A Little Extra Bounce

(Original, slightly less polished version posted here.)
I wrote this when I first posted this story on the kink meme, and I will write it again: so I think the whole idea of "genderswap" (or, more accurately and less offensively, "sex swap", which is what I will call it from now on) is potentially problematic in that it endorses the idea that gender is a binary, that gender is based on biological sex, and that trans* people are an amusing plot device. Writing a sex swap story in a medieval setting is even more fraught, because the modern vocabulary we now use to talk about gender identity is difficult to incorporate without breaking immersion. Also a potential problem is Sebastian's immediate infatuation with Anders upon the revelation of the swap; fetishization of trans* bodies is common and has extremely negative consequences, and it is possible that to some, Sebastian's reaction may read as fetishization.
To the utmost of my ability, I have tried to write a story that avoids the problems that I have outlined above. The point of this story is that sex does not determine gender and that love, while of course influenced by a partner's physical traits, ought not to be boxed in by them. This is a lighthearted fic, meant to be amusing, but I have tried to make sure none of the jokes are made at the expense of trans* characters or trans* identities. I have tried to make every character powerfully individual and therefore impossible to fetishize.
That said, my utmost is not perfect, and there are many ways in which I may have failed. If I have offended or caused harm, my sincerest apologies; please leave me a note in the comments. I would really love to talk about it and to take any steps necessary to remedy the problem, up to and including removing the fic from the internet entirely.
And with that, I'm almost done talking. The only thing left is to post warnings: this story is written from the perspective of Sebastian, who starts out knowing nothing and making a lot of mistakes, including misgendering Anders. He learns his lesson, but some may find this process unpleasant or triggering to read about. If so, I would recommend reading something else.

Work Text:

It started, as these sorts of things often do, on a typical night in a typical tavern -- the archetypical tavern, in fact, or at least it seemed that way when it was Varric telling all the stories, voice rough as tar filling up the place with smoke and lips and jewel-bright eyes, and bodies prickling with steam. The smell of sweat was tempered by the gentle aroma of sweet summer rain, tapping carefully against the roof, dripping down the necks of the drunks stumbling in and out, darkening the leather of their boots.

Sebastian didn't usually like coming to the Hanged Man -- no, that wasn't strictly true. It was more that Sebastian didn't like that he liked coming to the Hanged Man: liked the ribald stories, liked the easy, unbounded wit, liked even the dirty corners of the taproom yawning blacker than sin under decades of steady grime, and Norah cuffing rowdy men's ears and Aveline cuffing Isabela's, and Varric shoving whole stacks of papers off his table all at once to make room, the result a flying, fluttering mess. All shit anyway, he would say, and there was a certain familiarity in it that, feuding and contentious, but that was what made it familiarity in the first place, what teased something a little like family out of it, what differentiated it from the clinical universality of prayer. And Sebastian craved that the most, even more than the liquor that sat so heavy in the air that breathing it burned his throat.

Doubt was an uncomfortable, insidious thing, and Sebastian had had enough of it already. So mostly, he stayed away.

The past few weeks though, he’d been restless. He hadn't had a spare moment; it was nearly the solstice, worth marking for being the anniversary of the day when Andraste, long ago, went pacing through Her garden and singing of the sun, of the newness of light, and the day when the Maker first heard Her. So naturally there were celebrations to plan and a long sermon to help prepare, and no time to even speak with Hawke and his companions, let alone accompany them in whatever venture Hawke deemed it most appropriate to pursue. And, well…

Sebastian missed them.

It was that same shame, that there was so much of the rake in him still, that beyond merely recognizing the capacity of Hawke and his friends to do good works in the city, he should seek out and enjoy their company. The conversations that spun wildly around Varric's suite might very well cause fainting were they to come up in a cloister, but he supposed that that was why they attracted him. Just like in the heat of battle: much more exciting than the Chantry. So when he'd found a few spare hours, here was where they'd led him, good or ill.

It didn't do to dwell too much on guilt, Sebastian told himself. His dissatisfaction with life as a Brother was his own demon to wrestle with; he could not in good conscious pretend that the blame for the way he so often chafed against Elthina’s guidance lay with anyone but himself. It was not the influence of Hawke’s friends that made him doubt, only his own failings. He admired them, in fact, for all being able to choose their own paths with such certainty. He should be able to see so clearly. For now, at least, he would stop worrying and let himself appreciate the company. The atmosphere was certainly worth savoring, especially since it wasn't as belligerent as usual due to the absence of a certain apostate. There, at least, was someone that Sebastian certainly wouldn't miss were he to disappear--

And then the door flew open, and thus perished that advantage.

"Shit," Anders sighed by way of greeting, shouldering his way into a spot at the table. There were fresh copies of his dreadful manifesto tucked under his belt that explained his lateness; Sebastian took a moment to thank the Maker that the rain had probably rendered them unreadable, a fact which would hopefully preclude him from spending the night trying to surreptitiously shove them up Sebastian's armor. His hair was shining silverish where the rain had plastered it to his forehead, and there was water running all down his clean-shaven face -- unusual for Anders certainly, and perhaps another reason why he was late. At least he could heal any accidental cuts that resulted from a clumsy shave. Rather suicidally, he was dripping all over Fenris's cards.

"Shit, but it's hot in here," he said again, and shrugged off his coat.

Later on, Sebastian would insist that it was only because he refused to gamble and therefore had no hand to pay attention to that he'd been letting his eyes wander.

No, that wasn't the right term for it. Looking. He'd only been looking. Innocently.

And while he was looking, what he saw was that Anders seemed thinner, slimmer than normal in the shoulders especially, and there was a strange delicacy to the flick of his wrist when he twisted around to toss his coat over onto one of Varric's benches, and when he turned back to the table, his very wet, very thin shirt made it abundantly clear that there was a bounce to his chest that definitely had not been there before.

Anders, Sebastian imagined himself very calmly asking, how is it that you've managed to grow a pair of breasts?

What he actually said was, "Nrrgh."

"What?" Anders asked, confused, and then noticed what Sebastian was so very pointedly staring at. "Oh," he said, glancing down ruefully at his chest, "I keep forgetting. They're sort of a long story, these." He looked back up from his examination, a small, peaked tit cupped in each hand.

There was a pause.

"Er, Sebastian," Anders said. "Your nose is... bleeding."

"Your nose is bleeding a lot," added Merrill helpfully.

Sebastian hadn't really noticed.

After a handkerchief had been fetched for Sebastian and Varric's coat had been draped magnanimously over Ander's shoulders , the story that Sebastian couldn't quite believe he'd missed, even accounting for all his extra work at the Chantry, finally came out.

What had happened was this:

Hawke, being an upstanding man of great moral character in addition to being incredibly, astonishingly handsome, was attentive to news of any misdeeds and had heard a rumor of some slavers setting up shop on the Wounded Coast. Naturally, he felt it his duty to investigate such happenings and intervene before any of the good citizens of Kirkwall fell prey to such depraved villainy--

("Hawke, that's not how it went. You got offered three sovereigns by some lazy magistrate who didn't want an incident with Tevinter to do his job for him--"

"Don't you mean, Aveline, that I got paid to do your job for you?"

"Hardly, since I was actually there. And nobody gave me three sovereigns."

"Hey, I needed that money. Sandal's enchantments don't pay for themselves, you know."

"Hawke, you live in a mansion in Hightown. You hardly need three extra sovereigns."

"Fenris lives in a mansion in Hightown."

"Fenris doesn't own a mine."

"Or the mansion, actually."

"If the two of you would cease debating my living situation and continue with this tiresome story--"

"Of course. No Hawke, shut up, I'll tell it."

"Fine.")

All right then. After he'd gotten the tip-off about the slavers and been pestered by the Guard Captain into actually looking into it, instead of fecklessly hanging around the Hanged Man flirting with that pirate of his and never actually doing anything worthwhile until the last minute--

("Hold on there, Big Girl, you're talking like flirting with me isn't worthwhile."

"It's just an unnecessary, wasted effort is all, seeing as all it takes to get anywhere with you is a wink and a nod."

"Well, come to think of it, you have been shaking your head a lot at me lately -- is that it? Have you been trying to tell me something all along? You romantic, you!"

"What? No, I-- urgh, stop it, geroff me you crazy--"

"Varric, am I missing something? Is this... flirting? I didn't know flirting was supposed to make you so angry!"

"You know, Daisy, I'm not really sure… what they're doing. How about we just let them get to it and you finish telling Choir Boy what happened before he bleeds to death?")

Oh! Well Hawke, or at least the Guard Captain, took the threat of slavers very seriously, because they are rather horrible, aren't they? What with the whole enslaving people thing, you know, and they do always seem to pick the dirtiest sorts of places, which is especially bad if you're not wearing any shoes, and so they really aren't very nice at all. Anyway, since the slavers were so naughty and also very serious, Hawke decided to take along all of his closest friends to-- oh, well I guess you weren't there, Sebastian, so really Hawke took along all of his closest friends except Sebastian, who Hawke was really very good friends with too but he was busy that day, and they went off to find the slavers. Well, except they didn't go straight there, because first there were a bunch of giant spiders and they had to kill all of them and it was very messy and then there were a bunch of Tal Vashoth and they had to kill all of them and it wasvery messy and then Hawke's hound found a jellyfish washed up on the beach and tried to eat it and it was very messy, and then Isabela wanted to go swimming and then they all stopped for lunch--

("Is there a point to this?"

"Excuse me?"

"I asked if there was a point."

"Oh no, the elves are fighting! Why can't the two of you every just get along and run around making love to trees and frolocking through the wildflowers and whatever else it is you're supposed to do?"

"I am obliged to do nothing, mage, least of all listen to inane blather that is unnecessary to relay your incredible folly."

"Ooh, that was low. You've hurt my tender feelings and now I'll never recover. Look, I'm shedding a tear."

"A womanly tear?"

"Hawke, have I ever told you how much more handsome you’d look without eyebrows?"

“Ah wait no, I apologize -- no Anders not my beard--!”

"Wait you all, we don't need to fight. Fenris, you can tell the story if you like; I'm not much good at them anyway. You'll tell it very nicely, I'm sure.")

…Fine. After an inordinate number of foolish delays, they reached the cave. The magistrate's information was good, and Hawke and his companions cleared out the front-most caverns with ease. All fell before their blades. Even the blood mages with their subtle tricks could not account for the simple element of surprise. Of course, that advantage was quickly lost once a certain fool mage decided it was high time to set off a trap and alert the whole operation to their presence--

("All right, that's not fair, traps are tricky. If they all had signs pointing to them saying 'Beware, some ass decided to hide spikes in the wall' then they wouldn't really be traps, would they?"

"To be fair, I did tell you not to step there."

"You're taking his side? Varric, you traitorous bastard."

"Blondie, you can't insult me when I'm letting you drip all over my clothes."

"Come off it, I did offer to just put my coat back on, you know."

"Ah, but it was all wet. I wouldn't be very much of a gentlemen if I let you do that, now would I?"

"Varric, tch, always spoiling the ladies. Next thing you know he'll be naming a crossbow after you."

"Oh shut up and go back to snogging your latest conquest, why don’t you."

“I wasn’t -- we were not--”

“Oh but Aveline, we most definitely could be, and we might still -- right after I get this story back on track. It’s past time we got to the exciting part, don’t you think?”

"What? You can't just take o--")

Anyway, the rest of the slavers all came running in all at once and the heroes faced considerable strife and it was a tough battle but with much effort they prevailed blah blah. Once they'd killed everyone, they got right to the getting-their-stuff part, which is really the best part. Except that maybe the thing to do before looting is to read the labels, or else the next thing you know you tip over a box and poof! All of the sudden Anders has tits. He was all like, 'Gah, my penis!', which has probably never meant anything good for as long as the words 'gah' and 'my' and 'penis' have existed--

("I don’t think 'gah' is actually a word, Rivaini."

"Oh, don't be a snob."

"I just want to make sure that you're using proper language when talking about Anders' penis. You're supposed to show respect for the departed, after all."

"Varric, I'm sorry, you're completely right. Anders had a brave and noble penis, and we should all mourn its passing. Sadly, not all of us got to know his penis personally, but there are stories I could tell that would make you wish you had."

"Ooh, are they dirty stories?"

"Kitten, they're the dirtiest."

"I suppose that this has to do with the Pearl again? I'm starting to really wish that Da had decided to settle down in Denerim instead of Lothering."

"Mmm, too bad. Anders' penis was never in Lothering."

"All right, if we could all just stop talking about my penis, for a moment--"

"You're right Blondie, why don't you talk about your penis instead.")

What? Oh, well, as it turns out, these particular slavers had a specific, um, target audience in mind, going by all the all the stuff we found in the cave, anyway. The short of it is, they were apparently there to supply slaves catering to certain... needs, and were well-equipped to begin training them, fresh-caught, even before they shipped them off anywhere, so really it’s a good thing that Hawke and his friends managed to catch them before they had a chance to set up properly. But you know, everyone is always saying that Circle apprentices are creative when it comes to sex, but even they couldn’t have come up with half the contraptions that were stored in there, not to mention all the powders and potions and things. And when one of the supply crates fell and smashed along with everything in it -- well, it was as simple as that. From the notes by the box, it wasn’t supposed to be permanent, just enough for a night of fun, but it also wasn’t meant to be applied in such high doses, and it definitely wasn’t meant to be used on mages, and it especially wasn’t meant to be used on anyone who’s sort-of-an-abomination, and between all the complicating factors the effect never quite, uh... well the effect never quite wore off.

“And there’s your story, Choir Boy,” added Varric with a flourish, as satisfied as if it had been him doing all the telling. “You can’t make this shit up. Don’t go mouthing off to anyone about it though. This is definitely going in my next serial, and I don’t need anyone else getting any ideas before I get it published.”

“Does it matter if I object to that?” asked Anders.

“Wait to read it ‘til you judge it,” answered Varric distractedly. “Now where’d I put my quill?” Anders rolled his eyes as Varric began to go burrowing through his things, and very pointedly didn’t let the dwarf know that what he was searching for was buried in the pocket of Varric’s borrowed coat.

It was not long before the card game started up again at Isabela’s insistence, and Anders joined in readily enough with a casual air that Sebastian couldn’t help but wonder at. Maybe it was that becoming a Grey Warden and then allowing a spirit entrance to your soul transformed you in such a way that made purely physical changes seem petty, or maybe it was that Anders was so remarkably adaptable that the days since the incident had been adequate time to adjust. Either way, he seemed not much different than he usually seemed -- she usually seemed -- Sebastian’s brain fizzled. He did his utmost to follow everyone else’s example and put the matter from his thoughts -- a futile effort, as it turned out, because somehow, while glancing up and looking for a distraction from the inevitability of another losing hand, Anders' eyes landed on him.

Sebastian felt himself blush once again as their gazes met, at the disheveled sight he must make, at the ever-so-slight quirking of Anders' brows. And then, upon seeing the beginnings of a smirk start to settle itself over those lips, now set so pertly in a wily, smooth-shaven face, the blood rushed to his cheeks so fast that his nose started gushing all over again.

If this kept up, he was going to need a new handkerchief soon -- and he doubted Aveline would be willing to let him ruin another.

All previous intentions be damned. Sebastian Vael was no coward, but there was a such thing as strategic retreat.

He stood abruptly. “I -- I need to go.”

“And pray?” wondered Hawke.

“A lot?” asked Isabela.

Those weren’t only the beginnings of a smirk on Anders' face, not anymore.

Put together, the onslaught was practically lethal. It was all Sebastian could do to stammer a stumbling reply that he could not even remember once the words had left his mouth, and then bolt without grace for the door.

It was just that he hadn't witnessed such explicit exposure for quite a long time, he told himself, hastily splashing his way back to the Chantry, head still half in the clouds even as he was up to his shins in mud. Years since he’d spied a pair of naked breasts -- well, not quite naked, but nearly there, shirt like a milk-white second skin, tented by those wet hard little nubs, every wrinkle in each areola so clearly outlined against the sopping fabric, and Sebastian had wanted so badly to feel the shape of them against his tongue, taste them through the summer rain, and then--

And then--

And it had been a long time since he'd taken his vows, that was all.

Certainly, it wasn't that they were Anders' breasts. And certainly, it wasn't that in addition to those, Anders had also theoretically developed a… a…

Oh Maker.

He was grateful that most of the Chantry’s inhabitants were already abed by the time he got back, panting and wet and doing his best not to track mud over the carpets, hair mussed and dripping from the rain -- but at least the water had helped in washing the blood from his face -- and in cooling his (extremely unwelcome) ardor.

He didn’t know the source of these feelings -- he refused to know their source -- but the one thing he did know was that it would be best for all involved if he avoided the mage for a time, at least until h-- she managed to turn herself back into a he. And ‘til then...

‘Til then, Sebastian thought in despair, he was going to be enduring some very long nights.

Avoiding Anders, in theory, shouldn’t have actually been hard.

All right, there were a lot of things that in theory shouldn’t have actually been hard -- and he did indeed find himself lying awake and doing his best not to pay any attention to the more insistent of them -- but it was just that avoiding Anders especially shouldn’t have been so difficult. It was not as if he was a frequent visitor to Darktown, and Anders was certainly never invited to the gatherings Fenris would sometimes host with Sebastian and Donnic and Varric and a few others he knew from his mercenary work in attendance, and their encounters at the Hanged Man were infrequent at best.

Truly, the only place he and Anders spent any amount of time in each other’s company was on the battlefield with Hawke -- and if he thought about it, even just there there was plenty admirable to be found: the way Anders moved with such strength and force, never any hesitance, never any fear, never anything but searingly deep reserves of will. The hottest, most insistent tongues of magic that Sebastian had ever encountered, always hovering along the edges of their spines, always dragging them ruthlessly back from wounds that by all rights should have been mortal. And in nearly everything else about Anders, that same ruthlessness could be found, that same strain of determination -- in the clinic shining like a beacon to the needy underneath Kirkwall’s unforgiving streets, in the manifestos scattered so relentlessly across the city, in refusal after stubborn refusal to just admit that Fenris was, and forever would be, vastly superior at cards.

