#romanson

“You’re making a mess,” she said.

He looked up. “Eh?”

She jerked her chin at his head. “You splashed water all over the floor.”

He made a little face. “Damn. I’ll wipe it up after.”

She folded her arms and said nothing more, so Samson decided to ignore her and continue washing up. He picked up her fancy glass bottle of shampoo and poured some into his palm, and he did his best to enjoy the vanilla-almond scent despite Roman’s unstinting scowl.

He lathered his hair thoroughly, being sure to wash the roots so she wouldn’t nag him. Then something made him pause — something in the bathtub. 

Something pressing between his legs.

He swallowed hard. “Bird, your foot is on my balls.”

“So?”

“So… maybe you should move it.” He shifted a little awkwardly; even the gentle pressure of her toes was starting to rile him up.

“There’s nowhere else to move it,” she said. “You’re taking up too much space.”

He slumped slightly. She was the one who’d told him to take a bath with her. “You want me to get out? Is that it?”

She curled her lip. “No. Whatever. Why, do you want to get out?”

“Not when it’s all nice and warm in ‘ere. But if you’re going to use my balls as a footrest…” He trailed off; her foot was sliding along the length of his hardening cock.

She scoffed. “What, no more complaints now?”

He exhaled shakily and widened his knees. “Just don’t kick me, all right? Ah…”

 She stroked his cock slowly with her foot, then gently pressed her heel into his balls. He grunted and curled his hips toward her, and she suddenly moved her foot away.

She huffed and settled her feet on either side of his hips. “Don’t be gross. I’m not going to let you come in my bathwater. Rinse your fucking hair.”

He exhaled, then shot her baleful look. “You’re a mean bloody tease, you know that?” He dunked his head and rubbed his hair until the shampoo was mostly gone. When he lifted his head from the water and slicked the water from his hair, he purposely splashed the floor a little more.

Roman sneered at him, and he gave her a mocking little smile before picking up the soap. “You’re not going to wash up, then?”

“I’m not the one who needs the bath,” she said.

“Then why are you sittin’ there?” he asked. “Should I be putting on a dirty show for you?”

She huffed and looked away. “No.”

He smirked and rubbed the soap on his chest. “Come on now, you don’t need to look away. Nothing you haven’t seen before.”

“Fuck you,” she muttered.

Don’t need to ask me twice, he thought, but he kept that comment to himself; she looked about as brittle as the first layer of frost on a lake in winter, and if he goaded her any further, she might light a fire under his ass or something. Worse yet, she might tell him to get out of her bathtub and out of her house. 

But her mother had just been murdered yesterday, and Samson wasn’t sure that it was a good idea for her to be alone. Why he’d decided that he should be the one to babysit the damned bird today, he wasn’t sure, but, well… here he was, so he supposed he’d make the best of it. 

He started rubbing the soap on his arms. Then Roman sighed loudly. “Use the fucking washcloth,” she scolded. “You’re just rubbing the soap on top of the dirt.” She picked up the washcloth that was hanging on the edge of the tub, then held out her hand impatiently.

Samson handed her the soap, and she briskly lathered the washcloth. “Turn around,” she said. 

He shot her a suspicious look, then gingerly turned around in the bathtub. A moment later, she was washing his back. 

She rubbed the soapy cloth in a circular motion from the back of his neck across his shoulders, then over his shoulder blades and back toward his spine, and Samson breathed slowly as she washed his skin. Her movements were brisk but gentle, thorough without being rough, and he wondered at how the movement of her hands almost seemed practiced. 

Her hands sank beneath the water to wash his lower back. Then she was scooping handfuls of water over his back and sluicing it away, again with those businesslike practiced movements as though it was something she’d done many times before, and Samson’s curiosity continued to grow, even as he enjoyed the unusual gentleness of Roman’s hands on his skin. 

He didn’t get it. He didn’t get her. She was clearly capable of being gentle; this wasn’t the only time she’d treated him with tenderness in the guise of complaining about how dirty he was. But if he ever remarked on her gentleness or made an awkward attempt to be gentle in return, she snarled and shied away from him like a feral cat. 

Less than a minute later, she was finished. “There,” she said. “That’s how you should be washing yourself. No wonder the fucking water is always brown by the time you’re done.”

He grunted. “I get it, all right? I’m filthy.”

“Not anymore. You’re welcome,” she said snarkily.

He huffed. Then, on impulse, he shifted backwards in the tub toward her. 

“Hey,” she exclaimed. “What — what the fuck are you doing?”

He didn’t answer. He kept sliding back in the tub until he was between her legs, then boldly leaned against her so his back was flush to her chest.

“Seriously, what the fuck do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.

“Having tea with the bloody Queen of Ferelden,” he retorted. “What’s it look like?”

“It looks like you’re fucking trapping me in my own tub,” she snapped.

He sighed and adjusted the back of his head against her bony collarbone. “Just relax, all right? The water’s warm and it’s not that dirty. Just relax.” 

She growled in his ear, but she made no more complaints. Samson closed his eyes and waited to see what she would do. 

For a long moment, she didn’t move. She just sat there stiff and unmoving in the tub behind him, and Samson eventually wondered if she’d just stay sitting there like a golem until he moved.

Eventually, though, he felt some of the tension leave her body. Her thighs softened behind his hips, and he could feel her shoulders and her spine relaxing into the curve of the tub, and some of his own tension started to leave him in response to the softening of her body. 

He breathed slowly, enjoying the soap-scented steam of the bath and the strange pleasantness of Roman’s body pressed against his own — not to mention the fact that she was letting him stay pressed against her like this. Honestly, when he’d decided to lie back against her chest, he hadn’t really expected her to allow it. Now that he was lounging against her in such an intimate way, he realized something odd: he’d never actually done this before. This lounging-and-relaxing business, that is. There’d been a few girls here and there before he’d joined the Templars, but none who wanted him to stick around for… whatever this was. 

Not that Roman had asked him to stick around or anything like that. But she was also a strange case — an especially difficult case. Frankly, Roman Hawke was a bloody pain in his ass. She would never actually ask him to stay with her or to stick around. And unless she was demanding that he fuck her, he could never be entirely sure what she wanted from him. The most she would do is tell him she didn’t care what he did, and after knowing her for a few years now, he’d started to accept her I-don’t-cares as implicit permission to stay. 

Or, in a situation like right now, if she wasn’t pushing him away and telling him to leave, he’d take it as a sign that she wasn’t completely disgusted with his presence.

She suddenly curled her arm around his shoulders and grabbed his chin, and Samson tensed at her sudden grip. Then she roughly rubbed his chin. “You should shave,” she said. “Your stubble is too long to be stubble anymore.”

“What if I was trying to grow a beard for the winter?” he said.

She clicked her tongue. “It’s not winter for another four months, you dumbass.”

“It takes time to grow a beard, you know.”

She released his chin. “Are you really trying to grow a beard?”

He shrugged. “Eh, not really. Why? You think I’d look worse with a beard?”

“No,” she said. “I don’t know. It’s your face, do what you want.”

Her hand was resting on his chest now — just resting there casually and not doing anything. He wasn’t used to her hands on his body unless they were having sex. Having Roman’s hand just laying there on his chest… He couldn't decide if it felt nice or just plain strange. 

“I’ll shave,” he said. “Don’t want to hear you complaining about how I’m scratching you up when I’m going down on you.”

She tsked. “Thanks a lot.”

“Anytime, Bird.” He closed his eyes again. Roman’s arm was still loosely curled around his shoulders, and it was almost like a hug.

A sudden jolt tugged at the inside of his ribs. He swallowed hard and didn’t speak, and for another long and oddly peaceful moment, they just sat together in the bathtub with his back pressed to her chest and her arm draped around him. 

“I’ll shave your stupid whiskers for you,” she said quietly. 

Her lips were close to his ear, and a little shiver traced down his spine at the nearness of her lips. A number of snarky replies darted across his mind, but he settled on an honest question instead.

“Why?” he said.

“Why what?” she asked.

“Why d’you want to shave my face for me?”

“I don’t — I didn’t say I want to. I just said I can.” She tensed behind him as though to push herself up from the bath.

Samson grabbed her wrist so she couldn’t get out. “Wait.” 

“Let me go,” she snapped.

“Just wait, will you?” he insisted. “I want to ask you something.”

“What?” she said impatiently. 

“You’re good at this,” he said. “This washing business, the hair, the back. Why is that?”

She tried to pull her wrist from his hand, but he tightened his grip and doggedly pressed on. “You said it wasn’t from helping with your brother and sister. So what, then?”

“Let me go. Now,” she hissed, and she bit the edge of his ear.

He yelped in surprise and released her, then watched resentfully as she stepped out of the tub and grabbed a towel on her way out of the bathroom. Once she had disappeared into her bedroom, he settled against the back of the tub with a sigh. 

He shouldn’t have said anything. He should’ve known better than to push her. He took a deep breath and submerged himself completely in the tub, then slowly rose to the surface and pushed his hair out of his face. 

He opened his eyes, then recoiled slightly. Roman was standing there in her silk dressing gown, and she had an open barber’s razor in her hand. 

“Get out,” she said, and she nodded her head at the stool beside her. “Sit here.”

He exhaled slowly, then stood up and stepped out of the bath. “You’re not going to slit my throat, are you?”

“For fuck’s sake, no,” she said in exasperation. “I know what I’m doing.”

He pursed his lips but didn’t contradict her. He quickly rubbed a towel through his hair, then wrapped it around his waist and sat down on her stool.

She draped a smaller towel over his shoulder. A minute later, she started lathering his face with shaving cream.

He jolted, and she squeezed his shoulder. “Sit still,” she scolded.

“It’s hot,” he complained. “Why is the shaving cream hot?”

“It’s supposed to be hot,” she retorted. “Just relax.” 

Her tone was mocking. He scowled and closed his eyes, and Roman continued to blot his face with the hot shaving cream, and it was… all right, it was kind of nice once he got used to the feeling of it. But she could have warned him. 

He inhaled the faintly astringent scent of the shaving cream as she dabbed it over his upper lip. Then Roman picked up her barber’s razor. “Tilt your head,” she said.

He did as he was told. Her fingers rested delicately on his cheekbone, and she began carefully shaving away his whiskers with careful little strokes of the barber’s blade.

She shaved part of his cheek, then wiped the blade on the towel on his shoulder before continuing to shave his skin. “I did this for my dad,” she said quietly. 

He opened his eyes and glanced at her. She was looking at her hands, but her eyes flicked to his briefly before returning to her busy hands.

“He couldn’t do it himself?” Samson said.

“Not when he was sick, no.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Sick?”

“Yeah,” she said. “He died of… we don’t know what. Some kind of illness that just made him waste away. He couldn’t breathe by the end.”

“That’s…” He trailed off awkwardly, then tried again. “Sounds rough, Bird. Sorry to hear it.”

“Don’t be,” she said. “You didn’t do anything.”

Her tone was flat and brusque. They were both silent for a moment. Then, against his better judgment, Samson spoke again. “Did you… wash his hair too?”

“Yes,” she said.

And his back? Samson wondered, but his gut was squirming with discomfort now – discomfort for her sake. He knew Malcolm Hawke had died when Roman was about twenty, and now to imagine a younger Roman giving her own sickly father a bath and a shave…

He shifted uncomfortably on the stool. He wasn’t sure how to feel about her shaving him now. 

She tsked and squeezed his shoulder. “Sit fucking still, Samson. I mean it.” 

“You don’t have to do this for me, you know,” he said. “I can do it myself.”

“I said to sit still,” she snapped. “Just let me do it.”

He pursed his lips, but he did as she bade him and sat there while her razor moved delicately across his face. Her fingers were uncharacteristically gentle, just as they were when she washed his hair or his back, but now he understood where her gentleness came from. 

He decided to risk asking her another question, since she was being so strangely forthcoming. “Why didn’t your mum shave him?”

She let out a humourless little laugh. “She couldn’t. Too overwhelmed.”

“Your mum seemed to get overwhelmed a lot,” Samson remarked.

She huffed. Then a flicker of emotion crossed her face — a complex mixture of anger and guilt and distress that made his gut twist. 

Her mother had just died yesterday. He was being an asshole. He sighed. “Roman, I — Maker’s balls. I didn’t mean—”

“It’s fine,” she interrupted. “Stop apologizing.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t—”

“I said stop apologizing,” she barked. “You didn’t fucking do anything wrong.”

“All right, all right,” he said hastily, and for a while, he said nothing more. Roman continued to shave his face, and by the time she was done, there was a melancholy sort of softness to her frown that made his chest hurt. 

She dampened another towel with hot water and carefully wiped the residual shaving cream from his face, then eyed him in silence. He rubbed his face — damn, it really did feel extra smooth — then lifted one eyebrow. “So? Do I look like a brand-new man?”

“Yeah, actually,” she said. Then she turned away. “Get dressed and come downstairs,” she said, and she left him alone in the bathroom.

He sat there for a moment, surprised and a little dismayed that she hadn’t taken the opportunity to take a dig at him. She really must be feeling fucked up. 

He quickly threw on some of Carver’s clothes that she’d left on the bed for him, then padded downstairs. She was in the kitchen, and she was pouring rum into two shot glasses. 

He huffed in amusement and leaned his elbow on the kitchen island. “It’s not even close to noon yet.” 

“I don’t give a shit,” she said. She pushed one shot glass toward him, then nodded her head at the spread of food on the kitchen island. “Eat whatever you want.”

He eyed the food. There was a tureen of what smelled like lamb stew, a platter of fragrant cranberry-studded scones, and a plate of fat red grapes and sliced Ferelden cheese. 

He smirked. “You made all this for me? That’s nice.”

She scoffed. “Fuck off. Orana and Bodahn did it.” She downed her shot of rum.

“You expectin’ company?” he said. He popped a grape in his mouth.

“Fuck no,” she said. “I’m not seeing anyone today.”

He paused in his chewing. “You’re not?” he said in surprise. There was no way her crew weren’t going to show up at some point today. Was she really not going to see them? 

She wrinkled her nose and poured a second shot. “No way. I don’t need company. I’ve got this bottle of rum.” 

He watched her warily. The bottle of rum in her hand was more than half-full, and she wasn’t looking at him. Was she planning to drink it all herself?

He remembered how spectacularly drunk she’d been last night. Probably, he thought. He quickly drained his shot glass and held it out to her. “Here’s to hoping you can share, then.”

She looked at him, and something flashed across her face — a look that tugged at his heart, but it was gone before he could fully register it. Then she shrugged and poured some more rum into his shot glass. “Sure. Whatever. Stay and eat if you want.” She drank her second shot and poured herself a third.

He nodded and drank his second shot, and Roman immediately poured him another, but instead of drinking it, he picked up a scone and offered it to her.

She raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“Eat it,” he said. “You’ll last the day better if you have something in your belly.”

She scoffed. “You’re giving me lessons in drinking?”

“Think of it as passing on the family wisdom,” he said wryly.

She gave him a more serious look. “Your parents were drunks?”

“My dad,” he said. “Or my mum certainly thought so.” He shrugged and took a small bite of the scone. “He was probably no better or worse than your uncle, for what it’s worth.”

She harrumphed. “That’s not saying much.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. He took another bite of the fresh scone, then held it out to her.

She gingerly took it from his fingers, then shot him a guarded glance. “Your parents are… they, uh. They died a long time ago, right?”

“That’s right,” he said.

She nodded and picked some crumbs from the scone. “How did they… what happened to them?”

Samson sighed and leaned both elbows on the counter. “My dad was done in during a work accident. He did odd jobs here and there, general labour stuff — sometimes building houses, sometimes working down at the docks. The job that killed ‘im was a construction job, I heard.” He shrugged and selected a piece of cheese. “My mum was right pissed. She thought he was drunk at the time.”

“Was he?” Roman said quietly.

“No idea,” Samson said. “Probably.”

“Didn’t get along with your dad, huh?” she said, and she drank her third shot.

“I barely knew ‘im, really,” Samson said. “He didn’t spend much time at home.”

“And your mom?” she asked.

He shot a pointed look at the scone in her hand. She rolled her eyes and took a bite, and Samson picked up his shot glass. “I knew my mum well,” he said. “Too well, really.” 

“No, I meant did she get along with your dad,” Roman said. “Doesn’t sound like it.”

He smirked. “You got that already, eh? No, they weren’t on great terms.” He downed his third shot. Frankly, his mother had hated his father. His only memories of his parents together were memories of fights, whether those fights were furiously whispered arguments or full-out shouting matches. Samson’s father drank too much, he was never home, he was drunk whenever he was home, he drank away half of his weekly pay… His mother’s list of complaints was a never-ending diatribe that somehow only worsened after his father died. 

Roman poured a fourth shot for them both. “What happened to her?”

“She got sick,” Samson said. He shot her a knowing look. “Doesn’t sound too different from what happened to your dad, actually. She got a cough that just kept getting worse. Then one day, she just stopped breathing.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Fuck. That’s… it’s shitty, isn’t it? Watching that happen and not being able to fucking fix it?” 

“Honestly, I wouldn’t know,” he said. “I wasn’t there.”

Her eyebrows jumped up. “You — where were you?”

“I was here in Kirkwall,” he said. “I couldn’t make it back to Starkhaven.” 

“Why…?” She trailed off, and her face twisted with anger. “Oh fuck. Had the Templars already kicked you out by then?”

He nodded and sipped his shot. “I hadn’t the coin to go back. Haven’t been able to say my farewells or nothing.”

She exhaled. “Fuck. That’s… that’s fucking awful. Fucking Templar Order.”

He shrugged. In truth, even years after his mother’s death, he still fluctuated between terrible guilt and even more terrible relief for not being able to attend his mother’s funeral. 

He finished his shot and changed the subject. “Why couldn’t you do anything about your dad?”

She frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I mean magic healing,” he said. “You couldn’t do that for your dad?”

Her frown deepened into a scowl. “I can’t, no. Advanced magic healing involves getting help from spirits, which is a stupid fucking idea when you do blood magic.”

“Oh,” he said in surprise. “It… that healing stuff uses spirits, eh? I never really thought about it.”

“I have,” she said. “A lot.” She downed her shot and poured another.

“You have?” he said.

She gulped down her fifth shot, then looked at him. “I started doing blood magic when I was seventeen or eighteen. My father taught me about it, actually.”

He stared at her. “Your dad taught you blood magic?”

