Dizzy with nerves and choking on a series of strange thrills, Hawke let herself be led up the stairs. Instead of going into the master bedroom as she'd expected, Fenris brought her into a side room, one she'd not set foot in since they'd taken the mansion. It had been a guest bedroom five years ago, but as he pulled her into the space, she realized he'd converted it into a lush little bathing chamber. He'd ripped the rugs out to display the bare floorboards beneath: well-trodden wood worn down to a dull gloss. The center of the room was dominated by a reclining tub, the pounded copper kind nobles favor with painted enamel insides and one wall of the oval tub sloping high and out for the purpose of laying one's head on. The hearth still smoldered with quiet embers, and beside it were two large casks of clean water for bathing. Fenris began to build up the fire again, and Hawke hesitated at the edge of the room, suddenly feeling deeply insecure about the way she smelled.
Fenris glanced over at her as the fire flickered to a proper size, alive, and he read the apprehension ensnaring her—"Is something the matter?"
"No, I just...I didn't realize I smelled so foul, is all." She remarked, feigning a casual disinterest and plucking the wet dress from her skin.
"Hawke."
She refused to look up at him. She was too busy having a good, self-indulgent sulk and entertaining the notion that by cleaning his house, she'd made herself too dirty and sweaty to even appeal to him.
"Hawke."
She looked up. His eyes crinkled at the corners but Fenris was much too aloof to simply show his amusement at her pout.
"You worked very hard, and I am thankful for your efforts. I hoped that I could...demonstrate some gratitude in return. If you would like."
"Oh."
"You smell fine."
She snorted.
"You do," he insisted, arching one eyebrow. He reached for her wrist and led her closer. "I promise. I didn't intend to hurt your feelings."
Hawke bit her lip; the first thought that had bubbled up to her tongue at that moment was to ask where this concern had been three years ago when he'd dashed out of her bedroom post-fuck. Now that had hurt her feelings.
"You're shivering," he murmured. He watched her body closely, his eyes trailing down her chest, across her arms, over her stomach, down...
"Well, you know. Damp damn dress would be my first suspect."
He chuckled and she beamed at it.
"Before we—are you hungry? Have you eaten?" he suddenly asked, raising his face to hers. At the mention of food, Hawke's stomach was all too eager to answer with a loud growl before she could even pretend otherwise.
"I thought you might've worked up an appetite. I was returning from the market, actually, when I found you here—so I have a few things downstairs I'd forgotten about. I'll go prepare us some lunch." He stepped back, cocking his head to survey her. "Stay here, and get out of that dress. Towels are in the cupboard," came his parting instruction as he swept from the room.
"Alright…" Hawke trailed off, watching him go. She'd envisioned some hopelessly romantic scene where Fenris helped her remove the dress, one button at a time, smoldering-hot kisses soothing the cold skin he exposed bit by bit. But as she struggled with the too-small dress—now rendered ridiculously difficult to wrestle with while wet—she was grateful for his absence as she flailed and fought the fabric.
She huffed and shivered, naked, while rummaging through the cupboards for his stash of linens. These, at least, he kept fresh and laundered. She helped herself to a generous pile and inhaled deeply, delighted to discover that the scent Fenris had always carried came from clean towels he kept stored in cedar cupboards. The knowledge felt precious to her—as if by divining the origins of his enticing smell they'd somehow become closer.
Fenris returned to find her swaddled in no less than four of his towels. One she wore draped about her head like a cloak hood, one pulled like a shawl over her bare shoulders, one wrapped around her torso, and the last clutched in her hands—she was quick to yank that one from her face once he entered. She stood tall and proud, daring him to laugh.
Fenris pursed his lips around a furtive smile. "My lady," he smirked, somewhat teasing, and offered her a glass of wine.
She accepted it silently, keeping the new word between them poised and waiting on her lips—Master. He'd said My lady and she could have gone cheeky and said Master in return, but Hawke wanted to be very, very cautious with her usage of that word. She'd seen how it had affected him so profoundly, and she yearned to exercise it in the correct circumstance—but this was not yet the time for it. She would await the exact moment. If she got it right, she surmised, his heart would finally fall open to her and she'd plunder the spoils. She'd be special. She'd be the one who won him.
She sipped her wine, sick with longing. Fenris had brought up cheeses and breads, placed on a pewter platter along with with fresh fruit. It was all arranged prettily. Neatly. Hawke despised the reminders of his former slavery. She cringed, knowing where he'd learned that.
He scraped a chair up to the sidetable with their food and gestured for her to sit as he went in search of another chair. She did. Hoping to appease her rude stomach, she stuffed four grapes and an apple slice into her mouth while he was gone, completing perfunctory chews and swallows just as he reentered. She acted as if she'd done the polite thing and waited for him to return before eating. If he took notice of the sudden appearance of open gaps on the platter, he made no mention of it. He'd brought back his book and tea, too.
