AN: This takes place a few weeks after the events of Aceldama and references events in Latibule and Cingulomania. Not all of the Volutions series is available on this site due to TOS restrictions for explicit content, but if you do a google search for "tempus teapot volutions index" you can find a full index on my tumblr (tempus-teapot) of all Volutions stories and side stories in chronological order with links to the various sites the stories have been posted. The Volutions stories that are available on ff net are tagged "Volutions" in the story summary and you can find them in my profile.
"Hey, Fenris, where's Anders?"
Fenris took a card from his hand and laid it face down on the table before he looked up at Isabela. "Why are you asking me?"
Aveline snorted, Merrill giggled at her cards, and Sebastian gave the entire table a disapproving look, but Isabela grinned before flipping a fresh card to Fenris.
"Don't play coy." She dealt cards out to the rest of the table and raised an eyebrow at Hawke to wait for his bet. "We all know you've gotten over your 'I hate all mages' thing."
"It's true," Hawke said, nodding sagely. He bounced a coin on the tabletop to land in the center of the table while most of their friends nodded in agreement.
"It's cute," Merrill said. "You sneak looks at him when you think none of us are watching."
"I do not," Fenris said. He didn't want to snarl or snap or sound defensive, but why were they all so interested in his relations with Anders anyway? Didn't they have enough to gossip about with Hawke and Isabela, or Aveline and her awkwardly progressing relationship with one of her own guardsmen?
"You do," Aveline said. "We've all noticed."
Varric returned from the drinks run and set a loaded tray on the edge of the table. Hawke snatched two tankards off the tray and passed one to Isabela. "Are we talking about the most unlikely couple in Kirkwall again?"
Again?
"No," Sebastian said. "Because he'll come to his senses and see that consorting with an apostate can bring nothing but grief."
"Hey!" Merrill protested.
Varric set a tankard in front of Merrill before he settled in a chair next to her. "It's okay, Daisy, I'll consort with you."
Hawke flicked a copper across the table to strike Sebastian in the gleaming breastplate. "I thought we had an agreement – no talk of the A-word from you and we can all just get along."
"But—"
Hawke cut him off with a scowl that made Sebastian snap his mouth closed. "Until you come up with a reason as good as Fenris' to hate mages, I'll thank you to keep it to yourself and remember the family I come from."
Fenris was reminded of Hawke under the Gallows in a stolen meeting with Bethany, their voices, shared history, and the sound of shared grief. Hawke might be ready to joke about almost anything, but not his sister.
He looked to his right and shook his head at Sebastian to warn him to leave the topic, not just for Hawke's sake, but because Fenris was not of a mind to hear it either.
The silence from the group around the table had individual tonality – challenging anticipation from Hawke, smirking amusement from Isabela, poorly-concealed embarrassed pleasure from Merrill, and almost fraternal humor from Varric, who set a tankard in front of Sebastian and clapped him on the shoulder. "Drink up, Choir Boy, someone else will put their foot in their mouth soon enough and take the pressure off you."
They could be playing cards back in Varric's room rather than on display in the main room, but Varric insisted that every other Wicked Grace night should happen out in the tavern to give him more storytelling hooks. Fenris was of the opinion that Varric's real motivation had more to do with ensuring that he didn't have drunk players passing out in his suite every week. Although more often than not, that was Isabela, who was easy enough to haul down the hall to her own room.
Aveline remained unreadable, her attention drawn away from the tense scene at their table by the arrival of four strangers who took the table next to theirs. Fenris gave them a cursory glance that turned into a more lingering stare as he wondered why four such beautiful people would be slumming in the Hanged Man.
Around him, the tension broke as one by one his friends stopped talking and playing to stare at the newcomers. The four – were they men or women? Fenris blinked and frowned, unsure from one moment to the next how to describe them, whether they were male or female, fair or dark, or even a simple distinction like human or elvhen. They were captivating, but unknowable.