“No, he taught me about it,” she said impatiently. “He told me to avoid it — of course he did, he was brought up in a fucking Circle. But he taught me the basic principles so I’d know how it works. And one of the principles is that if you do blood magic, you should avoid healing magic because mixing the two can make you more prone to possession, since advanced healing magic invokes spirits.”

He gazed at her in genuine surprise. “I didn’t… I didn’t think of that.”

“What, they didn’t talk about that in Templar training?” she said snidely.

He shook his head, and she snorted. “I’m not surprised. Something the Chantry doesn't know about? Of course they teach you to be scared instead of fucking learning about it.”

He held up a hand. “Hang on, I need another shot.”

She looked at him. “You need one? Why?”

“If we’re going to talk politics?” he said dryly. “You bet I need another bloody shot.”

She smirked, and his heart did a little hop at the rare sight of a near-smile on her face. She must be getting drunk. 

“Fuck politics, then,” she announced. “You were saying something about your mom.” She poured him a fifth shot, spilling some rum on the counter in the process. 

Definitely getting drunk, he thought in amusement. If his gently spinning head was anything to go by, though, she wasn’t the only one. 

“Maybe I’d rather talk about the politics,” he said.

“Too bad,” she said. “Tell me about your mother.” She took a big bite of scone.

“My mother…” He sighed and picked up his overfull shot glass. “She wasn’t fond of me.”

Roman swallowed her bite of scone. “Not fond of you? Why not?” She bit into the scone again.

He shrugged. “She thought I was my dad all over again. A useless layabout.”

Roman paused, then swallowed her food and frowned at him. “She thought that?”

“Must have done,” he said casually. “She called me that often enough.”

“But you’re not a layabout,” Roman said.

He gave her a humourless little smile. “I’m a beggar, Bird. Ask anyone and they’d say I’m the perfect example of a layabout.”

“They’d be wrong,” she said in a hard tone. “You’re not fucking layabout. You’re always thinking about shit even when you look like you’re just sitting around. Listening to people, picking up their secrets to sell for later. That’s work. That is your work.”

He looked at her, stunned by her assessment. She wasn’t wrong, that was what he was always doing, but she considered that to be work?

A little unnerved by her generous impression of him, he shrugged and lifted his shot glass to his lips. “Maybe I was a lazy layabout when I was young. You don’t know.”

“I doubt it,” she said. “You joined the Templars when you were, what? Eighteen?”

He swallowed the rum and lowered his empty shot glass. “Yeah.”

“That doesn’t sound lazy to me.”

He toyed with his shot glass and didn’t reply. Again, she wasn’t entirely wrong; he and his mother desperately needed the money, and picking up the jobs that his dead father had left behind hadn’t been enough, so Samson had joined the Templars for the steady salary. But there was another more selfish reason that he’d joined the Templars, too. 

He briefly considered not telling that reason to Roman. She was the only person who thought he had any value, and if he told her how selfish he was, maybe she’d start thinking he was a piece of shit like everyone else did. 

But his drunken tongue was already wagging. “I didn’t exactly join the Templars because of my work ethic,” he said. “I joined them to get away from my mum.” 

Roman shrugged. “Mm. That makes sense.”

He raised his eyebrows, surprised by her casual response. “You think so?”

She gave him a knowing look. “You’re not the only one with a disapproving mother. Or whose parents weren’t on the greatest terms.”

He stared at her. In a single breath, she’d just told him more personal information he’d ever heard from her mouth.

She’d never said outright that Leandra didn’t approve of her. And she’d never anything about her parents’ relationship before. Samson had always assumed her parents had a good marriage since her mum was always whining about Malcolm’s death.

But how could Roman’s mum not approve of her? Roman had gone to the deep roads and brought back a fortune. She’d reinstated the Amell name and bought back this bloody mansion, all for her mother’s sake. What was there for Leandra to disapprove of?

At a total loss for words, he grimaced. “Well… damn.”

“Yeah,” she said. She poured them both another shot, then lifted her shot glass. “To dead mothers.”

A snort of laughter escaped him. She was so fucking vulgar sometimes. He lifted his shot glass as well. “To dead mothers, all right.”

They downed their shots. Then Samson chuckled and shook his head.

She blinked at him blearily. “What?”

“Ah, just…” He chuckled again. “Having a drink in their memory. Seems like it’s the last thing they’d want.”

She raised her eyebrows, then leaned back against the kitchen island beside him. “Shit. You’re right. My mother was always fucking nagging me about going to the Hanged Man.”

“Mine was always nagging my dad about the booze, too,” he said.

Roman looked up at him, and his heart did a little flip: her plump lips were curved in a small smile. “The fucking irony, huh?” she said. “Drinking in their honour?”

“Er, yeah,” he said blankly. To be honest, he wasn’t really thinking about his mother anymore. He was too preoccupied with the unprecedented sight of Roman’s smile. 

She was smiling. Roman was smiling, and her arm was pressed against his, and the front of her robe was gaping a little bit so he could see that she wasn’t wearing a bra.

She snorted a little laugh, and Samson’s heart stopped. Had – had she just laughed? 

She shook her head and folded her arms. “We’re honouring their memory by doing the thing they hate. That’s… that’s fucking funny.” She snorted again, then started laughing in earnest, and Samson gaped at her stupidly. 

Roman Hawke was laughing. Not a little huff or a tiny smirk, but a real belly laugh, and – Maker’s balls, he couldn’t think. She was laughing and she was pressed against his side, and her robe was gaping wide enough that he could see the edge of her nipple, and his head was spinning with rum and disbelief and a sudden burn of lust, lust that only climbed higher as she suddenly reached out and curled her fingers into his shirt–

And then he was kissing her. Or she was kissing him. Or – fuck, he didn’t know who had kissed whom, but she was sucking on his tongue and he could taste the sharp sugary flavour of rum in her mouth.

Without breaking their kiss, he abruptly pinned her back against the kitchen island, then cupped her face in his palms and kissed her hard. She twisted her hands in his shirt, and he nipped her lips and stroked her tongue ruthlessly with his own, and with every excited beat of his heart, he realized something unbelievably odd: she was allowing the kiss.

Roman was letting him kiss her. Before now, she’d always bitten him (or tried to) whenever he kissed her. But now, at this moment of drunken desire, it seemed that her guard was down.

He groaned and pressed his hips to hers, riled beyond reason by the rare treat of her unabridged kiss. He devoured her lips and twisted his tongue with hers and savoured the rum-soaked taste of her breath, and meanwhile his fingers were tugging at the loose belt of her dressing gown and pulling it open and sliding over the angular planes of her ribs— 

He palmed her bare little breast, and she broke their kiss with a convulsive gasp. “Fuck,” she whimpered.

“Do you want to?” he breathed, and he kissed her again. 

Her muffled moan filled his mouth. He twisted her nipple until she was writhing, then eagerly pushed his hand into her smalls. 

She gasped into his mouth, and he groaned with longing; she was already wet, her slick warmth coating his fingers as he ran them clumsily between her legs. 

He pinned her against the counter and buried his face against her neck while he stroked her pussy. She was already bucking against his hand, gasping through her parted lips as though his clumsy drunken touch was actually pleasing her, and despite his alcohol-muddled mind, he couldn’t help but feel a little proud.

Feeling cocky now, he kissed her again and slid one finger inside of her at the same time. She cried out into his mouth and arched into his touch, then bit his tongue.

He grunted in pain, then pulled away from her kiss and grabbed her throat with his free hand. “Don’t bloody bite me,” he gasped. “Don’t – just let me…” He trailed off distractedly; her eyes were unfocused and feverish, and she was grinding hard against his hand. 

That self-satisfied feeling of lust fanned out through his body. He squeezed her throat gently and curled his finger inside of her. “This is nice for you, is it?” he growled.

She gasped and nodded. Samson delved his finger inside of her for a moment longer, then pulled his finger free and circled it around her clit instead. “If I was licking you right now, it would feel extra nice since my face is all smooth,” he murmured in her ear. “No scratching or anything.”

She gasped and dug her nails into his chest through his shirt, and the faint hint of pain pushed his lust even higher. He petted her clit and nipped her neck, then pressed his lips to her ear again. “You’re going to come all over my hand, Bird,” he crooned. “And when you come, I’ll fuck you good and hard.”

“Why won’t you go down on me?” she demanded.

“I think I’m too drunk,” he admitted. “I can’t do a proper job of it.”

She scoffed. “Coward.”

He shot her an affronted look, then turned her head to the side and bit the side of her neck. She cried out and bucked against his hand, and he bit her once more before pressing his lips to her ear again. 

“I’ll show you who’s a bloody coward later,” he hissed. “Now come on my fingers.”

“Don’t — ah — don’t tell me — what to — f-fuck, ah!” Her face twisted with pleasure, and then she was shuddering with rapture, her fingers gripping his shirt and her eyelids fluttering in the throes of her pleasure, and Samson vindictively enjoyed the sight of her climaxing on his hand exactly as he’d told her to do. 

Without releasing her throat, he leaned in and kissed her again. When she parted her lips to bite him, he bit her lower lip instead.

She yelped in pain, then pushed his hand away from her throat and stared at him, and he smiled mockingly at her. “Hurts, doesn’t it?” he said.

She stared at him without speaking, and Samson watched delightedly as her expression became heated and intense. She suddenly reached down and rubbed her hand over his pulsing groin. 

He gasped, and she started plucking at the laces of his trousers. “Fuck me,” she demanded. “Come on, fuck me now.” 

“Where?” he panted. Frankly, he’d fuck her right here on the kitchen floor if she wanted, but somewhere slightly more comfortable would probably be… well, more comfortable. 

She was clearly of the same mind. “Anywhere,” she blurted. “Anywhere, I don’t… there, the table.”

He blearily followed her gaze. There was a round table for four at the back of the kitchen, the sort of table that kitchen servants would sit at while eating their meals. 

He looked at her. “You sure–”

She shoved her hand into his trousers and wrapped her fist around his cock. “Fuck me on the table,” she ordered. 

Fuck, her hand was so warm and tight around his cock. “All right,” he blurted. “All right, all right.” 

She released him and strode over to the table, then sat on the table and spread her legs. “Come on, get over here,” she said. 

For a split second, he just stared at her. Her robe was splayed open, showing off the rosy peaks of her nipples, and her smallclothes were soaked with her own desire. 

Damn, he thought stupidly. A second later, he was standing in front of her and pulling out his cock while shoving her legs wider with his other hand. 

He pumped his fist along his length. “Pull your smalls to the side,” he grunted. 

She reached for his cock. “Don’t tell me what to–” 

He grabbed her wrist. “Bird, just bloody do what I ask for once,” he said in exasperation. He shoved her hand down between her own legs. “Pull them to the side, come on.” 

She finally did as he’d asked, hooking her fingers into the fabric between her legs and pulling it aside, and Samson stared greedily at her slickness, dizzy with booze and desire and his own good fortune. 

He braced one hand on the table and thrust into her, and they both gasped at the desperately-needed joining of their bodies. Samson grabbed her hip and tilted her closer to the edge of the table, then thrust into her again and dipped his head low to take her nipple in his mouth, and then he was fucking her fast and suckling her nipple at the same time.

She bucked her hips to meet him. “Harder,” she gasped. 

He wasn’t sure what she meant. Fuck her harder, or suck her nipple harder? He supposed he had better do both just to be safe. 

He dug his fingers into her ass and bit her nipple and slammed into her, and she cried out and arched her spine toward him. Spurred on by her obvious pleasure, he sucked her nipple hard, then released her breast and sank his teeth into the juncture of her shoulder and her neck, and all the while he was slamming into her in a hard and driving rhythm, driving his own insistent pleasure higher with every frenzied thrust. 

He dragged his tongue along her neck and bit her throat, and she whimpered. “F-fuck,” she gasped. “I — I kind of miss your scratchy whiskers.”

He burst out a rasping little laugh. “You’re such a contrary bitch.” 

“Shut up,” she panted. “Bite me again.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” he said mockingly, and he slammed himself in deep again. 

She cried out, then released the crotch of her smalls and clawed at his shoulder, sending a delicious streak of pain across his skin. “Come on, come on, I want you to bite me!”

He stopped thrusting and reached down to pull the crotch of her smalls out of the way. “For Maker’s bloody sake,” he complained, and he thrust into her again before biting her breast. 

She sobbed and slid her fingers into his hair, but to his surprise, she didn’t pull or scratch his scalp. She was still bucking her hips like a wanton little wildcat, but her fingers were oddly gentle in his hair and on his neck, curving around the back of his neck and gripping him without digging in, and for some reason, the gentleness of her hand was making his heart pound. 

He dragged in a breath, then cradled her neck firmly in his free hand and pressed his forehead to hers as he fucked her. Her lips were an inch from his and he could feel the rum-scented heat of her breath across his lips, but he didn’t try to kiss her; he just fucked her in a hard driving rhythm with his forehead pressed to hers and her slender kiss-bruised neck cradled in his palm.

“I’m going to come soon, Bird,” he grunted.

“I know,” she gasped. 

He stroked her jawline with his thumb. “I’m — I’m going to fill you with my come so it soaks into your smalls.” 

She nodded eagerly, and her lips brushed against his. “I know, I know, just do it,” she moaned.

He breathed hard, dizzy and breathless from the nearness of her mouth. His orgasm felt like it was ready to burst from his skin, and her mouth was so close to his, barely a hairsbreadth away, what if — what if he, while he was coming, what if he – would she bite him if he kissed her? But fuck, he really wanted to… 

His climax suddenly burst. Reckless and overcome with pleasure, Samson kissed her while he came. He thrust into her and hungrily stroked her tongue with his, and — oh Maker, Maker’s balls, Roman was licking his tongue and kissing him back. 

For the second time today, possibly the second time ever, she was actually allowing him to kiss her, and her fingers were running through his hair in a smooth caress, and his heart was pounding so hard that it felt like it was trying to escape his rib cage altogether. 

He petted the back of her neck and slanted his mouth firmly over hers. Then Roman gripped his hair and pulled him away. 

He stared breathlessly at her flushed and frowning face. His cock was still pulsing with the tail-end of his rapture, and his entire body felt like it was tingling and floating, and… Maker’s fucking balls, he’d never felt this way before. He felt stunned but euphoric, as though he’d been struck in the head but in a good way, even though that made no bloody sense.

Must be drunker than I thought, he told himself. He released her neck, then slowly pulled out of her and tucked his cock back into his trousers. “Where’s… um, your household staff. Bodahn and the others. Are they…?” He trailed off awkwardly. Damn, he should have thought of this before he’d shoved his hand into her smallclothes. 

Roman adjusted her smalls and slid off of the table. “They’re here somewhere.”

“Oh,” he said. He scratched the back of his head and guiltily eyed the table. “Should we, er…”

“Yeah,” she said. “They already think I’m an asshole, though, so this doesn’t change anything.” She retied her robe, then pushed past him to get a wash rag and some soap from the kitchen sink. She wet the rag in hot water and lathered it up, then stumbled back over to the table and started wiping it down. 

Samson watched her for a moment before speaking. “You’re not an asshole, Bird. Not always.”

She shot him a disparaging look. “Yes I am,” she said. She turned back to the table and continued to clean it, and as he watched her scrubbing the table as though she was doing penance, he was struck by a weird urge to walk up behind her and wrap her in his arms. 

Don’t be stupid, he thought. She would shove him away if he tried. 

He leaned against the kitchen counter and folded his arms. When Roman finished washing the table, she rinsed the table with hot water and wiped it dry, then wandered over to him.

She leaned against the opposite counter and folded her arms too. “Well? Are you leaving now?”

His belly dropped with disappointment. “Do you want me to leave?” he said.

She shrugged and brushed a stray piece of lint off of her sleeve. “I don’t care. Do what you want.”

He studied her carefully, then lifted his chin. “What if I said I’m staying here tonight?”

She shrugged. “Fine. Whatever.”

“And if I wanted to take a piss in your fancy bathtub?” he taunted.

She wrinkled her nose. “Don’t be fucking disgusting.”

He huffed in amusement. “How about…” He nibbled the inside of his cheek, then took a chance. “What if I said I was staying here for the rest of the week so I can sleep in your fancy bed?”

She eyed him for a second, then looked away. “Stay if you want. I don’t care.”

I don’t care. She was always saying this, and it was so fucking frustrating.

He reached out and tugged her arm, and she stumbled toward him. “Hey, don’t pull,” she complained. 

He ignored her complaint and dragged her against his chest. “What if I said I’m going to sleep here from now on so I can have my way with you whenever I get the urge?”

She stubbornly folded her arms, but Samson noted that she didn’t try to pull away — and that her cheeks were turning pink. “Good luck with that, you cocky asshole,” she retorted.

“Roman,” he said seriously. “Do you want me to stay?”

Her cheeks were red now, and she was positively glowering at him. “It’s — whatever. Stay if you want. I told you, I don’t care what you do.”

He sighed loudly. “You’re a bloody pain in the arse,” he complained, and he kissed her. 

She nipped his lip, then pushed him away. “I’m going back upstairs,” she said. “Eat what you want. Or bring something upstairs with you, whatever.” She strode toward the kitchen door without looking at him, and he watched with a mixture of fondness and frustration as she walked away. 

Once she was gone, he leaned his elbows on the kitchen island and popped a piece of cheese in his mouth. Bloody Bird, he thought. She was like a tornado, pulling him in a hundred different directions at once with her anger and her defensiveness and her constant cursing. But then there were these moments of peace and stillness with her — moments where she was just a little bit soft, when her hands were tender and her voice was calm. Those moments when they were sitting together in silence, or having a drink and a chat, or lying in her bed in the aftermath of their torrid sex: those moments were precious, more precious than any moment he’d ever had with any other person in his life, and in those fragile moments, Samson knew, deep down, what this really was.

He knew what this was, even though he’d never had it before or felt it in this way for anyone else. He knew what this was, and at some level, beneath Roman’s sneering words and her whatevers and her I-don’t-cares, he was sure that she knew what it was as well.

He’d be damned if he would be the one to say it, though. He’d made a damned fool of himself enough times in his life, thanks very much.

He slowly ate another piece of cheese. When he was finished, he went to the cupboard and took out a large plate, then piled the plate with scones and cheese and fruit.

She didn’t bother looking at the dance floor; Varric was about as fond of dancing as she was. She scanned the tables, and when she finally spotted him, she couldn’t help but smirk.

He was sitting at the head of a long rectangular table toward the back of the room, in the comfortable padded armchair that usually sat in his suite at the back of the Hanged Man. He was overseeing a game of wicked grace, looking comfortable and happy and giving the distinct impression of being the man in charge.