Sebastian didn’t agree with such righteousness, but he supposed he did admire it, especially when the question of what to do about Starkhaven was still uselessly circling itself over and over again in his own thoughts. Going after what you believed was not nearly so hard, in Sebastian’s experience, as figuring out what to believe in in the first place. Whatever their disagreements, there was something about Anders' resolve that... drew him. Had always drawn him, in all honesty, though he had never bothered himself much about it, as given the circumstances, it didn’t matter. They were not friends, and he was not enough of a fool to have supposed any overtures to that end on his part could ever reconcile their wildly differing views and goals. They knew each other only well enough for Sebastian to be sure that Anders' intentions were good, rooted in empathy and kindness even, as well as in implacable rage, but everyone knew the line about what exactly the road to the Void was paved with.

That was the reason Sebastian was not just charging into Starkhaven, after all. One had to spare a thought for the consequences. And those thoughts, Anders very certainly wasn’t sparing -- Sebastian knew from experience too, that there was nothing better than anger to make men blind.

Or women. Or -- no. Still not thinking about that.

Trying not to think about it.

Maker.

The point was, he and Anders were not close associates. By now the solstice had come and gone, but though he was again free to devote his time to adventuring, avoidance should have been as simple as bowing out of excursions on which Hawke had gotten Anders to also tag along. Avoidance should not have been a problem at all.

That it had become such a problem -- Sebastian highly suspected Isabela. But, as with Wicked Grace or illegal lyrium-infused whiskey or citywide acts of debauchery that made Aveline repeatedly pull out her hair, catching the pirate in the act was so nigh impossible as to not even be worth attempting.

Sebastian resigned himself instead, prayed for guidance and cursed his own fallibility in equal measure, and did his best to withstand the rapidly growing list of indignities.

There was that one excursion to the Bone Pit, and it was named ‘the Bone Pit,’ after all, so there had been an endless litany of quips about bones, and it was a mine, after all, so there was then an even more endless litany of quips about shafts, and it wasn’t as if any of that was surprising or even unusual, not for Hawke’s companions, but enduring it under Anders' wry gaze had become particularly excruciating.

And then there was that one time tangling with the Carta under Kirkwall, dark and messy and chaotic and no room to use his bow properly, and a venom-flushed dagger sheathing itself in the meat of his thigh before he’d even noticed the dwarf wielding it. He was too used to looking for enemies at eye-level, that was his problem, and Varric was probably going to mock him for it later, he had time to think, before the poison swooped dizzily through his mind in a rush that made him drop like a stone to the ground. When he woke up again, it was with the source of his woe crouching over him, apparently summoned from the nearby clinic to make sure Sebastian’s inattention would not be the cause of his death -- “I thought you of all people, Vael, would be more cautious of where the men around you are sticking their pointy bits,” Anders had been saying, fingers long and thin and elegant and thrumming with a fizzy rush of magic, palms hovering so close to Sebastian’s face that he could almost taste the heat of them -- Sebastian didn’t remember it, but according to everyone else, he had blushed, choked, and then promptly passed out again.

And there were, of course, the limericks that had begun showing up without fail, pinned to the Chanter’s Board each and every morning so that Sebastian was forced to rouse himself even earlier than was his custom in order to remove them, lest the Sister whose job it was to look after the board had a chance to read: One day a fair prince from the Chantry/Spied the chest of a mage escapee...

It was a testament to how much he’d been suffering that when Hawke asked him along to help with another of his nosy investigations into something or other, he was relieved, even after learning their destination. Hawke’s latest inquiry was taking them to the Blooming Rose, apparently, for the sake of tracking down a disgruntled ex-runner from a lyrium-smuggling operation to see if he couldn’t be persuaded into giving them information that would help sour the ring’s business. Though it was an end that Sebastian approved of -- all lyrium did belong to the Chantry, after all, by right and by law -- he still normally would have balked at going: a brothel was no appropriate place for a Brother. But now, he was only profoundly grateful. Even the Rose was acceptable, as long as Anders was not along. Isabela was in the party, it was true, but so was Fenris, and with the elf to back him up and no immediate ammunition with which to tease him, he might just emerge from this mission unscathed.

He should have learned by now, he thought not half-an-hour later, that such optimism was rarely ever called for.

Everything had been fine -- well, not fine; he could never be comfortable in a place that was such a vivid reminder of his selfish past, having to resist the urge to loosen his collar under the overwhelming heat, the cloying pull of incense and low laughter -- but even a multitude of leering prostitutes could not make him more ill at ease than he had been of late, so the whole affair was more of a relief than an ordeal.

That was, right up until the moment that a door in the wall that Sebastian had cornered himself against in an attempt to appear as inconspicuous as possible opened right next to him to reveal -- who else -- Anders, sweaty and disheveled and without any heavy overcoat, not in heat like this, no, just a patchy, ill-fitting shirt whose drape still managed to hang exactly right to give a hint at the shape underneath, leggings tight enough to show the new, round swell to those lanky thighs: a pure, cream-spun vision of everything Sebastian had ever wanted to fuck.

It was a peculiar set of acrobatics that his mind was going through, simultaneously doing everything in its power not to think of Anders while also thinking of nothing but Anders -- and most especially, what was Anders doing in a private room at the Rose, especially now, especially with his new-- her new--

Sebastian opened his mouth, thought better of it, shut it with a click of his teeth, and looked down, hiding his face, hoping against hope not to be noticed -- praying even, with a desperation that was more suited to his younger days, when he would beg Andraste’s aid in gaining a lady’s favor or winning whatever reckless bar brawl he’d managed to involve himself in, not at all befitting the faith of a staid man of the cloth.

But this was different, surely -- these were the prayers of a Brother attempting to conquer himself for the sake of his very vows, made in Her name!

From her perch on his waist, His Lady stared implacably up at him.

Her gaze was decidedly unsympathetic.

“Well if it isn’t our very own prince, come to see the sights,” drawled Anders, voice close enough to Sebastian’s ear to make him wince. “Wetted your appetite, did I?”

If only, Sebastian thought longingly. Lust was a failing that he knew, simple, aimless in its intent as it was wide in its reach. It had bitten him now and then, in his years since joining the Chantry, but he had always overcome it.

This wanton, single-minded infatuation, on the other hand -- this was a temptation he didn’t know what to do with.

“I-- we-- Hawke,” he managed to stammer in reply, and Anders looked over towards the counter to spy the very man, currently engaged in a bout of strenuous flirting with the imperious Madame Lusine -- who, by the looks of her, was having none of it. Sebastian wished that Hawke was not as fond of lingering so, especially not in such... infamous locations, but he didn’t doubt that any attempts to persuade him to get on with it would be met with nothing but a mocking grin. He wondered if Hawke had perhaps even established within minutes of entering the place that their contact was not here, and was now only dragging things out for the fun of it. It would not be out of character -- and it was a trait that was playing to Sebastian’s disadvantage especially now, with Anders' sly eyes burning his blush brighter by the second.

Isabela, of course, had disappeared arm-in-arm with someone-or-other practically the moment they were through the doors. Fenris, at least, was still by his side.

“Hawke explains our presence, but not yours, mage,” he observed, stating what Sebastian had been thinking (though his air of idle curiosity was certainly not how Sebastian had been thinking it). “I know you were not asked here with the rest of us.”

“It’s cute how you mage-hating types think we owe you every explanation,” Anders answered lightly. “Oh wait, did I say ‘cute’? Because really what I meant was ‘utterly repulsive’.” Sebastian didn’t like the acid in h-- her voice, but he did like that her ire was not, at the moment, directed towards him, in spite of how thoroughly he deserved it.

Luckily, Fenris seemed willing enough to engage the mage in what to two with so much animosity between them passed as conversation -- lucky, because it gave Sebastian a chance attempt with all his might to sink into the wall. “I am as interested in your life as I am in your politics mage -- that is, not at all. I only thought to comment upon the rapidity with which you seem to be... adjusting.”

Anders snorted. “Look at that, the elf thinks he’s funny. Haha. As if I had the coin for a place like this, anyway.”

“And yet, you have coin enough to lose good sums of it to me weekly, without fail.”

“Bastard elf.” Anders crossed her arms. “I work here, if you must know.”

At that, Fenris’s eyebrows raised -- “That certainly does not alter my comments on the rapidity of your adjustment,” he said, but Sebastian wasn’t paying him any attention. Sebastian wasn’t paying attention to much of anything, actually, had forgotten even his previous effort to wish himself into nonexistence in favor of gaping like a very shiny fish.

“You work here?!” he sputtered, an unwelcome barrage of salacious images zipping through his mind so quickly that he did not even have time to be properly horrified at himself, twin urges of desire and sudden, inexplicable protectiveness boiling through his gut with equal fervor.

At the annoyance in the pair of brown eyes that Sebastian abruptly found himself meeting, he guessed that the expression of any such defensive urges would undoubtedly earn him a dousing in one of Anders' much-bragged-of fireballs.

"Vael, you’re daft,” said Anders. “I meant that Madame Lusine pays me a good fee so that she can brag she's got the cleanest lays in Kirkwall, and some of the girls've passed on word to a few of the more discreet clients. I don't feel bad about taking money from people with enough of it to afford the Rose."

"Oh," he realized, chagrined.

Anders seemed satisfied at that, rocking back on her heels thoughtfully to add: "Not that I haven't ever slept with anyone for coin, mind you. It's just that I'm not classy enough for somewhere like this. The Pearl though, in Denerim--” Anders tapped her chin. “Now that place was a party."

Sebastian choked.

“I have now learned more than I ever needed to,” said Fenris in his usual flat tone, which did nothing to betray whether he had become annoyed or bored -- or perhaps amused. “You will find me over there, with Hawke.”

No, Sebastian meant to beg as Fenris made his way decisively across the room. No, don’t leave me, I haven’t figured out how to make my mouth work yet.

But unfortunately, he was capable of saying absolutely nothing, still trying to work around the impediment of a thoroughly frozen brain.

“You didn’t get stabbed again, did you?” Anders wanted to know, waving a hand in front of his face. “Concussed? Some cognitive impairment concoction that didn’t kick in until just this moment? Or perhaps nobody noticed it until now because you always sound the fool anyway.”

“Um,” said Sebastian, which, in his opinion, was an accomplishment in itself.

“I’m going to take that as a no, if only because I really don’t feel like examining your head again.”

The thought of Anders' hands, so close to him again -- “I-- you-- um. No. No, I don’t think that that will be necessary.”

“That’s what I thought.” There was that wry look in her eyes again. “If you’d rather not be touched by the twice-over abomination, all you had to do was say so, you know. I’m not about to be bothered.”

Twice-over...? “What?”

She waved a hand. “You Chantry types are all the same. Anything a little outside the norm and it’s ‘Maker preserve us!’ this and ‘Andraste save us!’ that. You do know that you’re perfectly free to go disapprove of me somewhere else. Somewhere far away, preferably.”

“Wait you think I...? No! What happened is not your fault, I never meant to imply... you believed that I thought less of you?” He was so distracted by his horror at this revelation that he forgot to be shy of his own tongue.

“No?” Anders' eyebrows went up. “You certainly have been doing your best to avoid me like the plague. And I’ll remind you that it’s nobody’s fault that they’re a mage either, and you don’t seem to mind hating them for it.” She stuck a finger into Sebastian’s chest. “And you’ll excuse me for not being impressed that you pity me because what happened ‘is not my fault’. I suppose if I’d done it on purpose you’d be all for drowning me in the harbor.”

“I don’t hate mages Anders, and I don’t hate you,” Sebastian insisted. “The Circles exist as a safeguard, for practicality’s sake, not malice. And as for this... if becoming a woman had been your intent, then it harms no one, and is therefore no one’s business but your own.”

“You honestly believe that, don’t you? About the Circles. You--” Anders looked like she was about to launch into her same familiar tirade when she became momentarily distracted. “Wait -- ‘becoming a woman’...? Oh Maker, you’re think of me as a ‘she’ now, aren’t you. Andraste’s great flaming -- all right, enough. Stop that. Stop that immediately.”

“I... what? But isn’t that... what happened? I thought--”

“It’s my body that’s different, you ass, not my head. Honestly.” Anders gave a great roll of her -- his? eyes. “If the same had happened to you, would you be thinking of yourself as a girl? Because I could scorch your crotch off right now and then we’d see how well having the proper bits makes you a man. What do you say?”

“I, oh, um,” was what Sebastian said. “No, I am sorry. That was foolish of me, in retrospect. Forgive me, I had no intention to make you uncomfortable.”

Anders eyed him skeptically. “You don’t want to make me uncomfortable. Me, apostate abomination extraordinaire. You know, the one who’s sort of in opposition to everything you stand for?”

Sebastian shifted self-consciously. “We all have our sins, and we all choose our own paths. I am the Maker’s servant, not His judge.”

Anders stared at him for a long, hard minute. “You’re a weird one, Vael,” he said finally, the tone of his voice so inscrutable as to make Sebastian’s heart execute a confused sort of backflip in his chest.

“I-- well-- thank you?” he stammered.

And just like that, he was back to babbling idiocy.

Wonderful.

Hawke chose, at that moment, to be his savior instead of his tormenter -- an unusual turn of events, to be certain, but Sebastian was not ungrateful. “Anders!” he said cheerfully, striding over with a disgruntled-looking Fenris in his wake. “What are you doing here?”

“Just the usual, Hawke, don’t look so surprised.” He sighed, one hand on his hip in an unconscious pose that was doing things to Sebastian’s... brain. “Actually, I better get back to it before Katriela over there loses all patience with me.”

Sebastian turned his head to see a vibrant-haired elf in a huff by a doorway on the far side of the room. She was tapping her foot rather severely, and judging by her expression, it was a good thing that Anders started making his way to her when he did. But then Hawke fell in happily enough behind him, clearly intending to go along, chatting away about has-that-one-drunk-who-keeps-insisting-he-has-the-blight-left-you-alone-yet and no-I-swear-I-killed-this-many-spiders and did-anyone-see-where-Isabela-got-off-to-anyway, and Fenris fell in step beside him, so Sebastian had no choice but to go along, unwilling as he was to become involved in this particular situation. But at least he was no longer the focus of Anders' attention.

“Come on, Sparkles,” chided the Katriela, once they all got close enough and followed her through the open door into what looked to be a storeroom with ample counter space. “Some of us don’t have the time to waste on chitchat, you know.” A smile slid over her lips as she spied Hawke. “Though Honeybadger, if you’re buying, I’ve always got time for you.”

“Not today, Katty,” Hawke dismissed. “It’s business, today.” Katriela pouted winningly as Hawke put up his hands, grinning, and then Jethann (and it was not lost on Sebastian that his life was not going exactly as planned when he knew several prostitutes by name) appeared through the door.

“Sparkles, finally getting around to us, are you-- Sparkles!” He whistled in astonishment. “Well look at you. We heard the rumors filtering up from that filthy tavern you like to waste time in, but we know how fond your dwarf is of spinning tall tales.”

He stepped forward without a thought, and -- the blood rushed to Sebastian’s face so fast he thought his brain might well be hemorrhaging -- seized Anders by the hips, giving a hearty squeeze before running his hands up the mage’s frame, fingers mapping out the lithe figure under his hanging shirt, tightening the fabric for all to see: the hourglass dip of his waist and the small, pert mounds of his breasts and the newly-rounded width of his still-slender hips and Sebastian really was going to fall over and die, wasn’t he--

“Seri, come look!” called Jethann just as Anders managed to elbow him off, and yet another elven prostitute came wandering through the door -- Serendipity, her name was, Sebastian had just enough presence of thought to recall, before his mind fizzled back into its series of frantic death throes.

“Well then,” said Serendipity, and reached up to pat Anders on the cheek -- his face was not much different, in all honesty, fuller lips and a shorter chin and a distinct absence of scruff, nose still as prominent as ever, but in spite of the subtlety of the changes there was still something about it which made it instinctively recognizable as female in a way it certainly hadn’t before. This was clearly enough to impress Serendipity. “Anders, doll, you’re as pretty as a painting.”

“Let it never be said that our Sparkles doesn’t have a trick or two up those sleeves,” agreed Jethann proudly, and Anders glared as Hawke broke into a fit of coughing that sounded rather suspiciously like laughter.

“This is still a waste of time,” interjected Katriela, feet swinging from where she’d hopped up to sit on one of the counters, “though I admit you’ve got me curious. How did you ever manage it?”

”It was an accident,” Anders explained wryly. “And no, I don’t know how to repeat it... or reverse it, for that matter.”

"Damn," Serendipity sighed. "I wish someone could teach me that trick."

"Might be fun to try out," said Jethann thoughtfully, "if it wore off, anyway."

Anders' tone was sour."There's the trouble.”

"See Fenris?" Hawke asked, grinning as he turned to the warrior, "I told you we should have kept that stuff from the cave to sell. Just because it's from Tevinter doesn't automatically make it evil."

"I refuse to argue with you about the merits of distributing untested magic among laymen, Hawke. You are not that much of a fool."

"Maybe I just think that if I can rile you enough, you'll consent to giving me a good spanking, eh?"

The tips of Fenris's ears turned an immediate, insistent pink, though Sebastian almost didn't notice. The rather spectacular effect of a thousand lines of lyrium lighting up at once was rather distracting compared to a simple blush.

"Does he do that every time you flirt with him?" Jethann was interested to know.

"Or when you kiss him?" Katriela added. "Ah, that would be so romantic, a magical glowing kiss. Like from a story book."

Serendipity leaned in against Katriela’s counter, slipping an arm around her waist and to pinch her generous hip. "I'll be he glows twice as hard when he's hard."

Fenris would never be so undignified as to sputter, but his eyes did widen perceptibly. He recovered remarkably quickly, though, and turned his admirable glower on Hawke before storming out the room.

"Well, that backfired," said Hawke to no one in particular.

"You are an impressive cock-up," agreed Anders.

"Good thing if you ask me," interjected Katriela, "because that elf really needs a cock-up, if you know what I mean."

What else could you possibly mean? Sebastian asked himself in despair as Jethann reached up to flick Katriela's ear. "Honey, that was my line."

"Speaking of cock-ups," interrupted Serendipity, "Anders, sweetheart, have you -- ah -- had any fun with the new equipment yet?"

There was only so much a man could stand. Sebastian scrambled out of the room with as much finesse as he could manage, hoping not to be noticed as he slipped off. That he knocked over a crate or four on his way out probably didn’t help much in that regard, but Hawke and the harlots were all leaning in with interest to hear the answer, seeming not to pay him any mind, and Anders -- well, Sebastian just wasn’t going to think about Anders, or what Anders thought of him. He wasn't going to think about whether Anders noticed him at all. That was exactly what had gotten him into this ungraceful mess in the first place.

