A/N: Wow, you all are too kind. Thank you for reading and for the reviews. I'm glad others are enjoying these. :) This one took on a life of its own, so if it rambles, it rambles. I was disappointed by an obvious setup that was completely ignored during a certain part of Fenris' Act 3 friendmance (the scene was different in the rivalmance, iirc). The following is my rebellion against this oversight. And a big thank you to Lywinis for mentioning a workaround for the update issue the site has been having lately! "All you have to do to fix it is go to your story update page, and when the error comes up, change the word 'property' to 'content'." Awesome.
Description: Aveline proposes a simple solution to a complicated problem. Hawke and Fenris are not convinced. Or are they?
Warning: A little silliness, a little angst, and a little nekkidness. Because you should be warned about all those things, clearly.
Disclaimer: I own absolutely nothing at all. BioWare's toys, I'm just abusing them.
Sudden Moves
Fenris had grown accustomed to Aveline's visits over the years. She only showed up at the mansion for one purpose, and predictability was something the elf found comfort in, even if the degree of forcefulness or civility found in these interludes varied greatly from month to month. The former had far outweighed the latter recently, and this visit promised to be no different.
"I've run out of ways to hide you, Fenris," the imposing Guard-Captain explained with equal parts frustration and concern in her voice as she paced the breadth of the room. The elf surveyed her agitation with a bemused lift of his eyebrows. He slowly brought his wineglass to his lips and lounged back in his chair. "You simply cannot stay here any longer."
"You've said that before, Aveline," he reminded her calmly. "Many times, in fact."
"This is serious!" she snapped, tossing her arms in the air in exasperation. "The mansion has been sold, and the Knight-Commander herself has ordered it cleared out within the week. I cannot fight this!"
"Then don't," the elf told her with a shrug, but his thoughts were interrupted when Hawke chose that moment to swagger into the room unannounced. They exchanged a long, private look that made Aveline sigh and shift her weight.
"I've never asked for your protection," Fenris continued in half-truth as Hawke perched on the corner of his dilapidated desk. "Let them come."
"Right, and that's not at all threatening," Aveline huffed. "Talk some sense into him, Hawke."
Hawke shrugged as the larger woman crossed her arms over her armored chest. "You could always take a room at the Hanged Man," the Champion suggested to Fenris. "Not very private, though. And it'll get expensive."
"I lose far too much coin there already," he agreed. "Thanks to Varric."
"Man's a terrible influence," Hawke nodded with a sidelong grin.
"Like so many others." Fenris found himself smirking back at her and immediately set his wineglass aside. It was never wise to drink too much around Hawke. Maker only knew what she would have him doing. Or saying.
"You know," Aveline interrupted with a calculating note in her voice that brought cautious frowns to both Fenris and Hawke's faces, "there is a simple solution to this mess…"
"Bribery?" Hawke guessed.
"Kill the buyers?" muttered Fenris, prompting an amused snort from his lover.
Aveline pointed at Hawke. "No, and," she scowled at Fenris, "don't make me arrest you. Hawke, you have a very large mansion of your own. Lots of empty rooms. Lots of space."
Fenris and Hawke shared a startled look at the obvious implication. "No," they both answered with equal conviction.
"And why not?" Aveline asked, returning to her pacing, though now her expression was decisive, bordering on inspired. "It would get Fenris out of this dump, keep the Knight-Commander off my back, prevent a pointless confrontation, and ensure the safety of the both of you. No bribes or butchery required." She stopped and gave the couple one of her stern, matronly stares. "You may not be able to express it like normal people, but your feelings for each other are no big secret. There isn't a single reason for you to refuse."
"I happen to like my empty space," Hawke grumbled with a glare.
"As do I," Fenris was quick to agree. Whatever their differences, when it came down to basics, he and Hawke were very similar creatures indeed. He liked where things were between them, saw no reason to change them, and Hawke had never said anything to make him believe she felt any differently.
"By the Void, you don't have to sit and stare at each other all day," Aveline scolded. "You'd probably see as much of each other living together as you do now. Maybe even less."
"With no option of reprieve," the elf snorted scornfully, fully expecting Hawke to voice her agreement, but the woman remained oddly silent. When he leaned forward to look at her, he discovered the Champion was staring off thoughtfully at the far wall.
"She has a point," Hawke conceded after a pause. She turned to look appraisingly at Fenris, who frowned fiercely and drained his wineglass in one draught. Apparently sobriety was the opposite of what he would need tonight. "Would it really change anything?"
"You have to ask?" he shot back, though his feelings were closer to dismay than irritation.
Aveline cleared her throat to get their attention, and though she tried to hide it, there was a triumphant gleam in her eyes. "I'll just leave you two to work out the details," she said smugly. "Three days, Hawke. Four at most."
