by his hair to roar in his face. “You’re mine. You belong to me.”
Hawke’s fist sinks into Fenris’ stomach, and he barely has time to be glad it wasn’t the broken ribs again - he doesn’t know how often his lungs will be lucky - before the air is rushing from his chest.
As Hawke hurls him onto the ground again and the screech of Fenris’ armour screams against the stone, he has a moment to think that of course, Garrett would attack him like this. By surprise, from the shadows. Fenris grits his teeth, and rolls onto his side, but when he puts his hand on the ground to push himself to his feet Garrett’s boot lands on his knuckles, cold and hard. Then he pushes down, and Fenris screams as his knuckles break.
Garrett crouches, and his breath is hot on Fenris’ skin. “If I can’t have you, no one can.”
Fenris tries to wriggle away, seeing Garrett’s hand moving for his dagger - but his ribs are screaming and his hand feels as if it’s on fire and the world is still tilting madly from that first punch. Garrett grins, teeth white and even, and presses his lips against Fenris’ in a hot, aggressive punch of a kiss. Fenris wants to throw up. He does manage to knee Garrett in the crotch, which he only has a second to celebrate before Garrett is using a hand in his hair to slam his head into the stone ground again.
This time dizziness hits Fenris like an arrow, and he feels the sudden damp of wetness at the back of his his head. He blinks slowly up at Hawke, and supposes this is how he dies. He thinks it serves him right, for trusting anyone but himself.
Then there’s an arc of blue light, and suddenly Hawke disappears.
Fenris’ back hits the stone ground, and he chokes on vomit as pain rolls through his cracked skull. Weakly, he rolls onto his side and tries to get up, the same bitter determination that had taken him safely from Tevinter refusing to waste this chance and let him die, here, now. He’s at the opening to the lift to the Undercity when he looks back and sees a man on fire. Fenris blinks, slowly, sound coming to him dim and muffled as if it’s underwater.
He sees the burning man twist a stick in his hands, and then sees him hit Hawke on the head with it, hard. Fenris trips against the wall of the lift, and falls against the lever. He sees the burning man turn, and hears someone call his name…
Then he collapses.
*
When Fenris wakes up, he feels as if he’s lying in cool, shallow water. It’s not cold. It’s the perfect temperature, actually, to soothe the omnipresent sticky heat of Kirkwall. He can hear voices - children, women, other people. He waits for what he expects, and after a moment Anders is there, burbling away at a counter next to Fenris’ cot. Fenris forces his eyes open, though they feel heavy and slow. It takes too many heartbeats for the blurred figures around him to resolve themselves, but by the time they have Fenris has registered the stiff bandages around his hand, and his head, and his chest.
Anders smiles down at him, upside down. “Sleeping beauty awakes.”
Fenris forces his mouth up in a small smile. “Hawke?”
Anders’ expression darkens. “Hightown. Varric has promised to tell me if he makes his way down here.”
“And we’re here, too.”
Fenris blinks, rapidly, wondering if he’s still dreaming as Merrill makes her way into his field of vision. There’s a dark, fat, muscular arm slung around her shoulders, and Fenris follows it to Isabela, whose full lips are pursed with tension. Her mouth softens when she catches his gaze, though, and she leans forward with her free hand to push his hair out of his face.
“Evening, handsome.”
The tension eases from Fenris’ shoulders, and he falls a little more fully against the cot. Anders’ fingers brush Fenris’ forehead, and he feels healing magic melting into his skin like cold water refreshing a cool bath in summer. Anders’ voice is soft when he speaks. “Sleep. We’ve got you.”
(Ha, so this isn’t actually a Dragon Age WIP - it’s a vampire-regency-secret agent fic based on a tabletop I play. These two characters are supposedly on opposite sides but are far too distracted by their UST. He has just caught her sneaking into a ball, and has been successfully flirted into helping rather than turning her in.)
The hands gripping her were shaking slightly, she realised, and the deep breath Isidore took shook as well. “You’re here for the Daywalker rings?” he said softly. Prudence nodded, and he let out a defeated laugh. “You’re going to be the death of me. Pretend to swoon, and I can take you into the private areas.”
She snorted a little. “Just swoon, just like that? Being a delicate female, and all that.”
“I can give you reason if you’d prefer.” She was about to laugh, or roll her eyes, when she read the absolute sincerity in his eyes.
Mouth suddenly dry, she could just about make herself nod. “All right then, Romeo. Sell it.”
Her permission had barely left her lips before he had swept her up against him and kissed her, deeply and with an intensity tinged with desperation, as though she was the air he’d breathe, the ocean he’d drown in. His fingers slid into her hair, dislodging pins holding her elegant hairstyle in place, as his other pressed at her waist, holding her close and gently sweeping her back until he was holding her in a perfect dip. It’s a cover it’s a cover it’s a cover she chanted to herself, even as she clung to him in turn, gasped into the kiss, and felt her head spin, suddenly lightheaded and giddy -
Oh right, it was a cover. Rather than fight the lightheaded feeling, she embraced it, letting it fill her mind with bubbles and perfectly fell back into a swoon.
