"[ TOGETHER ]: when the receiver awakens, they discover that the sender has been sleeping next to them, arms wrapped around one another for warmth, comfort, protection" for fenders?
Hello hello to my favorite SpudMage 🥔🧙❣️
Fenris woke up with warm feet. Not an oppressive burning of walking too long or simply standing on the scorching roads of Kirkwall, but a cozy one. It brought back a memory. It was faint and incomplete - something involving sitting in a chair while wrapped in a blanket on a chilly night - but it was more than he had before.
He rolled over as he tugged the blanket up over his head. Even after three years, Kirkwall winters were a difficult adjustment: one day so cold that there were icicles hanging from the hole in the roof, and the next day back to that uncomfortably damp heat that sucked the air from his lungs. Today had been one of the frozen days. Yesterday and the day before had been as well, and he hoped Hawke wouldn't need him for anything so he could continue to huddle in his warm little nest.
His eyes snapped open and he found himself face-to-chest with Anders. Not unwelcome, but not expected. Somehow, their difference in size and height made them ideal tent mates. His protests had died on his lips the moment Anders’ had warmed up his bedroll with magic, and since then, he’d looked forward to camping with him. But they hadn’t been camping well over a week, and Fenris had been holed up in his mansion waiting out the cold. "Mage?" he asked, voice muzzy from sleep. "What are you doing here?"
Anders snorted. "I think you mean, 'What am I doing here?'"
Fenris frowned and peeked out over the covers. "This is not my house," he mumbled. "This is your clinic." He blinked slowly then rubbed his face. "Why am I in your bed?"
Anders reached out to squeeze his shoulder. "Hawke stopped by. You didn't answer, so they broke in. It was snowing, Fenris. Inside your mansion."
That didn't make any sense at all. "Snowing?"
"I didn't believe them either," he said irritably. "But Merrill said it too. And I’ve been too busy to actually check myself."
Fenris' ear twitched at the agitated tone. "Busy?" he asked neutrally. "With the clinic?"
Anders glanced away. "In a manner of speaking," he said slowly.
He huffed as he shook Anders' hand off his shoulder and moved to sit up. "Speak plainly, I am too tired for your riddles."
"Busy keeping you from freezing to death, you ass," Anders hissed as he pulled him back to the bed. "And you're still too cold for my liking, so get back here."
He fell back against Anders with a thud, shocked at how weak he felt, only now noticing that they were both shirtless and he was wearing a pair of soft trousers nothing like his own clothing. "I - how long?"
Anders tugged him closer and wrapped his arms around him. "I've had you since yesterday - no idea how long you'd been like that before Hawke found you." His breath was warm on Fenris' neck, and oddly soothing. "Don't - don't do that again, okay? If it's freezing out, go to Hawke's."
Something squirmed uncomfortably in Fenris' belly at the suggestion. "Why?" he asked. What he meant, of course, was why Hawke? but that felt too . . . complicated a question. Not when what he really wanted to ask was why not here?
"You want to put Hawke through this again?" Anders demanded as his arms tightened. "Or worse, find you a dead little elfsicle? Haven't I - haven't they been through enough?"
That slip of the tongue suddenly made everything make sense. "Perhaps I should simply stay here then," Fenris said quietly. "Until this weather passes"
"I can't believe you'd even - wait, what?" The rant Anders had clearly been winding himself into vanished. "You'd - you want to stay here? With . . . with me?"
Fenris rolled over in his arms to snuggle closer and tuck his head under Anders' chin. "You're warm."
