In which Fenris confronts Hawke about Merrill and Anders, and the scribbled pages that live beneath his bed make a reappearance. 

This is a follow up on The Book of Love, Part I.  NSFW.

For @dadrunkwriting​ Friday. Read here on AO3 (~6500 words):
tinyurl.com/fenhawke10

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

A heart was a fragile thing.

Fenris knew this better than most. He was, after all, an expert in the business of ripping hearts from his enemies’ ribs. A heart was just a beating ball of muscle: firm and fibrous but ultimately delicate, and infinitely prone to being crushed.

Over the past ten years, Fenris had torn out more hearts than he could count. If his experiences had taught him anything, it was this: that the heart was a fragile thing.

Perhaps this was why he’d always guarded his own heart so closely.

Not that he was particularly fearful for the safety of his organs; he was well-protected by armour and lyrium both, and skilled enough to deflect most attacks. He could admit that it didn’t hurt to have Hawke’s and Anders’s healing abilities on hand, either.

No, it wasn’t structural damage that he feared, but damage of a different sort altogether. And it was this fear that had made him shield his heart from Hawke for so damned long.

It took years for him to realize that the shield around his heart was unnecessary. For all her jokes and her teasing and her infernal magic, Hawke’s own heart was open and steadfast, and her strong and slender hands made the perfect vessel for holding that which he kept clutched so closely to his chest.

And so Fenris let down his guard. He’d dropped his shield and he’d opened himself to her. And that was when he’d finally seen the truth: that Hawke had held his heart all this time.

In retrospect, it was obvious. The rest of their group had always known it. If Fenris was being honest, he could admit that he had always known it too, though he’d shunted the truth aside for fear of the pain it would bring.

Now that he and Hawke were together, Fenris thought it was crystal clear: vulnerable and delicate though it was, his heart belonged to her, and he trusted her with it completely.  

The only person who didn’t seem to know it was Hawke herself.

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

Merrill was crying.

Fenris stared flatly at the back of her head as he and Varric followed Merrill and Hawke down the mountain. She brought this on herself, he thought. Consorting with demons, cutting her veins for power, assuming she was strong enough to master the forces that were clearly beyond her control… Merrill had no one to blame but herself, and Fenris had no sympathy to give.

Hawke, however, was clearly of the opposite opinion. Her arm was tight around Merrill’s shaking shoulders as they made their way to Sundermount’s base. “Let’s get you home,” Hawke said. “I’ll make you a strong cup of tea with honey. I won’t even burn the leaves this time.”

Merrill sobbed. “I wish it was yesterday,” she said. “I wish I could undo all of this!”

“Listen, Merrill, everyone fucks up now and again,” Hawke said gently. “That’s why life is so long, right? Lots of chances to do things better the next time.”

Merrill wiped her face on her arm. “She should have trusted me!” she cried. “Why couldn’t she have believed in me? If she’d helped me instead of trying to protect me…”

Fenris scowled. He’d just known this was how Merrill would interpret these events.

“Don’t say it, elf,” Varric muttered, but it was too late; the words were already leaving his tongue.

“Yes, blame the Keeper,” he snapped. “You’re the one making deals with demons and dabbling in dark magic, but of course she is at fault.”

“Thank you, Fenris,” Hawke sing-songed. She shot him a filthy look over Merrill’s shoulder, then gave Merrill another squeeze. “Merrill, some things are worth making sacrifices for. She loved you. She knew that you were worth it.” She fished around in her pocket, then handed Merrill a dirty kerchief. “Sorry about the spider guts,” she said apologetically. “But look, at least they make a pretty pattern on the cloth.”

Merrill gave a wet little laugh, then fell quiet as they approached the Dalish camp. The silence that greeted them was heavy with hostility, even more so than the first time they’d come here, and Fenris didn’t blame them.

For once, Hawke held her tongue as she led them through the camp. Once Merrill’s former clan was behind her, the Dalish mage sobbed once more. “They’ll never forgive me,” she said. “Hawke, if you weren’t here, they would kill me.”