He ended up back in the main hall, a little dazed, and tried to look for Fenris to wait with, but the elf seemed to have gone. Tucking himself into a corner as best he could until Hawke remembered that they were here for a purpose beyond idle gossip seemed the best option, except sitting alone must have been giving people the impression that he wanted company, and eventually Sebastian was frazzled enough that he bought his own drink, just so people would stop trying to buy them for him. And then he bought another, and another, and that only made three -- or four, it might've been, when he stopped to think about it -- and he used to knock back many times that, before the Chantry, but it had been a long time since he'd touched alcohol -- how long, exactly, he tried and failed to remember, just as he failed to remember what exactly it was that he’d been ordering -- and there were people still propositioning him, and the horrified realization that one of them was vaguely recognizable as Hawke's uncle was enough to earn him another drink, and it would have gone on like that indefinitely had Isabela not chosen just then to return smugly from whoever's room she'd disappeared to.

"Isabela," he pleaded, a little despairing and a little drunk, as she scooted in next to him and wrapped an arm around his waist, "I… I don't have cock-sucking lips, do I?"

"Oh sweetness," she sighed, and patted his head. "Someone's having a rough night. You tell your dear 'Bela all about it."

"It's just that I don't even like cocks. Or you know, sucking on cocks, or anything like that, and I don’t think I ever have, except maybe the one person, if he really wanted me to, but he doesn't even have one anymore, so…"

"Well this is a delightful vein of conversation," said Isabela, eyebrows raised in satisfaction. "Do please carry on."

And he might well have done exactly that, except just then Anders and Hawke emerged back into the main room, and there must have been something Divine behind it, for timing like that could simply not be a natural occurrence -- Andraste truly was the Lady of Sorrows, the way she was contributing to Sebastian's. Either that, or She was just the Lady with The Really Unkind Sense of Humor, and Sebastian was currently the butt of Her joke.

The pair wandered over, Hawke grinning like someone had just handed him a puppy to kick and Anders' eyebrows perilously raised -- his eyes were very swimmingly gold beneath them, Sebastian noticed, like they were eating up the lamplight somehow. Somehow -- thoughts on the mechanics of that how (and also on the mechanics of why he should be noticing in the first place) were enough to make his head spin rather unpleasantly. He felt as dizzy as the liquor he’d been drinking, swished around uncomfortably at the bottom of some fishbowl-bright glass.

"What the matter with him?" Anders wanted to know, once they’d reached the table. Isabela gave her head a knowing little shake.

"Oh, don't pay him any mind, he's just about to confess his undying love for you.” She cocked her head. “Or lust, anyway. Which is it, Sebastian?"

"I think I'm going to be sick," Sebastian said.

And after that, thankfully, he didn’t remember anything more.

“If you ask me, Hawke ought to pay me for doing this,” he heard a familiar voice saying from somewhere that sounded very far away, as if it was echoing down to him from the surface of some abysmal pool in whose depths he was helplessly languishing. It certainly felt like he was under fathoms of water, anyway, judging by the sensation of pressure spiking painfully through his half-present thoughts.

“I mean, yes,” continued the voice, swimming tantalizingly closer, “He did give me that rather fantastic sum that one time, but that was supposed to be my share for the expedition, not payment for future services rendered. And even if it was, I should expect that those services wouldn’t include looking after his inexcusably drunk friends so he could run off and have a grand time with Katriela after all.”

Sebastian dizzily became aware that he was not just a mind mired in the deep, but did indeed have a body, one that was chilled on one side and warm and cushioned on the other, curled up uncomfortably and with a stabbing crick in its neck. His neck. He was... where? He experimented with trying to move, an attempt which only ended with a groan of misery. Feeling that he was most certainly going to regret it, he cautiously blinked open his eyes.

At least he did not encounter any abundance of cruel, throbbing light. But the sight that did greet him was far worse: a pair of gold eyes inscrutably meeting his -- gold like they’re eating up the lamplight, he remembered, and blanched.

“So hello,” said Anders conversationally, and Sebastian sat up all at once in a panic and found himself spitting out a mouthful of grey, dust-flavored feathers. Anders stared at him, and he stared back at Anders, and he spied a distinct wet patch on Anders' shoulder from where he had drooled on it, apparently, oh Maker, and when had Anders even put his coat back on, anyway, and what was even happening, and why was there no mercy left in the world--

“You owe me for those,” Anders said, reaching out to brush a wet feather off of his chin, and Sebastian found himself wishing that there was some way to travel back to years ago and warn himself that it would be best to let those Flint Company Assassins off him, after all.

“Um,” he said with desperation -- ‘um’ was rapidly becoming his new favorite word, he realized, so embarrassed that he could barely breath. He had never before thought of himself as innovative, but it shouldn’t have been possible to show himself to be more of a fool than he already had -- and yet, here he was, crashing into abrupt sobriety with all the grace of a traipsing bronto (as Varric might say), hungover as anything and with absolutely no idea of what had transpired.

It was a situation that was all too familiar, but to experience it again, after so many years, with Anders, of all people, as a witness: Anders, whose respect he suddenly craved as he craved nothing else -- this was far too much to bear.

He looked away in shame and thought to at least attempt to get his bearings -- wherever they were, it was dark, with the feel of rough stone under his thighs and at his back, the texture of the wall that he and Anders were currently leaning against. They were outside, the temperature still comfortably summery, but the night had turned it cool enough so that more layers wouldn’t be unwelcome -- would in fact be very welcome, at the moment, as Sebastian found himself mysteriously lacking a shirt. Lacking everything, actually, except for boots and breeches -- though bizarrely enough, he still had his belt, buckled around his waist completely absent of his armor.

He looked down at Andraste.

Andraste looked up at him.

I know, I know, he told Her sadly. Maker be thanked for Your infinite grace.

Though he supposed he couldn’t well go asking for forgiveness until he figured out exactly what it was that he’d done.

“Um,” he said again, and looked back over at Anders, who had apparently ceased to find Sebastian to be a phenomenon interesting enough to stare at and was now leaning back with his eyes closed, head against the wall. Stacked by his side were a couple of weathered looking crates, the same sort that Sebastian found himself cornered against as well. There was a flickering of warm, yellow light seeping into their little hollow from around the crates’ edges, as well as the sound of muffled laughter, which told him they couldn’t be far from the mouth of the brothel -- not far from the scene of his debasement, Sebastian corrected himself with a wince, both at the throbbing in his head and at the situation he’d managed to mess himself into.

“I suppose you’ll be wanting to know how thoroughly you disgraced yourself,” Anders commented, still not opening his eyes. “Or did you actually manage to remember anything?”

Sebastian stared down miserably, drawing his knees up to his chest and cursing his own traitorous impulses. “I-- no. No, I don’t remember.”

“Mmm. Thought so. Well, first thing was, we got kicked out after you started dancing on the tables--”

His head shot up so fast that he cracked it on the stone wall behind him with enough force to see stars.

When his vision cleared, Anders was looking at him again, lips twisting easily. “That was a joke, Vael, you can start breathing again.”

He stared, wide-eyed and dizzy and incredulous, and Anders rolled his eyes. “Not so funny, then? Here--” and suddenly there was a hand on his forehead, firm and slender and full of light, full of heat, so much of it cupped in his palm, and the pain from both his hangover and his bruised skull were gone, but Sebastian was still seeing stars, oh yes, stars upon stars, and he thoroughly deserved the way the Blessed Andraste was glaring up at him from down below, but oh, he hardly cared--

“Better?” asked Anders, taking his hand away, and Sebastian blinked his way back into reality.

“Buh,” he managed to say, stupidly, and then he got his tongue in order. “I mean-- yes. Yes, you have my thanks. I, ah-- I apologize; I am not recently accustomed to finding myself in such... circumstances.”

Anders snorted. “You’re not exactly the only one, you know, but-- I wouldn’t worry. It was nothing so dramatic. You got sick-up all over yourself, but Isabela and Hawke managed to get you out of your armor and have it sent back to Hawke’s estate for Bodahn to get it cleaned. Though I wouldn’t accuse either of them of altruism. It’s not like nobody was appreciating the view.”

Sebastian flushed all the way from his ears to his toes -- a reaction which, if not for the low light, would have been entirely, embarrassingly visible -- he was extremely, uncomfortably conscious of the fact that he was naked from the belt buckle up.

“Anyway, you put up with it, but you wouldn’t let them take your crotch ornament there away from you -- kept insisting that it was the only thing protecting your virtue -- so we just buckled it back on around your waist, and then you calmed down. And after an hour or so of making fun of you for everyone’s amusement, Hawke got bored, and Katriela caught his eye again, and Isabela was long-gone by then, so I got stuck baby-sitting. And then you babbled a bit, and then I had to convince a band of mercenaries that you weren’t for sale -- which you didn’t make very easy, by the way -- and then you looked like you were going to be sick again, so I dragged you outside. But you fell asleep on me instead. The end.” His face settled into a wry smirk, familiar and yet not on newly-full lips. “Bit of a let down, in all honesty. I was expecting better of Sebastian ‘rumored-to-be-a-wild-boy’ Vael.”

“I, ah.” Sebastian looked down. “Well I suppose I am sorry for disappointing.” He was sorry for a lot more than that -- sorry that he should have ever been so irresponsible, sorry that he should ever have been such a burden, especially to someone who so clearly wanted nothing to do with him, sorry that such disgraceful feelings should have been spurred in him at Anders' un-asked-for transformation in the first place.

But he doubted the mage would want to hear any of those apologies -- not from him, anyway.

Unaware of his thoughts, Anders flapped a careless hand in front of his downcast face. “Don’t look so put out, would you. I run a clinic in bloody Darktown. As long as you’re not shitting out chokedamp, I rather consider this a luxury.”

Sebastian looked up, startled, and Anders seemed to catch the expression in his eyes. “Honestly, this is... not awful,” he said again, and then paused. “Though I am serious about the feathers.”

“You... really? I mean-- of course,” Sebastian promised. “I won’t forget.” He swallowed abruptly and looked up, trying to judge what time of night it was by the stars. “I don’t suppose that Hawke ever found that man he was looking for?”

“Oh, you mean he dragged you all there for an actual reason?” Anders' voice was full of irony.

Sebastian felt his lips twitch. “Supposedly.”

“Right. And I wonder what that was ever supposed to be.”

“An ex-lyrium-smuggler, apparently, who was going to help us break one of the larger rings.” Sebastian let his head fall back against the cool stone of the wall. “Knowing Hawke, I doubt he was ever even there in the first place.”

Anders thumbed one of his coat sleeves thoughtfully. “An ex-lyrium-smuggler? You know, I think I know the very man. No, he wouldn’t have been at the Rose. I’ll see if I can’t look into it.”

“You would do that?” Sebastian asked, surprised.

“Sure. You know well enough who the main customers are, and anything I can do to make their lives more difficult is fine by me. Templars with their own supply means Templars off their leads -- the Chantry doesn’t like that, sure, but it’s mages who actually suffer when the Order goes rogue.”

Sebastian frowned. “That is -- troubling. I would it were not so complicated.”

“Life’s not simple just because you are, Vael. If you had an ear for anything besides sermons, you would have learned that by now.” Anders hauled himself to his feet. “Now I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not sit here ‘til the morning.”

Perhaps at any other time, or with any other person, that contention would have made Sebastian inclined to argue. But now, he was only grateful that he was not subject to a worse dismissal. He certainly deserved it, the way he’d been behaving -- was still behaving, he thought, wincing, as he noticed his eyes following the shape of Anders' long legs as they unfolded, smooth as butter, the lines of them lanky but with just the slightest, most tongue-wetting curve--

He clutched his belt buckle like a talisman, and hastily stood up.

Out of the space tucked amidst the crates, away from the little pocket of heat they’d cultivated between them, the night air was sweet and breezy, and cool enough to make Sebastian’s muscles jump. A spasm ran up his back, and he bit his lip, the intensity of his awareness of his half-clothed state spiking as Anders turned to face him, eyes drifting up and down in lazy observation of Sebastian’s shivering.

“Cold, are you?” he asked, a touched amused.

Sebastian left off clutching Andraste in favor of rubbing his bare arms. “I’ve been warmer,” he admitted.

“I forget you’re not from Ferelden, though I shouldn’t, not with that ridiculous accent of yours. This is hot for Ferelden, you know.”

“And chilly, for a Starkhaven summer. We’re close to Antiva.” Sebastian looked up at the fractured bits of starlight splintering into the alleyway through the maze of Kirkwall’s high buildings. “I admit, there are times when I miss it.”

Anders snorted. “What, being close to Antiva?”

For the first time in recent memory in the mage’s presence, Sebastian felt his chest loosen. He allowed himself a quiet laugh. “That too.”

When he turned his attention back from the sky, he found Anders considering him with a studious gaze, head tilted. “Here,” he said abruptly, when he noticed Sebastian noticing, and for the second time Sebastian had the surreal experience of watching him shrug off his bulky, shapeless coat to reveal a still-shocking figure underneath, narrower shoulders and wider hips and the faint outline of breasts still visible through his linen shirt -- though the fabric was not soaked through this time, thank the Maker. Sebastian doubted he would be able to survive a sight like that again; as it was, the stark line of one delicate collarbone peeking through his open collar was almost enough to do him in.

“I would feel bad if I spent all this time looking after you only to have you freeze to death on me now,” explained Anders in a tone that brokered no arguments -- no arguments from idiot Choir Boys, anyway, and so in spite of his dry mouth, Sebastian reached out and took the proffered coat (being brandished at him more like a threat than a favor) with only the barest bit of hesitation, with only a slightly-trembling hand.

Anders had always been a skinny man, even before his accidental transformation had narrowed him in some places (and amplified him in others), and so his coat did not quite fit all the way around Sebastian, who had an archer’s build, biceps and shoulders thick with use, the constant tension-and-snap of the bowstring. He didn’t even try to fit his arms through the sleeves, fearful of accidentally getting stuck in the thing, only clutched it around himself as best he could, a wide stripe of his chest and stomach still peeking through. But nonetheless, he was much more comfortable than he would have been without it, and he couldn’t help but feel small and warm and grateful.

He very carefully did not ask what the real reason was behind the offer when there was no threat of anyone freezing to death, not on a mildly cool summer night like this. He was rather afraid that he wouldn’t like what the answer might be -- or perhaps that he’d like it too much.

“Thank you,” he told Anders instead. The mage waved his thanks away.

“Just be sure I get it back,” he said. “Now do you need me to walk you back to the Chantry’s front door, or do you think you can get home without falling over and throwing up in some noble’s flowerbed?”

Sebastian blushed. “I’ll be fine,” he said.

Anders eyed him skeptically. “If you say so, Vael.”

What that was supposed to mean, exactly, Sebastian couldn’t tell.

They parted ways by the square that topped the stairs to Lowtown, Anders' hand raised in a nonchalant goodbye, figure outlined by the silvery light of the moon. He didn’t look back, which was a good thing, because Sebastian couldn’t help but stare after him for a long, long time.

Avoiding Anders shouldn’t have been hard.

But in retrospect, he was rather glad that it hadn’t been so easy.

There were still other things that shouldn’t have been hard, of course -- having Anders' coat was only adding fuel to that particular fire (and if he, upon returning to the Chantry that night, had happened to fall asleep enmeshed in its scent, face buried in its folds and soaking in contentment, then it was certainly something better left undiscussed), so Sebastian resolved to return the thing as soon as might be.

He didn’t get the chance until a few days later, once he’d successfully persuaded Hawke to return his own clothing to him, an effort that took more doing than it by any rights should have -- Hawke was all too eager to draw out the delight he so clearly took in reminding Sebastian of his stunning lapse of judgement, and therefore none too eager to relinquish Sebastian’s armor, not as long as there was still opportunity to call in Bodahn and Sandal and sigh and moan about how long and hard the both of them had had to work to scrub it, and you know, maybe it really did need one more polish, you wouldn’t want to go out without being properly lacquered, now would you Sebastian, why don’t you come back tomorrow -- it was as tiresome a business as Sebastian could have imagined, but Isabela wasn’t in on it, at least, and after a few days Hawke did get bored enough of it that he finally let Bodahn return Sebastian’s possessions to him, packaged neatly and as shining as ever.

Sebastian thanked him for his trouble (and he was dearly hoping that Hawke was exaggerating exactly how much trouble it had been), changed, bundled up Anders' coat under his arm (along with a few replacement feathers he’d taken out of the stores he kept for fletching his arrows), and set off on his way Darktown. He strapped his weapons on as well as his armor; he wasn’t expecting to have to do any fighting, but this would be his first journey into the decrepit warrens beneath the city on his own, and it wouldn’t do to get jumped. He could only imagine Anders' reaction to his showing up at the clinic’s door, robbed, stripped of his valuables, and shirtless once again -- and he highly doubted that it would be to offer to kiss his wounds better.

Though that was not an unpleasant thought.

He very carefully did not look down, lest the Blessed Andraste’s expression chastise him all the way back to his knees on the prayer chamber floor.

Darktown turned out to be a lot more confusing then he remembered without Hawke to follow, and none of the people he saw really looked like the sort who would be friendly and helpful were you to stop and ask them for directions. But he stumbled upon a seller of poisons who he vaguely recalled having met before, and the elf, recognizing him as a friend of Hawke’s (“Forget you? We don’t get many with that much polish down here, Prince Charming,”) pointed him in the right direction for only a menial bribe -- and his amusement at how long it took Sebastian to figure out that a bribe was what he wanted did not seem overtly ill-natured.

The lantern at the clinic’s front door was out, but the door was open. Sebastian tread cautiously inside -- though, as Varric would tell him, he was sure, he should have learned by now that there was nowhere he could go with any hope of not attracting attention, not in attire such as his. The heads of every person in the clinic lifted at his entrance, even those of the ill souls languishing upon their cots. He saw that many of them, especially the younger ones, looked about ready to scatter out of instinctive mistrust of anyone richer or better-armed or less filthy than they. Not a face in the crowd did not look upon him with suspicion -- he found could not blame them. There were so many who had been failed by the rulers of Thedas, by the Chantry even, though it hurt him to admit it; he’d seen enough of them in his father’s own city when he’d run wild there, slumming without a care. Now, following Hawke, he often came across even more.

