A/N: Content Warning(s): Alcohol consumption.
This is another sort of half-chapter, so sorry that it's kind of light on plot.
Isabela, Sera, and Anders all seemed to have opinions about the way Hawke's date with Fenris had ended, which they expressed with varying degrees of tact. Anders conducted himself in the manner that was by far the most restrained. He merely nodded when Hawke rejoined the others inside the gallery, the corners of his precisely-shaped lips turning upwards in a smile that was wedged firmly between smug and relieved. He never mentioned Fenris at all—then, or for the remainder of the night—though he did say that he was glad Hawke had returned.
Isabela and Sera, both of whom had clearly been drinking extravagantly throughout the entirety of Hawke's absence, welcomed her back with demonstrative enthusiasm, though Hawke did notice a flicker of surprise cross Isabela's expression. Neither she nor Sera brought up Fenris in any particular detail, however, until they were all piled in the backseat of a cab, jostling against one another on their way to Undercity.
It was then, with their sides smashed together and their legs tangled gracelessly in an intricate weave, that Isabela lowered her voice in a very poor approximation of a whisper and began to inquire as to what exactly had gone on after Hawke and Fenris had disappeared together.
She had plenty of guesses, of course, which she offered against Hawke's ear in gusts of humid, wine-sweet breath. All sorts of murmured suggestions of skirts shoved up and out of the way, of adventurous hands slipping between parted thighs, of frantic motion, bitten-back moans, and desperate hunger.
Every aspect of Isabela's speculation was quite a bit filthier than what had actually occurred, and Hawke told her as much. Swaying along with every lurch of the cab, she let herself be flung into Isabela's side as she revealed, in the same overloud whisper, that everything that had gone on between Fenris and herself had been remarkably chaste.
If their appalled gasps were anything to go by, the confession that she and Fenris had parted without so much as a peck on the lips was a detail far more shocking to Isabela and Sera than even the most lurid smut would have been.
Sera blew a loud, wet sound against the heel of her hand, and declared that that was the end of it then. People who were interested in bumping uglies did not say goodnight with a hug, apparently.
Obviously, that same thought had occurred to Hawke, but it was still rather discomfiting to hear it expressed by someone else.
Isabela was moderately more optimistic, though that optimism came on the heels of her firmly rebuking Hawke for being such an unbelievable idiot.
Anders, riding up front beside the driver, remained curiously silent on the subject.
Hawke, for her part, vacillated wildly between optimism and resigned dejection. Both were easy enough to ignore that night, with the thrashing bass of Undercity thudding through her bones and the scorching heat of tequila shots down her throat leaving her blissfully incapable of complex emotion. Left to her own devices for the remainder of the weekend, however, Hawke had perhaps too much time to dissect the evening, with particular attention paid to its close.
In one moment, she could believe quite contentedly that she would soon get another chance to kiss Fenris and that she'd be grateful then that their first had not been some hurried thing on the curb of a dirty street. But that certainty could disappear entirely in the next moment, replaced by self-doubt.
She allowed herself an entire day-and-a-half of indulgent introspection before settling into a state of reasonable equilibrium. It had taken work and careful breathing to achieve that state, but she'd gotten there. She'd gotten there. Hawke reminded herself repeatedly that Fenris had made a point of saying, in no uncertain terms, that he'd like to see her again. She reminded herself determinedly that he had said he would call her. Leaning relentlessly into optimism, she decided to take him at his word, though admittedly she didn't take his words quite literally.
"I'll call you" was just one of those things that people said at the end of a date. Probably because it sounded better than "I'll text you", or, "Expect a short message in your inbox within two to three business days." After just one date, people generally seemed to opt for those modern, slightly more prosaic forms of communication rather than initiating an actual phone call.
It was an instinct Hawke understood well. It was infinitely less daunting to converse via quick, concise texts than it was to go through all the pulse-pounding, sweaty-palmed stress of actually calling someone up and attempting to speak extemporaneously. She remembered being distinctly pleased when texting had definitively replaced phone calls as the default means of communication. It had reached the point where it was a genuine surprise to hear her phone ring.
Which was why she startled so violently when her phone suddenly began to ring merrily, pulsing itself across the kitchen counter in jaunty little circles while she was in the midst of dismantling a head of romaine.
