The hour's journey to the lake took them only twenty minutes at full gallop. Their horses jumped over small creeks that fed into the steadily flowing main waterway. The river became knee deep by the time it joined itself to still blue waters. The mountain range to the far west and the vanishing plateau to the east were the only obstructions to the sky. A sparse line of pine trees followed the far edge of the lake, and it is there they dismounted after finding a space unlittered by rocks and other washed up debris.

Despite the hard ride, Fenris arrived unwinded and perfectly poised. Anders was, if anything, wilder in temper than before. He grabbed the bedroll and began dismounting before his horse even reached a full stop. With a strong shake, he spread the bedroll out wide along the ground. He yanked his clothes off in quick, angry motions. The Tevinter chantry amulet he had taken to wearing swung widely before settling again on his neck. Down to his boots and trousers, he cursed at the difficulty of undoing his boot laces.

Fenris looked on with amusement, still down to his tunic and leggings from their last stop. He dismounted leisurely and gathered the reins of Anders' horse. He coughed an introduction. "I am trying to calculate," he interjected, "how many locations for us you spotted. Including those you didn't share."

Anders stopped for a moment, the question intriguing enough to make him momentarily forget his haste. "At first," Anders admitted, "I didn't want to waste my chances. I gave you only a small fraction of what I saw. After you asked, I told you everything. Then towards the end, when we argued, I stopped mentioning them entirely. But honestly, by then every third patch of ground looked appealing to me."

"Good," Fenris said, nodding. He tilted his head, eyes fixed blankly, as his lips murmured in an unshared equation. Satisfied, he shed his tunic. "You must have imagined us in over a hundred places today." He tied the horses' reins to the nearest tree, inhaling the pine scent deeply as he turned back around.

Anders grinned. "We do get around, don't we?" The mage finally succeeded in unlacing one boot and turned to the other. "And there I thought the desert would be boring. Silly me." He wiggled one foot free from its boot and sock and stretched, comfortable in his nakedness over the soft bedding. He turned his attention to his second boot, again cursing the naughtier portions of Andraste's body. "Also, silly me for thinking you would stop at any point before the end. You really had me going there."

Fenris peeled off his leggings. He stroked himself idly while he watched Anders struggle with his boot. The blonde finally freed the laces on the second boot and pulled it off. Upon looking back up, Anders caught his breath, swallowing. He began panting like a dog in the hot sun. Fenris grinned at the reaction. "How did it make you feel, searching?" Anders whimpered, hands catching in the laces of his trousers in his haste to get them off. He considered his answer as he threw the pants toward their horses. Fenris folded his clothes and placed them in his horse's pack. He also stowed away Anders' discarded outfit.

Fenris could feel eyes passing over his body. He took his time walking over to join Anders on the bedroll. Anders watched every fluid motion with delighted eyes and a half open mouth. "Hmm, how did I feel, scouring the landscape in hopes of you? Aroused? Anxious? Eager? All that and more." The last sentence was spoken gently as Fenris settled into a graceful heap, pulling Anders' over with him. They rolled around for a minute, muscles straining, until Fenris predictably pinned Anders' wrists above his head.

Lulled by the constriction, Anders continued his confession. "You made me feel incredibly frustrated, but also erotic and beautiful. Cared for. Thought of. Held, even in the desert sun. And yet, unsatisfied, unrecognized, left wanting, tortured and teased. Basically, you confused the hell out of me. Happy?"

"Mmm," Fenris agreed heartily. "And what did you imagine us doing?" Anders turned his head up to look into inscrutable eyes framed in shadow by gleaming white hair. He recognized Fenris was trying not to broadcast anything that might influence his impending response. Anders chose to answer with blunt honesty. "Oh, well," he blushed. "I imagined you inside me, mostly. I thought that's what you wanted."

Fenris interrupted. "Not what you wanted?" Fenris was fishing, clearly. They both grinned.

"Well, yes. That too," Anders admitted agreeably. He arched his body upwards, happy to find Fenris still hard, cock twitching as he listened to Anders' unprepared stream of consciousness. "I told you I was conditioned, didn't I?" Anders rubbed back and forth, doing his best to slide their hard lengths together. "But it's not like I only imagined one thing full stop. Sometimes it was other things as well. Depending on the place. Depending on my mood. More and more the later in the day. It got quite elaborate, you see. I just couldn't stop thinking about you. But yes, you were always inside me, everywhere I looked."

