#lyriumpulse

“I have no second name,” Fenris replies simply. “Neither do you, so far as I can tell. I doubt Anders is your given name, just as Fenris is not mine. Well— given only in that Danarius benevolently gifted it to me. If I had any other name, I do not know it.”

Which wasn’t Anders’s point. Fenris has been calling him mage since the day they met, same as he calls Merrill witch, with all the venom the words deserve. Calling him Anders just feels…odd every time he does it. Intimate, perhaps, and yet Anders, so far as Fenris can recollect, has not called him anything but Fenris to his face.

“Did you choose the name Anders for yourself, or was it something others called you? Though I suppose it could be your birth name, I highly doubt it.”

“Perhaps Anders is my second name and my first name is too embarrassing to speak,” Anders jokes, mostly to alleviate any tension.  Danarius has a lot to answer for; perhaps all of Teventir does. 

He bumps their feet together in a small offer of comfort, but otherwise keeps his distance in the large bed. That they share a bed together at all on occasion is still new and strange. He wouldn’t want to push his luck. They still fight and argue, and sometimes Anders thinks it would be easier to wring Fenris’s neck than to try to explain to him one more time how mages are oppressed in Thedas, but these little moments of peace are… nice.

Three years of friendship, three years of trying to break down the walls Fenris has so skillfully built up around himself. She was never offended, with the way that he'd protected himself. He's never hurt her, not intentionally and not without an apology shortly following. He'd come here to apologize again for things said in anger and she had already forgiven him.

Fenris has never had to ask her for absolution, Marian knows the things he says in anger are things he doesn't know how to process without lashing out.

It's why when she tries again to comfort him and he responds by kissing her, she doesn't hesitate. She's wanted to kiss him from the second she met him, she's been in love with him since he'd come to find her after she'd lost Carver to the Deep Roads and the Grey Wardens; when after visits from all of her party members offering condolences to her and her mother, Fenris had shown up late into the evening with a bottle of wine. It would have seemed hesitation, to someone who didn't know him. To Marian, she knew he'd waited until Leandra had gone to bed.

Their actions are clumsy and wanting, Fenris picking her up and dropping her onto the edge of the bed gently, she wishes she didn't have to break the pleasantly tense silence but he's undoing his armor and she's still dressed and this is the part where usually she'd start stripping off her clothes.

She doesn't mean to laugh, just a little, when he asks her what's wrong. It's so thoughtful and kind, more tender than Fenris usually lets himself show, pressing her face into the hand on her cheek. She turns her face to press a kiss into the palm of his hand, the faint tint of faded lipstick leaving a mark on his skin.

Painfully slowly but surely, Isabela's started to crack open that shyness and uncertainty and getting Fenris in the habit of her more specific asks. Posing it as silly games usually gets him to open up to the idea and things spiral from there, when he finds himself particularly into something. It does also mean that Fenris has started becoming bolder and bolder in bed, getting more comfortable with the fact that she holds essentially no limits and figuring out what he likes.

A few weeks ago, she'd asked Fenris to deny her orgasm. They'd only lasted half an hour before he'd given in. She'd laughed, buried her face into his neck when they were finished and kissed him. Promised it was good, it was good, and she figured that was it until the next time she asked.

Today, they'd come home from a simple in and out job. Nothing serious, nothing too strenuous, but it clearly has his blood pumping. He'd scooped her up in the doorway of his mansion, carried her to his bed and thrown her down ungracefully. She's not even sure how long she's been here, her own bandana wrapped around her wrists and through the bars of his headboard, Fenris between her legs.

Isabela couldn't keep track of how many times he's brought her right to the edge and backed off. He's put his fingers in her, his tongue. His cock once, had managed to finish himself without letting her get off. She can feel the drip of tears out the corner of her eyes onto the bed, her mascara and eyeliner is probably staining the pillow underneath her head. She hadn't even realized she'd been talking, when he teases her about begging.

I need you to understand how much you mean to me.

As if it's not written over every action Fenris has ever made for him. As if he does not know that Fenris would not strike the sun out of the sky for him if he asked it. As if despite the three year gap cut out of their relationship, Hawke hadn't been patient and understanding and that no one besides someone who knew how much he meant to Fenris would have done.