When the unwarranted burst of adrenaline that had gone spiking through her began to settle, Hawke glanced towards her phone without any particular expectation. Generally, the only calls she received were from alumni fundraising organizations or telemarketing scammers promising her free boats in exchange for all her personal information, so there wasn't much to get excited about. It was such an anomaly to see an actual name on her caller ID, rather than the long string of digits that signaled an unknown caller, that it took Hawke a moment to actually process what she was seeing.
A name. That she recognized. On her phone.
Hawke hurled her knife a little recklessly onto the cutting board and lunged for her phone, leaving scraps of lettuce clinging to her screen as she swiped her fingers over it.
"Hello?" Her greeting came out like a question, high-pitched and reedy even to her own ears.
Hawke was answered with a blast of music against her eardrum. The crisp, exact strains of sharply electronic beats shot through her phone as clearly as if it were an earbud shoved deep into her ear canal.
She jerked back from the sound instinctively, just beginning to absorb the disappointment of a pocket-dial when she heard, "Hawke?" Fenris was speaking loudly, clearly aware of the volume of his surroundings. As she lifted the phone back to her ear, she heard him muttering softly, and clearly to himself, "Venhedis, every time it seems I've escaped it, that din starts up again." He tried her name again, with a return to his slightly heightened volume. "Hawke?"
"Yes, hi, I'm here."
Fenris sighed, a sound of mingling relief and barely repressed frustration. "Ah, there you are," he said above the thrum of the continuing music. "I'm sorry to have called you from amidst this… this racket. I thought it had let up at last, but it seems I was not so fortunate."
"Oh, I don't mind," she rushed to assure him. "Where are you?"
Fenris made a noise that might well have been the beginning of a word, but he was apparently interrupted by some commotion on his end. There was a rustling sound, the soft crackle of the phone readjusting against Fenris' ear, and a slurred exclamation from someone whose voice Hawke didn't recognize. "Fuck, I know you!" shouted the voice, close enough to the receiver that Hawke knew the speaker must have slipped well into Fenris' space. "Fucking awesome shit, man," said the voice, thrilled and oblivious. "Fucking awesome."
Fenris' voice was brittle and iced over as he said, "Yes, thank you. Deeply flattered." There was the sound of rustling again and the fading sound of drunken, blurry babbling from Fenris' admirer. Hawke heard Fenris breathing out his irritation in a long exhalation. When he spoke again, his voice had lost its hard edges. "Pardon, I didn't quite catch what you said."
"Me?"
"You."
"Oh, I just asked where you were." Hawke brushed an errant strand of hair behind her ear as she spoke and it immediately sprang free once more. She repeated the gesture again, with similar success.
"The Leyford Party," he told her, his voice elevated over the sound of the bass dropping loudly and with great enthusiasm. "Evidently, it was of vital importance that I attend."
"Leyford?" Hawke shifted, turning away from the countertop and leaning back against it, the hard ridge of its edge pressing into her hips. "The clothing company?"
"An excuse to advertise while minor celebrities clamor to have their photos taken. You can imagine how delighted I am to be tasked with documenting the affair." There was an abrupt dampening of the sound against Hawke's ear, as though the music were being filtered to her through a tangled mass of cotton. "There we are," said Fenris, his voice clear and soft. "I ought to be able to hear you now."
Absent the obtrusive ambient sound continually pulsing in the background, their conversation suddenly seemed more intimate. Hawke felt too aware of Fenris' lowered voice, honeyed and gentle and just for her now that the crowd was stripped away. "Yeah?" she said, her tongue feeling altogether too thick for her mouth.
"I've locked myself in the men's room."
"Won't there be a line?" Hawke peeled herself away from the edge of the counter, making a quick move over to the refrigerator for no other reason than that the movement helped to settle some of the nervous energy she could feel building inside of her. She opened the door purposelessly, letting the cool air billow out against her over-heated skin.
"There's a fountain around the corner," he said drily. "I'm sure they can make use of that, if it's a matter of some urgency."
"One of the advantages of being male," Hawke observed, trying too hard to sound casual. She didn't know how it was that Fenris managed to speak over the phone with such seeming ease when it was costing her a tremendous amount of effort just to sound mildly composed. Just the sound of her heart was a deafening distraction.