"Understood," Hawke murmured as the Guard-Captain strode purposefully from the room. Only the popping fire dared make a sound until the telltale clank of the front door closing echoed in the entryway below.
Hawke twisted around to sit cross-legged on the desk facing the scowling elf. Fenris stubbornly refused to break the silence first, and instead poured himself another glass of wine. Hawke snatched the bottle from his hand before he could set it down and took a deep pull that made her cringe and cough.
"She does have a point," Hawke croaked, stealing another messy sip of wine before Fenris pried the bottle away from her and hid it behind his seat.
"So you've said," he growled. He drained half of his glass and stared at her through narrowed eyes.
Hawke tilted her head, eyes hooded in shadow, making it difficult for him to read her mood. "You don't agree?"
"I never said that," the elf argued.
The woman looked down at her lap quietly for a moment, lost in thought. "It could solve a lot of old problems," she offered softly after a time.
"Perhaps," Fenris shrugged, fighting back the urge to sigh.
"And cause a lot of new ones," she chuckled, turning her wine-warmed face to gaze at him fondly.
He leaned forward, drawn to the woman despite the discomfort this conversation was bringing him. "Absolutely," he murmured, watching her expression closely as she reached out and gave a lock of his hair a firm tug. The urge to ravage her inviting mouth was painful to ignore, especially since he knew it would effectively put an end to this topic for the moment.
"How about this," she said in that decisive way of hers that he had come to both appreciate and detest. "Think about it tonight. See if any better options come to mind. We'll talk in the morning?"
Fenris scowled and started to argue, but then she was kissing him, deep and insistent and tasting of wine, her hands twisting and tightening in his hair. Before he could do a thing about it, Hawke was off the desk and striding out the door.
"Good night, Fenris," she called from the stairs. And then she was gone.
The elf hissed a string of bitter curses into the empty room and drained the dredges of his cup before hurling it at the fireplace. Amid the satisfying chime of shattering glass, Fenris retrieved the wine bottle and shoved out of his seat, measuring the room in long, restless strides.
He thought she understood. He thought she was like him, that she would always take his side in this even if they disagreed on so many other things. How could she not see what this rundown wreck of a building meant to him? She had to know it had nothing to do with status or pride or some misguided sense of "home."
Fenris had taken it, through his own means and strength, and deprived Danarius of this place even if it had never truly belonged to the magister to begin with. It was one less advantage in that bastard's hand. This mansion was Fenris' personal insult to Danarius and all of his ilk, proof that their power was finite and breakable. That was why it mattered, that was why he could not simply hand it over and move on.
The elf paused his prowling to glare at the merrily crackling flames in the fireplace. It sounded pointless, now that he thought about it, a worthless symbol sitting in the dark. Danarius was dead. Hadriana was dead. Varania was dead. Everyone who knew him as a slave was either gone or too far removed to matter. Whose eye was he spitting in at this point exactly?
But there was more to it than that, he told himself as his pacing resumed. He could not simply move in with Hawke, no matter how simple Aveline might wish it to sound. Thoughts of "too fast" and "too much" haunted his mind, just as they had years ago when he abandoned Hawke because of his own cowardice. He could not risk losing himself to that fear again, not now that he truly understood the agony it would bring them both and how easily it could have been avoided. He had meant it when he said he could not imagine living without her, and he knew, even if she did not, that the biggest threat to their relationship was Fenris himself.
In rare moments of uncertainty, he wished he could be someone else for her. Some nights he would lay awake after an evening spent at her mansion, the scent of her sweat still hot on his skin, and wonder why he had not slept in her arms. When the sex or pillow talk had run dry and sleep began to pull at them both, he would always reach for his clothes. Hawke would smile or kiss him or whisper something lewd that would have him crawling back between her sheets for something decidedly not like sleep, but she never commented or complained when he eventually departed for his own bed. What had changed that she would now ask this of him?
Fenris realized the fire had burned down to embers while he worried and brooded, and that the bottle in his hand was dry. It was very late and he was exhausted, but he would find no rest this night, not without talking to Hawke first. He had to understand what was going through her head, make her understand why this was impossible. Damn Aveline for starting this mess.
He expected to find Hawke asleep, or perhaps staring into her fireplace as she so often did when her mind was too full of strategies and battle plans to find the Fade. The last thing he could have anticipated was discovering Hawke and Orana hauling a heavy straw mattress up the main stairs. He stood confused in the shadows of the entryway door for a moment, wondering if he had dozed off at his home and perhaps this was all a dream, before the elven servant noticed him and dropped the mattress with a startled squeak.
Hawke cursed and stumbled back to one side to escape the free falling weight, which jostled and flopped its merry way down to land with a dusty thump at the base of the stairs. An awkward silence followed, broken only when Fenris stepped cautiously across the room and Orana began babbling a hurried apology.
