Chapter Text
Fenris lost the battle against himself.
“Hawke?”
“Mm?” she said without looking up from the book in her lap.
Good, Fenris thought. It would make this easier. “Do I offend you in some way?” he said. He tried to keep his voice even, but a note of anger crept in. After all, what other reason could there be for her refusal to ever touch him?
Hawke chuckled softly. “Who gave you that idea? Anders?” She turned the page in her book, still reading as she spoke. “Sure, we don't always agree, and sure the shouting matches are spectacular,” she grinned down at her book. “But you know I love a good argument.”
“That isn't what I mean.”
“No?” Hawke turned another page.
“Do I repulse you?” he demanded.
Hawke finally looked up from her book and raise a dark eyebrow at his question. Her full attention made Fenris want to squirm. “Of course not, Fenris. What gave you that idea?” She frowned. “Did Anders give you that idea?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
How could she not know? “Hawke. You did.”
She blinked. “I did.” It was not a question. “I made you feel repulsive."
Fenris said nothing. Color threatened to flood his cheeks, and rather than let her see it, Fenris began stalking back and forth in front of the fire. A full minute dragged on in agitated silence.
“Fenris,” Hawke said. There was so much weight to his name from her lips. Confusion, shame, hurt. She said his name again, a gentle request.
“You don't touch me.” From under the fringe of white hair hanging over his face, he could see Hawke square her shoulders against the accusation.
“I pulled an arrow out of your shoulder two days ago. That doesn't count?”
“No.” He stopped pacing and glared down at her.
Hawke glared back. “What does count then? Do I need to give you a Maker-blessed sponge bath for it to count?”
Fenris did blush then. “Absolutely not.”
They continued to glare at one another for several long moments before Hawke sigh loudly and scrubbed a hand over her face. “Sit down.” And then, remembering not to command him, “Please.” She gave him a smile between grimace and grin. “You're making me claustrophobic.”
Fenris acquiesced and settled on the floor next to her.
“Tell me how I've made you feel that way?”
Fenris looked into the quixotic firelight to avoid meeting Hawke’s eyes. “Your nature is to express yourself through touch. You casually touch the others constantly, but you only touch me when there is a purpose to it.”
Her forehead wrinkled in confusion. “You don't like to be touched,” she said.
Fenris knew it should please him that she knew this about him and went out of her way to accommodate him, but it annoyed him instead. The way she was so careful with him spoke of pity, and Fenris hated it. He did not need and certainly did not want her pity. True, he hated being touched; a master’s touch meant pain for a slave. But that Hawke could see that so clearly, when he had never asked not to be touched, made him snarl at her. “I don't need your pity, Hawke.” In his mouth, her name sounded like a curse.
Hawke simply sighed. “It isn't pity, Fenris. It's respect. I am trying to respect your boundaries.” Her voice was gentle but insistent, and Fenris knew that he already believed her. It really was frustrating how much he trusted this woman.
He sighed shoved his hands through his hair. “I don't need you to treat me differently,” he said. His tone was still adamant, but without the venom.
“I treat everyone differently,” she pointed out. “I tell jokes to Varric and Isabella that I would never tell to Sebastian. I coddle Merrill in a way I would never dare coddle you.”
“I don't need coddling.”
Hawke rolled her eyes. “No, you don't.”
But she did anyway. Didn't she realize that going against her nature to avoid touching him was doing exactly that? “You have a point,” he said, “but this is not an instance where you need to treat me differently.”
“No?”
“No.”
Hawke paused for a moment processing his request. “Do you want me to touch you, Fenris?” she said seriously. When Fenris raised an eyebrow at her wording, she smiled and shrugged her shoulders at him.
“What I want is for you to be yourself with me,” he said.
“I'm not less myself because I try not to touch you.”
“You are.” And she was. She was more hesitant, colder with him than she was with the others. She sat in the pirate’s lap, played with the blood mage’s hair, even ran her fingers through the dwarf’s chest hair when she was drunk. A thousand meaningless touches that she stopped short of with Fenris. He found that those meaningless touches meant a great deal in their absence. He had assumed she didn't care for him all that much initially, but that idea seemed to contrast with how much she sought out his company. She and her books had become a regular installation in front of his fireplace. The clash in her behavior had confused him—if she wasn't opposed to his company, then it must have been his body that kept her from touching him.
Somehow, Fenris felt a little lighter knowing her strange behavior was due to her attempt to treat him with more care than she treated the others, not less.