"And surely one of the most advantageous."
Hawke could hear Fenris' smile as he spoke. It was pleasurable torture, knowing that he was smiling, but being left with only her imagination to supply an image of it. In her mind, it was devastating. She snatched a half-empty bottle of sauvignon blanc out of the fridge and let the door fall shut with a subdued thud.
"Yeah," she said, wishing desperately for something remotely clever to say and coming up wretchedly short. "Yeah, probably." Hawke closed her eyes for a pained moment, all too aware of exactly how strained her voice sounded.
Fenris waited silently, probably expecting her to say something with any actual substance. Mercifully, he did not let the silence stretch out for long. "Is now an alright time to talk? You sound preoccupied."
Hawke exhaled slowly, her sigh breaking into a rough laugh at the end. "Sorry, I know." She let herself laugh again, allowing her nerves to bleed into the sound. "I'm just a bit scattered right now. I wasn't expecting you to call."
"I did say I would," said Fenris, sounding almost wary.
Hawke shook her head, cupping one hand around the chilled bottle of wine that sat on the countertop, a circle of condensation pooling at its base. "I know, I know," she said hurriedly, wanting to strip that cautious edge from his voice as quickly as possible. "I just assumed you were speaking figuratively. I didn't know that there were still people who used their phones as phones."
Fenris' amused breath puffed audibly against the receiver. "What else would one use it for?"
"A texting machine?" she ventured, comforted by the sound of his easy laughter. "An alarm clock? I don't know. I'm oddly nervous right now."
"Because I called you on the phone," he said flatly, though a note of teasing was clearly audible. Hawke smiled helplessly, unable to stop herself.
"Possibly. There's also the strong chance that I've developed a phone-related phobia, as well." It was so much easier when she wasn't pretending to be casual, when she wasn't pretending that she was unaffected by him.
Fenris hummed thoughtfully, the vibration of it low and agreeable. "I could disconnect," he drawled, "and send you a text message, if you'd be more comfortable."
"I'll muddle through somehow, thanks," she said, matching his tone for dryness. "I like hearing your voice, anyway," she added, thumbing the rubber stopper out of the wine bottle and letting it fall. She thought she heard a small intake of breath through the phone, but there was every chance that she had imagined it. Still, she liked to think that Fenris was blushing, just slightly, with his head bowed forward to hide his expression like he always seemed to do when she paid him a compliment. "So, what's up?" she asked, when it seemed that an imagined blush was the only response that Fenris was likely to muster in a timely fashion. "Aside from hiding in the bathroom away from all the fabulous people, that is."
He laughed again, very softly, in a private sort of way. "I called," he began, "though apparently that was entirely the wrong approach, because I wanted to ask if you were available on Thursday."
"Yes!" Hawke exclaimed, sounding far too eager. That was one of the many problems with talking on the phone: it was far more difficult to seem blasé than it was over text. She cleared her throat, taking a moment to rein in her enthusiasm before making another attempt at her reply. "It depends, actually. I might have plans in the afternoon, but I think my evening should be free." It was better. Still not perfect, but better by a mile.
"I'm glad," he said. "I would have chosen a more appropriate time to call, but I did want to catch you before you made other plans."
Hawke lifted a clean glass from the drying rack beside the sink, an irrepressible smile on her lips. "Well, clearly my plan to make you believe that I have an actual social life has been successful. That's a relief."
"It's not hard to believe that your company would be in high demand," he said smoothly.
Hawke almost choked on a gulp of air, the tips of her ears burning with the vibrancy of her blush. "You have no idea how far that kind of blatant flattery will get you, Fenris," she said once she'd sufficiently recovered. "So, what did you have in mind?"
"For Thursday, or in general?"
Hawke's teeth nipped against her lower lip as she bit back a grin. "Thursday," she clarified, pouring a thin stream of wine into her empty glass. "Unless you have something else you're prepared to share with the class?"
"Some other time perhaps," he said, with a faint note of barely disguised promise that threatened to send a shiver down Hawke's spine. Her hand tightened around her glass as she brought it to her lips. "As for your intended question," he continued, "the choice is yours. There is a halfway decent Antivan restaurant that's not entirely out of your way, or, if you'd rather, we could go for drinks later on in the evening. Or, if you're not entirely opposed to the outdoors, they're showing a film in Woodrow Park just past dark." He rattled off the list of options with a casual rapidity that suggested he'd given the matter a certain amount of prior consideration, if not some degree of rehearsal. Hawke smirked into her wine, her heart thudding heavily.
