Fenris eyes the Xbox controller in my hands with the adamant distrust normally reserved for sleeping tigers. "Is this really necessary?" he asks for the umpteenth time.

I shrug, half-apologetically as the console sings on, as I resume the game I started the night he arrived. "We've been dancing around this for two days because you wanted me to wait for your day off," I point out. "I'm out of ideas."

"We must have missed something," he insists stubbornly. He glances at the sheets of notebook paper we've taped to the wall, covered with our combined ideas. I've labeled one sheet Texas—it's covered with precise, detailed accounts of each encounter with…well, someone, each with his or her own little column. My half-print, half-cursive scrawl loops almost playfully around his sharp, blocky letters (and for some reason, that image makes me really happy). The sheet I've labeled Kirkwall, however, is depressingly blank, save for a single line scribbled here and there (and don't even get me STARTED on the "Flemeth" page).

"We're missing the entire other half of…whatever this is," I reply distractedly, already absorbed in the game's action. "And I don't know of any other place to start looking."

His gaze is still fixed on the wall of notes and half-baked theories, surrounded by charts and weather reports. "So we've merely spent the last two days organizing our combined ignorance," he snorts in frustration.

"Collecting data," I amend, flashing him a smile. "Collecting data and looking for a connection."

Fenris makes some inarticulate noise of masculine distress as the miniature him on-screen falls (I adjust the difficulty level and a few tactics slots so THAT doesn't happen again). "Connections, yes," he pants. "Connections are fine. But—must we look for them here?"

I pause the game and scoot closer to him on the couch. He jerks his eyes away from the television as my knee bumps his. Instinctively I fold my hands into his, tightening my grip when he squeezes back. "This can wait," I say definitively. "I'll do this part tomorrow, while you're at work. I'll take very detailed notes—"

"I am no coward," he interrupts with a growl. "If this must be done, I am with you." I don't have a name for his expression: it's keen discomfort, rapt attention, and sick fascination all rolled up in twisted rictus of blank. "And as you said, we've been avoiding this for the last two days." He swallows hard and repeats, "I am with you." He nods at the controller, face hard with determination. I pick up the bulky black handset in numb fingers, thumb hovering over the "Resume" button. "Be gentle with me, dulca," he deadpans.

I'm going to need both my hands. But I nudge his arm out of the way with my shoulder and press my back into his side. He stiffens, but only for half a second, before slowly settling his arm around the front of my shoulders. The air shudders in and out of him; I find myself breathing in time with the expansion and contraction of his ribs against my back. We stay like that, curled together like pieces of ribbon, as I blitz us through the first act. He ducks his face into the hollow of my neck (Christ and Cocoa Puffs and is THAT distracting) and groans a steady stream of Tevinter prayers and swears as I guide Hawke through Kirkwall, through quests that suddenly aren't just quests anymore. They're someone's life. His life. Fenris's grip on my shoulders tightens convulsively, and I know, without knowing how I know, that it means he remembers what's happening as the game disc spins in the console's tray.

Sometimes I forget that research, whatever the form, has its downsides.

I call a halt around sundown, just before heading into the Deep Roads. Even at my breakneck pace, Act I has taken us most of the day. I'm hungry, and the sheer weirdness of what we're doing is a constant, tinny buzz in the back of my mind. I untangle myself from Fenris's arm and stretch the stiffness out of my limbs.

"What is it?" he demands. "Why did you stop?"

"Because I'm tired," I reply shortly. "I'm hungry, and could use a break. You probably could too."

"I'm fine," he snaps.

I give him a long, critical look. There are furrows in the hair on one side of his head from all the times he's raked his free hand through the snow-white mess. He's gone pale underneath the permanent tan, and I know for a fact he hasn't eaten anything either. "No, you're not," I state with authority. We all have our areas of expertise; Rip-van-Winkling through eight straight hours of research (and the crappy feeling afterwards) happens to be one of mine. Ditto for barely clinging to the edge of sanity (but that's recent). "An hour," I promise. I whistle for Scooter and clip on her leash. "An hour to eat and stretch our legs."

He stares hard, and for a moment I think he's going to refuse on principle. But then his stomach growls revealingly. He heaves a sigh of grudging defeat and pushes himself off the couch. "An hour, then," he concedes reluctantly.

We end up at a trailer park eatery. It's a riot of international cuisine (or what a college town THINKS is international cuisine), taco stands nestled beside noodle bars and curry huts. I sense more than hear Fenris's deep inhalation as he draws in the olfactory cacophony. "Why must you be right?" he grumbles, loping off to one of the taco stands.

I savor the opportunity to just watch him while I wait in line for chicken satay (creeper Erin is creeping, I know). He's about as inconspicuous as a parrot among pigeons, with the neat, blue-white lines of his markings poking out of the long-sleeved t-shirt, the shock of white hair, and the elven features. But he's used to this—this modern-life business. He shouldn't fit, staring pensively at the menu with the rest of the small crowd and piling extra jalapeños onto the mess of beef, rice and beans. But he does. And I like it. I like that he fits.

Even though I know he doesn't.

Fenris watches impassively as I slide the pieces of chicken into a bowl of sticky white rice. "How is this possible?" he asks abruptly. "Any of it."

"You know I don't know," I reply softly.

"I have spent an entire day watching my life unfold at your hands," he continues as if I hadn't spoken. "My life, which is also a story, which is also—what? A toy?"

"It's a whole new level of weird, even for us," I agree uncertainly. "Are you okay?"

