This is my first time posting on ! I'm trying to migrate some of my "better" (lol) stuff over to . This is a short FHawke/Fenris fic that can be summed up as "baby-steps BDSM." (dom!Fenris)
He wasn't home. That was a good thing.
For whatever reason, Isabela had been, however, and she'd burst into a fit of tinkling, amused laughter when Hawke showed up to Fenris's home with her buckets and brooms. And Isabela would've stayed, too, had Hawke not frog-marched the pirate towards the door and made her leave. Isabela kissed Hawke on the cheek in farewell and patted her bottom with a wink before telling her "Good luck, then." The pirate was still laughing at Hawke's get-up as she sauntered away, dark curves incongruous and eye-popping amidst the ivy and mansions that quiet morning in Hightown.
Once alone, Hawke nudged the door closed with her hip and let all the cleaning supplies clatter to the floor. She took a deep breath and surveyed the task.
The stone mansion Fenris lived in hadn't been clean since...since before they'd slaughtered the previous occupants. Remains of those slavers and mercenaries who'd been hunting Fenris still decorated flagstones.
But. That had been over five years ago.
The place was choked with dust, especially the rooms downstairs that were never used—Fenris typically haunted the master bedroom upstairs. He left mostly to raid the wine cellar, it seemed. The walls were cracked, spiderwebs crowded every corner, and the stone floor was worn; tiles broken and chipped, and coated with grit. Hawke couldn't fix the cracks in the walls or the broken stones, but Andraste's tits, at least she could clean.
There was a small part of her that was very much hoping to please Fenris with her efforts, but she didn't want to linger on her unrequited bloody pining overlong. They were friends. Just friends. And friends do nice things for friends. Friends clean other friends' filthy fucking houses when friends are former slaves with hang-ups about housecleaning.
Right?
"Right," she decided, lying to herself and reaching for a broom. She began to sweep the floors. The foyer was quick work but the main room it led to proved a more difficult challenge—literal piles of dust. She nudged skeletons with her toes, and performed her noises of disgust for an audience of unappreciative spiders when the skeletons rattled and fell apart. The clacking dry bones were taken out to the refuse heap in the back alley, their final resting place amidst stinking feces and rotten meat. Fitting company for slavers, really.
Hawke used the broom to swat down some of the lower spiderwebs, too. The ceilings were vaulted in the main room so some of the more enterprising arachnids would likely live up there, forever, but the ones stupid enough to set camp at broom-height were getting unceremoniously swept and squished. She thought about the way Fenris had once said, "I like the spiders. They eat the flies," and she'd bitten her tongue from snapping, "Yes well you wouldn't have flies if you cleaned every once in awhile, now would you?"
She swept the stairs. The carpet had grown ragged and thin on the smooth stone steps, and with each swish of the broom she brushed loose more threads, which didn't approve the appearance overmuch. She frowned at that.
Once all the dust had been cleared from the floors, she navigated through the kitchens to the water pump out by the back entrance and began filling buckets with cold, fresh water. This would be the worst part. This was always her least favorite chore—Hawke hated mopping floors.
She lugged heavy, dripping buckets back to the main room and set them down with a slight slosh. She hummed a little, to try and make herself enjoy the hated task a bit more, but the room was too cavernous and Hawke didn't enjoy the sound of her own voice enough to want it echoing and occupying so much empty space around her.
She did not think about whose voice she wanted to echo in that room. She did not.
She grumbled, frustrated, when the mop was too soft—it moved some of the grime around, granted, so she could just paint clean one giant penis on the floor and leave it at that—but she and Fenris weren't exactly on "practical joke penis" terms, and he'd react poorly. The mop swirled around grime, but it was too soft for getting up any of the black grit stuck steadfast to the stones.
She flung the mop handle away from herself in disgust, letting it clack loudly against the tiles. She'd have to get on her hands and knees and scrub, then. Shit.
