AN: This story is a direct continuation of the events of Grotesquerie. There are references to events that occurred both in Grotesquerie and its predecessor, Nautilus. While you can read this without having read either Nautilus or Grotesquerie, some things may be a bit confusing without the background.
"Who told you?" The woman's voice was strident, raised loudly enough to reach Fenris' sensitive ears well before he reached the throne room. "It was Sigrun, wasn't it?"
Fenris paused in the open door into Vigil's Keep's throne room to see an elven woman with the distinctive facial tattoos that marked her as one of the Dalish haranguing Widald Amell. The human man was the Warden Commander of Vigil's Keep, known to most as "Dal," "Warden," "Hero of Ferelden," or in some cases, "Holy Maker, run!"
The elven woman knew him at least well enough to throw a fit in his general direction. She gesticulated angrily before thrusting an accusing finger toward an armored dwarven woman – Sigrun, Fenris presumed – who stood to the side watching the whole exchange with a vague expression of annoyance. "She told you about it?" Her accusation wavered halfway between a statement and a question. "Well I don't care what she told you, it belongs to the People and not to the Wardens and not to you!"
Behind Dal, another elf lounged insouciantly against one of the throne room's columns. While his face was tattooed, it was not in the distinctive vallaslin, or blood writing, of the Dalish elves. He had his arms folded casually over his chest, but Fenris had seen Zevran Arainai in combat and did not take his casual stance for inattention.
Dal weathered the storm of the woman's anger without flinching before taking the pause in her rage to say calmly, "Sigrun didn't have to tell me about it."
Fenris heard footsteps and glanced over his shoulder to see Anders approaching, Ser Pounce-a-lot trotting at his feet. If nothing else, he had to give the mage credit for striding forward without losing his footing every time the cat wove its way around his ankles.
"Is that Velanna I hear?" Anders asked, sliding past Fenris and into the throne room. "It is. And she's as bright and cheerful as ever."
Sigrun looked away from the ongoing fracas, her gaze sliding over Fenris with barely a stutter to take in the sight of his markings before moving on to Anders. Her eyes widened and Fenris watched her expression slip-slide between surprise and anger before settling into an easier, welcoming beam. She put a silencing finger to her lips and shrugged to indicate Velanna and Dal.
Velanna was demanding to know who had told Dal about whatever "it" was that did not belong to him or the Wardens.
"Velanna," Dal said just as calmly as before, "I listen to what people say. You didn't travel the whole way with just Sigrun – there were other wardens with you, and you can't exactly hide a jewel that can light a whole room with its glow, can you?"
Velanna's shoulders slumped fractionally before she straightened again. "It doesn't matter how you heard about it. It won't do you or anyone else any good."
"That remains to be seen," Dal replied and held out his hand. "Give it to me. If I think you're the one who can best use it, I will return it to you."
"And if you don't?" Velanna challenged. "If you don't you'll give it to whoever you feel like. Maybe you'll even give it to him," she shifted, turning her body to be able to point unerringly toward Anders. "It won't do you humans any good. It takes a Keeper, and I am going to use it to find the Architect and Seranni."
Anders opened his mouth to say something and received a warning head shake from Dal that made him shut his mouth with an audible click of teeth snapping together. Fenris frowned, remembering how readily Dal had used them to find the Architect just take a sample of his blood. Was he concealing that information from Velanna for some reason? And who was Seranni?
"Be reasonable," Dal admonished her, a snap of command behind his words. "All you have to do is let me examine it and if I determine that it's what you think it is, I'll return it to you." He held out his hand palm up.
"What is it?" Anders asked Fenris sotto voce. "Have you seen it?"
Fenris shook his head and shifted as Ser Pounce-a-lot twined his way through his ankles. "I have been here barely longer than you," he murmured, eyes fixed on the tableau of Dal with his hand outstretched to the angry woman.
Nothing moved for an instant, even Ser Pounce-a-lot stopped to lean the full weight of his small body against Fenris' shin, then Velanna's shoulders slumped.
"I knew you would show me how human you were," she said while she opened a pouch on her belt. Fenris thought she sounded more determined than defeated. "I told myself that some of your kind can be trusted, that some of you have honor, but I knew I was just lying to myself." She withdrew a small cloth-wrapped bundle, inciting Anders to edge nearer, curiosity written openly on his face.
Behind Dal, Zevran straightened from his casual slouch, his expression sharpening. At first Fenris thought that it was just his own curiosity over the object in Velanna's hand, before he realized what Zevran was seeing. Both elven men drew weapons, but it was already too late.
A faint green radiance had grown around Velanna while she spoke. As Zevran and Fenris unsheathed their blades, Sigrun spoke up, "That's not—"
Dal took a step back and raised his hands, power gathering around them in a faint red haze.
Anders sucked in a breath and reached over his shoulder for his staff.
Ser Pounce-a-lot hissed.
Velanna finished unwrapping a small crystal orb that pulsed with a sympathetic green to the gathering glow of her magic and threw it to the ground at Dal's feet where it exploded with a pulse of vibrant green light that threw everyone in the room to the floor except Ser Pounce-a-lot and Velanna.
Fenris could not swear to it, but before he was blinded by the silent explosion's glare, he thought that he saw the ground under her feet thrust up a welter of lashing vines that gathered her into their grasp and pulled her down and out of sight.
The concussion from the magical blast blew through Fenris, traced the lines of lyrium written into his flesh, struck the cuff that had been magically welded to his wrist like a mallet hitting a gong to send still more vibrations reverberating through his body, and passed onward, leaving him stunned, but apparently undamaged.
As his head cleared enough to take in his surroundings, he could hear other people moving, harsh breathing, a sharp curse in a woman's voice. He pushed himself to his feet, using his sword for a brace at first, blinking away the blinding spots across his vision until he could make out blurred details – Zevran's dark skin and gold hair moving cautiously across the floor, a dark blur lower to the ground that must be Sigrun moving just as carefully, the columns that lined the great room, but…
He blinked harder as though that would clear the flash blindness more quickly and searched the slowly-resolving room blur until he identified two figures lying on the ground, one in Widald Amell's distinctive russet and gold robes, the other in Anders' skin-baring Tevinter robe. The Zevran blur knelt by the Dal blur while Sigrun shouted Velanna's name.
"I'm going to find her and I'm going to give her ears such a twist," Fenris thought he heard the dwarf growl.
Ser Pounce-a-lot was standing on top of Anders' back, patting the side of his face with a paw. As Fenris' vision finally cleared, he searched the room, but there was no sign of the elven Keeper.
