Anonymous asked you: F!Hawke/Fenris - Goofy Kiss

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Characters/Pairing: F!Hawke/Fenris
Rating: G
Word Count: 1200
Prompt: #17 - goofy kiss

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The Champion's out in her garden again. Jule can't help but notice, can't help but pause, either, jabbing her embroidery needle through a loose bit of fabric in order to pull the curtain a little further away from the window. She's not supposed to be watching the Champion—certainly not supposed to speak to her, according to her mother's frequent lectures on her general unsuitability for a young noblewoman's friendship—but the window of her little sitting room looks directly over the Champion's back garden, and despite the lectures she can't help but be fascinated by her rather unusually-titled neighbor.

"Jule," comes a voice at the door, and she drops the white-lace curtain hurriedly, plucking the needle from its home in the embroidered branches of an apple tree. Her mother takes a few steps into the room, dressed for company. "I'm going over to Charity's for lunch. Will you be all right here by yourself?"

"Of course," she says, as easily as she can. "Say hello to Elery for me."

A faint tinge of suspicion chases across her mother's face, but after a moment it gives way to a smile. "I will, dear," she tells her, and departs, and the moment she is gone Jule abandons her embroidery to the cushion beside her and looks back to the window.

The Champion is still there, kneeling on the ground beside the old stone bench half-hidden under a broad-spreading tree. It had shocked her, the first time she'd realized the woman elbow-deep in dirt was the noble Hawke everyone was so concerned with. At the time the garden had been terribly overgrown, years of neglect and misuse turning it into a massive green nest of weeds and poison ivy, the rather uncouth men who'd been in residence before her little concerned with maintenance—but then one day she'd looked down and there had been Hawke, not yet the Champion, in the most ridiculous broad-brimmed hat, a pile of weeds behind her measuring as large as the massive mabari dozing at her hip. Jule could hardly help watching, really, as week by week the weeds receded, and a little path emerged, and somewhere under the ivy-choked tree a picturesque stone bench had found its way to light again.

She is not in her hat today. A shame, really—she will not be out long, then—but as Hawke sits back on her heels and scrubs her forearm across her eyes the back door opens and a voice calls out from inside. Hawke answers something—Jule can't quite understand the words through the closed window, and she isn't daring enough to open it for the sake of true eavesdropping—but a moment later, the dark, tattooed elf strides out into the garden to meet her.

Jule sucks in a breath, her cheeks coloring despite the distance and her own relative privacy. This has been an entirely different thing, watching the elf's relationship to Hawke change and strain and resolve itself over the years. She's only gotten glimpses of it from her window, the tail ends of some fights and the beginnings of others and brief, painful moments of tears and the Lady Amell holding her daughter before she died; but in the last few months something has changed between them, something very deep and very strong, and in spite of her own misgivings it makes her—happy to see them together.

The elf stands over her, lean shadow thrown across her shoulders, and asks something Jule cannot hear. Hawke nods, smiling at him over her shoulder, and that seems to be enough; the elf—Fenris, she's almost certain he's called—moves to sit on the stone bench, crossing one leg lazily at the knee, pointing at some patch of weeds in the far corner with a murmured word. That startles a sharp retort out of the Champion, but it's followed by a quick, bright laugh, and even as Jule covers her mouth to stifle her own laughter the Champion reaches over and tickles the bottom of the elf's bare foot.

He jerks away, scowling, and both Hawke and Jule snicker; then the Champion pushes to her feet and stands before the elf on the bench, her hair sticking to her cheeks, his green eyes narrowed in suspicion that is clear enough even from Jule's lofty perch. Hawke says something, bending low, and the elf answers her in kind—and then, grinning, Hawke takes his face in both dirt-stained hands, smearing earth across his cheeks and down his jaw. The elf sputters, batting at her hands, brushing at his own face ineffectually—Jule laughs again despite herself, because as terrifying as he looks when he is angry she knows he can be surprisingly fastidious about his own appearance—but before he can rid himself of either the dirt or Hawke's groping fingers the Champion pulls his mouth up to meet hers.

Jule gasps, colors, and turns away. The apple tree with its silver-needle decoration looks back at her cheerfully, entirely complacent in the afternoon sunlight; when she musters the courage to look down again, Fenris has risen from the bench, Hawke's arms twined around his shoulders, his own hands knotted between the blades of her shoulders. They are still kissing, his complaints about the dirt apparently forgotten, and continue to do so for some time—certainly longer than Jule has ever seen people kiss, certainly longer than her mother would deem as anything even approaching appropriate. Still, when at last they pull apart, there is a contentment in the lines of his shoulders and the ease of his limbs that she has never seen in him before, and Jule can't help the foolish smile that spreads across her face at the sight of it. They've been unhappy together so long, and it's—rather nice to see something else, even if she knows she shouldn't be watching in the first place.

The Champion reaches up, then, to brush a bit of the dirt from his cheek. She murmurs something and the elf laughs, catching her still-soiled wrists in his hands, and as they make their way together into the privacy of the Champion's home Jule allows the curtain to drop across the window again. Her embroidery still sits placidly beside her, a perfectly respectable diversion for a perfectly respectable young woman with perfectly respectable friends. It's not that she dislikes it, not really—even her mother could not have forced her to embroidery had she hated the idea—but…

But she has never smeared dirt over a lover's cheeks, and she has never been kissed like that.

Tomorrow, she decides, she will invite the Champion to tea. Her mother will be scandalized and her father will purse his lips and lift his eyebrows, and yet, she doesn't care. The Champion brought a bench and a path and a garden and a home out of a weed-choked mess; all Jule has is an apple tree made of green thread and a silver needle, but that's more than nothing and she's eager to learn what nineteen years of respectability haven't taught her. Hawke knows; she's watched her learn it. She hopes she's smart enough to learn it, too.

Smiling, Jule plucks the apple tree from the window seat. It's just a bit of colorful thread woven through white fabric but—she's chosen her pattern to follow, here, and she thinks, somehow, it's a start.