#tsuraiwrites

[madecunningly]

a little Christmas present for @tsuraiwrites! This is Danika, the rusalka from their Witcher fic, Gwarchodfa. This was the original image that got stuck in my head from that fic -- Danika, being coached on how to spin by some of the humans. She's sitting at a spinning wheel (based on the Ashford Traditional, which is actually the spinning wheel that I have) in front of the formerly dry well at Corvo Bianco. Bianchi, in cat form, is enjoying the sunshine.

[hmslusitania]

11. Link your three favorite fics right now 💜👀

I think it’s meant to be my faves that I’ve written because it’s fic-writer asks? Which is:

1. Like Any Unloved Thing

2. Weakened Like Achilles

3. Probably the one I just started posting this morning actually, I’m really excited about it (Gotham Honest, Anyway)

Ask Meme

[faux-fires]

16 for the WIP meme?

Thank you for the ask! Gonna pick the fairy tale handers fic i've been plucking at for like 6 years because i like its voice for this one!

16. Write the next 5 sentences and share

That was the worst of it, Anders thought. He could have coped if he had never met Hawke, if he had never known what existed outside this fucking valley in this corner of this fucking dog-infested country. He could have lived his days here in quiet discontent, and he would never have known that it was discontent. That he could live as Hawke did, free and wild and untamed, roaming the world in his scruffy armour without the luxury of a guaranteed plaidweave bed at night or free spam for breakfast.

The stars didn't look the same anymore. How strange that one man - one mad mage man - could steal the magic from the sky by defending it in Anders.

You're not living, Hawke had said. You're just surviving.

[bxdcubes]

8. "Nobody's seen you in days" for the Steter prompts 💜

Ned, I’m sorry. This went straight into angst.

trans!stiles below

--

“Nobody’s seen you in days,” Peter says in lieu of hello. He looks wary and stiff, not a hint of his usual smirk in sight as he surveys Stiles from head to toe.

There’s a three feet distance between them and it feels like a gaping wound.

“I know, I’m sorry,” Stiles says and means it, too. He got-- lost in his head.

He leans against the doorway, all of the energy he mustered to answer the door going out of him. He looks at Peter and wishes he could turn back time. He wishes it was five days ago and Peter was barging into his place, his space, like he belonged, so sure of his welcome, all snark and flirty remarks. 

He wishes that Peter never leaned in as they were parting for the day, eyes dark and smile promising, he wishes his heart hadn’t stuttered and his hands hadn’t itched with the need to touch. Stiles wishes he never closed that gap.

Peter left that night with a satisfied smile and another stolen kiss, wrangled a promise out of Stiles to call and arrange a date once Peter was back from his trip to Sacramento.

Stiles hadn’t made that call, hasn’t answered his phone or any of the texts since.

The moment he locked the door after Peter and lost sight of him, hand pressed to his chest like a victorian novel heroine as he tried to calm his breath, his fingers pressed against the material of his sports bra right beneath his shirt, and all too soon he was missing oxygen for a different reason. 

Because Stiles hadn’t told Peter, hadn’t told even his dad yet, or Lydia, or Scott. Hadn’t told anyone yet that he’s a he. 

He’s only come to terms with it a few months ago, started thinking of himself in terms of he and him and it felt… good. It felt good and it was scary and for all the research he’s done and for all that he knows his friends will probably accept the news and be supportive of him--

Learning that your darling girl is actually a darling boy is something vastly different. 

Just the way Peter is looking at him now hurts and Stiles-- He can’t do this at all.

“Stiles, have I done something wrong?” Peter asks, voice pleading, and that’s it, that’s all Stiles can handle before he breaks.

Peter sweeps him into a hug and into his apartment before Stiles even realizes he’s sobbing. It’s ugly and raw and unstoppable. And Peter holds him through it, collapsed as they are right in the hallway.

It takes a long moment of Peter murmuring nonsense into his hair, rocking them both right there on the floor as he lets Stiles cry and snot all over his designer coat, it takes a brief moment of halted breath and silence from Peter for Stiles to realize he’s began been babbling “Not a girl, not a girl,” over and over again. 

