Work Text:
If you ask me three times
I will answer you the same
Lord, you know I love you
Though I said I didn't know your name
So when I've finally made my choice
Break my bones and they'll rejoice
(i. the first act)
"Marry me," Hawke says, and Anders can smell the alcohol on his breath. He wrinkles his nose, just a little, and leans over to push Hawke's tankard away. It's been a whole five days since their return from the Deep Roads, bearing backpacks bulging with treasure, and Hawke's not been sober for any of them so far as he can tell.
"Sorry to fetch you out so late, Blondie," Varric says apologetically from across the table, and tosses a silver to the boy who had brought Anders all the way up from Darktown. "I thought you might have better luck with this than me. Crying humans get me every time."
"Is it the snot?" Anders wonders, because it is either that or ask why me. It's been five days; five days of work in his clinic, catching up on all the patients left untreated while he aided the expedition. Five days of grimly not thinking about Hawke, about his tousled dark hair, about his grin. About how they went in four and came out three. "It seems like it should be the snot, if not."
"Anders," Hawke says again, pawing at his sleeve as though Anders hasn't noticed and nearly tipping over in the bargain, "You saved his life. My brother. Carver. My idiot brother, my little brother..."
Guilt curls through him. "In a fashion," Anders says, and he is thinking of the Calling, and ghouls, and a hundred and one reasons why he should not be enjoying Hawke's hand on his wrist, burning through his clothes. He is a dead man walking, and he has nothing he can offer Hawke. Not that Hawke would want it, even if he had; he is not the same man he was a year ago, before the Wardens, before the Taint, before Justice.
"You saved his life," Hawke says. His gaze is bleary and soft, but oddly focused; his eyebrows are drawn together, and not for the first time Anders regrets the shape they make, the line of Hawke's nose, the beard. It's nothing real. It's just loneliness speaking, and he's had enough flings in the Circle to know that. Hawke smiles at him, and it is handsome if somewhat lopsided. "Thank you. Thank you for coming. Thank you for being so Wardeny. Marry me."
"Coming on a bit strong there, Hawke," Varric says, not without sympathy, and Anders makes himself smile. He remembers the steps to this dance well; Karl and wine, I love you and laughter: you're drunk, go to bed, sleep it off.
You'll know better in the morning.
Hawke wrinkles his nose at Varric. "Your face is coming on strong. Wait. That makes no sense."
"At last! He sees reason," Varric says, all dry humour, and glances up at Anders. "He needs to sleep it off and frankly - Blondie, Hawke - you're not doing that on my rug. I've heard about enough snoring from you to last a lifetime."
"Fine," Anders says, gently prying Hawke's hand off his wrist, "But you're going to owe me at least one favour."
Varric's laugh is his only reply, and the dwarf holds the door open for them as Anders drapes one of Hawke's arms over his shoulder and steers him out toward the taproom, quiet now with only a few other late-night drunks draped over tables, nursing their tankards. Hawke's steps are stumbling and he leans against Anders heavily, alternatively boneless and clinging on tightly, and Anders grits his teeth and guides him down the stairs. "Careful now," he says.
Hawke makes no immediately response, focusing on navigating the last of the steps, but when he does he sags against Anders's side and breathes in deeply. "The house is empty," he says.
"I'm sorry," Anders says, and he is. He can't say he and Carver Hawke were bosom friends; neither of them were ever likely to be weaving each other friendship bracelets, not with Carver's starry-eyed gaze at the Templars and Anders's teeth bared defensively in protection of his own kind, but that didn't mean Carver deserved... that.
"Thank you," Hawke says, with the somber, serious tone of the truly plastered, and somewhat spoils the effect by tripping over a chair left standing ajar from a table; Anders tightens his grip on the man's chest and saves him from smashing face-first into the sticky floorboards, and Hawke giggles to himself. "And thank you again! Another Hawke saved from calamity by the Darktown -"
"Resident," Anders says hastily, all too aware that drunks in the Hanged Man's taproom can very quickly become helpful sources for Templars. "I reside in Darktown, no need to make fun, Hawke."