Norah came to take their orders, for once polite and even smiling shyly at the strange patrons. They gave their orders in melodic voices too quiet for Fenris to make out clearly, even though the tavern had gone strangely silent, but even the indecipherable sentences were lovely to hear. Perhaps they were performers, hired by some wealthy Hightowner to entertain.
Norah took the strangers' coin with their order, holding out her hand for them to drop the coins into her palm. The last one to pay brushed fingertips over her palm and Fenris heard her gasp more clearly than he had heard their orders.
He forced himself to look away to see why the tavern was so unaccountably quiet and found everyone focused on the scene. Every patron, Corff the bartender, Maraas in his stoic silence – even the man everyone simply called the Talkative Man was frozen in place, staring with looks of mixed hunger and longing.
He knew without a doubt that something was wrong, no matter how beautiful and fascinating these people were. His friends were still transfixed with the exception of Merrill, who pushed herself out of her chair and whispered in a strained voice, "Hawke… I think—"
The strangers turned on her as one, each raising a finger to their lips, "Shhh…"
Merrill fell back in her seat with a small cry, eyelids fluttering closed while her chest heaved. Fenris felt the magic then, pulsing like something alive and warm, gliding along his marks with gentle touches that he didn't even allow Anders. The spectral fingers found the scar on his hip where the matrix was broken and pushed inward through the hole in his defenses.
His eyes fell closed and the touches grew more bold, trailing heat through the lyrium and sending jolts across his body. He thought of Anders and Justice and the heat that flashed through him when Justice…
Lips pressed tight over his and he eagerly strained up, parting his lips and reaching for Anders to pull him down into a tight embrace.
The kiss tasted of ale, no bristles scraped his chin, and there was armor under his fingers and pushing his breastplate against his chest.
Fenris snapped his eyes open and pulled back to find himself face to face with Sebastian Vael, while around them Isabela had climbed onto Hawke's lap, Varric had risen from his seat to kiss Merrill, and over Sebastian's shoulder, he could see Maraas lifting Norah off the floor while she flung her arms around his neck and showered his bare shoulders and chest with kisses.
He wanted…
"Anders."
Sebastian shook his head and kissed him again.
· · ·
Anders expected many things of the Hanged Man – bad ale; a unique reek of vomit, piss, that same bad ale, and body odor; brawls; shady characters; his friends, who were also shady characters; brawls; and his favorite night of the week, Wicked Grace night.
What he did not expect to find walking through the Hanged Man's front door on Wicked Grace night was Sebastian-bloody-got-Andraste's-face-up-my-rump-Vael snogging his– his– his Fenris like elves were going out of style.
Never mind that the rest of the tavern was one button short of going full orgy; that Aveline had the Talkative Man pinned against the wall with one armored thigh between his legs while she kissed him; that Varric was holding Merrill in a classic sweep-you-off-your feet pose while she had one dainty foot pointing almost straight up at the ceiling and his lips caressing the tip of her ear; that Hawke and Isabela were about to break every public indecency statute in Kirkwall, or that Norah was doing things to Maraas' horns that were one step shy of fellatio.
Could you perform fellatio on horns?
If someone didn't step in, Anders had a creeping feeling he was going to find out.
But under it all and worst of all was the stink of demonic influence flowing out from four figures at the table next to his friends' usual gaming table.
They turned their attention on him and he felt it like hands on him, crawling across his body, trying to play tunes through his blood, crooning songs of the Fade in the back of his mind to coax Justice to rest. It would be so easy to give in, he could go push Sebastian aside and take his place in Fenris' lap. Let the Chantry boy go have a holy wank.
Fenris came up for air and the wildness Anders saw in his eyes – the fact that he was struggling against the demons' influence and going under while Sebastian kissed his jaw, the way he focused on Anders and held out a hand to him – those things brought Anders back to himself and shamed Justice out of his somnolence.
Smoke burst from the incandescent cracks that opened on his skin and bled from his eyes while quick strides bore him into the center of the main room to allow the influence of the spell he called to break over every man and woman around him. He cast out the demons' influence, shattered the spell, and woke them all from their lustful trances.
