HAH omg YES. I mean of course. And here it is – for @dadrunkwriting! 

Fandom: Dragon Age II
Pairing: Fenris x FemHawke
Rating: Mature

Read on AO3 instead. 

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Aveline sighed and rubbed her face. “Hawke…”

“What?” Hawke complained. “What’s wrong with that? It’s a gift! It’s nice! I’m sure he’ll see it in the spirit that it was intended.” She nodded pertly, then took a drink from her dented stein.

Fenris shook his head in exasperation as Aveline shot Hawke a chiding look. In a slow, careful voice, Aveline said, “You sent Carver a box of soil.”

“A box of soil containing seeds,” Hawke corrected. “They’ll grow into an embrium plant, and then he can use the flowers for healing. And it’ll remind him of Father, since embrium was his favourite!” She leaned into Aveline’s shoulder in a wheedling manner. “Come on, Av, admit it. I did good this time. Even Carver can’t interpret a gift like that as an insult.”

Then Varric piped up from the end of the table. “You probably should have sent the soil and the seeds in a pot. You know, for growing the plant? He’ll probably just think you’ve sent him a bunch of random dirt.”

Hawke opened her mouth to protest, then slowly wilted. “Good point,” she admitted. Then she perked up and shrugged. “Well then, it’ll be a test of his ability to problem-solve and put clues together! Nobody wants a stupid Templar, after all.” She winked at Varric and lifted her stein to her lips again. “See, some people call this wisdom.”

“Nobody would call this wisdom,” Fenris drawled. “Most people would, in fact, call this idiocy.”

She lifted her chin and shot him a challenging look. “And yet you all still spend your days following me from Sundermount to Darktown and back, so what does that make all of you?”

The whole table burst into protest and laughter, and Hawke jumped to her feet. “Time for another round!” she said loudly. “Drink up, everyone! Same thing as before?” She glanced around the table to confirm their orders, then drained her stein and sashayed over to the bar. A few minutes later, she returned to the table with two steins in hand.

“One for the sexy morning scruff and one for the sexy chest hair…” She slid the steins across the table to Anders and Varric, then returned to the bar and brought two more drinks. “One for the sexy ginger, and one for the sexy… everything,” she purred, handing them to Aveline and Isabela, then she returned once more for Sebastian and Merrill (“one for the sexy blue eyes, and one for the one who’s too damned cute to be sexy”).

Finally, with the last two drinks in hand, she sat next to Fenris and placed his stein on the table. “And one for… you,” she said quietly.

He met her twinkling bronze eyes. Everything about her expression screamed mischief, but Fenris refused to rise to the bait. “Thank you,” he said politely.

“You’re welcome,” she replied equally politely.

Fenris lifted his stein to his lips, then paused as the fumes from his drink reached his nose. He balked and peered into the stein, then looked at Hawke. “This is brandy.”

“Yes,” she said. Her lips were curled in a smirk as she drank from her cup.

Fenris frowned as she lowered her drink to the table. Then he reached for her stein. “What’s in your cup?”

She jerked the stein away before he could grasp it. “Hands to yourself!” she insisted. “Leave my wine alone.”

Wine. Fenris wilted in exasperation. “You switched our drinks.”

She cradled his wine in both hands and smiled. “It’s for your own good,” she told him earnestly. “You have to start getting used to drinking swill. You’re down to your last two bottles of the Aggregio.” She lifted the wine to her face and inhaled. “Ahh, Antivan red. Not as good as the stuff you have at home, but it’ll do.”

Her grin was wide and provocative, and Fenris refused to cede to it. He folded his arms and raised one eyebrow. “How do you know I’m down to the last two bottles?”

She tilted her head coyly. “I sneak into your house through the wine cellar to watch you sleep, of course. What else are friends for?”

There was a snort of laughter from the end of the table – probably Anders, he enjoyed this kind of puerile humour – but Fenris couldn’t smile. If he smiled, it would mean she’d won.

He kept a straight face and reached for her stein again. “Give that to me.”

She twisted away from him. “No.”

“Hawke,” he said sternly.

She lifted the stein over her head and held out her other hand to hold him back. “I backwashed,” she warned. “My spit’s in here.”

Aveline and Isabela exclaimed in disgust, but the threat wasn’t as off-putting for Fenris as she’d likely intended. A flash of a fantasy flickered through his mind: her lips on his, his tongue tangled with hers – a far more appealing way to taste the contents of her impertinent mouth.

He shunted the thought aside and lunged for the stein. “Give it back,” he demanded.

Then her hand was on his chest. Fenris stopped short at the touch and met her gaze.

Her amber eyes glittered with mischief. She jerked her chin at the abandoned cup of brandy. “Go on, try something different,” she purred. “You might like it.”

He swallowed, mouth dry as he gazed into her infuriatingly wicked eyes. Her face was a handspan from his own. Her fingers rested on his chest with barely enough pressure to hold him back, and he wondered if she could feel the sudden thrumming of his heart.