"Brasca."
The Antivan curse drew Fenris' eyes in time to watch Zevran roll Dal fully onto his back. The mage was not bleeding, his dark skin was not ashen, his eyes were open and focused – if confused – but his face… His face was softer, the line of the jaw lacking the sharp definition of full manhood; his eyes were clearer, lacking the lines at the corners that came with hard experience.
He looked… young. Like a clay-soft teenager who had not yet been fired into the hard finish of adulthood.
"Oh nughumping, deep stalking, bronto shit," Sigrun groaned. "How are we going to clean this mess up?"
Ser Pounce-a-lot meowed to draw their attention to the fact that the mess was bigger than they had realized at first blush.
Fenris loomed over Anders' supine form as the mage rolled over and gazed up at him. "Right, not the Circle Tower. Did I, I don't know, drown swimming Lake Calenhad? Or lose myself in my Harrowing without knowing it? Because this is the best view I've had since that one dream where half the apprentices suddenly decided to declare tower-wide naked day. Sixteen is young to die, but this might just make it worth it."
Zevran slipped a hand under Dal's shoulders, coaxing him to sit while he murmured affectionately, "Come, my love, we will see this fixed. It is a fetching look, yes, but I prefer my men more mature."
To Sigrun Zevran said more firmly, "Fetch Nathaniel Howe, he will know where she has gone, and lock the doors on the way out."
Sigrun secured the doors to the throne room before she left at a brisk trot to search out Nathaniel Howe and bring him in on the developing mess.
Anders gave Ser Pounce-a-lot a bemused stroke when the cat climbed onto his chest to resume patting him with a paw. "Good kitty." Fenris noted that his voice had not yet filled out with the resonant adult timbre it would have… when he grew up?
Sometimes life around mages was just too strange to tolerate.
He found himself unable to look away from Anders, taking in all the ways both subtle and obvious that he had changed in this reversion from a man to a youth. He could hear Zevran talking to Dal, asking him questions, even laughing occasionally, low and intimate as though nothing had changed. Maybe to the assassin little had, but Fenris could not see it that way.
Anders looked too soft like this. Fenris had never given much thought to the effect that the mage's years of experience must have had on his face, let alone— he paused in his ruminations as a realization struck him.
"Justice?" he asked, searching Anders' too-smooth face for some sign of reaction from the spirit he hosted.
Anders gave him a blank look in response and shifted Ser Pounce-a-lot off his chest to be able to stand up.
"Justice?" he asked while he brushed wrinkles out of his robes, his expression turned confused when he realized that the upper half of his chest was mostly bare. He traced the bare patches almost absently while he went on, "I don't have to be in any trouble if you don't tell the templars." He sidled closer to Fenris. "I could make it worth your while. You know we don't just learn the boring magic in the Circle. I've picked up a few really brilliant—"
Fenris cut him off. "No."
This did not have to be his problem. He wasn't chained to Anders anymore. He could leave the man – boy – mage here with people who knew him, with the wardens he had once pledged himself to.
He could…
Anders yawned, stretched, and froze with his mouth open when the door opened to admit Nathaniel Howe. Fenris watched Anders look the man over from head to toe, realize that he was still standing with his arms stretched over his head and his mouth cracked in a wide yawn. Anders snapped his mouth closed and jerked his arms down into an awkward attempt at a casually enticing pose.
Maker, but the boy still had a way to go, didn't he?
"Well hello there," Anders said once he had composed himself. "My name is—"
"Anders, yes, I know," Nathaniel said, brushing past him to confer with Zevran. "Sigrun told me what happened, she's asking around in case anyone has seen Velanna since then. How is…?"
"My dear Widald is well," Zevran said, shooting an amused look in Dal's direction. Even magically younger though he was, Fenris saw Dal bristle at being called by his full name. "But he thinks he is an unharrowed mage who will be pursued by templars at any moment for somehow escaping the Circle. You have already seen how Anders is doing."
Zevran's smile did not change, but somehow his expression lost all of its humor. "I want him back. Find Velanna, bring her back, and I will persuade her to reverse this."
Nathaniel scowled at Zevran. "I won't bring you to her just so you can torture her."
"Which does Ferelden need more, my friend," Zevran asked, tilting his head up to meet Nathaniel's scowl without flinching. "Its hero or your lady?"
While Nathaniel and Zevran talked, Anders eased his way around them to where Zevran had seated Dal on the Vigil's throne.
Fenris kept half an eye on Anders, but he was deeply interested in the exchange between Zevran and Nathaniel. He had gotten half an inkling that there might have once been something between Anders and Nathaniel, or oddly, perhaps between Justice and Nathaniel, but Zevran's remark about Velanna as Nathaniel's "lady" had implications as well.
Did all wardens just sleep with all other wardens? Considering Oghren, he doubted it.
It was with half an ear at first that he heard Anders strike up a conversation with Dal.
"You look familiar," Anders began. "Were you ever at Kinloch Hold? Maybe a few years ago? Only I'd know you if you were there now. I know everyone my age."
Fenris thought that based on some of Anders' comments about Circle life, by "know" he probably meant he knew them on a "hiding in the storage closet" basis.
"I'm an apprentice there now," Dal answered, but his attention seemed as fixed on Zevran and Nathaniel as Fenris' was. "And I don't know you."
That made Fenris glance away in time to see Anders mouth "ouch."
Fenris cracked a smile for the first time all day.
Zevran and Nathaniel finished their discussion, agreeing that Nathaniel would do everything in his power to persuade Velanna to make this right before Zevran did everything in his power to persuade her.
Nathaniel nodded an acknowledgment to Fenris as he strode purposefully out of the room.
Zevran drew Fenris away from Anders and Dal and lowered his voice. "No one must see the Hero of Ferelden like this. This is important not just for my Widald's reputation, but for the stability of the power structure here, do you understand?"
Fenris narrowed his eyes, looking at Zevran from a new perspective. He had gotten to know Zevran on their trip into the Deep Roads to find the Architect, and he respected the elven assassin's skill with blades, traps, and poisons, but he had not really seen the calculating aspect of the man's personality before. Perhaps because Zevran could hide it behind his casual lasciviousness and let the Hero of Ferelden be the calculating planner that everyone expected.
Fenris promised himself that he would not forget what he was learning about Zevran in these moments. "I understand. What do you intend?"
