Characters/Pairing: F!Hawke/Fenris
Rating: G
Word Count: 384
Prompt: from anonymous: "Eppie Hawke and Fenris, sunrise"
—
Fenris has always been an early riser, even from the earliest places of his memory. He has seen enough sunrises to last a lifetime, suns rising dull and grey with winter, harsher through red skies in the birth of a storm, bright and brilliant and hot in a cloudless summer blue, burning away the morning mists in dewdrops made of gold and silver. There is no mystery left to enthrall him.
And yet.
And yet, the first morning he wakes in Hawke's bed, with Hawke asleep beside him and her arm across his stomach, her nose pressed against his shoulder, a thin pale line of dawn tracing down her cheek—
"Good morning," Hawke whispers, the words a breath against his skin, softer even though the dulled sensation of the lyrium stripes. One blue eye cracks open soft and sleepy, and a corner of her mouth quirks a smile. "Sleep well?"
He has. For the first time in a long time, though he does not know if that is due to contentment or exertion. He finds he doesn't particularly care. "Yes."
"Mm." She closes her eyes again, moves closer, sighing as his arm finds its way around her back, as his mouth wanders home to her forehead. He does not know how two people ought to behave in bed together when one is not master and there is no over-brimming lust. It seems a very simple thing to be so strange.
"And you?" There, a safe question.
Hawke sighs again in answer, and somehow her fingers trail their way up his stomach to palm flat against his chest, over his heart. It skips once, the traitorous thing, and beats harder as if to spite him, though Hawke says nothing and neither does he, his hand tightening against her, her feet tangling with his beneath her sheets.
It is so still. Birds outside the window, some whippoorwills calling back and forth to each other; not even the markets are awake yet at this hour, with dawn so young and the light so pale and gold.
Fenris has never seen her look so content.
Her mouth presses softly to his collarbone, her voice quiet and thick with sleep, soft even in the hush of sunrise that surrounds them. "I'm glad you're still here, Fenris."
So is he.
Characters/Pairing: Leda, Isabela, F!Hawke/Fenris
Rating: G
Word Count: 616
Prompt: from anonymous: "Isabela being the best/worst babysitter for little Leda Hawke :3"
—
Aunt Isabela is the best.
Aunt Isabela is only the best because Mama and Papa don't know how amazing she is, which is probably why she keeps getting to go on the trips she wants to take her on. It's easy to be excited about a delivery of cargo when that cargo is spices and the delivery goes to a shady merchant on the Rivaini coast, who smells of cinnamon and wears a dozen gold earrings in one ear, who winks at her and calls her delicious.
(Aunt Isabela hits him when he does that, though it's a friendly sort of blow. She doesn't take Leda back to meet him again, though.)
It's harder to keep the secrets when they come back, however, when Leda's brown as the islanders and wild-eyed with adventure and her parents are just the same as they ever were, keeping house calm and quiet and boring as any old couple gone on in years, who never knew adventure before. Still, she gives them their gifts, gold jewelry and brilliant blue silks for Mama, little shining knives for Papa (if not as good as the ones she keeps for herself), and she tells them the safe stories of sailors laughing and the way the sea looked at early dawn, and when they go to bed (so early, so sad), she lies on the low sofa in the sitting room and dreams of the way the sun glinted off her dagger, or the soft breathless hush just before the stars broke through the gap in a cave's roof, lighting up the jewels hidden there like a thousand little stars of their own.
And then one night when she's home and it's quiet she wakes just after midnight, her mouth dry and her bladder full. It's a short, irritated walk to the privy and back again—but it's on the way back when she hears the voices in the sitting room, low and familiar and how are her parents up so late, even if Isabela is here?
Eighteen years of soft-footed stealth takes her to the cracked door, and she closes her eyes as Papa's voice carries out into the night.
"And you're sure she was safe?"
"Oh, please," Isabela says, a scoff in her tone that Leda's heard too many times directed her way. "You think I'd let anything happen to her?"
"The last time you said that, she walked with a limp for three weeks."
"And she was thrilled to have it. Not every young woman gets to spend her summers hanging upside-down from my rigging."
Mama laughs, familiar and dear. "I spent enough time doing that to know how quickly the novelty wears away. You said you raided a cave?"
"Mm," murmurs Isabela, and Leda leans forward, just enough to see her cross her legs in the soft chair, her dark thighs dimly lit by the two candles burning on the end table. "Just a little one. Abandoned for years."
Papa shakes his head, but Mama leans closer, grinning, and knocks his temple gently with her own. "It's all right, Fenris. You know Leda's got to get free sooner or later."
Leda's breath catches in her throat. Her mother—pride in her voice, and love, and something stronger that she cannot name, something flickering in her father's eyes just as fiercely.