"You should move in with me," Hawke blurts out, swinging around and grabbing the lapels of Anders's jacket; he leans uncomfortably into Anders's personal space, and Maker, his breath belongs back under the earth with the rot. "Marry me! Move in! The house is empty, and the dog kills most of the rats!"
"Romantic," Anders says. Hawke's eyes are such a light brown they're almost gold, he thinks, and feels a wash of discomfort at the thought that he's almost certain isn't his own.
"I am," Hawke announces, grandiosely, "Exceedingly romantic. And," he taps a finger next to his nose and misses; it'd be funny if it wasn't breaking Anders's heart, "Discrete. You're brave. And alone. You haven't said no?"
Anders smiles at him, bittersweet, small, sad. "I'm going to take you home, Hawke," he says, "I think you'll feel differently in the morning."
Hawke looks at him for a long time, a piercing, shrewd expression on his face that does not belong on a man so drunk he can't walk straight. Anders meets it evenly. You know better than this, he tells himself, and he thinks of Kinloch; of waking up one day and just finding Karl's bed empty. He can't do that to Hawke, he tells himself.
"Are you gentlemen stayin' or goin'," Corff calls out grumpily behind the bar, and that proves sufficient for the pair of them to look away from each other; the door is open, the other drunks being roused by a haggard-looking Nora and directed toward it. "Man needs some sleep."
"Going," Anders says, and Hawke does not resist when he begins walking them into the Lowtown night.
He can walk Hawke home, but he can't stay there. Too many mages, too close together; the Templars want his head, and Hawke is... a friend. He knows better than to hope for anything else. It's not safe.
It's never been safe, but he has so much more to lose nowadays.
(ii. an interlude: romance)
"Marry me," Hawke says quietly, the morning after. Sunlight slinks lazily along the lines of his body, and Anders chases its path with his fingertips, relishing the texture of his lover's skin and the way the word rolls around his head, like something long forgotten and now unearthed, struggling for air: my lover my lover my love love -
Hawke's words sink through the haze. "What?"
"I just -" Hawke shrugs, uncomfortable. There are crumbs at the edges of his mouth from his sandwich. Anders wants to kiss them away, and, with nothing stopping him, does so; Hawke leans into the kiss like a cat nuzzling for food, and the pleased noise he makes is almost a purr. "I thought if you were moving in, we might do it officially. You know. Make Mother happy."
Yes, Anders thinks, ruefully, a possessed apostate is just about every woman's choice for a son-in-law. But Hawke is looking at him, faintly hopeful; Alrik is dead and Elthina must surely listen, as she did not to the monster himself; the sun is high and the morning is sweet, and he wants, for one long perfect moment, to just be happy. Surely he can have this much for himself, just for a little while. "Perhaps," he says, and kisses Hawke again, licks jam from his bottom lip. Hawke smiles into the kiss, and he is perfect. "Not yet," Anders says. It is kinder than a no.
Hold onto the simple things, he tells himself. They never last.
(iii. the second act)
"Marry me," Hawke says hopefully, coming up beside Anders to lean against Lady Renfere's marble balustrade with one arm, and uses the other to tug at his scarlet formal sash. Anders glances over at him and smiles briefly, just at the sight of him; it has been four months now, the two of them together, and he is at once well used to the way his heart skips a beat at the sight of his lover and yet utterly delighted by it still. There is more colour now in Hawke's cheeks; it has been a whole five days since he defeated the Arishok - five days since being announced Champion of Kirkwall.
"Right now?" Anders asks. "Shall I drop to one knee in front of the entirety of Kirkwall? What a way to interrupt the inauguration ceremony."
"You know me and fancy parties," Hawke says. "I'm much too aggressively Fereldan, more's the pity. I'm like to get confused with all those unspoken social rules and step on someone's foot, eat all the cheese, roll around in all the mud and then kidnap someone's dog. Or kidnap someone's foot, eat the dogs, roll in the cheese and step in the mud. Apparently that sort of thing is uncouth, or so I'm told."
"You ought to let the nobility hear you. I think most of them would be genuinely surprised to hear a Fereldan use a word like uncouth, love," Anders says, and relishes the way the endearment feels when his tongue curls around it. Love. Lover. I love you..