And Stiles is ready to panic, a fresh wave of tears already incoming, but then Peter holds him tighter, presses kiss after kiss to the crown of Stiles’ head, and promises, “Everything will be alright, sweet boy, we’ll figure it out. We’ll figure it out.”

--

rblgs are love

[queerspacepunk]

Welcome to DADW! How about “I’ll protect you.” for Anders/Fenris?

thank you!! idk if this is too late for@dadrunkwriting or not (too tired to calculate timezones lmao) but oh well!

“‘I’ll protect you’, he says,” Anders mutters, “‘everything will be well’ he s- hold still- he says, ‘I’m just going to go running full tit at a bunch of drunk and rowdy templars’ he says.”

“I did not say that,” Fenris corrects, trying to hide his wince as Anders carefully removes another piece of broken glass, “and I believe you mean ‘full tilt’”

“No, actually,” Anders snaps, “I do mean full tit, since you insist on being one.”

“‘I’ll protect you’, he says,” Anders mutters, “‘everything will be well’ he s- hold still- he says, ‘I’m just going to go running full tit at a bunch of drunk and rowdy templars’ he says.”

“I did not say that,” Fenris corrects, trying to hide his wince as Anders carefully removes another piece of broken glass, “and I believe you mean ‘full tilt’”

“No, actually,” Anders snaps, “I do mean full tit, since you insist on being one.”

He moves the little ball of magelight again, watching for the glint of remaining slivers.

“Are you not well?” Fenris asks.

“Physically, perhaps,” Anders says, “emotionally? No!”

Fenris frowns, “the threat was neutralised, we are home safe, and none of the templars were aware of your presence, is that not well enough for you?”

“Is that not-” Anders huffs and pulls away enough to fix Fenris with a glare, “I had to watch you get brained with a bottle!”

“You frequently witness me come to harm in battle.”

“You’re not making this better,” Anders warns. The glass, as far as he can see, is gone, and he reaches for a bottle of antiseptic.

“Precisely. My injuries in battle are frequently far worse.”

“Fenris.”

“I do not understand how you can take that in stride but be so worried over a bar fight.”

“Taking it in stride is not the same as not caring,” Anders points out, pouring the antiseptic onto a wad of gauze and dabbing at the wound, “and typically in battle I’m able to heal you as soon as I’m able to. I don’t have to hide in the bloody shadows and worry about templars sensing my magic.”

“You were not in danger, they were distracted.”

“By you!” Anders waves the open bottle so wildly that a little slops out, onto his hand, “believe it or not, watching my- watching someone I care about being ganged up on by templars who’ve had too much to drink and too little to do isn’t something I enjoy!”

His voice catches at the end, damn it all, and Fenris notices, damn him. Anders’ eyes are watering. From the astringent scent of the antiseptic.

“It was a strategic decision,” Fenris says after a moment, slow to let Anders know he is choosing his words carefully, “and given the outcome, it was the correct decision. I regret that it has... distressed you.”

“Distressed-” Anders cuts himself off when he realises he cannot trust his voice not to crack, and puts down the medicine.

Fenris tolerates magical healing well enough, when he has to, when it’s that or bleed out, or leave the others defensiveness. He lets Anders heal him that way when he has to, and in return Anders attempts to tend to his wounds without magic, if he can.

Tonight, he cannot.

There’s a shiver up Fenris’ spine, like there always is, as the soft blue glow of Anders’ magic surrounds the wound on his head, seeping out and down the lines of lyrium, but he doesn’t complain.

The magic in his hands alone is soothing, as is seeing Fenris whole. Whole and well and well away from templars.

“Bed,” Fenris says softly, an offer of truce, and Anders nods, follows him toward it.

“I am sure you know that I am well,” Fenris offers when Anders reaches up to tap the magelights to extinguish them, “but leave them, tonight, if it would help you to believe it.”

[lilminina-miau]

It's like one of those Russian dolls or the #sherk onion

[lesetoilesfous]

For DWC: "These chains never leave me, I keep dragging them around" from the Florence prompt list for Anders/Fenris?