Hawke went poking about the servant's quarters for a wire, or maybe boar-bristle scrub brush, scratching absently at the bodice of her dress. She'd worn something she didn't care if she ruined, which, as it happens, was a two-sizes-too-small sky blue house dress Orana had got for her. It was stretched taut across her waist and chest, and if she took a deep breath, she could feel the stitches of the damned thing reining her ribs in, "Whoa, there!" before threatening to pop. Orana, Maker bless her, had been so crestfallen at the ill fit of the dress that Hawke hadn't the heart to do anything but wear it with a constrained smile and assure the woman it was fine. In her head she was already rehearsing how best to later exclaim, "Oh, no, Orana! I seem to have made a dreadful mess of it while cleaning! Couldn't be helped, I'm afraid."
"Ah!" Her eyes lit on a scrub brush in the kitchens. It was high on a shelf, probably used for scouring dishes and not floors, but it would do the trick. Hawke hitched her skirt up around her thighs and hoisted herself on top of the rough granite counter, cold against her bare knees. It was slightly out of her grasp. She reached, straining up, as the dress strained the other way; deep neckline pressing a hard and uncomfortable line down across tops of her breasts. She should just stand, really, but if she could just—nudge the damn thing—a little—
"Hawke!"
"Shit!" was her automatic and immediate answer. Startled, she lost her balance and braced a hand on the wall in front of her, before twisting to peek at Fenris in the kitchen doorway. His sword was raised, and there was a discarded bag of market belongings dropped and scattered a few paces behind him. He must've heard her noise and thought there was a bandit about.
He lowered his sword, and the lyrium brands entwining his skin dimmed as his mood did. He furrowed his brow and peered at her from beneath a hank of white hair that was forever falling across his eyes. "What are you doing?"
"I'm looking for a scrub brush."
"Why?"
"Because the sad mop just couldn't cut it with that floor."
"Why?"
"Because I'm cleaning your house!"
"Why?" he growled.
She looked him in the eye and kept her face level. "Because it's filthy, Fenris."
He curled his lip at her slightly, a ghost of a snarl. His eyes flicked down and then Hawke remembered, she'd hitched her dress skirt nearly up to her bottom and was kneeling atop a countertop in this elf's kitchen. The elvhen man who she'd quietly yearned for with a keening, terrible desperation following a single night spent together three years ago.
That was enough to make Hawke spin around, hiding her furious blush, and resume reaching for the scrub brush. She should've just stood on the counter but at that point the thought of clambering up gracelessly, skirts in hand, while Fenris watched was just too mortifying to endure. So sod it. She strained.
She pulled her hand down when he entered her vision, and sat back on her haunches to watch him. Fenris gave her a very significant look of some kind; who knows really, another degree of brooding that left her feeling chastised—and used his foot to kick out the step stool from under the cabinet she perched on. He stepped on top of it, leisurely picked up the scrub brush, and held it out to her.
"Oh," Hawke said. "Thanks."
"Hm." He made it sound disapproving and polite at the same time.
"Well." Hawke hopped off the counter, and raised the scrub brush. "I'm off, then!" She turned away too quickly to be sure, but it had almost looked like Fenris was smiling. Almost.
Once back in the main room, Hawke picked a corner at random, and pushed the bucket towards it with her foot. She used her dress to pad her knees as she knelt, giddy with the prospect of ruining the garment. She dipped the brush in the soapy water and leaned forward as she began to scour.
Ten minutes of scrubbing later, she hated Fenris. Forget ever loving him. Forget fantasizing about his hips, his lips, his fingers on her flesh. Nope. Nevermind. She hated him. Hated this.
Twenty minutes more, her arm was sore, but she loved Fenris again.
An hour more, she'd cleaned half the floor, but she'd begun to hypothesize on how to use her magics to finish off the other half. She was a mage, after all, wasn't she? If she could conjure ice, why not a bit of a spring shower?
Three minutes later, Fenris was thundering down the stairs, demanding to know what that noise had been.
