For DADWC: "“Why are you whispering?” for either Fenris/Anders or Hawke/Anders please
Hey, thank you so much for the prompt! I just, really enjoyed this mental image. I hope you like it!
(If you’d like me to write you a dragon age fic, send me a prompt from here!)
@dadrunkwriting Pairing: Fenders
Characters: Anders, Fenris
Tags: fluffy nonsense, pre-romance, enemies to sort of friendly colleagues, Anders likes cats
Rating: Teen and Up
“Look, if this isn’t urgent Fenris then I actually do have other things to do with my life than follow Hawke around like a sad mabari puppy. I know! I know, it’s hard to believe but I find myself occupied with things like... a life. Responsibilities. Friends who aren’t criminals. Take your time on that one, I know it’s a stretch.”
It’s evening in Kirkwall, and through the broken walls of Darktown the sky is lilac shading down to indigo, sinking into the inky blue of the sea. The sun burns between the Twins like fallen treasure, and in the rafters there’s the snap and rustle of pigeons and seagulls nesting for the evening. Fenris frowns at the mage’s back. “Why are you whispering?”
Anders crouches, and begins to click his tongue. “Because I don’t want to scare her off.”
Fenris’ frown deepens, and he steps closer, leaning past Anders’ shoulder. The mage immediately waves him back with a quick, impatient movement. Fenris keeps leaning, peering down the narrow crevasse between the wooden beams supporting the wall of Anders’ clinic and the rough stone of the cliff. A cold wind whistles through the gap, passing a shiver down his spine. “Don’t want to scare who off?”
Anders pushes Fenris’ knee, and after a moment Fenris moves it, letting the much taller man attempt to wedge himself further into the gap, one hand out with his fingers curled. “Look if you’re going to stay then could you at least make yourself a bit less, I don’t know, dark and brooding?”
Fenris glances down at his armour, and raises one hand to the hilt of the greatsword on his back. “That...might be complicated.”
Anders sighs, and settles to sit on the dirty earth floor. “I’m not asking you to disarm. Just. You know, make yourself smaller.”
Fenris hesitates, and looks again at the velvet darkness into which Anders has been staring. Far off, children squeal as they chase one another, and the voice of an adult calls them for their dinner. Fenris crouches, squatting on his haunches. Anders resumes clicking his tongue.
A ghost comes out of the crevasse. Fenris has lit his lyrium brands in one heartbeat and is charging forward in the next. Anders tackles him into the rough cliff of stone beside them, yelping, “Fenris, no!”
There is a very distinctive hiss as the white cat that had been creeping out of the shadows retreats back into the cliff, and down a crevasse too narrow for either of them to follow. Anders slumps, arms still braced against Fenris’ chest, watching the shadow disappear. The light of Fenris’ brands casts him blue and ethereal.
“Andraste’s knickerweasels.” Anders turns to Fenris, breath huffing over his nose and lips. “Fenris! I told you to make yourself small, not attack the damn thing.”
Fenris clenches his teeth. “You neglected to tell me what you were doing. I thought it was some kind of demon.”
Anders’ mouth jumps in the direction of a grin a split second before he snorts, raising an eyebrow at him. “A demon?” Fenris glares. “A demon. Really.” Anders cocks his head to the side, still leaning on his arms against Fenris’ chest, still so close Fenris can feel the tickle of his laughter on the sensitive skin of his neck. “Tell me, Fenris, have you ever actually met a demon?”
Fenris shoves Anders away, hard, and the mage topples backwards, tripping over his own feet before he hits the wood and plaster wall of his clinic. Scowling, he makes a show of brushing down his dusty clothes. “Ow.”
Fenris moves in the direction of the staircase, pausing at the top. “What exactly were you planning to do with it?”
It takes Anders a moment to finish mumbling something under his breath before he replies, distracted. “The cat? Oh, you know. Blood sacrifice and reading her entrails, that kind of thing.” Fenris grimaces, and turns to leave. Behind him, Anders sighs, loudly. “Come on, it’s been three years. You cannot seriously still think I’m a blood mage.”
Fenris studies the wall beside Anders and the graffiti on it instead of looking at the mage himself. “I am sure I do not know what you are, mage.” Then he turns on his heel in the dust and begins to walk back down the sun-baked steps outside of Anders’ clinic. He’s halfway down, low enough to no longer be able to see the sun as it drowns in the sea, when Anders speaks again, more quietly this time.
“I was - I’m lonely. I just. I thought it would be nice to have some company.”
Fenris pauses, turning to look up at the man on the landing above him. “My understanding was that you were never alone.”
Anders rolls his eyes. “There’s a difference between having a cause and having a companion. You of all people should understand that - I mean, shit.” He stops, abruptly, biting the inside of his cheek. He narrows his eyes at Fenris, but there’s something of a smile at the corner of his lips when he adds, quietly. “You always make me say more than I mean to.”
Fenris meets his eyes for three long heartbeats before he breaks his gaze, and resumes his descent. “I do not make you do anything, mage. Good night.”
Fenris is halfway up the second staircase when he hears Anders’ reply. “Night, Fenris.”
It may as well have been a trick of the wind, or an echo from elsewhere in the Undercity, as thugs and workers and criminals headed to their beds or to those establishments here which still had the audacity to call themselves taverns. Still, Fenris glances back on the next landing. Anders is gone when he looks, and the light above the clinic is blown out.