A puff of mirthless laughter stirs the white fringe that's dropped into his face. "No. Just—just tell me there is a point to this."

"There is," I try to reassure him. "I think. It's kind of a crackpot idea, but if your being, uh, here changes anything there, maybe it'll show up somehow."

"And if it doesn't?"

I shrug casually as I throw away my garbage and untie Scooter from the picnic table. "Negative results are still results," I tell him with a chipper smile. "If the gameplay doesn't change, we can close that line of inquiry and open new ones."

The streetlights turn his eyes to obsidian pinpricks as he scowls darkly at me. "You're enjoying this," he accuses me incredulously.

Oh Jesus. This toeing the line between rigorous scientific inquiry and walking on eggshells is exhausting. Time to come clean. "Yeah, okay," I state bluntly. "I am. But not for the reasons you're afraid of."

"Which are what, exactly?" he sneers, folding his arms across his chest.

"You're afraid I get off on this," I answer with quiet conviction. "Playing God, playing with the lives of people you knew." He gapes at me (ha, guess I was right) as I continue softly, "But that's not it. I'm enjoying this because even though the situation is fucked up, and I mean fucked up, I'm back in my element. Doing research," I clarify at his blank stare. "Finding answers. I'm good at it. It's nice to be doing what I'm good at, for once."

Heavy, thoughtful silence swells in the empty spaces between the jingle of Scooter's tags and the tap-tap of my sneakers on concrete. Our shadows stretch beneath us as we pass under the streetlights, skip behind us as we climb the steps to my front door. I shove my hands into the pockets of my hoodie, leash and all, and try to ignore the fact that I'd much rather be reaching for his hand. "Can I ask you something?"

"Is it possible to stop you?" he retorts, still crackling with temper.

It's a deliberate (not to mention risky) choice, taking that as a yes. "What were you doing on the Wounded Coast in the first place? Y'know, before you ended up here."

"Why is that important?"

"It'll give me an idea of when to stop." Screw it. I curl my hand around the crook of his elbow and spin him to face me. "Listen—if I could make this less weird, I would." The dim glow from the porch light plays across his face, leaving it in shadow as I fruitlessly search for a reaction. "You have to know that."

His markings tickle against my fingertips as he gently slides out of my grasp and pushes my door open. On bare, silent feet he pads into the kitchen and starts a pot of coffee, face hidden as he resolutely puts his back to the living room. The gurgle and drip of the coffee maker, the ethereal lilting of the game's background music—all just noise that scoops through the oppressive quiet and trickles back into the empty space. I perch on the edge of the coffee table, eyes on the note-wall. Maybe he's right—maybe we should be looking here instead of in the game—

"It started out as an ordinary day." Fenris's soft baritone cuts through my deepening angst with the finality of a blade. "They always did. Hawke asked me to accompany her on some errand—do you know, I didn't even care what it was," he interrupts himself. "Anything to get out of that—that shithole, as you call it. The Viscount wanted one thing, the Arishok another, and somehow we ended up on the Wounded Coast, pinned down by marauders with some of the city guard. And then—" He steps into the living room and hands me a mug of coffee (complete with cream and sugar), and waves his hand illustratively at the couch. "You know the rest."

My slow sigh of relief raises tiny, aromatic waves across the surface of my mug. "That, I can work with," I say brightly. The confident certainty I feel is a welcome strangeness after so much doubt, so much fear. We fold back into each other on the couch, picking up right where we left off. "You still with me, babe?" I ask softly.

My hair rustles dryly against his cheek as he nods. "Somehow I doubt I'll like the Deep Roads any better the second time," he sighs resignedly, and tucks me more securely into his side.

I speed us through the end of Act I (and he was right—he doesn't like it any better the second time). We swap out coffee for something a little more toxic and mind-numbing, as things start getting down to the wire. The sickly sweet symmetry of the alcohol hangs in the air like a fog, pregnant with all the things that have changed. All the ways we've both changed.

"Blue," Fenris blurts abruptly, breath salty with tequila and lime. "Deep sky blue."

"Come again?"

"My favorite color is deep sky blue. And in retrospect I should have listened to you about the peanut butter." He tightens his grip on my shoulders and buries his face in my hair, breathing ragged as Hawke and her companions jump from a loading screen and land on the Wounded Coast. "That's it," he continues, tone sharp and eyes on the screen. "That's the ambush."

The tip of my nose bumps his jaw as I knock back the watered-down dregs of pure alcohol in my glass. "Showtime," I mutter darkly. "Hang in there babe—we're almost done."

Speaking in terms of health and stamina bars, the fight goes rather well. No one falls; my earlier tactics adjustments ensure that everyone can pretty much fend for themselves. And when the dust settles—

"I'm still here," Fenris murmurs, sounding stunned. "I'm still here, and I'm still there."

I move the joysticks on the controller. Hawke moves around in spastic circles, screen-Fenris following in her wake as he always does. I send them back to Kirkwall. I bring up the "Gather Your Party" screen: game-Fenris is still there, hunched and ready, as always. I press a few buttons and run aimlessly around Kirkwall for another fifteen minutes before officially calling it. "So what now?" I chime happily. If I think about all the reasons why I'm happy he's still here, I'll probably explode. "Bacon and toast?"

"Old Gods, yes."

I fold into his tight, desperate hug with no resistance at all, practically purring with pleasure at the pressure of his palms on my back. And I remember something. "Hey, speaking of deep sky blue—"