He kind of is, she thought. He’s hosting this big fucking party, after all. Ever since the Arishok had sacked the city three years ago, Varric had started sponsoring a Satinalia party at the Hanged Man. The first one had been to celebrate the reopening of the Hanged Man, seeing as it had been partially destroyed by the qunari. But for the following two years after, he’d continued to host these Satinalia parties every year, paying for the food and the drinks and the entertainment — a small fortune, given how much the greedy residents of Kirkwall could eat and drink.

“Why do you do this?” Roman had asked him one year. 

“Why not?” he replied. “It makes people happy. We can always use a little happy around here, especially in Lowtown.”

Roman curled her lip. “It’s not like it makes a difference. They’ll eat all your food and drink all your booze today, then go back to talking shit about you behind your back tomorrow.”

Varric shot her a sympathetic look and patted her elbow. “It’s one night, Hawke. A night where we can forget all that shit and have a good time. You should try to join in.”

She clicked her tongue in annoyance, and Varric chuckled. “Besides, if you’re worried about me losing money, don’t. I’ve got a special fund I keep specifically for this party, and you know what it’s made up of?”

“What?” she said suspiciously.

His smile widened. “Winnings from wicked grace.”

Roman gave him an incredulous look. “You pay for all of this with your winnings from wicked grace?”

He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over his belly. “What can I say? I’m a lucky guy.”

Roman actually laughed at that, and since then, she hadn’t questioned him about throwing this party every year. Besides, it was nice to see Varric looking all happy indoors, rather than looking all disgruntled while trampling around the fucking countryside with her.

She slunk through the crowds toward him. “I’m here,” she yelled. 

He looked up from his cards and smiled. “Hawke,” he yelled back, and he waved for her to join the table. “Come on, sit down, I’ll deal you in the next round.” 

She shook her head; she didn’t know anyone sitting at the table right now, and she wasn’t in the mood to make chit-chat with strangers. “Just wanted you to see I’m here. And now that I’ve shown my face, I’m going home,” she said, only half-jokingly.

Varric smiled. “Ha ha. Seriously though, get some food, enjoy yourself, find the others. I think the whole crew is here except for Blondie and Choir Boy.” 

She nodded. Of course Sebastian wasn’t here, since he never did anything involving booze or fun. And Anders was probably stuck at the clinic in Darktown.

I wonder if Samson is here, she thought. Then again, she wasn’t sure he was even going to come. He’d shown up at Varric’s Satinalia party only once in the past three years, so there was no guarantee he would come this time. Maybe he’d just gone straight to Roman’s mansion to go to sleep.  

Lucky asshole, she thought. “I’m stealing this,” she said to Varric, and she took his mostly-full stein of lager from the table. 

He waved affably, and Roman made her way toward the nearest wall, intent on getting out of the crowd. But the revelry in the tavern was so uncontained that by the time she was pressed against the wall away from the worst of the people, a big mouthful’s worth of lager had gotten sloshed over her hand and onto her skirt. 

“Fuck’s sake,” she muttered. She gulped down the drink as quickly as possible, then swiftly placed the empty stein on a passing waitress’s tray and grabbed a fresh drink from the tray at the same time. 

She sniffed the drink, and a faint aching feeling tugged at her ribs. The stein contained mulled wine, and the distinct Ferelden smell made her feel both homesick and resentful at the same time — kind of like being at this party made her feel.

Roman had never been fond of parties. The cheerfulness and the jollity always made her feel as though there was something wrong with her. The bigger the party, the more isolated she felt, like the divide between her own moodiness and other people’s carefree cheer was even more stark and glaring, and she had never known how to bridge that divide — not that she really wanted to, since most people were shit and she hated small talk. 

Still, sometimes she wondered what it would be like to have a gift with people, like Varric had: to be comfortable around people, to see the good in them and chat with them and not be braced any second for them to suddenly decide that she was an evil piece of shit for being an apostate with a temper and a foul mouth that even sailors would cringe away from.

She took a big gulp of mulled wine, and the aching feeling in her rib cage swelled even more. Then someone sidled up beside her — someone she wouldn’t have expected to seek her company willingly. 

Fenris nodded politely. “Hawke,” he said.

She nodded in return. “Surprised to see you here,” she said.

“Varric insisted,” Fenris said dryly.

Roman scoffed. “Yeah, he’s pretty fucking persuasive.”

“That he is,” Fenris said, and he took a sip of his wine — normal, non-mulled wine.

Roman curiously eyed his glass. “Is that that Aggregio shit you like?”

He shook his head. “It’s Orlesian. A bit on the vinegar-y side, but I will take what I can get.” He gave her an odd look. “Besides, they don’t import goods from Tevinter here.”

She scoffed and swirled her drink. “Not legally, maybe. You should ask Varric to hook you up, get you some black-market fancy wine. He knows people.”

Fenris huffed in amusement. “That is an understatement. That dwarf knows everyone and their mother.”

Roman smirked at him, and she was surprised to find him smirking as well. Then she was surprised to find herself feeling this relaxed in Fenris’s company. They usually spent any time together walking on eggshells to avoid falling into the kinds of shouting matches he and Anders usually had. He must be pretty fucking drunk. 

She glanced down at her half-empty stein of mulled wine. Then again, she was pretty tipsy already too.

She took another deep drink, and Fenris sipped his wine as well. Then Aveline joined them. “Fenris, Hawke,” she said with an officious little nod. “Happy Satinalia.”

“And to you,” Fenris said. Then he raised an eyebrow. “I’m surprised to see the captain of the guard here.”

“I’m here for Varric, as you well know,” Aveline said testily. “Although I suppose it doesn’t hurt to have a member of the city guard here to keep the peace. Just in case.” She frowned at the boisterous patrons in the room.

Roman rolled her eyes. “Don’t fucking bother. If you get involved in any fights here, you’ll only make things worse.”

“She’s got a point,” Fenris said. “It would be prudent for you to not get involved.”

Aveline pursed her lips, then sighed. “Donnic said the same thing,” she admitted.

“He is a wise man,” Fenris said.

Aveline shot him a resentful look. “You’re only saying that because he goes to your house every week to play cards.”

Fenris shrugged. “If you wish to rejoin our games, take it up with your husband, not with me.”

Aveline harrumphed and folded her arms, and Roman hid her smirk in her stein. Then Isabela and a pink-cheeked Merrill pushed their way through the crowd. 

“Ooh, hello everyone!” Merill said breathlessly. “Isabela was teaching me an Orlesian two-step! It’s very hard work though, a lot more hip twirling than I would have thought.”

Hip twirling? Roman thought. She didn’t think that Orlesian dances were known for their hip action. She glanced at Isabela, who winked at her. 

Merrill was looking around the tavern with wide eyes. “I’m so thirsty. I wonder if I can get a glass of water here?”

“Not likely, kitten,” Isabela said. “But here.” She plucked a stein from a passing tray and sniffed it, then handed it to Merrill. “Cider. Not water, but close enough.”

Merill beamed at her, then took a big gulp of cider, and Fenris narrowed his eyes. “You ought to eat something,” he warned.

Merrill lowered the stein and gave him a chiding look. “Don’t fuss, Fenris. I can hold my liquor, you know.” 

Fenris pursed his lips and looked away, and Isabela chuckled. “Now children, don’t fight, just dance. Who’s going to dance with me next?” She tilted her head cheekily at Aveline. “What about you, big girl? Care to dance?”

Aveline frowned. “Are you making fun of me?”

Isabela grinned. “No, actually. Why? Are you a bad dancer?”

“I never said that,” Aveline said — defensively enough that Roman knew she must be a terrible dancer.

“It’s all right if you are,” Isabela said soothingly. “If you’re dancing with me, nobody will be looking at you anyway.”

“I’m not dancing with you,” Aveline said stiffly.

Isabela sighed. “Fine, fine. What about you, Hawke?”

“Not a fucking chance,” Roman said, and she finished off her mulled wine.

“Oh come on,” Isabela coaxed. “I can sense that you have moves.”

Roman sardonically lifted her eyebrow. “Ask me again and the only moves I’ll make are toward the fucking door.”

Isabela laughed. “All right, sweet thing, no need to get sassy.” Then, finally, she gave Fenris a slow and salacious smile.

He lowered his mostly-empty glass. “What?”

“What about you?” she said silkily. “Care to dance?”

Fenris shook his head. “I don’t dance.”

“Not even with me?” Isabela simpered.

“No, Isabela,” he said patiently. “Not even with you.”

She sauntered right up to him and trailed her finger down his chest. “How much do you want to bet that I can change your mind?”

Fenris raised an eyebrow, and Aveline stepped away. “All right, I’m going, er, elsewhere.”

“Me too,” Roman drawled.

“Me too!” Merrill said with a nervous giggle. They all dispersed, Aveline toward the opposite side of the room and Merrill toward Varric’s table and Roman back toward the bar, all of them chased by Isabela’s husky laugh. 

Roman carefully pushed her way through the crowd at the bar and held up three fingers. A moment later, the bartender handed her a tumbler of whiskey, and she deftly flicked him another gold royal for a tip, which he caught in mid-air with a smile.

A deep, sarcastic voice spoke behind her — one she didn’t recognize right away. “Ain’t that flush of you, Champion.” 

She turned around and immediately stiffened. The person speaking to her was a tall and pasty fellow that she instantly recognized as one of Meredith’s more loyal Templars, accompanied by a shorter man who was also a Templar, both apparently on shore leave. 

An instinctive flush of anger bloomed in her gut, but she forced herself to ignore it. She might be half-drunk, but she was sober enough to know that getting in a fight with Templars at Varric’s party would be a shitty thing to do.

“Yeah, it was,” she said. “Fuck off and enjoy the party.” She started to step around the Templars, but they shifted in front of her.

Roman gave the taller Templar a flat look. “Get the fuck out of my way.”

Unfortunately, he didn’t listen; instead, he and his crony stepped closer. “We heard you’re a blood mage,” he growled.

The anger in her gut curdled, and she lifted her chin. “You heard that, huh?”

“Yeah,” the shorter Templar said. “So? It true?”

She laughed nastily. “You think I’d tell you if it was? How fucking stupid are you?” She tilted her head. “Oh wait, you’re Templars. Never mind, I answered my own question.”

The shorter Templar curled his lip and took a step toward her, and she tensed her fists, ready to hit him if he took another step. She wouldn’t use magic, not during this party, but she had no fucking qualms about punching someone in the face. 

The shorter Templar stepped even closer, and Roman bared her teeth in a snarl. But before she could raise her hand to strike, another voice interrupted. “Evening, fellas. Is there a problem ‘ere?”

Samson, Roman thought, and her shoulders loosened. He was standing just behind her with one hand tucked in his pocket and the other holding a stein, and his lips were curled in a polite smile — or seemingly polite, at least, though Roman could see the hint of mockery at the corners of his lips. 

The Templars were looking at Samson now instead of her, and the taller one sneered. “Samson. The fuck are you doing here?”

“Having a drink, same as you,” he said, and he lifted his stein. “Happy tidings and all that.”

The shorter Templar snorted, and the taller one folded his arms and jerked his head at Roman. “You friends with this apostate cunt or something? That why you’re stepping in for her?”

Roman swelled with anger. “Cunt?” she snarled, and she took a step toward the taller Templar. “Who the fuck are you calling a—” 

Samson grabbed her arm, and the shorter Templar laughed. “Oh ho, look at ‘im, putting the brakes on mages like he thinks he’s still a Templar.”

Roman wrested her arm away from Samson and glared at him, but he wasn't looking at her; he was looking at the two Templars still, and there was a quizzical look on his face now. “Does Cullen know you’re here?” he said.

The taller Templar went tellingly still, and the shorter one’s face crumpled into a scowl. “What’d you say?”

Samson shrugged and tucked his free hand back in his pocket. “Just askin’ if Cullen knows you’re here. Last I heard, the Knight-Captain had forbidden all of you from going to the Hanged Man or the Blooming Rose on your nights off.” He smirked. “Too much of a distraction, I heard.”

The shorter Templar stared at Samson. “How the fuck d’you know—”

The taller one elbowed him. “Shut it, you dimwit,” he hissed. He shot Samson and Roman a venomous look, then pulled his crony toward the door, and a moment later, they were gone.

Samson turned to her with a half-smile. “Bird,” he said, and he sipped from his stein.

She tutted. “I was handling that just fine without your help,” she said, but without any real heat. She hadn’t expected him to come, and frankly, it was kind of a nice surprise that he was here. He was wearing a rust-red shirt that was unbuttoned partway down his chest so she could see his chest hair, and… okay, fine, if she was being totally honest — an honesty she would entirely attribute to the mulled wine — he looked pretty attractive.

She took a gulp of her whiskey, then squinted at his chest. His shirt wasn’t unbuttoned, actually; he was just missing a couple of buttons. 

“Something wrong?” he said.

She scoffed and plucked at his open shirt. “You look sloppy as fuck.”

He twisted his lips ruefully. “Yeah. Nicest shirt I’ve got, if you can believe it.” 

“You should just let me buy you something new,” she said, for the umpteenth time. “Then you don’t have to go around looking like shit.”

“If I look like shit, why’re you staring?” he asked.

She tore her eyes away from his chest and scowled at him. “I’m not staring.”

“Sure you are,” he said.  “It’s all right, Bird. You look good too.” His eyes travelled from her low-necked top to her knee-length skirt, and he smirked. “There’s a stain on your skirt.”

She rolled her eyes. “I know. Someone made me spill my fucking beer.”

“And you’re nagging me about being sloppy?” he said archly.

She gestured emphatically at her skirt. “This was an accident! You showed up looking like this!”

“Give me credit, will you? I tried,” he said plaintively.

She raised a skeptical eyebrow. “You did not. You didn’t even shave. You’re all whiskery.”

He tsked. “You and the whiskers. I can’t figure out if you like them or not.”

“They look good,” she said without thinking. “They feel like shit on my skin.” Oops, that was more candid than she’d intended. 

She frowned resentfully at her half-empty tumbler, and Samson chuckled — a rough little heh-heh-heh that lifted an annoying buzzing sensation between her legs. “That doesn’t help me decide whether to shave the bloody whiskers off or not,” he said.

She shrugged and looked away from him. “Just do what you want. It’s your face. I don’t care what you do.”

He sighed and shifted a little closer to her — close enough that their arms were touching. “You’re a bloody pain in the ass, you know that?”

She clicked her tongue. “Ah, fuck you, too.” She tapped her tumbler to his stein and finished off her drink.

He grinned at her, then took a gulp from his stein before speaking again. “You’re in a good mood. Having a nice time then, eh?”

“Not really,” she said. “I don’t like parties.” 

“Me neither,” he said. “Never really felt right when I was at them. Always got the feelin’ like there was something I wasn’t quite in on, even if I was right in the thick of it.”

She looked at him in surprise. That was exactly how she’d always felt at parties.

He met her eye, then rubbed a hand over his chin. “What? Something on my face?”

“If you don’t like parties, why did you come to this one?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I knew you had to come, for Tethras. Thought I’d keep you company.” He gave her a crooked little smile. “Misery loves company, or so they say, and I figured you’d be pretty bloody miserable.” He drank from the stein, and Roman watched the bobbing of his throat as he swallowed. 

He lowered the stein and looked at her, then lifted his eyebrow. “What—”

She grabbed his shirt and dragged him into a kiss. 

He grunted in surprise and wrapped his arm around her waist, and Roman twined her tongue with his for a moment before pushing him away. “Your face is scratchy,” she said.

He stared at her stupidly for a second, his half-bared chest rising and falling as he panted for breath. Then a broad smile stretched across his face. “You bloody minx,” he said.

She smirked. Then a tall burly man bumped into her shoulder hard. 

She stumbled slightly, annoyed but unfazed; this fucking tavern was way too crowded, after all. A second later, however, the man’s disparaging tone made it clear that the bump was definitely not an accident. “Look at this,” he drawled. “The Champion’s a whore for the beggar.” He bared his yellowed teeth at her in a semblance of a grin. “Times so desperate that you’ve got to fuck the trash on the street?”

A ringing rage suddenly burst in her ears. Without thinking, she swung her empty tumbler up and smashed it across the burly asshole’s face. 

“Roman!” Samson barked.

The man stumbled back with a howl of pain, and the people around them cried out in shock and tried to shuffle away. Roman ignored them and took a threatening step toward the burly asshole, and Samson grabbed her arm. 

“Roman, stop,” he hissed. 

She twisted out of his grip. “He said you’re trash,” she yelled. “You’re not fucking trash. He’s the trash.”

Samson opened his mouth, but before he could reply, the burly man’s big hand squeezed her shoulder in a painful grip. “You fucking bitch—”

She viciously clawed at his hand, and when he whipped his hand back with a yelp, she raised the now-cracked tumbler, ready to smash it across his face a second time.  

“Stop!” Aveline shouted. She pushed through the crowd and stepped between Roman and the burly man. “Hawke, what’s happening here?”

“She hit me in the face, that fucking bitch!” the burly man bleated. 

Roman snarled and took another threatening step toward him, but Aveline held up a hand. “Enough,” she said loudly, and she turned toward the burly man. “Outside, now. Unless you want to come with me to the holding cells.” 

“Yeah, get the fuck out of here,” Roman spat. “If I see your fucking face again—”

Samson grabbed her hand and pried the tumbler from her fingers. “Come on,” he said in exasperation, and he started pulling her away toward the back of the tavern. 

She tried to pull her hand out of his grip. “What are you doing? Let me go!” 

“Getting you somewhere quiet to calm down,” he gritted.

“I am calm,” she yelled. “It’s that asshole who isn’t calm! You heard him, he fucking started it!” 

Samson didn’t reply, and he didn’t let go of her hand. He kept pulling her through the tavern, out of the main room with its music and its noise and through to the inn area at the back, which was much quieter. 

She sighed loudly and smacked his arm. “Let me go. I’m fucking calm.”

“No,” he said, and he kept tugging her through the corridors until they were in a secluded back corner of the inn, where a few dilapidated crates and barrels sat there waiting to either be repaired or thrown away. 

Samson finally released her hand and folded his arms. “I told you not to get into fucking fights for me.”

She glared at him. How dare he scowl at her like he was the angry one? “It wasn’t my fault. He was looking to start a fight!”

“You made the fight happen,” he accused.

“I did not!” she retorted.

He gave her a chiding look. “You hit him with a bloody tumbler, Bird.”