"Nothing!" She tried to use her dress hem to cover the patch of frozen flagstones, ice creaking in the cracks. That wasn't enough. Shit—she sat on it. Sat. On the patch of ice. She used her arse to cover it. "Everything's fine," she grinned, a little breathless.
He knew she was lying, obviously, but didn't seem too worried about it. He shook his head, a wry smile on his lips as he returned upstairs.
Hawke plucked her bum off the patch of ice with a string of curses.
She had only tried to cast a spell she'd cast thousands of times, wherein she conjures a block of ice, except this time she'd tried to think wet thoughts. Instead of the nice, cleansing, magical rain she'd been picturing, however—ice had formed between the cracks in the flagstones, sitting and squeaking inside the seams of the stones and breaking them even more.
Ah, well. She'd tried.
She huffed, tugged the neckline of the dress higher again, and got back on her knees to finish.
Hawke found a bit of peace as time wore on, losing herself to the task and the mindless motions. She had maybe a quarter of the room left to scrub and rinse as she worked her way towards the stairs, when she heard a noise she couldn't recognize, something discordant from the settling and sighing sounds of the mansion's old stones. She looked up to find Fenris descending the stairs, bringing out a small wooden chair in front of him. He had a book folded under his arm and carried a cup of tea. He reached the first flat landing of the steps—the halfway point between upstairs and down—and placed the chair there, adjusting it to face Hawke, before disinterestedly taking a seat. He looped one ankle over his other knee and appeared to relax into the chair as he opened his book, and began sipping his tea.
Well, then.
Hawke fought the urge to yank up the front of her dress again. She gulped, her mind a blank. She'd been doing something, right?
Ugh, she remembered, leaning forward for the scrub brush again. Her hands were raw, but she eased the pain by conjuring little icicles into her fingertips, and helping herself to health potions.
For a time she found it difficult to focus on the task, and caught herself scrubbing the same spot over and over again. His low chuckle would interrupt her frazzled thoughts, but when Hawke glanced up—Fenris was looking down at his book and she didn't know if his amusement was for it or she. She didn't know what was worse, actually—if Fenris was or wasn't watching her.
She knelt on all fours to work out a scorch mark that'd probably once come from her fire staff, anyway. She noticed her dress neckline was pulled taut, precariously low, and stealing a peek up through her bangs—yes. Fenris had noticed, as well.
She looked back down, stowing away her smile. Her movements slowed as she considered, arm lazily following the motion of scrubbing without putting any of the effort behind it. Fenris's book lay forgotten in his lap.
He was watching her in earnest now, having dropped his pretense of a taking a nice afternoon tea on the stairs while a buxom friend in a tight dress just happened to be scrubbing the floor at his feet.
Hawke considered her next move carefully. Fenris was too sly, too smart, for games—he could always tell when he was being played. He would be able to tell if Hawke had come to clean his house just to get closer to him, and the thought embarrassed her. Well—alright, she maybe had despite convincing herself otherwise—but in any case, she was going to make him work for that knowledge. Her intentions were good, and she was going to finish cleaning the bloody floor.
She pushed her shirtsleeves up higher; the unspoken universal signal for "Let's get to work." She again began to scrub the floor, and hoped he'd enjoy the show.
When she finished and reached the foot of the stairs, she drew upright, sitting on her heels to wipe the sweat from her brow with her shoulder. Her back was aching. She arched, pressing her fingers into her lower back—oh, he liked that.
She was torn between two desires: one being dictated by her exhaustion was to give up, go home, and say she was too tired to finish today but she'd be back tomorrow—and the other being dictated by her—well—was to stay. And play. With him. With whatever it was they were doing. Whatever this was, happening between them.
His lips were parted like he wanted to say something, and he took a deep breath as if to say it, once, and again, but he then let a tiny smirk curve his parted lips instead. His hands, oh, those beautiful bronze hands, curled over his knees.
Right. So. She was staying. Definitely.