Hawke winks at him. "It's the Marcher in me," he agrees, knocking his shoulder against Anders's. "My formative years spent rolling in Ferelden mud and eating Ferelden cheese have failed to eradicate it completely, I suppose. Still, it could be worse." He shudders. "We could be in Orlais."
Anders chuckles at this, and does not resist when Hawke slides one hand over the back of his, lacing their fingers together. For a time they watch the stars, as Anders had been doing before Hawke emerged from the party within the estate; Lowtown's foundries have been quenched since the Qunari attack, half of them sabotaged by vidathari and the others struggling to find and process enough ore with the storehouses burnt, and the night sky is clearer than Anders can remember ever seeing it in Kirkwall.
Behind them someone strikes a sour note on the violin, and a glass shatters; they glance at each other briefly, thoughts naked on their faces - Should we? Shall we? I don't want to go - before the party sounds start up again smoothly. Anders leans against Hawke, a solid warm line against his arm, and tries not to think of his lover bleeding out on the marble floor of the Viscount's throne room; tries not to remember desperate magic and Justice riding under his skin as he fought to save Hawke's life. No, he remembers saying. Don’t be dead! Please! Don't go!
And Hawke hadn't. He's here. The scar is still raw and new, and lifting his arms above shoulder-height is an ongoing struggle, but he's here. He's not an empty bed and the dispassionate helm of a Templar, sword of mercy stamped on a silverite breastplate as though its wearer could know anything of mercy.
It's been a long time since he had this, Anders thinks. Hawke's silence is as companionable as his conversation, and his hand on Anders's is grounding. There is a party going on behind them, all Orlesian imitation, cigar smoke and harps, but the man it is in honour of chose to be outside, here, with him. It means something. It means a lot of things, all of them frightening.
"I meant it, you know," Hawke says. His voice is a little hoarse; he has been making the party rounds all night, joking, flirting, charming. Fereldan-born noblemen turned out hidden apostate. He is a scandal, and if he is to survive he must prove he is a harmless one. "The whole marriage thing. I mean, not right here right now, not if you don't want to, but I... I wasn't joking about it. I love you."
Anders bows his head, bites his lip. Would you tell the world, the Knight-Commander, he'd said, punch-drunk and giddy with affection - as though Hawke could really do something so very dangerous, not with his own apostasy a looming threat.
(Anders hadn't been invited to the single meeting Meredith had held with his lover since the invasion, but he didn't need to be. He knew how it would have gone. I am willing to overlook your... status, she'd've said, cold eyes glittering, So long as you prove yourself a fair and true servant of the Chantry.)
"Hawke," he says, soft and low, "You know I can't."
"I don't see why not," Hawke said, cheerful and confident as usual. "Sebastian probably knows someone who'll do it. I mean, if my parents could get married here in Kirkwall in secret I shouldn't see why we couldn't. Alright, so maybe the issue of children isn't quite as pressing, but it's still a symbol."
Anders lets his free hand curl into a fist. Ella, he thinks, and remembers her panicked scream, coming back to himself to Hawke at his back and inches - small, bloody, dangerous inches - from an unforgivable error. Hawke seems convinced that his intervention meant little, that Justice would not have killed the girl regardless. Anders wishes he could believe that, too.
"I wish I could, love," he says, and watches Hawke's face. He is not coward enough to look away from the hurt, not yet. He will take responsibility for this. "It is enough that you are free. The fact that I am too, still - it is only because of you. If I were... If I were caught, Hawke... it's risky enough for us to be seen together here."
Hawke draws his hand away, just a little; but a little is enough. "Meredith told me..."
"A lie," Anders says.
Hawke glances away. He already knew, Anders thinks, and something in his chest tears; it is a lancing pain sharp as splintered bone. Whether it is for Hawke himself, clinging to fairy tales of apostate weddings and social acceptance; or for what lies between them, smothered and hidden, in secrecy and for safety - he cannot say. This has happened before, he thinks, and remembers the high walls of Kinloch, a small cubby in the apprentice dorms they thought nobody else knew about; remembers Karl's bed neatly made, his trunk emptied with no word or warning - ready for its next occupant. Nothing lasts forever but the walls themselves, he'd thought.