"I'd love to go to the park, actually," she said after a moment's consideration. "I've seen those flyers floating around for years now, but I've never gone to one myself."
"Nor have I. It's deeply unlikely that either of us will have seen this one, in any case. Some obscure horror film that's over a half-century old, I believe."
Hawke made a small sound of approval. "Ooh, I hope there's a clumsy monster in a bad, rubber suit and whole lakes of terribly convincing fake blood."
Fenris hummed. "I don't expect you'll be disappointed on either score; it's called The Blood Moon. I hear bad things."
"Looking forward to it. I'll bring along some food, if you'll take care of the wine and maybe a blanket?"
"I can agree to those terms. What are your feelings on red?"
Hawke opened her mouth to convey her very positive feelings, but was cut short when she overheard the sound of a thunderous hammering from Fenris' side.
"What the fuck, man! You taking a shit or what the fuck!" The unfamiliar voice was deep, forceful. Hawke heard Fenris sigh, as though an enormous, angry man pounding on the door of the room he occupied was nothing more than a trifling annoyance.
Hawke clicked her tongue against the top row of her teeth. "Sounds like someone doesn't want to take a piss in the fountain," she said gravely.
The repressed tremor of Fenris' laughter never failed to send a thrill of delight thrumming through her. "Evidently."
"The fuck!" The impatient shout was followed by another rapid series of hard thuds against the door and a string of accompanying profanity that Hawke couldn't quite make out over the knocking.
"Thursday, then?" Fenris said evenly, disregarding the noise.
"Thursday," confirmed Hawke with a crisp nod that, of course, he could not see. "We can meet there, just at the corner of Hyacinth and 14th St."
He proposed a time to meet that would allow them enough time to settle in before the movie started and Hawke gave another pointless nod as she replied, "I'll see you then." Smirking, she added, "You can tell me all about how the giant, angry man beating down the door over there decided to break your face in."
"I'm sure I'll manage," said Fenris, unfazed. "Though it's probably best not to test his patience any further, eh?"
"Agreed. I like your face the way it is."
"You say what's on your mind, I'll give you that," he chuckled, warmly enough that Hawke could feel it burn in the pit of her stomach. "I'll see you soon, Hawke. Hopefully, with my face still intact."
Hawke forced herself to put an end to the call promptly after she'd wished Fenris goodnight and he had responded in kind. She had long since passed an age where it was socially acceptable to linger over the ends of phone calls, fondly goading one another to hang up first, but she was still loath to say goodbye. There was a part of her—some clinging vestige of her foolish adolescence—that wanted to stay on the line just to see how long it would take for Fenris to hang up, as though that would give her some quantifiable measure of the degree of his feelings for her. Hawke felt unjustifiably mature for resisting that urge.
Likewise, she felt that it was quite mature that she did not immediately send a text to Isabela with all the details of what had transpired. It was her first instinct, of course, as Isabela was perhaps the only person she knew who would share her excitement in that moment. Indeed, it seemed entirely possible that Isabela's excitement might even exceed her own, given that Isabela had taken an eager interest in Fenris' affairs for years prior to Hawke's involvement in them.
However, it struck Hawke that keeping Isabela fully apprised of her every interaction with Fenris might be a dangerous precedent to set. If all their conversations began and ended with him, Hawke worried that Isabela might dismiss her as the sort of person who was prone to vanishing into romantic relationships, prizing that bond above all others.
So, Hawke restrained herself, texting Isabela a link to an amusing parrot, instead. It seemed like the mature thing to do.
Of course, Fenris did enter into the conversation the next time that Hawke and Isabela saw each other, though it wasn't until after they were both two beers deep, luxuriating on the deck of Isabela's glass-bottomed boat.
The boat was still in its slip, lifting and falling only slightly with the small waves that came in so deep into the harbor. The air smelled faintly of decaying fish, as it always did along Kirkwall's polluted shores, but Hawke found that she didn't really mind it. The fairly unobtrusive stench of it was masked somewhat by the warm, familiar scent of sunscreen and the somehow comforting smell of her own sun-ripened skin. Hawke felt settled and easy, melted back onto the bench of The Siren's Call by the golden heat of the sun's rays.