Ah I had so much fun with this, thank you! I hope I did it justice!!

(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: hurt/comfort, angst, canon-typical graphic depictions of violence, Anders was right, anti-chantry, graphic reference to infanticide, Tevinter is awful, graphic reference to abortion, oblique reference to sexual assault, self-hatred, mention of self-harm, suicidal ideation. Basically post-Danarius, and all that entails. Characters dealing with trauma, PTSD and survivor’s guilt.

Rating: Mature

It’s been one week, two days and three hours since Fenris killed Danarius. He is sitting with Hawke and her friends in her mansion, because he had not been able to conceal his discomfort when they’d visited The Hanged Man, unable to remove from his recent memory the stain of blood on the floorboards and the sting of his sister’s betrayal. Corff had, at least, worked a miracle with the former. As far as the latter was concerned - Fenris did not think that Isabela was the only one who’d noticed him startling in the Lowtown crowd at the sight of every redheaded elf. The trait was, blessedly, a rare one. There was that, at least.

In the beautiful marble fireplace, Hawke’s fire roars loud and red, crackling with heat that licks gold light over the sandy, muscular back of her mabari, half asleep on the wine purple rug laid over the stone. Sandal is humming somewhere in one of the rooms nearby, and occasionally, under the loud sound of Hawke’s voice and her companions’ laughter, Fenris can make out the soft sound of Bodahn talking to his son. Orana, of course, is inaudible. She knows better. 

Fenris bites the inside of his cheek, hard, and drinks deeply from his cup. The wine in it is thick and rich and velvet. Fenris can feel Marian’s eyes on him, but he can also see, from the corner of his eye, the way that her muscular arm is looped casually around Isabela’s shoulders. As he lowers his cup, he catches the way that Isabela tilts her head back, thick black hair falling over Marian’s tunic as she brushes her lips against her ear. He can see the way Marian flushes. 

Fenris gets to his feet, and by the fireplace Dog raises her great sandy head. He gives her a small, calming gesture, and next to the low table onto which they’ve scattered their cards, Marian frowns at him. “Fenris?”

Fenris motions vaguely in the direction of the kitchen. “I need some water.” He tries to ignore the eyes of his companions on him as he goes. Instead, he leaves the warm, firelit parlour and walks into the cold, empty rooms not baked gold by fireplaces. Fenris feels his shoulders lower as soon as he gets to the second room, standing in the grey and black dusty shadow of an utterly deserted music room. Through the narrow stone windows of the Amell Estate, he can see the deep black sky of Kirkwall, scattered with stars. Houses fall like broken marble down towards the sea, which crashes with a distant roar against the cliffs. At the edge of the horizon, moonlight races silver across the waves. Fenris stares at it, and thinks about being a younger man, on an island, thinking that it would be the last thing he ever saw.

“Nice view, isn’t it?”

Fenris whirls on instinct, limbs moving with muscle memory as the lyrium sewn into his skin sets his nerve endings on fire and he plunges his hand into the intruder’s chest. In the dark, Anders’ blonde hair is grey and silver. If he’s bothered by the pain about which Fenris’ victims had so often complained to him before their grisly demise, he doesn’t show it. Instead, he raises his eyebrows at Fenris over the wrist plunged into his chest. Fenris squeezes his fingers, and feels the frantic, shuddering jerk of Anders’ heart in his palm, the warm, wet sensation of it dulled by the distance of the Fade.

“Why aren’t you afraid of me?”

Anders breathes out, a long, shuddering breath that belies his calm demeanour. Fenris had not previously thought him capable of such a poker face. His heart beats in Fenris’ hand like a bird, struggling. “I don’t know.” Anders meets his eyes, and in the dark his are almost black, but his blonde eyelashes are gilded silver by the moon. “I guess I trust you.”

Fenris’ fingers uncurl around Anders’ heart, and the mage’s shoulders lower from where they’d been scraping his ears. Fenris’ gaze falls to his long, crooked fingers, but there’s no telltale spark of magic there. Slowly, Fenris withdraws his hand, watching it fade through the frayed fabric of Anders’ coat as he tries to ignore the burn of a hot, embarrassed flush pushing up into his cheeks. 

