warnings: none.
Written because there was a sore lack of aggressive, pro-mage, friend-mance, female mage hawke and anders fics out there. I have a few thoughts about Malcolm Hawke and the kind of daughter he'd raise, so tada! I wanted a mage who did not fuck about, but also cared very deeply. Also, i was so sick of anders's 'i'm a bad person, i'm too dangerous for you!' schtick bc Hawke's just as dangerous tbh.
Anyway, enjoy.
'If you got hurt,' Anders said, 'I would drown us in blood to keep you safe.'
Something desperate pushed at his voice and, oh, how Hawke smiled at that.
'Good,' she said. Her eyes were fierce. It cut and stirred something in him at the same time.
'No, not good,' he replied. Desperation let restraint slip from him. Fade blue sparked at the edges of his vision. 'You make me forget control. I can't keep myself together around you. If you tie yourself to me, there'll only more violence – I'm dangerous, Hawke,' he tried again.
Answering sparks of electricity leapt off her fingers. It crackled faintly up her arms.
'So am I,' she said.
Her gaze bore down on him and he couldn't keep looking at her. It almost hurt to try, so he didn't.
'I told you,' he choked out, 'I'm not – I can't, I – Don't, Hawke, just – '
It's for your own protection, he desperately wanted to say, don't tempt me.
She moved then, so suddenly he couldn't stop her or move away. She leaned up towards him, one hand curled over the edge of his jaw and over his cheek keeping in him place.
'I would kill any man, woman or child who tries to harm you,' her voice was soft and intense. The vehemence of her words kept him in place. 'If I thought Justice was harming you more than he was a part of you, then I'd destroy him too. You're one of mine, Anders. Don't you dare forget that.'
The kiss that came after her words was so fierce it was more like a bite. Her fingers were soft but her mouth was hard. Her lips were hot. Anders could feel himself bruise under the force of it.
She let go of him with that same abrupt movement, turning on her heel and leaving the clinic. She left him stunned. Left him watching the sway of her hips, the straight line of her spine. One of her hands clasped her staff at her side, her effortless grip not even hinting at the true, hefty, weight of her red-steel staff.
Anders had the distinct feeling that she'd just laid a challenge at his feet and she was now waiting to see what he'd do with it. Testing him.
He wasn't sure if he liked it.
#
In the weeks that followed, Hawke made no mention of their kiss or her challenge – if it even was a challenge or just her trying to make a point. She took him on every errand and every quest she was sent on – even the ones where bringing him along seemed almost unwise. Anders couldn't help wondering if she wanted him there for his company or because she found him useful; one night at the Hanged Man he asked her as much. He had to bring the question up in between Isabela's outrageous flirting and Hawke's (agonising) openly interested replies.
His ale wasn't quite strong enough to even give him a vaguely loose feeling, but the chill of it was nice in contrast to the heat of the fire against his back. Hawke sat across from him, her attention wrested away from Isabela for a moment as she gave him a considering look. Anders shifted under her gaze. Hawke had always had this way of making him feel observed when she looked at him, a distinct feeling of being seen though. It was heady and terrifying all at once.
'I'm not a healer, Anders,' she answered finally. 'That was always Bethany – but aside from that, I like having you with me in a fight.'
But why, he wanted to ask, but she was already getting up, her gaze on the bar where Isabela lounged with a pint.
Hawke said, offhand, as she walked away, 'You balance me, Anders. You mirror me. I like that.'
He was left nursing his ale and her words.
She was, he realised later, alarmingly correct.
Hawke was hard, so hard. Brutally offensive, her magic was like his without the healing to offset it's battering edges. But she was also soft where he was hard, when she needed to be soft, and he was soft for her when her edges were too much.
Yet, at the same time, she matched him on his level when he needed it – or rather - he matched her. Soft when she was soft. Hard when he was hard. Balance and a mirror. Always the same coin.
He trusted her completely, he realised. He trusted her more than he could trust his own maker-damned self, cracked and flawed as it was. There were so few people he trusted that he could count them on one hand. Varric was one of the those few, just, but he was there all the same. However, there was no one he trusted more than Hawke.