They know. Have they always known?
"Isabela," Papa says at last, and he is quiet and fond and sure. "Take care of her."
Aunt Isabela's eyes flick to the crack in the door, just for an instant, to meet Leda's in the shadows. Her heart stutters; Isabela smiles, quick as light on a blade, and says, "With all I've got."
Characters/Pairing: Varric, F!Hawke/Fenris
Rating: G
Word Count: 368
Prompt: from my-lord-magikarp: "Fenris and Varric talking about anything and everything at the Hanged Man, or another appropriate place."
Original Notes: Somewhere in the middle of Act One. Fenris can't read but he's got Opinions; Varric doesn't know he can't read, though it's an interesting dynamic.
—
It's the middle of the day, so they're not drinking; it's too early for cards; there's no job to rush off to or mercenaries to kill. And yet, here they are, sitting in his suite, and…it's nice.
Certainly nicer than Varric expects, considering the natural taciturnity of the elf currently occupying the armchair across form his desk. If it were Isabela, she'd be needling him about the latest chapter of Loose Cannon; if it were Aveline, she'd be doing the same thing for a different reason, which he suspects would be entirely less pleasant. More risky in terms of his printing press's integrity, anyway.
But here they are, having a perfectly sanguine conversation about linguistic complications in translations in comparison to strictly transformative works, and it's—nice. The elf has a number of opinions, certainly, some of which are rather entrenched—Varric takes vocal offense to his position that stories set down in print are immutable from that point on—but hey, he's had bitterer arguments with stubborner people, and at least Fenris is willing to entertain the opposing position.
"It does not change," Fenris says, leaning forward in his chair. "The words are in ink, black and white on the page. Any chance to alter them is therefore forfeit."
Varric snorts. "Ever heard of an addendum? Errata? Nobody's perfect, elf, least of all a writer."
"Except you, naturally."
"Naturally."
Fenris rolls his eyes, smirking. It's a good look on him, a sort of rebel-with-a-cause disdain for authority, and Varric makes a mental note to give Donovan a little more nuance in future. "You are nothing if not modest, dwarf."
"What can I say? Some of us were just born for the burden of power."
Fenris laughs outright at that, and for the briefest instant Varric catches a glimpse of why Hawke is so aflutter over the blasted man. And then—speak of the devil, but if Hawke doesn't walk in right at that moment, paused mid-step at the sight of the two of them so comfortably entrenched in his suite.
"Am I interrupting something?" she asks, her eyebrows lifted in uncertainty.
"No," says Varric, looking to Fenris, surprised to find it true, "just a conversation between friends."
Characters/Pairing: F!Hawke/Fenris
Rating: K+
Word Count: 376
Prompt: from lilouapproves: "If you're still doing them, how about Fenris and Hawke having a few drinks together?"
—
Hawke doesn't hold her liquor, Isabela tells him right before the first time. He thinks he understands. He's seen so many excesses before, seen magisters and slaves alike sick to death from alcohol. He thinks he is prepared.
Now, years later, he is still surprised every time.
"Fenris," Hawke says behind him, and before he can even begin to look her fingertips are tap-tapping down his chest, smoothing across the leather over his ribs. "Fenris, you've got your shirt on."
"Yes," he says, catching her fingers in his own, holding her hands captive as he twists on the couch in her library.
Hawke bends forward, apparently not noticing the awkward angle as her cheek slips against his own; she wiggles her fingers in his grasp and says, "Why?"
"Why?" he says, distracted by the way her hands slip and slide against his, by the faint tendrils of unfocused magic that glide so freely from her skin to his own.
Hawke sighs, turns her head to mouth the skin beneath his ear. "Why, what?"
Fenris shakes his head, his eyes slipping shut, his grip on Hawke's hands loosening despite himself. Only a few glasses of wine—and a tumbler of unwatered whiskey—and a swallow of something clear and Nevarran—
"Fenris," Hawke sighs into his ear, and he shudders as her hands spread across his chest, as she fumbles her way through one, two, three opening clasps. Then her hands are hot on his bare chest, sparking bits of lyrium in their wake, and he shudders again.
"Be careful, Hawke," he warns her, hardly knowing what he says, hardly caring that his hand reaches up, finds the back of her neck to hold her mouth against his throat. A wolf's throat—
Hawke laughs, a low, throaty thing that ripples down into his stomach, and he presses a blind kiss to her jaw. She laughs again—and then somehow she slithers over the back of the couch until she is mostly in his lap, one knee crooked between his thigh and the arm of the sofa, her arms tight around his neck, her tongue in his mouth.
Why—
Why not, he decides, and spends the last thought in his head on the hope that the door is locked.