"I will sequester our young Warden Commander until Nathaniel returns with Velanna. If anyone asks after him, I will simply appear naked at our bedroom door and tell them we are busy." He winked at Fenris and grinned in such a way that he could not be certain whether Zevran was joking or not.
"You must ensure that when the rumor gets out about what Velanna has done, it applies only to your Anders. It is true that a human mage was cursed by our wild elf, but it was Anders. It should not be difficult to sell; the mage has a talent for making people want to throw things at him – pillows, books, spells."
"The mage is not my Anders," Fenris ground out through clenched teeth.
"So you say," Zevran said so blithely that Fenris felt as though he had just been called a liar. "And who am I to argue? I will take my Widald now. If anyone asks you where he is, you do not have to lie – tell them he is with me. My reputation will do the rest."
He turned his smile back up to full brilliance and left Fenris to interpose himself between Anders and Dal. "I will show you to your room," he told Dal taking his hand and tugging him out of the throne. "I think you will find that it is exactly to your liking."
Anders ruefully watched Zevran lead Dal away before shrugging to himself and picking up Ser Pouce-a-lot. "At least you want me, kitty. Isn't that right? Do you have a name? I could give you a name. What should I call you?"
"Ser Pounce-a-lot," Fenris said grimly. "The cat's name is Ser Pounce-a-lot."
"Ser Pounce-a-lot?" Anders asked.
For a brief, hopeful moment, Fenris thought that perhaps this version of Anders would realize how ridiculous the name was, but his hope was promptly shattered.
"That's perfect!" Anders rubbed his cheek against the top of Ser Pounce-a-lot's head and cooed, "Who's a good kitty? You are, yes you are!"
Watching a teenage Anders coo over his cat, Fenris considered again that this did not have to be his problem. He could return to Kirkwall without Anders and tell Hawke with no shame that the mage had stayed with the wardens.
Anders looked up at him from over Ser Pounce-a-lot's back and Fenris could see the man he would become. Perhaps it was the way he held himself, or the moment when his voice broke into a deeper register, or perhaps Fenris might have to admit to himself that the constantly-complaining pain in the ass had grown on him.
The last thought goaded Fenris into action. It was preposterous from any direction that Anders had grown on him.
Theuderic. My name is Theuderic. Fenris shook off the memory of the night before on the Vigil's battlements.
"Come on," he said gruffly. "You're hungry."
"How did you know?" Anders asked, putting Ser Pounce-a-lot down to approach Fenris. He was trying for an enticing saunter, but apparently he had just gotten some extra length in his arms, legs, or both, because it was a bit more of a scarecrow's meander.
Fenris quelled his smile before it could reach his lips. The last thing he wanted was to encourage Anders like this.
"You really don't remember anything, do you?" he said, pointing Anders toward the door that would lead to the mess hall. "You're always hungry, even when you won't admit it."
"I'd think I'd remember you." Anders passed a little too close with Ser Pounce-a-lot hard on his heels. Fenris told himself that it was his imagination that he could smell him, and that it was the same scent that had been his constant companion for the period they were chained together. He could not find Anders in the dark by scent alone.
Warm, a tinge of sweat, an edge of herbs, the faint thrill of magic, and something beneath that was unique only to Anders.
"Then you think wrong," Fenris said, shaking his left wrist to draw attention to the cuff he wore.
Anders followed the motion, scanning the cuff incuriously. "Nice, I guess. But what does that have to do with knowing you?"
Fenris wordlessly pointed to Anders' right wrist where he wore the cuff's mate. He fought to keep his lips from twitching into a smile when he saw Anders' expression. The youth held his wrist up to his face first with bemusement, glancing between his wrist and Fenris', then with something more akin to fear when he turned and turned the cuff only to find that it had no hinge, no latch, no apparent means of removal.
"What's this?" he asked, looking at Fenris as though he was seeing him for the first time. "Is this some templar thing? Because I don't think you can punish me when I don't even remember escaping."
"I am not a templar," Fenris assured him. "Nor is that 'some templar thing.'"
He had a brief, unworthy thought that now that Anders was free of Justice, at least temporarily, he could test whether the cuff would have the same effect on the young mage as it had once had. It might keep him… pliable. He dismissed the thought with a twinge both of regret and disgust. This was why magic was such a danger – it was a constant temptation to be resisted, and he was only a man.
"Then what is it?" Anders asked, interrupting his thoughts. He looked unsettled and more unsure of himself than he had since waking.
Fenris shook his head and brushed past him to retrieve Anders' staff where it had fallen and gone unremarked in the minor chaos. "An accident, but one that shows we know each other. Take this." He held out the staff to Anders. "And I will take you to get some food. If Nathaniel Howe lives up to Zevran's trust, we will not have to endure your confusion too long."
Anders took the staff and regarded it curiously. "This is nice," he said as he turned it first one way and the other, admiring the stone set at its head and the sword tip at its foot before swinging it experimentally. "But it's not mine," he finally said with real regret before holding it out to Fenris. "I have an apprentice's staff. They'd never let me have something like this, and I'm not a thief."
"It's yours," Fenris said, turning away to lead Anders to the mess hall. "Now come on."
"Wait!"
Fenris turned at the desperation in Anders' call. The mage stood behind him, looking so terribly young and unsure of himself. "I don't even know your name."
"Fenris."
Anders held out a hand to forestall him before he could turn away again. "How do you know me, Fenris?"
Fenris did not consider lying, not because it was beneath him, but because he could not begin to imagine a plausible lie to suit the situation. "I know you as an adult man – a runaway Grey Warden, an apostate mage, and an abomination. You are under a spell now that has reverted you to your youth, but I know you better than I wish to."
So, perhaps he had found just a bit of a lie. He gave Anders his back, determined this time to make it out of the thrice-cursed throne room with or without the mage.
He heard the footsteps, felt the air move, and swung around to knock Anders' hand away before it could land on his shoulder to stop him.
Anders jerked his hand back and flinched under Fenris' glare before drawing himself up and glaring back. "You can't drop a load of dragon shit on me and like that and just walk away. I'm supposed to believe you? An apostate, sure, but a Grey Warden? And an abomination? What kind of idiot do you think I am?"
"I think you are many kinds of idiot," Fenris said. "The kind who hasn't even asked where he is, hasn't asked why he is wearing Tevinter mage robes, the kind who would rather follow his—" Fenris dropped his gaze to Anders' crotch before looking up at his face "—instead of determining his situation. So come with me or do not."
He spun on his heel and strode out of the room, calling back one word that summoned Anders more surely than any other.
