At Your Side (A Dragon Age fanfiction)

Year Two: Diamondback

Her lips moved across his flesh, leaving fire leaping just under his skin wherever they moved. He arched into the touch. Such pleasure was beyond his capacity to endure; he could never have imagined that anyone could inspire such intensity of sensation within his body. He heard himself moan, the sound echoing strangely ...

Fenris's eyes opened, and he bolted upright off the mattress. The covers were tangled around his legs, his chest running with sweat. It was a hot night in Kirkwall, but not hot enough to have agitated him so badly. The dream came back to him, the feel of Hawke's mouth and hands on his body as stimulating in memory as they had been the night he'd spent in her arms. His body ached for release, but not as desperately as his heart ached for her.

Nothing had been quite the same between them since he'd fled the Viscount's throne room after her duel with the Arishok. She'd come out of that experience with hard eyes and an air of aloofness, completely in keeping with her new persona as the Champion, but not the Hawke Fenris had grown to care for. He hated to see it in her, but what right did he have to complain? He was the one who had gotten her into that duel in the first place. So he kept his own counsel and stayed away from her, as he should have done from the beginning. He couldn't regret what had happened between them—those were the most precious of the small stock of memories he possessed, and would be a warmth and a brightness in his life as long as he lived—but it was far better for her to involve herself with half the men in Kirkwall than to continue thinking of him with tenderness. Or so he told himself, as he stood by the window and gazed across Hightown toward her home.

Sleep was over for him that night, and so he dressed swiftly and went out, a mere shadow in the cobbled streets of Hightown. It was early, the sky just beginning to lighten with the approach of dawn, and it promised to be a humid day, reminiscent of the Seheron jungles.

Fenris crossed into Lowtown and made his way to Mistress Blodgett's. Her establishment had become so popular in the last several years that the only way to get a quiet meal was to get there in the morning before she was officially open. Oddly enough, that was also the only time she would serve him. The rest of the day she told him to run along and eat elsewhere, as she was too busy to feed him, and he couldn't help but notice that she always gave him pies from a separate shelf. The pies were better than they used to be, but not enough so to justify the popularity, in Fenris's view. He resolutely refused to wonder about it, however. Mistress Blodgett was the first person in his memory to view him with the kind of unquestioning affection he imagined family members felt for one another. Whatever his suspicions might have been otherwise, he kept them firmly locked away.

Even with his considerable strength of mind, he couldn't ignore the smells. They always dissipated by late morning when the shop opened, but in the early morning when the bake ovens were going the odor was sickening. He breathed shallowly through his mouth as he opened the door and went in.

"Duckie!" Mistress Blodgett's face, which had increased in size over the last several years of prosperity, lit up when she saw him. She put down the rolling pin, reaching for a pie off of his shelf. "Baked this one special for you, I did. It's got rosemary in it, from the plant you brought me on Summerday. Couldn't believe you did somethin' so nice for me, and from the Champion's own garden, too." She simpered, handing him the greasy pie on a napkin.

"It was my pleasure," he said, uncomfortable as always being thanked. "Where is Serah Drury?" he asked after a few bites. He hadn't seen the barber around the last few times he'd visited.

"Oh, always busy, that one," Mistress Blodgett said, turning away and bending over the oven. Fenris didn't think the sudden red in her cheeks was to do with the heat, however. "Always seems to have folks waiting to be barbered."