It was disorienting, at times, to have known both sides of the coin. Confusing too, to bear their anger when he himself had not ever had a hand in shaping their circumstances -- or had been blind to it, if he ever had. He disliked problems with no obvious solutions, and there were no problems more intractable than the ones these people were forced to live and breathe.

Anders though, had come here with nothing but himself to give, Sebastian realized, and he had made these people trust him. He added this strand of thought to the confused tangle snarling through his chest, and felt it pull its knots a little tighter.

A dark-haired, no-nonsense woman finally stepped forward to save them all from the awkward silence, shaking out her apron as she came . “You’re one of the Hawke’s, aren’t you?” she asked. “I’ve seen you around with him, right enough. You know me?”

“Serah Lirene,” Sebastian realized suddenly -- he’d been to her shop in Lowtown before, but he had not recognized her out from behind her counter, though the harried look on her face was familiar enough. “Forgive me, it took a moment to remember you.”

“Don’t think I mind. I prefer my face not worth knowing, not with some of what I get involved in, looking after these folk.” As Lirene settled, the others relaxed, seeing that Sebastian was a known entity, and went back to the things they’d been doing before -- helping the sick or being sick themselves, retching and coughing and staring at the dirty ceiling. Lirene looked them over, eyes tired. “It’s been years since the Blight, and so many still can’t get a leg up in this cursed city.”

“Maker grant them comfort,” Sebastian said in sympathy.

Lirene snorted. “They need more than comfort. Maker’d be more useful if He could grant me more beds. More bread, too. Though right now, I’d settle for my healer mage back again.”

That caught Sebastian’s attention. “He’s missing?”

“Drat,” she sighed, looking disappointed. “And here I was hoping that he was off with you lot somewhere and only neglected to tell anyone.”

“No, I have not seen him in days.” Sebastian frowned, more worried than he had any right to be, not over someone capable of setting people on fire with a flick of his eyebrows. “Where might he have gone?”

“Search me.” Lirene shrugged. “I was in my shop until this morning, when someone came running to say the healer was gone. I hope he hasn’t gotten himself into trouble with any rogue magic again.” She shook her head. “I don’t trust the stuff. When he first showed up again after going after those Tevinters, my mind boggled.”

You weren’t the only one, Sebastian thought, and fought down a blush.

A young woman, surely not far older than twenty, stepped up behind Lirene, hands scrubbed red and a pail of water clutched in her fists. “Excuse me, serah, but I think I could help.” Her eyes flicked up to meet Sebastian’s, and then fled down again. “Messere.”

Lirene was all business again. “Evelina, is it?”

Evelina bobbed her head. “Yes serah,” she said. “I was around here the day before last -- he’s been teaching me healing, you see,” she explained at the question in Lirene’s eyes. “They wouldn’t let me study in, in the Circle. Said I had no talent for it, but I don’t care. I’ve always wanted to help people.” She wiggled her fingers and showed them a fountain of blue sparks.

Admirable, Sebastian wanted to tell her, but Lirene flapped her hands impatiently. “Go on, girl.”

“Well, around sundown that night, things slowed down enough that the healer thought me and the other volunteers would do well enough. He had an errand to run, in the tunnels, he said -- going to meet some contact, as far as I could tell.”

“The ex-lyrium-smuggler,” Sebastian realized. “He told me he was going to look into that.”

Lirene frowned -- from her expression, she didn’t like reminders that her healer mage had priorities of his own. “Fat lot of help that is. So we’ve got our mage lost mucking about in the sewers somewhere, and a bunch of smugglers thrown in, to boot.”

“Templars too,” added Evelina, “if it’s lyrium they’re smuggling. But Anders knows what he’s doing, doesn’t he?”

“He’s a mage, not a miracle-worker,” said Lirene irritably. “If he was that, he’d have managed to undo whatever curse he stumbled into that has him looking all sugar-faced. And he would’ve been back by now. Dammit.”

“Tell me where, and I’ll go searching,” Sebastian offered immediately, caught with a sudden sense of urgency so insistent that for once, he did not bother with worrying over why he was feeling it in the first place. “It would be no trouble.”

“Don’t go saying things like that when you don’t know what you’re walking into,” Lirine told him. “But you’re right, it would be no trouble -- not to me anyway, since you’re not one of mine. I’m not throwing people after him if he’s already gotten himself offed.”

“Lirene!” Evelina was shocked enough to drop the ‘serah’. “He’s the best help any of these refugees have!”

Lirene jabbed a thumb at Sebastian. “And don’t think I don’t know it. That’s what tall and handsome here is for. Now tell him where to start and then get back to it.”

“I could help--”

“No. You’re not near as trained as the healer, it’s true, but you’re better than nothing, and elsewise, nothing is what I’ve got.”

Evelina looked to be on the verge of a scowling protest, but then she seemed to change her mind all at once. Instead she turned, cupping a hand over her mouth. “Walter! Jessa! Itch!”

A couple of children rocketed over at the sound of their names, an older boy who looked to be a bit shy of thirteen and a thin scrap of a girl with quick hands and dark eyes, too dirtied and too underfed to guess at what her age might be.

Evelina frowned. “Where’s Jessa gone?”

The boy shrugged. “Beggin’ with Cricket. Says he’s little enough for folk to feel for him an’ give more coin, but she don’t want him alone, ‘case the guards clear the Lowtown market again.”

“She doesn’t want him alone, honestly Walter.” Evelina said, exasperated. “By the Maker, I will teach you lot to talk properly one day. Watch yourselves, there’s highborn folk here!”

The girl smirked up at him, wicked as could be. “Them highborn folk is you, then, messere. Thought some’un blew a hole for lettin’ the sun in, way it shined up in here when you come in the doors.”

“Itch!” The girl giggled and ducked Evelina’s hand, spinning around merrily.

“Itch?” Sebastian couldn’t help but ask.

“‘Because she’s got fleas like you never seen, messere,” Walter supplied, elbowing his friend in the ribs.

She jabbed her tongue at him. “Not since the healer, you bum-licker, so can it!”

“Itch!” yelped Evelina again, and actually managed to move quick enough to box the girl’s ears this time. She looked up at Sebastian, flushed. “I’m sorry, messere. These ones aren’t used to having a soul to mind them. When I--” she stumbled. “When I left the Circle, Ferelden was in chaos. There were a lot of new orphans. A lot who already had been orphans, but with no one to look after them and no way to eat, not with food scarce and everyone worth begging off of dead. So when I came here, I, well. I brought them with me.”

Sebastian held up his hands placatingly. “You needn’t apologize for such a thing, nor for your charges. It’s a good work that you’ve done.” He didn’t need to ask her why she’d ‘left’ in the first place, not if she was an associate of Anders'. You honestly believe that, don’t you? he remembered Anders saying to him scathingly, and reminded himself that there were some questions too complicated to untangle.

Besides, this Itch, made him think of his own younger days in Starkhaven -- he’d had a more polished vocabulary, maybe, but that same strain of mischief, enough to drive his parents mad even before he ever set foot in a tavern.

He would pray that she lived to rise above her beginnings.

Evelina smiled, a little sadly. “I wish I could do more.” she said. “With the healing and with the children -- I’ve not learned as much as I’d like to. But this will have to do. Itch and Walter will show you the way to the tunnels’ entrance -- but then you come right back!” she warned, turning to the children. “I’ll not have you running about with smugglers and whoever else stalking through the deeps.”

“Yes’m,” said Walter, readily enough, but Itch only grinned up at him, twisting a up grimy finger in her even grimier hair.

“We’ll take him, sure,” she said. “But on’y if he can keep up.”

In spite of his worry, Sebastian couldn’t help but give her a small smile in return. “I will,” he promised, “and I will find him. Though-- if he does show up, will you give him this, and tell him I was here?” He handed Evelina Anders' familiar, folded coat, complete with a bundle of new grey goose feathers, tied up in a roll with a rawhide thong. “And this too, for you,” he added, and reached quickly into his purse for a handful of silver coins. A Chantry Brother’s allowance was not great, but it was certainly enough for this. He pressed them into her hands with what he hoped wasn’t enough flash for anyone else to notice. “You all feed yourselves. And good luck.”

She blinked at the coin in her hand, and then looked up at him, eyes bright. “You too, messere,” she said fervently.

“Touching,” scoffed Lirene. The exchange had not gone unnoticed, at least by her. “Now take the little terrors and be gone. We haven’t all day to stand around.” She flapped her hands at Itch. “Shoo!”

Sebastian allowed himself to be shooed, only taking a moment once they were out the doors to string his bow. He didn’t know what he would find -- he would pray for the best, but prepare to walk through fire, if need be.

Itch was eager to get gone, but Walter was interested in the process of stringing the bow, the mechanics of the weapon, how it worked, and as they made their way through Darktown’s low, close warrens, Sebastian found himself peppered with questions. By the time Itch stopped short with the jaunty announcement of “Here!” he was indeed so distracted with giving explanations and encouragement to the eager boy that he realized he had no idea how to find his way back, once he got out of the tunnels again.

Well, it didn’t matter. Anders would know.

And he was going to find Anders.

“See you soon!” Walter told him cheerfully, by now apparently convinced that Sebastian was an arms-master of legendary renown and would doubtless be returning in short order with Anders over one shoulder like a damsel from a tall tale. Sebastian had to smile at the notion, patently ridiculous as it was -- it was good, at least, to have something to smile at, with his faith in the possibility of success being besieged on all sides by the pressing darkness, in this rank, barely lit section of the warrens, by the hopeless black yawning of what was apparently the entrance to the tunnels, its trapdoor revealed by Itch -- by the fear in his own heart.

He tamped it down firmly and waited long enough to make sure the children kept their promise to Evelina to start immediately back, and then turned to make his descent into the depths.

Sebastian hadn’t had a set route to follow, nor any inkling of what clues he might look for to find it. It was enough to know that there was someone that he was looking for, and his search wasn’t finished until he found him -- or at least, it had been enough hours ago, when he’d first started. Now, a dozen branching paths later and with the constant, hair-raising drip of seeping wet from above (he must have been traveling long enough to be deep under the center of harbor, by now), his initial adrenaline was beginning to creep away to be replaced by the low, steady buzz of dread. He’d had to double back on several occasions, biting back his frustration with time wasted -- time that would have been wasted if he had any idea where he was going, anyway.

Truly, foresight was not one of his greater strengths. Or just not one of his strengths at all, really. Or perhaps the actual problem was that merely hearing the name Anders had become a cue for him to stop thinking with his brain and start thinking with his-- well.

The point was, in retrospect, he could have used a bit more preparation. A map, maybe. Or at the least, a bit of common sense. As it was, all he had to go on was a haphazard trail of torchlight -- people had been here recently, if he was any judge; there were sockets cut into the soft red rock every so often, and the torches left in them were hot, smoking or smouldering. In some cases, they were even still aflame. He’d taken one of these to light his own way, and eventually its low red glow had illuminated a track through the wet, mixed dirt-and-stone of the cavern floor -- two deep, parallel lines: a cart, or maybe more than one. In lieu of anything else, he’d decided to follow it -- it wasn’t Anders, certainly, but it could be the smugglers, and there was a chance that one might lead him to the other.

The farther he walked, though, the colder the chance seemed. Paranoia or claustrophobia or simple doubt -- he was growing tired of all of them, especially the last. It had been in his thoughts far too much, of late.

He threw it off with a shake of his head, and trudged on.

The path kept growing lower, and deeper, and the plick of moisture trickling bit by bit from the ceiling became ever more insistent. He lost the sound of his own footsteps in it, lost even the passage of time in it, walking and walking for Maker knew how long -- he might have lost the low murmur of voices drifting up the tunnel too, except the familiar strain of one of them was exactly what he’d been searching for.

His heart sped up and so did his feet, and soon enough he was seeing more torchlight flicking up cavern. Fresh torchlight, this time, and he raced towards it, quick as might be--

Quick as might be was perhaps not the best idea in retrospect, he realized, as he skidded around a bend in the tunnel only to find an unexpected incline. He lost his footing as well as his torch, sliding muddy and disheveled to land in a wet heap in a shallow at the slope’s bottom.

For the second time that day, his entrance was enough to make every head in the vicinity turn in his direction. But even on his knees and shaking mud out of his hair, Sebastian paid heed only to a single pair of those searching eyes.

“Anders!” he called hastily, scrambling to his feet -- and then he had time to notice more than his eyes.

Inexplicably -- incomprehensibly -- the mage had elected to trade out his usual ragged collection of here-and-there clothing for a rogue’s attire: beaten leather cuirass plastered over his skinny frame and leaving no doubt as to the modest curves beneath, thighs pale as milk peeking out from between the straps of his hobnailed skirt, their fine dusting of pale, pale hair catching in the torchlight. The lack of his usual loose top gave a clear view of the jagged angles of his shoulders, the grace and length of his elegant, newly-smooth neck, and the effect the stale, underground heat was having on him: perspiration pooling along the sharp lines of his collarbones and then beading glitteringly in the shallow valley between his two breasts. The staff he leaned against was masquerading as a halberd, its head wound around with rawhide strips that concealed the arcane symbology flashing underneath. His hair was bound up higher on his head than was usual, his stance was loose with a fluid, easy sort of confidence, and his eyes beneath his fair brows were sparking sharper and hotter than flint.

Sebastian’s brain executed a confused sort of flop inside his skull before deflating all at once and trickling defeatedly down his spine -- a self-defense mechanism, most likely, as detaching itself from his eyes, ears, and most importantly, his mouth, would hopefully prevent further damage to his reputation, and also to his chances of not being set on fire.

“Who’re you, then?” an unfamiliar voice wanted to know, interrupting his floundering. Sebastian had been rather preoccupied with other things, but now he noticed that there was a group of maybe about two dozen gathered in the widened-out hollow: a motley collection of smugglers, garbed in cheap cut-cloth padding and armed with even cheaper iron. Fighting was not these people’s expertise; black market dealing, rather, was their strong suit, the proof of it in the hand-pulled cart they were bunched around, stacked to the brim with bricks of pure lyrium, enough to hear its singing clear and heady as a dream. At their backs were three Templars, the hungry looking sort in their middle-years, well past the age that the Chantry’s prescribed doses of lyrium ceased to satisfy. They looked nervous, hands palming their blades and eyes flicking every which way -- and why shouldn’t they be nervous? They were breaking Chantry law, after all, and they well knew it. Anders stood before the lot of them, relaxed but firm, completely in control -- though he turned away from them now to glare daggers at Sebastian.

“I mean, you can’t jus’ come stumbling in here,” the original man continued, disgruntled. “Acting like you’re hot as anything when me and my lads staked out these tunnels for our use -- though... wait. I do know you, don’t I? I swear I’ve seen you ‘round with that jumped-up noble brat Hawke while he’s sticking his nose where it don’t belong.”

“And what’s that you called our contact?” a woman asked, sharp-minded. “That’s not what she said her name was.”

“Vael,” hissed Anders, low and threatening.

“Anders,” puzzled one of the smugglers, “Anders... the only Anders I know around here is that healer set up in Darktown.”

“Yeah, that mage one, innit? Who’ll magic you for free? He runs with the Hawke too.”

“But I know him! And he ain’t a she.”

Another one snorted. “Then you haven’t seen him recent, then. Rumor up at the Hanged Man says the healer got inna spot of trouble, made hisself into a herself.”

“Huh,” came the reply. “Come to think of it, she does look a lot like that mage, doesn’t she?”

“Mage?” rumbled a Templar.

“Um!” yelped Sebastian.

“Fuck,” swore Anders, and threw a furious fireball into the middle of the crowd.

Sebastian vaulted around the flames while the smugglers reeled in confusion, barely reaching Anders' side when he heard the first man voice raised in a furious shout: “It’s only two of ‘em, you lack-wits, kill ‘em, kill ‘em!” He felt the press of Anders against his back, the pressure of the swollen corona of magic that surrounded him as much as the physical presence of his body, and swallowed, throat dry, as the battle broke out around them.

Their attackers swarmed in all at once, disorganized, and at first, that was their only salvation. There was no room for Sebastian to shoot, but there was no room for the Templars to swing their greatswords either, not without cutting down their own -- and the three of them were the true threat in this battle, compared to the smugglers at least, the only enemies having both good steel and the know-how to use it. Sebastian didn’t bother to reach for his grandfather’s bow on his back, instead drawing the long dirk he kept strapped to his calf for just such close-quarters occasions; he knew his way around a blade well enough to have kept his family’s old arms-master from grumbling, and against these two-bit smugglers, that was enough. But if one of the well-trained, oft-drilled Templars got close enough to engage him steel-to-steel, then he would surely be done for -- and Anders, who was fighting off the Templars’ unrelenting attempts to Silence him as well as their numerous attackers, would have no ally to stand beside him.

The thought of what might happen then made Sebastian’s gut clench with dread. They needed to find a path out of the middle of this, now -- soon enough their attackers would get smart (or the Templars would smarten them up) and get out of the way, leaving the Order’s men room to do their worst.

He gritted his teeth and feinted to the right, the wench at his front showing a black-toothed grin at his supposed mistake and following him with her dagger -- he lunged again, left and low, heard her screaming as he slashed the back of her thigh, cutting her hamstring, her leg folding like straw beneath her as she toppled thrashing to the ground. Then there was a man trying to surprise him from his side, but he pivoted quick enough to hike a knee into his crotch -- no codpiece, the dolt -- at the same time as launching a punch with his free hand that broke the smuggler’s nose and sent him stumbling backwards into the arms (and blades) of his companions behind him. Momentarily cleared of enemies, he took the chance to get a look around, searching--

“Anders, there!” he yelled over the noise of the fray, spotting a low, jutting ledge on the far side of the cavern where they might both have their backs to the wall and have a better chance to make it into a ranged fight.

Anders' eyes followed his shout and understood his meaning immediately; he cursed under his breath, and Sebastian felt a heady flush of magic begin to gather, thrumming, in the tip of his staff, the sheer power in it enough to burn away the rawhide hiding the weapon’s runes. He could see at least one Templar with shaking fists standing stock still in the shadowy torchlight, his face screwed up in concentration; beside him, he heard Anders grunt with effort. Sebastian ducked around him to fend off a man who was surging for his flank, giving him time to concentrate on this invisible battle of wills without the need to defend himself.

