Characters/Pairing: F!Hawke/Fenris
Rating: M
Word Count: 1300
Prompt: from theirinliestheproblem: "Fenris/FHawke zombie apocalypse (the walking dead, if you're familiar with it)"
Notes: Didn't know The Walking Dead, but I can totally do zombies.
—
"I used to be clean," Hawke says meditatively, her chair teetering on two legs as she stares at the scorch-marked ceiling. "I have a very distinct memory of having no dirt on me at all. More than once! More than once in the same week, even."
Fenris, perched on the apartment's narrow windowsill, smirks without looking away from the street below. His grease-stained fingers twist a cloth around the barrel of his shotgun with the ease of long practice. "An unlikely fantasy."
"Don't you remember any nice things from before the Blight?"
Now his smile slips. "Very little."
"Come on, you can think of something. I know it wasn't all agonizing experimentation and sterile white lab rooms."
He cuts an annoyed glance at her, but she can see the reluctant humor beneath it. "I…enjoyed the sea. The Adriatic."
"Pft. You would."
"You…" Fenris starts, glancing out to the empty street again. His cheeks show faint color. "You would enjoy it as well, I think."
The front two feet of her chair thump to the floor again. "I'd like to see it sometime. If it's still there."
"The Blight could hardly have changed so much in three years."
"You'd be surprised," Hawke mutters, and that's when the dog starts snarling.
Fenris snaps the barrel of his shotgun closed again, smile gone. Toby gets to his feet, hackles a mile high, teeth bared as he stares at the door; Hawke slings her bag over her shoulder and palms one of the little glass jars she keeps on the side beside her handgun, ignoring the clatter of the chair overturning behind her. They've only been here a few days, but if—
The door explodes inward.
Fenris gets the first two darkspawn with one shot. Hawke takes the next one with the .45 as Toby bowls over the slender man with no lower jaw, the snap of mabari teeth loud as a gunshot itself in the tiny room. By then Hawke has the jar lit and she lets out a piercing whistle; Toby abandons the mangled mess between his feet and bounds towards her, muzzle stained red and flashing redder as the Molotov cocktail strikes the apartment's door behind him.
"God—" Hawke chokes, and throws out her hands against the blast. Huge and twice as hot as normal, fire roaring across the splintered wood of the walls and door like a starving creature. She must have mixed it too strong—the 'spawn are screaming—
"Hawke!" Fenris shouts behind her, and she whirls to see him already out the window, hand outstretched for hers. Toby has already vanished down the rickety fire escape; Hawke shoves her handgun in the back of her jeans and sprints after them both, planting one hand on the sill and vaulting over the broken radiator. Fenris's hand presses on her back as they race down the narrow stairs, pushing her as fast as she can go, faster as flame begins to lick out the open window above them. He crowds her against the wall once when the gas stove explodes glass and steel into open air, drops of blood and flame alike lighting the shoulders of his leather jacket; when it is over they move again, the last few flights of the fire escape shaking wildly beneath them as they join a panting Toby on the street.
The dead do not follow. Not this time.
"I don't understand," Hawke says, adrenaline shaking her fingers as she rakes her hand through her hair, staring upward at the ruin of their temporary shelter. "I've never seen them so high in a building before."
"A feeding frenzy," Fenris suggests, scanning the silent street as they begin to head away from the ruined apartment building. A few blood-marked 'spawn rummaging through a dumpster in the distance—nothing dangerous. Yet. "If someone died low, and the scent carried…"
"Not my favorite way to start my day," Hawke says flatly. Her heart will not slow; every inch of her skin is tingling. She says, her voice trembling, "Fenris—"
He glances over his shoulder. She does not know her expression, but something in his eyes catches fire, grows dark and hot as if she'd broken a dozen Molotovs inside him—
They fuck in a narrow alley behind a burnt-out bookstore. It's hard and fast and rough as the brick wall behind her, and when it ends Fenris bites her shoulder and Hawke muffles her shouts in her own wrist. He does not immediately let her down; instead he kisses her, again and again and again, all the things he won't say—can't say—caught up in his mouth on hers, in his hands in her hair. His jacket bunches and slides under her fingers; her hair snags on the brick and she closes her eyes, shutting out the strip of smog-grey sky capping the alley, the cheerful green lettering on the battered door opposite that reads BIANCA'S – EMPLOYEES ONLY. Just Fenris's hands, his calluses, the taste of his sweat and the thicker tang of lyrium that keeps him safe from the Blight.
Three years since the first 'spawn appeared in the south. Two since Lothering burned; just over one since the night Fenris introduced himself in the middle of the night by nearly shooting her in the heart.
Stupid, really. To fall in love in the middle of the apocalypse.
Eventually Toby whines from the mouth of the alley, and after a long, calming breath for them both Fenris sets her on her feet at last. The butt of .45 has bruised her spine; his boots are caked with dirt and week-old blood and worse. They're both sweaty messes and streaked with soot, and she is so idiotically happy she can't bear it.
"Come on," she tells him, grabbing her bag as they both straighten themselves again to decency, as he adjusts his shotgun for easier reach. "Anders wanted to meet with us at Isabela's place, anyway. Something about another breakthrough in his cure research."
Fenris scowls without heat, passing a hand over Toby's head as they reach the alley's entrance again, scanning left and right before stepping out into the street proper. "His research is more likely to destroy the world than save it."
"Maybe that wouldn't be so bad. Maybe we need to start over as a species."
Fenris stops in the middle of the street to look at her. The dumpster at the end of the road is empty now; the apartment window eight stories up where they took refuge the last few days is a charred hole, broken glass glittering on the sill and the asphalt below. Toby lets out a low whine, and Fenris says, "You sound like him."
Hawke meets his eyes. "You know I don't mean that."
A burst of gunfire goes off in the distance and glass breaks, the sound almost enough to mask Fenris's soft sigh. Hawke comes closer with a rueful smile, wrapping her free hand around his. He sighs again, his eyes flicking up to hers through his too-long white hair; Hawke bumps her shoulder against him and says, quietly, "Fenris. I would live a hundred years with this Blight if it meant I got to spend them with you."
He shakes his head; his fingers tighten around her own. "Anders could never be so patient."
"Probably not."
"I…would say the same to you, Hawke."
She smiles, and kisses him, and when Toby barks and bounds forward they set off behind him down the forgotten, nameless street, shotgun over his shoulder, Molotov cocktails on her hip, and their fingers linked between them.