disclaimer: disclaimed
dedication: to that little bit of song that won't leave your mouth.
notes: hey, look, just in time for DA Day!
notes2: don't let the neighbourhood hear — oh wonder.
chapter title: (are we not) good enough
summary: It's not a very good kiss. — Fenris/Merrill.
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"Will you trust me?"
Merrill's back scrapes against solid stone, the alienage wall cool and rough behind her. Everything is just a little off-kilter: sky too dark, the air thick with sick and haze, no sound and no light, no light.
"What?" she manages, strangled.
"Will you trust me," he stresses every syllable, panting fast, too fast, right in her ear. The words are nearly a hiss, spit out through clenched teeth. His breath is ragged, hot against her throat. "Quickly, witch, we have no time. Will you trust me?"
"I—yes, I s'pose, though I don't see—"
And Fenris kisses her.
It's not a very good kiss.
For a moment, Merrill is too shocked to respond, can only think: it's not a very a good kiss on a loop. More an awkward mash of lips than anything else, really. Fenris holds himself very still against her, one arm above her head, the other biting in white-knuckled at her waist. He's very careful, but tooth-chip sharp, somehow. It's not a very good kiss, and ten heartbeats pass, and Merrill findings herself blinking up at a very irate Fenris, and it's still not a very good kiss.
Merrill opens her mouth to tell him, I'm sorry, Fenris, but you're not very good at this—
A soft sound escapes her, instead, half-muffled when Fenris catches her lip. It's an accident, that quick inhale hot and hungry.
It's not such a bad kiss anymore.
Merrill finds half his name in her throat, wolf in a language that tastes like music to speak. She stands up on her toes, clinging suddenly to chase his mouth and oh, Creators, it's not a bad kiss at all, it's startlingly nice, like kissing a quiet misty morning with the sun shining through. The bite of his knuckles loosens, turns more gentle than she'd have thought he'd know how to be, to drop to the meager cradle of her hip.
She doesn't know how long they kiss. It might be minutes, or hours, or several moonless nights. Skin tingling in the cool air, her arms wrapped around his neck; she has to be so close to reach his mouth.
A tiny fractal of a moan slides out of her unbidden.
Fenris freezes in place.
(Oh, all out of time.)
Earth and sky invert. Merrill crashes to the ground, all of the places where their bodies had touched burning, limbs akimbo. Everything spins dizzily for a moment; the ground is hard, and she's going to have bruises. Near chokes on her own tongue, all alone suddenly, aching absolutely everywhere. Bruises, yes, and not just on her flesh.
But oh, how deserved those bruises are.
Oh, Creators, all she can hear is the frantic pound of her own heart, and the wavering pull of her lungs.
Merrill sits there for a very long while with her hand over her mouth. She's halfway to numb before she figures out how to force herself up and into standing, shaking off the shock. True night settles over the alienage.
She probably ought not stay where she is.
Getting up takes more effort than she wants to admit. Her knees feel like jelly, and they only barely hold her up. She gropes at the wall, stone into sand beneath her fingertips.
And so Merrill stumbles home.
Fenris kissed her.
(That was some kiss, kitten, Merrill hears Isabela say, inside of her head, so smoky and shrewd like narrowed eyes. Be careful with that heart of yours.)
He'd dumped her in the dirt and run off, too, but Merrill can't say she didn't entirely not expect that part. Really, that was the most familiar bit of the evening, if she's honest about it!
But Fenris—Fenris had kissed her.
And Merrill had let him!
She has to touch her mouth again, just to be sure that it's still there. It might have run off, too, for all she can tell! Merrill isn't always so certain about these things.
Now there's just the matter of deciding what to do next.
Her hands shake a little as she fights with the doorknob to her home. The old thing sticks; it always has done. But she gets inside eventually. The perfectly ordinary, comforting dark of the place envelops her in quiet.
Merrill can feel her shoulders unknotting already.
