In which Varric and Fenris are adorable friends, and Hawke persuades Fenris to dance.

I wrote this because I heard the song “Surround Me” by LÉON and it just felt perfectly Hawke. If you can, please listen to that song while reading this! ^_^

Read on AO3 instead:
tinyurl.com/fenhawke6

*****************

Fenris sipped his wine, then shrugged casually as he set his glass on the table. “It does not seem plausible to me. That’s all I’m trying to say.”

Varric scoffed and gave him a knowing look. “Elf, if you think that part of the romance is implausible, you haven’t spent enough time around humans.”

Fenris glanced pointedly at the boisterous and primarily-human clientele of the Hanged Man. “I don’t think that insufficient time with humans is the problem.”

Varric chuckled, and Fenris leaned his elbow on the table and lifted his glass again. “Don’t take offense that I didn’t like that part of your book,” he said. “You asked my opinion.”

The storyteller waved a dismissive hand. “Ah, what do you know,” he said affably. “You’re not the target audience, anyway. I should have asked Merrill.”

“Asked Merrill what?” Hawke said breathlessly as she plopped down on the bench beside Fenris.

He pushed a tumbler of brandy toward her, and she smiled at him and sipped her drink as Varric explained. “The broody one here proofread a chapter of Swords and Shields for me, but I don’t know why I even asked him. Merrill’s opinion would’ve been more helpful.”

Hawke swallowed her mouthful of brandy and wrinkled her nose. “Swords and Shields? You’re sticking with that title? Really?”

“I beg your pardon,” Fenris said to Hawke in mock offense. “I chose that title.”

She grinned and tweaked his earlobe. “So you did. I stand corrected. It’s a marvelous title.”

“Ah, nepotism to the rescue,” Varric drawled.

“Now now, Varric.” Hawke draped her arms around Fenris’s neck and grinned wickedly at the dwarven storyteller. “You’ll always be my second most favourite person in the room, I promise.”

“Thanks, Hawke. That’s… definitely something,” Varric said blandly.

She winked at him, then turned a winning smile on Fenris. “Come dance with me,” she said. “I wore Merrill out. I need someone new to dance with.”

Fenris shook his head. “I’ve not had enough to drink.”

“That’s no excuse!” Hawke exclaimed. “Look, Aveline is dancing with Donnic and she’s certainly not drunk enough to be attempting to dance.” She, Fenris and Varric glanced over at Aveline, who was looking very happy indeed as she clumsily swayed in her husband’s arms.

Varric chuckled. “I don’t get it. She moves way better than that in a fight. You’d think some of that skill would transfer over or something.”

Hawke snickered, then turned her attention to Fenris again. “Come on, Fenris, dance with me. You’ve never danced with me before.”

He shook his head again. “There is a good reason for that. I don’t dance.”

Hawke’s eyebrows jumped high on her forehead. “Yes you do! You told me you like to dance.”

Fenris frowned. “I did not.”

She let out a bark of incredulous laughter. “You absolutely did! You think I’d have forgotten something like that?”

“It’s true,” Varric interjected. “You said it. I was there.”

Fenris gave them both a deeply mistrustful look. He was fairly sure they were playing a trick on him. “When did I say that?” he demanded.

“Years ago!” Hawke said. “A couple months after we met. You said you liked to run around in your mansion choreographing dance routines.”

Suddenly he remembered what she meant. “Oh,” he said, then wilted with exasperation. “Hawke, you know I was joking.”

She shrugged innocently. “Didn’t sound like a joke to me. What about you, Varric?”

“Nope,” Varric said cheerfully. “You sounded dead serious.”

Fenris lifted one eyebrow, then picked up his wine glass. “I’m afraid you’re both to be disappointed. I am not dancing.”

Hawke pouted and batted her eyelashes. “Not even with me?”

He smirked. “Not even with you, Hawke. There are too many people watching.” He took another sip of his wine.

Hawke tutted in annoyance and released him from her loose embrace. “We’ll see about that,” she said boldly. “A few more drinks and you’ll be singing a different tune.” She dropped a noisy kiss on his cheek, then stood from the bench and sashayed over to the end of the table where Sebastian, Anders and Merrill were sitting.

“I don’t sing, either,” Fenris called after her, and she stuck her tongue out at him as she dragged Anders toward the dance floor.

As she danced with Anders, Hawke kept her back to Fenris, and he instantly recognized her game. She was twisting and rolling her hips most provocatively, trailing her fingers across the back of her neck and throwing him the occasional heated glance over her shoulder, and Fenris shook his head in fond exasperation.

Trying to lure me with her body, he thought, but with no real pique whatsoever. Fenris wasn’t going to dance, but he was more than happy to watch her obvious show.

Varric snorted. “The two of you are sickening. I should make you the side romance in Swords and Shields.”

Fenris tore his eyes away Hawke’s ass. “I would prefer if you did not,” he said calmly, then gulped the rest of his wine and tried to ignore the warmth in his cheeks and belly.

Varric smirked. He held up two fingers to the nearest serving girl, then leaned his elbows on the table. “What about the introduction to Siege Harder 2, then? Any comments?”

