Work Text:
The knock on his door, about ten minutes after they’ve returned to the mansion, takes Anders by surprise. He’s already shrugged out of his waterlogged coat, hung it up on the peg before the fireplace, and is attempting to coax the small flame between his hands to take root in the logs he’s laid out in the hearth.
“Come in,” he calls over his shoulder, catching his bottom lip between his teeth in concentration.
The door opens and then is latched again, near silent footsteps sounding behind him. Anders sighs happily as the tinder finally catches, and he holds his hands out to the flames, rubbing them briskly a few times before climbing reluctantly to his feet.
Fenris is as drenched through after walking to Hightown in the rain as Anders is, but he’s only succeeded in taking off his gauntlets so far. He stands there, just inside Anders’ door, dripping onto the hardwood. They stare at each other for a moment, then two, Anders waiting for Fenris to speak, until Fenris shivers, breaking the spell between them. And there’ve been a lot of those moments lately, looks held just a little too long and a little too intensely to be without meaning.
“Maker, Fenris,” Anders scolds, “you’ll freeze to death if you just stand there. Why are you still in your wet things? Oh, never mind, just – come here.” He steps forward and drags Fenris to stand in front of the fire, fingers tripping over the clasps and buckles of Fenris’s armor. It’s nothing he’s not helped with before, but Fenris’s silence is different, and maybe Anders’ fussing is too when there’s not a wound somewhere to be tended to. Anders doesn’t let that stop him, just tugs and fiddles until the breastplate and pauldrons fall to the floor, then comes around and kneels in front of Fenris to work his belt with its pouches off.
“Anders,” Fenris says hoarsely, catching hold of Anders’ hair and tipping his face up to look at him. In the firelight, Fenris is a work of art, his skin bronzed and wet hair darkened to silverite, the low glow of his lyrium like a backlight to the rest of him, and Anders’ breath catches in his throat.
“Yes?” Anders whispers, pushing wet hair out of his eyes. Then Fenris swears in Tevinter – Tevene, Fenris says it’s called – and hauls Anders to his feet to kiss him breathless.
And it’s a shock, but not entirely unexpected – not after all the weeks, months, years they’ve spent building to this, all the stolen glances over card games, how Fenris welcomed Anders into his home like he belonged there when the templars in Darktown became too much of a threat, and the way they fit together under the same roof. Fenris, rescuing kittens to bring home to him; Anders, allowed to cook in a real kitchen for the first time in his life. Anders knitting lumpy scarves that Fenris actually wears over his armor while Fenris tries to coax Anders into an appreciation for fine wine. All those moments of domesticity that Isabela teases them for. Little things, really, things anyone else might take for granted, but not Fenris, not Anders, not after everything. They never expected this, reaching the point where their hurts and pasts and disagreements ceased to have the same power when buried under years of amicable friendship and months of…more, a sharing of new experiences as free men.
Fenris starts the kiss hesitantly when he gets Anders to his level. He brushes his lips over Anders’, the briefest of touches, doesn’t press forward again till Anders leans after him, and then it’s a series of feather-light kisses showered over Anders’ lips, corner to corner.
Anders laughs at him. “Fenris, just-” he wraps an arm around Fenris’s shoulders to pull him close and tips his chin back with his other hand, sealing their lips together in a proper kiss, long and lingering, deep, opening his mouth to tease at the seam of Fenris’ lips with his tongue.
“Oh,” Fenris says when they break apart for want of air. He smiles, touches his mouth with his fingers.
“Thank the Maker, I was beginning to think you were never actually going to do that.” Anders says, giddy. He feels a bit drunk, really, and it’s not because he convinced Justice to allow them some wine tonight at The Hanged Man.
Fenris rolls his eyes.
“You could just as easily have made the first move,” he says.
“Bit awkward, though, don’t you think, what with me being the tenant here and all?” Anders quips, clasping his cold hands together to try and still their trembling before Fenris can notice.
“You have been more than just a tenant for a long time,” Fenris murmurs. He covers Anders’ hands with one of his own, and when Anders inhales, reaches up to toy with a stray bit of Anders’ hair. “You are particularly attractive when you’re wet, you know.”
A strangled sound escapes Anders’ throat. Fenris smirks.
And that’s as good of an invitation as any Anders has ever had for more kissing.
“This might be more comfortable on the bed,” Anders says, an indeterminable amount of time later. He grins down at Fenris’s disheveled look, his lips kiss-swollen and hair mussed. He did that. He put that glazed look in Fenris’s bright eyes.
“Hm.” Fenris plucks at the ties of Anders’ shirt. “You’ll need to be wearing far less for that.”
“That can be arranged.” Anders’s trousers are still uncomfortably wet, anyways.
He shucks his shirt off and tosses it onto a chair, grinning. A little hip shimmy to get the rest of his clothes off, and Anders ducks around Fenris to throw himself back on the bed.