“You’re not fucking trash!” she yelled.

He wilted and rubbed his forehead. “Bloody Maker’s balls…”

“You’re not trash,” she railed. “There’s nothing wrong with you. He doesn’t even fucking know you, how can he just go around—”

Samson suddenly clasped her neck in his hands and pinned her against the wall, and Roman gasped at the impact of her back striking the wall. “You’re lookin’ for an excuse to fight,” he said roughly. “You say you’re not, but you are.”

She glowered at him, stung by the injustice of this accusation. “I am not,” she retorted. “I don’t want to — I don’t want to be this way! You think I like being all — fucking pissed all the time?” 

“That’s not what I’m saying. I just…” He sighed. “Maker, I don’t know what I’m saying. I just… don’t want you to get in fucking fights for me. I can fight for myself.”

“But you don’t,” she said. “You don’t fight when they pick on you, and I hate it.”

His eyebrows rose, and he released her neck. “Right, right. Because I’m a coward, right?”

Her frustration ratcheted higher. “You’re not a fucking coward!” she shouted. “You’re — there’s nothing wrong with you!”

He scoffed and folded his arms. “Are you blind or something? I’m a lyrium-addicted beggar with missing buttons on my best bloody shirt.”

She glared viciously at him and prodded his half-bared chest. “There’s nothing wrong with you that isn’t wrong with me too. If you’re fucking trash, then so am I.”

He stared at her without speaking, and Roman’s belly twisted; his expression was softening from anger into something far softer and more unnerving.

She curled her lip. “What the fuck are you looking at me like that for?”

A little smile lifted the corners of his lips. “That was almost romantic, Bird.”

She recoiled slightly, then shoved his abs. “Don’t be fucking stupid. It was not.”

He didn’t move. “It was, sort of. You going to be giving me roses in the moonlight next?”

His smile was broad and his tone was playful now, and Roman’s annoyance swelled, along with the hot feeling in her cheeks. “Shut the fuck up,” she said, and she shoved him again.

He grabbed her wrist and pinned it back against the wall, and a sudden hot rush of lust flooded between her legs. She twisted her wrist, and Samson stepped closer, close enough that she was trapped against the wall by his body. 

He stroked her cheek with his other hand, and Roman twisted her face away. “Quit it,” she snapped.

He gripped her jaw and turned her face to look at him, and her heart thudded between her legs at the force of his hand on her jaw. She slipped her free hand into his open shirt and twisted his nipple, and he gasped in pain and released her jaw. 

His hand on her wrist only tightened, however, and Roman gasped with excitement at the firmness of his fingers around her wrist. Then he captured her other hand and forced it back against the wall as well. 

“Bloody wildcat,” he growled. “Just calm down, will you?”

“Then let me go,” she snapped breathlessly.

He huffed. “See, I don’t think you really want me to.”

“Yes I do,” she said belligerently.

He lifted his eyebrows skeptically. “You sure? Then tell me again to let you go, and I’ll do it. Go on, say it again.”

His tone was taunting, and it was like tossing oil on her flaring temper and her lust. She sneered at him but didn’t speak, and he let out a smug little laugh. “Didn’t think so. I know what you’re really looking for.”

“You don’t know shit,” she snapped.

“Yeah, I do,” he said, and he pressed his hips to hers.

His cock was a hard ridge pressing against the vee of her thighs, and her lips fell open with a gasp. Then Samson pressed his mouth against her ear. “You want me to fuck you,” he whispered. “That’s why you’re wearing this skirt, isn’t it?”

She dragged in a breath and wriggled in his grip, rubbing herself against his groin in the process. “What the fuck are you talking about?” she panted.

“This skirt,” he murmured in her ear. “This is the one you had on when we first fucked in the alley outside.”

His voice was low and sly, and the heat in her cheeks and her abdomen swelled even more. He was right, unfortunately; this was that same skirt, the same one Samson had shoved up before pinning her against the wall to fuck her from behind, and she’d be lying if she hadn’t thought about it when putting it on this evening. She wasn’t very well going to admit that, though.

Unfortunately, it seemed that she didn’t need to; Samson was laughing softly against her ear, that smug and knowing little chuckle that both enraged her and riled her up to a maddening degree. “Aw, you got dressed up for me tonight, eh?” he teased. “That’s romantic too.”

“Fuck you,” she spat. “Fuck you, fuck you, I hate you—”

He released her wrist and slid his palm up along her thigh, and Roman broke off with a convulsive gasp. Then he was rubbing her sex, his fingers sliding against her throbbing pussy through her smalls, and he was talking in her ear once more.

“Don’t be embarrassed, Bird,” he murmured. “I picked out this shirt for you, too.”

His fingers between her legs, his voice in her ear, his whiskers scratching her face… She fucking wanted him, and it was so annoying. She gasped in a breath and tried to gather her scrambled thoughts. “You picked the shitty shirt with missing buttons for me? Fuck you,” she moaned.

He laughed softly and pressed his fingers against her clit. “No, you daft idiot. I picked the one in your favourite colour.”

Her heart squeezed, and she scoffed. “Whatever. You’re the idiot.” 

“And you’re a bloody pain in my ass,” he purred. Then, without warning, he pushed the crotch of her smalls aside and slid one finger inside of her.

The unexpected pleasure of his finger drove a cry from her throat. She twisted her free hand in his shirt, and he released her other hand and covered her mouth. “Shh,” he hissed. “Keep your voice down, eh?”

His finger was curling relentlessly inside of her, striking at a spot inside of her that was making her legs feel shaky, and she couldn’t stop herself from moaning against his palm. She thrust her hips eagerly toward his hand, and he exhaled hard.

“Maker’s balls, Bird,” he groaned. “What am I supposed to do with you?”

She twisted her face away from his palm. “Fuck me,” she rasped. “Fuck me right now.”

“Where am I supposed to do that?” he said quietly. “There’s no furniture here.”

“Like that’s ever stopped you before,” she said.

He smiled slowly at her, then suddenly pulled his finger free. Before Roman could protest or say a word, he was lifting her up and depositing her on a dusty barrel at waist-height. 

He roughly reached into her skirt, and she lifted her hips so he could pull her smallclothes off. “If I get a splinter in my ass, you’re helping me get it out,” she threatened.

He shot her a reproving look as he shoved her smallclothes in his pocket. “Look, d’you want to fuck here or not?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Then stop complaining and spread your legs,” he commanded. 

She glared at him as she parted her knees. “Don’t fucking tell me what to do.” 

He gave her a reproachful look as he unbuttoned his trousers, but Roman ignored it; she was too focused on his cock, the thick hard length of it straining against the fabric of his smalls, and now he was pulling his cock out and stroking it with one hand while he stepped closer to her…

She eagerly shifted closer to the edge of the barrel, and Samson’s eyes dropped to her thighs. “Come on, Bird, let me have a look at you,” he breathed. He lifted the edge of her skirt to look at her pussy, and Roman spread her legs wide so he could see her better.

The look on his face grew hungry, and Roman stared at his lustful expression with a growing hunger of her own. “Pervert,” she accused.

He looked up at her and grinned. “Takes one to know one,” he teased. He stepped closer to the barrel and grabbed her hip, then thrust into her hard.

She gasped and jolted, then wiggled closer to the edge of the barrel so he could fuck her deeper, and he groaned and grabbed her thigh. “Put your legs around me,” he urged.

She wrapped her legs around his waist and locked her ankles together at the small of his back. He thrust into her again, and this time she was forced to cry out with pleasure; the edge of the barrel was digging into her ass a bit, but with her legs wrapped around him, it felt like he was striking much deeper inside of her with every thrust. 

He gripped her hip with one hand and the edge of the barrel with the other and slammed his cock inside of her, and Roman moaned again.

“Shut the fuck up, Bird,” he groaned, and he slammed into her again. She gasped and sank her teeth into the side of his neck, and he groaned and thrust into her over and over, rapid deep thrusts that sent ripples of pleasure through her fingers and her toes, and she greedily sucked and bit his neck to stop herself from moaning at how fucking good it felt. 

After a couple of blissful minutes, Samson gasped fitfully and dug his fingers painfully into her thigh, and she grunted against his neck as his cock grew even harder inside of her. He came a moment later, shuddering and painting against her collarbone as he thrust into her a frenzied blur, and Roman savoured the forceful striking thrusts of his cock as he rode out his climax. 

A long moment later, he sighed heavily and nipped her neck, and the feeling of his teeth on her neck sent a little shiver down her spine. He patted her thigh, and she untwined her legs from around his waist with a little grimace. 

“My ass hurts,” she complained. 

He smirked at her as he stepped back and tucked his cock into his trousers. “Sorry,” he said.

“You are not,” she accused. 

“Ah, you’re right, I’m not,” he said unrepentantly, and he helped her down from the barrel. She immediately felt his seed dripping down the inside of her thigh, and she quickly untied the red scarf from around her wrist to wipe it up. 

“Hey, I’ll do that,” Samson said affably, and he reached for the scarf.

She wrinkled her nose at him. “Why?”

“Because I’m a gentleman, o’course,” he said. “Gentlemen clean up their messes.”

His face was lit with a broad shit-eating grin, and Roman couldn’t decide whether she wanted to laugh or to smack him. Instead, she shot him a flat look as she wiped the inside of her thigh. “You really want to be a gentleman? Then you can go down on me.”

His grin fell into a look of surprise. “Eh?”

“I didn’t come,” she said. 

He grimaced. “Oh. Balls. Sorry, Bird.” He eyed her uncertainly. “You… you really want me to go down on you? Now?”

She paused in her wiping and raised her eyebrows. “What, you’ll fuck me at the back of the Hanged Man but you won’t go down on me?”

“It’s not that,” he said hurriedly. “It’s just…” He scrunched his face up a bit. “I already came in you.”

“So?” she said.

“So I’m not really keen to, uh, eat my own cooking, if you get my meaning,” he said.

Roman gave him a withering look. “Are you fucking serious?”

“Yeah…” He sighed and wilted. “You want me to do it anyway, don’t you?”

She clicked her tongue. “You’re the one who was saying you’re a gentleman.” She went back to wiping the inside of her thighs.

Samson rubbed the back of his neck. Then, to her surprise, he kneeled in front of her. “All right, twist my bloody arm,” he grumbled. He pushed her skirt up to her hips, and Roman felt a fresh thrill of heated anticipation pooling between her legs. 

He leaned in and kissed her hip, and her pussy pulsed at the nearness of his mouth. Then he sighed. “Can’t believe I’m doing this,” he muttered, and he drew his tongue along the length of her cleft.

She gasped and sank her fingers into his hair. Despite his reluctance, he was doing just as good a job as he always did: his tongue was circling smoothly around her clit, teasing her with the exact amount of pressure that felt fucking good while making her crave an even firmer touch of his tongue.

She dragged in a shaky breath and rolled her hips toward his mouth. He drew his tongue firmly over her clit, and the firm pressure sent a shock of pleasure through her body.

She gasped and clenched her fingers in his hair. He lapped at her clit again, and she bucked toward his mouth. He reached up and placed his palms on her bare thighs to push them wider apart, and the heat of his hands on her skin sent another thrill of pleasure through her limbs. 

She rocked her hips toward his tongue, and within seconds she was grinding against his mouth, her rapture rising steadily with every smooth hot stroke of his tongue against her swollen clit. She gasped convulsively and pulled his hair, and he growled into her pussy and tugged at her clit with his lips, and she let out a moan. 

He leaned away and shot her a resentful look. “Seriously, Roman, shut up—”

“Don’t fucking stop,” she gasped, and she pulled his head between her legs once more.

He grunted and sealed his lips over her clit, and she shoved the back of her other hand against her mouth to stifle herself, and not a moment too soon: a few blissful licks later, she was shuddering and slumping back against the wall as her rapture rippled from her pulsing clit down to her calves and all the way up to her scalp.

She closed her eyes and leaned her back against the wall, giving the wall all of her weight as the pleasure washed through her limbs. When her climax had finally ebbed away, she dropped her hand away from her mouth and sighed.

Then Samson kissed her and thrust his tongue into her mouth.

“Mmph,” she protested, but his tongue was sliding against her own. She poked his belly and bit his tongue, and he pulled away from her.

“See?” he said pointedly. “Doesn’t taste so good, does it?”

She gave him a shut-the-fuck-up look. “Tastes like it always does when I suck you off after you fucked me.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Oh. Yeah, that makes sense.”

She snorted and reached into his pocket to take back her smallclothes. “You really are a fucking idiot,” she told him. She pulled her smalls back on and smoothed out her skirt, then started to sidle past him toward the corridor, but he stopped her with a hand on her hip.

She paused and looked up at him, then frowned; he looked quite serious. “What’s wrong?” she said. 

“Stop getting into fights for me,” he said quietly. “I don’t want you getting into trouble.”

She sighed in annoyance, and he squeezed her hip. “I mean it, Roman. You have to keep your head down more.”

“Are you going to tell the whole world to fuck off and leave me alone, then?” she said archly. “Because if everyone gets off my case, I’d gladly keep my fucking head down.” 

He clicked his tongue wearily, then pecked her on the forehead and gave her butt a little smack. “Forget it, all right? Let’s go get another drink.”

She shot him a resentful look and made her way from their dark abandoned corner back into the nearest corridor, then stopped short in surprise: Isabela was leaning casually against the wall. 

She looked up at them with a knowing grin, and Roman stared at her. “Were you listening in?” she demanded.

“Yes, actually,” Isabela said. 

Roman recoiled. “Why the fuck were you listening in?”

“I was guarding this hallway so you could have a private moment,” Isabela said. “It’s hardly my fault that you make so much noise.”

Roman deflated a bit. “Oh. Fuck.”

Samson rubbed his chin and gave Roman an I-told-you-so look. Roman hunched her shoulders defensively, and Isabela let out a throaty laugh as she approached them.  “Don’t look so embarrassed, sweet thing. Having a quick one at the back of a tavern is perfectly natural. We’ve all done it.” 

“Thanks, I guess,” Roman muttered.

Samson eyed Isabela cautiously, then touched his fingers to his forehead in a small salute. “Kind of you to keep an eye out for us, cap’n.”

Isabela raised her eyebrows. “Well well. Captain, you say? Talk dirty to a girl, why don’t you?” She elbowed Roman. “You should invite me to join you next time.”

Roman rolled her eyes. “Maker’s fucking balls,” she complained, and she started walking away.

“That wasn’t a no,” Isabela called after her. 

She shook her head and didn’t reply. A second later, Samson caught up to her. “Er, what was that exactly?”

“Approval from Isabela,” Roman grunted. 

“Really?” Samson said. “That’s, er, nice?”

“Whatever. I don’t need anyone’s approval,” Roman said. But for some reason, she didn’t feel as irate as she would have expected from having Isabela listen in to her and Samson fucking. And Isabela had even been friendly to Samson, which was — well, not unexpected necessarily, because Samson and Isabela had barely ever spoken. But Roman was so accustomed to seeing people treat Samson like a pile of nugshit that witnessing the opposite was… nice.

Yeah, it was nice. The more Roman thought about it, the more she realized that she was actually feeling… pretty good, actually. She was still a little tipsy from the booze, and her damp smallclothes were reminding her of the excellent illicit sex she and Samson had just had at the back of the tavern, and someone other than herself had treated Samson like a person…

Damn, she thought in surprise. Against all odds, she was actually feeling… kind of happy.

She looked up at Samson with a little smile, and his eyebrows jumped up. “What’s with you?”

She shrugged. “Nothing,” she said. “Come on.” They stepped back into the main room of the Hanged Man, and Roman balked for a second; it was somehow even more noisy and crowded and hot than before. The musical troupe in the corner were playing a song with a hard driving beat while the majority of the patrons twirled and spun to the music with varying degrees of coordination and drunkenness. Every few minutes, a howl of laughter and dismay would go up from one of the tables where people were playing cards, and the entire room was scented with mulled wine.

A funny swelling feeling filled her chest. Then Samson leaned in close to her ear. “It’s bloody hopping in here,” he yelled. “I’ll find some drinks, you find us a corner?”

“No,” she yelled back. “Come on.” She grabbed his arm and pulled him into the middle of the crowd.

She ruthlessly pushed her way through the pulsing crowd of bodies until they reached Varric’s table. He was still sitting in pride of place at the head of the table, and the rest of their little crew was sitting with him and playing cards: Fenris and Merrill were on the left side of the table and Anders was on the right, having apparently gotten away from the clinic at last. Aveline was sitting beside him with no cards and her arms petulantly folded, and they all looked up when Roman pushed her way through the crowd. 

Varric smiled. “Hawke! Samson! Have a seat, join us.”

“Thanks,” Roman said, and she poked Anders’s arm. “Move over.”

“Happy Satinalia to you too,” he drawled as he shifted over. “Where’ve you been?”

“Busy,” she said. She pushed Samson down onto the bench beside Anders, then seated herself on the padded right arm of Varric’s chair. 

“Busy doing what?” Isabela said as she sashayed over. 

“None of your fucking business,” Roman said, but with no heat. 

Isabela winked cheekily and sidled around to sit on the other arm of Varric’s chair, and Anders snorted in amusement. “This is rich. Varric, you look like the owner of a harem now.”

Isabela tsked. “A harem of two isn’t much of a harem. Merrill, you should come and sit in Varric’s lap to round us out.”

Merrill tittered. “Who, me? Oh no, I couldn’t!”

Anders glanced at Aveline. “What about you, then? You could go on up and sit in Varric’s lap.”

“Over my dead body,” Aveline said flatly.

“Over mine, actually,” Varric said drolly. “I don’t think I could survive all of Aveline’s muscle.”

Merrill, Anders and Isabela laughed, and Aveline smiled faintly. Then Varric tapped Roman’s arm. “Are you and Samson joining in the next round, then?” 

His tone was casual, but his expression was faintly hopeful — the look he usually wore when asking if Roman would play cards with them, even knowing that she was going to say no. 

But today wasn’t a usual day, and Roman wasn’t in a usual mood. She shrugged. “Yeah, deal us in. Right?” She looked askance at Samson.

“I suppose,” he said tentatively. “I, uh, haven’t any coin to bet, though.”

“That’s okay,” Varric assured him. “The elf here hasn’t got any coin, either. He’s just playing on good faith.” He jerked a thumb at Fenris, who sighed and tugged his ear. 

“I’ll win it back next week, I swear it,” he grumbled. 

Varric nodded affably. “Uh-huh. Whatever you say.”