Hawke shook out the cloth napkin—he'd folded it into a pristine, starched blossom.
She was wearing two towels too many, so she cast off her cape and cowl. This left her in the one towel wrapped around her torso, tucked to a fold under her arms. Her breasts were too large for such an arrangement to be comfortable, but the indignity of having to ask the elf for a bigger towel, please was too much to bear. She squashed them down and kept her arms pinned, intending to keep the towel in place by sheer force of will and tucked elbows. And besides, consequences should it slip would perhaps not be so bad anyway. She took another sip of the wine, this swallow followed with her stupid, silly grin. She was too nervous to eat in front of him. Fenris raised one corner of his mouth in return; a dark smirk.
Fenris never grinned, and Hawke didn't quite know why. He had a beautiful mouth. He smirked, he smiled, he chuckled, he rumbled, he quirked his lips, he even laughed, but he never quite grinned. Too undignified, perhaps. He was, after all, effortlessly composed—elegant, even in anger. Even when roaring, covered in blood, sword slashing in battle. Or maybe Fenris never wore a witless and shit-eating grin because he'd forgotten how? Hawke, at times, struggled with how to navigate alongside the life of a former slave. She wanted to get it right. She wanted to be perfect.
"Have you, ah—" She paused when his hand held out a grape. He was feeding her a grape.
She took it delicately between her teeth before deciding Void take it, and wrapped her lips around his fingertips with a quick brush of her tongue to take the grape he'd offered her.
His eyes widened and he inhaled, hard. Hawke mentally congratulated herself on how good at seduction she was. She should write a book. Wait. Varric should write a book.
Fenris cleared his throat. "Forgive me. What was it you wanted to ask?" His voice was husky.
"I wanted to ask if you'd read any good books lately."
Hawke and Fenris shared a secret smile between them, one laden with the private knowledge of his reading habits and Hawke could have made a very unladylike cackle of triumph; so happy she was at the inclusion. She knew him—knew this private, secret thing about him. He trusted her enough to know. She clung to that fact, growing needy and restless and sitting in a towel. The glimmering of hope in her heart found a better footing.
"I have, actually." He gave her a kind smile, a close-lipped but warm one, and it touched his eyes as he leaned back in his chair. He began to explain his most recent library acquisitions, admitting he favored science and history manuals because it interested him, but also because their sparse, clean prose was easier for him to understand. Hawke hung on his every word, watching the way his mouth formed sounds with a fascinated, devoted reverence.
She noticed, then, the book set under his empty tea cup from that morning. It was the Book of Shartan—the book she'd given him. The gift that had led to his confession of illiteracy, and her insistence of it never being too late to learn. That was the book he'd brought down with him, to watch her. She hadn't noticed until now.
He quieted, watching her reaction. His scrutiny came from under cover of the hair falling into his eyes.
"And that one?" she asked, with a slight tilt of her chin towards the book.
"It was...life-changing."
Hawke's breath hitched in her throat. If this was to be it, if that moment from her fantasies was coming alive, the moment where he'd confess having feelings for her and finally put his fucking hands on her body again—a rather nice body, she lamented, which had known no other hands aside her own the past three years—she was going to be perfect. And thus, Hawke stood and whipped the towel from herself. She was going to take a bath. And be a better perfect from it.
She padded over to the bathing water casks, leaving Fenris sputtering behind her. It was nice, him being the unmade one, for a change. She filled a bucket and brought it to the tub, letting it splash in since she was too eager to care to pour. She was relieved to find delicate Dwarven fire runes decorating the bottom perimeter of the tub. At home, Hawke conjured fireballs to heat her bathwater, but it tended to make a great sodden mess of things and then she'd have to wait for the water to cool down from literally boiling before getting in.
She kept her back to Fenris as she dumped another bucket of water in, but she could feel his stark gaze adhered to her. She ignored him (or pretended to, rather) and walked naked to fill the bucket again. She knew what she looked like, and wasn't worried or insecure about her body. She knew she had no reason to be. Hawke may be marred by battle marks but she was a great fan of scars, personally—white, raised ropes of branded lyrium being a particular favorite.
She pointed her pert ass towards Fenris and bent over the edge of the tub under pretext of swirling her hand through the waters to test the temperature. She heard him suck back a sharp breath and hold it in.
"Are you really going to just watch me fill this whole tub alone?" She straightened, arching a brow, and flicked water from her fingertips.
Fenris jumped up, reaching for the other bucket with such immediacy that Hawke felt guilty. She should think, before she asks these things. She should think before she speaks. She should remember who he is and what he's been through. She should show more hazard with making demands of him.