Fenris is slower to move, his gaze sweeping over Anders’ body with an intensity that raises the gooseflesh on Anders’ arms. He has seen most of Anders before – there is not much privacy to be had on long trips up the coast, to say nothing of sharing their space for so long – but Anders knows it’s different like this. When he’s naked just for Fenris. The moment draws out long enough that Anders starts to feel self-conscious. He’s not as young as he once was, and his knees are maybe a little too knobby, and the scars around his wrists and ankles from too many times clapped in irons to be dragged back to the Tower are downright ugly. He’s got scars from fighting darkspawn, too, and other scars he just doesn’t talk about.
Fenris drags his shirt over his head and speaks as he’s peeling off his leggings.
“You’ve filled out,” he says, with no small amount of satisfaction.
“Excuse me?”
“Since living here,” Fenris clarifies, wiping additional mud from his bare feet with his leggings before he tosses them aside. He’s not wearing any smalls, but Anders knows from a drunken confession a long time ago that he never does, and that’s why Isabela never guesses right.
“Ah…” Anders isn’t quite sure what to say to that. Getting fat has never really been on his list of flaws, but he supposes he is quite thicker about the waist than he used to be. He frowns.
Fenris crawls onto the bed after him and settles himself over Anders’ thighs.
“Anders. Stop fretting. It suits you,” Fenris grumbles. He runs his hands over Anders’ sides like he’s some kind of skittish colt, which does cause Anders to jolt because his hands are damn cold. “You look…healthier. Happier.”
Anders breathes in, met with the scent of rainwater and lyrium and red wine.
“Being with you makes me happy,” Anders confesses. “Happier than I ever thought I’d get to be.”
Fenris kisses him slow and gentle, his hands on Anders’ shoulders, already getting warmer from Anders’ skin. But Anders has that bone-deep chill in him from so long in the rain, and he shivers in the open air.
“Under the covers?” he asks hopefully. Fenris nods emphatically, and together they peel Anders’ blankets back and shuffle under them till everything below their chins is covered. Anders lays on his side, intent on snuggling Fenris close to him again, and he isn’t paying attention until he feels icy toes jammed under his leg. “Andraste’s flaming knickers!” he yelps, glaring when Fenris only gives him a few innocent blinks of his green eyes. “Oh sweet Maker, that’s cold. You need shoes, elf.”
Fenris makes a derisive noise and buries his face in Anders’ chest, keeping his toes firmly where they are.
“I am not a blanket,” Anders complains. Fenris doesn’t seem to agree. With a long-suffering sigh, Anders lets it go, cupping Fenris’ cheek in his hand to carry on where they left off.
They trade slow, lazy kisses, bodies pressed together under the blankets. Outside, wind lashes the rain against Anders’ window. The steady drizzling on the roof overhead mixes with the crackle of the fire, the sounds a soothing tempo in the background. It’s comforting, really, when they’re in out of it, safe, and warm, and together.
They fall asleep like that, a tangle of limbs under the blankets.
*********
Fenris wakes sometime in the middle of the night, wrapped around Anders’ back. The blankets have slipped down to his waist, exposing his shoulder and upper body. Anders is warm in his arms, but the room is freezing again, the fire down to nothing but embers.
Pressing a kiss to Ander’s shoulder, Fenris disentangles himself carefully and crawls out of the bed. He hisses softly at how cold the floor is under his bare toes, and hurries to add a few logs to the fire. While he waits for them to catch, he peeks back at the bed. Anders sleeps like the dead when he’s not having nightmares; a lifetime of experience sleeping near lots of other people and in uncomfortable places has given him the ability to drop off anywhere with ease. It’s an ability Fenris has envied before, always too alert even in his sleep to rest as well as Anders does. Tonight, though, it’s a relief, letting him tend the fire and use the chamberpot without waking his bed partner.
Fenris rubs his cold shoulder, the one not covered by the blanket earlier, and decides he might need to put a shirt back on. When he picks his up from the floor, though, it’s still wet. Fenris sighs. He drapes his shirt over the arm of a chair and tiptoes towards Anders’ wardrobe, digging around where he knows Anders’ keeps his shirts by touch till he finds a soft one to pull on. It drapes around him, his shoulders so much less broad than Anders, and falls to his mid-thigh, but it’ll keep him warmer. And it smells like Anders.
He slips back into bed, smiling when Anders breathes out and rolls over to curl around him without waking up.
*********
Anders wakes with the sun on his face, mid-morning light streaming through the east-facing window by his bed, and an armful of elf. Last night comes back in a rush, the usual night out at the tavern and the rain and then kissing each other senseless, their arms around each other a perfect fit, like a haven they’d both been made for.
Anders nuzzles Fenris’ neck, just under his hairline, and breathes him in, warmth filling his whole body.
“Mm, good morning,” Fenris rumbles, with his deliciously rough morning voice.
Anders smiles against his skin. “Morning, love.”
Fenris rolls his head to peer at him with bleary eyes, one eyebrow raised.
“What?” Anders asks, shifting over so Fenris can roll all the way onto his back and then settling himself halfway on top of him again.
Fenris’s gaze is intent on his face. There’s a thoughtful wrinkle to his brow that smooths away the longer he looks at Anders, and then his eyes are practically glowing with happiness. He touches Anders’ face.