The others chuckled as Fenris tsked, and Roman watched contentedly as Samson’s posture relaxed a bit. Then she looked at Varric once more, and an unusual feeling of warmth spread through her chest. He was smiling broadly at her, and Roman knew that he understood the significance of her agreement to play cards.

She shrugged and looked away from him. “Happy Satinalia or whatever,” she muttered.

He chuckled. “You too, Hawke. Now come on, let’s play.”

“We’re all waiting on you,” Anders pointed out.

“All right, all right,” Varric said affably, and he set down a card. “Okay, Daisy, it’s your turn.” 

The round of wicked grace continued, with Anders seeming to have the winning hand. Roman listened quietly as they chatted and teased each other in turn, and she marvelled at the strangeness of the situation — the strangeness of sitting here with this weird little group of misfits, all of them victims of shitty circumstance in one way or another, now joined together in a mish-mashed group of semi-friends who spent most of their time together and helped each other out when help was needed, whether they even particularly liked each other or not.

Kind of like a family, Roman thought, and that weird squirmy feeling of warmth invaded her chest again.

She shifted slightly on Varric’s chair. Then Samson subtly squeezed her ankle. “You all right, Bird?” he said quietly. 

Monty wagged his tail, and Samson huffed. “You’re back late. Picking fights at the Hanged Man, were you?”

“Yeah, I was,” she said belligerently.

Samson shot her a long-suffering look, and she rose to her feet and frowned at him. “Don’t look at me like that. It wasn’t my fault.” She pulled the cork out of the bottle and took a sip. 

“It’s never your fault though, is it?” he asked, and he reached for the bottle of cider. 

She shot him a dirty look but handed over the bottle. “It really wasn’t my fucking fault this time, okay? It was Fenris’s. Well, not Fenris’s,” she amended, “but it was related to Fenris.”

Samson lowered the bottle in surprise. “I thought he didn’t like getting involved in your fights.”

She rolled her eyes and snatched the bottle back from him. “I told you, it wasn’t my fight, it was his. His former master showed up.”

Samson’s eyes widened. “Former master? You mean a Vint magister was here in Kirkwall?”

“Yeah,” Roman said, and she took another sip of cider. That wasn’t the worst of it, though. Roman still couldn’t believe Fenris’s own sister had tried to sell him out to his former master. She didn’t mention Fenris’s sister to Samson, though. She and Fenris didn’t agree on much, but they both valued privacy. If Roman was in Fenris’s place, she wouldn’t want strangers knowing her business either.

Samson scratched his whiskered chin. “And here I thought the Templars were helping the city guard to crack down on who comes in and out o’ Kirkwall.”

“Templars,” Roman said scornfully. “They’re corrupt as fuck, even if precious Meredith doesn’t want to see it. Grease the right palms and practically anyone could get in here.” She took another sip of cider, then set the bottle down and picked a piece of chicken from Samson’s plate. 

“Hey, get your own,” he said, but with no real heat.

She huffed and chewed the chicken and ignored Monty’s pleading eyes, and for a moment they were quiet as Samson selected another chicken thigh from the platter on the island and started cutting it up. 

He broke the silence. “If there was a Vint magister here…” He shook his head. “Maker. If there was anyone I’d think the Templars would try to keep out, it’d be magisters.”

Roman scoffed and stole another sliver of chicken from his plate. “Yeah, because more mages are the worst thing that could happen to this shithole,” she said sarcastically.

Samson didn’t reply. He was frowning slightly, and Roman narrowed her eyes. “Don’t tell me you agree.”

He sighed and scrubbed a hand over his chin again. “I’ve been hearin’ things,” he said slowly. “Down in Lowtown, and in Darktown too. A lot of abomination attacks, sounds like.”

Roman aggressively bit the piece of chicken in her fingers. “Yeah?” she said in a hard voice. “Have you also heard how the Templars have started punishing the Circle mages even more harshly? Anders said that a full quarter of the Circle mages are Tranquil now.”

Samson flinched at this, and Roman felt a pang of guilt. She knew that the Tranquility process was a sore issue for him, given what had happened to Maddox after Meredith had thrown Samson out of the Templars. 

She swallowed her bite of chicken, then pushed the bottle of cider across the counter toward him. He picked it up and took a sip, then set it down and jerked his chin in the direction of the main room. “You got some letters, by the way,” he said. “Both from the Gallows.”

Roman sighed loudly. Two letters from the Gallows always meant the same thing: both Orsino and Meredith were trying to get her help with some bullshit task. “YFuck that. They can wait until tomorrow.” She plucked a piece of potato from Samson’s plate and ate it while she brooded about Meredith, then picked up the bottle of cider. “The fucking gall of that bitch, trying to get me to help her,” she complained. “She’s just trying to find an excuse for her fucking puppets to drag me in.”

“Better not give her one, then,” Samson said.

She gave him a dirty look. “I know, Samson. I’m not a fucking idiot.” For the past month or so, she’d cut down on her use of blood magic, doing it only when she was working a spell at home or when she was outside of the city limits. It infuriated her to play into the Chantry’s bullshit sanctions against blood magic, and if she had it her way, she’d keep using blood magic in her perfectly safe way even within Kirkwall’s bounds. 

But Roman didn’t just have herself to think about. She was famous here now — or infamous, depending on who you talked to — and her actions were under scrutiny, no matter how much she tried to keep to herself when she was out and about. Anything she did would reflect poorly on the people close to her… particularly on Carver. 

Fucking Carver, she thought angrily. She couldn’t give the Chantry an excuse to make her brother a scapegoat for her choices. 

She and Samson continued to eat silently from his plate. As the minutes stretched on with no further commentary from Samson, she started to watch him suspiciously. He was usually more talkative than this. Not that he was a huge talker or anything, but he usually had more to say than, well, nothing.

She narrowed her eyes. “What’s wrong with you?”

He glanced at her. “Nothing. This chicken’s good.”

Roman grunted, and they fell silent again. When his plate was cleared, she frowned at him. “Seriously, what is your problem?”

He raised an eyebrow and reached for the cider. “What are you on about?”

She gave him an arch look. “If you’re trying to do some kind of ‘strong and silent’ bullshit, it’s not working.”

Samson lowered the cider bottle from his lips and shot her a chiding look. “You sure about that? It seems to be getting your knickers all twisted.”

She scoffed and grabbed the bottle of cider from him. “My knickers aren’t fucking twisted.”

“Too bad,” he said. “I was going to offer to untwist ‘em for you, but…”

She ignored his innuendo. “Are you pissed about what I said about the Tranquil?”

His sarcastic little smirk slipped away. “No.”

“I wasn’t being an asshole,” she said defensively. “I was — it’s just the fucking truth.”

“I know, Bird,” he said tiredly. He sidled past her and headed for the front door.

Roman put her cider down and followed him. “Where are you going?”

“I’ve got to get more of the dust,” he said, and he slid his feet into his worn-out shoes.

She raised her eyebrows. “Now?”

“When else is a man supposed to go meet his illegal lyrium dealer?” he said sardonically. 

Roman pursed her lips but didn’t reply. Samson bent down to tie his shoes, and she leaned against the doorjamb and folded her arms as she watched him. She knew he needed the lyrium; she’d seen what happened to him when he ran out of it, and she didn’t want to see him suffer like that again. But still, sometimes she wished…

She discarded the fleeting thought. There was no point wishing Samson didn’t need the lyrium. He’d told her long ago that he would die without it, and she had no reason to not believe him. It wasn’t like she knew any Templars who had ever quit taking lyrium. 

She pushed away from the doorjamb and wandered over to him. “I’ll come with you.”

He looked up in surprise. “Eh? What for?”

To hit back if someone hits you, she thought, but she wasn’t going to fucking say so. She shrugged, and Samson smirked as he stood up. 

“You going to be my knight in shining armour again?” he taunted.

She scowled. “No. Fuck you.”

He raised an eyebrow, and she scoffed and looked away. “You know what, whatever. Forget it.”

“All right, good,” he said affably. “Gettin’ into a brawl kind of defeats the purpose of going out in the middle of the night.” He chucked her chin playfully.

She smacked his hand away. “Don’t touch me.”

He suddenly gripped her chin. Before Roman could snap at him to let her go, he was kissing her: a quick firm kiss on the lips — so quick that she didn’t have time to bite him or push him away before he released her. 

He opened the door. “Go eat some more. I’ll be back soon,” he said, and then he was gone. 

She wrinkled her nose at the closed door. How dare he kiss her? He was such an asshole. 

Beside her, Monty sat back on his haunches and tilted his head curiously. Roman looked down at him for a second, then sighed and crouched beside him. “Go with him, okay?” she murmured. “If he gets hit, you jump in and bite back for him. He’s a fucking idiot, he won’t defend himself.”

Monty stood and wagged his tail, and Roman opened the door for him. He bounded away into the darkness, and Roman went back to the kitchen with a sigh. 

She picked up the half-empty bottle of cider and took another sip, then wandered over to her writing desk to check out her letters. She pushed away the ones from Orsino and Meredith without opening them, then paused when she saw a thicker envelope with Varric’s handwriting on it.

She frowned as she opened it. The envelope contained a bunch of worn journal pages that were variously dirty and bloodstained, topped with a short note from Varric. 

Hawke,

Remember that old journal page we found wedged into a brick wall that one time — something by the “Band of Three”? I had a couple sharp eyes looking out for more pages, and this is what they found. I put them together in the order I think they’re supposed to go. Kind of hard to tell without dates, but this is the best I could do. 

Come on down to the Hanged Man after you read them and let me know what you think. You’ll probably want a drink, anyway. I always knew shit in Kirkwall was weird, but this takes the cake.

 - V. 

That’s cryptic as fuck, Roman thought. She took the pages and her bottle of cider to the study and plopped down on the couch in front of the fireplace, then began to read.

- SAMSON -

Samson sidled into the shadows as he made his way through Hightown. There was a faint feeling of unease in his gut, like a hint of nausea, and it revolved around the mages in Kirkwall. 

He’d been hearing stories down at the docks: stories about people cutting their wrists and getting possessed by demons and exploding into monsters who gobbled up their whole families. Samson was too jaded and skeptical to believe any old story he heard on the streets, but he’d been hearing tales for weeks now, versions of the same stories, and he’d been able to put together enough pieces to know that not all of the stories were made up. 

Kirkwall had always had its share of horror stories involving mages, most of which Samson had heard in the course of his business of smuggling mages out of the city. This familiarity meant he was all the more aware that there were more stories than ever before, and they were getting more and more bizarre. 

Mysterious deaths involving ice and lightning, flash fires with no evidence of kindling or fuel, people behaving strangely and talking in tongues, people going missing… He knew Roman didn’t want to hear it, and he didn’t even want to believe it himself, but the truth was this: there was a mage problem in Kirkwall.

Roman was right too, though. Samson had heard things from the Gallows, whispers from the merchants and the few visitors who came and went from that ghastly fucking place, and he knew that Roman was right: Meredith was handing out the Tranquility sentence these days like a Chantry sister handed out blessings on Satinalia, and Samson’s former brethren were feeding right into her tyrannical attempts to control the mages. 

Samson sighed. He’d heard enough and lived through the nugshit for long enough that he could see all the moving parts in this Maker-forsaken place, almost like looking at the inside of a clock: the Templars were getting more controlling and punitive, and the mages were getting more desperate to protect themselves. The hysteria of it all was bleeding down from the Gallows to Kirkwall proper, making the city guard more fearful about magic and making the hidden apostates more fearful than ever of persecution. If something didn’t change, if things continued down this route, the city was going to explode like one of those qunari gaatlok barrels. 

His troubled thoughts were interrupted by the sound of heavy breathing behind him. He barely had time to be alarmed before a heavy muscular body rammed into his hip.

He stumbled, then caught his balance on a nearby wall and stared in surprise at Monty, who was standing beside him and wagging his tail so enthusiastically that his whole body was shaking. 

Samson gathered himself and frowned at the mabari. “What are you doing here, eh?” 

Monty sat and gazed at Samson attentively, and Samson wrinkled his nose. “Did she send you after me?”

Monty let out a little bark, and Samson jumped before scowling at him. “Quiet, dog,” he scolded in a whisper. “You’re going get people looking. If you’re going to follow me, you have to shut your trap.”

Monty panted but didn’t bark again, and Samson gazed at him a little resentfully. It looked like Monty really did understand him. Just not when Samson was saying ‘no’ to feeding chicken to the big furry fucker.

He sighed. “All right, come on then. But be quiet,” he said severely, and together they continued on their way to Lowtown in silence.

Samson watched the mabari from the corner of his eye as they walked. It was so strange having any kind of company when he went… well, anywhere really. Monty, on the other hand, seemed perfectly at ease as he trotted along at Samson’s side.

Within the space of a couple of minutes, Samson had adjusted to Monty’s presence. It helped that Monty was almost entirely silent. He was a big bloody dog, and Samson would have expected him to make some noise as he walked, but he was pleasantly surprised at how quiet Monty was. 

He shot the mabari a sideways glance. “She really sent you along, eh?”

Monty looked up at him with his mouth agape in a wide doggy smile, and Samson huffed. “Let me guess. She told you to attack anyone who attacked me, right?”

Monty wagged his tail, and Samson pursed his lips. Bloody bird, always acting like he was some kind of coward for not picking fights like she did. He’d told her time and time again that it was smarter to run or hide than to fight back, especially for someone like him: someone powerless, someone that the city guard wouldn’t move to protect if something really went wrong. Besides, he did fight back sometimes when he was attacked — if fighting back was the smarter move. Roman was hotheaded and angry, always looking for the next person she could justifiably throw a fireball at, but Samson wasn’t like her. He wasn’t strong like her.

Leave it to the damned bloody bird to be the strong one, he thought tiredly. I’ll do things my own way. Samson might not be strong anymore, but at least he had his street smarts. He’d just keep sticking to the smarter course, whether it meant hiding or fighting back. He’d keep doing what he needed in order to survive.

He and Monty were about to step into the market when he spotted something strange: two men and a woman talking in low and urgent voices in a corner. He slowed down and placed his hand on Monty’s head, and Monty slowed down to a stop as well. 

Together, they sidled a little closer to the furtive trio. Samson couldn’t move close enough to hear what they were saying, not without making himself and the mabari visible, but as they edged a little nearer, Samson had a jolt of recognition: he knew one of the men — or at least, he thought he did. The man’s blond hair was shorter than Samson remembered, and he had a beard where his face used to be bare, but Samson was fairly sure this blond bloke was a Templar.

On shore leave from the Gallows, looks like, Samson thought. Then, with another jolt, he realized that he recognized the woman too: she was a known mage sympathizer. 

Strange, he thought. He watched the trio for a minute longer, trying to determine if he could conclusively identify the blond fellow as being a Templar, but he really wasn’t able to get any closer without being seen. When the three people made signs of looking like their meeting was coming to an end, Samson quickly ducked into a nearby alleyway with Monty to hide.

When the trio had dispersed, Samson patted Monty’s head. “Let’s go, dog.”

They quickly slunk through the market and into the lower-class suburb that led toward Lowtown, and Samson pondered what they’d witnessed. A Templar and a mage sympathizer having an amiable little late-night meeting? Meredith wouldn’t be too chuffed about that. Or maybe the mage sympathizer wasn’t as sympathetic as she seemed and was feeding information about apostates back to the Gallows, in which case old Orsino would be the unhappy one. 

Samson and Monty made their way through Lowtown proper. As usual, Lowtown was more active — and more dangerous — at night than Hightown was, and Samson listened furtively as he made his way to the usual meeting spot for his lyrium-smuggling contact down by the market. The gossip was the same as he’d heard earlier today: mentions of a fish merchant closing down for the week after selling some clams that made people sick, talk of a few lingering qunari out on the Wounded Coast, reports of a young elf getting dragged off to jail by a guardsman after stealing a few apples for his family, the usual grim fare. But one piece of gossip in particular deepened his worries. 

It was a corrupt city guardsman talking to some other human. “... those knife-ears still cleaning blood and guts off of that big tree in the alienage. You know, the one they tie all those poncy ribbons to.” He chuckled. “That’s what happens when apostates hide out in the alienage: all that knife-ear nugshit makes ‘em blow up. Too bad and serves ‘em right if you ask me.”

Samson frowned as he slunk past the guardsman and his friend. He knew about the incident in question because Roman had been directly involved. Meredith had forced her to track down three runaways from the Circle by making indirect threats toward Carver, and one of the runaways was a possessed mage — a mage who had, as indicated by the guardsman, become an abomination and ultimately exploded into a shower of blood when Roman was forced to kill him. 

“Is that a mabari?” 

“What’s a mabari doing with that homeless fellow?”

“That’s not… it’s not Hawke’s mabari, is it?”

Maker’s balls, Samson thought in  exasperation. He knew he shouldn’t have let Monty come with him. The damned dog was drawing far too much attention, including curious looks from the corrupt guardsman.

He shot Monty a resentful look. Monty ducked his head and tucked his tail between his legs, and Samson immediately felt bad. It wasn’t Monty’s fault, after all; it was Roman’s. He’d have to have a word with her when he got back to the mansion.

He quickly met up with his contact and traded a few silver for lyrium powder, then selected a more convoluted but quieter route back to Hightown so they wouldn’t be stared at. As they silently made their way back to Roman’s house, Samson brooded over that abomination incident in the alienage. 

He’d always known there were apostates hiding throughout the city, but he’d somehow not thought much about how much harder it had to be for the apostates who were elves. He’d helped to smuggle out dozens of apostates in his time, and he count on one hand the number of times they’d been elves, and the reason was obvious: they didn’t have the coin. Mages who didn’t have the coin to smuggle their way out of the city must be even more afraid, which made them more prone to possession — more prone than they already were if they hadn’t had any training at the Circle.

He rubbed his forehead. Maker’s balls, I’m tired, he thought, and he continued on his way to Roman’s house.

When they got back to the house, Samson let Monty in before following him inside and closing the door. “Oi, I’m back,” he called. He took off his shoes and padded through to the main room, and when he didn’t find Roman there, he peeked into the study. 

Monty was already lying on his belly in front of the fireplace, and Roman was sitting on the couch and scowling at the fire. There was a sheaf of papers beside her and two empty cider bottles on the floor, and another half-finished bottle in her hand.

Samson wilted slightly. Roman had been drinking less since he’d started sleeping at her house. This was the first time in a while that she’d had more than one drink in the evening. 