Outside the mansion, on the streets of Kirkwall, a pair of mabari start barking, great bellowing things that echo against the stone buildings. A cat yowls, and far off there’s the sound of people shouting. Fenris stares at his bare feet on the stone floor of Hawke’s mansion and hates the fact that his eyes are burning as he tries to untangle his tongue, and dispel the impression that Anders will do something awful to him for his trespass. (Hadriana’s smile flickers behind his eyelids every time he blinks. Her fingers curl, wreathed in green light. His own screams echo in his ears long before the pain hits.)

“Are you alright?”

Anders’ voice is rough and soft, and Fenris jerks his head up, falling back on the easy confidence of anger and letting it buoy him up out of his despair.

“What do you care, mage?”

As Fenris speaks he surges forward, feeling his lips curl back from his teeth in a sneer. Anders doesn’t back away, and it leaves their faces mere inches apart. Anders is looking at him oddly, and abruptly Fenris wishes for more light: knowing the man well enough by now after almost a decade to be able to read the spiderweb cracks of wrinkles in his face as the giveaway they tended to be. 

“You haven’t been yourself since -” Anders hesitates, and Fenris hates him for it, and abruptly cannot look at him. So instead he turns away, throwing his hands into the empty air as if that will satisfy his urge to hit something.

“Since what? Since I killed him. Tell me, mage, what is my ‘self’? What am I?” Fenris means it as a challenge, but his voice cracks, and when he turns back to Anders, chest heaving, he’s horrified to realise that tears are running down his cheeks. He glances at the open door, leading into the dark and deeper into the mansion. He takes a step in the direction of the doorframe.

“Brave.” Anders says the word quickly, and Fenris stops, unable to force himself to turn around but unable to leave either as some stupid, childish part of him that he had long since thought irreparably ruined rises in delight. “Funny. And you know it, though you pretend you don’t.” It’s getting hard to breathe. Fenris stares into the thick shadows of the next room, where Orana’s drawn the curtains across the window. Elsewhere in the mansion, there’s a cheer and a crow of triumph from Isabela as the rest of their friends laugh.

“Smartest man I’ve ever met, probably.” Anders goes on, but doesn’t move. “Fucking stubborn. Annoying. Terrifying, with a greatsword. And without one.” Anders hesitates, and Fenris hears the catch of his breath as clear as a bell struck at daybreak. “My friend.”

Fenris clenches his jaw so tightly his teeth hurt, and shuts his eyes. More tears fall down his cheeks, tickling his chin  as they go. 

“A good man. That’s what you are, Fenris.” Anders delivers the proclamation with the same certainty with which he insists on his desperate, hopeless, flawed revolution.

Fenris whirls on him. “And what do you know of good men?” Fenris means it cruelly, and he tries to take satisfaction in the way that Anders flinches. But then the stupid, stubborn, ridiculous man lifts his chin.

“Enough to know one when I see one. And know when he’s being an ass.”

“You know nothing of me!” Fenris almost bellows, and cowers when the words echo. For a moment, both he and Anders hold their breath as they wait for one of Hawke’s servants - or worse - their friends, to come and investigate. But a minute passes, tense as a knife edge, and no one does. Fenris goes on, and tries to ignore the prickling in his sweating hands. “You don’t know what I am. You don’t know what I’ve done.”

Dust motes dance silver in the starlight as they fall onto the piano. Anders purses his lips. “Alright, I don’t. But I know that you dress up as Fen’harel for the kids in the alienage every Wintersend. I know you win more often at cards than you say you do, and that you let Merrill win. I know you’re a little bit in love with Isabela, and a little bit in love with Hawke, and it kills you that they chose each other because it kills me too. I know that you have more reason than any bastard I’ve ever met to hurt me until I forget how to breathe and you’re one of very few people who never has. I know that I’ve known you for a decade and you haven’t killed me yet.”

