He could have let her finish him, then - it would have been so easy, so sweet - what saves him is that, a second after she speaks, he registers the actual semantic content of the words. Up until this, Anders has been content to let Hawke have her way with him tonight, never mind how torturous or slow she cares to be. That discussion about nightlights has stuck in his mind as something more than a brief exchange of jokes about his poetry, and he feels (obscurely, unconsciously) that he owes her, that what she does to him now can count toward payback for months of neglect.
But then she says those words. It's not only a dare, though it is a dare, the best kind; it's an allusion, and an affirmation, and a question, too. He answers it the only way he can.
Years of combat magery have developed his reflexes and speed (and, all right, his muscles, more prosaically; besides all the running and climbing, when he's low on mana and the enemy presses too close, he's obliged to use his staff as quarterstaff). His reaction would be too swift to counter even if she wished, which he's rather hoping she doesn't: he removes her hand, holding it away from their bodies, and tilts sharply to the side, spilling her from his lap. She has time now to roll away, if she wanted, but he's bargaining she won't, and he's right.
He pins her there on the carpet, her arms over her head, his hands over hers as he balances over her body. His voice rasps, steel against velvet.
She could have finished him off. She could have rolled away. She could have a number of things. But she's proved the point she was trying to make to herself, and doesn't feel a need. Whereas pushing him to the brink tends to yield a good result, in this context.
So she smirks up at him, the dare still firmly in her eyes as she meets his own heated gaze without flinching. "Show me."
He guides her legs wider with a rough shove. He doesn't need to touch her there to know she's more than ready. Intentions half-formed earlier, to take his time, to lavish attention on her, to act less than selfishly for once, have all completely faded out of mind with that demand.
Show me. Again, an allusion, and a memory that would be enough to fire his blood all on its own.
For his own sake, though, as much as hers, Anders enters slowly, inch by agonizing inch, aware that too quick a pace will end this sooner. That would let her off too easily, and he ought to live up to the memory she's invoked. To keep from focusing his entire awareness on that sweet slide in, at the same time he captures her mouth with his, giving the kiss all the force that he can't yet allow his other movements.
Hawke closes her eyes, biting back a moan at the exquisite deliberation in his movements, hiking her knees up to tilt her hips and give him more access, give herself a better angle. He still has her arms pinned above her head, and her hands grip his, fingers threading. Maker, love, I missed you... She can't say it, even if her mouth weren't filled by his she probably couldn't say it, but perhaps something of it comes across in the way she moves against him, desperation mixed with acceptance mixed with something like exultation, or perhaps just relief. I missed you.
His breathing catches at that change in angle, and he alters his own angle to meet it obliquely. However willfully clueless Anders may be in other circumstances, it can't be denied that once he's in bed - or on carpets, or in storerooms or warehouses, or in a certain Denerim establishment of ill repute - he proves to know precisely what he's doing.
(Andraste's tits, it's not exactly arcane knowledge, he would exclaim, a little indignant that anyone could go ignorant of these things, and it's entirely possible that he has had little informative talks with people like Guardsman Donnic, purely as a public service, to improve the mood of people like, say, Guard-Captain Aveline. It's also entirely possible that Isabela may have egged such lectures on. With diagrams. It doesn't take electricity tricks to keep your woman happy.)
He frees one of Hawke's hands so he can brace himself better. He rocks against her, all the while kissing her forehead, the line of her jaw, the fine curve of her cheekbone, drawing this out as long as he can. The task is complicated by the strength of his need and hers, a mutual urgency that rapidly grows past Anders' capacity for restraint.
In other circumstances Hawke might balk at that. It's a name she's left behind twice now, for different reasons each time, and for all that she used it herself briefly on planet she doesn't think of herself as Marian anymore. Marian was someone else, a lifetime ago, before she had the responsibilities Anders will never be able to convince her she didn't fail to safeguard, and Kirkwall was not the most important of those; there are reasons Hawke uses her father's name as her only name. And Marian then was, for a few too-brief years, her private self, the one she kept for this man and this man only.
But that self's been ressurrected for this interval, it seems, so while there's one sharper intake of breath mixed in with all the sweet cries she's making, she doesn't protest. It's not as though she has the presence of mind to object, not with gentle kisses placed all over her face and the not-so-gentle way his hips roll against hers.
Her freed arm wraps around his shoulder, and when she finally throws her head back in release her hand curls hard against the skin at the back of his neck.
