At a guess, the statuette was carved from a dark-hued amber. It was small enough to fit in Hawke's palm with room for him to close his fingers over it if he wanted to, but his hand was open and extended to Fenris so he could examine the small orange cat curled up asleep in his palm.
"What do you think?" he said. "Would Anders love it or would he love it?"
Before Fenris could answer, Hawke tossed the statuette to him and turned back to rummaging through the stone coffer he'd pulled it out of, along with a handful of gold coins, a toy boat with a broken mast, and a pair of torn trousers that couldn't possibly have been useful to the desire demon they'd recently killed for the privilege of rifling through its junk.
Demons and Hawke – hoarders one and all.
"Give it to Anders," Hawke said dismissively over his shoulder while he unsheathed a dagger he'd found at the bottom of the chest and scrutinized its fuller. "Tell him it was your idea."
. . .
Fenris brought the statuette back to Kirkwall, tucked into a belt pouch as a concession to Hawke rather than a deliberate gift for Anders. He and Anders weren't… together like that. They didn't call each other pet names or give each other gifts – the key to Fenris' estate notwithstanding – and they weren't a couple. Half the time Fenris still balked at calling him a friend.
Trudging up the stairs behind Hawke and automatically making the turn down the hall to the guest room where Anders lived, Fenris wasn't sure what they were.
"Messere Fenris." Orana's diffident call turned him back around to see her at the foot of the stairs. "Messere Anders is still at his clinic if you need him."
Nothing he did could get her to stop calling him Messere, and he'd just about given up on it. He raised a hand in acknowledgment and continued down the hall to Anders' door. Whatever he and Anders were, everyone knew that they were that whatever together.
Sometimes that chafed, rubbed raw spots that made him growl and want to lash out. Today he was too weary for growling, aching down to the bone the way he did when he had been forced to call on the lyrium's power to protect himself and others for too long and too hard. He never told anyone of that ache, never let on what it cost him to use the marks in his skin, and never hinted that since Anders had gouged a piece out of the matrix one hot summer night under Darktown, the song of the lyrium in his skin had slowly been turning to dissonance.
Those were his burdens to bear, and he would never tell. Not when he knew his friends – if they knew the cost, they would try to protect him from himself.
He pushed open the door to Anders' room to find it as empty as Orana had warned him.
Almost as empty.
Ser Pounce-a-lot was stretched out on Anders' bed, somehow taking up almost the entire mattress. He stretched lazily and offered Fenris a challenging stare in greeting, never taking his eyes off the elf as he closed the door and hung his sword on the pegs that Anders had put in the wall after Fenris started spending the night a bit more regularly.
"I'm not talking to you," Fenris told the cat. "If you want conversation, you'll have to wait for Anders to get home."
Ser Pounce-a-lot blinked once and stretched out even more, claws pushing out at the tips of his paws for a moment in some silent commentary before he relaxed and the sharp little nails retreated out of sight again.
Fenris stripped off his armor and sat down on the edge of the bed where Pounce had left him a little space. "I brought something for Anders."
So much for no conversation. There was something about the cat that almost demanded recognition, as though he could understand at least as much as Hawke's mabari, if not more. That was saying something; Brutal played a mean hand of diamondback. He set the statuette on the bed where the cat could see it and watched as he deigned to stand up and come closer to sniff at it.
His tail twitched hard when he pulled back, mouth open and nose wrinkled as though he'd smelled something unpleasant. Apparently not so unpleasant that he wasn't going to rub himself all over it. Fenris watched, bemused, as Pounce went from apparent distaste to practically rolling on top of the little statuette, butting it with his head, rubbing the edge of his jaw on it, and finally swatting it with his paw before he sat himself down and looked expectantly at Fenris.
"I can't tell if that means you approve or not." He took the statuette and looked around for somewhere to put it that Anders would see straight away. The bedside table was cluttered with books and papers, pens and ink pots, and pages covered in Anders' scrawled screeds on mage rights. The statuette would be lost there, if he could even find space for it.
He settled for putting it on the thin ledge of the headboard where the orange of the amber against the dark wood should draw Anders' eye when he returned. Then he turned his attention back to Ser Pounce-a-lot.
"I'm lying down here. You can either share or I'll lie on top of you and tell Anders you started it."
And somehow, despite his fatigue, he found the corners of his mouth tugging upward a little. He'd lie down and sleep somewhere he felt safe, let the ache in his skin and bones settle into its usual background murmur, and let Anders wake him for a meal and exchanged stories of demonslaying and Darktown medicine.
Pounce gave him a long, considering look, blinked slowly, and moved just enough to give Fenris room and time to lie down before the cat curled himself against Fenris' chest and started to purr.
Take it or leave it, the cat's attitude said.
Fenris took it, and fell asleep to the soft sounds of purring.
. . .
When Anders got home from a day spent not just in Darktown, but chasing down supplies in Lowtown, he was in a grim mood that lightened just a little when Orana informed him that Messere Fenris was upstairs.
"Back from the Wounded Coast?" He found a smile for Orana as he took the stairs two at a time. "Was he in one piece or carrying a missing limb?"
"One piece, Messere." Orana gave no sign that she found the question odd or even hyperbolic. "Would you like me to bring dinner upstairs tonight?"
"Don't trouble yourself." He stopped, thinking about it at the head of the stairs, and added, "But I wouldn't complain if you left a few sandwiches outside my door later, you know the ones you make with mutton and some of that Fereldan cheese?"
Orana assured him that she knew which one and that it would be no trouble at all, but he barely heard her as long strides carried him away from the stairs toward the only place in Kirkwall where he could find some peace from the city's demands, if not from the constant murmur of outrage in his own head.
For all his pleasant expectation, he still opened his bedroom door cautiously, not wanting to startle Fenris or bump Ser Pounce-a-lot if he was sleeping against the door, as he sometimes did. The sight that greeted him startled a real smile from him. Fenris and Pounce were napping andcuddling. He had to cover his mouth to keep from awwing and waking them.
The gentle click of the door latch catching when Anders closed the door woke Fenris before Pounce. He blinked owlishly at Anders and watched him without speaking as Anders set his staff in its corner.
"Long run on the Wounded Coast?" Anders asked as he approached the bed.
His words woke Ser Pounce-a-lot and from there the calm exploded into nothing he'd have expected in his bedroom. Not since his Denerim days, at least.
Pounce took one look at Anders, twisted to see Fenris lying beside him, and lashed out with his claws to drag bleeding furrows down Fenris' cheek.
Fenris screeched, shoved himself backwards, and the next thing Anders knew, there was an elf scrabbling to get under his bed while his cat snarled and hissed from the center of his mattress, back arched, tail fluffed, and every hair down his spine bristling up.
So… no sex, then?