Perhaps they should, Fenris thought acidly, but he took the unspoken advice of Varric’s raised eyebrows this time and said nothing.

The trip back to Kirkwall was long and tense, punctuated by Merrill’s tearful outbursts and Hawke’s soothing jokes. Fenris kept his distance during the journey, and a nicely distracting discussion of weaponry and trap-making with Varric went a long way toward helping him control his temper. By the time they’d returned to the city, however, Fenris had had enough of Merrill.

She’d finally stopped crying, but she was still lamenting the Keeper’s foolishness instead of her own as they entered the alienage. “I should have paid the price, not her,” she told Hawke for the umpteenth time. “The clan needed her, and now they have neither a Keeper nor a First!”

“Marethari was a close friend, then?” Fenris interjected.

Merrill looked at him suspiciously; he hadn’t spoken to her since that morning. “She was like a mother to me,” she replied. “To all of us.”

Fenris nodded. “Then I’m sorry.”

Hawke’s and Varric’s eyebrows rose in surprise, but Merrill’s brows furrowed into a frown. “No you’re not,” she snapped. “She’s just one more mage to you. Why would you be sorry she’s dead?”

Fenris shrugged. “I’m not sorry she’s dead. I’m only sorry she died for you.”

Varric winced, and Hawke’s jaw dropped in shock.

Merrill’s big green eyes went even wider than usual. “What?” she gasped.

Fenris narrowed his eyes at the little witch. “Let’s hope the sacrifice of someone who cared for you that much wasn’t wasted.”

Merrill’s face crumpled, and Fenris watched coldly as she turned on her heel and ran off toward her shack.

Hawke turned to face him. “Are we sure you haven’t been possessed by a rage demon?” she asked. “That was a particularly terrible thing to say.”

Fenris frowned. “You know I’m right,” he said. “She spent this entire journey deflecting all responsibility, crying as though she played no part in this.” He raised his eyebrows at her. “You feel sorry for her now, but you know that I am right.”

Hawke pursed her lips, then took a step away. “Well, I have a promise of unburnt tea to fulfill. Varric? Are you coming?” She turned and sauntered off toward Merrill’s home.

“Right behind you,” he called, then shot Fenris a rueful look. “That was some smooth handling,” the dwarf said.

Fenris folded his arms. “I am not wrong,” he insisted. “Can you not smell the corruption of the mages in this city? Hawke is the only one who remains immune. It cannot last.”

Varric grimaced and shoved his hands in his pockets. “I’ve been breathing through my mouth these days, truth be told.” He waved his hand before turning toward Merrill’s house. “Good luck with your argument tonight,” he called over his shoulder. “I think you’ll need it.”

Fenris scowled at Varric’s unnecessary warning, then made his way to Hawke’s house to await her return. This was nowhere near the first time he and Hawke had disagreed, and it would not be the last.

But this time was different from the others. Hawke was too attached to Merrill, too blinded by her fondness for the blasted blood mage. Fenris knew Hawke’s position on Merrill’s and Anders’s freedom, but it didn’t mean he couldn’t contest it, especially in the face of this growing danger.

Hours later, he was lounging on Hawke’s bed with her dog-eared copy of Siege Harder when she opened her bedroom door. She stopped short for a moment when she saw him, then breezed into the room and began undressing.

He sat up and put aside the book. “I don’t suppose you convinced Merrill to see the error of her ways?”

Hawke carefully lay her coat on the desk chair, then began unbuckling her belt with her back to him. “She’s going to focus on helping the elves in the alienage,” she said. “It’ll be a good change for her.”

Fenris grunted. Her lack of a direct answer translated clearly into a no. “Hawke, she is becoming more dangerous with every passing year. A blood mage who refuses to take responsibility for the horrors she’s wrought? She might as well be a magister.”

She set her belt aside, then peeled her sleeveless tunic over her head. “Don’t be silly. The Vints don’t really accept elven magisters, do they? I thought that was just a fairytale.”