"We should do this every week," Isabela proposed lazily. "Tipsy Tuesdays." She was sprawled out across the long bench that ran along the portside of the boat. Hawke was on a bench opposite her, but the modest vessel was small enough that neither of them had to raise their voices much to be heard, even over the light, frothy pop music that played over the sound system.
It was the sort of music made to be carried on summer air, tangled up with a warm breeze. Songs about first loves and fast cars and short skirts baring tanned thighs. With her forearm thrown over her closed eyelids, Hawke let herself be reminded of days spent speeding heedlessly over overheated asphalt, of coarse Fereldan sand between her toes, of laughing until it ached while her friends tried to sing along with lyrics they'd gotten wrong a dozen times before. Being with Isabela always dragged her back like that: to a time when being happy had felt so effortless.
"Don't you have tours on Tuesdays, though?" asked Hawke without removing her arm from over her eyes. "You might want to be sober for those. Bit illegal otherwise."
"Not headed out until sunset. We'll be sober by then."
"Speak for yourself," Hawke said, scratching absently at her bare navel. Neither she nor Isabela had dressed with any expectation of lying out in the sun, but they had both made adjustments to their clothing in an effort to prevent unfortunate tan lines. Isabela had cast aside her fluttering linen top almost instantaneously, leaving her in a florescent green bra and white cut-offs, the top button of which she'd undone to reveal even more of her torso to the sun. Hawke had followed her example, abandoning first her shoes, then socks, then shirt, until she was left in a similar state to Isabela.
Isabela rolled onto her side, her head cushioned on her folded arm as she looked over at Hawke. "Do you want another beer?" She gestured towards the boat's well-stocked miniature fridge with her own empty bottle.
Hawke peered out from beneath her forearm, blinking into the sunlight as she glanced sidelong at Isabela. "Are you having one?"
Isabela's teeth flashed brilliantly white in the sun. "You know I am, sweet thing."
At Hawke's nod, Isabela rose and went off in the direction of more alcohol. Hawke didn't watch the process, instead sinking contentedly back onto the bench and letting the sunlight send a vivid play of red sparks across the inside of her eyelids. She could hear the sounds of preparation—a knife blade hitting gently against a plastic cutting board as Isabela sliced off fresh segments from a line, the clack and hiss of bottle tops pried off and clattering away, the sound of Isabela's feet padding slowly across the deck.
Ice-cold glass pressed against Hawke's exposed hipbone and she shot upright, crying out in shock. Isabela met her glare with a dazzling grin and an innocently proffered drink.
"Here you are, sweetness," cooed Isabela as Hawke accepted the frosty bottle.
"Thank you, asshole," grumbled Hawke, fighting back the smile that tugged at the corners of her lips.
Isabela cackled unapologetically, sauntering back to her side of the boat and collapsing gracefully onto the bench. She immediately began seeking out a more comfortable position, pulling her legs up onto the bench until the soles of her feet were pressed together, her bent knees falling to either side of her like she might start meditating at any moment. All the while, she watched Hawke with a keen sort of glint in her eye.
"I love this beer, don't you?" Isabela declared before Hawke had even finished her first sip.
Hawke swallowed pointedly, meeting Isabela's gaze. "Mm. It's good," she nodded, slowly turning the bottle in her hands to search the label for whatever point Isabela was wheedling towards. The name of the brewery was one Hawke recognized instantly.
"Do you know where I heard about it?" Isabela asked, not even attempting to sound casual.
Hawke knew. She lifted one of her eyebrows significantly and leveled Isabela with a frank look. "Where you read about it, you mean?
Isabela did an appallingly bad impression of surprise. "Oh, I didn't know you read Hot Ice," she said, all delighted innocence. "But just for the articles, I'm sure." Hawke scoffed, her lower lips pressed lightly against the rim of the bottle as she rolled her eyes. "And how is Fenris, by the way," continued Isabela, wide-eyed as she fluttered her long lashes twice in quick succession. "Your public is just dying to know."
