[ Master Post ]
Title: Rhapsody In Ass Major – Chapter 135
Co-Conspirator: 
MaverikLoki
Fandom: Dragon Age
Characters: Bethany Hawke ♀, Anders ♂, Fenris ♂
Rating: T (L2 N0 S2 V0 D0)
Warnings: Fenris and Anders may not be killing each other but it doesn't mean they have to like it, flirting, groping, questionable decisions
Notes: Things go from Bethany to worse.
They didn't hear footsteps. They merely saw a shadow in the doorway, then heard a woman clear her throat. They looked up at Bethany, Anders's hand still on Fenris's cheek, as the youngest resident Hawke slipped into the room, replaced a book on its shelf, and grabbed another. "Oh, don't mind me," she said, waving her hand at their stares. "I'll be out in a minute. Carry on!"
"It's… not what it looks like," Anders sputtered, still not taking his hand off Fenris's face. "We were studying Tevene, and he's got this pain…"
"Oh, I'm sure he's got a pain. Just like the pain my brothers get when you touch them like that," Bethany teased, still examining the shelves for another book. "Did you move any of my books?"
"Were they in Tevene?" Fenris asked, turning his head to look at Bethany, which pressed the corner of his mouth against Anders's palm. His lips crackled deliciously, and he tried to ignore that.
"Nevarran," Bethy replied, sliding one out of the top of a shelf.
"Then we haven't touched them," Anders assured her. "If it's not Tevinter, I haven't had my hands on it today."
Fenris kicked him sharply in the ankle.
"And what is Cormac making noise about, if you're down here, Anders?" Bethany asked, finally realising something wasn't right.
"Dunno. I think he was out with Isabela, this morning. He was yelling about ale and wenches when he came in." Anders shrugged like he was completely unconcerned with anything Cormac might be doing, which, by and large, he was. He was much more concerned that Bethy was asking about it.
"Was that an earthquake, earlier? Is Artemis here?" Bethany pulled over one of the ladders and climbed up to look at a higher shelf.
"My fault," both Fenris and Anders volunteered at the same time.
"Our fault," Anders corrected. "Mostly mine. I was teaching him a new spell, and it got away from him. Fenris was worried about him, so we… I have some neat tricks from the Circle."
"You are so amazingly full of shit, Anders," Bethany cooed, climbing back down with her books.
"Strangely, as much as I would like to agree with you, most of the time, you should ask Artemis about the spell Anders taught him. I'm sure he'll be happy to show it off, once he's back on his feet," Fenris muttered into Anders's palm. "I think he went to lie down and read. He's either asleep or he's cleaning in some unfathomable corner of this labyrinth."
Bethany nodded, her expression pleasantly neutral. Fenris could read Artemis like a book — and that was an analogy he could use now — but Bethany was a cipher. "Cleaning, knowing him," she said, adjusting her grip on the pile of books. "If you do see him, tell him to stay out of my room. It may be a mess to him, but it's an organised mess and I'll not have him messing up my notes again." She sauntered out of the room, humming under her breath.
"Venhedis," Fenris swore against Anders's palm. "Credere te putas?" he asked in Tevene, in case she was close enough to hear: do you think she believed that?
Anders's eyes crossed. "What did you just call--? Oh. Tevene. Sorry, my brain went Antivan for a moment. 'Putas' means… something very different in Antivan. Ha. Anyway." Anders let out a nervous laugh. "Yes, I hope so. Or… 'si, spero' if we're practising my pronunciation."
"Not terrible," Fenris muttered, and that was the highest praise Anders had gotten all day. He considered asking Anders to touch something other than his cheek in case anyone else came in to borrow a book, but then Anders might take that the wrong way. And there was really nowhere else Anders could touch him that wouldn't raise a few eyebrows.
"Just pray there are no more earthquakes in the next few minutes."
"Maker's aching balls, there better not be." Anders looked dreadfully distressed, for a moment, at that thought. "How fast does he recover, with you? I think we have another few minutes before it's even possible."
"Faster than with you, clearly." Fenris looked a little smug. "But, the real question is how fast he'll recover with Cormac, and we've both seen that."