"Theuderic."
As Fenris expected, he heard Anders break into a trot to catch up with him.
"How do you know that name?" Anders asked anxiously. "This really is a templar thing isn't it? You're a bounty hunter."
"No," Fenris said, not turning back as he led Anders down the hall and around a corner toward the mess hall. "I know your name because you told it to me last night."
He heard Anders' steps falter and stop. He told himself he should just keep walking and Anders would catch up, but he found himself stopping and turning to see just what response his words had elicited.
Anders looked dumbstruck.
"Are we…? I mean, you're gorgeous and all. Does that mean that we're…?" Anders flailed his hands helplessly before settling on a graceless gesture with his hands at hip level.
"We are not lovers," Fenris said firmly, tabling "gorgeous" as something to consider at another, far less sober time.
"That's downright criminal, that is," Anders said, putting aside his shock in favor of a leering grin. Apparently emotional upset could only quell the teen's libido for so long before it took over again.
The leer made Fenris wonder vaguely how Zevran was getting along with his teenaged Hero of Ferelden. Anders' libido might have been a better match for the elven rake, were it not for the fact that Fenris had seen real attachment between Zevran and Dal. They seemed well-matched in a certain ruthless pragmatism. Or at least they did when they were both adults.
"We should give it a go," Anders suggested, breaking into Fenris' thoughts.
"Give what a go?" Fenris asked, although he could already feel where Anders was going.
Anders confirmed his suspicion. "Being lovers. I like older men – a lot – and you wouldn't be sorry."
Fenris felt a strong urge to rub his temples. "I'm already sorry. The mess hall is down that corridor. If you can walk from here to there without making another proposition I won't have to break your arm."
Ser Pounce-a-lot interceded for the sake Anders' arm, meowing up at him until Anders gave in and picked up the cat.
"It's yours, you know," Fenris said, opting for a safer subject while they resumed their trip.
"What?"
"The cat, Ser Pounce-a-lot. It's your cat. You told me that it has even been down into the Deep Roads with you."
Ser Pounce-a-lot meowed as though to confirm Fenris' words.
They passed a guardsman who quizzically regarded first Fenris, his tattoos, and his great sword, before stopping dead in the hall staring at Anders. Assuming that the man might have known Anders in the past when he was a warden, Fenris grabbed Anders' arm to pull him onward.
"I knew you couldn't resist me," Anders joked while Fenris tugged him into the mess hall. Anders' cocky smile froze as a dozen men and women stopped talking and stared at the pair of them in open surprise or curiosity before resuming their meals and conversations in more muted tones.
"Over here," called a gravelly voice, drawing Fenris' attention to the corner where Oghren sat, unsurprisingly unaccompanied during the late dinner hour. Perhaps it was the fact that the only thing in front of him was a tankard, not a dinner plate.
Fenris used his hold on Anders' arm to drag him through the chow line, not releasing him even after Anders' hands were filled with his wooden tray. True to form for both Grey Wardens and teenage males, Anders left the line only once his tray was heaped with more food than Fenris could imagine packing into his body in one sitting.
Fenris maneuvered Anders over to Oghren's corner partly out of curiosity to see if his appetite could weather the storm of Oghren's various eructations and emissions, partly to distract Anders' libido from fixing on everyone he met. If Anders went after Oghren, Fenris told himself he was leaving the youth to his fate.
Oghren looked the two of them over and gave a chuckle that sounded as though it would need to be mopped up. "This must be what Sigrun was talking about. She ran in here and grabbed that Howe, all 'Velanna this' and 'kid that' and sent him off to see the Commander while she ran out looking for that crazy elf. You get all kinds of shit hanging out with mages and wardens."
"You're going to tell me I know him, aren't you?" Anders asked, sitting as far from Oghren as Fenris' hold on his arm would permit before he tucked into his dinner with all the gusto of someone who could not remember the last time he had eaten.
"I know you when you've got more hair on your chest and at least enough on your face so's you don't look even more like a girl, you skirt-wearing freak," Oghren said genially. "But I'd think pointy-ears over here would like you girlier." He leered over at Fenris. "If you just flip the skirt up over his back you could pretend…"
"Oghren." Fenris cut Oghren off before he could offer any other unwanted sexual advice. "Do you have any of that brew you were drinking in the Deep Roads?"
"The family recipe?" Oghren asked. "Never leave home without it."
Fenris took Anders' cup of weak ale under Anders' protest and drained it before pushing it down the table toward Oghren. "For Anders."
For a moment he thought Oghren would say no, but the dwarf's face cracked into a broad grin before he fished a flask out of the depths of his armor. "Start 'em young, I always say. Now Felsi, she don't listen to me about it, but she's not here and she wouldn't argue about this one anyways."
He poured a measure of amber liquor into Anders' glass and pushed it back across the table before leaning back in his seat to grin expectantly at them. "Go ahead. I want to see this."
Anders looked from the cup to Oghren and from Oghren to Fenris. "Is this some kind of trick? You know, give the new guy something and watch him vomit up his guts for the rest of the night?"
Oghren took a swig from the flask and belched. "Nope."
Fenris pushed the cup closer to Anders. "No."
"Then what's the trick?" Anders picked up the cup and sniffed experimentally only to grimace and hold the cup at arm's length.
"Drink it before it melts the cup," Oghren suggested.
Anders' eyes widened. "Would it really do that?"
Fenris gave a half shrug. "Maybe. Drink it."
Oghren tilted the balance. "Unless you're scared to."
Anders knocked back the liquor and erupted into furious coughing, curling around his stomach while his eyes streamed with tears much to Oghren's raucous amusement. Oghren slapped the table and snorted with laughter.
Fenris observed Anders closely. He was no healer or mage and couldn't put Anders to sleep through those means, but seeing Oghren had made him realize that if he could get Anders quickly and efficiently drunk he could lead/carry him back to his room and leave him there for the night. What would come in the morning was another problem, but it could also wait until morning.
Anders slowly stopped coughing and sat up, scrubbing the sweat and tears off his face with his hands and blinked to clear his vision. The first go apparently did not suffice and Fenris watched with veiled amusement as Anders continued to blink until he determined that his vision just wasn't going to clear.
"Uh…" he said eloquently.
"Not bad," Oghren said. "The Commander just passed—"
Anders slowly toppled toward Fenris, forcing him to move to keep Anders' face from planting on some of the spikier parts of his armor, ending with his thigh serving as Anders' pillow.
"You were saying?" Fenris said dryly.
