Fenris could hardly believe his luck. A day ago, and he was single, with a living nightmare of a master with legal claim on his actual person. Today, Danarius was dead at his (and Hawke's and Varric's, and Isabela's, and, yes, the abomination's) hands AND Hawke forgave him the horrible mistake he had made three years ago and… well, he wasn't sure how to define their relationship based on the last half hour, but he was fairly certain it wasn't "just friends" now, at least, not "just friends" on both of their parts, anymore, because no one else he was "just friends" with kissed him like that (and Isabela's wanting to notwithstanding.)
Oh, how his luck had changed!
Her lips were so soft, and she tasted like apples, just like she had before. His hands tangled in her hair, not entirely comfortably for her because of the gauntlets he still wore, but she was his and his and HIS and… she was pulling away from him, her normally pale cheeks colored crimson, her eyes anywhere but on his face.
"I… I'm glad we had this talk," she said in a rush. Hawke placed her hands on his breastplate in an obvious ploy to keep them separate, so Fenris untangled his gauntlets and respected her space.
"Is something wrong?" he asked, after a moment. If anything, the color flushed higher, to her hairline, and she bit her bottom lip (most enticingly, although he was already in quite the mood to find most things about her especially enticing) before pasting on an obviously fake smile. Hawke's smiles were usually bright, and friendly, and she smiled easily and often (something that had him attracted to her, just physically, initially, when he still held a lot of suspicion over her being a mage; even that hadn't been enough for him to deny that she was a beautifully attractive woman) but this smile didn't reach her eyes.
"Gotta get home," she said, stepping away quickly and letting her arms drop. "And do… home… things."
"I was hoping we could spend some time together." It was the closest he could get, at the moment, to asking her to stay the night. Too many years ingrained into him the need to never express that desire to her, never let her know how many times he wanted to show up at her door and beg her to take him back, to kiss him and hold him as she had done that very first time. He would have been happy for her to stay, or to invite him over, to come home with her; it had been three years, after all, and Fenris was quite (finally) ready to take their relationship to the next level. Or any level at all, so long as that level involved the bed, or the floor, or, in one particularly interesting fantasy of his, the bathtub.
"Not tonight, Fenris." Ouch. The words. The tone. He forced a smile onto his own face, although his chest felt tight and his stomach felt sick.
"Another time, then. I will see you tomorrow?" Only long practice kept the hope and longing out of his voice. Slaves did not hope; slaves did not want.
"Yes! Absolutely! We have a job to do, after all." Her smile changed into something more genuine, and she gave him a quick wave before slipping out of his mansion.
Well then. Perhaps his luck had not changed so much, after all.
He was pacing well after she had gone, hands clasped behind him, trying to discern where he went wrong. Perhaps he needed to bathe? It was Kirkwall, after all; none of them smelled too great, except for Hawke, who always smelled of apples and fresh soap. Perhaps Hawke was picky. Although that didn't seem to fit with the Hawke he knew.
Perhaps she was hungry? Fenris kept little in his mansion to eat, so perhaps she rushed home because she needed to eat something. That was a little more likely, although she would usually invite him to come eat with her if she were going home to eat dinner. She invited all her friends to come eat with her; it was something Hawke just did.
Maybe she was playing coy, or she was earnestly shy. It had been three years since they were last together, although they could hardly have been called a "couple" back then, no matter what. If she were shy, he would have to help her work through her shyness with him, although Fenris wasn't much better in that respect. What he could remember of their one night together (and oh boy, what couldn't he remember from that one night, let me tell you!) she was rather shy, so perhaps that was it. Perhaps he should stop worrying and stop pacing. Perhaps he should go talk to her?
And that was when he knew he was lost: Fenris could no more go and talk to Hawke about this issue than he could go and talk to… to…. Well, Varric, or, um, anyone else, really. But he wanted to know what he had done to drive Hawke away, and he wanted to know what he needed to do in order to fix it.
Fenris stopped his pacing and settled on the bench by the fireplace, staring at his gauntlets reflecting the firelight. He would figure out what happened, he would figure out what he did or said that was wrong, and he would try to fix it, fix this thing between himself and Hawke. He had made great strides today, in admitting that he wanted to be with her, wanted a future with her.
He spared a vague thought for Danarius, dead and disposed of, and his sister, Varania, who knows where, allowed her freedom only because Hawke had asked it of him. But that was a passing thought; Danarius was no longer worth thinking of, and Varania was nothing to him, now.
With a sigh, he settled himself more comfortably on the bench and stared into the fire, lost in thought and trying to figure out what he needed to do to make Hawke happy.
It felt like "not tonight, Fenris," was the new mantra he lived with. At this point, he simply wanted dinner with her, a simple kiss, a conversation that didn't take place between killing people and trekking all over the Wounded Coast and the alleys of Kirkwall, a moment where it didn't smell of blood and viscera and they didn't have their blood hot from battle.
He had tried talking with her, outside of battle, but it seemed like the world was conspiring against him in that regard. If someone didn't interrupt, some thing did. Fasta vass, Hawke herself said she was his, but she spent more time with the damnable abomination than she did with Fenris. A sort of sickness developed in his stomach, equal parts confusion, jealousy, and sadness. And, as Fenris was obviously no good deciding his own life course, he decided he would seek help.
However, he wasn't sure he knew where to go for help. The other two mages were immediately out of the question. Both of them had already proven that they made horrible life choices and Fenris could never trust anything they ever said. Anders wanted his Hawke enough that any advice he would give would be sure to be the exactly wrong advice to listen to, in his bid to gain Hawke's heart away from Fenris, and Merrill was ridiculously fluff-brained, naïve enough to think that summoning a demon to learn blood magic was a good idea simply because she went in without trusting the demon. Besides, he wasn't entirely certain that Merrill wasn't romantically interested in Hawke, either.
Isabela was another option he quickly wrote off. For one, the mocking would be merciless, all-encompassing, to the point where there was little to the conversation other than Isabela's mocking teasing. For another, it wasn't just entirely about sex with Hawke, although that encompassed a great deal of what he wanted to accomplish at the moment, if he were able to at least be honest with himself. He had obviously done something horribly, horribly wrong, and he needed relationship advice, not shagging advice.
He could try approaching Carver. He could try. No one knew Hawke better than he did, after all. However, Fenris sort of hated Carver, and Carver sort of hated Fenris and sort of resented his sister, so there went that idea. It wasn't a big deal to discard; he had only entertained it for a very short while, at any rate.
After several days of no Hawke, but plenty of thinking that lead nowhere but in a circle, Fenris decided he would try to seek counsel with Sebastian. If the man would take confession, perhaps he could give some actual, solid, reliable advice to a completely confused and bewildered Fenris.