He shook the sweat from his eyes and readied himself for the next attacker, panting; the air was thick with humidity, the wet heat of human stink and the moisture of their harsh, mixed breaths. That would have been uncomfortable enough, but Anders was making it thicker yet, threading heavy, tugging vibrations through it somehow, weaving the foundations for whatever it was he was about to cast. Just when the pressure grew too unbearable for Sebastian to even breath, the mage finally let it go -- a wave of force magic, ‘mind blast,’ as Hawke sometimes nonchalantly referred to it, but fortified to be far stronger than its usual variation. Except for the Templars, there was not a foe within lengths of them left standing. Only the smugglers on the very edge of the spell’s wide radius kept their feet, swaying dizzily and clutching their heads.

For a moment, Anders swayed too -- such a spell would not normally have cost him so much effort, but with the Templars still only at the edges of the fight, they were free to concentrate all of their energies on draining him of his power. That he still had so much left to work with was testament to the force of his will. Sebastian would just have to make sure that all that stubbornness didn’t go to waste.

He grabbed Anders by the bicep -- this armor left it bare, Sebastian’s brain took the time to tell him even through the haze of battle, bare and slick with sweat underneath his fingers, Maker -- and towed him in the direction of the ledge. They trampled the fallen as they went, the smugglers letting out moans of protest as their stomachs and elbows and faces made acquaintance with unkind bootheels -- both theirs and those of the Templars, who were scrambling at their backs.

Anders finally caught his bearings and wrenched his arm out of Sebastian’s grasp, trying to catch his breath as they ran. “Why in the name of the Maker’s bloody shit are you here, anyway?!” he wanted to know, his heaving breaths not nearly enough to disguise his ire.

“At the clinic,” Sebastian panted. “They said you’d been gone -- I was worried!”

“And you didn’t think to bring back-up, you stupid-- does Hawke even know either of us are here?”

“Ah,” said Sebastian. “Um. Well.”

“You’re an idiot,” Anders gasped, and lobbed a spell over Sebastian’s shoulder hot enough to burn his ear as it passed; behind him, he heard a Templar’s pained wail. “You are a complete and thorough idiot; a beacon to all idiots everywhere, past, present, and future; an idiot whose idiocy is so shining as to very nearly redefine the term--”

“Duck!” Sebastian told him, and lunged for a man who’d managed to find his feet and had been trying to flank Anders, dagger raised. Anders dropped to his knees and Sebastian toppled over him, landing in a heap atop the smuggler; they rolled over and over each other, Sebastian with no room to use his blade and his opponent with no calm head to remember his own. Finally they both tumbled into a gritty cavern wall, Sebastian throwing aside his dirk to get his fingers twisted up in the man’s hair, grip firm enough to smash his face into the stone, again and again, until it finally went slack.

When he looked up again, he saw that Anders had already mounted the ledge, bare thighs splashed over with mud from his harried, scrambling climb. “Up!” he admonished, gesturing frantically, and Sebastian moved to obey. He rolled into a crouch and looked for where he’d lost his blade in the muck; he saw it glinting to his right and went to dive for it, but then thought better of it when the business end of a Templar’s broadsword smashed into the ground before him. He dove left instead, towards the ledge, and Anders' hand was there, reaching for him, even as he loosed another, much weaker pulse of his first force spell, sending the Templar reeling for long enough to drag Sebastian up without getting him run through in the process.

“So bloody stupid!” he hissed as Sebastian finally slid over the edge and hastened to his feet beside him, and then began to shout. “I’ll show you why mages are feared!”

“I think that they fear you pretty well already,” Sebastian gasped, freeing his bow from its straps in practiced movements (and thanking the Maker that his grandfather had had it made sturdy enough to withstand a bit of tumbling about). The previously over-bold smugglers were looking much less cocksure now, dragging themselves to their feet and eyeing the ledge with hesitance. Even the Templars ducked back, aware that it was a new game now that their opponents had gained the advantage of higher ground.

“I meant you, not them, Vael. You are going to hear it when this is through,” growled Anders. The threat sent a thrill of dread through him, but it was a small one -- his bow was in his hands now, his focus caught up almost entirely in the smooth feel of it against old calluses that were long since worn even deeper than bone. He relished the familiarity, relished the potential of the thing, waiting only on him to turn its deadly tension-snap into a true threat -- he prepared to turn this fight from a chaotic scramble into a killing ground.

He’d lost maybe half the contents of his quiver rolling around in the mud, but what he had left would do, if he picked his shots -- and he always picked his shots. The Templar who’d harried him with his broadsword was down with an arrow through his heart before he’d even had time to realize the danger he was in; at close range, a longbow could do mean things even to plate metal. And this was very close range. Beside him, he felt Anders' sheath of summoned power flicker, and then swell -- with one Templar dead, some of the pressure of the Silencing had been taken off.

Good. Two left, then.

The Order’s surviving men got the idea quickly enough and dove for cover, unfortunately, but that was fine. In the meantime, Sebastian could take easy shots at the untrained smugglers milling in fear and confusion at the center of the cavern. He looked for any that were getting smart and reaching for bows and took them out first, sometimes managing to kill two with one shot, packed as tightly as they were. Any who tried to make a run for it were quickly dispatched of as well: the ledge was positioned just about in the center of the tunnel’s bulge, convenient for any skilled archer with the inclination to turn both narrow exits into death traps.

Beside him, Anders was catching his second wind, huffing out a harsh breath as something vicious began to catch in his palms; he launched another fireball, so explosively hot as to make the humid air burn dry in its wake, and their opponents let out a chorus of agonized shrieks. When the smoke cleared, there was maybe about only half of the original crowd still standing -- maybe less.

Through the synchronous rhythms that bound allies together in battle, Sebastian felt Anders' grim satisfaction, responded with a rising excitement of his own, let them come -- come they did, the Templars cursing and rallying those left standing, realizing that swarming the two of them was their only chance. Sebastian aimed his foot at the head of a woman making a desperate grab for Anders' ankles, his kick landing hard enough to snap her neck, falling away as her face tilted backwards in an impossible angle. As soon as she was dead, his attention slipped from her, his bow slanted downwards as he shot the attackers at his feet like fish jumping in a hot, chaotic barrel. Anders burned them and froze them in turns, magic bubbling up unassailably in spite of the Templars’ best efforts, siphoned in from the Fade faster than they could drain it from him. Out of the corner of his eye, Sebastian could see the lines of a furious, otherworldly light splitting Anders' face wide open, filtering through his teeth.

A Templar let out a curse of frustration at this blatant display and charged -- the last mistake he’d ever make, Anders nimbly sidestepping his sword and angling the bladed end of his staff to find the vulnerable space between helm and gorget. The man had clearly not been expecting that bit of know-how; he didn’t know, as Sebastian did, that Anders was a survivor and a Warden and as clever as anything, not some inexperienced mageling who’d memorized entire libraries but had no knowledge of real things, tangible things -- things like how to kill, where to cut, how to turn the world upside-down with a casual flick of his eyes. The Templar gurgled miserably beneath his helm and fell, his gallons of forfeit blood painting the red mud redder.

The loss of a second of their shining silver allies made the smugglers lose their heads entirely, surging forward all at once in a disorganized crowd that was all too easy to dispatch. Anders waved his staff and a mass of tangling, curling light bloomed in eerie green at their feet -- “Too easy,” Sebastian complained, and killed the paralyzed fighters three at once, their eyes, the only parts of them still capable of movement, widening in unspoken horror as they watched Sebastian take the time to line up his shots precisely enough to skewer them in neat lines.

“Too easy, says the shit-for-brains who sprung the trap in the first place,” Anders panted. “What is this, a game? Going to ask me how many I got so we can compare kill-counts? Because even if you win, I’m not buying the drinks.”

“Neither of us drink,” Sebastian reminded him, releasing his bowstring with a twang that sounded the deaths of the last unlucky smugglers.

Anders snorted and wiped his brow with a dirty forearm, grimacing as mud and sweat mingled on his face. “Oh?” he wanted to know, “because there are several dozen people at the Blooming Rose I could ask who would tell a different story-- shit!”

Sebastian looked up and immediately saw his concern -- the last Templar, sprinting determinedly towards one of the exits, almost already disappearing into the narrowed mouth of where the cavern funneled itself back into a tunnel, sword discarded for the sake of speed, helm thrown aside to better enable his gasping breaths.

They’d missed his departure while dealing with the last push of the smugglers, and now he was near gone. “If he gets away--” Anders started, frantic, but Sebastian was already leaping from the ledge, landing in a tensed, wide crouch. His bow raised deadly and one hand in his quiver, fingers meeting his very last arrow, eyes narrow with focus. A small, moving target, flickering through shadow, already many lengths distant and seconds away from vanishing around the tunnel’s bend, covered in armor everywhere but for where he’d lost his helmet, vulnerable in no location but his far-off, bobbing head -- Sebastian picked him off with ease, skull punched neatly through, body carried forward by the force of the shot until it finally scraped to a halt against a nearby wall of rough stone.

“Maker keep you,” he muttered under his breath, and Anders, shaking with effort, slowly lowered his staff.

The soft plick-plick of the water filtering from the ceiling seemed strangely muted in comparison to the fury of the battle they’d just won, the only other sound the insistent, spine-tingling chime of the lyrium. The cart had been toppled in the battle, its contents crashing open and dissolving slowly into the mud, sizzling without any real urgency, emitting faint coils of tingling blue smoke. It was a loss now, unless they wanted to touch it to try and package it back up again -- and Sebastian didn’t need Anders to tell him that that was a bad idea.

Luckily -- or, unluckily -- Anders didn’t seem much interested in talking about the lyrium. “Andraste’s ass,” he swore, and his staff thunked into the mud, agitated. “Do you make a habit of this sort of thing? Charging in and ruining plans and generally making life difficult? Or is that a talent you’ve been saving special just for me?”

“You-- I-- I really did not mean--” The effort it took to withstand the heat of Anders' gaze (as well as to withstand the urge to allow his eyes to follow where they would along the uncovered lines of his body) was enough to make Sebastian fumble. “Anders, I thought something had happened to you!”

“Right, sure, I lay low for a couple of days and all of the sudden it’s your sacred duty as a beholden Chantry stooge to go nosing after me to make sure I haven’t gotten up to anything too sacrilegious--”

Sebastian flushed. “That isn’t fair. You know that isn’t fair, and I was right to be worried too, was I not? Not when you speaking to Hawke’s contact somehow turned into you attacking a whole party of smugglers and rogue Templars all on your own.”

“I did speak to him,” Anders said, exasperated, “and he told me that they’d moved his base since he left them, so he didn’t know where to find them to wipe them all out. But he did know that the smugglers were trying for a deal with some mercenaries for protection, and where it was going to take place, except there wasn’t time to wait around -- I met the thugs’ people on their way and offed them, and I figured I’d go and meet with the smugglers in disguise and let them lead me back to their hideout. And then, Vael, I was going to come back with back-up.” He shook his head, disgusted. “Now they’ll hear soon enough that someone’s slaughtered their friends, and we’ve no idea where their base is. They’ll be long gone before we can ever get wind of them again, all because you apparently don’t have a brain to think with.”

“What does it matter?” Sebastian asked desperately. “Their operation is interrupted either way. They’ve lost all the coin from this one shipment. They’re finished; they won’t sell again. We don’t have to kill them, too.”

“It matters because we don’t have names, Vael!” Anders shouted. “Customers or suppliers. We don’t know which captains are shipping the stuff in, we don’t know which Templars are buying it, which ones have slipped the Chantry’s lead. Without that, we interrupt the supply for maybe a week, and then the metal-heads keep getting what they want. The world’s a lot more complex than you like to pretend it is, and your idiot noble ethics just cost me a lot. Remember that the next time you go charging in where you’re not wanted.”

Sebastian blinked, throat tight. “I only thought to make sure you were all right.”

“This again!” Anders looked furious. “I didn’t need looking after before, and I don’t need looking after now, just because I haven’t figured this out yet.” He tapped his chest, eyes glinting. “So you can take your misplaced chivalry and stuff it before I decide to break your face.”

He could only manage to muster a faint response to this, a hopeless little protest in the name of all the things he had no way to explain.“That is-- that is not it.”

“Well you had better figure out what it is pretty quickly, because as far as I’m concerned, it is getting old. Now, I’m leaving. Follow along or rot down here forever; I really, really don’t care.”

“Anders,” he called to the mage’s retreating back, feeling very, very small.

“What?” In spite of the ire sparking blue behind those eyes, Sebastian was glad that the mage was not quite disgusted enough to not turn around and look at him.

“I am sorry,” he offered.

“Yes,” said Anders, ever inscrutable -- though if Sebastian were forced to place his expression, he might be tempted to call it tired. “Yes, of course you are.”

There were things like suns that were always spinning, things like people, always changing. Different shadows cast. Day shifting and stars rising and insomnia setting in, and perhaps the strangest thing about it wasn’t that the universe was moving but that people’s minds were stubborn enough to bother mourning the change.

Mourning wasn’t quite the word for it. Perspective, maybe. Noticing, maybe. Noticing the new shape of things under foreign flavors of light.

The Chantry looked different at night. Steeped in congenial darkness that lapped in through the windows in mild, incurious waves, licked the red rugs black and then washed with familiar violence over the silent walls, ricocheting up the staircases, frothing weightless to the ceiling. Andraste’s feet were lit with candles, red wax and stuttering gold, but the rest of Her towered away endlessly into the gloom. Sebastian wished they’d thought to illuminate Her face, even at night -- it might do him some good to see it. He liked the cathedral best when it was filled with song, filled with light; now, shadowed as it was, it was no good place to help clear an over-full head.

He was not a soul accustomed to late nights spent brooding. A Chantry dedicate woke early and slept early too, rising with the first call to prayer and returning to bed content after a day of service -- though it was true that for Sebastian, contentment was an elusive wisp to grasp at. Had been for a long time, even: first dismissed furiously at the news of his family’s death, and then, when he’d returned to Kirkwall after three futile, exhausting years, not waiting for him in the place that he thought he’d left it. But in spite of his failure to recapture the peace he’d once found here, he still kept to the general schedule of devotion -- and the times that he simply couldn’t, he went adventuring with Hawke instead. He had never been one to sit, staring at walls.

But then, there were a lot of things he’d supposed about himself that had turned out not to be true.

It had been a week since he’d seen Anders. Awful Anders with his blasphemous tongue and his ironic brow; inconquerably stunning Anders with his pale thighs and his keen, curving mouth; soft-hearted Anders with his scraping-by clinic and his shoulder warm to sleep on; uncompromising Anders with his resolve, with his diamond-hard words, with his lamplit eyes cutting fine molten lines through every story the world had ever tried to tell him. Anders, who made Sebastian want to be cut, to be bled -- Anders, who he was never, ever going to be able to banish from his head.

Maker, why? Why was he plagued by these uncomfortable thoughts? Infatuation or adoration or whatever it quite had become, whatever it had evolved into from where it had been rolling subtly through his gut all along -- he didn’t like men, but he liked Anders, and in the end, all it had taken was the added familiarity of lust to make him realize it. To pointlessly realize it -- all it amounted to was another place he’d found that he would never be able to fit into: not quite content as a Brother, not quite secure as a prince, not nearly quite anything as the lover he had to admit in the quietest places of his heart that he so dearly wanted to be.

That he should be haunted with this -- to what end? To drive home the fact that in his heart, his vows were already broken? To remind him of how upon returning to the Chantry after three years spent playing politics and chasing revenge, he had been unable to recommit to the Maker’s service with his whole soul? Had it been a falseness, a sin, to do as he’d done, going through the motions and hoping that answers would eventually come?

The Maker was not not an unmerciful creator, was indeed a God of second chances, even after mortals had well-proven that they deserved none.

But Sebastian couldn’t help but feel that if this was His admonishment, it was a cruel one.

It would sting less with more sleep, perhaps. More sleep than he’d been getting this past week anyway, between circling examinations of his own faith and endless, flashing recollections of the disgust that had colored Anders' voice the last time they’d spoken, that last weary look that had settled in his eyes. That he couldn’t help but think on, tortured, fingernails biting into his palms.

All right, so it was probably futile to expect sleep. He could at least hope. It was not as if sitting here in the sanctuary and trying to think was doing him any more good then tossing in his bed.

Sebastian tiredly heaved himself to his feet, palm trailing smooth over the hard back of his chosen pew as he sidled out into the aisle. He needed no candle to light his way through the darkness; this Chantry was as familiar as his own skin. And even feeling distinctly ill at ease in your skin, it was impossible to help but recognize that it was yours.

That was comfort, of a sort.

Besides, his insomnia had made him recently accustomed to navigating the dim halls even during the most skulking hours of the night. His feet knew the way. He cast one glance over towards where Andraste vanished like a dream into the floating shadows before turning to make his way back to the dormitories, staring downcast at his feet and so lost in the disquiet in his own mind that he nearly missed noticing something unusual--

There was light flickering under the library door.

The Chantry held a great many scholars, and the scholars collected a great many books; Kirkwall, a bustling trade city that saw plenty of educated travelers from all corners of Thedas, seat of the Grand Cleric and home to a Circle of Magi, was particularly renowned for its expansive collection. The scholars kept odd hours, it was true, but they liked to set themselves up in the grander, front-most area of the library, where there were couches and carrels to work at and vellum and ink stocked aplenty. The section near a modest, tucked-away back entrance opening up near the dormitories should by all rights be deserted.

Sebastian hesitated, carefully grateful that he’d not thought to remove his armor, nor abandon his bow -- his grandfather’s old weapon was a comforting talisman, good to arm himself with against the misery of sleeplessness. Now he shouldered it off and strung it, arming it for true. Overcautious, probably, but he would not return to his room without checking; he didn’t need yet another worry unhappily haunting his mind. He had enough of those already.

He steeled himself for trouble and threw open the door all at once, and he didn’t quite know what he had been expecting, but it certainly hadn’t been--

"Is that Andraste's face on your crotch, or are you just happy to see me?"

--Anders.

Maker above, why was it always Anders?

Sebastian deflated, unable to help but feel somewhat exasperated. It was one thing to spend all night awake mooning after someone; to find that they’d been in the same building all along, sitting cross-legged with their back to the leg of a long, thin table running between the shelves, sweating in their heavy, oppen coat and apparently trying to set some sort of record for how many open books they could pile in their lap at once -- that was a bit much.