“I might.” It’s not a threat. Fenris doesn’t look at Anders when he says it, staring dully instead at the painting on the wall: some rainy Fereldan landscape, the details of which he can’t make out in the dark. 

“But you haven’t.” Anders steps forward, and Fenris steps back, and feels dizzily as if they’re dancing. The moonlight catches on Anders’ chin, and Fenris can make out the faint tooth of a scar just below his bottom lip, hair thin in his stubble. Anders swallows, and breaks Fenris’ gaze, eyes tracing over a lute hanging on the wall. “You know mages don’t get to keep their kids.”

The subject change is so abrupt that Fenris feels as if he’s been physically thrown off kilter. “What?” He’s been standing here long enough to feel the cold, now, and taste the wood polish in the air. Anders goes on, still not looking at him, massaging one hand with the other as his fingers flex. 

“They take them away. Can’t abort them, not under Chantry law. I’m a Spirit Healer.” 

Fenris’ frown deepens, the back of his head already aching with the dull constant stress of the last fortnight and the sleeplessness that came with it. “I know.” He tries not to make his frustration obvious. Judging by the small grin Anders gives him, he doesn’t succeed.

“I started working with the Circle Healer when I was 17. Day after I was Harrowed. First day wasn’t so bad. A couple lashings. Attempted suicide. Self-harmer. Some kid who said he walked into a wall.” Anders rolls his eyes, huffing a laugh as his hands move to massage his wrists. Fenris watches him carefully. “Second day. There was this girl. Fifteen, Templar father, obviously. I helped deliver that baby.” Anders’ expression shutters. “She wasn’t allowed to see it. I did. I got to hold it, give it to some lieutenant who held it like it was contagious. I don’t even know if it made out of Kinloch. But she begged me to let her hold it and all I could say was that it was already gone.”

“That -” Fenris picks his words as carefully as he would navigate a floor covered in broken glass. “I do not think that you were the one at fault, there.”

“I know.” Anders says the words simply, and reaches up into his hair to pull the tie loose, scratching the tangled waves that fall around his head as he does so. “My point is, when you’re a prisoner, most of the time, the burden is on your gaolor. And you aren’t Danarius’ crimes.”

“It is not the same.” Fenris grinds the words between his teeth as his fingers tighten into fists hard enough to hurt. “I was - the things I did - I did not take babies. I killed them. I broke their skulls on his altars. I aborted them from their mothers before I killed them, too. I cannot - there are not words for the marks that what I have done, what I did, has left on my soul, and I do not know if I will do them again, and I fear them and I fear him, and I fear myself, and I hate them and I hate him and I hate myself, and every hour of every day I live with these cursed chains on my body that I cannot shake no matter how far I run and I do not know how to make it stop.” Once Fenris starts speaking, he can’t slow down, the words falling from his tongue with the tears that run thick and fast down his cheeks as he tears at his arms hard enough to make them bleed. Anders startles forward, and Fenris jerks backward, thrusting his burning hands into the air between them. “I would tear it from my skin. I would rip myself apart piece by piece if I did not know that killing myself would only be a mercy that I have never deserved.” Fenris breathes, and it splinters in his chest. He finishes in a hoarse whisper. “You know nothing of what I am, or what I have been, or what I have suffered, or what I have done. You never have.”

Behind Fenris, through the window, the sound of the ocean beats incessantly against the land. Elsewhere in the mansion, their companions are quiet, and the sound of Sandal’s singing has ceased. Fenris can feel his blood roaring in his ears, and doesn’t bother to brush the tears from his cheeks. Standing in the middle of the room, Anders stares at him, his tall thin figure swaying like a sapling in a breeze. 

Then he says, “You’re right. There’s a lot about you that I don’t know or understand and, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I’m kind of an asshole sometimes. But, Fenris? I need you to know this.” Anders steps forward and gets, stiffly, to his knees, one leg bending more slowly than the other. Fenris stares at him, bewildered, and steps backward until his head bumps softly against the wall. “Forgive the melodrama but uh, I don’t get on my knees for just anyone.” Fenris doesn’t think he has ever seen Anders on his knees, and he realises abruptly that he had never wanted to. Anders gives him a small, nervous smile, and takes a deep breath, swallowing before he speaks. “Fenris. From a mage, on his knees, asking you to listen to him. You deserve to live.”

