between the ribs / fenris/hawke / mature (eventually) / 1/? / 929 words in total
─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: .☽ . :☆ﾟ. ───
Fenris is baking peasant bread, hands sticky with honey and flour, when there is a knock on the front door.
The Hinterlands have been quiet this morning. Earlier, when the sunlight was barely there at all, he collected blackberries from the vegetable garden with Bear, who focused on just running around chasing bees inside the small fenced area rather than helping Fenris, and everything was deadly silent – even the wind.
It is midsummer by now and hot enough that opening the windows does nothing to cool the house down, and it is making Fenris feel tired and lax in a dangerous way. He has gotten too used to the quiet life — a life without constant danger hounding his back, and he knows that feeling peaceful is the most idotic thing a man like him can feel during times like these, but it has been a number of years after Kirkwall and no one has bothered him out here. A few bandits here and there, but they were dispatched quickly enough.
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It was the beginning of the summer when Hawke built the cottage with his own hands with a grin on his handsome face as he hammered wood together with seemingly no idea what he was doing. Fenris shook his head as he watched him and felt like a fool for loving someone so much.
Bear boofs unhappily at the noise, but doesn’t rise up from his place by the window, though his tails start wagging ever so slightly. Fenris frowns and wipes his flour crusty hands on a linen towel. He does not have visitors often. Or ever.
His sword is by the fireplace, and Fenris picks it up, when he walks to the door. He doesn’t flinch when there is another, louder, knock, but the line of his mouth deepens and his brows furrow further.
He opens the door, sword heavy in his sweaty hands, and that is when everything stops. Even his heart.
It is Hawke behind the door. Somehow Fenris knew that before seeing that. The man is different and the same as he was before. The same tousled dark brown curls, the same coloured lonely eye. The same unkempt rough beard, the same gentle hopeful smile.
The same man that Fenris loved so dearly. Without him he has been a husk of a man; without him, he has turned back into a shadow in the corner of the room — silent and invisible.
“Hawke,” he growls. He grips his sword tighter, knuckles turning white, lyrium flaring blue, because Hawke is dead. His body was not burned in a pyre, but he was dead all the same.
Years ago, Varric wrote him a letter. There was such grief in the words that Fenris felt it through the letters, when he traced them with a bare fingertip as he slowly pronounced the words as he read, the ink smudging with his bitter tears of heartache.
And years ago in the wretched city of Kirkwall, which Fenris both hates and loves, Sebastian taught him that dead can't ever pass through the Veil to the waking world. Those were demons possessing a corpse, and now Fenris looks at Hawke and knows that he is not the same man he was, when he left. He has changed.
“Fenris,” Hawke whispers, voice a low gravel. There is something very tender about the way he says his name. It sounds the same it did an age ago. He cannot trust it.
Hawke takes a brave step forward, so near that the tip of Fenris's sword presses against his burly chest. He breathes in and out slowly, the blade digging into the soft flesh, and Fenris does not know what to do or say.
He keeps swallowing and Hawke keeps looking at him, something fiercely gentle in his dark brown eye. But he does not reach for him, does not try to touch Fenris, and Fenris thinks that that might be the first clue to Hawke being real. Hawke never pushed, never demanded, never took without permission — he waited patiently, like the tide waits for the evening to land.
Fenris trembles. His blade drops to the ground, when Hawke embraces him so tightly that his ribs ache. Or maybe it is just his heart that is hurting. It is beating like a terrified rabbit.
“Fenris,” Hawke whispers again and when he pulls away from the hug to look at Fenris, his broad hands on Fenris shoulders, he beams like the midday sun. <i>Fenris Fenris Fenris</i>, he keeps whispering under his breath, like he has just learned the name and is tasting it on his tongue for the first time.
Fenris closes his eyes and pulls Hawke impossibly closer, fingers gripping his cloak, nails sinking through the fabric to the firm meat of Hawke's shoulder. He has forgotten how much taller Hawke is than him. He engulfs Fenris in his hug, chin resting on the crown of Fenris's head, and for a moment Fenris feels trapped, but the feeling passes.
He cannot speak for his feelings are swallowing him whole. So, he only holds on tighter, grounding himself in Hawke's warmth and scent. For the time being he does not even care that this might not be his Hawke, that it might be an imposter wearing his clothing; that he might regret letting this man, who might be a stranger after all these years, into his home.
That is a problem for future Fenris. Right now he can't bring himself to care as he helps stumbling Hawke inside his home despite knowing better.
Summary: It all starts with the alcohol. Correction: It all starts with Sungyeol's inability to keep his alcohol in proper cabinets. Oh, and his stupidity, of course.
MULTI-CHAPTER | NC-17 | COMPLETE | by ashesof-hope/ashkt
Jin gets the promotion Kame thinks is rightfully his. Jin lusts for Kame and Kame, meanwhile, is trying to deny the attraction. Both of them go on to spite each other in the way 8-year-old boys do.
(Another one of my favorites. Fucking read it now if you haven't. It's brilliant.)