He scowled. “I’m being serious. If Merrill continues in this vein, it’s only a matter of time before she turns on you for the chance to bring back her blasted heritage.”

Hawke shoved her trousers down and kicked them aside, then swiftly crawled onto the bed and straddled his hips.

“What are you doing?” he demanded. He was thrown by her sudden presence on his lap, but his hands rose instinctively to grasp her hips even as he tried to lean away from her.

She ran her palms firmly over his chest, then unbuckled her bustier and threw it on the floor. “I think you’re wrong,” she said. “And you think I’m wrong. What else is there to say?”

He tore his eyes away from her dusky nipples and frowned. “Hawke-”

She kissed him, and the arguments were instantly driven from his mind. His traitorous lips parted for her as she licked his lower lip, and suddenly his palms were smoothing over her breasts, her hips were pressing into him and rendering him dizzy, and then her lips were at his ear.

“This is how I’ve wanted to argue with you for years,” she whispered. “You can fight with me all you want, Fenris. I will always just want to fuck you instead.”

He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think. His cock was pulsing, and her hands were beneath his shirt, her fingers tracing his nipple, fasta vass, why did it feel so good –

She pinched his nipple and rolled her groin against his lap, and he released a pleasured moan. “I still think you’re wrong,” he gasped.

She smiled and ran her fingers through his hair. “That’s the spirit,” she breathed, then pulled his head to her breast.

He took her nipple in his mouth and suckled hard until she gasped, then flipped her onto her back. At the back of his mind, Fenris knew this wouldn’t solve the problem; it was a smokescreen, a distraction, Hawke’s obvious attempt to draw him from his righteous anger.

He stretched her arms over her head, then smoothed his fingers along the inside of her thigh. As far as distractions went, it was a damned good one.

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

A couple of days later, Fenris was polishing his weapons and armour when Hawke strolled into his mansion with her hands in her pockets.

She dropped a kiss on his hair, then sat beside him at the table and pulled off her boots. “Busy day?” she asked, her eyes flitting over the weapons laid tidily on the table.

“Quite,” he said ruefully. “But I would rather hear about yours. What foolish errand did Anders talk you into?” She’d spent the day helping Anders with some task, and Fenris had been only too happy to sit this one out.

She smiled crookedly and rifled around with her pouch belt. “You first. Of all your long, hard swords here, which one do you like to polish the most?” She waggled her eyebrows suggestively, then pulled her flask from her belt and took a deep swig.

Fenris studied her carefully, amusement ceding to suspicion as she lowered the flask only to lift it again and take another long gulp. He reached over and gently took the flask from her hand. “Hawke, tell me what happened.”

“What makes you think something’s happened?” She reached for the flask, then slumped her elbows on the table when he placed it just out of her reach.

“You’re gulping your brandy as though it is water,” he said flatly.

“I always drink my brandy that way!” Hawke retorted. “Come on, you know I bathe in brandy. I marinate myself in it. It’s the air I breathe and the, er, blood that runs through my veins?”

Fenris watched her with growing concern as the shit-eating smile slowly slipped from her face. Finally she ran her fingers through her short dark hair. “Anders told me he’d found a way to split himself off from Justice. Or Vengeance, or whatever his little friend is called.” She cocked her head thoughtfully. “I think we should call it ‘Venjustice’ from now on. Everyone loves a good portmanteau, don’t you think?”

Fenris gaped at her. “He found a way to split himself from the demon?” he demanded.

Hawke sighed dramatically. “Fine, no portmanteau. He said he’d found a potion that would let him cleave himself from the spirit without either of them being hurt. So we go to the sewers to collect poop for the potion. And it wasn’t so bad-”

“What?” Fenris said flatly.

She laughed. “Trust me, that wasn’t the bad bit. Then he drags me off to collect some drakestone, and then we go back to his clinic, and…” She sighed and rubbed her forehead, and in a rush she said, “Then he tells me the whole potion thing was a ruse, and he asks me to come to the Chantry and distract Elthina while he went off to go do… something.”