At least she’s not drinking rum or whiskey, he thought. “You can’t send the dog with me again,” he said as he entered the room. “Everyone was staring. A guardsman was giving me the eye over ‘im.”

She looked up at him. “Kirkwall is a fucking mage trap.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Eh?”

“Look at this.” She picked up the sheaf of papers and thrust it at him, and he took them gingerly. 

The papers were journal entries by some group called the Band of Three who’d been investigating the history of Kirkwall during Tevinter occupation. The more Samson read, the more discomfort he felt twisting in his gut. Secret Vint plans, hundreds of slaves going missing, the city designed in the shape of magical glyphs, gutters in the sewer system meant to channel vast amounts of blood…

By the time he finished reading the pages, the hairs were standing up on the back of his neck. He held the papers out to her. “Where’d you get these from?” he rasped.

“I found one of them. Varric scrounged up the rest.” She stood up and plucked the papers from his hand. “You know what this means, right?”

He pulled a face. “Er—”

She cut him off. “The Veil is thin here,” she said. “That’s why so many mages in the Circle fail that fucking Harrowing ritual bullshit. That’s why some people turn into abominations for doing a single little spell with blood magic. It’s this fucking city. It’s…” She waved her arms in an angry expansive gesture. “The whole environment is against us, and the Templars just make it worse!”

Samson blinked at this. “Hang on.” He rubbed his face with both hands, then gazed wearily at her. “You’re telling me that Kirkwall is a… a bad place for mages, but the Templars are the problem?”

“They’re definitely not a fucking solution, that’s for sure,” she retorted. “Everyone knows that demons are attracted to fear.”

“And to anger,” Samson said pointedly.

“Exactly,” Roman said angrily, missing his point entirely. “And think about what’s pissing me off. It’s the Templars!” She waved the journal pages. “It’s already hard enough for us to live here, and they’re just making it harder.” She tossed the pages on the floor and drank from her half-finished bottle of cider, and Samson frowned. 

“What is it you want, then?” he said slowly. “You want to just… get rid of the Templars or something?”

She lowered the bottle and gave him a frank look. “Sounds like a good fucking plan to me.”

He stared at her with growing disbelief, then laughed. “You’re not bloody serious.”

“Do I look like I’m fucking laughing?” she said. “It’s the Templars that are making the mages so desperate that they’re turning to… to summoning demons and other shit that they don’t understand.”

“And when they summon demons and do that shit, someone needs to be able to stop them,” Samson retorted.

Her face went slack with disbelief, then twisted back into anger. “You can’t be fucking serious about this. You’re defending them? They threw you out!”

“That bitch Meredith threw me out,” he corrected.

She threw her hands up in frustration. “So what, now you think the Templars are justified? Now you think it’s okay to keep the mages locked up in a fucking tower with no freedom?”

“No,” Samson said loudly. “That’s not what I’m bloody saying. I’m just….” He sighed and rubbed his face again, then looked at her once more. “Think about it, Bird. Say the Templars get dismantled. What happens to ‘em?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” she said impatiently.

“What happens to Templars who have no use anymore?” he said, and he gestured sarcastically at himself.

The fury in her face loosened slightly, and Samson gave her a humourless smile. “You didn’t even think about it, did you? Well, you should. Think about Carver there. The Order falls apart, and he’ll end up like me, just a ruined—”

“You’re not fucking ruined!” she bellowed suddenly.  “Stop saying that!”

Samson closed his mouth and stared hard at her. An ugly pause ensued, electric and tense like the brewing of a heavy summer storm. The longer he and Roman went without speaking, the more he felt the old memories rising to the front of his mind, like bloated corpses cut loose from the bottom of the sea: his disbelief at being kicked out of the Order and out of the only home he had, all for something so trivial. The betrayal and the loneliness. The shakes and the nausea when the withdrawal first set in. The delirium, the beatings, the confusion, the raging thirst and hunger during the moments when he was lucid, the horrific hallucinations when he wasn’t. The humiliation of having to find a black-market lyrium dealer, and the slow erosion of his soul as his muscles and his purpose and his confidence wasted away bit by bit. 

For a first time in a long, long time, the old injustices were burning in his belly and burning through the shroud of his usual world-weary passivity, prompting him to take an aggressive step toward her. “I am ruined, Roman,” he said in a hard voice. “You didn’t know me when I was in the Order. If you did, you’d know I’m a bloody shadow of the man I used to be.” 

She sighed and rolled her eyes. “Samson, for fuck’s—”

He interrupted her. “Is this what you want for Carver?” he said harshly. “You want that big brute to end up like this, all wasted away and jonesing for the dust?”

She opened her mouth again, but Samson didn’t let her speak. “You going to write to Her Divine Holiness and tell ‘er to dismantle the Templars?” he said aggressively. “Tell her to let every one of ‘em end up on the streets like beggars?”

She narrowed her eyes. “If you really think that’s what would happen to them, what does that say about the Chantry and your precious fucking Order?”

He exhaled hard and glared at her, furious at not being able to find a reply. Roman leaned away and planted her fists on her skinny hips. “Besides, it’s not like complaining to the precious fucking Divine would do anything,” she said. “You think she’d break up her personal army for the good of the mages? Not a fucking chance.”

“They’re not supposed to be her personal army,” Samson snapped.

“And the Circles aren’t supposed to be jails for mages, but look where we are,” Roman drawled.

All of a sudden, Samson had had enough. “Fine then, everything in the world is shit,” he shouted. “Are you happy now?”

She recoiled slightly, then sneered at him. “No, actually. I’m fucking pissed.”

“No different than all the fucking time, then,” he said acidly, and he strode away to the kitchen. He threw open the enchanted icebox and stared unseeingly at its contents. Truthfully, he hadn’t been planning to get anything out of here. All he knew was that he didn’t want to be around Roman right now.

Unfortunately, she didn’t get the hint; a second later, she was storming up to him. “What the fuck is your problem?” she yelled. “Why are you being such an asshole?”

He slammed the icebox shut. “Me?” he said incredulously. “I’m just tryin’ to survive, Bird. I’m just trying to make the best of this bullshit that we’re living through.”

“What do you think I’m trying to do?” Roman demanded.

“You’re trying to pick a fucking fight,” he snapped. “I can see it in your face. You’ve never tried to keep your head down. You want a war with the Templars, don’t you?”

“I don’t want a fucking war, but that’s what’s coming,” she yelled. She shot him a scathing look. “And don’t act like you don’t know it’s coming. You’re one of the smartest people in this fucking city. You know exactly what’s coming.”

He raised his eyebrows, thrown off by her compliment in the midst of her vitriol. “So… so what, you think there’s a war coming and nothing can stop it?”

“Yeah,” she said. “That’s what I think.” She took a slow step closer to him and belligerently lifted her chin. “There’s a war coming between the mages and the Templars. And if you won’t pick a side, you’re a fucking coward.”

Coward. The word shot straight through his chest like an icy spear. It wasn’t that she was wrong necessarily, because she wasn’t. Samson wasn’t brave or principled or any of that shit, so if he didn’t have any of those precious virtues, that must mean he was a coward. But to hear Roman saying it to his face…

His chest squeezed painfully, almost as though she was digging her nails through his rib cage to rend his heart. He swallowed hard and glared at her. “Fuck you,” he spat, and he pushed past her and headed back to the study.

He sat down heavily on the couch. Monty sat up and whined softly, but Samson ignored him; he lay down on the couch and closed his eyes.

 A moment later, he heard Roman’s strident voice. “What in the Maker’s fucking ballsack are you doing?”

“Cooking a four-course Antivan meal,” he said flatly. “What’s it bloody look like?”

She barked out a nasty little laugh. “You’re fucking sleeping down here, then? Is that it?”

He opened his eyes and glared venomously at her. “Yeah, I am. I’m sleeping here tonight, and I’ll get out of your hair first thing in the morning so you don’t have to share your fucking fancy house with a coward.” 

Her jaw clenched visibly, but she didn’t speak, and Samson’s heart twisted. She really did think he was a coward, then.

He rolled onto his side and closed his eyes once more. “Go away, Roman. Leave me alone.”

She scoffed. When she spoke again, her voice was moving away toward the stairs. “Fuck you too, then. See if I fucking care.”

He didn’t bother to reply. A few seconds later, he heard the slamming of her bedroom door. 

He drew a deep breath and ignored the swelling feeling in his throat. Then something nudged his back.

He jolted in surprise, then sighed loudly; it was Monty snuffling around him. 

He shifted his shoulders in annoyance. “Leave off, dog,” he said quietly. “Go upstairs.” 

Monty whined and nudged him again, and Samson shrugged irritably. “I said leave off,” he snapped. “I don’t want your company.”

Monty whined again, but the nudging stopped. A moment later, he heard the distant sound of Monty’s scratching nails, followed by the opening and closing of Roman’s bedroom door.

Feeling even shittier now, Samson sighed and slowly stood up, then shuffled around the lower level of the house putting out the oil lamps and chandeliers. When the house was dark except for the lingering flames in the fireplaces, he lay back on the couch in the study and folded his arms behind his head. 

He stared blankly up at the ceiling for a long time, exhausted but unable to sleep. His gut was a buzzing mess of agitation, and his chest felt like there was rock sitting in the center of his ribs. His mind kept running fruitlessly over all the negative thoughts in his head — and there were a lot of negative things to go over: abomination attacks, a quarter of the Circle’s mages being Tranquil, Meredith blackmailing Roman to do what she wanted, Roman wishing she could dissolve the Templars, Roman yelling about a war that no one could stop, Roman telling him he was a coward…

His heart twisted painfully, and he breathed slowly to quell it. She was such a bloody bitch: telling him he was smart one second then calling him a coward the next, and sending her mabari to follow him as though he was a fucking child who couldn’t look after himself. She was so fucking stubborn and hard-headed, always carrying on about how fucked up the Templars were and how fucked up this entire city was.

But she’s not wrong, he thought as he remembered those papers she’d shown him. That history of the Vints doing some kind of mysterious horrible magic right here in this city — this city that was built in the shape of a magical glyph, this city where the Veil was thin and demons were just a whisper away from the minds of its mages…

And Roman was even more vulnerable than most. Rage-filled Roman Hawke, with her fearlessness and her ferocity and her fucking blood magic… A pulse of fear pierced through his heartsick anger. Sure, she had good control over her own magic, but if those journal pages had the right of it, she was in danger no matter what. She was in danger just by virtue of living in this fucking place that she refused to leave.  

What if she becomes an abomination? His gut clenched at the thought. He’d asked her once if she was afraid of becoming an abomination, and she’d told him that she was. What if she did become an abomination, though? What if she became the very thing she feared? What would happen then?

What would Samson do then?

An icy sort of fear was spreading through his chest. Don’t think about it, he thought. He couldn’t think about what he’d do if that happened — not that he could do anything, really, since he wasn’t a Templar anymore. The lyrium he bought off the black market was enough to keep the edge off of his cravings and his withdrawal, but it wasn’t nearly pure enough to channel into any kind of power. If Roman… If something happened to her, there was nothing Samson would be able to do to help her. 

He rubbed his face wearily. He couldn’t believe he was even having to think about this. Truthfully, given the political situation and the ugly history of this city, Samson knew what he and Roman should both really be doing: fleeing this city before it had a chance to explode. 

And that’s why she thinks you’re a coward, he told himself scathingly. But was it cowardly to survive, or was it just the smart thing to do? Who gave a fuck about being called a coward if it meant you got to live?

Then again, what was the point of living the way Samson had before Roman had wandered into his life?

He was suddenly reminded of something else she’d once said: that it wasn’t enough to just survive, to just eke out a living from one day to the next. That people needed something to live for. But Roman herself had admitted that she didn’t know what she was living for. Did Samson know what he was living for, either? 

He sighed. Maybe he really was a coward. Maybe this bloody mage-Templar problem would force him to find something to live for. Maybe Roman was right, and what he really needed was to pick a side. Support the mages, or support the Templars? Support the monsters, or support the people who made those monsters what they were? 

Support the freedom of mages, or support the freedom of the Templars who’d been leashed and brainwashed just as he had been?

Maker’s fucking balls, he thought morosely.

He lay in the dark on the couch for a long time sliding in and out of a restless sort of doze, unable to settle his mind enough to properly sleep. He was vaguely aware of the fire slowly dwindling down to mere embers until the whole study was wreathed in shadows. When a shadow broke away from the gloom to move toward him from the stairs, he thought it was a dream.

The shadow paused at the end of the couch. “Monty won’t shut the fuck up,” she said. “He keeps whimpering.”

Samson frowned at her through the gloom. “So?”

She folded her arms and said nothing for a moment, and Samson stared at her, half-convinced she was just a figment of his imagination. 

“Come upstairs,” Roman muttered.

He raised his eyebrows. “Eh?”

“I said come upstairs,” she said a little more loudly. “I don’t think he’ll shut up until you come upstairs.”

He blinked blearily at her. In the feeble glow of the dying fire, he could just make out the glimmer of her silk robe and her customary pouty scowl. 

He frowned at her, then closed his eyes. “I’m staying here, Bird.”

She clicked her tongue. “You’re telling me you like sleeping on the couch?”

“That’s right,” he lied. Truthfully, his lower back was hurting, but it was still better than sleeping on the ground in Lowtown. Most importantly, it was better than doing what Roman wanted.

For a second, there was silence. Then she poked his shoulder hard. “Come on, don’t be so fucking stubborn. I know your back must be hurting.”

He scowled. Bloody know-it-all, he thought. “It is not,” he muttered.

“Then why do you complain about it all the time?” she said archly.

He opened his eyes and glared at her. “Go back to bed, Roman. I’ve had enough of your nugshit.”

She stared stonily at him. Then, to his surprise, she started to climb onto the couch.

He hastily tried to shuffle away from her, but she doggedly settled herself over his hips. He grabbed her hips and started trying to lift her off. “Bird, quit it—” 

She untied her robe and opened it, and Samson stopped breathing: she was naked under the robe. Naked, no panties, no bra, her dusky little nipples hard… 

His cock pulsed, and his mouth was flooded with a rush of saliva. Infuriated by his own traitorous body and at Roman for making him this way, he gripped her bare hip and tried to push her away. 

She pulled his hand away and placed it on her breast. “Come upstairs,” she said. 

Her nipple was a perfect taut little bud. He roughly kneaded her breast, then twisted her nipple suddenly, wanting to hurt her and make her purr at the same time.

She gasped and arched into his hand, then fisted her hand in his hair and pulled his head back, and Samson burst out a groan: her mouth was suddenly on his neck, her teeth nipping at his skin and sending jolts of pain and pleasure from his throat down to his groin. She nipped the base of his throat then started to suck, and for a moment, Samson let himself enjoy it. He wasn’t giving in, mind — he was just… letting himself enjoy this for a second before pushing her away. 

She sucked hard at his skin and started rubbing his cock through his breeches, and he groaned and lifted his hips. “You bitch…” he moaned.

“Come upstairs,” she whispered, and she bit the side of his neck. 

He jolted at the pain, then gasped with pleasure as she squeezed his cock through his breeches. Then she was grabbing his hand again and pulling it between her legs, making him touch her wet curls– 

She pressed his fingers into her folds, and a red-hot roar of lust tore through his body. She was sopping wet and spreading herself over his fingers, and he wanted her so badly that it pissed him off. 

She groaned and undulated shamelessly over his hand, and Samson tried — rather feebly — to pull his hand away. “Not here,” he hissed.

She tightened her grip on his wrist and continued to rub herself against his fingers, and Samson stared at the meeting point of her pussy and his hand for a second before forcing his eyes back to her face. “I said not here,” he complained, and he tried to pull his hand away again. “Get off.”

She dug her nails into his wrist. “Make me,” she breathed.

Make me. Her provocative words, these words she said on purpose when she was trying to rile him into roughing her up... Something hot and angry and wild suddenly snapped inside of him.

He wrested his hand away from her and grabbed her by the throat, and her lips fell open in a gasp. She clawed at his wrist and tilted her hips down toward his groin, but Samson didn’t let her make contact; with his hand at her throat, he clumsily forced her off of his lap until they were both standing up.

He released her throat to grip her chin instead. “Get upstairs,” he bit off.

She curled her lip. “What happened to ‘I’m not going upstairs’?”

He lifted her chin higher. “If you’re going to rub yourself on me like a bloody cat in heat, I’m not letting you do it down here.”

She laughed mockingly. “Let me? Like you can tell me what to do.”

He tightened his grip on her chin — enough that it had to be hurting her — then squeezed her buttcheek in his other hand. “Get upstairs, Bird,” he snarled. “I’m sick of hearing it.”

“No,” she said belligerently. “I want to fuck down here.”

He spanked her suddenly, satisfied when she jolted and gasped. “Get upstairs,” he commanded.

“I said no,” she spat.

He dug his fingers harshly into her buttock until she gasped in pain. “Then I’ll just have to take you upstairs,” he hissed. Without warning, he bent down and hefted her over his shoulder in an undignified carry.

She squawked, then thumped his back as he made his way to the stairs. “Hey! Put me down—”

He spanked her upraised ass. “Shut it, Bird,” he ordered. He began carrying her up the stairs, and he was secretly pleased when he realized that carrying her was easier than it had been a couple months ago before he started sleeping in her house. 

Must be those three square meals Orana makes, he thought idly. Then, just for the hell of it, he spanked Roman’s ass again.

She yelped, then thumped his back. “You’re such a fucking asshole,” she hissed.

He huffed, and without replying, he flipped up the hem of her robe and pressed the tips of his fingers into her pussy. 

She jolted and gasped, and Samson smirked, satisfied at having found a way to shut her up. He continued to caress her slick folds as they ascended the stairs, and by the time he was stepping into Roman’s open bedroom, she was breathing hard over his shoulder. 

Monty was resting his chin on his paws in front of the fireplace. When Samson and Roman came in, he sat up attentively. 

“Go to the washroom,” Samson ordered, and he unceremoniously dumped Roman onto the bed. He still wasn’t used to having the mabari stand witness when he and Roman were doing the deed. 

Monty dutifully trotted away, and Roman struggled to sit up and push her hair out of her face. “Don’t tell him what to do,” she snapped. “He’s—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Samson said coldly. He kicked the bedroom door shut, then started unlacing his breeches. 

Roman leaned back on her elbows and sneered at him. “Look at you, the big strong boy throwing me around. You want to shut me up, hm? How’re you going to do that?”

His blood roared at her taunting tone. He pulled his throbbing cock out of his breeches and stalked toward the bed, then crawled between her legs and wrapped his fingers around her throat.