After chiding herself, she grew shy. The direct consequence of her guilt was suddenly being unable to look him in the eye. They remained quiet while carting buckets of water, one by one, to the tub. The runes did their thing and the water started to steam, until the room was made hot and humid. The idiot fire still crackled happily in the hearth, blithely continuing to warm the place up even though its services were no longer needed.
Hawke inhaled for a moment, pausing to hold her hair off the back of her neck. On his way for more water, Fenris saw that. He stopped where he stood and leaned close to blow a cooling breath against the back of Hawke's bared neck. When her eyes fluttered shut and her chin dropped forward to her chest, Fenris continued past her like nothing had happened. Once the tub was full, he resumed his post at the sidetable against the wall. He ignored his empty glass, and curled his fingers around the neck of the wine bottle instead. He took a swig and licked up a lone red drop from his bottom lip.
Hawke turned away, reluctant to drag her eyes away from his but eager to address the fact that she was an overwrought, sweaty mess. She plunged one leg into the tub and then the other, clutching the sides as she hissed and lowered herself into the steaming hot water. Once sat, she spat a few swears out. The water was up to her chest, licking and lapping over her flushed skin with a stinging heat like fire-forged needles. Sweat beaded on her upper lip and her hair started to frizz. Maybe this had been a bad idea. Ice soon flared from her fingertips, so she put it to work—Hawke patted the water around her, pressed her icy hands against her neck, held the blessed coldness flat to her chest. She was soothed by the dual sensations of cold and hot. When she glanced over at Fenris, he was staring; somewhat disapproving.
"Oh, right." She remembered, and was contrite. "I'm sorry. It's—honestly, I didn't even think. I'm sorry."
He accepted her apology politely. Hawke began to slink lower into the bath, until the high sides of the tub blocked her from view, and only her face from the nose-up was left above the water. She breathed through her nose, and watched the ripples of water reacting from it. Fenris and Hawke sank into a silence, but it was a testy one. She had no idea what Fenris had grown quiet over, but as for herself—Hawke was silently despairing and wondering if they would be doomed to continue this dance of hesitation and apology—wherein they trod upon eggshells with one another, too afraid of crossing lines or causing offense within their tenuous, yet heady...friendship. Heady on her part, anyway—she was still fumbling for the true nature of Fenris's feelings.
Hawke took a deep breath and let her body slip lower, sinking down until the back of her head met the metal bottom of the tub. She thought of fragile things: of the breath leaving her body and rising in bubbles up through the water; of folded cloth blossoms and illiteracy; she thought of snapping words and breaking hearts; she lingered over bending and yielding. And when Hawke needed to come up for air, she did.
She burst upwards with a gasp, water cascading off her. She whipped her hair from her eyes, which cast out a spraying arc of wetness around her. Fenris chuckled before she had time to worry about making a mess. Hawke pushed the rest of her hair out of her face with her fingers, and smoothed it back. She blinked several times, dispelling the lingering droplets caught in her eyelashes. Curling her palms over the edge of the tub, Hawke rested her chin on the backs of her hands, facing Fenris. Peering at him and pondering.
"It's stuffy in here. You should take all your clothes off."
His amusement was immediate and genuine, and Maker bless him for it. He cocked his head with a laugh and asked, "Is that so?"
"Yes," Hawke assured him. "Definitely."
"Thank you for worrying about my well-being and comfort in these dire times," he joked, tone dry.
"Oh, it's no matter—just trying to be a good friend." She faked loftiness, continuing the joke.
"Mm, that reminds me—I want to wash your hair."
"Maker's balls, Fenris! Am I that repulsive?"
"No! Fasta Vas. I simply...would like to."
"Are you sure? I can do it myself, you know—I was getting to that part."
"Hawke." He was firm. "I would enjoy the opportunity."
"Alright, then."
He ducked his head so she missed his expression, but he stood and made for the cupboard. He knelt, and rooted around inside until his hand pulled loose a vial of some kind. He peered at the label with a frown. "I'd forgotten about this. Here," he tossed it to her, and Hawke caught it with splash. He resumed rooting, addressing her from inside the cupboard. "It was left here, before, by the previous occupants. I could not read what the label said at the time so I tossed it here and forgot all about it. It's yours, if you like, a bathing oil of some kind—"
She uncorked and upended the vial into her bath. The perfume that flared off hit her harder than the humidity, assailing her senses, sweet fragrance cleaving through all the clean air left in the room.
"...but it's very rare I believe, and outrageously expensive as it's a distilled oil for use in moderation," Fenris finished dryly. He rose and began to prop open all the windows. "Hawke, I believe you shall carry the smell of peaches on you for the next ten years."
"Well. Good."
A blast of cold air lanced her through the window, and Hawke shuddered and sought refuge by sinking lower in the heavily-perfumed but hot water. Fenris breezed out of the room with a murmur about giving him a moment, and she listened to the retreating pad of his footsteps make a path as he proceeded to open every other window on the floor.