He stared at her with growing horror. “What kind of ‘something’?” he asked.

Hawke shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know,” she said. “He wouldn’t tell me. Fenris, I begged him to tell me what the fuck was going on, he wouldn’t say a word. It must be some kind of trap, but-”

Fenris shoved himself up from the table and strode off toward his bedroom.

There was a rough scraping sound of wood on stone as Hawke pushed her chair back from the table and hurried after him. “Where are you going?”

He stalked over to his armour rack. “I am going to speak to the mage,” he snarled. “He has asked his last ill-fated favour of you. I will not see you drawn into whatever it is that he has in mind. He will undo it.”

Hawke grabbed the gauntlet from his hand. “If you’re going to talk to him, why do you need your armour?”

“Why do you let him drag you into these things?” Fenris shouted. His heartbeat was loud in his ears, thrumming like a war drum and goading his anger forth. “He asked you to be a distraction. A distraction, Hawke. That is what we do when we are stealing from people or setting traps of our own. What did you think he was going to do? Did you not think? How could you be so-” He stopped himself and clenched his jaw.

Hawke lifted her chin. “Go on,” she said. “Go ahead and finish that sentence. Or shall I finish it for you? How could I be so stupid?”

“Frankly, yes!” he snapped. He reached for his other gauntlet, but Hawke placed herself in front of his armour stand.

He glared at her. “You are not a stupid woman, but you are acting like one,” he said. “First Merrill, and now this? This is – how could you -”

“I will talk to him,” she interrupted. “I’ll get through to him. I will,” she insisted at Fenris’s skeptical scowl. She folded her arms and gave him a pointed look. “Besides, we both know that your particular brand of ‘talking’ won’t help. He’ll go through with whatever he has planned just to spite you.”

“He is an abomination!” Fenris bellowed. “You can’t talk to an abomination!”

“He is my family!” Hawke yelled back.

Fenris recoiled in surprise. In the seven years that he’d known her, this was the first time she had ever yelled at him.

Hawke seemed to realize it too, as she took a deep breath and spoke again in a calmer tone. “Anders is my family. So is Merrill, and Aveline and Isabela and all the rest of our beautiful idiots. I’d rather stand witness to their idiocy than deny knowledge of it.” She tried for a smile, but it came out as a grimace. “Support in the face of complete fuckery. That’s what family is for, right?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Fenris snarled. “I don’t have any family.”

Her face fell instantly. “What about me?” she said faintly. “Am I just chopped liver, then?”

“Of course not,” he said impatiently. “You are different. You know that.”

She stared at him silently, and as his rage began to cool, he finally noticed the vulnerability in her hunched posture and her lovely copper eyes.

She stepped away from his armour rack and wandered toward the fireplace. “Fenris…” she said softly, then stopped and stared at the fire for a moment before continuing. “Things are getting bad here,” she said. “The mages and the fucking Templars… It’s bad, and it’s going to get worse. Meredith and Orsino, the pressure from both of them, it’s…”

She turned to face him. Her hands were twisting together nervously, and her eyes looked bigger than ever in the paleness of her face. “I don’t want to choose a side,” she said. “I never did. But they’re… everything is forcing me to pick. And I just…” She took another slow breath through her nose, and Fenris frowned at her with growing concern. Why did she look so scared?

She met his eyes again. “I’ll probably side with the mages,” she said bluntly.

“I know that,” he said. He hoped he sounded less angry than he felt. “What of it?”

She rubbed her thumb compulsively. “When – if – when that happens, what are you going to do?”

He stared at her in confusion. “What do you mean?”

She nibbled her lower lip in silence, then took another deep breath. “Are you going to leave me?” she asked.

All at once, his anger was gone. He strode over to her and grabbed her twisting hands. “Why would you ask me that?” he demanded.

