It just keeps going…

Anders doesn't even look up when the TV in the waiting room blares the familiar theme music at the opening of Grand Cleric Elthina's 8:00 p.m. benediction. She'll mouth some platitudes about the Chantry's love and care for all citizens, remind everyone that the Maker loves them (as long as they aren't mages or nonbelievers), and include a guilt trip about how donations to the Chantry should be up as they near the year's end celebrations.

He's heard it all before.

He shuffles through the stack of folders in his hands before looking up to search the clinic for a familiar face. "Isabela?"

Isabela stands, and three women and a lithe young man stand with her. They know the drill by now and follow him when he turns without a word to go back down the hall to the largest of the exam rooms.

Isabela and her little lambs get group treatment because that's all he can afford to give them and still have time for the kids with whooping cough, the miners with grey lung from working the Bone Pit, and the myriad other ailments that the Chantry says are the Maker's will while those mealy-mouthed clerics don't do a blighted thing to help out.

Isabela escorts her charges inside and leans against the closed door while Anders hands them each a clean cloth exam gown.

"How are they doing?" he asks her while the four strip and pull on the rough garments. "Anything I should know about?"

"Nice to see you too, sweet thing," Isabela says, patting his cheek. "Renny's had a cough. Dahlia needs a pelvic. Brie and Lise are tip-top."

Brie and Lise go first, getting a perfunctory exam augmented by a light touch of magic that confirms without having to get invasive that they are indeed tip-top. He gives Isabela the thumbs up and tells them to get dressed while he moves on to Renny and his cough.

"Quit smoking." Anders is brusque about it, mostly because Renny's not smoking cigarettes.

Isabela catches the message when Anders looks over Renny's shoulder and nods. Anders tells him to get dressed. If Renny wants to burn out his lungs smoking the latest Orlesian poison, that's Renny's problem, not his.

It's Isabela's as well, because if one of her little lambs develops an expensive habit, he might think that he can subsidize by stealing from his customers. Isabela's business runs on safety - safety for her charges, safety for their clients.

Her business might not be legal in the strictest Aveline Hendyr sense of things, but Isabela sees to it that her clients and employees got a better quality of fucking under her oversight than they could ever get from the justice system.

He sends the others out to give Dahlia some privacy for her pelvic, and eventually sends Dahlia out to Isabela with a bottle of antibiotics, a strict "no work" order for the next month, and a surreptitious booster of magic in addition to the pills to ensure their efficacy.

Isabela blocks the door while he's stripping the paper off the exam table.

"So…"

In that single purred word, he knows exactly what she's going to ask. "I haven't fucked him."

"Why not? What's taking you so long, I want all the juicy details when you do."

He's tired. He's tired of the endless line of patients, the work, the hours, the after hours, the loneliness, the not-loneliness, and he's tired of Isabela asking him why he still hasn't fucked Garrett Hawke after three years of blue balls and frusterbation.

And he's tired of the reason.

"I'll give you one guess, and if it isn't tall, dark, and broody, you might want to rethink that whole 'I'm an excellent judge of character' thing you've got going on."

"I still think polyamory would fix all your problems," Isabela says, leaning in to smack Anders' ass as he passes her with an armful of exam gowns.

"Yeah? Try telling that to Fenris. Does he strike you as the sharing type?" .

The receptionist tells him later that she paid double for the exams. Just like always.