With some help from Oghren, Fenris managed to lever Anders up out of his lap and into a dragging stumble with Anders' arm around his shoulder. He planned to get Anders back to the room they had shared when they had been chained together – he didn't know where Dal had moved Anders after they were separated – drop the drunk boy into bed, and return to have his own dinner free of worries about Anders telling the wrong story to the wrong person.
Somewhere along the way to the room, Anders started to get his feet under himself enough to reduce the amount of dragging and increase the amount of stumbling.
"Karl?"
Fenris felt an unexpected pang upon hearing that name. He had never thought that he would care about what had happened when he had first fought alongside Anders, but when Anders spoke the name, he realized that in the youth's mind and memory, Karl was still alive somewhere, his forehead free of the Tranquil brand.
Fenris would not be the one to tell him otherwise.
"No," he said gruffly. "Fenris."
Anders twisted his head to get a bleary look at Fenris' face and grinned. "I want to lick your chin."
Now it was Fenris who nearly stumbled, but he kept himself and Anders upright and started the daunting task of getting him up the flight of stairs that stood between them and dumping Anders into a bed. "You will not lick my chin."
"I can lick other places, too," Anders added hopefully. "All the places those tattoos go."
Fenris struggled to keep energy from flaring through the lyrium in his skin at Anders' words. Even as an adult, Anders could have no idea what it would mean to actually do that.
"You will not," he said, his voice dropping to a low rumble with a whiplash flick at the end.
Anders tried to rest his head on Fenris' shoulder, but his spiked armor made that an uncomfortable proposition. "Hey…" he slurred after staring at the offending pointed bits, "…why do you have pink on your armor?"
Fenris followed Anders' gaze and saw nothing but properly re-dyed black until Anders flicked one of the leather protrusions and turned it for Fenris to see the thin line of un-dyed fuchsia. That sneaky little mage. Anders must have known it was there before, when he was an adult, and had not mentioned it to him.
Never trust a mage. Not even to point out fuchsia streaks on armor.
He pulled Anders roughly up the stairs, ignoring his protest when he stumbled and barked his shin on a stone step. Served the mage right. He should dump him in bed covered in bruises.
But he did not. He saw Anders safely to the too-large guest room with its too-large bed and ungently dropped him onto the bed. He lay on top of the pile of blankets that barely served to keep Fenris' bones from shivering through his skin in the depth of a cold Fereldan night.
It was a chilly Fereldan early evening, and as far as Fenris was concerned, if Anders got cold enough for it to penetrate the haze of Oghren's family recipe, he could get himself under the blankets on his own. Ser Pounce-a-lot jumped up onto the bed and settled himself in a purring ball against Anders' leg.
Anders wriggled until he was taking up most of the center of the bed, boots still on, and blinked up at Fenris before breaking into a broad grin and crooking his finger invitingly.
"It's a big bed," he observed. "Lots of room."
"Which you are already taking up. Go to sleep."
Anders tried for a pout. "Will you wake me up in the best way?"
Fenris finally allowed himself to smile. "Yes, but only if you go to sleep."
Admittedly, his mental image of waking Anders in the best way doubtless did not coincide with Anders' mental image. He was imagining ice, ice water, Oghren singing a dwarven love ballad, perhaps getting the mabari, Brutal, to come and jump on the bed… not sex.
"Promise?" Anders held his eyes open with effort and absently petted Ser Pounce-a-lot when the cat moved up his body for a better spot on his stomach. "Good kitty."
"You have my word," Fenris said without a trace of irony.
"Mkay." Anders let his eyelids drop closed, his breathing evening out to a slow, deep rhythm while Fenris watched.
Idly, he wondered if this version of Anders had nightmares before he dismissed the thought. It wasn't his problem. Anders was only his problem because he allowed it.
The question of why he allowed it drove him out of the room and back downstairs to the mess hall.
"Eh, done with Junior already?" Oghren called. "Didn't take you for a five minute man."
Fenris scowled at the dwarf, but sat down by him to finish off Anders' dinner, which hadn't been taken away or eaten by Oghren during his absence. "He is asleep. May he stay that way for the rest of the night and trouble me no longer."
"Don't know him too good do you?" Oghren chortled. "I'd bet you a bottle of Mackay's Epic that he's already out of bed and into trouble."
Fenris paused with a piece of cheese halfway to his mouth before finishing the bite and mulling over the thought while he chewed. Anders had a gift for trouble as an adult with a spirit of justice as a headmate. Would he really be better as a teenager left to his own devices?
Images of revenants, templars, Xenon, and tentacles danced through his head.
He pushed himself away from the table and left without a word for Oghren, who roared with laughter behind him.
He took the stairs two and three at a time on the way back up to his room and caught himself before he burst through the door. Anders was asleep, the cat would be curled on his chest or in the crook of his neck, and crashing into the room would wake him and end the peace.
Instead, he opened the door slowly, holding his breath until he could see the bed.
The bed that was empty other than Ser Pounce-a-lot, who blinked sleepy eyes at him before closing them again.
Fenris cursed bitterly and slammed the door open to check every corner of the room before pulling the door closed. Up and down the hallway there was no sign of a runaway teen mage. He could be anywhere.
He started from the top down, ignoring the biting cold to go out on the battlements without a cloak, asking among the guards if they had seen a blond youth in mage robes. Finally he found a guard who told him that he might have seen someone down below in the courtyard who matched that description.
Fenris left him without a word of thanks, running down the outside stairs to search the Vigil's courtyard before Anders found a cart or merchant to stow away and turn the hunt into a wild goose chase.
Again, he did not pause to question why he cared to stop Anders from getting away and leaving his life blessedly mage-free, though the thought did niggle at the back of his mind.
"Is this yours?"
Fenris turned when the familiar voice called to him before he had barely made it ten feet into the main courtyard.
He was greeted by the sight of Wade the smith in high dudgeon. His usually brown skin was nearly brick red with his fury, but more importantly, he had Anders by the scruff of his neck while his partner, Herren, hung back and watched, looking unusually abashed.
Rather than argue the semantics of whether Anders was his or not with the enraged smith, Fenris said, "It seems so."
Anders flailed his hands helplessly and shot Fenris a beseeching look. Regardless of some of Wade's disarming behavior that made one think "artist" and not "armorer," the man had a smith's hard-earned muscle under his tunic, and Anders was not getting away until Wade let him get away.
"Wade, be reasonable," Herren pleaded. "You know it was nothing."