When he returned, he went to the far wall and snagged the back of his chair to drag it nearer to the bathtub. He pulled it close, and motioned for Hawke to spin around and face the other direction while rolling his shirtsleeves up.
She caught her lip between her teeth and grinned as she obliged, presenting her back to him. Facing away, Hawke's eyes darted about the room as she waited with bated breath to feel him touch her. She couldn't tell if this was a sex act or not. The tender distance he kept had her stymied.
His hands splashed briefly into the water behind her to wet something. She listened next to the dripping, concise rasp of his palms as he rubbed a soap bar between them and conjured a lather.
He used a single finger to tilt her head slightly back, and then, his fingers were in her hair. She squinched her eyes shut.
"I will endeavor not to get soap in them."
That wasn't why she'd closed her eyes, but she didn't correct him. His hands began to work the lather into her hair, moving against her scalp with a touch that was firm and thorough. There was an economy to his movements as he washed her hair, a briskness that suggested focused intent. Feeling very much like a small child, Hawke gave herself over to the motions of being washed, head tugged this way and that as need be—until he stopped. His fingers were wavering, hesitating, just behind her temples. So she waited. He cleared his throat and smoothed his palms down over her hair to squeeze out excess soap. Hawke continued to sit very still.
Fenris combed his fingers through her hair to the ends, and something anguished tightened in Hawke's chest once she realized it was a caress. She decided that yes, they were doing something dirty.
He gathered her hair in his hands, wrapping it around his fists, and—pulled—until Hawke was sucking back a gasp, staring up at the ceiling. She smiled at the rafters. He released her, and she heard the wooden squeaks of his chair as he shifted in his seat, getting up. He moved across the room to fetch a pitcher.
When he sat down again, Fenris said "Rinse," in rough voice behind her. So she leaned on her palms and tilted her head further back.
"This will be cold," he warned her.
"Good."
The water had cooled to comfortable, and the heat was no longer stinging. Actually. It was quite nice—the lapping. At her chest. On her breasts. The slick licks of water that teased her nipples to hard peaks when every little move sent the waters sloshing slightly. Hawke tried to imagine a scenario in which she could reproduce the pleasing sensation of lapping, warm, insisting water—except lowe—
Fenris poured cold water down her neck.
"Shit!" she hissed, spine going rigid. Fenris tutted and hushed her. He must've chosen the pitcher sitting in front of the open window, for it to be this cold. He chuckled, a dark and sincere sound—before dousing her with ice cold water again.
Sadist. She could hear the smile in it.
He raked his fingers through her hair as he rinsed, something she might've delighted in if the water wasn't so bloody cold that it had her bereft of sensation. Gooseflesh raised on her arms and she shivered with teeth gritted to subvert any coldness-related chattering.
He set the pitcher on the floor. His arm came in front of her, fingertips finding her chin. He tilted her head back and bent over her, leaning forward until she could see him. "Finished," he said.
And then softly kissed her forehead.
Hawke perhaps squeaked. She'd gone breathless and gooey. It was as if she'd forgotten what the man looked like while he was back there, fussing with her hair. Once she saw his face again, and then next, his lips actually touched her skin—
She melted into the bathwater, blushing and beaming. Fenris gave her a half-smile and stood. He took his chair away, returning it to the far wall. Where he sat. And Hawke didn't understand.
"You're going to prune."
"Good."
That had come out more sullen than she'd intended, but Fenris didn't seem to mind. He nibbled at the food, and picked up his book. Utterly thwarted, Hawke began to swirl her hands over the top of the water, flattened palm skimming and diving it as she bristled. She pretended she could smooth it like a sheet, trying very hard not to find the metaphor in how her every attempt to smooth water only agitated it further.
He'd kissed her forehead. And meanwhile, Hawke didn't even understand why she wasn't already fuck-tuckered out and dozing flat on her back down on the flagstones. And now Fenris wasn't even paying attention to her.
But he'd kissed her forehead.
She'd washed his floor, and then he'd washed her hair.
Hawke's mind caught the glinting edges of a something, and she started to gather together the dots in her head, connecting them. He'd kissed her on the forehead—an unspoken signal, a wordless reward for her patience. He'd fed her a grape and given her wine, helped her draw a hot bath after she'd scoured his floor—No. Not after she'd scrubbed his floor. After she'd asked if she should call him Master.
Her heart gained speed as the pieces fit together: he'd brought her up here to take care of her as a reward for figuring out something he needed. He'd kissed her on the forehead to reward her patience for letting him wash her hair. He wasn't ignoring her, over there, pretending preoccupation—he was waiting for her next move. Because they were playing.
Was Fenris aware of doing this? Was he conscious of the machinations, or were they now unearthing an innate propensity?
Her mind reeled with risks and rewards; calculating.
"Fenris," she looked up, "Will you read to me?"
