[ Master Post ]
Title: Rhapsody In Ass Major – Chapter 134
Co-Conspirator: 
MaverikLoki
Fandom: Dragon Age
Characters: Cormac Hawke ♂, Anders ♂, Fenris ♂
Rating: T (L2 N0 S0 V0 D0)
Warnings: Fenris and Anders may not be killing each other but it doesn't mean they have to like it, Anders cites some gross-out moments from the tower, discussions of Cormac's toys, flirting
Notes: More explorations of Tevinter history and commentary on some more personal history.
Hours later, Cormac returned, throwing the door shut behind him, and calling out, "Ale and wenches is what I need!"
"Ale's downstairs, but we're all out of wenches," Anders called back, from the library. "Unless you want Bethy, and I think she's getting Nevarran in the drawing room again. Skulls and crystals everywhere, the last time I was through."
"What are you—" Cormac started, leaning around the doorframe, into the library. He stopped when he spotted Anders and Fenris shoulder to shoulder, over a book. He could see the dim glow in the hand that rested on Fenris's shoulder.
"We're reading some of your books. The Tevinter ones about elves." Anders looked up like this was a perfectly reasonable way to spend a Wednesday afternoon, with someone who mostly couldn't stand him. "I'm telling you, Fenris, it's not at all related to 'wer'. In what world would 'way' become 'man'? 'Wer' is Avvar."
"Your brother's upstairs, cleaning your room," Fenris pointed out, instead of answering Anders.
"Well, since nobody's dying in here, and thank you for keeping the blood off the furniture, Fenris, I'm going to go check on Artie. If he's rearranging that drawer again, I swear to Andraste…" Cormac blew a kiss to Anders and headed up the stairs to his room.
"Of course I'm keeping the blood off the furniture," Fenris huffed. "Artemis may no longer live here, but he still insists on cleaning."
"Thank you, Fenris," Anders said, his eye-roll almost audible in its intensity. "Very reassuring." Though really, if Fenris hadn't punched a hole through his chest yet, Anders suspected he wouldn't, especially after that ridiculous moment where Fenris had tried to show him how to roll his r's. In the end, Anders had given up and blown him a raspberry. Fenris had been less than amused.
Fenris ignored the mage and tried to focus on the page they'd left off on before they'd gotten sidetracked. He stared at a few letters before giving up and asking, "That's the second time that drawer has come up. What is in that drawer? Or… no, I don't want to know, do I?"
Anders opened and closed his mouth a few times, fighting not to smirk. "Well, that depends. If Artie is the one making use of its… contents, then you might."
Fenris looked like he might be verging on delirium, eyes a little wild, face tense, as he remembered, "Cormac has a—"
"Not 'a'. Many. An entire collection. A veritable library of fascinating objects for various orifices, several of which I know Artemis enjoys just as much as Cormac." Anders smiled slyly, gesturing to the word Fenris's finger was on. "Secunda."
"Yes, but… Several? What is the point in more than one?" Fenris just looked confused, although he supposed if one was the jade wand of ass-destruction, a second, smaller one might be worth having.
"They're all different. There's the knobby one, the one with the loose silverite balls in it, the one that looks like a tentacle — I will not go near that one. Did I ever tell you how I almost lost half my intestines to a tentacle? No? Let me not tell that story. It's not sexy. The one that's cast after me, the one that's cast after Cormac — he's very proud of having fucked himself, you know — the spiral-carved one… All different shapes and sizes, and that's just the ones you'd recognise the uses of. He's got some less obvious ones in there, too." Anders shrugged and ran a sparking finger down the back of Fenris's neck. "Me, I just have one. Gift from Sigrun, when I was still a Warden."
Fenris looked a bit ill. It took him a moment to get past the word 'tentacle', and then he was tripping over the next set of words. "Cast… after?" His stare dropped to Anders's crotch before he could catch himself, shaking his head and looking around the room at anything that wasn't a mage. He didn't realise that was a thing that was possible, let alone a thing that was desirable… let alone a thing that was done. "Isn't that… redundant if he already has the original? Having one of… those… cast after you, that is."
Anders laughed. "I don't think there's such a thing as 'redundancy' in Cormac's mind. Only 'more options'."
Fenris couldn't stop his ears from twitching, the left one canted higher than the right. Two flagpoles. Two, as if one weren't enough. He wondered what it was about Hawkes and their appreciation for wands of ass-destruction, which — huh.
Oh.
Fenris pointedly did not glance at Anders's crotch as something occurred to him. Through grit teeth, he said, "Please tell me Cormac's is the only one of… those… cast after your — cast after you."
As if on cue, the floor under his feet rumbled, and he growled.
"Nope! I left the pattern with the stoneworks. There's not many that I know about, though. Isabela has one. I think she uses it for other things, though. Threatening people, I suspect." Anders smiled slyly, watching Fenris out of the corner of his eye, as he ran another light spark down the back of Fenris's neck. "You could get him one after you, you know. Lyrium engraved, even. Maybe some runes at the base for extra fun. You know how much he likes pushing the limits. You could have him twice, at once, and you wouldn't have to touch Cormac to get there."
Eyes sliding shut, Fenris tried to look like he wasn't considering it, wasn't thinking about his mage stuffed achingly full of him, panting and squeaking. The gentle current Anders had been maintaining wasn't much helping, either, although it had been helping him concentrate. There was so much more space in his mind, without the constant itching in his skin. "Speaking of runes, do you think adding an electrical rune to my armour might serve as a more permanent solution to another problem?" He was starting to appreciate Anders's hands, and that unsettled him badly.