As he watched her, Hawke smiled and whispered something in Isabela's ear. Hawke's lips almost caressed the shell of the other woman's ear, and even though the sight of it twisted like a knife in him, he couldn't bring himself to look away. The two women shared sly, heated looks. He knew that meant; he used to give the same looks once. He used to get them. He used to share them. It has been a long time since then.
Like his own gaze followed Hawke, Isabela's gaze lingered on Hawke's form as Hawke turned and headed towards Isabela's room in the tavern. Hawke's hips swayed. Her spine was straight. She was completely sure of herself; totally secure in what she wanted and that Isabela was watching her and wanting too. Anders knew what Hawke and Isabela were going to be doing together in a silk-swathed bed. He hated himself for the knowledge of it – wanted so badly to be ignorant of them.
Isabela stopped by his table on her way up to her Hawke-occupied room.
'I can't tell if you're stupid or inflicted with an extreme case of masochism,' Isabela said to him. Her voice was sly, as if there was a joke she knew and wasn't sharing, like it was more fun to not tell him.
He glowered flatly at her. Irritation and lonely rejection stirred. Justice wasn't involved with the swill of feelings in him – it was just him. Just Anders. Isabela must've seen something in his expression because the sly twist of her lips softened a little.
'She doesn't love me, you know,' Isabela said, 'not like she loves you.'
The words stung and he jerked his head wildly.
'Don't – I – just don't, Isabela. That's not fair,' he choked out.
Shrugging lithely, Isabela said, 'Suit yourself.' Another twisting joke entered her voice as she continued, 'Can't say I'm sorry about getting more of her. You're really missing out, Anders.' Isabela smiled. It was bladed. Sinuous. Trickster sly. 'Hawke has a very clever tongue.'
Blood swelled at her words. It pounded at his temples. In his pulse.
Isabela fluttered her fingers and left.
When he slammed his fist down on the table, it rocked the whole damn thing, causing his mug to jump and fall. What was left in the tankard spilt onto the table. Cursing to himself, Anders left for his clinic to write and roll bandages until the small hours where sometimes a few came with injuries caused by fighting – or from being hurt by the people who should've hurt them the least.
#
Things got complicated.
Now there was a word if Anders ever picked one.
…. Complicated.
Never was he more aware of it than now. The night had long passed the heavy pre-midnight skies. It was a soft scrape on the clinic's door and her voice calling his name out quietly that let him know it was only her, and she always let him know it was her.
It wasn't unusual for her to come by in the small hours, but she seemed unusually relived to see him up cutting elfroot by candlelight. There were shadows under her eyes, deep bruising that made him ache to offer to cast a sleep spell and heal them away. He'd only offered once. 'I'd rather you keep me company', she'd said and he'd never asked again. Selfish of him. He knew that.
Like always, he was glad to see her, but wary too – wary of her intentions; of the things that she might try to press.
At his welcoming murmur, she crossed his dusty stone floor and took a seat on a cot near him. She was wearing a tired hesitance that didn't suit her; gnawing at her bottom lip with her teeth.
'Couldn't sleep?' He asked quietly. He wanted desperately to touch her. 'My insomnia always welcomes you here.'
She smiled at that. It was a little wan, but it was there, and he took heart from it.
'Too worried to sleep,' she admitted.
He waited for her to elaborate but instead she nodded her head towards the elfroot salves he was currently preparing. 'Can I help?' She asked. 'I'm not as good a healer as you, but I can certainly chop things.'
Anders didn't need to look at the mound of elfroot that still needed cutting to decide. Nodding, he handed her the other knife on the table as she came to stand beside him.
'Rule one of healing,' He joked, though he was serious about it, 'don't prep magic – potions or otherwise – with the knives you cook with… or kill with.'
'Where'd you learn that?'
Hawke took a bundle of elfroot, and copied how he prepared it. Her hands were steady as she stripped the leaves and cut the stem and the root of the plant in half, exposing the thick stringy fibres.
'The Circle,' he replied, nodding in approval as she shredded the leaves. 'All apprentices have to do stints in the healer's wards. It's one of the first thing they teach us; helps to avoid cross-contamination, accidental poisoning, the mingling of volatile ingredients – that sort of thing.'