He pushed her down so her back was flush to the bed, then started rubbing his cock between her legs. Her lips parted on a moan, and the sound of it made his blood thrill even more. 

She thrust her hips toward him, and Samson squeezed her throat. “I’m going to fuck your mouth, and you’re going to like it,” he snarled. “You’re going to like it so much that you’re going to rub your pussy until you come with my knob in your throat.”

She mewled and jerked her hips, pressing her sleek heat against his cock. Overcome with the pleasure and the heat of her, he leaned in and kissed her hard. 

She parted her lips and licked his tongue, then bit his lower lip, and he grunted as the sharpness of her teeth sent yet another tantalizing pulse of pleasure pounding to his cock. He shoved his tongue ruthlessly into her mouth for a moment before pulling away, then crawled over her body until he was straddling her. 

He lifted her chin with one hand. “Open your fucking mouth,” he snapped. 

“Fuck you,” she breathed, and she obediently opened her mouth.

Without any hesitation, he leaned forward and slid his cock between her lips. She suckled the head of his cock, and a jolt of ecstasy tore its way from his groin up to his throat in a helpless gasp. 

He curled his hips toward her and grabbed her hand. “Touch yourself,” he rasped.

She pulled her hand out of his grip and reached between her legs, and he watched raptly as her eyelids fluttered with pleasure. Soon she was writhing beneath him, her lips a tight suction on his shaft, and Samson thrust into her mouth with greater zeal as his pleasure rose in time with her own. 

A breathless minute later, she released his cock to cry out in climax, and Samson greedily watched the pleasure twisting her pretty face before taking hold of his cock. “I said to come with my knob in your throat,” he snarled, and he pushed his cock toward her lips.

She eagerly lifted her head to take him deep, and he grunted and thrust into her mouth as she moaned her pleasure around his cock. When the shuddering of her climax had stilled, he finally pulled his length from between her lips.

He crawled off of her and kneeled between her legs again, then ruthlessly looped her knees over his arms and planted his palms on either side of her hips. “I’m going to fuck your brains out,” he gasped, and he plunged himself inside of her.

She cried out, a hoarse and guttural cry of pleasure, and Samson slammed into her in a rough and mindless rhythm, riled almost beyond reason by her taunting and his anger and the beautiful lanky length of her naked body beneath him. Her fingers were digging into his forearms, her nails biting into her skin with little pricks of pain that only served to enhance his ecstasy, and as his pleasure continued to rise, he dipped his head down and took her nipple in his mouth.

He suckled hard, hard enough to bruise her flesh, and Roman arched beneath him as best she could despite the constraints of her legs over his arms. “F-fuck!” she cried. “Fuck, fuck, come on, fuck me hard…”

He slammed into her even harder, so hard that he would have sworn it would hurt her if not for the rapture that was twisting her face. She moaned and scraped his arms, and he gasped against her chest, and when his climax suddenly crashed over him, he bit her nipple. 

She keened with pleasure and writhed beneath him. “Fuck yes,” she sobbed. 

He didn’t reply, too busy gasping and thrusting jerkily into her as he came. Then, in a final fit of spite, he pulled out of her and thrust against her belly instead.

A few thick white spurts landed on her belly, and Roman twisted her hips. “You asshole,” she whined.

He didn’t reply, focused instead on catching his breath. When his heart had slowed to a less-than-frantic pulse, he sat back on his heels and smirked at her. “Serves you right,” he said.

She shot him a dirty look, and Samson smiled more widely at her, feeling oddly at peace. Roman looked so thoroughly spent, and her body bore the obvious marks of his work: his toothmarks on her breast, his semen on her belly, her own wetness smeared on the insides of her thighs and on the bed. For some reason, seeing her look this way made him feel more relaxed than he’d felt all day.

He pulled off his shirt and flopped down on the bed beside her. “I guess I’ll stay here and get some sleep,” he said.

She huffed and sat up. “Whatever. Do what you want, I don’t care.” She slid off of the bed and went to the washroom to clean up, and Monty trotted out of the washroom. 

Samson hastily tucked his cock back into his breeches, then gave Monty a sheepish look. “Sorry about before,” he muttered. “She just… she drives me up the wall sometimes.”

Monty wagged his tail and gave him a big canine grin, and Samson smiled faintly at the mabari before shuffling under the blankets. When Roman emerged from the washroom a couple of minutes later, Samson was glad to note that she was wearing her usual slight frown instead of an angry one.

She took her robe off and hung it on her painted changing screen, then put out the bedside lamp and crawled under the blankets. She settled on her back beside him, and as they lay there side-by-side, not talking nor touching, Samson began to wonder if he should say something.

Roman spoke first. “You’re not a coward,” she said quietly.

His heart flipped. He didn’t reply, unsure what to say. After all, he wasn’t totally sure that he wasn’t one.

She spoke again, and her tone was a little harder this time. “I don’t think you’re a fucking coward, Samson.”

“Then why’d you call me one?” he said.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I was... mad.”

“You’re always mad,” he pointed out.

“Would you–” She broke off, then exhaled sharply and sat up on her elbow to look down at him. “I didn’t mean it, okay? Sometimes shit just comes out of my mouth and I – I didn’t fucking mean it. You’re not a coward.”

“You still think I need to pick a side, though,” he said.

She was quiet for a moment. Then she laid down and rolled onto her side facing away from him. “I didn’t think it would be so fucking hard to know which one you’d pick,” she said. 

He gazed morosely at her naked shoulder blade. She wasn’t wrong; he had no real reason to side with the Templars, after all. It wasn’t like he’d joined them because he believed in their cause. Really, he had every reason to hate them — or not the Templars per se, but the Chantry’s control over them. Whether Roman saw it or not, the Chantry controlled the Templars just as much as they controlled the mages. The leashes they used were just of a different kind. 

Really, if it came down to a war between the Templars and the mages, there was no reason for Samson to side with the Templars. He just wished… 

He sighed. Honestly, he sort of wished he could be a Templar without joining the Order again. If he could just get his hands on some real lyrium, the real good blue stuff so he could have his Templar powers back, then he’d be healthy and strong again. He could walk through this city with his head held high, and he could fight back when anyone tried to beat him down. And he could use his powers for a good purpose, too — to be the kind of Templar that Roman would tolerate: the kind of Templar who stepped in to stop the abominations and to talk the scared mages down from doing stupid things. 

If he had his Templar powers back, he’d be able to do something if Roman became an abomination. Maybe he’d be able to stop her or calm her down so she didn’t need to die.

His gut writhed. Stop it, he thought sternly. There was no point thinking about this any further; it was all a pipe dream. There was no way he would get his hands on real lyrium again. 

He gazed at Roman’s naked spine with an aching heart. Then he rolled toward her and pulled her back against his chest. 

He hugged her around her waist, and she tsked. “You’re squeezing me.” 

“Yeah,” he said huskily.

They laid together in silence for a moment, her spine flush to his chest and his knees tucked behind hers. Then Samson spoke quietly into the dark. “I know you don’t want a war, Bird.”

She scoffed. “Obviously.”

He didn’t reply. A minute later, she spoke again. “I don’t get in fights because I want to, you know.”

He frowned slightly. “Then why’re you always fighting all the time?”

“I’m not the one picking the fucking fights,” she snapped. “The whole world keeps picking fights with me.” Her voice cracked, and Samson felt her body tensing in his arms. 

His throat started to ache. He swallowed and hugged her harder, and she wiggled her shoulders slightly. “You’re crushing me,” she complained.

Her voice was thick with tears. Samson closed his stinging eyes. “Shut up, Bird,” he whispered, and he kept hugging her.

She sniffled quietly, and Samson held her in silence until her body started to relax. When she spoke again, her voice was hard, as though to make up for her tears. “I just want a fucking moment of peace. Just a fucking second of calm. That’s what I really want.”

He breathed quietly in the ensuing silence. Her hair smelled like vanilla and almond and sweat, and her skin was soft against his chest. The room was dark and her sheets were warm, and the only sounds were his breathing and the soft rumble of Monty snoring on the carpet by the fireplace. 

“It’s pretty calm right now,” Samson murmured.

For a long moment, she said nothing. Then she pulled his hand away from her midriff. 

She twined her fingers with his, and a nearly-painful spear of tenderness pierced his chest. She was such a pain in the ass, fighting with him one second and making him angry-fuck her the next, then being just a little bit sweet like this and making him feel bad for fighting with her in the first place… 

Bloody damn bird, he thought. She was fierce and angry and so fucking vulnerable, and Samson wished he could do something to save her from herself. If only he could be a Templar without actually joining the Order again. If only he could get access to some proper lyrium again…

Varric stepped toward her. “Uh, Hawke…” 

“I’m fine,” she insisted. “I just want to go home.” She braced her weight on her staff — like a weak old man, she thought angrily — and headed for the doors as quickly as her aching body would allow, but before she could reach the exit, Merrill slipped inside. 

“Meredith is coming!” she whispered. “Meredith and some Templars, and they don’t look very happy.”

Fuck, Roman thought with a fresh rush of frustration. Beside her, Anders rolled his eyes. “Great,” he drawled. “Just what every terrible situation needs. A bunch of bloody Templars.”

Varric tapped Roman’s elbow. “Hey,” he said urgently, “when they get here, let me do the talking. I’ll smooth it over.” 

Isabela wrinkled her nose. “What’s there to smooth over? Hawke killed this big horny bastard.’” She shot a distasteful look at the dead Arishok.

Fenris was the one to reply. “She used blood magic in front of Kirkwall’s elite.”

Roman glared at him. “Fenris, for once in our fucking lives, can you piss off about the blood magic?”

He narrowed his eyes, but his tone was calm. “I am simply stating a fact. One that you are aware of yourself. This doesn’t look good, Hawke.”

“What the fuck else was I supposed to do?” Roman demanded. “Let him murder my ass? That was not going to happen, I promise you.”

“That’s the spirit,” Varric said cheerfully. “Listen, I’ll take care of this, okay? Everyone just calm down and look heroic.”

Isabela snorted in amusement. “I have no idea what that looks like.”

Fenris raised an eyebrow. “After your sudden abscondment yesterday, that’s not surprising.”

She shot him an offended look. “Ouch. Someone stepped on some broken glass tonight.”

“You said it yourself, not me,” Fenris replied.

“Both of you shut up,” Anders hissed. “Here she comes.”

Sure enough, Meredith strode into the room with a group of bloodied Templars at her back, including Carver. “Is it over?” she demanded. 

Roman couldn’t help herself. “Yes, no thanks to you,” she said loudly. 

Isabela snorted softly, and Meredith’s expression became even stonier than usual. Varric sighed quietly before addressing her. “Knight-Captain,” he said with a casual salute. “You’ll be happy to hear that Hawke killed the Arishok.”

“Hawke?” Meredith said. Her sharp blue eyes darted to dead Arishok’s body then to Hawke’s staff, and her eyes narrowed. “A — you are an apostate?”

Roman opened her mouth to make a barbed comment, but Varric stepped on her foot. “Yep,” he said to Meredith. “An apostate took down the Arishok all by herself. She saved the city.” He looked around at the assembled nobles. “You all saw it, right? It was incredible.”

The nobles murmured and looked at each other, and one of them stepped forward. “That’s right,” he said. “Hawke killed the Arishok with magic. I saw her do it.”

The murmuring grew louder, murmurs of agreement now, and Roman watched with disgust as the nobles’ expressions became approving as they looked at her. The Arishok was a murderous bastard, but he’d been right about one thing; nobles really were a bunch of brainless pigs. 

Varric was still talking, telling Meredith a colourful recounting of the Arishok duel — loudly enough that all the nobles could hear. Beside Roman, Merrill sighed with relief. “Isn’t Varric clever?” she whispered. “Everyone looks so happy now.” 

Fenris scoffed quietly. “Most nobles are just wealthy fools who are easily entertained.”

Roman grunted. “We finally agree on something.”

“It was bound to happen eventually,” Isabela said drolly.

“Not necessarily,” Anders muttered with a resentful look at Fenris.

Anders, Fenris and Isabela fell into a quiet semi-bickering conversation while Merrill sidled over to Varric to listen, and Roman just stood there with her whole body aching, waiting dully for the moment when Varric deemed it safe for her to leave. Honestly, if she had it her way, she’d be halfway home by now.

“Roman,” Carver said quietly. 

She looked up. Carver was standing beside her with a deep frown. “Are you okay?”

“Like you give a shit,” she retorted. She waited for him to make the usual angry retort, but to Roman’s surprise, it didn’t come.

He pursed his lips, then spoke in a lower voice. “You don’t look well. Are you sure you’re—”

“I’m fucking fine, okay? I’m fine,” she snapped. “Or I’ll be fine as soon as your fucking commander lets me leave this hall. It stinks like sweat and burnt meat in here.” 

Her voice was louder than she’d intended, and Meredith looked over at her. “So,” she said. “Master Tethras says you saved the city from the Qun.”

“She sure did,” Varric said. “She’s a real champion.”

Some of the nobles started clapping, and within a few seconds, the whole hall of them were applauding and calling her the Champion of Kirkwall. 

Roman ignored them and returned Meredith’s hard stare. Meredith was clearly trying to find some reason to detain her, but as they stood there staring at each other, Roman started to realize just how powerful Varric’s words had been. With a hall full of nobles cheering for her and a dead qunari chieftain on the floor, Meredith couldn’t arrest her without inciting a huge protest. 

She sauntered up to Meredith as casually as she could despite her trembling legs. When she was a mere foot away from Meredith, she paused and lifted her chin.

“You’re in my fucking way,” she said, very quietly. 

Meredith’s eyes were as cold as marble. Without breaking from Roman’s gaze, the Knight-Captain shifted slightly to the side. 

Roman smirked, then did a sarcastic half-bow to her before leaving the great hall. She breathed shallowly as she made her way to the exit, ignoring the icy heat in her muscles and the pounding of her head, gritting her teeth to keep the nausea at bay. 

She vaguely heard the others following her out of the hall to the exit, but she didn’t look at them and she didn’t speak. She pushed open the doors to the keep— 

Or at least, she tried to. But she couldn’t muster the strength to push open the solid wooden doors. 

“Fucking fuck,” she muttered, and she shoved her shoulder against the door, to no avail.

“I’ve got it,” Anders said from behind her.

She clenched her jaw and tried again to open the door herself, but Anders reached over her shoulder anyway to push it open. She stepped out into the cool nighttime air and took a breath, then promptly vomited all over the front step of the Viscount’s Keep.

“Oh shit,” Isabela lamented.

“Oh dear,” Merrill said tensely. 

Fenris grunted. “You’re nearly overextended.”

Roman shakily wiped her mouth and straightened up, ready to snap at him. Then she swayed to the side as her legs tried to give out. “Fuck—”

Varric caught her by the arm. “Yikes. Okay, come on, Hawke. You need to get home.”

She pulled her arm away from him. “Where the fuck else d’you think I’d be going?” she demanded. She made her way down the steps using her staff for a support, no longer caring how weak she looked as long as she could make it home without any of their fucking help. 

A minute later, Anders caught up to her. “I’m coming with you,” he said. “And don’t try telling me to piss off; I know you can take care of yourself, but I just need to be there in case your symptoms get worse before you’re home.”

“I can take care of myself,” she hissed. “I don’t need any fucking help!”

“Call it a doctor’s conscience, then,” Anders said calmly. “Just let me do my job, all right? And let me patch up that wound on your arm while I’m at it.”

She gave him a sour look but allowed him to heal her sliced arm, and they walked in silence for a while. But as the silence stretched between them, she started to wonder where the others had gone. Fenris and Merrill had probably gone home, but where had Varric and Isabela gone? 

At the thought of Isabela, Roman’s head felt like it was swelling with rage. Fucking Isabela, she thought. She still couldn’t believe Isabela had just taken that Tome of Koslun thing and run. Sure, she’d come back, but that didn’t change the fact that she’d run off in the first place, leaving Roman high and dry. 

She fumed about Isabela the rest of the way home — a helpful rage, really, since it distracted Roman from the fact that her whole body felt like it was aching and burning and freezing at the same time. By the time she and Anders were within sight of her mansion, she was doing everything in her power to focus on her anger and not on the fact that her feet were dragging as she walked. 

Anders sighed. “Hawke, just let me carry you the rest of the way. It’s not that far—”

“No,” she snapped. “I said fucking no. I don’t need your help.” Then she tripped over her staff. 

She dropped her staff and caught herself on her hands, sending a bone-rattling ache from her palms up to her shoulders. Anders sighed loudly and reached for her, but she twisted her elbow from his hand. 

“Stop trying to coddle me,” she yelled. “Stop trying to take care of me. I don’t need taking care of, okay? Just stop it!” 

Anders plopped down beside her with a scowl. “You’re a pain in the ass. You’re aware of that, right?” 

“It takes one to know one,” she said acidly.

Anders gave her a chiding look, and she glared at him before looking away. For a long moment, they were silent as Roman tried to gather the strength to stand up again. 

She stared fixedly at the door of her mansion, which was now only about a hundred paces away. She just needed to get up onto her feet and walk a hundred more paces. Just a hundred more steps…  

She breathed through the nausea and the chills and stared stubbornly at the door. Then Anders spoke in a quiet voice. “I told the others not to follow you, by the way. Varric and Isabela especially. They wanted to come to keep an eye on you, but I told them to go do some good elsewhere.”

Roman shrugged. “Whatever. I don’t care.” It was good that the others weren’t here. It was humiliating enough for them to see her vomiting on the steps of the Viscount’s Keep like an amateur drunk. Having them stare at her while she was sick in her own house would be even worse, so it was for the best that they weren’t here.

Anders nodded, then stood up. “All right. Ready for the home stretch?”

She ignored his outstretched hand and used her staff to heft herself onto her feet. A couple of torturous minutes later, she was placing her palm on the front door of the mansion and muttering a spell.

“Hey,” Anders said sharply. “Hawke, don’t do that—”

It was too late. The spell had already activated the magic lock embedded in the door, and Roman realized too late that using magic to unlock the door was a mistake. 

The door opened, and Roman collapsed into a heap in the foyer. 

She heard Orana and Bodahn exclaimining in dismay, and Anders tsked as he stepped over her and shut the door behind them. “Maker’s mercy, Hawke. Why did you do that?”