It would be nice, he thought wistfully, if Anders could be bothered to look up from his reading and at least pretend to be somewhat interested in Sebastian’s sudden entrance. Nice, if Sebastian were worth enough to merit a greeting besides his usual, deflective brand of casual sarcasm.

But then, perhaps he should just be thankful. No doubt if Anders' attention were to be focused on him, he would only end up regretting the spectacle he would doubtless make of himself -- was making of himself, already.

“Anders,” he sighed. “What is that even supposed to mean?”

“Take it how you like it,” Anders advised, cool, and turned a page.

“I’m not sure I like it at all,” Sebastian told him -- Anders did look at him then, eyebrows raised, gaze glinting. The mere sight of the darkened hollow of his neck, the way the light from the lamp he’d lit washed shy red highlights through his fine hair as he tilted his head upwards -- it was all enough to make Sebastian’s mouth go dry, to make some measure of heat coil through his gut, to his groin: a reaction that went entirely un-prevented by even Andraste’s much-celebrated guardianship of his crotch.

He blushed.

Anders smirked.

Point.

“All right,” he conceded, and stepped into the room, closing the door behind him much more gently than he’d opened it. He replaced his arrow in its quiver and leaned his bow against the end of the table opposite of Anders' , crouching down to begin unstringing it. “Nevermind. What are you doing here?”

“Oh, you know,” Anders said carelessly aloof, and gestured to the piles of musty books around him, thumped haphazardly about the little tucked-away corner of the library that he’d claimed for himself, stacked title upon title all across the table. They lent a heavy filter of dust to the air, the scent of ink and parchment along with the flickering, hazy incense of the lamp. “Just a bit of reading.”

“You can’t just break into the Chantry in the middle of the night,” Sebastian felt obligated to say, though he knew well what the response would be--

“I’ll stop doing it, then, when they stop making it so easy.”

Sebastian looked away, at the bite in his tone, at whatever it was sitting between them that he didn’t quite know how to fix. That a mere week ago, he could have still convinced himself he didn’t want to fix. He coiled his bowstring around his hand and rubbed it back and forth between his thumb and forefinger for patience. “If there was something you needed, you could have told me.” He would like to think that he was at least trustworthy enough for that.

The suggestion earned him an incredulous dismissal. “Right. Because you’d just be so happy to help the apostate.”

Sebastian managed to catch his gaze. “Yes.”

Anders' eyes narrowed, looking like he was about to start an argument. But then he changed his mind all at once, and turned away. “I don’t even know what I’m looking for. Treatises on shape-changing, anything shifty-looking from Tevinter -- there’s not a lot of academia focused foreign sex magic, if you haven’t noticed, but if you find any, then sure, you’re welcome to help.”

“You’re trying to change yourself back,” Sebastian realized.

Anders snorted. “Wouldn’t you be? No, don’t answer that. I don’t want to know about your personal proclivities.”

Sebastian ignored that. “Wouldn’t this sort of thing be more suited to a magical library?”

“Yes, well, I tried that.” He tapped the yellowing pages of one of his open books, sending dust most spiraling up into the air. “Turns out they keep all the good stuff, anything about Tevinter at all, in here, where the sinful little mages can’t get their hands on it and tempt themselves all the way into abomination-hood.”

“Tried-- you broke into the Circle?” There was that stupid protectiveness again, rearing its head -- and on top of that, there was something else, another part of Sebastian that remembered drunkenly jumping off of balconies in Starkhaven and wanted to whistle in appreciation of Anders' daring.

“Well, I’ve broken out of it enough times. Into it too, for that matter.” Anders' voice was heavy with irony. “You think the mages who keep disappearing under Meredith’s nose just sprout wings and fly away?”

Sebastian wavered, thoughts hovering. “I had not-- Anders, that must be terribly risky.”

Anders leaned forward -- when his new posture made the modest outline of his breasts show even through his heavy coat, Sebastian couldn’t help but notice. He swallowed and Anders smirked, but there was no mirth in it -- only an old truth, cutting and familiar. “No more risky than sitting back and ignoring the world going to pieces around you.” His tone was brutal. “You know what happens when you do that, don’t you? You try to keep your head down, and next thing you know you wake up and they’ve got you and you’re in just as deep shit as everyone else. Better not to stand by.”

His mouth was very suddenly dry. “Is it you who believes that, or your spirit?”

Anders regarded him piercingly, and Sebastian’s head swam at the brightness in his eyes. “Think about the words, Vael, and not who’s saying them. Your judgement might improve -- maybe you’ll even start to actually hear those sermons you’re so fond of reciting.” He sat up and turned unceremoniously back to his book. “Though I, for one, am not counting on it.”

Sebastian stood slowly, frowning. That didn’t seem fair, to him -- but maybe he was no good judge. And nor was Anders, and nor was anyone, but for the Maker. Hoping for guidance was as much as any of them could do.

He worried his bowstring and tried to think how best to avoid an argument he couldn’t win -- and didn’t know if he wanted to win. Tried to think what he was doing here in the first place; there seemed to not be much of a point to it, besides perhaps cataloging the further spectacle of his own foolishness, the idiotically interested stirrings that continued to roll through his gut, in spite of it all.

Still, he couldn’t just leave.

“Have you found anything helpful?” he finally settled on asking. Neutral enough, and it was actually something he could do with knowing, besides. If Anders did manage to return to his original shape, it would be -- well. He wouldn’t be able to forget the way he’d realized he felt, he supposed, but at least his blood wouldn’t surge embarrassingly downwards every time he saw the man.

Though perhaps that was only another selfishness, only another false way he sought to return his life to normalcy through pretending. That he could live in the Chantry and act as if he was content, that he could look at Anders and act as if he wasn’t enamored -- what had Anders said? Better not to stand by? Not to only watch as the things fell to pieces?

Was that good advice?

Anders was caught up in his reading for some moments more before wincing and rubbing at his forehead. “No,” he finally said. “Dratted nothing. And I doubt I’ll find anything either, not unless I want to try my luck breaking into the First Enchanter’s office and poking around for the very secret stuff. These are mostly same-old, same-old: blood magic this and summoning demons that and mad old magisters yattering on with transparent philosophies about mages being destined to rule mankind--”

“They keep books such as that in the Chantry?” Sebastian interrupted, startled. “Why? Why would they not destroy them?”

“In case they come in useful, you idiot. Do you think they came up with the Rite of Tranquility by sticking to sanctioned magic? Or our phylacteries, that they’re so fond of? Those are blood magic, you know.” He punctuated this point with a finger. “And of course, whenever a Templar wants to blackmail a mage, or outright get him punished, all the Templar has to do is come in here, grab one of these, plant it in his room, and hold it over his head for the rest of his life. However long or short the Templar decides that life gets to be.”

Sebastian couldn’t help but take a step back at the venom in his voice. “That-- surely that doesn’t happen often.”

Anders slammed shut the topmost book open in his lap, threw it aside, and grabbed another, seemingly at random, tugging it open with near violence. “Sure! Sure, or course not! Whatever helps you sleep at night.”

“Anders, I only... I know so many good people here,” he said slowly, finding a note of pleading in his own voice. “I found so much of myself here, that to think we are just teaching one thing and doing another, it is-- I can’t believe it.” He shook his head. “I have not always agreed with every single tenet we have preached, but that I cannot believe. This place is good, at its core.”

“Oh, you can’t believe it? Really, Vael, I should think that you of all people wouldn’t be surprised to find that the Chantry is full of hypocrites.”

“The Chantry isn’t full of hypocrites.”

“No?” asked Anders, low and furious. “No? No, when even you with your saintly chastity and your vows have been wanting to get up my robes since the very beginning of this whole mess?”

Sebastian felt himself go immediately, wretchedly red. No he hadn’t exactly been subtle, but he’d still been holding onto the hope that maybe he could skate out of this without standing... accused. Truthfully accused. “I-- that is--” He had to look away. “It... shames me, the way I’ve acted.”

“So sorry to be your dirty little secret, then. But I promise, in here you’re in good company.” His hand swung wide in indication of the building around him. Every stone, every statue, every flickering candle -- all stood bitterly dismissed. “You keep preaching poison and soon enough you’re left with nothing but snakes. That’s the Chantry, and that’s you -- our insides are never as shiny and sweet as we’d like everybody to think, are they?”

Dirty little...? No. No, that was wrong. Shamed, yes. Ashamed of himself, horribly, horribly so, but -- not of Anders. Never of Anders, clever and capable and grudgingly kind, sometimes awful and always irresistible, sometimes shaking apart with fury but always, always standing firm. The only shame there was how disgracefully Sebastian had acted towards him. How could he think-- “Anders,” he said, but Anders ignored him.

“People born already on top, they get so used to the world being ordered exactly how they want.” His voice was full of venom. “There was a time or two when I might have had you confused for a somewhat decent person, all the same -- don’t know how I ever managed that. But really it’s just-- just fucking the abomination back into place, is that the fantasy that’s got you so addled?”

“What?” Sebastian was aghast. “I haven’t-- I never--”

Anders was fast, faster even than the fireballs he was so fond of throwing. Faster and hotter and so much more vicious -- he was off the floor all at once in an explosion of vellum and old, bound leather, his feet eating up the space between them in a furious swirl of dead letters -- and he was so, so close, too close for Sebastian to retreat from him any further, his back against the door and Anders burning up his front, burning up any last bit of thought with his impossible eyes--

“Haven’t you?” he hissed, voice seeping and crackling and breaking with every storm and every indignity and every never-weeped-over hurt that he’d ever furiously weathered. Hot, his voice, scalding, scalding as the hand that without warning found its way beneath Sebastian’s armor, knuckles scorching the skin below his navel, and then lower, lower, fingers on his cock -- and that was scalding too, instantly, achingly hard at Anders' touch, the closeness of him, his scent drifting heavily from the hollow of his neck, the collar of his open coat. “Haven’t you?” he said again, squeezing, “because this says differently. So tell me how you want me, why don’t you, and we’ll get it over with. You can satisfy whatever it is that’s going through that sick head of yours and then go running off to beg for absolution, and we’ll call the whole mess finished.” His grip was far, far too tight. “Because like I said, Vael, I’m getting really, really sick of it.”

Too much. Too much. Wanting and doubting, too much of it all. “Wait,” he gasped, and there was his bowstring, still wrapped around his fingers, the cut of it sharp against the quick of two of his nails -- through the half-real haze of heat and want and yellow lamplight, the outline of the thing he still needed to say fluttered vaguely to the top of his head. “Wait, you think this is just--” It was too painful a thought to finish. In his mouth, leaking into his voice, something that tasted a little like despair. “Anders.”

The mage pulled back, glaring and frustrated -- glaring and frustrated and a little uncertain, and maybe that was just enough to be a victory.

“Wait, then,” he said. “What in the void do you think this is?”

Sebastian kissed him.

Sebastian kissed him, and somewhere just beyond them there were pages and pages of many an old manuscript finally settling back into dust-muffled stillness on the floor. Sebastian kissed him, and somewhere beyond that there was a gaggle of scholars slowly dropping one-by-one into dreams from their accustomed perches in the front of the library. Sebastian kissed him, and somewhere even further there was a Templar being startled back into embarrassed wakefulness by the changing of the watch. They were kissing and somewhere out in the city Hawke was crudely making Fenris blush and somewhere else Varric was writing it down with much prettier details filled in. They were kissing and somewhere Aveline was lying asleep next to her man and somewhere Merrill was lying awake next to her mirror and somewhere Isabela was sitting cross-legged on a salt-washed piling, counting the faces that marred the the moon’s reflection on the black, swollen sea. Somewhere there was ale swirling and somewhere there were brawls thundering and somewhere in the Chant of Light there was probably something that said that this was wrong -- and somewhere else, Sebastian thought, there was probably something that said that this wasn’t so bad. The thing was so, so long, and Anders' mouth was so, so soft, and there had to be a reason why kissing him should feel so threaded through with light, so floating, so alive. A reason why it was so easy to pour every last ounce of his earnestness into it, every last sincere echo of his own heartbeat, and mean it, and mean it, and at least right now, in this blessedly clear moment, to not have any room left for doubt.

He pulled away slowly, after what couldn’t have been more than an instant’s interval, chased back by Anders' rigid stillness. With such a question posed to him, there had been -- could be -- no other response. But now that he’d answered it, honestly as he was able, it wasn’t left to him to impose. Not more than he already had, with a mouth as chaste and yielding as the hand still wrapped around his cock wasn’t, with feelings as tangled as the soft, fine hair that he so badly wanted to wind his fingers through. Anger, he understood, and thoroughly deserved -- his one indulgence, after the moment broke, was to leave his eyes closed, so that he might not have to see it.

There was a pause, and then there was a longer pause, and then he felt Anders move. His hand loosening its grip, sliding carefully upwards to knead the skin of Sebastian’s stomach in a deliberate, gentle pattern. His body relaxing, breath heavy on the exhale -- he stepped closer, close enough for Sebastian to feel the press of their thighs, their chests, and that was... rather the opposite of what he’d been expecting, actually. Enough to make his breath catch, his eyes blink open, wide and confused and with his chest full of something tight. And maybe it was that he hadn’t known the man for long enough, that he needed to have been paying so, so much more attention, but he hadn’t thought that someone like Anders could be capable of anything that wasn’t loud, anything that was less than everything, all at once--

But there was his gaze, quiet, thoughtful and intent. A touch curious, and a touch warm. There was his gaze, and there were the pads of his fingers catching against the line of Sebastian’s jaw, and there was his mouth, chapped and close, anger replaced with his lips’ familiar, crooked twist, wry words falling out into the space between them with a soft huff that was made of laughter and relinquished tension both.

“You’re a weird one, Vael,” he said, giving a little half-shake of his head. “Sebastian. Have I ever told you that?”

“I-- yes,” Sebastian answered, heart hammering, and made himself breathe. “Yes, I think I may have heard that before.”

“Well you deserve to hear it again. Stupid man.” He looked down, hand descending in a stuttered trail over Sebastian’s jaw, his throat, his chest. Eyes following. When he tilted his head back upwards, his gaze was tender, voice gone low and soft. “Me? Me, really? Think you know what you’re doing?”

“No,” said Sebastian, mouth dry, and swallowed. “No, I have no idea really, but-- I am certain that I want to do it.”

“Is that so.” Under his armor, Anders' thumb was circling his navel, rubbing thoughtfully. His other hand was warm on Sebastian’s chest. “And if I manage to turn myself proper again? What then?”

“Still certain. Maybe less... carried away. Insane. But still certain.” He felt a little daring, leaned in close. “Anders, this has always been about you.”

There was a little twist of a smirk playing lazily around the corner of Anders' mouth, the mirth of it leaking up into his eyes, and Sebastian thought this was probably the strangest confession that had ever been drawn out of him -- but the most worthwhile, all the same.

“Well,” said Anders, sudden and business-like, shifting momentarily away, an arrow pulled back with the string and preparing for the snap. “Well in that case.”

Sebastian (perpetually behind the curve, it seemed) wasn’t ready for the hands suddenly fisting in his hair, cupping the back of his head, for the fingers digging decisively into the nape of his neck and mingling with the few short, unruly hairs curling there. For the mouth, Anders' mouth, crashing into his in a way that brokered no argument -- and he didn’t have one to offer, didn’t have the mind to do anything except inhale in a stuttered exclamation of surprise that only gave Anders an opportunity to slide his tongue in and over his teeth. Clever tongue, clever man, so, so worth wanting, and it was a few long moments before Sebastian’s brain finally caught up to his heartbeat and reminded him how to move again.

With near reverence, he smoothed his hands up Anders' back, feeling out the shape of his bony shoulder blades through the thick cloth of his coat, tugging it loose from his shoulders so that it fell crooked halfway down his back, hanging from the bends of his elbows. That earned him Anders' pleased, responsive hmm, and the chance to savor the taste of it in turn, fluttering over his tongue. But Anders wasn’t willing to be satisfied for long, was moving already, fingers tightening in Sebastian’s hair, and then he stepped backwards, swinging away from the door and flattening himself against the row of bookcases that lined the nearest wall. Sebastian was helpless but to follow, not with Anders so obstinately refusing to relinquish his mouth, not when Sebastian didn’t ever want him to. He tumbled into the mage’s front, barely managing to catch himself with his palms flat against books shelved to either side of his head, hands sending up clouds of dust as they landed, gasping as Anders arched forward so that Sebastian could feel the press of the entire slender line of his body, gasping as Anders' clever fingers left his head to fuss with the catches of his armor.

Vaguely, he wondered if he ought to be concerned about the clatter: arrows rattling messily over the flagstones as his quiver toppled to the ground, Anders seeming to relish the carelessness with which he could toss aside Sebastian’s breastplate to hit the wall with a ringing smack -- it was hard to care too much, not with Anders' coat hanging open off his shoulders, thin linen shirt the only thing between Sebastian’s fingertips and skin, but he could at least pay lip service to caution. “Hush,” he murmured in fond admonishment, dragging his face upwards so he could breathe it into the fine hair tickling Anders' temple, and then further, and then again, and then lips brushing the tempting shell of his ear--

“You hush, idiot,” Anders interrupted, and flung an arm around his neck to drag him back down. His free hand was loosing the last fastening of Sebastian’s mail with a near violent flourish, sending it cascading to his feet with a jangling, metallic whoosh. His lips were twisting wicked into their kiss. Andraste, Maker save them, was being irreverently lobbed over Sebastian’s head towards some far corner of the room. Out of sight, out of mind, Sebastian supposed -- he would have to tell Anders that it didn’t matter.

He’d already made up his mind.

This wasn’t a promise broken -- this was a new one made. An end to pretending only, that he was still the same man who had years ago taken vows without a shadow in his heart, that he still could be, if only he tried hard enough. Faith didn’t always look the same. Blessings came and went in shapes unrecognizable, and -- this was one of them. This, here between them, Anders with his impropriety and his clever, awful hands, Sebastian with the helpless, heavy press of his entire body, and the curling sighs they shared, moans, playful teeth and fleshy lips and tugging tugging biting, and Anders half-laughing through all of it like he couldn’t help himself, laughing until their mouths slotted against each other again like the answer to a legion of half-dreamt prayers, laughing again when they parted, instead even of opting for breath -- this. This. This was one of them.