"Someday," Hawke says, leaning hunched over the balustrade. His eyes are no longer on the city sky and the stars winking away; he glares across the water at the bloated silhouette of the Gallows, blocky and angular on its island.
"Someday, love," Anders agree, and thinks: when the walls come down. If I live that long. It's strangely comforting.
(iv. an interlude: duty)
"Marry me," Hawke says, ragged and desperate. He's gripping Anders's sleeve to stop him as he attempts to stride through Hightown. There are explosives in the Chantry, and a dangerous sort of clarity suffuses his limbs and fills him with purpose. I would drown the world in blood, he told Hawke once, but Hawke is just one mage, and he cannot do for Hawke alone what he would not do for the rest of magekind. There's nobody left underground but him, and Meredith is testing Elthina's limits while the Grand Cleric holds both hands over her eyes and sings the Chant into the void, as though Andraste herself might spring forward and intervene.
"I can't," Anders says. He can see the blood coming, a tsunami fast approaching the shore, and is surprised only at how hollow he feels. They have taken almost everything from him, from mages: Justice and Hawke are all he has left, and he knows the templars have already started a whisper campaign against the latter. Maleficar, apostate, abomination: the Champion cannot be trusted. Wouldn't it be safer if the Templars took him into custody?
Strange, he thinks, that he's never felt quite as much a Warden as he does now, with no darkspawn in sight. He will protect what is his: the mages, his people; Hawke, his, his, his.
"I'm not naive, Anders," Hawke says, grim. "I know things are going to get much worse. Please - I love you. Just let me in," and oh, does it ache.
"I'm sorry," Anders says. "I love you." He wishes he was braver. He wishes he didn't need to say it, wishes he didn't have to lay that extra burden to bear on Hawke's shoulders, on top of what is to come. But then again, he supposes, Sebastian is probably right about that much: he is a selfish man after all.
The walls are coming down. He can do that much.
(v. the third act)
"This is the last time," Hawke says, and he sounds tired. They both are. Their faces are masks of soot and ash and blood, and Kirkwall burns on the horizon, and the waves are choppy and rough; on the forecastle Isabela stands with her hands on her hips scowling at the sky. "I won't ask you again after this. Marry me?"
Anders looks at him sidelong, his heartbeat quickening; he breathes in deeply through his nose, feels the air fill his lungs, and closes his eyes. He never thought he'd make it here. He never thought he'd make it this far, but here he stands: with a body like anybody else's, warm and alive, with a beating heart and pounding pulse, toes restless inside woolen socks in warm boots. He becomes momentarily aware of all of it. The ache in his shoulders, the roughness of his staff against his palm, the charcoal taste at the back of his throat.
He set alight a city and offered himself up for the executioner, and here he is, whole, unblemished, diminished. He has no plan. He has a thousand blades heading for his heart, no doubt, and he has no idea what to do with the life he has been granted, but he knows two things: that the mages still need help, and that he has tied Hawke to him with ropes of obligation and responsibility, and that this cannot last.
When he opens his eyes again Hawke is still standing patiently beside him. His face is expressionless; those gold-brown eyes Anders fell in love with so long ago are trained on him, watchful and intent.
"If this is a plot to -"
"It's not," Hawke interrupts, with some force. He sighs, scuffs both hands through his hair; the mingled filth accumulated in it leaves it sticking up in wildly untidy spikes. "Maker's breath, Anders, do you think I didn't expect something like this? I knew. I - okay, admittedly I thought it was saar-qamek you were brewing, to be perfectly honest, but even if I was wrong on the specifics I was knowingly willing to help you carry out what I thought was an assassination plot. I just wish you could have told me the truth."
Anders cuts his gaze away, to the white foam wake spilling out across the sea behind them. The ship is three-masted, big and strong, and Isabela has already made a show of covetously fondling her railings and part of her mast before them; Varric and Fenris managed small smiles at that.
"I still love you," Hawke says. His voice is roughened with smoke, ragged and plaintive. "I didn't stop."
Anders touches the tip of his tongue to his lips to wet them. His own voice, when it emerges, is so quiet Hawke has to lean closer to hear him. "I don't understand why this matters so much to you. This goes beyond - promises to your mother about respectability, or symbolism."