"I'll deal with you later," Wade spat at Herren, shaking Anders to make his point. "I never took you for a cradle robber. I don't know why I ever left Denerim."
Wade's attention sharpened on Fenris, taking in his black armor. "What have you done to your armor? After all the work I put into its perfection, you do this?" Wade shook Anders again, making the young mage yelp and struggle in his grip.
"Wade," Herren interjected before Fenris could potentially say something about how Herren had given him the leather dye to remedy Wade's fuchsia masterwork. "Please, come home and we can talk about this where it's warm. I'll tell you everything that happened."
"I saw what happened," Wade nearly shrieked, rounding on Herren, dragging Anders along for the ride. "You were kissing him!"
"If it helps," Anders put in weakly, "I was kissing him. Not the other way around." He cringed, expecting more rage from the smith.
"It's true!" Herren eagerly agreed. "He took me completely by surprise!"
Fenris shivered when a bitter wind cut through his bare arms and chilled his armor against his skin. "You have my word that I will take him inside and not allow him out unsupervised," he promised the raging smith. "He's been drinking some of Oghren's special brew. You know Oghren, don't you?" If only by smell, who didn't know Oghren at Vigil's Keep?
Wade held onto his anger for a moment longer before suddenly deflating, releasing Anders to push him toward Fenris. "Get him out of my sight. And I don't want to see you in my defaced armor again either."
Anders stumbled and fell at Fenris' feet while Herren tried to go to Wade. Wade breezed past his partner, ignoring his open arms, saying in a voice as coldly biting as the wind, "We have to talk."
Anders pushed himself to his feet and brushed off his robe with carefully deliberate motions that hinted that he had not yet sobered up.
"You were supposed to wait for me to wake you," Fenris told him.
"You were going to wake me your best way," Anders retorted, "not my best way. I'm not stupid you know."
"Going after Herren was stupid." Fenris caught his arm in a vice-like grip to drag him back inside and out of the wind.
"How was I supposed to know he was taken?"
"Two minutes of observation would have told you," Fenris snapped. "What were you thinking?"
"I was thinking that it can't be long until the templars find me and drag me back to the tower," Anders said sullenly, dragging his feet up the stairs. In the torchlight Fenris could see that Anders' lips were blue from the cold and that he was shivering lightly. Although with Oghren's brew in him, he probably didn't feel it. "And I just wanted some fun."
He let Fenris pull him back upstairs without saying another word, not even complaining about the bite of the sharp tip of Fenris' gauntlets.
"Give me your boots," Fenris demanded once they were back in his room.
"My boots?" Anders looked down at his feet and then at Fenris' "I don't think they'll fit you."
"Give. Me. Your boots," Fenris repeated. "You may have them back in the morning, but you are not leaving this room until then."
Anders slowly grinned. "Are you going to stay here to make sure I don't get away?"
Fenris just held out his hand and wiggled his fingers. Give me the boots.
With a grunt and much eye rolling, Anders toed off his boots and kicked them toward Fenris. "Now what, Master?"
The use, however unknowing or ironic, of "Master" made Fenris' hackles raise.
"I am not your master."
"Then what are you?"
"Tired of you," Fenris growled. "Get in bed."
He expected many things of Anders at that point – sighs, eyerolls, huffing complaints, defiance, whining, who knew what else – but he did not expect what actually came.
Anders lunged forward and kissed him.
And for a moment, he weakened and kissed Anders back.
A blaze of wanting overrode Fenris' higher reason, heat spreading through him like the flare of the lyrium in his body. The Anders who pressed against him, all lips and questing tongue, panting breaths and murmured, "Please, please, please," was not the man Fenris had slept beside for weeks, learning the sound of his breathing in the night, the rhythms of his life. He was not the man who Fenris had found himself wanting in dark moments when Anders slept beside him.
But he was close.
Fenris clasped Anders' forearms when he tried to untie the front of Fenris' leggings. The kiss he could permit, and even with the taste of Oghren's family finest on Anders' lips, the flavor was as fine as any wine he might have found in Danarius' cellars. He wanted those lips on his skin, he wanted to allow Anders to lick his chin and follow the line of lyrium down his throat and—
"No."
Roughly, he pushed Anders away and pushed him again when Anders tried to press against him with a wordless whine caught in his throat.
"No," Fenris repeated, nearly growling with the effort it took to deny what they both wanted.
"But why?" Anders demanded. His lips were full and red with kisses, his skin flushed, even showing in hectic patches on the bare skin of his chest. "You want to, too." He reached out and flinched when Fenris batted his hand away.
"Because I do not take advantage of children." Fenris wiped his mouth and tried to wipe away the sense memory of Anders' lips against his. It was madness to want Anders in any sense, as a demanding boy or as the man Fenris knew.
He was a mage. One did not trust mages. Ever.
"It's not taking advantage when I made the first move." Anders sounded petulant as he threw himself down on the bed, landing on his side instead of his stomach for reasons made entirely clear by the broken lines of his robe over a respectable bulge. "And it's not like I'm a kid anyway. People have families at my age."
"You do not," Fenris said, locking the door and putting the key in one of his belt pouches. "And you are still too young for me." He moved to the bed and picked up Anders' dangling feet, shoving them onto the bed before he padded to the other side of the bed and removed the outer layers of his armor, shedding the spikes and breastplate to place on the room's armor stand.
Anders watched his every movement. His lower lip still protruded just enough to hint at a pout, making Fenris want to climb onto the bed and bite it until he writhed.
"What are you doing?"
Fenris was not altogether certain of that himself, but he moved purposefully despite his uncertainty, choosing to fake decisiveness while he extinguished all but a single candle next to the bed. He hoped that if he kept moving, he might come up with some hint of a plan. He took off his belt last, tucking it and its pouches in a bedside drawer before putting a knee up on the bed.
"Roll over."
"What?" Anders face lit with hope that Fenris was going to give in to his charms after all.
Fenris frowned. "I said roll over. Don't make me repeat myself."
Anders sat up and fumbled with at his robe. "How does this come off?"
"It isn't coming off," Fenris said. He had not moved since putting his knee on the bed and was growing impatient with Anders. "Leave your robe on and roll over." As an afterthought he added, "Get under the blankets."
Fenris waited until Anders wriggled under the blankets and rolled to face away from him before sliding into bed behind him on top of the blankets. He could not trust himself without the extra layers of wool and down between them.
Anders craned his neck around to see Fenris in the dim light from the single candle. "Aren't you coming under the blankets?"