Shushing her elven companion, Hawke shoved a few sweaty locks of hair out of her eyes and looked Fenris over nervously. "You're…not supposed to be here," she informed him with a sheepish shrug. "Don't suppose you'll just pretend you didn't see this?"
"Hawke," he started, too confused to really know where to begin, "what…?"
"Andraste's blood," she sighed, her guilty expression slowly giving way to irritation. "This isn't how I wanted to do this, but I should've known you'd make it hard on me. Just…come to my room. Please. And I'll explain."
Fenris did as she asked after a brief hesitation, trying his best not to guess at what this mad scene meant. He carefully navigated his way around the abandoned mattress and followed the two women to Hawke's bedroom, where he found himself unable to do much more than stare in surprise.
The northern side of the room had been cleared, her desk moved to the wall beside the fireplace. An extra bed frame, presumably from one of the small guestrooms downstairs, had been put in the desk's place, and a small table and comfortable chair had been arranged in the opposite corner with a wooden partition to separate it from the rest of the room.
"It was just an idea I was playing with," Hawke murmured. Fenris turned to find her leaning against her desk, chewing nervously at her thumbnail and seeming unable to meet his gaze. "I wasn't presuming to know your answer, and I'm not stupid enough to think I can convince you if it's not what you want. I just," she finally looked at him and shrugged, her eyes honest and vulnerable, "thought it couldn't hurt to try."
"You made me a room…inside your room," Fenris managed to say quietly, shaking his head in bafflement.
"Maybe it's silly," Hawke shrugged. "I can't stand the thought of sticking you in one of the guestrooms like some embarrassing third cousin with a drinking problem that I'm trying to hide from the neighbors, and we both know one bed isn't enough for the two of us. I know it's not a decent substitute for an entire house." She shrugged again and sighed, turning her head to stare into the fireplace. "Just tell me I'm a fool and get it over with, will you?"
Fenris had definitely had too much wine that night because he could not even remember moving, yet suddenly Hawke was in his arms, pushed fully up on the desk with her thighs tight around his hips. His lips found hers, biting and eager, and he growled when she whimpered into his mouth. Somewhere behind them, Orana made a strangled sound and retreated from the room, closing the door behind her, and Fenris hoped he would remember to apologize to the poor girl tomorrow.
"You are a fool, Hawke," Fenris rumbled, sucking the delicate salty skin of her throat between his teeth while her hands sought his hair and her ankles locked around his waist. "A beautiful, infuriating fool."
"I – ah, Maker…I'd have done this months ago if I knew you'd react like this," she gasped, arching into the elf as she clawed at the buckles of his armor. "I had no idea – oh! – you'd be so…eager…"
Fenris tugged at her the bottom of her shirt, exposing the soft slope of her shoulders to his seeking lips. How could he explain to her that this had nothing to do with excitement or agreement, and everything to do with relief? He had not been wrong all this time. She did understand, she was like him, and any of the little doubts that plagued him were exactly that – his doubts, not hers. He should have known better than to think she was against him in this.
Hawke pulled gently at his ears, interrupting his tongue's downward exploration of her chest and forcing him to meet her lust-dazed stare. "Is this a yes?" she breathed, her face suddenly filled with skepticism, confirming Fenris' suspicion that she had not expected him to agree to move in at all. Maybe she was not even sure if she wanted him there yet. Strangely enough, that brought him even greater relief.
Softly, Fenris kissed her, a gentle, lingering pressure, and smoothed her damp hair back from her face with his palms. "This is," he answered in between brief brushes of his lips against hers, "a maybe."
"Stubborn tease," the woman chuckled against his mouth and gave his lower lip a hard bite. "Anything I can do to help you decide?"
Her smooth fingers slipped under the waist of his loosened armor, drawing out a low groaning from the elf while she traced the lines of his stomach in a painfully slow descent. "You already are," he growled, pressing himself roughly against her but momentarily releasing her only to tear his gauntlets off and toss them aside. "And you know it."
Hawke grinned as he made short work of her shirt and breast binding. "If only you'd gotten here ten minutes later," she teased, helping him hoist the top of his armor over his head. "We could have debated this on your possible future bed."
His hard, cooler flesh met her soft, warm curves in a crushing embrace of questing fingers and nipping mouths and delighted gasps. "Desk first," Fenris murmured against her ear, intrigued by the way she was somehow tugging the bottom half of his armor off with her toes, "bed later."
Hawke's laughter made him smile against her skin, and he was surprised to realize that for the first time, he was actually considering accepting her offer. Would it change anything? Would it really be so bad? At that moment, tangled with the woman he knew he would protect with the very last of his strength if need be, Fenris was beginning to think that Aveline may have been right all along. Maybe it was just that simple.