Hawke blinks at him. "Because I love you," he says, like it should be simple. He swallows. "Because all I wanted was to stand with you, Anders. Because you were right, and it wasn't just, not at all. I wanted us to be - equal." He leans over the railing, elbows digging in sharply to the wood, and lets his head hang; he presses his hands as fists to the back of his neck. "I wanted the whole world to know that I was yours, and you were mine, and if it wanted to get to you it would have to go through me. I... I thought I was protecting you all this time, and then I saw - what you've been doing. Meredith - exposed, although thankfully not literally."
It's a weak joke, but Anders allows the edges of his mouth to move, sensing Hawke glancing at him out of the edge of his eye.
"Someone has to protect you while you protect mages," Hawke says, wistfully. "I wanted it to be me. And I wanted the whole world to know it."
"Thank you," Anders says gently, and tilts his head back. It is black up above, Kirkwall's burning obscuring the stars from view. None of Hawke's friends will meet his eye, save Isabela and Merrill. He killed hundreds to save thousands, and the choice sits no easier. Fugitives, they agreed, together. "... I don't want a bodyguard, Hawke. I don't want a relationship built on obligation or - or gratitude. I never did. I just wanted..."
A friend. A lover. A confidante. Two out of three is not good enough, not for a life on the run. He closes his eyes and presses the heel of his hands against his eyelids, counting to ten in the dark, and tries to picture them wed as they are now: too raw, too jagged, cutting into each other accidentally even as they jostle closer, trying to help.
"I need you to be you, Hawke. I don't need a - pretty girl, a decent meal, the right to shoot lightning at fools. I thought I did, once, but now I... I just need you. If you're willing to be with me." Anders lets out his breath, releasing the air in his lungs slowly in one long stream. "You are, and always have been, the one bright light in Kirkwall."
"I'm not going anywhere," Hawke murmurs. He straightens up, his hands resting on the ship's railing. "I love you. I'm not sorry for that. Besides, we have work to do, don't we? Circles to visit. I know you don't have a plan, so I thought we might put one together, well, together; we can't let this, what happened here - we can't let it be in vain."
Anders tilts his head to one side and tries to smile. "Yes. You're right."
Hawke narrows his eyes. "Or alternatively we could let the wind steer us for a bit, keep an eye and an ear on things, and work out what we're going to do based on what the Chantry does next." It sounds as good an idea as any. Anders shrugs, and Hawke sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose; it is a habit he acquired from Anders. "What do you want to do next, Anders?"
"I never thought I'd make it out of Kirkwall," Anders says honestly. "I don't know, love. One suggestion is as good as another right now. I'm - a little lost."
"You have to want this," Hawke retorts. "We could run forever, but this is... this is the change you brought about. You said you didn't want a relationship built on gratitude, or obligation? That starts here, with us. You don't owe me your life, Anders. It wasn't mine to give back to you." He scuffs a hand through his hair, mussing it into even wilder spikes. "Please. Help me plan what to do next."
He pauses, taking in Anders's expression, then adds, "I said I wouldn't ask again, and I won't. I won't push you."
Not all of the walls were physical, Anders realises. Hawke is tearing down some of his own, and Maker help him, Anders has never loved him more; this man who has stood tall in this city, who has helped and helped and helped and been repaid with loss and secrets and betrayal, and Anders...
He's not Karl, Anders thinks. The only walls left between them are the ones Anders himself built, for fear of an empty bed and empty clothes chest, a life vanished overnight and a First Enchanter's empty smile; you can always write him like that was ever going to be adequate substitute.
He set a city on fire, and Hawke is still here, still waiting, still loving. Anders's eyes sting, for the first time in - oh, so many years now, and he rubs at them roughly with a sooty sleeve still stinking of smoke. Hawke gave up everything he had to Kirkwall, and he's still here, offering everything that he has left. All Anders has to do is trust, and he is - finally, impossibly, incredibly - ready to do so.
It is the first time in more than twenty years that he's actually felt free.
(iv. an epilogue)
It may not have been the most dignified homecoming. Hawke probably had a whole speech planned, something about Weisshaupt, and delays, and Skyhold, and the Inquisition - and almost certainly something about making sure the Inquisition's agents did not follow him here, to the little shack hidden away in a smuggler's cove, four countries and half of Thedas away from Fereldan and Sister Nightingale's prying eyes. It's no matter.