He pressed forward and Anders pulled back, far enough that Sebastian had to flutter open his eyes to see where he’d gone, to take in his hazy, heady smirk: neck arched and head lolling against the bookcases and then oh so, so slowly he was grinding against Sebastian’s thigh, tangled in between his own, building building and Sebastian couldn’t help lunging in to take his mouth again. Anders hmm-ing breathily into the kiss as he rubbed, shimmying closer and then scraping his mouth down, teeth insistent at Sebastian’s pulse, hands by his sides and gripping the edges of the shelves to give himself some leverage. Sebastian craned his neck and closed his eyes in acquiescence, but he didn’t still his hands. He started low and ran them upwards, getting to know the shape of Anders' thighs, pulling his thin leggings taught, and then up, and then skin, and then a hipbone under his fingertips, and he wished badly that he’d thought to take off his gloves so that he might have his whole hands to feel with instead of only bare fingers.

But it didn’t seem worth pausing, not when the buttons of Anders' shirt required such frantic, immediate attention. He fumbled them, one-by-one, and then Anders was laughing again, into his collarbone, one arm looping tight around his waist, and Sebastian had to get a hand threaded through his hair so he could drag him back up and kiss him. Kiss him, and then pull his open shirt off his shoulders, and then kiss him again. Run a hand up over his flat stomach, thumb dipping into his navel, kissing him and kissing him, fingers higher now, spreading up and over his sternum, meeting the first suggestion of his chest’s soft new curve-- “That’s it, Vael. Careful now, don’t faint,” Anders was saying wicked into his mouth, and Sebastian grunted, exasperated.

“Hush,” he told him again, and dove, and Anders' teasing was quickly lost to a moan as Sebastian’s mouth found his breast. Modest and white and lovely, soft under his lips, soft to meet his lips’ soft skin, the swirl of his tongue, and his free hand giving the other what little was left of his attention. It was a wonder, how easily he could cover the all of it with his leather-clad palm, how well it fit there, how sweetly. A wonder, to hear Anders' gasp as he squeezed gently and then let go, hand grazing just slightly downward so he could worry his nipple into hardness between the tips of his two fingers, press up and pop it inwards with his thumb. And his mouth still working -- he found he loved the texture of Anders' areola under his tongue, loved to lap at it, leave it to duck down and plant little kisses along the pert underside of Anders' flesh, slowly turning from chaste brushes of his lips to a barrage of unrepentant nibbling as he made his way back again, and the whole time hearing Anders above him voicing his messy approval, fingers twisting deliciously through Sebastian’s hair.

“I just want you to know,” he panted, “that this is really, really weird. Also, come here--” and the arm still wrapped around Sebastian’s waist tightened, forcing his body close again, face to face, chest to unclothed chest with Sebastian’s one hand still trapped between them. Their noses bumped, and the intimacy of it, the immediate, heartrending closeness, walloped him with unexpected force: Anders gazing at him with rippling intent before kissing him breathless, Anders reaching up to take hold of the hand Sebastian still had wound through his hair, dragging it downwards, covering its back with his palm as he led it on a path over his own skin. Anders arching beneath him in the most ferociously distracting way, Anders laughing at Sebastian’s wide eyes as he felt exactly where Anders' hand had led him. He was as gorgeous as anything Sebastian possibly could have imagined, a dream writhing depthless out of the lamp-cast shadows flickering along the bookcase, full mouth lazy and smiling as he used the heel of Sebastian’s hand to push his leggings off and over his bony hipbones. Sebastian sucked in a helpless breath, and then Anders got down to it properly, hooking his thumb in to peel them off of his thighs, down and down until he was stopped by the boots he’d never bothered removing. Soft skin, lean muscle -- Sebastian reached out to grip a handful of leg and got a sigh for his efforts. Anders' hands on his shoulders. Anders kneading his neck. A crescendo of intensity. Their eyes met.

This? Sebastian wondered, mouth dry, and tentatively let his hand trail higher, touch just brushing the course hair that met his fingertips, nails skimming Anders' sex. Haunting question, haunting want. This?

He swallowed. Started. Stopped. Swallowed again. “Would you like me to...?”

Anders looked at him witheringly, half-irked, half-fond. “Fuck, of course,” he nearly groaned, “I’ve been wanking like mad since this first happened, by all means, would you just please--”

Sebastian sank all at once to his knees as if compelled (as if, no, he was compelled; you didn’t say no to people who regularly twisted your insides up into knot after intricate knot, people with eyes like that, mouths like that, Maker), squeezing his way down Anders' thighs and doing his best to lick his dry mouth wet -- though Anders, let it be said, was wet enough for both of them, was already glistening temptingly under the lamplight that flickered its way along the grooves of his thighs, and Sebastian was so full of want that he had no room left for hesitation, not in this. Not in surging forward, in splitting Anders open with his tongue, in the groan that rumbled out of him at the flavor exploding without a care into the forefront of his senses, in savoring the pitch of Anders' answering scream. He flicked his gaze upwards just in time to see Anders' teeth clamping viciously down on his own wrist as his eyes closed helplessly, and when Sebastian dove back in in earnest this time, it was with the shadow of a relieved smile playing on his soon-busy lips.

This, he found, was skill that came back easily -- not a memory of any specific experience, as there wasn’t room left in his brain to have processed it. He acted, rather, on instinct amalgamated from years of rakish living and triggered by the heavy musk invading his nostrils, slicking his mouth. And there was something else in it too, the wanton desire to please -- not like an anonymous night in an anonymous tavern, a conquest whose name was already out of mind by the morning’s first wash of sunlight. No, here was a lover who’d conquered him, who’d made the whole world into a sleepless nightmare before spinning it back into a dream, whose name was no introduction to be fumbled through before getting down to fucking, but a litany of purpose whose unforgettable, urgent force infused itself into every flick of his tongue. Anders, as he executed his first long, slow lick; Anders, as he swept back down. Anders, as he pulled near away to suckle daintily on a fleshy, outer fold; Anders, as he pressed in far past the point of breathing to brazenly hook his tongue’s way inside that secret, weeks-new place. He knew with burning awareness whose was the modest chest heaving above him, whose were the toes curling into the leather of long since worn-out boots. Of course he knew -- there was no other he could have done this with, wanted this with. Anders, Anders, Anders, and there were his hips sharp and stark beneath Sebastian’s fingertips, and there were his fingers threading themselves through Sebastian’s hair, and there was nothing for Sebastian to do but willingly give himself up to their guidance.

Over his head, Anders seemed like he was near shaking apart, tugging Sebastian this way and then that, urgency with no clear direction, rippling, helpless need. This wash of new sensations must be beyond overwhelming, Sebastian thought -- and then hardened at the thought -- and then reminded himself to be slow, slow, building the tension with care instead of drumming it ruthlessly over the line into pain. Not too much, not all at once, drawing circles with his tongue around Anders' sensitive clit, gently toying with its hood, pushing it back: not so direct as to smother, not so indirect as to leave him wanting. And then back down again, sucking a slip of swollen labia into his mouth and worrying it back and forth, careful of his teeth -- though teeth did have their uses, a nip there, a tug here, the gentlest, most kittenish pressure, and Anders devolving into something like a whine above him, nails scraping along his scalp.

He yielded to Anders' frantic lead, lapping and swirling at whatever sensitive patch that the mage decided desperately needed his attention, going without resistance every time the hand fisting his hair shoved him ruthlessly forward. Slick smeared over his chin, his cheekbones, wetness sliding like dew over the tip of his nose, the only thing he could smell, heavy, heavy, and oh he wanted it, deeper he wanted it, his tongue finding Anders' opening again and flicking inside, Anders' hmm-ing breaths escaping his bitten lips, voice breaking with impatience, straining to spread his legs further but prevented by his leggings, still stuck on his boots and pulled taut between his calves.

Fed up, he moved all at once: leg snapping upwards knee-to-chest before he threw it over Sebastian’s shoulder, managing to get the material of his leggings looped around Sebastian’s neck. And then Sebastian was scrambling to get his knees beneath him more solidly, to find a firm grip on Anders' upper thighs, because the man had recklessly thrown his other leg over Sebastian’s shoulders too, one hand in Sebastian’s hair and a wrist still between his teeth, now with nothing but a bookshelf at his back and Sebastian’s forearms under his buttocks to support him. The heels of his boots were digging painfully into Sebastian’s back as he demandingly levered himself forward, and there was no room to breathe, no room to move -- and that was all right, because Sebastian didn’t want to breathe, didn’t want to move, only wanted to piston over and over again into Anders' sweet cunt, so much deeper now, so much more, the desperate feeling of muscle rippling around the root of his tongue.

His jaw ached fiercely and his arms were shaking with the strain of keeping the heaving body above him aloft, but he ignored it. He didn’t, couldn’t, slow his pace. Quicker, if anything; more frenzied if anything, and Anders finally seemed to give up on any attempts at obscuring how very undone he had become, dragging his wrist out from between his teeth so that his cries went unfettered, crashing into the ceiling to be soaked into dullness by layers of stone and mortar. But Sebastian didn’t think about who might be hearing them; Sebastian thought instead about where else but his mouth Anders might have taken his hand, thought about him perhaps toying with his own breasts, gasping, fingertips fumbling with relish over his own nipples, how much Sebastian would dearly love to see that, how he would have turned his head up to look if there was not still Anders' other hand in his hair keeping him still, and his lanky thighs squeezing, trapping Sebatian’s head mercilessly between them. Pressure, everywhere he turned -- so he didn’t turn, he just lapped. Pulling his tongue out, finally, licking in the long, wide strokes that Anders seemed to like best. Up and up, and his nose bumping Anders' clit, and he was close, so close, so wet, Sebastian could tell, wanted to please him so, so badly, began to lavish the little nub with more direct attention, and Anders keened, a high, soaring sound, and then his free hand slid down over his body, hanging coat sleeve dragging behind it, and joined Sebastian’s lips in frantically working himself towards completion.

Sebastian had to work to remember to keep his rhythm, to not get distracted by the temptation to kiss and kiss the tips of Anders' fingers. Difficult, because they were already pressed up against his lips, sliding moist under his mouth so that Anders could touch himself exactly how he knew he liked it -- and it must have been a dedicated stint of masturbation that could make him so sure of his own pleasures, in such a short time, in such a new place. Sebastian was temporarily distracted by how dearly he would have loved to see that too, but he managed to force it from his mind, engaging himself with hurried lapping, occasional, shallow dips inside and then long licks from stem to stern, pointing his tongue to flick it over Anders' knuckles, to wiggle Anders' clit. He wished longingly that his hands were free, that he could have brought his fingers to join in too, sliding them up and inside, hooking, finding the spot that would make Anders shiver and come and come.

But he couldn’t deny that there was something appealing about this: being restrained, being at Anders' whim, having to make do with mouth alone to please him -- and he was not failing at that task, at least: Anders' cries were indication enough of that. His cries and his shaking fingers and his urgent, guiding hand, and Sebastian’s arms felt like they were on fire from holding him up for so long, but at the moment there was nothing he could regret, nothing he possibly could have wanted more than Anders, Anders, Anders, and he sealed his mouth around his clit and sucked. Pulled back to breath, nudged frantic fingers out of the way, and did it again, and then Anders was wailing and wailing and pulling out what felt like a good bit of Sebastian’s hair, and the muscles in his thighs were tenser than steel in Sebastian’s hands, and the bruises on Sebastian’s back from Anders' dug-in bootheels were probably going to last for days. The heavy taste curling down his throat -- he hoped that that would last for days. Or that at the least he would soon have another chance to savor it, to remind himself what completion this deep felt like, wet and dripping on his tongue.

He filled the aftermath with gentle kisses, soft and chaste, careful affection nestled into Anders' swollen flesh as he shook his way back down. Spasming slightly, spine rippling from rigid to slumped, sweat pouring off of him and down Sebastian’s neck. The muscles of his legs, his buttocks, unclenching, going languid. The sound of his panting slowly quieting. The tucked-away library alcove sinking back into its previous hush. Time easing back into a steady, staid pace -- even if their heartbeats did not.

Sebastian’s body took the moment of relative stillness to remind him of his overburdened shoulders and his crick in his neck, the pauldron that somehow neither of them had ever bothered removing, knocked askew by Anders' thigh and digging uncomfortably into his armpit. And his cock, of course -- that particular piece of anatomy was still painfully erect, loudly demanding relief, any relief. He must look a mess. Debauched and strained but happy, and more than a little punch-drunk, kneeling on the floor in a pool of his own chainmail and with eyelids so sticky that when he finally tried to look up, giving one last, sweet lick before pulling away, he could barely blink them open.

The sight that greeted him when he eventually managed it was nothing less than the gold-washed vision that was Anders, breathing deeply through his nose, lazy smile and half-closed eyes and head thrown back against the bookcase, and Sebastian would have gladly stayed like this forever, shaking, aching arms and untouched cock and all, just for the furthered pleasure of looking at him.

“Well color me impressed,” announced his lover (his lover) carelessly to the ceiling. And then, without warning, he got a grip on the shelf behind him and shoved himself abruptly forward. Sebastian yelped, losing his balance, barely managing to keep from toppling over by catching himself on his hands. Anders was sliding down his front with open thighs, knees slipping from over his shoulders to around his waist -- a tight, shimmying squeeze, as he was still encumbered by his leggings, snagged at the tops of his calves. He settled straddling Sebastian’s lap, landing as neatly as a cat. And as pleased with himself, too, by the way he reached up indolently to flick a pearly drop of liquid from Sebastian’s eyelash, looking as if he’d swallowed a whole menagerie of canaries. “That wasn’t even half-bad.”

Maybe Sebastian would have been more offended by that if he’d ever heard Anders pay anyone a compliment. As it was, he was distracted by the sudden revelations of a lap full of languid, sweaty mage. If he were to faint, as Anders had so teasingly admonished him against, it would be now, with the pressure of Anders' naked sex snug against his cock, only spare bits of padding and breeches in between them -- he crashed forward desperately to kiss him, eyes clenched shut and hands sliding up and under the coat and shirt still hanging halfway off his frame, feeling the supple lines of a naked back beneath his palms, craning his strained neck and plunging his tongue all at once into Ander’s mouth -- anything to distract himself from the warm weight across his thighs.

Anders gasped in surprise before leaning eagerly forward to return the kiss, the taste of his own sex shared between their mouths, and then his hands came up to grip the sides of Sebastian’s face, thumbs against his cheekbones and the rough texture of his coat sleeves dragging along Sebastian’s jaw. His grip was firm, warm and full of reassurance as he pressed Sebastian gently back, keeping him still, his mouth peeling away and then returning again to glide their lips together. Soothing, slower and slower, until he’d managed to set the deliberate pace that suited him. And that did something, at least, to stop Sebastian’s heart from hammering quite so frantically. He followed Anders' lead -- was glad to follow it, to have somewhere to pour out all of the tenderness swirling through him with nowhere else to go. Anders hmm-ed at his acquiescence, grip relaxing, one arm draping itself lazily over his back, other hand moving to curl over his neck. He sighed into Sebastian’s mouth and then slid his face down, rubbing his nose along Sebastian’s jaw, eyes closed in satisfaction.

“Relax,” he murmured, laughing, and Sebastian wanted to take his voice, twist it up and hold it until it ran like gritty sand through his wanting fingers. “Hey, relax. Big, sweet man.” His chin turned up, another kiss, another welcoming sigh. “Have me.”

Sebastian inhaled sharply at that, head spinning, and he blinked open his eyes to gaze into Anders' warm ones, breathless. “You want that?”

Anders was smiling. “Well, it would be a practical crime not to try it, wouldn’t it? Or that’s what Serendipity tells me, anyway. Besides,” and he leaned in, breasts pressing against the front of Sebastian’s gambeson in the most beguiling possible way, “I want you. Or hadn’t you noticed?”

“Only recently,” Sebastian admitted distractedly, engrossed by the way the lamplight was playing along Anders' jaw. He reached his fingers up to join it.

Anders caught them, and then kissed them wickedly. “Very recently?” he asked, lips sliding wet against Sebastian’s knuckles.

“Ah... yes.”

“Like now, maybe?”

“Anders.”

“You’re rather dense, aren’t you?”

Sebastian was helpless against the beginnings of the smile he felt making its way over his lips. “Hush,” he said, and was gratified by the way that Anders threw back his head to laugh at him. He took the opportunity to lean forward and feel Ander’s throat under his lips. Anders' hand scraped through his hair in answer.

“Really Vael,” he asked, “Did that work the first two times?”

“A man can dream,” Sebastian told him, and flicked his tongue over his pulse.

“There had better be no daydreams. I’m right here, you know.”

Sebastian’s mouth found his way to his jaw even as his hand slid down to cup a modest, yielding breast, thumb fondly circling a nipple. “Believe me, sweet, I know,” he murmured, sincere, and had enough time to look up and catch the untameable desire crashing through Anders' molten eyes before a demanding mouth surged against his and stole all his breath away.

He couldn’t help but grind upwards, needing, needing so badly, and the motion made Anders release a series of eager little keens into his mouth to shatter against his tongue. He arched his back and finally managed to finish shaking his coat and shirt off of his upper body. They slid from his arms to land in a heap upon the floor. The sight of his wrists was surprisingly intimate, the naked crease of his elbows, folded against his body, and it sent Sebastian’s gut soaring all over again, sent Sebastian’s hands exploring skin and skin and skin that he had already touched, that he knew he would never get enough of touching.

Anders, too, was impatient for skin, was hurriedly ridding Sebastian of his crooked pauldron and armguards, one hand working at his buckles, another at his throat, tugging at his collar. His fingers were insistent at the seam, burning, and then there were the last remnants of his armor disappearing with a clatter into some shadowy corner, shine gone, the leather of his gauntlets stripped away. His gambeson forcefully pushed off of his shoulders with him doing his best to wiggle free of it so he could continue the all-important task of mapping out Anders' skin (mapping it out under his newly-bare hands, mapping it with un-gauntleted palms), and he could hear Anders growling in frustration when he encountered the thin undershirt that Sebastian was still wearing beneath -- “Pfah,” Sebastian gasped at suddenly feeling the texture of cloth clinging to his nose and his mouth, stuck under his ears, Anders jerking the shirt without patience over his head.