'I never learned it like that,' Hawke offered. 'My father said that trying to prepare healing magic with a knife corrupted by the weight of death would only taint whatever it was we were making. It always made sense to me; you could use a kitchen knife to kill with, but you wouldn't want to eat with it later.'
Hawke's childhood had always been a point of curiosity for him that he didn't pry into, mostly because Hawke never pried into his own. She was being unusually open about it and when Hawke didn't continue speaking Anders asked, 'did that happen often? Killing, I mean?'
'We were a family of apostates,' Hawke reminded him quietly after a moment, 'my father, sister and me. Carver and mother would have been killed for harbouring us alone. I don't think that there was a moment when we weren't constantly aware that we might have to run, or kill, or hide.' Anders focused only on the blade of his knife as she continued, 'The first thing my father taught me after I learned to control my magic was how to kill with it,' She held up one hand and ice crystallised in the air, unnaturally cold, unnaturally barbed, 'and how to kill without it.'
She dropped the spell and ice fell from the air, shattering on the ground – and Anders knew, knew, there'd be a reason for the knives she carried despite her deadly proficiency in the arcane.
'How old were you?' he asked quietly.
'Seven,' she replied and the answer shocked him a little. 'Seven with magic. Ten without. Templar hit me with a smite and I hit in the throat with a knife. But my father always used to say better to kill and live free than to be taken and die anyway. He said once, "to live under the Circle, in the Circle, was to die under a slow and crushing yoke".'
Anders thought about it then – thought about his own experiences: the learning, the thirst for knowledge, the camaraderie of his peers, but also of the loneliness, the fear, the knowledge that you were little more than a prisoner and your life would never fully be your own.
'He wasn't wrong,' he admitted quietly.
She nodded in reply, 'He rarely was. But we were happy for all that our life was harder than the average farmer's. Probably happier than yours.' Her last statement sent something burning in his throat, as if the truth was a coal he had swallowed. It stuck like a lump as she said, 'I've always been the person who takes the harder, more rewarding paths, even if there's a prospect of more pain, more things to lose.' There was a quality in her voice he couldn't quite put his finger on. It wasn't just the conviction with which she spoke but it was as if there was an underlying message to her words that she wanted him to know, to understand. To internalise. 'I got that from my father,' she finished.
And she would've too, if he were the man who taught a child, a child, to kill.
'Being an apostate with a family – that's a hard path,' he said instead, 'but it'd be better than the circle.'
'The lives we lead, Anders,' she said softly, 'are not ones destined for old age. You take what you can despite the dangers. You fight for what you want or risk never having it at all.'
There was no more root to cut and his fingers itched to busy their selves with something. Everything they've prepared needed to boil in the pot then cool and sit, and he'd been dumping the elfroot in it as they'd went. He desperately wanted to do anything but meet her gaze, which had been resting on him, steady and unwavering; unnervingly gentle. But he couldn't not look and when he finally dragged his eyes up to meet her gaze he found that he couldn't look away. Her gaze hooked him. Stilled him. He was caught there. He was willingly stone.
She moved closer to him. He could almost feel her brush against his robes. His breath lodged in his throat. His lungs stopped his heart. His heart stopped his blood.
She was close enough to kiss. All he'd have to do was bend his head forward.
'Goodnight Anders,' she said - breathed, more accurately. She passed her borrowed knife to him, sliding it hilt first into his stone hands. The warmth of her touch was immediate. It took his pulse scudding down to his wrists.
He found the voice to reply only when she was almost out the door. His voice grated.
'You as well, Hawke.'
The slight turn of her head, the barest slant of cheekbone, was the only acknowledgment of her hearing him. He knew she was smiling.
Anders blew out his candle and stumbled to his cot in the shadowy blackness of the clinic. When he lay down on it, it was as if he was pinned down. A strange beast, he fancied, dissected in the dark.
Holding one arm over himself, he pressed his face into the crook of his elbow and twisted the fingers of his other hand into the pillow. He let himself think about her. Let himself pull down the gale force of his feelings. He let himself sink down into it – diving fast and deep without the burn of air.
He held himself like that until every rushing exhale of air sounded like her name, like the wicked cut of her lips, her curves, her voice. There was a beating in his abdomen as if his feelings were a living entity burning there. It was only when it became a maelstrom he was lost in and apart of, did he touch himself.