Fenris huffed in disdain as Nora brought over a fresh round of drinks. “The title is horrendous,” he said bluntly. “The Flaming Fiasco? I could not get past it to read the first page.”

Varric laughed, and the two of them continued to discuss books and local gossip and diamondback strategy. Sebastian joined them for a short while before leaving for the night, and Merrill and Anders drifted back and forth from the table and the dance floor. Aveline and Donnic eventually came over when Varric pulled out a pack of cards, and Fenris flatly refused to allow Aveline to play for fear of her flipping the table when she inevitably lost.

Hawke, meanwhile, continued to dance with a rotating parade of acquaintances along with Anders and Merrill. She returned to the table a few times to refresh herself with the ample supply of alcohol that Varric kept summoning, and each time she took a break, she graced Fenris with a provocative grin that was increasingly difficult to ignore.

In fact, Fenris was finding it hard to focus at all on his companions at the table. The night had taken on a warm and fuzzy quality, and his attention seemed both slower and more focused than usual as he shamelessly studied his dark-haired lover’s sinuously twisting body. As he sipped his fourth – or was it his fifth, or Maker forbid, his sixth? He couldn’t recall – glass of wine, he marvelled at the warm sense of wellbeing that seemed to glow in his belly like the gentle embers of a fire. He was tipsy, certainly, and that could easily explain it. But he couldn’t recall ever feeling this utterly relaxed while drinking. There was something different about this evening, a kind of looseness that he hadn’t felt before while lounging at the Hanged Man with Hawke and the others. He could probably figure out what the difference was if he tried, but his pleasantly bleary mind was too content to think very hard right now.

Donnic offered to deal him in for a fourth hand, but Fenris politely declined, preferring instead to watch as Hawke placed her hands on Merrill’s waist and playfully coaxed the younger elf into a rolling grind. Hawke said something to Merrill, then threw her head back in laughter as Merrill’s cheeks went pink, and Fenris admired the line of his lover’s exposed throat with blatant appreciation.

He lifted his glass and drained the last few gulps of wine, then permitted his eyes to trail lazily from Hawke’s neck down to the swaying of her hips. She was so alluring: the subtle curves of her breasts, and those damned rolling hips, and her slender legs that wrapped so perfectly around his waist…

He pushed himself to his feet. The room seemed to sway in time with Hawke’s hips, and Fenris moved through the tavern toward her in a careful straight line. The lively tavern music was louder than he’d first thought, or perhaps that was because he was standing next to the musicians now, and then he was passing by them and reaching for her –

He took hold of her arm. Her eyes widened in surprise as she turned away from Merrill, and then her hands were on his shoulders and a smile was lighting her face as he pulled her against his chest.

Her expression was a picture of delight. “I thought you don’t dance,” she yelled over the music.

Fenris banded his arm firmly around her waist, then told her the truth. “I have never tried,” he said. “What circumstance would ever arise where a slave would have cause to dance? But you…” He trailed off and shook his head ruefully, then leaned in and brushed his lips over her cheekbone.

He pressed his lips to the delicate shell of her ear. “You make me want to try,” he murmured.

Hawke pressed herself firmly against his front, and a hot ripple of satisfaction pooled in his belly as she smoothly slid her pelvis against his own. “Move with me, then,” she breathed.

And so he did. Fenris moved with her, swaying slowly as the room spun around them, and it was easy and sweet and scorching. Her hips were pressed tight against him, and her fingers were warm as they cradled his neck, and if this was dancing, this slow and rolling slide against Hawke’s body, then Fenris could easily do this every night. He could do this every morning. Hell, he could do this while lying naked beside her in her bed.

He opened his eyes and met Hawke’s copper gaze. She was so beautiful, with that slow smile curling her lips and the angle of her chin as she lifted it in invitation…

Fenris kissed her. And then the room was doing the dancing for them, swirling around them as the exhilaration rose in his chest and stole the breath from his lungs. He wrapped his arms tightly around Hawke’s waist, as tightly as her arms were wrapped around his neck. The music was beating in his chest, beating in time with his joyous heart, and the breath he’d lost was back, but it wasn’t air he was breathing anymore: it was her, it was Hawke, and she was filling his lungs with the taste of her lips and her maddening scent of sandalwood and sweat…

She gently peeled her lips away from his, and Fenris reluctantly opened his eyes. Hawke smiled brilliantly at him, then cast a surreptitious glance to the side. “Fenris, everyone is watching,” she murmured.

He didn’t care. For the first time, he didn’t care if everyone was staring. His mind was floating and free and far too content to care. His blood was thrumming happily through his limbs, and his whole body was buzzing with pleasure from his cheeks to the tips of his toes, and it wasn’t just the alcohol that was making him feel this way.

“Let them watch,” he whispered. Then he kissed her again.

She tightened her arms around his neck and pressed her knee between his legs, and Fenris sank every remaining scrap of his attention into the perfection of her kiss. In this moment, with his heart beating in time with Hawke’s and his deliriously happy thoughts swirling in time with the tavern, it felt like the whole world was dancing.