He gave a thoughtful “Hm,” once he’d gotten it off, and then Sebastian barely had time to close his eyes before it was being roughly swept over his still-sticky face. “Better,” Anders judged with satisfaction upon finishing, and signed his work by leaning down to lick Sebastian’s cheek.

It was a playful gesture, a silly one, and Sebastian couldn’t help but laugh easily before turning his mouth up to kiss him. The shirt landed with a whoosh over an unfortunate stack of books, already forgotten before it ever even settled. There were far more important things to pay attention to: the heat blooming between them where their newly-naked chests were crushed together, the demanding grip of Anders' pale hands spidering wide over his waist, the infuriatingly complicated fastenings of Anders' boots -- Sebastian took it upon himself to remove them, as the mage seemed far too distracted to bother to do it himself, enamored as he was with the new swaths of skin open to his perusal. Palms over Sebastian’s shoulders, nails skimming his spine, and it was all Sebastian could do to keep his fingers from shaking on the buckles. Archers were supposed to have steady hands, it was true, but it would take a stronger man than he to keep from shivering under the weight of all this want.

Still, he did well enough, straps unstrapped and laces unlaced, moving to do the same to the other -- but then Anders leaned away and slid down his lap just a little, trailing fingers over his front, lower and lower, eyes lit up with intent and hair lit up with lamplight, shadows and gold melting together into something that was nearly solid in its intensity: solid enough to stop up Sebastian’s heart, anyway, solid enough to curl rigid through his toes. Anders arched his back and dipped his head forward, mouth open and eager again even while leaving open space between their bodies, and there could never be a kiss from him that was unwelcome -- but it was suddenly far, far beyond Sebastian’s ability to return it.

“Ah!” he cried, and felt Anders smile, moving to push Sebastian’s breeches and smalls even further off of his hips than he already, granting a little more freedom before bringing his grip back to Sebastian’s stiff cock. Gentle grip, this time, curious and clever, massaging the head to wetness in his capable palm before fisting it and slicking all the way down, and Sebastian was clutching his elbows for dear life and desperately gasping his name and not caring at all about how delightedly Anders was laughing at him--

“Been a while, I guess,” the mage murmured once he’d caught his breath, low and affectionate and smiling, and Sebastian looked into his eyes, flicked his gaze down along his throat, and then up the line of his collarbone. Down along his bicep, past his elbow, finely-haired forearm and thin wrist, and then Anders' hand between them, touching him, slowly jerking him -- he knew his mouth must be stupidly slack at the sight of it, but it wasn’t his fault. He’d never seen (never been walloped with) anything more erotic in his entire life.

“Hey,” said Anders, and Sebastian blinked distractedly and looked up, hopelessly staggered. Anders was looking down at him, eyes warm, mouth crooked. “This is good?” he wanted to know softly, strangely, a touch shy, and Sebastian’s head swam.

“You,” he said dazedly, “Anders, you. You’re so-- everything. Lovely. Anders.”

The mage laughed again. “Don’t be ridiculous, I’m no five-sovereign prize. I still look like a stick. Twiggy.”

“Gorgeous,” insisted Sebastian, and leaned forward to breath it into his neck. “Perfect. Beautiful, beautiful man.”

Anders cupped his jaw to tilt his head back up. “All right, all right, I’m a pretty thing, you win,” he said, eyes crinkling up around the edges. “Now stop it with the big words before you hurt yourself again.”

“Nn,” Sebastian agreed, and then urgently pressed their lips together. Anders let his eyes fall shut and hummed pleased into his mouth, sliding his tongue forward, pulling up his leg to kick off the boot that Sebastian had managed to loosen for him. He took his hand away from Sebastian’s cock so he could push his bunched leggings down and over his calf without unbalancing himself -- and yes, it was nice of him to manage to undress without toppling them both over, but Sebastian still groaned at the loss. Without quite thinking what he was doing, he pitched forward, needing pressure, hands dragging from Anders' waist to the outside of his thighs to his buttocks, and then he was stumbling to his feet and Anders was yelping into his mouth and his shoulders were screaming from the impossible strain of supporting Anders' entire weight again. This probably hadn’t been the best idea, he thought, except it hadn’t even been an idea in the first place: mere impulse, mere want driving him.

Blindly, he attempted not to slip on the arrows scattered over the floor from his emptied quiver, a fall that with his luck would break both of their necks. But even that wasn’t as much of a danger as his grip on Anders' flanks becoming dangerously sweat-slick, slipping, and he was panting and Anders was squirming and they were both careening helplessly forward--

And then Sebastian’s thighs hit the edge of the long library table just as Anders finally tumbled out of his hands with a muffled “Fuck!” He flung his arms out to catch himself, sending stacks of books and vellum flying as he slid backwards along the polished wood. Sebastian pressed a palm flat upon the table and vaulted forward to follow him, scattering more tomes with his still-armored knees, toes of his boots hanging out into space. Anders beneath him, flushed and wild, breasts pulled taut and nearly flat by his position on his back, nipples hard and brown, upturned wrists by his head and fair tufts of hair under his arms, at his sex, gleaming red-gold under the light of the lamp that somehow neither of them had yet managed to knock to the flagstones.

“Oh that was clever,” he was saying, “extremely romantic, you do know I bruise easily, don’t you-- no, what are you doing, come here,” and there wasn’t even a breath’s pause wasted before he was lunging to capture Sebastian’s mouth, stopping up an already half-formed apology and erasing any hint of space in between them. He slid one knee up, hot along Sebastian’s side until Sebastian found himself clutching Anders' thigh on instinct in his hand. Anders' still-boot-clad leg was flung wide, his leggings hanging formlessly from his calf as he swung it over the edge of the table. And then his hands, his awful hands, up Sebastian’s back and down Sebastian’s sides and firmly kneading Sebastian’s buttocks, pushing his breeches to his knees, and his mouth, his mouth, still moving, always moving, always demanding something, and it was exactly everything that Sebastian was already so willing to give--

“Please,” he found himself begging between kisses, “please--”

“Yes,” Anders said, and then they were sliding home together; slow, slow, he pressed in, and Anders' neck bent like a bow, and Anders' mouth an open, breathless o, a thousand fragments of desire finding their unified whole in between them, joined, a prayer or a dream or a wish fulfilled or any of these things, different words for all of the ways perfection finds to meet itself inside the fleeting moment of a heartbeat.

Anders shivered and closed his eyes and Sebastian managed to get an arm beneath him to cushion him before he reclined panting back to the table. He went with him, forward and down, supporting himself with the forearm he’d tucked under his lover’s neck. His hips shook from the feeling of Anders surrounding him, holding him inside, scathing and slick and impossible. There was desire coiling through him, tense and low, and his forehead mashed helplessly against Anders' collarbone, sweat mingling -- experimentally, he moved, gripped Anders' thigh more firmly and drew away the slightest bit, pushed the slightest bit back in, felt Anders' muscles spasm around him, heard his groan. “Yes,” he said again, quiet this time, “yes, yes, Sebastian, yes,” and his fingers tugged through Sebastian’s head of mussed hair, curling tenderly at his nape.

Sebastian made himself look up, then, opened his eyes even though his brain felt like it was already processing more sensation than it was truly capable of taking in. Anders met his gaze for long enough to smile at him, lazy, and then let his head fall back again, hair spreading loose across Sebastian’s forearm, teeth digging softly into his own bottom lip. He was so heartbreakingly gorgeous that Sebastian didn’t quite know what to do with himself, so he let his body decide instead. Began rocking with as much finesse as he could manage (which he was certain wasn’t much), trying to strike up at least some semblance of a rhythm, trying not to moan too wantonly at the heat that he kept finding there, every time he punched back in.

Anders was letting a series of stuttered little sighs escape him, and Sebastian couldn’t help but lean down to taste them passing through his throat, soft kisses, dry kisses, and he wanted so badly for this to be what Anders wanted too -- he released his grip on the mage’s leg, hooking it over his bicep instead, moving to trail his fingers under the rim of his navel, his flat stomach, through the course patch of hair at the top of his sex. His touch pressing open Anders' flesh, finding his clit, fingers working carefully just around it -- Anders let out a wail, his spine bowing up and off the table before he reached down to grab at Sebastian’s wrist.

“No, no,” he ordered, panting, “quit that. Not too frantic, just let me...” He exhaled, slow. “Let me feel it. Maker.”

Sebastian stopped, chagrined, and let Anders tangle up their fingers instead, slowing his thrusts as much as he could manage.. “Sorry,” he breathed. “Are you-- is this all right?”

A breath of laughter. “It’s weird. Good, though, don’t worry.” Anders clenched experimentally around him, and then shivered, body languid. “Did you know that this is really not like being fucked up the ass at all?”

Sebastian grunted helplessly at the effort it took to keep his pace steady and slow, letting Anders use him as a means of curiously exploring the newness of this pleasure, resisting the urge to snap his hips and take his own. “I could not say,” he gasped, and felt Anders flick a nail against his forehead.

“What? Come on Vael, you’re not telling me you’ve never been fucked.”

“It hasn’t ever -- ah -- appealed.”

“Ass like yours? Maker. That’s a real tragedy, I hope you know that.”

“Anders.” He shuddered, and pressed as close as he could to Anders' body, chest to chest, nose bumping nose. “If you don’t hush, then I am going to have to kiss you.”

“Is that so?” Anders raised his eyebrows, mouth crooked. “Well if you don’t kiss me, then I’m going to have to set you on fire, how about that?”

“Fair enough,” Sebastian answered, eyes laughing, and leaned in. Anders met his lips with a smile, tongue flicking out, hip rocking up, and Sebastian fell into him like a promise, fell into him like a prayer, found his peak hidden inside the feverish fit of his body and then fell straight over that too -- the heat of it, the snap of it, and the incalculable blessing of Anders' presence there to cushion him when he fell. No space to think about what a fool he was or wasn’t, no room for the ramifications of a decision he’d already made. A single thought in his head, a single name in his mouth, a single purpose tensing the muscles of his limbs, and there was nothing about it that he couldn’t help but be grateful for as he lost himself to release--

Losing himself, he could stand, if he didn’t have to do it alone.

“This is honestly completely ridiculous,” Anders was saying, and Sebastian yawned and attempted to blink his way back into wakefulness to listen.

It wasn’t easy, not when Anders' chest made such an incomparable pillow, not when he was leisurely smoothing his fingers through Sebastian’s hair in pattern after contented little pattern. Practically a recipe for drowsiness, especially after they’d both already settled into slumped satisfaction, bodies draped haphazardly across the table, Anders' one boot-clad leg still carelessly swinging.

He supposed he really should be glad that it had taken this long for Anders to shatter the afterglow; the man wasn’t exactly known for his silence, after all, and Sebastian had had some minutes, at least, when he’d finally calmed after coming gasping back to himself and collapsing, to feel sleepy and happy and close against the warmth of Anders' steadily rising and falling chest.

He yawned again, and turned his face upwards, chin resting on Anders' breastbone. The mage had his eyes half-closed, gesturing lazily at the ceiling with the hand not familiarly kneading the back of Sebastian’s scalp. “I mean, I know your Reverend What’s-her-face--”

“--Grand Cleric Elthina--”

“-- is convinced contrary all evidence that there could be nobody brazen enough to break in here, and doesn’t bother with too many guards,” Anders continued, ignoring Sebastian’s automatic correction; he found himself too sated to overly mind, instead amused by Anders' emphatic pointing. “But surely somebody standing watch somewhere must have heard something. You’re a bit of a screamer, did you know that?”

“I’m a screamer?”

“That is my story, yes. Care to dispute me?”

Sebastian rolled his eyes, corners of his mouth crinkling. “No, ser.”

“Insolence.” Anders flicked his ear. Sebastian snorted, and bit a nipple in retaliation, enough to make Anders heave himself up on his elbows to glare at him, eyebrows raised in mock-imperiousness. Sebastian schooled his expression to meek submission before bowing his head to lave the bite in apology -- and allowed himself just the slightest smirk as Anders went from mocking to flushed in the space of a heartbeat, head falling back in a groan.

“But no, really,” he finally managed to say once he’d struggled upright again, getting a hand under Sebastian’s chin and dragging him away from his lapping. “There aren’t a bunch of Templars about to storm the door, are there? No naughty sisters listening at the keyhole?”

“No. It’s as you said; the only watchers are posted in the main sanctuary.” He tilted his head thoughtfully. “Though there’s no accounting the sisters, I suppose. There are one or two known to nip down to the wine cellar, this time of night.”

“Oh that figures.” A sigh. “Then it’s probably past time to get out of here.” Still, he didn’t seem too keen on moving anytime soon. He released his grip on Sebastian’s face to loosely cup his nape again and let his own head fall back again, pillowed on the spine of a fat leather tome behind him.

Sebastian didn’t like the way the mirth crept bit by bit from his expression, didn’t want to know what he might have been thinking that could make him look so pensive. He pulled himself closer, up Anders' body, hoping to win his attention back. “We can leave by the garden wall, then. There’s no one stationed there.”

Anders' eyes flicked towards him. “We? As in, you too?”

Sebastian was taken aback. “If you like,” he answered, voice cautious.

“Hm,” said Anders, regarding him, gaze inscrutable, and then Sebastian inhaled sharply as he found another pair of lips suddenly catching against his. He returned the kiss eagerly -- there was no touch, no bit of attention he wouldn’t have returned eagerly, at this point, hands feeling out as much of Anders as he could manage, vague stirrings of further interest rolling through his gut. “Hm,” said Anders again, a small and satisfied sound. He pulled away, though his hand at Sebastian’s throat, another in his hair, brushing a sweaty lock behind his ear. “I think I do -- that is, if you’re sure that the Chantry won’t miss its resident Choir Boy.”

“Sure enough,” Sebastian answered, not quite knowing what to do with the note of quiet melancholy in Anders' voice, hidden all along under his constant, acerbic stream of sarcasm perhaps; perhaps as much a part of him as his warm brown eyes. But it still made his heart twinge. He found himself wrapping an arm around Anders' waist, voicing a niggling question before he had time to think whether it was truly a good idea to ask. “Anders if I had--” He stopped, suddenly feeling foolish, but Anders was looking at him curiously now, so he had no choice but to go on. “If I had felt about you the way you thought that I felt, would we still have...?”

Anders sighed, looked at the ceiling. Old memory in his voice. “You’re not so used to having to take what you can get, are you?”

Sebastian touched his face, knuckles to his jaw. Sincerity bleeding into his eyes, and a hint of consternation -- though it wasn’t unusual, at this point, for him to be confused more often that he wasn’t. “But that is so much less than you deserve.”

Anders' finger tapped his temple in admonishment. “Vael, I’ve fucked you once. You’re not allowed to go all sappy on me just yet.”

But his eyes were warm.

Sebastian felt smile a rueful smile cross his mouth, and ducked down to hide it against Anders' collarbone. “As you say.”

“Of course as I say. Was there ever any question?” He pushed himself up on his elbow, and Sebastian fell back to give him room. Sitting upright gave him a wince-worthy view of the little library alcove: vellum everywhere, books scattered, clothes and bits of armor flung every which way, inhabiting every shadowy corner. He felt a flush of embarrassment, and maybe a flicker of something a little like regret -- here lay the end of his days as a Brother; a long time in coming, in all honesty, a commitment that had lain false in his heart since he’d first heard of his family’s murder.

But there had perhaps been a way to mark the change besides allowing it to culminate in such a raucous mess.

Andraste was hanging from the top of a bookcase, swinging slightly, expression severe. Forgive me, he thought to Her silently -- not for the man he had just made love too, but for the pretending that had come before it. Thank you, he thought also, for he knew that Andes was -- could be -- nothing but a blessing sent his way.

He shook himself out of contemplation to the sight of Anders looking around the room with amusement as he fished his twisted leather thong out of what was left of his ponytail -- Sebastian thought to ask if he might be allowed the privilege of tying his hair back up, but then thought better of it, entranced by Anders' practiced hands. “We probably ought to do something about this,” he said instead, swallowing, and nodded to the room.

Anders only waved a careless hand. “Leave it for someone else to puzzle over. I can’t be bothered. Reminds me too much of being an apprentice anyway, forever carrying books.” He settled his hair with a shake of his head and then leaned forward conspiratorially, hands on Sebastian’s knees, breasts hanging pert and perfect from his chest. “How about we go?”

Sebastian caught his breath. “Where?”

“I don’t know, anywhere.” He looked thoughtful. “I could get you drunk again. That was pretty amusing.”

“I... think I’d rather not repeat that,” Sebastian murmured, feeling himself blush at the memory. The beginning of something he hadn’t wanted to know that he wanted, the beginning of something that was now beating so strong through his chest he knew he couldn’t do without it.

If there were more beginnings, he’d like to at least remember them.

Anders was smiling, eyes glinting lazy and amused, fingers lazily kneading Sebastian’s naked thighs. “Then we could find a corner somewhere,” he suggested. “And you could kiss me in it.”

“That-- yes,” Sebastian answered. Saw the night spinning out before him, saw the stars glinting through the jagged edges of an alley, something so, so close to perfection. Maybe getting a room, maybe waking up with Anders in his arms, maybe not being cast away with the fresh light of the morning. Hope hadn’t made him this breathless in a long time. “Yes, I think that’s a good idea.”

Anders only answer was a slick, crooked smile.

With any luck, it was the only answer that Sebastian was ever going to need.

Actions

Kudos

pinkishhorror, CalliopeSol, rvkn, nick_name, vicitamor, magnoliathic, tobrokenstone, VoxCyphrae, Namyra4, Time_plus_Night, KaylieeBurgess, Mitsubishi_Skeets, meowkinss, LyingInSpirals, NemoKnows, misterBee, bips_isms, Silent_Princess, Beatrixthestrange, Fant4sia, Plantacular, whyisthisevenneeded, SilverBlade, ColeKrem, PandoraVidal, Halfhinch, aourci, thomas_aisiteru, yellowcarnohitbacks, dCryptid, MintyMoonlight, NuclearPowerBottom, prettysounds, lukesywalkers, CatastropheCat, RaveDistress0, huatavoix, Dullbird, MagicalElvenJediCat, feathersmith, dismalzelenka, theo0918, TBs_LMC, Hexlorde, chimeycherical, gainpower, BreatheMeInLucifer, game_of_scones, lezascribbles, LobeliaSB, and 106 more users as well as 101 guests left kudos on this work!

Archive of Our Own

Actions

Work Header