He squirmed a hand down his smallclothes and thrust into the fist of his hand, feeling good and hot and shameful, until he came. The pleasure of it burst against his eyelids in a white dazzle. Anders shuddered where he lay; riding the sharply bright crest of completion.
For a moment, everything went still and quiet afterwards. It receded like a low tide; sucked out of him and left him exhausted. He could barely scrape up the damned effort to wipe himself down with his rag of a handkerchief. It wasn't made any less ruined by his quickly drying seed and Anders discarded it on the ground without pause. Tugging the edge of the blanket over his self, Anders dropped into unconsciousness. For once, he slept deeply and without dreams.
#
Night in Hightown was the only time he felt remotely 'safe' up that close to the damned Chantry and their bloody Templars. Still, he wouldn't be there unless he had to and, unfortunately, he had an issue on his hands that couldn't wait until Hawke came by his clinic.
'I need your help,' Anders said, fronting up to Hawke's estate. Hawke raised an eyebrow an eyebrow and ushered him inside. The vestibule was lit only by a single oil lamp in a wall niche and its slight flame sent shadows dancing erratically.
'Any particular kind of help?' she asked, as she leaned against the wall. The light scattered over her face. 'The one that involves killing people in an alley at midnight or the kind that involves courting death from the Knight-Commander herself?'
It had to be his face that made her ask that kind of question – it probably looked as hideous as he felt.
'No – maybe both, maybe neither. I don't know.' He replied, 'maybe a more Noble kind of help.' He pronounced noble with the emphasis one usually reserved for the slightly less useless nobility; not Orlesian nobility with their histrionics and frippery, or nobles like Kirkwall's utterly useless viscount, but the ones with a solid sense of duty like Queen Anora and King Alistair. The good ones. The ones like Hawke.
Now she raised the other eyebrow.
'You'd better come in properly then,' she said, and led the way to her library. The crackling fire, open book on the chair, and half-drunk glass of wine clearly indicated she'd been awake and relaxing.
Never was Anders more aware of their difference in status than now. He was wearing his only robes, and the stink of Darktown and some poor man's bile was heavy on it. Hawke, in contrast, wore a soft quilted tunic that was marred only by a few water spots on her shoulders where her slightly damp hair brushed against it. She'd obviously bathed recently. It said a lot about his current state of mind that he didn't even have to tell himself to not think about it.
Hawke poured him a glass of wine before he could refuse. He hadn't really wanted to stall their conversation like this and he fidgeted a little before sitting down and drinking. It was a very nice vintage.
'So,' Hawke began, 'what do you need my help with – Noble or otherwise?'
Anders could feel a little nervous sweat dew at the back of his neck as he leaned forward.
'There's rot in the rye.'
Hawke stilled immediately and said, 'Since when?'
A little relief poured down his spine. He'd had an inkling, of course, that Hawke would've understood just how dangerous rye rot was, but not everyone did. That Hawke knew to take it as seriously as it deserved was just another confirmation he'd been correct in coming to her for help.
'As far as I can tell, less than a month, more than a few weeks. I don't know how many shipments the rot's in and I don't know where it's come from. It's only affected Darktown as far as I can tell… but I don't know how far it's gone.'
'What do you need me to do?'
Licking his lips nervously, Anders said, 'I know it's a big ask, but the rye supplied to Hightown is still good. I was hoping, maybe, if you could buy some up and then distribute it among Darktown until I've figured out where the bad rye is coming from.' Anders hadn't finished speaking before Hawke was nodding in agreement.
'Of course,' she said and was already up and moving, shifting paper and talking over her shoulder. 'I'll have Bodhan make the arrangements. He'll know the best merchants to buy from – perhaps Varric may know a few.'
'I don't have money to pay you – but I could-' Ander's attempt at talking was cut off when Hawke turned and fixed him with a fierce look.
'This city and its refugees are mine, Anders, not just yours.' she said heatedly, 'I have to money and ability to do something about it, and if buying Hightown grain helps then that's what I'm going to do.'
'Sorry,' he murmured.
She didn't say anything, but he knew he was forgiven by the way her gaze softened.
