Characters/Pairing: Hawke/Fenris
Rating: K+
Word Count: 1100
Notes: For "Love Your OC Day," and because after everything I've put the two of them through, they ought to have a little peace.
Soundtrack: Beth's Theme, by Olafur Arnalds.
"All right," Hawke says, doing her best to sail out of the washroom in nothing but a towel and the shreds of her dignity, "so you were right about the soapy puddles. I know you said I ought to clean them up, but to tell you the truth, between the bathtub ravishing and the perils of afterglow I don't think there's anyone in the world who'd sit up and think 'oh, yes, now for the mop,' so I'm fairly certain I should be excused. And for once nothing even broke when I knocked the little table over, so if you think…"
It's not exactly prattle, but it's absent enough that when she notices Fenris isn't answering, she lets the sentence trail off without thought. The sound falls away into the soft murmur of Orana's voice in the hall, Bodahn's low, kind response, and muffled through the window-glass the distant noise of a city settling firmly into twilight. A few Hightown merchants pass through the street below, their familiar laughter bright for a moment before ebbing into farewells, and further away a pair of starlings loose a rippling trill that descends into the early evening.
And through it all, just on the very edge of her hearing: the slow, even breaths of an elf deeply and comfortably asleep.
Even worse, he's tucked himself into the last of the daylight, deep rose and purple and a narrow blue draping over his bare shoulder as it lifts in a breath, pauses, and sinks again into shadow. He's on his side of her bed, one arm tucked up beneath the pillow, the other half-curled at his mouth; he's managed to dress himself in the snug knee-length linens he sleeps in and not much else. Even the sheets and covers lie pooled next to him, as if he'd fallen asleep so swiftly he hadn't been able to finish the job of preparing properly for the night. One foot dangles over the bed's side, long lines of lyrium lacing down over the toes, and as Hawke takes a few abrupt steps towards him, Fenris pulls in a deeper breath, stretches luxuriously so that his toes curl into a brief glimmer of dusk-light, and relaxes again without once opening his eyes.
"All right," Hawke murmurs, her throat inexplicably tight, and she turns to the windows instead.
She's not made for silence, but Fenris does not wake as she closes the curtains with a hiss of rings on brass, as she lights the barest crackling embers of the hearthfire into life again. She finds the oversized nightshirt with the rumpled sleeves and the tear along one shoulder where the dog once overwhelmed her with affection, manages to close the drawer again without the slide creaking even once, and then she stands by the bed as she towels her hair dry as best she can.
"You must have been so tired," she eventually murmurs, when she's dry as she can get herself without setting herself afire, and drapes the towel over the carved screen in the corner of the room. "You should have said something. Not that a week camping on the lee side of a cursed mountain is going to make for restful sleep for anyone, but you didn't have to come to cards with me tonight." She pauses for a moment before bending the rest of the way, gathering her discarded, sweat-stained clothes from their leaf-scattered places across her floor. "I didn't have to go either, I suppose. But I was glad I did. I was glad you did. It's never the same without everyone there."
There's a soft thump as she deposits the clothes in the hamper, then turns to the armor Fenris has shed, scale-like, in a haphazard trail at the foot of her bed. "Look at this. I'm giving you so many terrible habits." Granted, he'd been preoccupied at the time with her own leathers, but still. Principles and so forth, and the most careful man she's ever known.
It's an odd thing, putting away Fenris's armor for him. Odder still to do so with him sleeping not ten feet from her, so tired from a week of late-hour watches and irregular, violent battles that he does not once stir at the clink of steel on steel or the shirring of a leather strap. Not even a catch to his breath when she says his name, or the twitch of a single lash when she puts away his things in the drawers he has claimed as his own, or when she comes and perches on the bed beside him and begins to braid her hair for the night. In all the years she's known him, she can count on one hand the times she's seen him so defenseless.
Safe, a soft voice points out, but she resolutely finishes the braid with a fine strip of leather and does not think of it again. She learned long ago she's the farthest thing for him from safe, and if she'd move heaven and earth to keep him from waking, here, it's nothing more than anyone might do for a lover who hasn't slept well in seven days.
His face is so calm. Not a single line of tension at the corners of his eyes, or across his forehead, or at the corners of his full mouth. Just the slow rise of his chest with every inhale, the gleam of twilight on lyrium, and so much affection her heart runs nigh to cracking.
"I love you," Hawke says suddenly. The words float into the evening air, hanging like a low star, and before she can stop herself she leans over and runs her fingers gently through his hair. Enough blue light still seeps around the edges of the drawn curtains to kindle the fine, pale strands as they fall over her fingers, to show the barest glint of green as his eyes crack open at her touch.
He does not wake, not really. Just enough that he sees her, and that she sees a faint, tired lift to the corner of his mouth, and then he closes his eyes again and the slow, deep, even breaths of sleep return. She draws through his hair a few minutes more, just as slow and just as steady, until the last of the evening light fades to a dim purple, and then to grey, and then she pulls the covers over his bare chest and kisses the curve of his shoulder twice, just to let it know how much she adores it.
She closes her eyes eventually, but she lies awake a long time, listening to the sigh of a breeze against her window, the hush of the cusp of night, and the faint, low song of distant starlings.