“Because you always leave,” she blurted. “When I do mage things, or help the mages or whatever, I know you don’t like it and that’s fine, it’s really fine, you don’t have to agree with everything I do, but I -” She broke off and pressed her lips together hard, and a tear ran down her face.

And there it was: the damage he’d done to her over the past seven years, laid bare in this moment of vulnerability.

The sudden remorse winded him. Fenris cupped her face in his hands, this precious face that he loved more than any fucking thing in this world. “Hawke,” he said softly. “I will never leave you again. I thought that was clear. I… These arguments… I know I have walked away before, but I am trying not to do that anymore.”

She pulled her face from his hands, even as her own hands twisted in the front of his tunic. “You left just the other day,” she retorted.

He frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“With Merrill,” she said plaintively. “Varric and I went into her house, and you just left.”

He sighed and ran his palms along her arms, torn between fondness and exasperation. “Of course I left. You wouldn’t want me there while you were comforting her. And I was at your house when you came home.”

She lightly punched his belly. “I still wanted you with me!” she said. “Fenris, I would rather have you there making snide remarks in my ear than walking away. I mean, I enjoy staring at that ass when you go, but-”

“Hawke,” he interrupted. “You can side with your blasted mages. I don’t like them, and I don’t think they can govern themselves without falling to corruption. But that doesn’t change my wanting to be with you.”

She stared at him. “Really?” she said faintly.

“Yes,” he said. He tenderly stroked her jawline and offered her a half-smile. “Besides, someone needs to tell you when you’re being foolish. I will gladly fill the role.”

Her beautiful face twisted, and Fenris gathered her close as she sobbed into his tunic. “I thought I’d made myself clear,” he murmured. “Any future without you is not worth having. I will be at your side.”

She gripped the back of his shirt more tightly, and he hugged her hard until her shaking began to lessen. A long moment later, she pulled away slightly. “I’m being stupid,” she sniffled. “I just…” She laughed wetly and wiped her face on his shirt. “You’re right about Merrill’s house, you would have been horrible if you’d come inside. I’m just… being stupid. I know you’re not…” She swallowed hard. “I know you’re not planning to leave.” She laughed again, then wandered over to his bed and sat down. “Just getting used to it all, you know.”

She wasn’t meeting his eyes. Despite her words, she wasn’t entirely convinced that he wouldn’t  leave.

Fenris frowned as he walked over to join her. He understood why Hawke was having trouble believing him; pain was more potent than pleasantness, and he was still coming to understand how much his frequent departures had hurt her.

But that was over now. He loved Hawke. The only thing he’d ever been completely certain of was his need to be with her. How to convince her of this…?

He sat heavily beside her on the bed, and a dry crinkling noise drew his attention. He glanced down and saw the corner of a piece of parchment poking out from under the mattress.

Suddenly he knew. Under the bed – the pile of papers he’d hoarded there, scribblings of angst and confusion and undeniable love –

He knelt beside the bed and shoved up the edge of the mattress, and Hawke squeaked with surprise. “What-!”

He pulled out a sheaf of papers. No, that was only part of it; more of it must be further under the bed…

He stood and offered her his hand. “Stand up for a moment.”

She raised one eyebrow as he pulled her to her feet. “This is odd. Some new sex game? A girl can only hope.”

He rewarded her feeble joke with a distracted smirk, then heaved the mattress onto its side.

Hawke gaped at the messy pile of parchment under the mattress. “What is that?” she exclaimed. “Did you steal a manuscript from Varric?”

“No,” he said. He gathered the papers together into a messy pile, and only then did he realize how much there was: it had to be about a hundred pages of double-sided text. He supposed this made sense; this was three years’ worth of almost-daily entries, varying in length from pages of ranting to just a few lines of thought.

This was three years’ worth of his feelings for Hawke, feelings that he’d been unable to share with her because of cowardice and reluctance and wanting to be better before giving himself to her. But as Fenris now knew, when was it really the best time to tell someone that you loved them with every fiber of your heart?