'What kind of rot poisoning is it?' she asked as she turned, scribbling down a message and some figures a sheet of paper.
'The kind that affects the mind,' Anders replied heavily, 'seizures, psychosis – mania. I'm just worried some uneducated superstitious lout is going to go running to the Templers shouting about blood magic.'
'And the last thing we need is Meredith getting more apparent cause for her actions.' Hawke interjected with a murmur. She blew on the parchment to make sure it was dry then folded it and sealed the missive with wax. She strode out to the main hall where he heard her murmur to Bodhan 'I need to get this to Varric – and when you're done, come find me.'
'Tell me, Anders,' she said, as she came back into the library, 'is there some way of testing the grain that's out there – other than eating it and being poisoned, of course. I'm aware it tends to show in light milled grain, but if it's dark rye – '
'It's dark rye,' Anders interrupted.
Hawke swore. 'Damn. Okay. What about magic?'
Frowning, Anders opened his mouth to reply when Hawke lifted her head, a sudden thought obviously coming to her.
'In fact – ' she said, but never finished where her train of thought had taken her as she turned suddenly and strode out the door. She returned with a small book, that on first inspection was a shabbily bound copy of The Chant, yet when Hawke opened it all Anders could see was cramped handwriting.
Hawke flipped over into the middle of the book and began leafing through pages. It was obvious she was well acquainted with the contents as she went through the book this way and that.
'What is it,' Anders said impatiently as Hawke hissed triumphantly through her teeth.
She stabbed a finger down onto the middle of the page and he jostled to get a better look.
'My father,' she said, 'kept a workbook of sorts; part diary, part grimoire. He's already done the hard part for us.'
Anders frowned over the section of text Hawke had indicated, 'It's a spell,' he said slowly, 'and a set of instructions for an amulet.'
'There was a bad barley harvest when I was a child – over three bannorn's were affected. Father used to test our grain.' She grinned at him, victorious, 'and he wrote down how he did it.'
Anders looked up at her, grinning in return, 'Hawke! That's brilliant!'
Hawke's expression was wild and excited. Her smile was bared in the way it got when she was chasing the trail of something and she knew it was hers. It was infectious and it stirred his blood. Stirred Justice.
'I could kiss you,' Anders said without thinking. Immediately the shock of his words hit him like a cold blow to the stomach. It winded him. Stilled the air in the room. Hawke rocked back a little on her feet and he tried to cover his mistake, 'That is – I – '
Hawke expression lost some of it's thirsty eagerness. She seemed to turn something, some words perhaps, over on her tongue. But whatever it was she was going to say, she discarded with a flat twist of lips and said, 'Yes. You could kiss me. But you won't.'
It was not an accusation – but it hurt. The man he used to be would've taken her to bed and had her in an instant, but Anders wasn't that man anymore. Now he only wanted to have her if he could have all of her. But his love was dangerous – too dangerous for Hawke. He could have her, but he couldn't have her – and so he wouldn't.
Anders wanted to wince, to apologise, under her flat statement; but she was already turning away.
'If we test the grain,' Hawke said, 'we can narrow down which merchant the bad rye is coming from. This way we can separate the good rye from the bad, and keep whatever's good. We'll need Merrill – she's more than proficient in nature magic and the more mages the better.'
'We should cover parts of Lowtown too,' Anders said, then, 'That is, if you think it's a good idea.'
Hawke observed him for a moment then nodded, her voice softening, 'That is a good idea. Thanks Anders.'
Anders was forgiven. Again. He couldn't deny the relief that loosened the vice around his lungs.
'We should get going,' Hawke said, 'the instructions say we need prophet's laurel picked in the hours between midnight and day-break. We also need willow switches. I saw some laurel plants not far out from the city walls two days ago. If we hurry, we can make it. I'm reasonably sure there's willow tree in that area too.'
'I'll come with you,' Anders offered and she took him up on it with a nod.
'Let me change, and I need my staff. Can you write a note for Bodhan telling him where I've gone, to let mother know about the rye, and to speak with me tomorrow morning? Leave it on the chair in the hall – he'll get it.'
She was already moving and Anders was left towed along like a leaf in the wind of her wake.
Nameless words collected together on his tongue. He did not speak them aloud. He only followed and tried not to listen to Justice's derision of his feelings.