“Hmm. I suppose you might be right,” she said. Fenris had to admit, he loved hearing those illusive words from her mouth. “I apologize that I made you feel singled out. It was unintentional.”
It was intentional, but it was well-intended, Fenris thought. With her, it seemed it was always damnably well intended. “Thank you, he said, and Hawke smiled at him.
How odd that Fenris was actually asking someone to touch him. He no longer had to accept the touches of others, and even more than disliking their touch, it gave Fenris a perverse kind of pleasure to deny people the option. It annoyed him when the dwarf insisted on slapping him on the back, or when Isabella took any and all opportunities to trail fingers across his wrist or brush her bosom against his shoulder. But it had annoyed him even more that Hawke had chosen not to touch him, and only him. He told himself it was because he wanted to be treated equally. It had angered him that she perceived him to be less worthy of her touch. But in the face of her thoughtful restraint, he found he couldn’t accept it gratefully. Was that still because he desired to be treated with equality? No less, but no more either? Fenris didn't know.
Fenris was startled from his thoughts by a body settling in beside him. Fenris looked over to find Hawke nestled against his side, curling her legs up beside her. She leaned into him and propped her book on his thigh. Too shocked to say anything, Fenris simply looked down at her, eyes wide. She looked up at him struggling to keep a straight face, clearly amused with herself.
“Better?” she asked. A grin broke through her control. She was pushing it, and she knew it.
“What do you think you're doing?” Fenris demanded.
She batted her lashes innocently at him. “Collecting on a year’s worth of inconvenience.”
Fenris's mouth opened, but refused to work for a moment. “So you treat me like a leper, and somehow I end up owing you?” He sounded more than a little annoyed with her.
For the briefest moment, a cringe flashed over Hawke's face. But immediately her grin was back, brasher than before. “Do you have any idea how difficult it’s been for me not to touch you? I'm a very invasive person,” she said as though it were a good thing. “And you...”
Suddenly she wasn't grinning anymore. Her eyes shifted to his hair and she reached her hand out towards it. Fenris reflexively cringed away from her touch, so near his face and ears. Hawke's eyes widened and the look in them deepened, became sadder. Fenris immediately felt guilty. Here he was, asking her to touch him, and the first time she tries to, he only reinforces the reason she hadn't done so for so long. She pulled her hand away from him towards her chest.
Without thinking, Fenris caught her hand before she could finish pulling it away. Unsure what he was doing or what to do next, he simply held her hand lightly and met her eyes. He had no context for the spark he saw in them. Fenris's heart thumped loudly in his ears, but Hawke did nothing, waiting for him to say or do something. She seemed content to wait with her hand caught in his as long as he needed. It was tempting to continue to be at a loss for words.
Fenris swallowed and said, “Go ahead.”
“Are you sure?”
He nodded. “It was unexpected, not unwelcome.” Fenris relaxed his hold on her hand.
She reached up, slower this time, and he allowed his fingers to trail down her arm. Tentatively she slid her fingers down a lock of his hair. She was careful not to actually touch his skin, just running her fingertips over the stark-white strands of his hair. Fenris wasn't sure whether he should panic at the contact or savor it. Gentleness was not something he was familiar with.
Hawke's grin was back, wide and silly. “Mmm. Just like I imagined.” She pulled her hand away, but even as Fenris was trying to decide whether to mourn its loss, she shifted closer and lay her head on his shoulder. “Soft as kitten fur.”
“So all of this,” he gestured to all of her curled against his side, “Is back-payment for my not allowing you to touch my hair for a whole year?” Fenris made no attempt to hide his amusement at the ridiculousness of the situation.
She nodded against his shoulder. “It looked soft.”
He shook his head, chuckling softly. “There really is no winning with you, is there?”
Her laughter reverberated through his chest. “So I've been told.” Hawke propped the book back up on his leg. “Now, if you don't mind, I’d like to get back to my book. Things were just starting to get really good.”
“What are you reading?” Fenris might not be able to read, but books fascinated him. The magneticism they seemed to have over those who read them—over Hawke.
She poked his leg with her finger. “That is not allowing me to continue reading.” But she was laughing and flipping the book to the cover with her finger trapped between the pages. Fenris glanced at the cover as she expected him to—the book was bound in new rigid leather still smelling like the tanners—and looked back at her. “It documents the Hero of Ferelden’s efforts during the Blight to save the kingdom. It's a fascinating account, really. Right now she’s in Orzammar, being forced to chose between Bhelen and Harrowmont. Personally, I'm routing for Bhelen. I like his views on the casteless dwarves.”