"No." Fenris slid closer until his legs spooned behind the curve of Anders' bent legs. "Turn around."
Anders' disappointed huff almost made him smile, but the strain of his thwarted wanting was almost painful, killing his smile before it could begin.
"Then what are we doing?" Anders wriggled back, his backside pressing against Fenris' groin despite the layers of blankets between them.
Fenris clenched his teeth against a hiss and clamped a hand down on Anders' hip to push him forward and hold him in place. "Don't move." He released Anders to flip a corner of the blanket up over himself and returned his hand to Anders' hip. "I told you that I don't take advantage of children."
"I know, I know." Anders sounded aggrieved.
Fenris gave his hip a hard squeeze. "But if you were not a child…"
The words hung in the silent gloom until Anders could not take it any longer. "If I weren't? What would you do if I weren't?"
Fenris closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. He did not have to do this. He should not do this. He could rest perfectly well in the chair by the bed, or he could leave Anders altogether.
Anders. Was. Not. His problem.
He could smell Anders' hair, and young or not, it was so familiar that the ache in Fenris' groin fairly throbbed.
"If you were not a child, I would not have pushed you away when we were kissing," he murmured, leaving his eyes closed. "I would have pulled you closer and caught you by your ponytail to hold you while I tasted every part of your mouth. I would not have been gentle with you because I do not think that when you are a man you would want me to be gentle."
Anders sighed and tried to press back against him again, but Fenris held him in an implacable grip. "Be still.
"If you were a man, I would have torn your robe at the collar to let it slide down your body until you were naked in front of me, but I wouldn't let you touch me until I was ready. If you were a man, I would run the tips of my gauntlets down your chest, through the hair on your belly and cradle your cock and balls in my bare palm."
Even with his grip to hold him still, Anders shuddered before he shifted an arm under the blanket. Fenris knew that he was hiking up his robe, but he allowed it. If one of them was to lose control, let it be Anders.
"If you were a man, I would have you on your knees. I would push you down to kneel in front of me and I would let you kiss and lick me through the leather to show how much you wanted me. I would hold your head there, letting you feel me hard through the leather, letting you smell me, and when I was hard enough, I would let you unlace my leggings and free my cock."
He wanted to put his mouth over Anders' mouth to breathe in his gasp when Fenris described how he would allow Anders to lick the length of his cock and use his tongue to gather up the fluid that had leaked from him with his arousal. Anders' body moved fractionally as he cupped himself under the blankets, and it took all of Fenris' self-control to keep his own breathing from hitching when Anders voiced a whimper muffled against his pillow.
"If you were a man," Fenris moved his face until his words stirred the hairs on the back of Anders' neck, "I would let you suck me. I would teach you where to touch me. I would fuck you, see you writhing under me, face flushed, mouth open, gasping my name and my name only. And in turn, I would let you see me in my most vulnerable moment, Theuderic."
Anders gasped, his body going rigid before jerking once, twice, again, and now Fenris' hand on his hip was an anchor, not a restraint.
Fenris allowed himself the barest press of his lips against Anders' nape before he rolled away and out of bed, snatching open the bedside drawer and retrieving the key inside.
He fled the room, pausing only to snatch up his cloak before he slammed the door closed. He gave Anders no time to collect himself or ask a single question before he was out in the hall, pressing his face to the stone to cool his overheated skin if not the ache of his self-denial.
"Fool. Fool. Fool." He paced the hall outside the bedroom door, stalking it like a caged animal. What had he been thinking? He had not been thinking. What if Anders was always young like this? What if he wasn't? What if the spell was reversed and he remembered everything?
"Fool!"
He paced until the ache subsided, watching the door, waiting to see if Anders would peek out, or try to make another escape, or come looking for him, but it stayed closed.
Finally he slid to the floor, propped against the wall opposite his door and simply waited for dawn covered in his cloak. He had once been a bodyguard, once a slave. He knew waiting and he knew sleeplessness. What he did not know was what to call what he had just done.
Hours slipped by, the keep sleeping around him as Fenris' mind provided all the noise of the busiest daylight hours. There was a word that teased at the tip of his tongue, at the edge of his mind – something that would explain what had grown between him and the mage, culminating in Fenris' act of madness in his bedroom.
Propinquity.
It was why male slaves and female were so often kept separate except for breeding – propinquity. Propinquity was to be avoided to keep slaves from forming relationships based solely on their physical nearness and shared experiences.
Of course, the idea of separation did not always bear itself out when slaves found themselves attracted to members of the same sex, whether from natural inclination or from propinquity, but those relationships did not result in unsanctioned breeding between inappropriate bloodlines.
Oh, how he had heard it bandied about in discussions among magisters as they weighed the costs and benefits of allowing slaves to form attachments. He had been invisible then, standing behind his master, hearing all, saying nothing, a perfect example of a slave with no attachments save to his master.
Now he was a living example of propinquity.
By the time the sun rose and the keep stirred to life, Fenris had reached a decision: he would see Anders restored to his former, aggravating, possessed self, he would see him safely back to Kirkwall, and he would not see him again. If Anders would even allow Fenris near him after what had passed between them the night before. Either way, he would tell Hawke clearly and distinctly that he would not accompany him when the mage was involved.
If propinquity was the problem, removing the propinquity would remove the problem.
Footsteps on the stairs interrupted his thoughts. He pushed himself up into a standing position and waited to see if it was a guardsman, keep servitor, or late-returning guest to the corridor set aside for guest rooms.
Of all the faces he thought he might see, Widald Amell's adult countenance was nowhere on the list. He reached the top of the stairs with Zevran at his back, the assassin breaking into a broad grin when he spotted Fenris in the hall.
Dal offered a less brilliant smile. "Good morning. Is Anders in your room?"
Fenris nodded dumbly.
"Good." Dal rapped his knuckles lightly on Fenris' door and opened it without waiting for an answer. Fenris pushed past Zevran to peer around Dal to see Anders – scruffy-cheeked, tired-eyed, adult Anders – pushing himself up in bed, looking around in confusion.
"Right," Anders said sliding out from under the blankets to stand by the bed. "How did we get here?" His face screwed up with the effort of understanding what was happening. "Last I remember we were… Velanna?"
Dal stepped into the room to give Fenris and Zevran room to join him before he closed the door. Ser Pounce-a-lot jumped off the bed to bump his head into Dal's shin before moving to twine affectionately at Zevran's ankles.