"Oh, have I not mentioned?" said Hawke, matching the feigned disinterest in Isabela's tone. "Fenris called yesterday. We're going out this Thursday."
Isabela hurled a stiff, weather-resistant throw pillow in Hawke's direction, which she caught with a triumphant peal of laughter. "You. Coy. Little. Minx!" exclaimed Isabela, looking delighted and affronted all at once. "Why was I not immediately informed?"
Hawke didn't even make an attempt to suppress her smile. It would have been fruitless, anyway. "I thought it would be more fun this way."
During the nearly eighteen hours that had elapsed since Fenris had called her, Hawke had been aching to share the news with someone who would truly appreciate it. Charade had been congratulatory and supportive, as she always was, but she had never met Fenris herself and couldn't really be expected to display more than the normal amount of enthusiasm. Hawke had certainly taken a girlish sort of pleasure in discussing Fenris with her cousin, but it was another thing entirely to talk about it with Isabela. Isabela had been there with Hawke when she'd seen Fenris for the first time, when the whole world had stopped to catch its breath. Isabela understood.
"This is fantastic," said Isabela emphatically. "Sera owes me twenty dollars."
"I wish I could say that I'm surprised that you've been placing bets on my love life," mused Hawke, wrapping her arms tightly around the throw pillow Isabela had chucked at her, "but, really, I would have expected nothing less."
"I had nothing but faith in you, sweet thing," said Isabela loftily. "But, if you do not at least attempt to swirl your tongue around in that boy's mouth this time, then I will have no choice but to recalibrate my entire belief system. There are some sins that even I can't forgive."
Hawke let out a little gust of airy laughter, though she couldn't stop her mind from calling up a very intriguing mental image of herself finally intertwined with Fenris, their mouths moving easily together and their hands becoming increasingly bold. "Believe me, I am not letting that opportunity pass me by again," she assured Isabela. "It just… wasn't right last time. Too many prying eyes."
"Just so long as you make it right this time. This is not the time to go squandering opportunities. You might just have the chance to be the first person in living memory to catch a glimpse of Fenris Leary naked." Isabela leaned forward intently, her elbow propped on one of her knees. "That's the dream, sweetness. You'll be a legend in your own time."
"Oh sure," agreed Hawke, nodding solemnly, "that can be my legacy. I'm sure that, in fifty years, I'll be telling my grandchildren all about it."
"See, I know you're joking," said Isabela after taking a long swill of her drink, "but, if it were me, I'd rent out a billboard."
Hawke probably wouldn't say no to taking out a billboard, either, but something told her that Fenris might not like it very much. "Well, don't get your hopes up too high just yet; I'm sure I'll manage to find a way to drive him off before we get that far. I'll update you on Friday, after I've spilled red wine down my shirt and belched right into his beautiful face."
"Hey, wine down the front can be a highly effective seduction technique," Isabela said, with an emphatic tilt of her bottle. "Your soaking wet shirt clinging to your flushed breasts as you dab at them with a damp cloth?" She made a show of pantomiming the gesture, patting her fingertips lightly between her own breasts with zealous enjoyment of her own performance. Her eyes flicked back up to Hawke. "He won't be able to resist."
Hawke tilted her head to one side, looking at Isabela with exaggerated awe. "I hope I never stop learning from you."
Isabela reclined grandly in her seat and nodded once in gracious acceptance of a compliment well-deserved. "I am a font of knowledge and indispensable wisdom, that's true."
"Undoubtedly."
"Besides," shrugged Isabela, settling deeper against the back of the bench and pulling up her legs beside her, "it's not as though you're without other options to entertain. Even if you do manage to create a colossal shitshow out of everything with Fenris, there are other possibilities. Attractive ones, even. Like Anders." She was shameless, really. Watching Hawke from across the boat, her eyes glittering and her mouth turned upwards at the corner as she steered the conversation just where she wanted it to go—ever the captain.
Hawke rolled her eyes. "Anders," she said flatly, prompting Isabela to plunge onward.
Isabela smirked, clearly glad to proceed. "He asked about you, you know," she said, her voice lowered like she was sharing a terribly salacious secret. "After you and Fenris slipped off into the darkness." Isabela shook her head, clucking her tongue in feigned condemnation. "Two beautiful boys nipping at your heels," she scolded, smooth as silk. "So greedy."