He's not even halfway across the beach to small wooden shack when its door bursts open and he's tackled to the floor - rather forcefully, and with an unusually excessive amount of saliva - by a mabari warhound, tail wagging hard enough to bruise; and his carefully prepared speech goes up in a chorus of sputtering and stop that and let me up! before finally succumbing to the truth: I missed you too, boy.
"He's been inconsolable," Anders says, leaning against the door frame with his arms folded. "Absolutely intolerable - kept trying to climb in the bed. It's been horrific."
"Oh, well, you've survived," Hawke retorts, with a grin, and buries his hands behind the dog's ears, giving him the good hard scratch he loves so much; the mutt drops to the ground with a dopey doggy smile, on his back with his legs flailing and kicking sand everywhere, and Hawke rakes his eyes thoughtfully over Anders as he rubs away.
Anders can only guess what he looks like: tired, certainly, but hopefully clean and well-fed. The dog has been more help there than he'd like to admit. Before he left Hawke instructed the mutt to watch over him, and it had; when the voice in his head got too insidious, the sick song too tempting, the dog had been there to shove its stinking muzzle in his face and lick his cheeks with its rank, meaty breath. When he forgot to eat, it brought him cookpots and (wet, drooled-upon) game. When he couldn't sleep, it lay down beside him, and its rhythmic snoring and unfortunate digestive disorders were grounding if somewhat... pungent.
He's still not a dog person, but even he can admit the damn mutt kept him going.
"So, Skyhold was... isolated," Hawke says, pulling a face. They agreed when he left that he wouldn't write Anders; too high a risk of his letters being intercepted, and their intended recipient captured or worse. Anders has no idea where he's been or what he's been up to, short of a letter written by Carver six months ago, in heavy cipher, that indicated Hawke was on his way to Weisshaupt fortress itself, coming from Orlais. "Turns out the Wardens were all hearing that Calling you told me about. Tried summoning an army of demons to invade the Deep Roads and kill the last two Old Gods. Not necessarily the greatest of plans. We stopped it, but oh boy, that sent us into the Fade -"
Anders is moving forward before he can finish. There'll be time enough for the story. It's been fourteen long, lonely months since Hawke left them, heading South on Varric's request, and Anders missed him; oh Maker, did he miss him. He's on his knees on the other side of the dog, his hand fisted in Hawke's cloak, pulling him close, and Hawke is moving just as eagerly; Hawke's tooth splits Anders's lip in their desperation, and Anders heals it with barely a thought and without interrupting the kiss.
It is wet and needy and welcoming at once, and Anders's spine shivers with how much he missed this - how much he missed this man; how much he needs him. Fourteen months. Never again, he thinks, and his eyes are stinging, and this time he does not try to fight it; Hawke breaks the kiss and leans up to press his lips against his forehead, tender and gentle, and it is only when his lover reaches up to cup his face and his thumbs stroke wetness across his cheeks that Anders realises that his tears have spilled.
"Hey," Hawke says quietly. His eyes are suspiciously wet, too; but then again he's had longer to prepare for this homecoming than Anders. "I'm here. I said I'd come back, didn't I?"
"Yes," Anders whispers, his voice cracking.He reaches up, using his sleeve to dry his eyes. He sniffs, taking a deep breath to try and settle himself. Fourteen months. Sixty weeks of waiting, of wondering, of worrying; telling himself that he had lain awake aching for Hawke for three years, what was a little more? And now here he was. Home again. "Maker, Hawke, I... Oh, I'm so glad to see you."
Hawke butts their foreheads against each other; presses them together, nose to nose, in a gesture at once sweet and intimate. He sniffs himself, which makes Anders feel a little better. "I said I wouldn't leave you," he says.
"Don't," Anders says. "Don't, not again. Stay here. Please." Impulsively he blurts out, "Marry me?"
Hawke leans away from him, raising an eyebrow. "What?"
"Damn," Anders mutters, and looks away. "... I had a whole. I had a whole thing planned. There was going to be Fereldan stew." He wipes at one of his eyes with the back of his hand, steadfastly not looking at Hawke. "I did a lot of thinking while you were gone about where we were when we left, love, and where we were when you left, and I..."