What followed was much more along the lines of what Anders expected from a night at the Hanged Man.
· · ·
When the smoke cleared, the bodies had been looted, carted away, and/or swept up, and Corff had come out of hiding to start serving drinks again – neither Norah nor Maraas were anywhere to be found, although Maraas' room was locked – Anders found himself collecting enough chairs to bring everyone to the table once again.
Fenris helped him without comment until Anders looked at the table, counted out seven chairs, and said, "That'll do."
He watched Fenris count the chairs, count their friends, and settle his eyes on number eight, Sebastian. He waited to see if Fenris would comment.
Fenris did not; he sat down and gratefully allowed Hawke to pass him a fresh tankard of the good-quality ale that Corff only brought out when he was trying to bribe people. In this case, Anders assumed that Corff was hoping never to be reminded of being caught with this tongue nearly down Martin's throat.
All things considered, other than Hawke and Isabela, and maybe Norah and Maraas, Anders doubted that anyone would be in any hurry to be reminded of what had happened.
Merrill giggled and leaned over to whisper something to Varric, causing Anders to reconsider his mental list to add them to it as well.
That left Aveline, who had excused herself as soon as the blood had stopped flowing with a muttered excuse about needing to file a report on the incident. She was still blushing hard enough for her freckles to have been lost in the sea of flaming red.
"You'd better tell Donnic!" Isabela called after her. "You-know-who is bound to talk."
Aveline's "Shut up, whore," came as a surprise to no one before she slammed the door on her way out.
Sebastian took Aveline's vacant seat and Varric pulled out a fresh pack of cards with a muttered complaint that they never got to wear out a deck the old-fashioned way.
Anders took his seat to Fenris' left and let Varric deal him in.
Hawke reached out to clap him on the shoulder. "That was some good timing. Thanks."
The others voiced their agreement, even Sebastian, although his thanks came as an ingracious mutter, but it was Fenris that Anders was watching.
Fenris unconsciously wiped the back of his bare hand across his mouth before nodding his agreement with the others. "Thank you."
Anders held his eyes for a long moment, well aware that the others were watching them. He knew that everyone knew what was going on; Isabela had spread the word the moment they set foot on dry land after their first trip to The Lovers' Wake. Now her ship sat at dock in the harbor and all the tiptoeing around that he and Fenris did was pointless because everyone already knew.
And Sebastian-bloody-Vael had been kissing his… his Fenris. He wanted to lean over right there and kiss the breath out of him until all anyone could remember of this night was that Anders and Fenris had kissed in public without magic or drugs or any outside influence at all.
But even if everyone knew, he had made a promise to Fenris to keep their relationship private, and kissing him in front of the Maker and everyone would not just be breaking the promise but shattering it.
He slid his chair back from the table and stood up. "If you'll excuse us, I need to talk to Fenris about something."
Isabela catcalled while Hawke and Varric laughed, but Fenris stood and let Anders lead him back to Varric's suite and push the door closed.
The moment the latch clicked, Anders caught Fenris' arms and pushed him back against the wall, pinning him there with the weight of his body before he kissed him, nipping his lower lip until Fenris parted his lips and let him in, let him taste, and let him take the lead.
When they broke, both breathing heavily, he almost expected Fenris to complain, but he laughed softly and pulled Anders into a tighter embrace. "Jealous?"
Anders hesitated. To say yes was to admit to a depth of feeling he wasn't supposed to have. Or was he? Who dictated supposed? Justice? Justice had come to think that Fenris was perhaps almost worthy of Anders. The Chantry? The Circle? His friends?
His fear?
"Yes," he said, throwing all those concerns to the winds. "I don't want to lose—" you "—this."
Fenris' smile faded before he nodded. "Nor do I."
He pulled Anders closer again, losing time together until Varric pounded on the door, "Not in my bed!"
Anders pounded back on the door and laughed before prying himself out of Fenris' arms. They left the room to go enjoy Wicked Grace night with their friends.