The sob that works its way out of Fenris’ chest is a living thing, and Fenris chokes on it, sliding down the wall as he begins to cry in earnest. Anders, mercifully, doesn’t move. Fenris doesn’t know how long he cries, only that at the end of it his throat aches and his eyes burn and his head is pounding. But when he opens his eyes, Anders is still there, silver in the dark on his knees next to the piano. Fenris stares at him, and tries to clear his throat.

“You’re a very strange man.”

Anders shrugs, and moves with a visible wince to take the weight off his left knee, leaning against the piano stool as he gingerly unfolds his leg. “I’ve been called worse.”

Slowly, he reaches out into the space between them, scarred, crooked, calloused hand palm upwards, fingers outstretched. Anders looks at him, and his brown eyes are almost black in the dark. Slowly, fighting the sensation that this must be some kind of trap, Fenris reaches out and takes it. Anders’ fingers are cool against his, and his knuckles are bumpy and uneven. But he squeezes Fenris’ hand so hard it’s almost painful, and Fenris feels more tears stinging at the back of his eyes.

For a moment, they sit like that, peaceful in the quiet. Then there’s a soft knock on the doorframe, and Bodahn ducks his head in, face lit by a candle in a brass dish. “Sorry to interrupt messeres, but Mistress Hawke wanted to know if you’d like some libation to keep you company?”

Fenris glances at Anders, half moving to pull his hand back. But Anders’ hand tightens on his, and instead, feeling strangely childish, he nods at Bodahn. “Yes, please. That would be appreciated.”

Bodahn gives him a small, kind smile and ducks his head. “Very good, messere.” He turns, and leaves, and Fenris watches Anders as he shuts his eyes and leans his head back against the barstool, hair fanning out around him like some Orlesian princess.

“I thought you didn’t drink.” It’s not an accusation, motivated more by curiosity than anything.

Anders’ lips curl, and he opens one eye to look at Fenris, fingers tightening in his. “For you? I’ll make an exception. It’s been a long week.”

[protect-him]

11. “I almost lost you” kiss for Fenders or your choice?

Awwww thank you so much for sending these. You make my little fenders heart flutter. Also, such an emotional prompt! 😭 I hope you enjoy! (I know I enjoyed writing it!)

Fenris ripped through the front door. Even Varric, with his active imagination, couldn’t imagine how Fenris made the door splinter so dramatically. It was like an explosion, but all he did was flare his lyrium and rip his hands through the doors. All the same, the effect was immediate and satisfying.

It drew the attention of the Templars lingering in the hall. They saw Hawke and held back on immediately attacking, though the snarling elf standing amid the shattered debris of the front door certainly had them bristling.

“Hawke?” One of them spoke up. Fenris turned to look at the unfortunate speaker, eyes burning.

“I heard that you had one of my companions here,” Hawke said, sauntering forward with her nonchalant swagger. She flipped the dagger in her hand.

“I don’t know anything about that,” the man said, ignoring the elf that was already scanning the hall. “We found an apostate, but that’s all.”

“Maybe you’d let us see him,” Hawke said.

“I’m afraid—”

“You’re afraid what?!” Fenris was face to face with the man—well, more like face to breastplate—in a couple steps.

“W-we can’t permit that,” the Templar said.

“I don’t think Marian asked you a question,” Fenris said.

“I’m not talking to you, elf.”

Fenris’s brands flared and he thrust his fist into the man’s chest, right through his breastplate. The Templar choked and froze, his eyes bulging.

“I’m talking to you,” Fenris said. “Take us to the mage.”

“Best listen to him,” Marian added from behind Fenris. He could hear the smirk in her voice. “I don’t think Fenris is very forgiving.”

“You’ll be too late anyway,” the Templar said, his voice squeaking as Fenris’s fingers gave his heart a slight squeeze.

“We don’t have time for this,” Marian said. “We’ll take care of the Templars, Fenris, go ahead and find Anders. I’d check the First Enchanter’s office first.”