#
The thing about Hawke that Anders kept tripping over was that she looked at him. Anders could never quite get over how she looked at him – the ways she looked at him. But more than looked, saw.
He looked back but it was not the same thing.
There were things he knew about her – facts and aspects of her that were as much a part of Hawke as her bones or her blood. She had a temper. She was protective as much as she was possessive. She wasn't sweet with young kids or her mother, or her dogs, or the sick, but she was careful with them. She hadn't cried when Carver had gone off with grey wardens. She had a keen sense of duty – did things because it was right, even when doing the right thing wasn't easy, or clear. She hated demons.
But there was always an edge to her. She was never all things at once.
And sometimes he forgot that she hurts. He forgot, sometimes, how strongly Hawke felt things.
He was always guilty afterwards when he realised. She always saw him – and he didn't do the same for her. It was another way that he was not worthy of her.
Then Leandra went missing.
Until then, Anders hadn't realised how profoundly unaware he was of Hawke's depths. He didn't truly see the fierce possessive love she had for her people, how much she truly felt, until the veil was lifted and Leandra was staring back at them. Except that it wasn't Leandra. Leandra's face was mangled and wrong: placed on the wrong body, warped by wrong magic.
No one should see their mother die in this way. Anders was horrified too, but it was stuck deep below, frozen in the face of Hawke's cry.
Hawke fought with a horrified kind of savagery. Her face was frozen in a rictus of loss and fury. She didn't defend herself as she should've. She left herself open when she usually never did. Anders covered the breaks for her – he kept a constant watch over her. Nothing touched her, nothing physical anyway: the blood nicks healed with an easy wash of Anders's magic but he couldn't heal her completely. Not this kind of soul-deep damage.
Afterwards he followed her home.
If Hawke were anyone else, Anders wouldn't be sure of how she's even up and walking – but Hawke's response to paralyzingly emotional pain had always been anger. Anders had seen it before and he saw it then as she walked through the Lowtown streets to home. Her face was set. Her arms slashed the air at her sides. Her spine had been fused to steel.
She walked like a dangerous thing – she was a dangerous thing – but Anders knew that she won't hold back right then. Anders needed to turn her on himself rather than anyone else if something set her off; he could take that damage.
She didn't drop that fury even when the doors of the estate closed behind her.
"Fuck." The word snarled from her throat. "Fuck. Fuck. FUCK"
Hawke roared out the last word and slung a punch at the wall. The plaster dented a little.
"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" Each word was punctuated with another punch. It was shocking. Anders had never seen her like that.
There was a smear of red blood on the walls and Anders swore, jumping forward.
"Hawke, stop, stop, you're hurting yourself!"
She turned on him with a snarl, fists turned against him. Dangerous. Dangerous thing.
He took the punches. They hurt, sweet maker, did they hurt – but it was inconsequential. How did this pain compare to hers?
Stop Her, urged Justice within him and Anders brought her hard and fast against his chest. He let her struggle and rage against him while he murmured 'I know, I know' over and over in a litany.
Eventually the struggles slowed to weeping, and he took her tears like he took her blows.
"I know love, I know," Anders soothed. It was the first time he'd called her anything but Hawke and he kept up the murmured litany of endearments as he took Hawke up to her bed and swept her under the covers. Her grip around his wrist did not relent and he ended up laying down next to her, pressing her face into his chest as her tears slowed into an emptied-out grief. He stayed even after her breathing steadied.
"I'm going to kill all of them, Anders," Hawke said. Her voice was empty and fierce all at once. She pulled her head up to look at him, "I'm going to kill every last one."
"I know, you can, you will." Anders said, a slow rage beginning to burn in his chest too. His voice echoed with the double layered timbre of Anders-and-Justice as he-they spoke, "We will have justice."
She held his gaze, pulled that promise out from him – he was caught again. He couldn't look away.
"Good," she said: fierce, pleased, promising. She tucked her head into his chest and clawed her fingers into his sides and said with a muffled voice, "Good."
He pressed a kiss to the crown of her head. He'd not thought it possible, but he loved her even more. He loved her so fiercely it burned. But Hawke was a burning thing too, and that made it okay.