But it's terrifying, Garrett has to admit. Two months out from the destruction of the Chantry and the sealing of Meredith, the adrenaline fueled celebration afterwards has suddenly presented it's consequences and they no longer have access to the man Garrett would prefer to be a midwife. He thinks that this reassurance of care must be Fenris' promise to stay regardless of the choice.

"I know." Hawke knows he doesn't need to reassure Fenris how much he means to him. Hawke says it every day, he doubts Fenris realizes he does too, just not with his words. Fenris says it a million different ways in a single day. "I think we could do this."

He thinks of Bethany with her missing front teeth when they were children, about Carver unable to pronounce the letter s until far later in his childhood than he ever cared to admit. About Leandra and Malcom sitting by their fireplace in Lothering. Maybe having a family again wouldn't be such an awful idea.

It's been another day of Danarius out of the house, doing... Maker knows what, though clearly not too precarious considering he's left Fenris behind. The day had started so simply, Isabela dragging Fenris out to the Saturday market for fresh fruits and wine with the loosened leash she's been earning. The two of them walking home leisurely, Fenris' polite and subtle jesting with her as she makes conversation with him.

They'd gone back to his quarters, instead of the master bedroom— The less time Isabela spends cooped up in her shared bedroom the better. Isabela sitting crosslegged on his bed, Fenris refusing to sit beside her despite the closeness that's grown between them. He'd at least relented to sitting on a chair across from her, sword forgotten leaned against the wall beside his door, as she tossed blackberries at him to catch. As she enjoyed her glass of merlot, as she admired his vague smile.

A little wine drunk and very distracted, she hadn't noticed Danarius appearing in the doorway, especially with Fenris obscuring her view. She's out of the bed before either of them can say anything, Fenris' sheets held to her chest and for once, she finds herself a little terrified of Danarius.

With Danarius dead and Varania having fled, Anders hadn’t wanted to leave Fenris alone. Hawke likely would have if he hadn’t, or Isabela–or both, perhaps. He had pretended not to notice the raised eyebrows or the shared looks at the too-familiar embrace he and Fenris had shared in the moment, or how he had left _with_ him. They could think what they wanted. It had been three years of distance and civility and heartache and wanting, missing Fenris’s presence in his life. As much as Fenris had wanted him to, Anders couldn’t move on from what they had, and he certainly couldn’t leave Fenris alone when he understood. 

They weren’t the same people they had been. People changed. It had been three years of longing, but it had also been three years of watching the mage underground be systematically crushed in a series of raids, betrayals, and arrests. Things were worse for Mages in Kirkwall than they had ever been. It wasn’t like he could explain that to Fenris. Where did he get off complaining about his own issues when Fenris had just been betrayed by someone he had tried to put his trust in? How could he explain that he hadn’t wanted Varania to die because she was Fenris’s sister, because she was a mage, because he was so tired, tired, tired of watching people die? 

They stand in the foyer of Fenris’s mansion, and Anders wishes he could close the distance between them. He wants to pull Fenris into his arms, hold him, kiss him. Instead he stands a handful of steps away and tries to explain himself.

{ @lyriumpulse }

Being able to get on his knees for a partner, to have his mouth or his fingers, or both, on them or in them left him with such a bone-deep feeling of satisfaction. It had been too tempting after the first time they sleep together not to at least offer. Fenris had such nice reactions, and, admittedly, a very nice cock. It wouldn’t be terrible to stay where he is, Fenris’s cock resting in his mouth. 

But, no. He does clean Fenris off with his tongue after, leaving lingering kisses, before resting his head against Fenris’s thigh. It only lasts a moment before he is straight-backed, staring at Fenris with wide eyes and a hot face and a pleasant twist of arousal in his gut. “Oh. I--Oh.” He wants to kiss him. Or maybe take him back into his mouth, damn the soreness of his jaw and knees, and see if he can get him hard again. 

{ @lyriumpulse }

“Oh!–” The question startles him; Fenris startles him. He nearly sends the letters, well-worn and increasingly delicate, he has been leafing through scattering. Anders is quick to put them back into the book where he keeps them–to try to keep them from being torn–and shuts book. It feels like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t. Spacing out, tracing his fingers over Karl’s large, looping signature. He shouldn’t fee guilty. Him and Fenris aren’t anything to each other; people that travel together who occasionally, when the mood takes them, fuck.