"Shit. We're going to die. Bethany's going to kill us both. Painfully." Anders looked just about as thrilled as he'd been the last time one of the cats had vomited in his boot.
"It's Bethany. The 'painfully' is implied," Fenris muttered.
"I should probably be on the other side of you, if I'm going to keep touching you. It's a little awkward for me to reach or for you to see the book, like this." Anders stood up into the narrow space between the couch and the table, hand still on Fenris's face.
Putting his hand on Anders's, Fenris moved over on the couch, taking Anders's seat, which was still deeply indented. He forgot, sometimes, just how large Anders actually was, since, as an elf, pretty much any human was taller than him, so he just stopped paying attention. Looking up from Anders's knees, just put him eye to crotch with the man. That didn't really help. What helped less was that he was now surrounded by the faint scent of Anders — much less offensive than he wanted it to be.
After a moment, Anders sat back down in the space Fenris had vacated, his hand sliding back to cup the back of Fenris's neck again. "Better?" he asked, following the words with a syrupy trickle of electricity down Fenris's spine.
Fenris's eyes slid closed, a moan escaping him before he could bite it off. Venhedis, that felt incredible.
"I'll take that as a yes," Anders said, chuckling softly. Fenris's glare lacked heat.
Anders slid the book closer so that it was between them again, the hush of leather against wood filling the quiet. Tilting his head, he paused to listen for a moment, fingers still sparking along Fenris's skin. "Hm."
"Hmm?" Fenris echoed.
"It's quiet."
Fenris blinked at him a moment before Anders's meaning sank in. Cormac and quiet rarely went together. "Is there a gag in that drawer of…" Fenris grappled for a word."…objects?"
"No. Neither of us are — no."
"Then I suspect Artemis has found more creative means of silencing his brother," Fenris said, slanting a look at Anders. And there was an image, one that went a little too well with the trickle of electricity down his back. "Which doesn't solve the problem of earthquakes but at least avoids the suspicion of earthquakes with Cormac's shouting."
"Oh, I'm sure he's got all sorts of creative ways of shutting Cormac up. It's kind of a pity that it's necessary, though. I love listening to him. You know the weirdest things come out of his mouth. It's amazing." Anders smiled fondly, and his fingers crackled a little more intently.
Fenris struggled to control his breathing as the trickle turned into a crawling torrent under his skin. How had he come to this? To the most annoying mage in all of Thedas pouring the most wonderful sensations through the aching lines etched in his skin. The pain had stopped. The itching had stopped. All that remained was this crisp tingle that went straight to his knob. "I do not want to know about what goes into or comes out of Cormac's mouth," Fenris choked out.
"Sounds like you're having enough trouble with what comes out of your mouth," Anders observed. "You all right?"
"I… I'm…" Fenris settled for a nod when he couldn't quite get the words to line up right.
"You're…?" Anders watched him dubiously, eyes narrowed to slits until Fenris made another sound in the back of his throat, arching back into Anders's hand. "Oh."
"Quiet," Fenris growled, fighting not to squirm. His ears were moving enough for the rest of him, twitching in time to the sparks running down his spine. His hands were white-knuckled around the edge of the couch.
Teasing jabs danced on the tip of Anders's tongue, but for once he knew enough to rein them in. "Do you want me to stop?" he asked because Fenris didn't look like he could pull away if he wanted to.
Fenris choked on his reply, knowing he should say yes but, "No."
Anders's surprise was subtle, eyebrows raised, eyes closed, a nod tipped just a bit to the side. He didn't trust himself to speak, for a little while, but just let his hand continue as it had been, stroking current against the lines on the back of Fenris's neck, listening to the sounds Fenris made. Finally, he backed down a bit and asked. "Are you sure this is what you want? Those don't sound like happy noises."
Panting, as he tried to recover what was left of his wits, Fenris just let words leave his mouth, ragged and breathy. "You upset me. Constantly. You annoy me just because you can. You're human. You're a mage. You learned to read Tevene so you could run away and become a magister — which wouldn't have worked, anyway. You — you fucked my mage, and he liked it. Your ugly human knob is revolting. You irritate me endlessly."
"You know, I can stop…" Anders eased back a little on the force of the current and Fenris grabbed his wrist.