She had a thought and knew what she wanted to do next, but it would likely ruin his carpet. Oh, sod it, I'll buy him new ones, she decided. She bunched her skirts in her hand, raising them to free her knees and crawl forward slightly. His eyes shot to the curve of her bare thighs, and Hawke hoped he was wishing that she would lift the hem just a bit higher for him. Two inches more and he'd know the color of her smalls.
She tossed the scrub brush aside, she wouldn't need it for this next part—and hefted up the heavy bucket full of clean water she'd been using for rinsing. She knelt below him, at the foot of the stairs, skirts bunched lewdly in her fist, tight bodice doing something stupid with her breasts, and a bucket of cold water in her hand. She looked up at him. He knew something was coming. His nostrils flared with every breath.
She let the moment linger, hesitating. Should she speak? Should she avail herself of her own Ferelden farm girl accent and play it up as some simpering servant, sultry and whispering, "Your floors are very dirty, my lord"? Would he like that? Would he want her? Would it ruin this moment? Is watching her clean his house an erotic act for Fenris because he used to be a slave?
She was never good with words, anyway, so deciding quickly, Hawke perched the bucket, unbalanced, on a step above her and "let" it fall forward; the water splashed over the threadbare carpet, soaking it, and more importantly—soaking her.
"Whoops," she whispered, feeling silly. A shuddering breath carried her through to the next smile. The dress, already indecent, was made downright vulgar once wet. She wore no petticoats, only a linen shift and her smalls, so now the fabric of the dress clung to her hips, outlined her thighs, and rasped against her raised nipples. She shivered, a little.
Fenris sat back in his seat and hissed some swears in Tevene, looking bleak. She had no idea if that was a good or bad reaction. Should she apologize for the carpet? They stared at each other, and Fenris must've noticed Hawke withering because he tilted his chin down towards his feet and made it clear: Come here.
She swallowed; dry mouth in a wet dress. Don't think about wetness, Hawke. Or do maybe.
She wondered if this were normal, as she crawled forward, up the stairs towards Fenris. She'd never had a proper courtship; she'd had tumbles in hay and fumbles in the dark. And then she'd had Fenris. And after that, no one else had mattered. Is this how people show love—wordless and strange, crass, vulgar displays?
She'd slept with Fenris once and the memory was enough to fuel her fantasies for the next three years. She'd launched thousands of daydreams of this man and what his fingers and mouth and cock were capable of doing to her. So she maybe had an inkling, after all, of how people like Fenris can accept love. She'd imagined asking him the same question over and over again in her head. She'd let the seedling, the idea, take root in the darkest grove of her sexual fantasies.
She reached his chair on the landing, and knelt in front of him. Fenris leaned forward, face masked with warmth and a fondness that, however genuine, was overtaking something fiercer—something hungrier that his eyes weren't lying about. A desire too desperate to conceal.
He brushed wisps of Hawke's sweaty hair away from her face. She closed her eyes, basking in the touch. Keeping her eyes closed, she took a short moment to marshal her bravado before she opened her mouth and began, "Fenris, I was wondering...do you—do—" She stopped herself, suddenly too afraid to ask. Her eyes flew open and she winced. She was going to ruin this all, she really was. She'd never have a chance with him again—
"Go on." He instructed, his voice was soft and low but commanding. He looked as if he were bracing himself, too.
"Do you"—she swallowed, shaking her head a little—"Fenris. Do you want me to call you 'Master'?"
He shot to his feet and the chair clattered backwards. His lyrium brands flashed white with fury and he snatched Hawke by her elbow, yanking her upright with bruising force. She closed her eyes because she was mortified, not because she was afraid. She knew he would never harm her, so she wasn't afraid of his rage, but the pit of her stomach was plummeting, knowing she'd just fucked up ever—
"Yes."
Her eyes flew open. They were standing so close. Fenris was within kissing distance. His brands glowed, his green eyes glinted through his white hair, and—there. Etched into his face. Burrowed into the furrow of his brow: not just desire, but need.
"Alright," Hawke whispered. "I will."