“You know the Hero supported Bhelen,” Fenris said.
“Shh. Don't ruin the ending,” she said. “You're welcome to read it with me if you like. You'll just have to be patient with me. Bethany was always complaining that I was a slow reader.”
“You are?” Fenris was pleasantly surprised at her assumption that he was a faster reader than she was. He was also ashamed that he couldn't reassure her of the opposite without revealing the truth.
“My eyes don't track the words properly. I end up reading the same line over and over sometimes. It's rather frustrating.”
His shame deepened at her openness about her weakness. “Why do it so often if it’s hard for you?” Fenris said.
“It's not that it's hard, per say. It’s just...inconvenient some times. Besides, I love the freedom books offer me. I can be anyone, anywhere—especially things I could never be on my own.”
Freedom, she had said. Books gave freedom. Yes, that was the true reason slaves weren't taught to read. It wouldn't do to have a slave escape, even it that escape was only in his own head. Fenris had always suspected as much, freedom and power, but to hear Hawke say it with such longing...what was it that she was looking to escape from? She was no slave, but the prospect of true freedom was as tantalizing to her as it was to him. It only increased his yearning to be able to read, and his bitterness that he never would.
“Read your book, Hawke. I am content.”
And he was. Though Hawke's nearness was unsettling in its strangeness, that was all it was. New. Different. Unexpected. Fenris breathed deeply and smelled leather and pine trees—Hawke's scent. The pressure of her body against the bare skin of his arm made his markings tingle and hum in a way that was...not altogether unpleasant.
Fenris gazed into the fire that was still burning high in the fireplace. The tongues lapped at one another, shifting and dancing in patterns indiscernible to the eye. How did Hawke manage to do it? How did she always manage to make him trust her just a little more, make him be just a little more vulnerable with her? Fenris would have suspected blood magic if the woman had been a mage. No, he thought, that isn't true. Even if she’d been a mage, what she did was no convention of magic. Blood magic was never so subtle, so gentle. Blood magic forced thoughts and action upon you, but they never felt like your own. And Fenris knew his thoughts and actions were his own. He trusted Hawke. It was not unconditional, nor was it limitless, but it was there nevertheless. And he let her in closer than he had ever allowed anyone. Which, he supposed, didn't say all that much considering the distance at which he held the rest of the world. But he had allowed Hawke closer and closer until she was now literally pressed up against his side. Fenris knew it was a dangerous thing. Trusting her, allowing her to see his vulnerabilities, gave her power over him. She could change her mind at any time and crush the fledgling, unnamed thing she’d allowed to grow inside him. Fenris didn't like it. The possibility frightened him. That was a vulnerability he would never show Hawke.
Fenris sighed. His only options were to stay or to run away, and his bones were achingly tired of running.
Next to him, Hawke's breathing slowed and grew deeper. Fenris looked down at her and saw her eyelids flutter and then shut. The book drooped from her hands into his lap. Hawke was asleep. Fenris couldn't help but smile. It wasn't as though he’d never seen the woman sleep before. He saw her sleep every time they found themselves camping along the Wounded Coast, or when they were all so blazingly drunk that they passed out around Varric's table, but none of those were as innocent, as intimate, as this. Hawke snuggled in closer to him in her sleep, wrapping her arms around his, and a jolt of electricity ran up the lyrium in his arm. Fenris reached out and ran his fingers through the curtain of black hair that had fallen over her face. It was only fair. Her hair was soft and feathery—he was never aware of wondering what Hawke's hair would feel like, but apparently this was in alignment with what he’d pictured.
Fenris was getting tired himself, so he picked the book up from his lap and lay it on the bench behind them. He eased himself sideways and out from under Hawke’s weight and laid her next to the fire. He grabbed one of the threadbare pillows from the bed he never used and tucked it under her head. He knew he could wake her up and tell her to go home, but it seemed unkind, and he honestly didn’t mind her presence.
Fenris quietly unbuckled his armor and laid it out on the empty bed. Normally he slept nude, allowing the lyrium to breathe. But out of his own sense of shame rather than for Hawke’s modesty, he left his leathers on. Fenris laid on the floor beside Hawke—not needing a pillow—and closed his eyes. He let himself be lulled by Hawke's rhythmic breathing, and when she fitfully tucked herself against his side, he didn't know whether to laugh or groan. He had created a monster. Fenris drifted toward the Fade with an exasperated smile ghosting his lips.