"She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita." ))
Anders doesn't catch the reaction, not exactly; well, he does, he's hyperaware of her every little movement, her every cry, but he credits this one to something else he's doing, and raises the tempo a notch. He still has some control, if only to determine how much control he allows himself to lose, and with what celerity.
He loses the last of it at the familiar flutter and clench of muscles around him, the way her body tenses and goes slack under his, the sound of her - Maker, was this much pleasure ever meant for man, this fierce joy that's shot through with something like triumph, that he's given her this much at least if nothing else, and pressure builds and builds and must have its release, and then he's crying out his own pleasure wordlessly, incapable of words, incapable of sense beyond sensation.
It's not so much that he manages to come at the same time she does, it's more that he makes himself wait that long and only then gives in.
He won't collapse against her, he's never been one for that. Anders holds Hawke close, their bodies still engaged, their legs entwined, and pulls them both over onto their sides.
I thought with Justice, this part of me was over... The memory flits through her mind, and she lets it go without comment, preferring to focus on the blissful lassitude that's overwhelming her.
"No, you haven't." It hasn't been like that for a long while, she can't remember the last time their lovemaking didn't involve a sort of desperate guilt or yearning. That they're recaptured something of their initial fervent pride in each other's pleasure is unexpected, and welcome. "Nor have I, based on some of your reactions. Good to know. I hate letting my skills get rusty."
Briefly she thinks of Sheeana, their one night liaison that never was repeated despite all the flirting they do, and realizes that other doors are now closed to her again, regardless of what happens after this. Hawke feels a pang for the might-have-been. I'm sorry, blue-eyes. She hides that moment of regret in nuzzling Anders, rubbing her nose against his while a hand strokes his hair.
He nuzzles right back. It's hard to feel conflicted about this closeness, even for Anders, and he has his reasons. "Skills? Maker, no, I didn't mean skills. I hardly got a chance. More a general ..." He runs a hand down her spine to linger at her hip. "Affinity for the subject. Naturally gifted, you know. That said I won't dispute your skills at all. Would have liked to exercise at least a few of my own, but alas, someone had other ideas." Grinning, he plants a kiss on someone's chin. "Of course, the night's still young. I think. It's a bit difficult to keep track of time in the Void. Regardless, I did say we could do this all night."
This is actually not what he said they could do all night, but to Anders, it's all in the same rough category. Accuse him of trying for a therapeutic effect and he'll make a face at you, what's that? beg your pardon? He's working on a more instinctual level than that, putting himself at Hawke's disposal in whatever way he intuits might make a difference.
"And neither of us has to say anything about what happens after that," he adds, quietly. "Because I'm fairly certain we can't possibly know. I don't want you promising me anything. Understand, Hawke?" Hawke, not Marian, because this is business he's proposing, and Marian is something different. If home is where the heart is, Marian is home.
"I think you can claim to have showed off a bit," Hawke murmurs. "Though I won't object to more. All night, Maker have mercy, you and your stamina. I hope no one's suffering from meditation deprivation out there. Poor Teo, having to guard the door for hours on end."
Hawke considers the rest of it for a while before she answers, choosing her words carefully. "I can't make you promises, even if I wanted to. I don't make promises I'm not sure I can keep." She looks at his lips, running a finger lightly across them. "You accused me of not knowing what I want, and there's a truth to that. But it's more accurate to say I don't know what I'm capable of doing."
Her eyes flicker up to meet his, and there's open vulnerability there, the first she's shown on her own behest instead of having dragged forcibly out of her. "I don't know who I am, Anders. The things I defined myself by..." are dead, or exploded, or in a world I can't reach "...no longer apply. I've been living despite it, but...stalled." The vulnerability fades as he gets a small smile of gratitute, and she brushes her fingers along his cheek. "I suspect I'll be able to work on that, finally, now that we've had it out. Congratulations on your perspiacity. But even if I knew what I wanted from you, what I could trust you to offer me were you inclined to offer me anything, I don't know what I want from myself. I can't do anything but take things as I go until I figure that out." She kisses him softly on the mouth. "So no, no promises. Just...now. Now is enough."
Is it wrong that Anders feels not a sliver of regret or disappointment when she says that? Shouldn't he feel obscurely dejected, perhaps even rejected in a sense, now that she's not only readily assented to his no-strings proposition, she's all but said she would have to reject any other kind? What he feels is something too close to pity for him to safely share with her. The way she describes her condition, it could as easily apply to him, to Anders as he was seven years ago, to Anders even now.
