Author's note: thank you for your comments and messages. They mean a lot to me.
Any attempts at Arcanum are courtesy of Google Translate Latin.
It was obvious to everyone that something had changed. There was never any kind of announcement or declaration, just a shift in the air that made the whole company, Varric in particular, breathe a sign of relief.
One day, Fenris was avoiding everybody, and the girls were chasing him like a mabari on a rabbit. The next, the three were inseparable. There was nowhere you could find any one of them away from the other two, whether in the Hanged Man, out on the street, or out in the wilds.
It was a bit strange, though; Fenris kept his distance, and if any physical affection passed between the girls and him Varric was thoroughly unable to detect it. They didn't even seem to talk very much. Hawke and Isabela cavorted like newly minted lovers, and Fenris watched over them like their own personal bodyguard.
So were they sleeping together or not? And was this a temporary diversion or something more permanent? Varric would normally be doing his wild speculating with Isabela, but she was being oddly tight-lipped.
Which was in itself a sort of miracle.
"Come on, Rivanni, spill. If you bagged the elf I'm pretty sure the whole city would know about it by now. So what's going on?"
"It's going," was all she would say, or some other wickedly vague reply.
Something that the notoriously open-book pirate queen would want to keep to herself was bound to be fascinating indeed.
The only sort of confirmation Varric would get from anybody was from the elf himself, when he managed to catch him alone at the bar, one night when the girls had disappeared into the crowd.
(Disappeared to Varric's eyes, anyway. He was admittedly challenged in the height department. He would guess, from the watchful glances Fenris cast about the room, that the elf didn't lose sight of the two of them for a single moment.)
"So." Varric settled down next to him. "I hear my services are no longer required."
"Did you?" Fenris fidgeted with his drink for a moment, and then smiled a little. "I suppose they aren't."
Varric grinned broadly. "Glad to hear it, Broody. Really."
And that was all he would hear of their arrangement, at least until long after the fact.
In reality, things were proceeding very slowly. Nearly a week passed after the first night at Fenris's manor without a repeat performance. They had parted happily that night with the idea of more to come, but all three became reluctant to broach the issue right away.
Hawke, for her part, had grown accustomed to Isabela's comings and goings and her disinterest in staying for breakfast, and was inclined to go with the flow. She did not want to push either one of them. Especially since they could very well disappear on her, should she go too far.
Despite this, a sort of routine was emerging; one that even her longtime affair with Isabela had not induced. With no prior arrangement, both Isabela and Hawke would wander to Fenris's manor in the mornings, and he would emerge to greet them in his tetchy way, and they would go about the day's business together. To the market, or to visit one of their friends, or to one of Hawke's little "errands" around the city. It was perfectly ordinary, in no way different from their previous adventures. Isabela would tell her bawdy stories, and Fenris would make dry commentary over their exaggerations. Hawke would babble about this and that, and bicker continuously with Fenris over his shitty attitude towards her other friends. Where any of them found work, it was efficiently taken care of. These days they were quite busy.
It was the same, but entirely different. A sort of electricity hung in the air like an exclamation point, making Marian more animated than usual, even giddy. Isabela's typically confident manner expanded into an outright swagger. And Fenris, although still guarded, was more relaxed and conversational than they had ever seen him.
The protectiveness that had emerged from him startled both women. Thoroughly accustomed to watching their own backs in battle, the two rogues had always bristled at any suggestion that they could not handle themselves. Which made it all the more startling how exciting it was, the way the elven swordsman leapt to their defense like a coiled spring snapping.
On one occasion, when a dog lord managed to slice Isabela's arm in an ambush, Fenris had reacted by cutting the attacker in half, neatly, with one emphatic stroke. In half.
Isabela had blinked up at him, then, before climbing back to her feet. It was only a shallow cut. She would hardly be bothered to dress it; her arms were densely crisscrossed with such marks from her long history of brawling. But the small bloom of red blood made the elf's face twist in anger, and made him curse in his strange language and exact bloody revenge on their attackers.
It heated the very blood in her veins, that look.
When the last of them dropped to the ground, relieved of their innards or their heads, Isabela grabbed Fenris's arm, risking the surprised flinch he made in response.
"Come tonight," she ordered him emphatically. "Hawke's place. Come tonight."
When he appeared at the Hawke estate, Isabela and Marian were sharing a chair in the library, exchanging long, drowsy kisses. He hesitated in the doorway a moment, watching. The library was large and bright, lit from all angles, and had no shadows for him to conceal himself in. It made him uneasy.
Hawke straightened when she saw him, reaching out to him around the Rivaini's body where she sat perched in her lap. "Come in! And shut the door, for heaven's sake, we can't have Sandal wandering in here. Or, Maker forbid, my mother."
Isabela groaned, with a painful expression. "Can we not mention your mother at a time like this? Major mood-killer."
"I seek only to prevent the biggest mood-killer of all - my mother dropping dead of shock at the sight of her baby girl in a... mature situation."
Hurriedly, Fenris shut and locked the door. "Does she know? About…" (he gestured to Isabela) "your relationship?"
At the same moment, Isabela was saying, "Relationship is a strong word", and Hawke was saying, "Let's stop talking about my mother now, pleasethankyou."
They glanced at each other, and then to Fenris.
"Sit with us," they requested in unison.
"Huh," he huffed as he approached. "I daresay your seat will not accommodate any more weight," he pointed out, and sank into an armchair opposite them.
