There is really only just the one couch; Isabela and Hawke in a close press while you lean a hip against the upholstered arm and Fenris perches, gargoylic and dour as ever, on the back. Hawke discreetly mentions the terrible substitution of furniture for firelogs, but stretches out to tease Fenris' knee regardless his earlier subtlety. You almost go green at the sight of the flirtation, but are smug in your victory; you had been right, Hawke has a thing for elves, and Fenris is so transparently vain that he actually softens at the attention and - Andraste's flaming knickers - you might have a thing for elves now too.
And wouldn't that just beat all, if you could finally have a leg up against Fenris... But then you would literally have a leg up against Fenris. You laugh to yourself and Isabela pokes your hip with a silver coin between her fingers.
"Oi, sweetness. Be a friend and get us some drinks from the stall at Bayover Street?"
Hawke pulls Isabela's arm back, chuckling. "Let's not send the wanted apostate into broad daylight just for snackies."
Isabela pouts, "But he's wearing trousers and everything!"
You snort. "You just wanted to watch me walking away. Again."
A sultry chuckle, "You know I hate to see you leave, darling, but I do so love to watch you go."
Hawke sighs, picking himself up from the couch. "I'll go. See if you can't find a table not yet broken into kindling. We can make a picnic of it."
"Oh no. Youuu aren't leaving me with Broody and Sparklefingers on the dry." Isabela plucks herself daintily from the couch, and you take up her spot with a relieved sigh. Your feet really were killing you in those heavy boots. "Sorry, spikeybits. But I know what you two are like in a conversation and I'd rather fetch the happy juice on errand than listen to you snipe."
Hawke frowns and you wave him away, head rolling back against the dilapidated couch and eyes sliding shut. "I'm going to nap. Wake me when the food's arrived."
Fenris' voice is already across the room. "I trust the mage not to burn what's left of my furniture while we are away?"
You grunt, swinging your legs up on the length of the couch and sighing in bliss because Lowtown never sawr such luxury. You wake up to a dark house; which would be spooky enough in that the house is falling apart and the air of it still tastes like burnt Fade and - and the jostle that woke you was the house's resident squatter kicking the leg of the couch to get your attention.
"Go home," Fenris advises, not unkindly. "Hawke asked I wait until nightfall before sending you out." He swats your legs from the couch and bends to light a lamp, setting book and wine bottle to the floor while you sit up to rub the grit of sleep from your eyes.
"You don't owe me any favors, but -"
"Understatement of the century, mage."
"Ha. Ha." And you know the answer is 'no' before you've even begged sanctuary. Justice is unusually quiet when you are in this house, preoccupied with the thin state of the veil, and your sleep had gone uninterrupted for the first time in years. You rub your tired face and lean your elbows on your knees, and if Fenris thinks sitting on the couch is going to scare you away from it -
You toe your boots off and swing your legs into his lap, disrupting his book. The look he gives you makes you withdraw first one leg and then the other, curling your knees back within reach, eyebrow up and magic humming defensively just under your skin. Right, well, it is his home, more or less, and you are a less-than-invited guest, and "My apologies; only Hawke spoke true when he said, well..." You tilt your head, forcibly casual.
Fenris' voice is a low thunder on a distant horizon, "When Hawke said what." Your heart plummets to your groin.
"When he hypothesized that anger only makes you more the beautiful." It's the cheesiest line in all of Thedas and you think you have just tolled your own death bell but it works, and suddenly the mystery of Fenris' loyalty to Hawke isn't so compelling - for Hawke is the crowned champion of cheesy pick-up lines - and the bridge of Fenris' nose has gone dark with a blush and his eyes are wide behind the initial shock of disrupted anger. The words fall out in a rush of relief, "So you'll have to excuse my rudeness. Only a test of theory." But if there's any hope of staying on that couch for the night, hell, you aren't above exploiting your enemy's only weakness. You latch on to the only topic on which you two have ever agreed, "Hawke and his theories, hey? I'd half forgive him the foolery if it didn't so often risk me my safety."
Fenris grunts, eyes only half recovered to their usual guarded scowl. "Yes. I daresay it was your safety in peril just now."
"Oh, yes, aha. Well." A staged cough, a feigned embarrassment. "I couldn't resist." And here you find yourself digging unplumbed depths for the flattery of your youth; that which saw you slapped more often than not. "Such as you are, irresistible."
Laconic, "I would ask you to -" But Fenris' throat works around the swallow, and the blush has reached his ears. "Stop. Talking."
You carefully stretch your legs back over his lap, as the best case scenario he simply flees with embarrassment - and the worst case scenario, well, you are a healer. It might not end in any permanent damage. "Fine," you are the picture of cold-sweat casual. "We don't have to use words." The 'we' is implied intimacy, as cheesy as it gets without there being presence of a cow. Your knee presses up against his shoulder, stocking heel rubbing a slow circle against the bone of his hip.
Fenris is staring straight ahead, eyes which flick your way changing intemperately between hooded suspicion and the fluttering lashes of blinking twice to reorganize his thoughts. You aren't exactly new to seducing reticent melee types; you only never made the connection in your assumptions that Fenris was as much a warm-blooded man as anybody else. You know very well the appeal of unbridled hate-sex, as the tower mages had little else to settle their philosophical disputes (and Templars both male and female had always carried that extra spice of desperation).