There's something to be said for coming home, even if it doesn't always feel like home. There's no wind tonight, but when there is, it's cold enough to rattle the shutters the same way it does an aravel. Merrill closes the door behind her, but the night air dribbles in unfiltered through the hole in the roof, starlit indigo blue.
She stands there for a little while, listening to the quiet.
It wasn't a dream. It can't have been.
But what else could it be?
Fenris? Kissing her? Preposterous!
And yet—
Merrill touches her mouth again. It stings a little from where he'd bitten down. A sharp little thrill goes all through her.
No, it hadn't been a dream.
It might be better if it were, but it wasn't.
Merrill takes another shuddering breath. There's nothing else, now; it's late, and Fenris is long gone. They won't talk about, she knows—that's not the way Fenris is—and so maybe it's better that she doesn't think about it at all.
It can't hurt, that way.
She staggers to her bedroom, and sinks down into the nest of ragged blankets on her pallet. Blows a lock of hair out of her eyes.
"Well," Merrill says aloud, huffs, to no one in particular. Her heart beats too fast, and she can feel his breath against her throat all over again. "That's—that's alright, then. Isn't it? It's fine?"
But there's no answer. She doesn't know why she was waiting for one.
Merrill closes her eyes, and tries to sleep.
—
It started—as most things do, Fenris is aware—because Hawke got a stupid idea in her head.
Let it be said that most of Hawke's ideas are stupid. Fenris hasn't forgotten that the woman had thought that challenging the Arishok to single combat was a sane course of action. That'd she'd come out of it alive is irrelevant. Most of Hawke's ideas are stupid, and he will stand by that assessment for all of his life.
But this one—perhaps this one is less stupid than he would like to give it credit for. Fenris watches the new Templar rounds from the shadows above the witch's abode, suddenly viscerally aware of the way they linger. They'd turned down the square, but now they stand outside and they do not move for a moment. Not so long as to be untoward, but not so short as to be anything but a very careful lingering.
Something in Fenris' stomach contracts in low, pulsing warning.
They are watching the place.
Fenris knows that there is a single, guttering candle in the window. The witch leaves it alight 'til just before she sleeps. He knows this only because he'd overheard her, once, cheerfully chattering to Isabela about Dalish midwinter traditions; the candle in the window had been in honour of one of her goddesses, descending into the dark with a single flame to illuminate the way. He could not say for certain why the conversation had stuck in his head.
Only that it did.
And Fenris thinks about it, now, innards twisting tighter with every second passing that the heavily-armoured humans remain motionless outside the witch's door. If they take a step closer, he may not be held accountable for the coming bloodshed.
Steel flashes.
And the humans move on.
Fenris exhales the breath he hadn't known he'd been holding. He doesn't blink until they've gone, left the alienage's iron gates without a whisper, and the square is empty again. Slumping backwards 'til his spine hits stone, he tips his head back to stare at the sky. The air is indigo blue, shimmering with stars.
(The conversation had gone like this:
"Look after Merrill for me, won't you."
"No."
"Er, that wasn't a question, darling, I wasn't asking! Keep an eye on her, please."
"…"
"Fenris."
"What's got into you, Hawke?"
"Oh, I couldn't possibly imagine. Maybe nothing at all! I just want someone to keep an eye on her when I'm gone. I'm not always going to be here, you know."
"Gone?"
Her lips part over her teeth. Laughter, sharp as a knife. "I'm not dying, if that's what you're worried about. Maker, you're sounding nearly as dramatic as me!"
"Hawke…"
"Please, Fenris. I don't want to have to ask Varric, I've asked enough of him. Look after her."
"…Fine."
And it sits at the back of his throat like acid, because he doesn't know; Hawke has been strange for weeks, ever since Isabela disappeared. There is not point in trying to divine what's going through her head. Hawke is inscrutable, and always when she doesn't need to be. Fenris is learning, slowly, that she does mean well, even if that doesn't always come across.
He doesn't know what Hawke had asked of Varric. The truth is that perhaps he doesn't want to know.)
Fasta vass.
He hates it when Hawke is right.
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tbc.