Hawke took a long, slow pull of her beer, letting it warm slightly on her tongue for a moment before she swallowed it down. She hadn't given much thought before to the fact that Anders might retain some sort of attraction to her. Admittedly, there had been sparks during their initial meeting at Undercity, but that had been years ago. She had more or less assumed that any interest he had expressed during their short conversation in the gallery had been purely out of spite for Fenris.
Truth be told, it was flattering that someone like Anders—who was handsome, and passionate, and successful, and, who, on all scores, seemed like someone worth impressing—had asked about her. Under different circumstances, Hawke might have found the information downright intriguing. As it was, however….
"What did you tell him?" she asked neutrally.
"The truth, of course. That it was the first time you'd been out together and I wasn't sure how serious you could possibly be at that point." Isabela shrugged. "I didn't want to risk shattering your chances with him, just in case that might be something you'd like to explore more thoroughly later on. I wouldn't dream of constraining a lady's options." She dropped her voice again, hushed and conspiratorial though it was just the two of them anywhere within sight. "So… are you interested?" One of her finely arched eyebrows lifted suggestively.
"He asked you to ask me that, didn't he?" Hawke grinned, catching on.
"Maybe," said Isabela, her sing-song lilt dragging out the word.
"Anders seems nice," Hawke said after a moments consideration, because that seemed like a diplomatic way to begin and because it was true. "And he's good-looking, and clever, and, if memory serves, one hell of a kisser. But, I'm not exactly looking for a relationship, you know?" Hawke realized that that probably sounded entirely like a lie, given her marked and decided interest in Fenris, but it was true nonetheless. She heaved a little sigh and endeavored to clarify. "The only reason I'm bothering with any of it now is because of Fenris," she explained. "If I hadn't seen him, then I'd be sitting here, dead-ass single and completely positive that I wasn't ready to date anyone, no matter how good-looking or smart or great at kissing."
Isabela was watching her with a curious expression on her face, unguarded but somehow inscrutable at the same time. Hawke wasn't quite sure what to make of it, or how to interpret the brief compression of Isabela's lips into a tight line. It passed in an instant, replaced by an exaggerated look of deep concentration. "That might be too much for me to send to Anders in one text," Isabela said contemplatively. "Do you have something nice and pithy that I could relay? In the neighborhood of five syllables, perhaps?"
Hawke huffed out a laugh. "Tell him: he's hot, but I'm just super-duper into Fenris," she summarized, taking a wild stab at sounding appropriately teenaged and gossipy.
Isabela made a show of looking bemused as she ticked off the syllables with her fingers before, overwhelmed, she shook her head. "Well, that was pithier, but I'll still have to put it through another round of edits. I'm sure I'll be able to cobble together something satisfactory."
Hawke, who had begun diverting herself by blowing short puffs of air over the rim of her beer to create mournful echoes, paused the activity long enough to ask, "How close are you and Anders, anyway?" She arched an eyebrow dramatically, let out another ominous-sounding puff of air across the mouth of the bottle. "Should I be questioning your allegiances?"
"My only allegiance is to myself," Isabela said. It was possible that she might have been quoting something, but Hawke couldn't say what. "But, don't worry, sweet thing: I'm not going to spill any of your juicy little secrets. Your exotic misadventures are no one's business but your own, I say." Her grin unfurled slowly. "And mine, of course, but I'm very discreet."
Hawke nodded. "That's what I thought, but I didn't want to… to put you in the position of having to keep something from a friend, is all. You and Anders seem to have a lot of history, so…." She trailed off, shrugging her shoulders noncommittally.
Isabela thrust out her lower lip, her head bobbling up and down slightly as if she were giving the matter careful consideration before speaking. "We're not close, exactly, but we do run in roughly the same circles," she said. "Or we did. He's become a bit of a wet blanket now that they've put all those fancy letters after his name. But I will say this for the boy: he knew how to scratch an itch, once." She inclined her head towards Hawke. "Well, you remember."
Hawke shifted a little where she sat, feeling that perhaps she ought to explain her own brief history with Anders more thoroughly. She suspected that Isabela had gotten the wrong end of the stick somewhere along the way, but it seemed nit-picky to insist upon the fact that, no, she did not know how successfully Anders was able to scratch itches. So, she settled for nodding in understanding while she went in for another swill of beer. It was mostly suds at this point.