#
She was flirting with him. Again.
It was bad enough when she did it around other people as if she was trying to off-balance him and make the others laugh in some twisted humour, but when no one else was around and she did it… Anders didn't know how to take that.
Hawke had that thing with Isabela going, why did she still see fit to dance her words in front of him. Temptation, temptation, all wrapped in a neat parcel of fight and magic.
He was no good for her. He was a wanted man hiding in a sewer with a corrupted spirit riding his body. He rubbed shoulders with sick Darktown dwellers and wrote maddened manifestos. It wasn't a life she should want. He wasn't a person she should want. And yet, she was standing in front of him, talking about mage rights and flirting.
'I love it when you go all… hot headed revolutionary.' Hawke said. Her tone was all business but her words were not and her eyes… they were definitely not business eyes. There was an approving heat to them.
It was unfair.
'Please, Hawke,' Anders said. He was trying to warn her off, trying to sound stern and foreboding, but instead his voice pleaded. His words twisted on his tongue and he was a supplicant to her. 'I've tried to hold back, and not… You've seen what I am!' he burst out, 'You saw what almost did to that girl. You can't keep teasing me like this and expect me to hold back forever! I'm still a man.' His words broke off and he was left shamed at the intensity of his feeling and shamed for his selfish weakness.
'Maybe that's the point, Anders.' Hawke said in the break of his silence. He felt himself reddening and began to turn away from her. Her hand shot out and grabbed him by the arm. Her grip was strong enough to bruise. It shocked him into speech.
'Maybe for you it is,' he retorted hotly, 'but for me... I'm a selfish man, Hawke. I only want you, and I only want you to myself. You and Isabela keep having that thing and I don't want her to have you. You keep tormenting me and - It's unfair.' Anders was breathing hard at the end of his tirade.
Hawke gave him a fierce look. 'Leaving aside the fact that I belong only to myself, and who I fuck is no business of yours since we aren't together in any capacity, Isabela and I stopped having 'a thing' when I realised how much I liked you. I'm not that damned cruel to the people I care about or sleep with.'
Oh. Oh. He'd just assumed…
'And who said,' Hawke continued, her tone hot and vicious and done, 'who said I wanted you to hold back?'
The sound that admission tore from his voice was a quiet punched-out sound. Her words stripped away the last of his reserves, tore down his barriers, and blinded his better judgement. Anders moved without thinking; he pulled Hawke to him and she went like she'd been waiting for this moment since the day she'd met him.
Hawke kissed like she fought: no holds, nothing barred back, full bodied movement. He got tugged along in it, swept up in her intensity. He wanted her. He needed her. Eventually the heat in his body was a burning need for air and he broke away from her with a quiet gasp.
He had patients to see to. Manifestos to write. Justice pounded in his head, distraction, distraction. Anders couldn't bring himself to care.
Her nails raked into his hair and then away as they broke apart. Her hand lingered on his face, her thumb brushing his lip as he spoke.
The light in her eyes was fierce and heady – she looked at him, into him, and it felt like his blood was burning.
'We could die tomorrow,' Anders said, 'I don't want it to be before I tell you how I feel.'
'So tell me.'
Anders couldn't help pushing his face into her hand as he stepped closer. 'If we do this, we'll be hunted, hated. I can't give you a normal life, Hawke.'
'When have I ever wanted a normal life, Anders?' she replied. Her voice was as low as his and just as intent, 'I want you, Anders. I don't care about what else might happen.'
Maker, she was beautiful.
'If your door is open tonight, I will come to you,' Anders said, stepping back from her with a pang of regret.
'It will be,' Hawke promised, 'and if anyone tries to stop you from getting to me, then I'll burn them all.'
The conviction in her voice was unwavering and he closed his eyes against the rush of blood that pounded in his head. She wanted him, she wanted him. When he opened his eyes, she was gone.
She is a distraction, Justice seemed to rumble at him. The wave of disapproval was easily pushed aside, especially when the spirit followed up with, but she has commitment to her cause.
Of course she did; she was Hawke. It was the only reason Justice wasn't taking over control of his body to warn her off. However this thing would end, in flames or not, she'd be right there with him. Anders knew that much.
That night when he went to her door, it swung open under his touch.
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