He dropped the mattress roughly, then sat on the bench by the fireplace and began sorting through the papers. Thankfully, the messy stack was still roughly chronological – he’d begun dating the entries after the first week or so – and as he attempted to order them, he couldn’t help but reread a few phrases.

… watching you run hedfirst into a groop of Karta. Such a stoopid moove. So dam impulsive. But your laff when its over just makes me want to grab you and kiss your foolish smiling lips.

He winced internally at the spelling errors, but as he continued to flick through the pages, the errors declined, and his conviction surged higher. Hawke needed to read this.

… happy you were wen Meril painted your nails with her dam majic pigments. For my part, I just imajined your fingernails on my chest. I wish I didnt remember how good it felt. I wish I kud forget, but its all that plays thruw my mind at night.

… why cant I just be with you? Why cant I be the man who wakes up beside you in your bed holding you and warding away the tears. Its fucking unfair. Fucking Danarius and all of his ilk. You said I was not ruined, but you were wrong. Your mother is dead and you lie there in your bed alone and I am here alone and what the fuck is the point

… searching for Varania. I want to tell you, Hawke, I wish I could tell you what Im doing, but I have to do this on my own. You will have nothing but the best version of me.

… your skirt sliding higher on your thighs, and all I could imajine was slipping my hand under it and feeling your pulse with my fingers. That’s why I left, don’t you see? I had to go. I couldn’t look at you any more. But now the thought of you torchures me as I lie in bed with my hand in my

He flicked through the pile of parchment until he reached the last page and the very last entry.

Varania will be here soon. Maybe even tomorrow. I hope she has the answers I’ve needed. I hope… Damn it, Hawke, I hope. It’s all your fault.

Do you remember the promise you made me? I have worn this promise for years. I have worn it and washed it and slept with it. The scarf you tied around my wrist has bound me to you, and you never knew it, because I never spoke of it. But this is a binding that I want.

I am not a pet. I am not a slave. You would say I belong to nobody but myself, but you would be wrong.

I am yours. No matter what the future brings, I will be yours in every version of it.

Hot water seemed to fill his chest and throat as he reread his own words. It was true, all of it, every word of it.

Hawke sat gingerly on the bench beside him. “What is that?” she asked softly. “Is that… that’s your handwriting. Did you write all of that?”

He lifted his eyes to meet her wonder-filled face. “Yes,” he said. He collected the papers into a reasonably tidy stack, then handed them to her. “Here. This is yours now.”

She took the stack dumbly. “What is it?”

He stroked her cheek. “That is… me,” he said. “Things I could not say, so I wrote them instead.”

She stared at him for a moment, then dropped her eyes to the thick stack in her hands. “How long have you been doing this?” she said faintly.

He shrugged. “Since you began teaching me the runic alphabet. Forgive my atrocious spelling in the first… well, the first half of it. I did not know how to spell.”

She lifted her eyes to his face. “You wrote an entire book for me?”

“I did not write it for you,” he told her. “It was… to control myself. But I don’t need it anymore.” He waved at the thick sheaf of parchment. “That belongs to you now. I hope it will make you understand.”

“Understand what?” she said.

He cupped her face and gazed seriously into her eyes. “That I am not going anywhere,” he said, then gently kissed her lips.

She kissed him back, then watched with wide eyes as he rose to his feet. “I will go back to my weapons,” he said. “You should read that, or at least some of it.”

“Okay,” she whispered, then folded her legs and began to read the first page.

Fenris returned to his table and continued cleaning his gear. Once he’d finished with that, he practiced with his throwing knives, then did some reading himself. He brought Hawke some tea and toast at one point, and she flashed him a huge but distracted smile, but other than that, he left her to her reading as the afternoon trickled on.

Late that evening, he was dozing at the table with a book on his lap when Hawke brushed her fingers over his shoulder.

He jolted awake and rubbed his eyes. “Had enough for now?”

“I finished it,” she corrected.

He lowered his hands and stared at her. “The entire thing? How fast-”

She pushed the book off of his lap and straddled him. “I love you,” she said.