"It's a shame, really," continued Isabela, staring out over the rows of boats that rocked in the harbor, "there's not enough people who take advantage of the nightlife in Kirkwall—every little defection hurts. Subtract the committed marrieds," she said, cringing at the word committed like it was something that had gone rotten at the rear of her refrigerator, "the college kids, the goody-goodies, the workaholics, and the commuters, and, really, there's just a handful of real people living in this city. It's always the same faces on repeat. You'll see, now that you're one of us."
"Oh, finally," sighed Hawke, collapsing back onto the bench and settling into an easy sprawl. "I'm in with the in-crowd."
"Damn right," Isabela said firmly, lowering her sunglasses down the bridge of her nose just enough that she could send a significant glance at Hawke over the top of their heart-shaped frames. "Even Varric knows your name now. You're officially somebody."
There was that name again. "Should it worry me that I have never met this person?" mused Hawke absently, rolling onto her side so that she could look at Isabela without all the bother of sitting upright.
"Oh, you will," said Isabela with a dismissive wave of her hand. "Everyone does, sooner or later. And, once you've got his curiosity piqued, he'll probably make it sooner rather than later."
Hawke chuckled softly. "And that's not the tiniest bit sinister?"
Isabela made a thoughtful sound in the back of her throat. "Mm, a bit," she conceded. "But, I wouldn't worry your pretty head, sweetness. Hell, if he likes you, you're more likely to walk away with a job offer than anything else."
"But what could possibly be more fulfilling than running unpredictable and bizarre errands for complete strangers?" Hawke gasped, tenting her fingers against her chest as if the mere thought of seeking another form of gainful employment horrified her.
Isabela snorted with amusement. "Well, if you ever are looking for a change of vocation, I can think of a few places that would be thrilled to get their grubby hands on you. My friend's an AD for Bellitanus Films and she says they always have an eye peeled for fresh talent."
"I don't know what that is," Hawke said slowly, tilting her head over to one side, "but I'm assuming porn."
"Erotica," insisted Isabela, jabbing her bottle pointedly in Hawke's direction. "High production values, a select crew of talented performers, actual scripts. It's more than just your classic gangbang, straight-bait, gay-for-pay nonsense with the pleather cat-suits and the will you stop laughing?"
Hawke turned her head, smothering her cackling laughter breathlessly against her bicep. When she was able to inhale steadily, she turned back to Isabela with great composure and said, "Thank you for thinking of me. But, I have a rule now not to do any work that I'd be too embarrassed to put on my CV. Learned that lesson the hard way after wasting four months selling pleasure aids at Exotic Wonders."
"Exotic Wonders!" exclaimed Isabela with obvious delight. She leaned in raptly towards Hawke, as though frightened that a moment's inattention might lead to a shred of the conversation slipping by her. "On Pike Street?" Hawke shoulders trembled with the effort of holding back her laughter, but she managed a nod. Isabela clapped her hands down against her thighs, her face practically beaming. "That is incredible! I can't believe that we never crossed paths; I'm there constantly. Why did you ever stop working there? What's their employee discount like?"
"It wasn't bad, actually. Forty percent off retail."
"I should work there; I'd save an absolute fortune," said Isabela thoughtfully. "Did you get anything good?"
Truthfully, Hawke had always been too self-conscious to really take advantage of the discount and, even at forty percent off, most of the more elaborate pieces were still a little rich for her blood. "A few vibrators," she admitted, "two or three dildos, and a flogger." Hawke shrugged, her face warming slightly and a flush of color rushing to the very tips of her ears. "Nothing too extravagant."
"A flogger?" asked Isabela, looking surprised and more than a little intrigued. "Not what I would have pegged you for."
Hawke nodded knowingly. "Elk leather. Soft thud, perfectly balanced." She held her drink aloft in a lazy toast. "Never used it once."
"Well, if you'd ever like the opportunity…," leered Isabela, with a theatricality that seemed moments away from resorting to actual eyebrow wagging.
Hawke smothered another uncontrollable burst of laughter against her bent arm. She was definitely going to need another beer before the afternoon was over. "Again," she managed, once she could safely speak, "thank you for thinking of me."