Hand still moving, still sparking, Anders paused to consider that. "There's a thought," he said. "We could try it. Remind me to ask Messere 'Enchantment' downstairs. You should see the wonders that boy works with runes. Oh, though I suppose you already have." He tapped his lip with his free hand, gaze turning inward. "We'd just have to make sure to use the right kind of charge. It rather defeats the purpose if we end up with a fried elf, doesn't it?"
Fenris didn't return his grin. "I imagine it does," he said. "Though that's why we have a healer." Gruffly, he added, "You do have some uses, after all." Another spark racing down his spine had him sucking in a breath, his show of nonchalance ruined.
"'Uses'," Anders replied with a wry twist of his lips. "You're not the first person to tell me that." Still, he imagined an electricity rune would go a long way towards relieving Fenris's chronic crankiness.
"I have little interest in the usual uses I imagine you're put to," Fenris choked out, words something of a dazed growl.
"Really? I always thought you rather enjoyed my more recent common uses. Healing, more healing, sticking people to the floor so you can stab them, teaching Artemis to keep himself safe…" Anders trailed off, pressing a somewhat stronger jolt against Fenris's skin. "But, maybe you would have liked me better when I was chained to the wall, a pincushion and a toilet."
There was a bitterness that Fenris recognised in those words, however casually Anders tried to say them, and bile rose up in his throat as the image of Anders, like that, flickered through his mind. He'd gotten a hint of some of the scars, now and again, and he'd always sort of wondered what could do that to a healer — even more now that he'd seen Anders put Artie's intestines back in, without a mark. The last jolt crackled through his fingers, still, uncomfortable not in the sensation, but in the implications. "That's not what I meant," he said, finally, pushing his hair back from his face.
"No?" Anders's smile didn't reach his eyes.
"No," Fenris said, more firmly. He thought of chains of his own, of scars his 'master' had healed, scars that glowed blue, rippling with energy at each touch of Anders's sparking fingers. "And you know that." Anders's disjointed smile slipped, his gaze turning inward. "You do know that, don't you?"
Anders's hand didn't pause. "I suppose I do. Considering the number of times you have threatened to use me as a pincushion but never followed through. Is that what you are then, Fenris? All bark and no bite?" And this was dangerous, he knew. No, this was stupid. He shouldn't be baiting the elf, but here he was, fingertips still tracing skin as he taunted the elf and smiled.
"And if I bit you? What good would come of it?" Fenris asked, mildly, reminding himself that Artemis would be extremely upset if he broke the healer.
"I might come of it, but you knew that," Anders joked, tapping a finger against a tiny gap between Fenris's belt and the rest of the split in the back of his tunic.
Fenris squirmed, this time. That had poured right into the space between his hips, and it was at once intoxicating and revolting. "You're like Cormac, then? Confused about the line between violence and pleasure?" Even as he said it, he thought almost the same about Artemis. And somehow, with Artemis, it was both more and less vile, in very different ways.
"No." Anders studied the page before them, intently. "Not at all. I've had enough of that." It was mostly true. It was true while he was sober. It was usually true while he was drunk. But, there was that level of drunkenness where his memory of the night before consisted of the aches in his body. "Still not going to turn down a firm bite, as long as it's not the left nipple."
"Not the…?" Fenris started to ask before trailing off, crinkled brow smoothing over. He'd had precious few glimpses of Anders's torso in the years he'd known the mage, but he'd seen the scars, most notably the giant, gnarled one in the middle of his chest. "That is… implying you wouldn't mind being bitten elsewhere, when I've heard you complain of a certain cat you like to call 'Lord Assbiter'."
A laugh choked out of Anders, his face twisting. "And that is not what I meant." He retaliated with another jolt down Fenris's back, a hair sharper than the last, and grinned at the way Fenris's toes curled. "Bites from cats are decidedly less sexy."
Which implied that a bite from Fenris would be. It was something Fenris told himself he wasn't considering, but the sparking touch that had been grounding was becoming distracting instead. He thought of his mage, of Artemis in shouting — and shaking — distance, but decided that Artemis would only egg the two of them on.
Fenris swallowed, mouth dry, and tried to focus on the page in front of him.
"You're actually thinking about it, aren't you?" Anders asked, without looking up from the page. He tapped another word.
"Dracones," Fenris said, avoiding the obvious question, in favour of the implied one. "Datur per dracones. That… can't be right." He batted Anders's hand out of the way of the rest of the line. Except that was exactly what it said.
Anders, of course, had already absorbed most of the page, in passing. "Designed by the Old Gods to be written into the elves sent to serve them. Runes, almost, really. It's… surprisingly similar, even if I haven't seen that design or any mention of lyrium."
"Serendipity said she'd seen it once before, in a book. Obviously, not this one. Just the design, I expect," Fenris mumbled, still dazed both by the concept and by Anders's hands.
"We should see if we can borrow it from her. At least someone in this house should be able to read it, no matter what it's written in." Anders took his hand back, to stretch his fingers and rub some feeling back into his palm.
The difference was immediate, and Fenris made a strangled sound. Anders's other hand was on him, in a second, cupping his cheek, as the easiest bit of skin to reach, fingers lighting with electricity, again.
"I'm sorry. I didn't think. My hand was just getting stiff…"
Fenris sagged under the touch of electricity, the gentle current soothing away his aches. "No, it's…" Fenris cleared his throat, forced himself to straighten, to school his expression. It took all his willpower not to lean into the hand on his cheek. "I am used to it." Or at least, he had been. Now that he knew what it was like to not be pain, he wanted to cling to that.
Anders hummed. "Still. We should really talk to Sandal about that rune. It's not like I can keep my hands on you all the time." The grin he gave Fenris said he mightn't mind it.
"I suspect not," Fenris replied. "Nor Artemis, though not for lack of trying."
Anders felt Fenris's cheek muscles twitch in the barest of smiles.