The tension was too much. The temptation to smile was gone, wiped away by a different and altogether more dangerous temptation, and Fenris expelled it the first way he could think of.

He pinched Hawke’s waist.

She squealed in surprise and flinched, tucking both her arms defensively in toward her belly, and Fenris plucked his wine from her now-accessible hand. “Benefaris,” he proclaimed, then drained the stein in four long gulps.

Hawke tutted. “Just don’t come whining to me when you run out of your fancy Tevinter vintage,” she said haughtily, then reached for the cup of brandy.

Fenris pushed it out of her reach.

Her eyes widened, and she grinned at him. “You wouldn’t dare,” she said gleefully.

He folded his arms and planted his elbows on the table, firmly between the mage and her brandy. “This is justice, Hawke. There are consequences for depriving a man of his wine,” he drawled.

A peal of joyful laughter spilled from her lips, and Fenris swatted her away as she tried to reach across him. Then Isabela’s cheerful voice cut through their scuffling. “Oh, would you two just fuck each other already? I could watch.”

Hawke turned around and pinched the pirate’s arm. “I bet you would, you dirty bitch,” she said, and the two women promptly fell about laughing. Moments later, Isabela was dragging Hawke to her feet, and Fenris watched with a combination of exasperation and amusement as they began dancing to the lively tavern tunes.

Aveline groaned and rubbed her forehead. “What am I even doing here? I feel like a schoolmistress. One who is bad at her job.”

Fenris gave her a rueful half-smile. “You are not alone in that feeling,” he assured her.

She shot him a baleful look. “You’re no better, Fenris. You just goad her on.”

Fenris opened his mouth to defend himself, but Aveline was already on her feet. “I’m leaving,” she declared. “Please get home safely, everyone. And you two.” She pointed at Anders and Sebastian, who were watching Hawke and Isabela’s antics. “Keep your eyeballs in your heads. You’re making fools of yourselves.”

Fenris smirked at Sebastian’s blustering protests, but his amusement was cut short by a perky little voice to his left. “I’ve never known anyone who frowned so much when they were happy.”

Fenris turned and scowled at Merrill. “Excuse me?”

She propped her chin on her fists and tilted her head. “You like Hawke. But you’re always frowning at her. Why don’t you just tell her that you like her?”

Fenris narrowed his eyes. “Pray tell what miraculous event occurred that makes you think you can speak to me like this?”

Merrill sat up straight. “Like what?” she asked, wide-eyed and worried.

“As though we are friends and I don’t despise you,” he growled, then stood and went to sit next to Varric instead.

“Harsh,” Varric murmured, and Fenris shrugged irritably in response.

Eventually Isabela and Hawke pulled Merrill into their dance, and Fenris and Varric watched them quietly for a while, Fenris sipping Hawke’s brandy while Varric enjoyed his ale. Just when Fenris was feeling pleasantly relaxed, Varric broke the silence.

“Daisy makes a valid point,” he said quietly. “Why haven’t you and Hawke… gotten together? Not that it’s any of my business,” he added hastily as Fenris shot him a glare, “but… look, I hate to tell you this, but you’re not as good at hiding your feelings as you like to think.”

Fenris scowled and sipped his drink to stall for time. There was an uncomfortable writhing in his belly, part-pleasure at the thought of Hawke’s affection and part-discomfort at the apparent obviousness of his own, and he didn’t want to reply to Varric’s question.

Partly because he didn’t really know the answer.

Fenris couldn’t deny that he wanted Hawke. He often fondly imagined the shapes her body would make as she arched beneath him on his bed, or on the table in his mansion while he spread her wide. But somewhere in the past few years, his imaginings of her had taken on a certain complexity that he’d not anticipated.

It wasn’t just sex that he wanted. It was her. He’d think about Hawke’s sultry voice whispering more than just dirty words in his ear, and he’d fantasize about sharing more with her than sweat. But the mere idea of turning these thoughts into reality made Fenris feel… itchy. And hunted, somehow.

Eventually Varric spoke again. “Well, as I said, none of my business. And it is entertaining to watch. In a juvenile, he-pulls-her-hair-because-he-likes-her kind of way.”

Fenris grunted, then drained the dregs of Hawke’s brandy and rose from the bench. “I will follow Aveline’s example,” he said, then turned toward the door.

“You’re not going to say goodbye?” Varric said in surprise.

“You’re the storyteller. Make up an excuse for me,” Fenris said, then left the Hanged Man.

As he trudged back to his mansion, he brooded over Varric’s infuriating words. Why did the dwarf need to push and prod? Fenris just wanted to enjoy flirting with a beautiful woman and having her flirt back. It was satisfying and it was safe, and there was nothing wrong with that.

If only he could convince himself that flirtation was enough.