Fenris yanked the Templar’s heart out, growling. The body fell with a clatter of armor behind him as he drew his sword and sped up the steps to the large office just off the main hall.

With this door, he didn’t bother breaking it apart with his hands. He simply lit his brands and punched through it, running in with his sword raised.

Two Templars stood one on either side of Anders. He looked so ragged and weary, deprived of his usual coat and staff. Orsino stood back near his desk, with Meredith in the center of the room. Beside her stood the Templar with the brand in his hand.

“Now!” Meredith shouted. Anders’s eyes met Fenris’s for a moment, before Fenris dashed across the room, a blue blur, faster than the Templar could move. The iron brand and the man’s arms fell together to the floor. Deprived of his arms, the Templar staggered back. Fenris followed him, swinging his sword again to finish him.

Meredith bent to snatch the brand. One arm still hung from the iron bar. She ignored the extra weight, throwing herself forward and hefting the brand.

Anders sucked in a breath, certain that he was about to lose everything.

He could smell the heat of the metal when Fenris kicked Meredith aside. Not a moment too soon. The two Templars saw that they were the last defense before the dangerous apostate would be able to go free. Fenris didn’t allow them the opportunity. In the time it took them to throw Anders back behind them and to draw their swords, Fenris had already buried his sword in one and was reaching his hand into the other’s chest. Blood dripped down his arm as he replaced his sword on his back and knelt between the dead bodies to put a hand on Anders’s shoulder.

Anders looked up, his hands still shaking.

“You didn’t leave me?” He whispered.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Fenris said, his voice thick. He cupped the mage’s gaunt cheek with his hand, then realized it was covered in blood. He pulled it back to wipe it on his leggings. It didn’t do much beyond smear it, but he reached for Anders’s face again.

“A little blood won’t hurt me,” Anders said. “I deal in blood every day.”

“Hush,” Fenris said. “Don’t speak, just look at me.”

“Fen—”

Fenris fell forward, claiming Anders’s lips. They could both taste the blood on Fenris’s lips, but that didn’t stop them from desperately pressing into the kiss. Desperation felt like a mild descriptor for the fierce energy in the way they clung to each other.

Anders finally pulled back, gasping and putting his own hand to the side of Fenris’s face, wiping his thumb through some of the blood there.

“So excited to see me,” he murmured weakly, with a soft smile.

“I almost lost you,” Fenris said, hardly blinking as he watched Anders’s face. That smooth, tall forehead, free of the brand. A broad canvas for the expressive wrinkles that would sometimes pass across the open space. Fenris leaned in and kissed his forehead.

“So sentimental today,” Anders teased.

“Hush.” Fenris didn’t like to think about what could have happened if they’d been a little bit slower. He pulled Anders to his feet and walked him back to rejoin their party.

The Templars were dead, and Marian had raided the little room reserved for the off-duty Templars. She held out Ander’s coat to him, along with his staff and his boots. Fenris took the boots and the staff, letting Anders put his coat on. Anders hardly seemed to realize that Fenris held his other items.

“You need a bath,” Fenris said to him. “We shall go to my mansion.”

“I need a bath? You need a bath!” Anders laughed, running his fingers into Fenris’s hair to pull at a smear of blood. All he managed to do was spread it further and get it all over his fingers.

“We both do,” Fenris said. “Thank you Hawke.”

“What would I do without my own personal healer-apostate?” Hawke said.

“We wouldn’t be who we are without you, Blondie,” Varric added. They picked their way across the remains of the front door and only parted ways when they reached Fenris’s mansion, where he guided Anders inside, bidding goodbye to Hawke and Varric.

Anders was already on his way to the bath, not waiting for Fenris to remove his gauntlets and sword. He ran to catch up, running his arm around Anders’s waist.

“Almost lost me, eh?” Anders asked.

“It is no laughing matter,” Fenris said.

“But it is a kissing one?”

Fenris rolled his eyes and turned Anders to face him.

“Entirely.”

And he pulled Anders down so he could kiss him again.