"No!" The frustration was obvious in Fenris's tone. "You heal me. You tell me secrets. You teach me. You help me. You make the pain stop, even as you continue to be a lasting pain in my ass."
"You don't want this from me, Fenris. You want this from Artie." Anders shook his head, but didn't move his hand. He wouldn't take that away from Fenris, until he was completely sure the elf could handle it.
"Why are you so difficult?" Fenris demanded, leaning back against Anders's hand.
And then Anders's mouth got away from him. "It's just because you haven't made me hard. Yet." The 'yet' was an afterthought. As much as he teased, this really hadn't been his intent. Still, the thought had crossed his mind a few times, and he wasn't going to turn down an offer, but it would have to be an honest offer, not some half-thought gibbering after a spell gone wrong.
"Yet." Fenris choked out a laugh and covered his eyes. "What are we doing?"
"What do you want to be doing?" Anders asked.
"I… I don't…" Fingers of one hand dug into couch cushions, worrying at the fabric. His other hand still clutched Anders's wrist. "I don't know." He didn't know what he wanted, just knew that he wanted. He knew he didn't want Anders to stop, didn't want to lose that soothing charge just under his skin. He looked at the mage, close enough to count each bit of stubble, but blinked and missed the way amber eyes flashed blue.
Justice was constant chatter in the back of Anders's mind,all but vibrating at the feel of lyrium against his fingertips, wanting to taste that lyrium against his tongue. Anders tamped down on the spirit's desires. Fenris was already glowing enough for the two of them.
"What do you want, Fenris?" Anders asked again. He didn't want to pull away, but he would if he didn't get an answer this time, a clear answer. Fenris squeezed his wrist harder, hard enough to hurt, and Anders retaliated with a sharper jolt down his spine, making the elf's back bow.
A growl was Anders's only warning before he found himself pinned to the back of the couch, the hand on his throat more a warning than a weight, in an echo of his hand still cupping the back of Fenris's neck. Fenris's eyes were more black than green, and Anders wondered if this was how he was going to die.
"More," Fenris demanded, eyes losing that wild gleam, for a moment, as he realised what he was doing.
"I'm not Artie," Anders warned him. "You squeeze any harder and we're done."
Fenris's eyes slid shut, and he rested his forehead against Anders's cheek. "Please…" His fingers spread and his hand moved down, settling in the centre of Anders's chest.
Anders's fingers twitched as he stopped himself from batting the hand away, when it landed on that scar. Fenris didn't know. Anders didn't want to talk about it. And the last thing he wanted was to piss Fenris off, right now. "You really don't know, do you?" It finally occurred to him that perhaps Fenris wasn't just confused from the current under his skin.
"It doesn't feel the same," Fenris said, like that should explain everything. After a few moments of confused silence from Anders, he realised it probably didn't. "His magic demands, and I am strangely happy to give. Yours coaxes and teases. I don't know how to do this, but I don't want you to stop."
"I'm a horrible tease. Gets me into just as much trouble as it gets me out of," Anders joked, still trying to figure out what to do with that information. "Are you going to regret this? If you're going to regret this, I don't want to do it. I'm not going to stop being a pain in the ass. That's … I've always been a pain in the ass, sometimes more literally than others, but I'm really not interested in giving you the literal ass-pain."
"Anders." Fenris's voice was as firm as it could be, under the circumstances. "Just touch me."
And that wasn't an answer, not really, but Anders took it for what it was: a request to stop talking. His free hand came around to touch Fenris at the small of his back, where it had rested before. Electricity ran in rippling currents up and down Fenris's spine, and Fenris's breathing was harsh and heavy against Anders's neck. Feeling that breath against his skin, Anders wondered for a moment if Fenris was going to make good on that threat to bite him after all. But Fenris's touch was soft, tentative, a press of nose and lips against the column of his throat.
"Like this?" Anders asked, words poured into one pointed ear.
A rumbling sound caught in Fenris's throat, echoed in his chest like a purr. The image of Fenris as a great big cat, half in his lap, made Anders smile. The hand at Fenris's back trailed up under his tunic, pressing palm and fingers to skin in a way that had the elf's hips squirming. He pulled a little, and Fenris moved, sliding across his thighs to straddle his lap.