He knew she loved him. He’d always known. But if there had been any doubt in his mind, it would have been wiped away by the blinding affection and joy in her face.

Fenris slid his hands around her waist. “I know,” he said. “You should know I feel the same. You shouldn’t be plagued by groundless doubts -”

“I don’t doubt it. Not anymore,” she said. She cradled his neck in her palms, and Fenris admired the clarity of her beautiful smile. “That book… Maker’s fucking breath, Fenris, that book was…” She wiped an errant tear from her slightly puffy eyes. “You were thinking all of that for three years and you didn’t say anything? How…? I would have exploded from the strain.”

“More than three years,” he corrected. “I had no way to jot it down before you taught me to write.”

“‘Jot it down’? Fenris, those words… everything you wrote…” She hiccuped and wiped her eyes again, then beamed at him. “Don’t tell Varric, but I’ve never read anything so beautiful. Or so angsty!”

“‘Angsty’,” he muttered. He slid his hands idly along her thighs. “I have accepted ‘broody’, and now I’m angsty as well?”

“You aren’t anymore,” she said. She swept her thumbs along the angles of his jaw. “Now you’re… a man in love.”

He met her eyes. “Yes,” he said seriously. “And I am yours.”

Another tear ran down her cheek as she beamed at him, her expression soft and hot and brilliant all at once. “Fuck’s sake, Fenris, I love you so damned much.” She laughed again. “Such shitty words compared to all the words you gave to me…”

He shook his head. “It is enough, Hawke. It’s more than enough.” He didn’t need her words, and he never had. Hawke’s love had always been obvious in more important ways. It was obvious in her open smile and her gentle hands, her easy jokes and her awkward comforting. It was obvious in the assistance and support she’d always offered without hesitation. He’d carried her love for years in the crimson scarf she’d tied around his wrist. Her years of endless patience spoke more loudly of her love than any words she could ever say.

Within months of their first meeting, Hawke had bared her heart to him. Now, many years and too many tears later, Fenris was honoured to exchange his own heart for hers.

He pulled her close with a gentle hand on her neck, and then they were kissing, kissing more slowly and deeply than he’d ever kissed her before. He lifted her arms around his neck and wrapped his arms around her waist. She was pressed flush against him as close as she could possibly be, but still he wanted her closer, wanted to be pressed to every single heated inch of her.

Without breaking from the fullness of her lips, Fenris slid his hands around to her front and began to unbutton her shirt. His tongue stroked the heat of her mouth as his fingers nimbly worked their way down to the hem of her shirt.

Hawke pulled the garment off, and their hands bumped together as he reached for her bustier while she reached for his tunic. She smiled against his lips, and together they laughed, a joyful and husky sound that matched the thrill of joy in his chest.

He leaned back and pulled his tunic off, then wrapped his arms around her and lifted her up as he rose from his chair. “I need you,” he whispered against her lips.

She carefully traced his lower lip with her tongue, then clasped his shoulders for support as he walked them back toward the bedroom. “I always need you,” she said. “All the time. I always want to be close to you.”

“You are. You will be,” Fenris promised. He fell onto the bed with his dark-haired lover beneath him.

He cradled her head in his hands and savoured the heat of her chest and belly against his own. Her arms and legs surrounded him in a tight embrace, her back arching to press her heated curves closer to his body, but there were too many clothes between them when he wanted nothing there to keep them apart.

He kissed her again, coaxing her tongue to tangle with his own while he roughly unlaced his breeches and shoved them down with one hand. His other hand was in her hair, and her hands were fumbling in the narrow space between their bodies, trying to unlace her bustier.

He pressed himself into her groin, desperately eager to feel her and desperately disappointed by the barrier of her clothes. With enormous reluctance, he lifted himself onto one elbow and reached down to unbutton her trousers.

Hawke whimpered as he peeled his lips away. “No, come back,” she whined, then finally parted her bustier and shoved it away.

“I will,” he panted. He lifted his pelvis slightly higher to better access her trouser buttons.