“My love,” Fenris murmurs, like he’s trying the words out on his tongue and finding them pleasing, if the smile on his face is anything to go by.
Anders’ face flames as he realizes what he’d just said without even thinking about it. But that giddy feeling from last night is back.
He kisses Fenris’s fingers and meets his smile.
“Did you sleep well?” Anders asks.
Fenris gives an affirming noise, his eyes still dancing over Anders’ face.
“Sap,” Anders accuses. Fenris shrugs both his shoulders. Anders shakes his head and ducks his head, planting wet kisses along the line of Fenris’s jaw. He pushes the shirt aside to get at Fenris’s collarbone, then pauses, head tilting. “Is that my shirt?”
“I was cold,” Fenris says – no, whines. That’s a sound Anders never expected to hear from him.
Anders runs his hands up Fenris’s side, under the fabric.
“I’m not complaining,” he placates, till Fenris looks smug and pleased. Anders makes a face as his bladder makes its presence known. “Give me a sec, love.” He wriggles his way out of bed and goes to pull on a pair of sleep pants and relieve himself. He grabs the bottoms that match Fenris’s shirt in a fit of sentimentality he’s pretty keen to indulge himself in.
Fenris picks up their clothing from last night while he’s gone, spreading it out properly in front of the fire so the damp patches can dry. He chuckles when Anders’ shirt slips off his shoulder, impeding his movement somewhat. He has to grab a fistful of fabric to keep it from falling into the flames when he bends to tend the fire. Then he stacks his armor, making a face at the fact that he didn’t dry it properly. He’ll have to oil the metal bits later, to keep it from rusting.
Anders leans against the door, his grey tabby weaving around his ankles as he watches Fenris shuffle around while positively swimming in his shirt.
“It’s impolite to stare,” Fenris says, turning around and placing his hands on his hips, which gathers the shirt in under his hands and leaves the upper half of it billowing.
Anders saunters forward. “Is it staring when the watching is purely appreciative?” he purrs.
“Perhaps not,” Fenris relents, smiling at him with his mouth and eyes alike. It’s a brighter smile than Anders thinks he has ever seen on Fenris before.
Anders plops onto the bed, fluffing the pillows into a backrest as he watches Fenris lift his breastplate in his hands to assess it, and then set it back down. He puts his elbow on his knee and leans his face on his hand.
“You look positively edible in my clothes,” Anders declares.
Fenris laughs. He climbs onto the bed and straddles Anders’ lap.
“Well hello,” Anders says, cupping the back of Fenris’s head and drawing him down for a kiss.
Fenris breaks the kiss with another snort of laughter as the shirt slips off both shoulders at once.
“Apparently, I did not realize you were so much…broader, than I,” Fenris says.
“Ah-ah. You said you liked me this stout,” Anders says. He reaches out, straightening it for him.
“I never used the word ‘stout,’” Fenris objects.
“I’m pretty sure it was implied,” Anders says, grinning to make it clear that he’s joking.
“Ugh.” Fenris casts his eyes at the ceiling, as though some help will be available to him from above. He gets an answer, but not the one he expects, as a little black cat with white paws and a splash of white on the end of her tail (rather like it’s been dipped in white paint) comes in through the open door after her sister, meowing loudly.
“I think the girls are hungry,” Anders says, reaching out to pet down the back of his tabby as she jumps onto the bed. “Are you hungry, Lady Whiskers?” he coos.
The black cat sits on the floor beside the bed and stares up at them with a kind of dignified expectation. She meows again, pointedly.
Fenris makes a face. “Niensis is, yes.”
Anders pokes him in the stomach.
“She has you so well trained. She just meows at you, and you jump to do whatever she wants,” Anders teases.
Fenris gives him an incredulous look, glancing deliberately at where Lady Whiskers has just flopped onto her back and Anders had immediately started giving her a belly rub.
Anders says, “All right, you got me.”
Fenris leans over to get a better view of Niensis, his shirt slipping almost completely off the one arm and all the way up to his chin on the other side.
“Look at this,” Fenris straightens, taking hold of the front of the shirt and pulling it away from his body to show Anders how much give it has. “This is truly ridiculous.”
“It’s a sleep shirt, Fenris, it’s loose even on me,” Anders laughs. He covers Fenris’s hand with his and uses their hold on the shirt to pull Fenris closer. “And it’s not ridiculous, it’s edible,” he corrects, kissing Fenris open-mouthed.
Fenris’s scoff is quickly muffled by Anders’ lips. He lets himself be mollified, sinking into the kiss, arms looping around Anders’ neck. He bends, mouthing along the column of Anders’ throat.
“Let’s do nothing but stay in bed today,” Anders says, his head tilting to give Fenris better access.
“I believe the cats would object,” Fenris says dryly, nipping lightly at Anders’ earlobe. “To say nothing of your own stomach.”
Anders rolls his eyes. “I mean aside from getting up for the essentials, silly.” He pulls back and pecks Fenris on the mouth, then waggles his eyebrows.
Fenris considers him, his lips quirking.
“I can think of worse things,” Fenris says slowly, the warmth in his eyes at odds with his words. “Worse things indeed.”