“I didn’t think about it,” she mumbled. And truly, she hadn’t. The front door of the mansion had a regular lock and key, of course, but she’d long grown used to using the magic lock she’d installed for nights when she was too drunk or tired — or both — to get out her keys after a night at the Hanged Man. 

“Well, it might have put you over the tipping point,” Anders scolded. “You can’t use any more magic tonight, or you could go into shock.” 

Roman glared blearily at him, but before she could retort, she heard an anxious bark. A second later, Monty was butting her shoulder with his nose. 

He whined worriedly and pawed at her. With a titanic effort, she reached up and hooked her arm around the mabari’s neck. “I know,” she muttered. “I know, I look like shit…” She trailed off and narrowed her eyes at the people in the room.

Bodahn and Sandal were crouched beside her while Anders hovered over her. Orana was standing in the doorway wringing her hands and looking scared, and Monty’s muscular bulk was pressed into her side. But there was one other person she’d been expecting to find here. 

Samson, she thought. Where the fuck was Samson? He’d been coming over here almost every night for the past couple of weeks. She would have thought he’d be here by now.

An icy feeling started to fill her chest. Was he in Lowtown still? With the fighting and the qunari and everything being on fire? If he’d gotten himself stuck in Lowtown during the qunari attack, or if he was injured somewhere…

Her heart stopped at the thought. That fucking dumbass, she thought furiously. She took a deep breath, then started pushing herself upright. 

Come on, she scolded herself. Get up right now. She tried to force herself to her feet, but by the time she was sitting upright, her head was spinning so much that she thought she might be sick again. 

Bodahn patted her shoulder. “Come on now, Miz Hawke, let’s get you off to bed then.” 

Don’t touch me, she thought, but she didn’t have the energy to say it. Monty whimpered and nudged her arm, but she ignored him and used his furry shoulder to try and get her feet beneath herself.

“Hang on,” Anders said sharply. “What are you doing?”

“An Orlesian waltz,” Roman gritted out. “What’s it fucking look like?” She tried to stand, but she couldn’t get her aching legs to move, especially not with her head spinning like this.

She closed her eyes to try and stop the spinning. Then Anders spoke to her in a quiet tone. “Where are you trying to go?” he asked. 

She took a deep breath to quell her nausea. “To Lowtown,” she mumbled.

“There’s no point,” Anders said. “The Hanged Man is a wreck.”

Very fucking funny, she thought sourly. She took another deep breath, then opened her eyes to glare at him. “I’m not going to the Hanged fucking Man,” she told him. 

His tiny smile faded to seriousness. “You’re not going anywhere. You’re a spell away from going into shock.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, then tried again to get her feet under herself, but Anders placed one hand on her shoulder to keep her down.

She pushed his hand away with way more effort than such a simple act should have taken. “Get out of my way, Anders,” she snarled.

“Make me,” he said. 

She glared venomously at him. How dare he look and sound so calm?

He gave her a look that was both knowing and obnoxiously sympathetic. “Come on, make me,” he said. “If you can make get out of your way, I will.” 

She gave him a hard look. He was right, and she hated it. She was well-attuned to her own mana, and she knew that if she even tried to light a candle using magic right now, she’d pass out and run a risk of going into shock.

“Fuck,” she hissed, and she pounded her fist feebly on the ground. “Fuck!”

Anders crouched beside her. “Hawke, what’s going on? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she snapped, furious at Samson for not fucking being here. He should have been here. He was supposed to be here in this house where he could stay safe. That was the whole point of him sleeping here, after all: somewhere safe to sleep where he wouldn’t get kicked and spat on. What was the point of having a safe place to sleep if he didn’t fucking use it? If he just ended up staying in Lowtown instead and maybe getting injured, or even killed— 

No, she told herself viciously. Don’t even fucking think it. Samson’s like a cockroach. He’s a survivor. He’s fucking fine. He just got caught up somewhere.

And that was why Roman had to go to Lowtown. He might need help getting out a sticky spot or something, the stupid dumbass. 

Anders gave her a skeptical look. “Clearly something is wrong. Tell me what it is. Maybe I can help.”

“I don’t want your help!” she yelled. “Don’t you get it? I don’t want your help. I’m fine. I’m not the one to be worrying about.”

“So there’s someone else you’re…” Anders trailed off, and his frown slackened into a look of understanding. “You’re worried about Samson, aren’t you?”

Fuck, shit, the backs of her eyes were pricking. “Shut up!” she barked. “It’s none of your business!”

“I’ll go look for him,” Anders said loudly. 

Roman froze, and Anders went on in a soothing tone. “I was headed back in that direction anyway to help with the casualties,” he said. “I’ll look around for Samson while I’m there. After I make sure you’re not going to do anything stupid like leave the house, I mean.”

“We’ll make she stays right here, Master Anders,” Bodahn said firmly. 

Roman glared at him, but his mustachioed face was resolute. Then Monty let out a determined little ‘woof’ and sat in her lap.

She grunted — the mabari weighed as much as her — and Anders nodded in satisfaction and stood up. “All right. I’ll be going, then. Hawke, I mean it: stay here and rest up. Eat something if you can stomach it—”

“I know, okay?” she snapped. “I know. I’m not a fucking idiot.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” Anders retorted.

She glared at him and tried fruitlessly to shove Monty’s muscular body off of her legs, and Anders smirked. “All right, off I go,” he said. He turned and headed for the door.

Roman gritted her teeth, then called out to him. “Anders.”

He turned back and raised his eyebrows, and Roman sighed. “Thanks, okay? Maker’s balls.”

He gave her a faint smile. “You’ll pay me back someday, I’m sure.” A moment later, he was gone. 

Roman sighed, then leaned her forehead against Monty’s shoulder. Bloody fucking balls, she was exhausted. She hadn’t been this tired since she’d fought that ogre a few years back. The ogre that killed Bethany—

No, shut the fuck up, she told herself, but it was too late; now she was thinking about Bethany’s glassy dead eyes, and her mother’s glassy dead eyes and her father’s waxy dead skin — almost her entire family, the whole family except herself and Carver: the people she hadn’t been able to save and who she should have been taking care of, and if Samson got added to that list—

Fuck it, she could feel her face crumpling. She buried her face in Monty’s fur and bit the inside of her cheek until she could taste blood. 

Monty whined softly, and Bodahn patted her shoulder. “Don’t you worry, Miz Hawke,” he said soothingly. “Let’s get you something to eat, and everything will be better then.”

Sandal patted her head. “Enchantment,” he said kindly.

Roman ignored them both and breathed in the woodsy smell of Monty’s fur. She listened as Bodahn spoke softly to Orana, assuring her that he’d seen far scarier battles during the Fifth Blight and encouraging her to go clean up the smashed window on the second floor. 

Her legs were going numb from Monty’s weight. “Get off,” she mumbled. “I won’t leave the house, I swear.”

Monty finally shifted off of her legs, and Roman sighed in relief. Then, painstakingly, she started crawling toward the flickering fire in the main room’s hearth. 

She was so cold, and her entire body felt like she’d been running too hard for too long. If she could get warm in front of the fire, she’d feel stronger, and she’d be able to go to Lowtown herself. 

Fucking Samson, she thought. If something had happened to him, she was going to be really fucking pissed.

It was the last thought she had before she passed out.

It was… unbelievable. Literally beyond belief. Samson didn’t understand what the infamous Roman Hawke was doing with the likes of him. Not to say she necessarily had a lineup of suitors at her door, given how notoriously bitchy and scary she was, but still: she was rich and influential, while Samson was a homeless ex-Templar who barely eked out a living in Lowtown. She was in the prime of her youth, while Samson was… Maker, some days he felt like a ninety-year-old corpse. She was… well, not beautiful exactly; the average person wouldn’t go around calling her a great beauty, what with her constant scowl and her lanky body that was all arms and legs. But in Samson’s eyes… 

Fine, he’d admit it: he liked looking at Roman Hawke. She was real easy on the eyes, in his humble opinion. Whereas even Samson’s own mother would say he was nothing special to look at. If she were alive, that is. 

In short, he couldn’t figure out why Roman had decided that he was the man she wanted to fuck on the regular. But he certainly wasn’t going to say no to such a boon. He was getting more sex now as a beggar than he’d ever gotten during any other time in his life, and the irony of this was enough to cheer him up in a vindictive sort of way. To think that he, Raleigh Samson, was currently getting more tail than his former Templar brethren? More tail than that bloody handsome berk Cullen Rutherford? This thought alone was enough to bring a smile to his face. 

All in all, it was a cheerful-feeling Samson who knocked on the door of the Amell mansion a few minutes later. After a few seconds’ wait, Roman opened the door. 

Samson tucked his hands in his pockets and lifted one eyebrow. “Bird. How’s—”

“Get in here,” she said, and she grabbed his shirt.

He stumbled in surprise as she dragged him through the door. She slammed the door shut, and Samson barely had time to regain his balance before she was shoving his chest.

“Move,” she snapped. She took a step closer and shoved him again.

He hastily backed away from her, then kept stumbling back as she aggressively stepped toward him. “Hey,” he protested. “What’s going on ‘ere? What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing,” she said, but she kept pushing his chest until he stumbled into the wall. Then she ran her palm over his groin.

He grunted in surprise. He wasn’t even hard yet — Maker’s balls, she hadn’t even given him a chance to get hard — but at the pressure of her palm, he could already feel his cock stirring to life. 

She tsked and rubbed his groin. “Why aren’t you hard yet?”

He choked out a little laugh. “Give me two bloody seconds, won’t you? I’m not as young as I used to be.”

She paused in her rubbing and shot him a scathing look. “That’s a poor fucking excuse.” Then, to his mild disappointment, she stopped rubbing his groin and started untucking his shirt from his trousers. 

Her fingers were rough and brisk as she plucked at his clothes, and Samson watched her in exasperation. “If I wanted to be frisked, I’d have just gone to the nearest guardsman instead of coming here.”

She looked up. “Huh?”

He gestured at her hands, which were tugging impatiently at the laces of his trousers. “You’re being pretty rough, Bird. This feels more like a strip search than anything.”

She scoffed and kept pulling at his laces. “If you want to be treated all nice and sweet, go to the Blooming Rose.”

He took her jaw in a gentle grip and lifted her chin. “Why would I go to the Blooming Rose when I can get it for free?”

She scowled at him. “That’s why you’re here? Because you think I’m cheap?” She tried to twist her face away from his hand, but he tightened his grip on her chin so she couldn’t wiggle free.

He looked her intently in the eye. “I’m here because you told me to come.”

“And you came because you think I’m fucking cheap and easy,” she said in a hard tone.

He sighed loudly — why did she always have to be so fucking difficult? — then kissed her hard. Her lips parted, and Samson quickly pulled away before she could bite him.

He ran his thumb over her chin, then released her. “Maker bloody knows why, Bird, but I like fucking you. So finish your frisking already so we can get to it.”

She curled her lip at him and went back to pulling on his laces. “You’re — fuck you. Don’t tell me what to do.”

He smirked, pleased to have won this particular argument. Roman finally finished unlacing his trousers and pulled out his cock, and when she wrapped her fingers around his shaft, he let out a pleasured breath.

“Finally,” he said. “Are you going to get your kit off now, or–”

She dropped to her knees and took his cock in her mouth, and Samson jerked with shock at the sudden wet heat of her mouth. She moved her lips up and down his shaft, and when the head of his cock slid deep into the softness of her throat, a gasp of pleasure burst from his lips. 

Fuck, she was sucking him so firmly, and her throat was so sweet and warm, and if she kept this up for much longer, he was going to come. He placed his palm on the crown of her head. “Hang on, Bird, just a– ah, fuck…”

She released his cock and frowned up at him. “What, don’t you want this?”

“Of course I do,” he panted. “I just — don’t you want — what about you?”

She gave him a look as though he’d suggested something horribly perverted. “What are you, a fucking gentleman?”

He chuckled breathlessly. “I’m a perfect gentleman, all right. Just look at my genteel clothes.” He gestured sarcastically at his threadbare trousers.

She scoffed and pumped her hand along his cock. “Shut up. You can pay me back after.”

He smirked dirtily. “Pay you back how?”

“By putting your tongue in my pussy, you dumbass,” she said archly. 

His cock jerked at her raw words. The thought of Roman’s fragrant wet pussy against his mouth, that fragrant pussy of hers sliding onto his length, the way she clenched around him when he was deep inside of her… 

“Can I keep going or what?” she said impatiently.

“Yes, yeah, suck me off,” he panted. 

“Good,” she grunted. “Maybe you’ll shut the fuck up now.” She took him in her mouth again, and Samson closed his eyes in bliss. Her mouth was a perfect firm pressure around his shaft, and it felt so good that he couldn’t help but roll his hips toward her a little bit as she suckled him.

She growled around his shaft and rested her hands on his thighs. He groaned and tightened his fingers in her raven-black hair, and she started sucking him harder—

Someone knocked on the door, and Samson’s whole body went cold with panic. 

Roman released him with a muffled curse and stood up. “Put your cock away,” she said brusquely, and she turned to the door. 

“Don’t open it!” he squawked. “For Maker’s bloody sake, don’t–”

“I won’t,” she hissed. “Just lace up your fucking trousers.”

The knock came again, and Roman rolled her eyes. “Just a second,” she hollered, and she turned and gave Samson an impatient look. 

He hastily finished tying up his trousers and ran a hand through his hair, and Roman went to the door and opened it a crack. 

Varric’s voice filtered through the crack in the door. “Morning. Ready to go?”

“Go?” Roman said. “Go where?”

“Sundermount, remember?” Varric said. “Daisy’s little errand? I’m not keen either, to be honest; you know how I feel about all that nature shit, but we promised.”

Roman tilted her head back and let out a long sigh. “Fuck,” she groaned. “I completely fucking forgot. You’d better come in while I get my shit together.” She opened the door wider and stepped back to let him in.

Varric came into the house, and when his eyes fell on Samson, his eyebrows jumped up. “Oh,” he said blankly. “Hey.”

Samson nodded awkwardly and touched his fingers to his forehead in greeting. “Tethras.”

Varric’s eyes darted from him to Roman. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to, uh, interrupt.”

“You’re not interrupting,” Roman said. “He was just leaving.” She shot Samson a pointed look.

He wilted slightly, but he wasn’t really surprised; she usually tried to get him out before any of her friends or family could catch him here. He sighed and made his way to the door. “Enjoy your nature trip,” he said, and he reached for the doorknob.

To his surprise, however, Varric spoke to him before he could open the door. “We’ll probably be back by tomorrow night, if you want to join us at the Hanged Man for a round of diamondback.”

Samson turned and stared at him in surprise. Varric was inviting him to join them? 

“No,” Roman said. 

Samson looked at her, but she was scowling at Varric. Varric raised his eyebrows. “You sure? We can always use another player.”

“I said no,” Roman said in a hard tone. “I don’t want him hanging around with the others.”

Samson’s gut twisted. He was surprised at how much her words hurt, like a dull knife piercing beneath his ribs. It was one thing for him to sneak in and out of her house without anyone seeing, but to hear her blatantly saying that she was ashamed of him… 

He bowed sarcastically to her to hide his hurt. “As the lady commands. Don’t let me taint your posh presence any more than I already ‘ave.” 

Her pouty mouth twisted into a sour expression, but she didn’t say anything, and with a pang, Samson pulled open the door and let himself out. 

He skulked through Hightown feeling like a whipped dog. As good as he’d been feeling on his way here, he was now feeling like utter shit, and he hated that he felt so bad. Logically, he understood why Roman didn’t want him around: he wasn’t anybody worth keeping around. He’d been thinking it himself on his way to her house, after all; he was a dishonoured ex-Templar and a beggar, an unsightly old shell of a man who was all skin and bones, and she was Roman Hawke. Of course she didn’t want him hanging around her precious friends. 

If it made logical sense and he agreed with her, why did it hurt so fucking much to hear her say it?

He slowly made his way back to Lowtown, and his mindset swung from anger to humiliation to resignation and back to anger once more like the pendulum of a clock. She was such a bitch, kicking him out of her house and being so mean about it. While Varric was watching, no less, just in case it wasn’t humiliating enough to be kicked out with barely a goodbye. Who the fuck did she think she was to just boss him around, telling him to come over and then telling him to get out like he was at her beck and call?

He immediately answered his own question. She’s Roman Hawke, he thought. She’s better than you deserve, even if she’s mean as a rabid alleycat. And that, of course, was the problem. Samson was the first to admit that he was as good as the dirt at the bottom of her shoes, so he should consider himself lucky she’d even spoken to him in the first place, let alone allowed him to fuck her as many times as he had. And at least when she talked to him, she didn’t look at him like he was a piece of shit. 

Really, if he thought about it, Roman was essentially the only person in Kirkwall who even looked at him when she spoke to him. And when she looked at him, it was like he was more than just a washed-up vagrant. When Roman talked to him, it even felt like she thought his opinions were worth more than just wind. 

But then she kicked him out of her house before anyone could see him, and she told her best bloody friend that she didn’t want him around her other friends…

Fucking idiot, he thought, but he wasn’t thinking about Roman now; he was thinking about himself. It was stupid of him to read anything into the way she looked at him or talked to him. It was stupid of him to think that she saw value in him. Of course she didn’t see any value; she was Roman Hawke, the wealthy and terrifying bitch who had gone to the deep roads and come back alive — who regularly walked straight into life-threatening situations and came out of them with nothing more than a few cuts on her arms and her middle finger held high.

And he was Raleigh Samson, the ex-Templar beggar who would lick a corrupt guardsman’s boots for a mere whiff of lyrium. 

It’s as it should be, he thought. She was a noble lady now, and he was at the bottom of the gutter where he’d always been since they’d met. It only made sense for her to treat him accordingly. But now that he’d had a taste of what it was like for Roman to look at him like he had value, to talk to him like an equal, he couldn’t stand the thought of her treating him like a piece of shit like she’d done today.

There was only one thing to be done, then: he wouldn’t see her anymore. Sure, it would mean a significant source of his coin would dry up, and it would mean he’d probably be curled somewhere in a corner in a couple of days having the sweats and the dry heaves as he went through lyrium withdrawal. But even that was better than the thought of Roman looking at him like the ruin that he was. 

By now, he was back in Lowtown. He made his way toward his usual spot near the docks, but instead of stopping, he turned down an alleyway and followed a twisting and increasingly dirty path toward a loose sewer grate. 

He sighed. He hated going to this part of town, but at least it meant that Roman wouldn’t find him if she came looking for him.

With that glumly determined thought, he lifted the grate and disappeared into Darktown.