apocalisse asked you: Since you asked… 1, F!Hawke and Fenris :) - Hot, Steamy Kiss
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Characters/Pairing: F!Hawke/Fenris
Rating: T
Word Count: 1200
Prompt: #1 - hot, steamy kiss
Notes: I took this completely literally and I don't even feel sorry about it; also, written under the influence of powerful painkillers, so…take it for what it is.
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Sometimes, very rarely, when the stars are aligned just so and the wind comes north-easterly with the tiniest hint of the sea and the Maker himself drops the bare edge of a smile in her direction, Hawke catches Fenris humming in the bath.
Today, as it turns out, is one of those exceedingly rare days, because as Hawke slips into her bedroom with a glass of water in one hand and an apple between her teeth, a faint snatch of…something floats through the barely-ajar door on the other side of the room. The crisp scent of her soap hangs in the air around her, and the room is heavy with heat and the dampness of open water; she places the apple and her glass on the desk as quietly as she can, delighted beyond reason, and creeps to the doorway of her bathing room on her toes.
And of course, there is Fenris in her enormous copper-and-wood tub, looking for all the world like some decadent nobleman sprawled amid his luxuries. His head leans heavily against the curved rim of the tub, his eyes closed, his face pointed to the ceiling; Hawke follows the bared lines of lyrium ribbing down his throat and chest to where they disappear beneath the steaming water, vaguely embarrassed that her breath goes so shallow at the sight of them but not embarrassed enough to turn away. One long, muscled leg stretches out before him, his bare, callused foot dangling over the tub's lip; his other leg is bent at the knee, more lyrium curving stark and white across his dark skin where it rises from the bathwater in a delicious contrast that makes her mouth go dry.
Even as she watches he hums again, slipping one hand behind his head, the lyrium over his throat just barely rippling with the sound. Water drips from his elbow, slides in rivulets down the muscles of his arm and across his chest, and it's only a few measures of a song she doesn't know but his voice is good and strong and he looks utterly content amid the steam curling around his shoulders—
And the most attractive man she's ever met is lying naked in her bathtub, and Hawke will be damned before she lets an opportunity like this go to waste.
(Isabela, she thinks dazedly, will die when she tells her this.)
"Knock knock," she singsongs, rapping her knuckles against the open door. "All decent in here?"
"No," Fenris says without bothering to open his eyes, but she can see a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. The room is much muggier than she'd expected, she realizes, practically a sauna between the heat and the steam and the closed windows, and in only a few moments her clothes have begun to stick to her skin.
Somehow, she doesn't care in the slightest. "My favorite way to find you," Hawke tells him, seating herself carefully on the edge of the tub. He looks at her, then, eyelids lifting just enough for slivers of green to fix to her face, and Hawke brushes a bit of damp white hair from his forehead. "I don't see how you can breathe in this. It's like a mabari's sitting on my chest, the air's so thick."
"I would have it hotter," he admits, glancing at the clear summer skies out the high window. "But this does well enough."
Hawke quirks an eyebrow and dips one hand into the water by his hip. "Say when," she says, grinning, and when he makes no objection she reaches for fire, threading heat down her arm and wrist and palm until a fresh plume of steam billows out from the water. It takes only a few seconds—though even that is long enough to nearly scald her fingers—and then Fenris lets out a long, satisfied sigh and sinks further into the water.
"Better?" she asks, shaking out her hand ruefully.
"Better," he says, and this time when he looks at her the heat from the bath has slid into his eyes, the green made darker with open suggestion. "Thank you, Hawke."
"Just don't come running to me when your flesh starts falling off your bones. That water's almost boiling."
"Heated baths were a rare privilege in Minrathous. I enjoy the…"
"Freedom?" she suggests, propping one hand on the bathtub's rim as she leans nearer.
"Indulgence," he says instead, and lifts one hand from the water to wrap it around her wrist. His hand is hot, his pulse thumping hard and quick in his fingertips, and the lyrium striped across his palm tingles and pricks as the bathwater runs in warm trails across the back of her hand.
Hawke grins, shaking her head, at once amused and exasperated at the sudden racing of her heart. "If that's an invitation, I have to decline. At least for a few minutes, anyway; I've no intention of reddening up like a lobster for the sake of a quick cuddle."
Fenris laughs, the bathwater rippling with the motion, steam puffing away from his mouth in a little cloud of disturbed air. His head falls back against the bathtub's curved lip again, eyes half-closed and hooded as he watches her, and then his thumb strokes very gently and very deliberately up the inside of her wrist, and Hawke wonders if he can feel the skipping beats of her heart. "Not only that," he murmurs, that same terrible promising smile sliding across his face again.
The most attractive man she's ever met— "Damn you," Hawke says roughly, and throws her other arm to the copper edge of the tub across him in a clumsy brace as she leans down and kisses him. Fenris lifts himself to meet her, water sloshing away from his ribs as he rises, as his mouth comes hot and wet and eager against hers; one dripping hand curls around the back of her neck, steaming water trickling down her spine, into her shirt already stuck to her back with sweat and humidity. He strokes the side of her neck once, twice, and she shudders at the gentleness of it; he laughs into her mouth and she tastes his own sweat, and the tang of lyrium, and a deeper something made of smoke and leather that she has always loved, cannot help but love now.
Eventually, though, he pulls away, or she does—somehow they find themselves apart, anyway, and Hawke blows out a breathless chuckle between her teeth. "You are ridiculous," she tells him, because he is, this perfectly ridiculous elf soaking lazily in her bathtub in water a thousand degrees hotter than it should be, his cheeks flushed with heat and more than that, eyes smug and satisfied and dark with desire as he watches her fruitless attempts to smooth her curling hair away from her face, to pull her hopelessly damp shirt away from her chest.
"No more so than you," Fenris points out, eyebrow lifting, and raises both hands from the water to cross them behind his head. He closes his eyes. Hums a half-measure of something low and gentle.
Hawke looks at him a long moment, quietly.
Then she says, "Oh, screw it," and a moment later her shirt sails off into the white-curling steam that surrounds them.
She does scald a little, just at first, but it is worth it.