Fenris released a sound that started as a hum and roughened into a soft growl. "You have been good today," he purred. Fenris shifted so that both Anders' wrists were in one hand. He continued their rocking. Anders eyes closed at this, his lips opening of their own accord. Fenris added, "Very good." Anders' body thrust upwards, rubbing harder, a barely contained straining beast panting in the heat.

"Have I?" Anders asked. And he opened his eyes to another shared grin. Now he was fishing.

"Mmmm," Fenris purred in agreement. Then he took a deep breath, thoughtful. He pushed Anders' hips down with a firm hand. "Tell me what you want." He traced lyrium lined fingers along the curves of Anders' body, watching it follow his touch like a flower following the path of the sun over a summer day.

Anders opened his eyes wider. It was a rare thing for Fenris to request his opinion on anything. He often seemed to know what Anders wanted more than Anders himself did. So this question confused him. But he sensed opportunity in it. Anders thought to himself a moment, then his breath caught.

"I want…" Anders took a deep breath before it too caught in his throat. He shook his head as if to dismiss a farfetched notion. "Just take me. Take me any way you want. Hard. Fast." Anders was speaking so quickly that Fenris felt certain he was prevaricating. But the emotion was genuine. "Please. I've been so good. Please." Anders was so desperate that he uncharacteristically wanted to be done talking.

Fenris would not allow such weakness. This had been all day in coming, and he was feeling unusually generous. He would not have his heartfelt offer discarded in favor of simple relief, no matter how long it had been. He put on a fierce face, growling, grabbing Anders' ponytail in a threat of punishment. "I know what you need," he bellowed. Then he countered, removing the leather tie and stroking his hand over the blonde locks in a soothing motion. His growling lowered, both in volume and pitch. He said it again as a command, using a hushed gravel voice, making Anders strain to hear it. "What do you want?"

Anders looked weak, his limbs losing all muscle function. Then after a breath of resignation and a pause for good measure, he entreated with wide eyes. "Anything?" Fenris nodded, adding an affirmative grunt Anders pleaded. "Are you sure?" Fenris hardened his lips, annoyed at being asked a second time.

Anders swallowed, eyebrows gathering in worry at being rejected. "I want you to scare me."

Fenris blinked, showing no emotion in response. The lengthy pause spoke for itself. Finally… "Go on." Fenris released Anders' wrists, demonstrating his willingness to listen without needing to be in control.

Anders lifted both hands to hold the sides of Fenris' face. He whispered as if he was afraid someone else might hear. His tone was that of a camper telling ghost stories, the soft sounds of s's and f's drawn out into little hisses. "I want you to do something so foul, misshapen, and misplaced, so deeply wrong that it scares even you. I want you to be as afraid of yourself as I am. But no matter how frightened, you'll have to do it anyway. I want fear, and desire overcoming fear. For both of us. At the same time."

Fenris pulled one hand up to cover Anders' on his cheek. He kept the other over a pale hip. "Continue." Anders moved towards the hand, seeking intimate contact. Fenris gently moved his hand further aside.

"I know you hold yourself in check for me. I can feel it," Anders took his sexual frustration and molded it into words, bitter at being cut off from something he didn't understand. "And I want it to end. Whatever that means. Whatever the consequences. Whatever it is that scares you most, that's exactly what I want." His volume having gone up with his temper, he now pushed it back to a whisper. "Terrorize me."

Fenris snarled, spitting out a quick stream of Arcanum, his hackles rising. "You want to break me."

Anders shrugged, past the point of playing nice. While one hand on Fenris' cheek still soothed, the other curled itself into talons, long fingers scraping their nails down a thin neck alongside metallic brands. "Yes. Crack you open like an egg and drink the yolk. I don't even want to understand until it's too late." The nails continued down, scraping over skin and brands alike, leaving a row of red marks along chest and stomach both before stopping just below the navel. "Short of death, I don't want to be able to back out. Not even if I ask. Or beg. Or cry. Until this hateful thing is out there in the open, until you're laid bare. And I can see you. Smell you. Taste you. All of you. Do you even understand what I'm saying?"

"I do," Fenris affirmed. There was another thoughtful pause. "You ask for a great deal." The elf's eyes rested on the Tevinter chantry amulet around Anders' neck, recollection sparking his imagination. The memory was still fresh of his fear as he followed Anders from Wildhaven. He panicked thinking the mage would enter Tevinter, where he might be hailed a hero and made a magister. The idea had sickened him, especially knowing that he would follow anyway, that he might end up the slave of the one he sought.

"I know," Anders admitted. With his honey voice and kind eyes, he gave Fenris every opportunity to decline. Those same warm qualities also gave Fenris every reason to agree. Lips hard, Fenris decided.