Hawke is grinning like a rising sun. "Yes," he says. "Yes, obviously, of course, although I still want Fereldan stew. Also, to be carried across a threshold bridal style. Maker, Anders." He leans in for another kiss, and Anders obliges; this one is tender and slow, and he can feel the way his heart thumps wildly in his chest, the slow tingle of heat in the pit of his belly spreading sparks through all of him down to a tingling numbness at the tips of his toes to an intense surge of pure joy, tearing through his limbs.
He doesn't regret making Hawke wait. It's been years since he destroyed Kirkwall's Chantry, and their relationship has shifted and adapted; but he knows that what they have is finally right. It is mutual, and it is right. It does not restrict, nor bind; it is finally what they've both always wanted. Equal. Free.
"I love you," Anders tells Hawke, and some of that giddiness is in his voice, in his face; Hawke grins back at him, and oh, it is reflected tenfold in his face. "Maker, love, I - I love you so much."
"I told you," Hawke says, and climbs to his feet. His knees pop when he does; he is not the young man Anders first met, in his mid twenties all fire and fury and terrible puns. Hawke holds out a hand for him; his fingers are filthy from the road and calloused, and Anders has never loved anything so much as he loves them, and all the other parts of Hawke. "I want you right here, love."
"Until the day we die," Anders finishes, smiling crookedly at the memory, and he reaches up, and he takes the hand he is offered.
This is not Kirkwall. This shack, comfortable though it has been, will not always be home. They will quite probably never have a true home again, and Anders knows that, and knows Hawke knows that, and knows too that Hawke made his choice - that they both finally made their choices, and they chose each other.
"So," Hawke says, drawing Anders after him and into the shack, the dog gleefully gamboling around them barking, "Did I mention the latest juicy piece of news from Varric? It seems Kirkwall has elected a new Viscount. You'll never guess who..."
"Try me," Anders says, but in truth he couldn't care. He only has eyes for Hawke, and his world is this: Hawke's hand in his; the colour of Hawke's eyes, gold or brown depending on the light; his dark, tousled hair; and the smile he's wearing, which Anders likes knowing he's caused.
It's not a big priority list. As far as Anders is concerned, it's the only one that matters.
(? - in conclusion)
The trail of clothes starts halfway up the beach; a shirt hangs ragged off a torn piece of driftwood that might function as a bench, and a boot sits in a firepit long cold. Socks - three of them, woolen, tattered, with holes in both toe and heel - are scattered between the firepit and the shack's front door, where a mabari warhound lies chewing merrily away on another boot, twin to the one in the firepit; nobody wears leather boots in Rivain, and the mabari has missed the texture.
Step over the mabari and you'll find a pair of thick wool breeches, filthy and stained with travel-dust, left crumpled on the floor aND entangled with another pair - of much thinner material, more suited to the heat. A metal gorget lies heavily on the table, with no regard for the small vase of embrium flowers knocked askew by its impact. A leather vest rests sprawled over one of the only two chairs in the little hut's interior, adorned with a thick ruff of wolf's fur, unnecessary this far north. On the seat of the chair rests a traveler's knapsack, still sealed closed, with a stained worn bedroll strapped to the bottom.
Heavy metal sabatons rest at the foot of the only bed, one standing, one lying on its side. They sit atop a rug coated heavily in dog hair, and the setting sun streaming in through the only window paints the metal orange and pink. Next to them, leaning up against the wall, are two mage's staves: one adorned with an intricate carving of a woman, arms outstretched, bronze face pointed upward in rapture. The other is topped with a stylized silver dragon's head, fangs bared. Claw-shaped gauntlets rest on the small rough-hewn chest of drawers next to the bed, that functions as a make-shift night table.
And on the bed itself, Hawke dozes, Anders curled against his back; both of them are sleeping, breathing peacefully and evenly, fitting together perfectly even whilst unconscious. In the light of the waning sun they look younger than they really are. They look almost like they used to be: two young men, naive and optimistic, meeting for the first time, head over heels in love and blissfully happy.
There are no templars, and they know they will never be torn apart. A hundred years is now.