Fenris took a place by the wall. His mind was reeling. Anders and Dal were adults again and Anders did not remember anything that had happened while he was bespelled? It was too good to be true. No one need ever know.
If it was true.
"Velanna," Dal agreed grimly. "Nathaniel found her before she got far. Traveling by Keeper's magic is impressive, but not good for long distances. A Howe-ridden horse on the other hand…."
Zevran chuckled. "He carried her back slung across his saddle like the prize in a bawdy tale. One should hope that he took advantage of the position to administer a proper spanking."
"Okay, let's go back a few steps here," Anders said, pulling himself together with the speed of a man who was accustomed to being wakened by emergencies, sneak attacks, and general mayhem. "What did Velanna do and why? Was that some kind of knock-out grenade? How long have I been out?"
Zevran shot Fenris a look and chuckled.
Dal shrugged, "I have only the word of other people for what happened. Zevran tells me that I spent yesterday evening and all night living as myself at sixteen years of age. Nathaniel tells me that Velanna told him that her diversion spell was tailored to only affect humans and he offers in her defense that she also tailored it to be dispelled by sunrise. She had apparently planned her contingency for years against the 'inevitable day when I would betray her.' Asking to examine a potentially dangerous artifact was apparently the betrayal because it was elven in origin no matter my good history with her."
"I cannot confirm that my warden returned to himself exactly at sunrise," Zevran said, leering at Dal. "But it must have been near enough."
Dal rolled his eyes at Zevran even as he half-smiled and flicked his fingers at his lover to quell the innuendo. "Zevran and I were reading one of my books at sunrise. One moment I was in the throne room with Velanna, the next I was in my bedroom, stumbling mid-sentence on a page I have read before."
"Many times," Zevran added. "It's one of my favorites. And the illustrations…."
"Zev," Dal raised an eyebrow at him. "Not now."
"Huh." Anders looked around the room and spotted his boots on the floor where Fenris had left them. "You woke me up. I don't know how I got here."
"I brought you here," Fenris said tersely. "After Wade caught you kissing his partner."
Dal's eyebrows shot up and Zevran could not contain a laugh. Anders on the other hand could not have looked more gobsmacked if Fenris had slapped him with a haddock.
"I did not," he protested.
"You did. After which I brought you here and put you to bed." And kissed you and lay beside you and talked you to an orgasm. No, that did not happen. "After which I went out into the hall to stand watch and ensure that you didn't sneak out to go kiss anyone else. Which is where Dal and Zevran found me."
Everything else that had happened could just be forgotten.
"You said you were sixteen years old and you looked it. Nor were you joined with Justice. You expected the templars to come for you to take you back to the Circle."
"They would have too, the bastards," Anders said, rubbing the back of his neck. "But Justice is right here with me, same as always. What else?"
"Yes, what else did Anders do?" Dal asked, taking a seat in one of the guest chairs. "I need to know everything that happened while I was… indisposed."
Fenris gave them an expurgated account of the day's events, omitting only the instances where Anders made advances on Fenris, and of course what happened between them when they were alone in this bedroom. Some things were best kept in Fenris' memory and Fenris' alone.
It was worth it in some respects to see Anders' mortification when he heard that he had kissed Herren.
"At no time did either of us indicate that you were at all affected," Fenris assured Dal when he finished.
Dal nodded approvingly. "Thank you. It's no secret I'm not perfect, but that was beyond the pale. I have had enough problems with assassination plots—" Zevran laughed ruefully "—I do not need to offer openings for new would-be assassins."
"Yes, the role of consort is now filled," Zevran agreed. "Though I am not averse to occasionally sharing."
"I am," Dal said firmly. He rose from his seat. "If you'll excuse me. I have to have talk with Velanna. She's currently occupying the cell where I first met Nathaniel. I hear he is keeping her company down there until I find time to speak to her."
"What are you going to do to her?" Anders asked.
Dal shrugged. "What I always do."
Zevran moved to shadow Dal as the mage strode to the door, smiling fondly at his back. "My warden is sometimes overfond of offering second chances."
Anders ran his fingers through his hair and shook his head. "Most of us don't have any room to complain about that, do we?"
"Join us for lunch," Dal said before he left the room. "We can talk about arrangements for your journey back to Kirkwall."
Zevran gave them a jaunty wave and followed in Dal's wake, leaving Anders and Fenris alone together.
"So…" Anders said, looking at the floor instead of at Fenris. "Your room?"
"I didn't know where they had moved you," Fenris replied gruffly, kicking Anders' boots across the floor to him. He wondered if there would be any lingering taste of Oghren's special brew on Anders' lips if he kissed him, then promptly banished the thought.
Anders took the hint and started to pull on his boots. "And you stayed outside all night?"
"Yes."
"Oh."
The silence stretched awkwardly between them while Anders finished getting his boots on and straightened his robes.
"You didn't have to," Anders finally said, breaking the silence.
"Didn't have to what?"
"You could have made me sleep on the floor. Or the chair. It's your room."
Fenris scowled. "The floor is for slaves. You are not a slave."
"Neither are you," Anders observed. "So why wait outside instead of in here? You could have at least taken the chair."
"Don't you have somewhere else to be?" Fenris asked as his scowl deepened. "Now that you aren't in my bed, I can sleep in it."
"You could have slept in it last night." Anders looked around and found his staff. "We have practice sharing a bed. Or were you afraid that you just wouldn't be able to resist me after all this time?"
Anders asked it sarcastically, but it struck Fenris square in the chest. He wanted…
Fenris opened the door and stood aside. "I have not slept. Go."
Anders tipped his head quizzically at Fenris before he sighed and shook his head. "Fine. Come on Ser Pounce-a-lot, I don't need you picking up bad habits from Ser Grumps-a-lot."
The cat meowed and trotted out the door, as well-behaved as Hawke's mabari ever was. It was downright uncanny in a cat.
Anders passed Fenris on his way out the door and paused, head tilted as his eyes took on a faraway look. "Funny. I just had the strongest flash of déjà vu." His gaze fixed on Fenris' lips for a moment before he tore it away. "Strange."
Fenris said nothing and waited for Anders to cross the threshold so he could close the door and brood in peace, but Anders paused in the doorway.
"Fenris?"
"Yes?"
"Thank you."
Fenris thought of the solid weight of Anders' head on his thigh, of the smell of his hair and his skin, of kissing him and the taste of his mouth, and he knew that when he returned to Kirkwall, he would not hide from Anders, and he would not tell Hawke that he would not work with the mage.
"You're welcome."