"Always practical," Hawke said.
"Silly," Isabela said. "Furniture sacrificed to lovemaking died for a good cause."
Fenris sat back in the armchair, trying and failing to become inconspicuous. The two ladies were focused totally on him. He would really rather they turn back to each other.
But they were going to insist on talking with him, it appeared. Hawke's legs remained draped over the pirate's, her finery hanging loosely around her, but her hands stilled themselves, interrupted halfway down removing the buckled leather straps from Isabela's arm.
"We wanted to talk about your involvement with us."
His expression went curiously blank at this, but disappointment could not help but leech into his words. "Am I... unwelcome?"
"Oh, no no no," Hawke reassured him. "Absolutely not. We actually wanted to talk about you doing more with us."
Fenris glared. "That was not the invitation I accepted. I agreed to watch."
Isabela cut in. "I thought we should renegotiate. Seeing as I wasn't consulted last time."
He folded his arms across his chest, looking frustrated.
"What Isabela means to say," Hawke put in, giving a pointed look to Isabela, "is that boundaries are a good thing to establish, if we are going to continue seeing each other."
"That sounds wise," Fenris admitted, staring at the floor.
"We would like to do more with you. More of what we did at your manor. A lot more." Here Marian and Isabela private smiles, clearly at some earlier conversation they had shared. "But it would really help to know what you're okay with, and what you're not okay with."
"I don't... entirely know," he admitted. His arms came up from the chair, and he folded his bare hands pensively just in front of his mouth (conveniently blocking much of his expression). "Since I left my captivity. I have never allowed anyone too close. When my markings were created the pain was… extraordinary, and the memory lingers."
"Are you saying what I think you're saying?" Hawke inquired, a little surprised.
"I may well have had lovers before the lyrium ritual, but I do not remember them."
Isabela, by agreement staying quiet for now, noted his cleverly evasive wording, something Hawke was not picking up on.
Hawke went on, "Haven't you wanted to be with someone?"
"No," he said frankly. "There were other matters to contend with, when I was on the run. It was not something I gave much thought to. Until now I have preferred to be alone."
Hawke perked up considerably at this.
"Until now... so did you enjoy what we did together?"
He huffed with irritation. "Must we discuss this? Surely you know the answer to that."
"I don't," she said sincerely. "You haven't said a word about it since then."
"Of course I enjoyed it. It was… a gift."
"… A gift?"
"Yes." Clearly he was not inclined to explain further. "I will remember it always," he added.
"I - we - are very glad you enjoyed yourself. Because I thought that was pretty amazing." Hawke smiled at him a little shyly. "Having you so close by while I was, well, pretty much on display... with you wanting to be there, to see me... it made me feel very beautiful."
Fenris replied with an oddly irritable tone, "You are very beautiful."
He found this perfectly obvious, so much so that he felt utterly silly saying it.
"Thanks, um, I think." She exchanged yet another look with Isabela. "Would you like to touch me then?"
Again with the obvious questions. "Cur torques me? Stop this, Hawke."
"Because you can, you know. Any time you want. You could have joined in then, that night. And you could have me now. All of me. Tonight." She tilted her head to one side, evaluating his expression, and then added: "The same for Isabela, I assure you. If you'd rather."
"Sermone hoc facit me vis ego adduxit vinum," he muttered, shaking his head.
Hawke ignored his retreat into Arcanum. "Can you at least tell us why not?"
He threw up his hands. "No. I cannot. There are all kinds of reasons why not. And you should have reasons of your own. You two have every reason in the world to have nothing to do with me. You ignore those reasons, why I cannot imagine. You would probably ignore mine as well."
Hawke... kind offollowed that statement. "How do you know until you try?"
"You only want to know my qualms so you can argue them with me. So I do not wish to discuss them," he told them both testily.
Isabela spoke up. "Plan B, kitten."
"Oh, all right," she acquiesced, laying her head on the pirate's shoulder. "I don't think this is getting anywhere."
Isabela addressed Fenris head on, an amused sort of smirk on her lips. "I let Hawke try it her way, now we're going to do it mine."
Fenris rested his head on his left fist and steeled himself. "Whether *we* are doing anything is yet to be determined."
"Right, so here are the terms. Option 1: you go home, sit there alone and get drunk, and we stay here and have incredible athletic sex all over this room. Without you. I don't think you'll like Option 1 very much."
"It depends on what the other options are," he said darkly.
"Option 2: you can stay. But you have to give us something."
Fenris felt his head was fairly spinning already, trying to stay ahead of this conversation. A part of him still wanted these two to forget all about him, leave him alone. Another part didn't want that at all.
"What do you want from me?"
"We play a little game."
"I don't like games," he said tiredly.
"You may like this one. The only rule is that we'll do whatever you say."
"... that's all?"
"That's all. But we won't do anything if you don't instruct us. So you have to tell us what to do."
Hawke broke in. "And you have to tell us what you think of what we're doing, if we're doing it right."
"Right," Isabela agreed.
Fenris raised an eyebrow at both of them. "You want me to talk to you while you're having sex."
"Right."
"May I ask why?"
"Because you have an incredibly sexy voice and we find it very… motivating."
They were being silly again. He sighed. "I suppose that's acceptable."
"Excellent. It starts now."
Isabela sat up a little straighter as Hawke slipped off her lap to sit chastely beside her.
They watched him expectantly.