She mewled with distress as his hips rose away from her, then gasped as he pressed his cheek between her breasts and caressed her skin with his lips. Then her hands were between them, pushing his fingers away to pluck at her own trouser buttons.

Fenris clasped her face again and kissed her hard. The knuckles of her busy hands brushed against his bare abdomen in an inadvertent tease, and he groaned into her mouth. “Hawke…”

“Almost,” she panted. He waited for a tense moment, biting his lip as her hands brushed his skin, then finally she relaxed. “Done,” she said. “Get them off-”

He pushed himself back on his knees and swiftly dragged her trousers off, then fell back into her soft and slender form.

Hawke was ravenous, her teeth tugging lightly at his lip and her nails pressing into his back as she twisted her hips toward him, but Fenris didn’t mind, for he was ravenous too. He hungered for her, for the taste of her skin and her sweat and her incessant adoration, and perhaps he’d been starving his entire life until he’d met her, because nothing had ever felt this good and this right: her arms around him, her legs around his waist and the heat of her chest pressing into his, the sheer and desperate want that rolled from them both – he’d never had anything in his life that had ever felt this… equal.

He pumped his cock against her, sliding his length against the heat-soaked apex of her thighs, and then he was breathing in the ecstatic moan that ghosted from her lips as he sank into her all the way to the hilt.

“Rynne,” he groaned, then kissed her deeply as he moved inside of her. His arms were curled beneath her, his hands cradling her shoulder blades, and in some delirious part of his mind he almost wished he had more hands to feel every inch of her.

She suckled his tongue gently, then broke from his kiss only to gasp against his parted lips. Her hips rose and rolled to meet him, both of them gasping together with every careful thrust. Despite their torrid need and the haste with which they’d tumbled onto his bed, the love they made now was slow and sweet, and Fenris simply savoured the slickness and the passion of Hawke’s pliant body beneath his own.  

Here, in this moment, he was as full and complete as he could possibly be. He was enrobed in the heat of her, his lungs full of her scent and his ears filled with her pleasured breaths, and his chest felt almost too full with this exquisite ache of affection that seemed both to squeeze his heart and lift it high at the same time.

They shifted and slid together in a tangle of sweat-laced arms and legs. Her hands were in his hair, and one of his hands was smoothing along the curve of her bottom, and the kisses: so many kisses, tender and languorous and slow, their lips meeting and melding until he could almost breathe for her. When his climax came, it was gradual and heavy and deep, as deep as the kisses she gave and as deep as the devotion that filled his chest, and he clasped his arms around her more tightly than ever as he breathed his pleasure against her neck.

They lay side-by-side in the warmth of afterglow, legs still tangled and his arm tight around her waist. Her wrist rested against his neck as she rubbed his earlobe idly with her fingers. “What should we do about Anders?” she whispered.

Fenris gazed fondly into her amber eyes. Her use of ‘we’ was not lost on him. He pulled her a little bit closer, then brushed her nose with his own. “Do what you think best,” he murmured. “Talk to him if you must.”

She wet her lips nervously. “Are you sure?”

He shrugged. “It was always your decision, Hawke. Your family, your choice. I will let him live. For now.” He smirked faintly.

She tutted and pinched his earlobe hard before resuming the soothing rubbing of her finger and thumb. “They’re your family too, you know,” she said softly.

He shrugged again. “I suppose.” He would not accept Merrill or Anders as such, but the others:  Varric and Isabela, Aveline and Donnic and Sebastian…

Support in the face of complete fuckery, Hawke said. It certainly qualified their little group. And truth be told, they had been there for him in that capacity too.

Templars and apostates, demons and dragons, slavers and thieves and blood magic… Their idiotic group had faced it all, and still they were together. And leading the charge from one mishap-filled adventure to the next was Hawke.

She held his heart in her magic-wielding hands, and she’d entrusted him with hers in turn. Here and now, bound by Hawke’s heated limbs and bathed in the glow of her infinite love, Fenris had everything he needed.