"Don't know what you're capable of doing," he repeats thoughtfully. "I think I know a little of what that's like." He serves up this rueful understatement more tenderly than the words might suggest, and punctuates it by pressing her closer to him. She's always been the one to protect everybody, whether they deserve it or not. He wishes he could protect her from herself. Since there's no way he'll ever be able to do that, even if she would accept it from him (and it's a mortal certainty she wouldn't), he can only express the impulse physically, wrapping about her like the shields he casts in battle to keep her from harm.
"I'm glad you're willing to take that time." Not a note of falsehood mars the assertion. He's completely sincere. He almost wishes she'd taken this approach years ago, some middle way between his despair and her insistence. "I ... wasn't sure. I know you're not the same person now as the woman I first met, and you'll want different things, it's only I'm used to you wanting specific things."
Fondly he kisses her forehead. "The morning after our first night together, when I told you the Templars were after me, and I knew you could tell I was angling for an invitation ... Hawke, I didn't mean you to take it as you did. I meant to be more casual about it, to explain I was looking for a place to hide sometimes, that was all. Maybe keep a few things there, make it easier for us to be together without putting you in needless danger either. I planned out everything I would say, just to make sure I wouldn't pressure you, or seem to expect too much. But you ..." He has to laugh, a little, softly and with profound appreciation. "You turned the whole thing round on me, you know that? And I couldn't believe my good fortune, that a woman like you, from a good family, with serious assets," he cups her bottom as he says it, giving the word a little extra meaning beyond an estate in Hightown, "would commit yourself to an apostate, a renegade."
He hadn't known the history of Malcolm Hawke then, of course. But that isn't the point of this story.
"It was instant commitment, and Maker help me, I couldn't say no. Didn't want to. The way you looked just then, I could believe that anything was possible. You'd make anything possible. You and your eternal good luck, and your determination, and your charm." He loosens his clasp about her, pulls back a little to look her in the eyes. "You've still got that power, Hawke, when you decide you're ready to use it. And I'm not talking about charming me into your ... room, or whatever you've got in this place; I've got a perfectly lovely nest that's about one-twentieth my own. I'm talking about commitment to anything. Anything you think is worth believing in. The effect you have on people, not just me. You don't have to carry that burden forever, but you'll always have the choice. And knowing that," he takes a deep breath, "I think it's a good thing you're taking some time to reflect. A very good thing, indeed."
She has to snort inwardly--a good family? The Amells were notorious in Kirkwall, cursed, much too prone to produce the odd mage child, and that was before their shining gem Leandra had eloped with Hawke's own apostate father. Hawke had restored some of the Amell 'good name' and fortune more by accident than anything else, but their situation was hardly the Rich Girl Falls For Poor Boy fairy tale that he's always idealized it as being, not to her eyes.
Maker's name, when they met Anders might have been living in the slums of Darktown, true, but Hawke wasn't much better off, a refugee sharing a floor with her mother and sister in her uncle's Lowtown shack. He knew her there for a year, visited her there. But she's never been able to banish the gloss of what came after from his view, or convince him that none of it meant a thing to her, particularly after her mother's death. More than not being able to value it, she couldn't see it as anything but illusory. Hawke has lived as a farmgirl, a soldier, a refugee, a noble, and it's all been the same to her personally, albeit with varying levels of comfort; what mattered was what she could do for the people she was guarding. It wasn't unselfishness motivating her but compulsion.
Still, it occurs to her to wonder, if she and Anders were to pursue anything here--where they both have next to nothing, where his status as an apostate is suddenly meaningless--how their equal social standing might change things between them, if only in his perceptions. Or how it will change things even if they don't. It's a thought to keep in mind, certainly. For another time.
Most of what he says falls into her like rain on dry ground. She can't respond to it, not immediately. Finding something to believe in is a daunting prospect, and deserves thought; the idea that she might still have the power to lead so that people convince themselves they want to follow is even more daunting, and not something she trusts herself with yet.
She's not sure she believes him, wonders if the ability he's referring to was based on naïveté more than determination. But his faith in her steals her breath, almost as much as being granted the freedom to not take that burden of leadership up again.
She can't answer him, not in words. But she'll remember, and when she kisses her thanks, it's redolent with validation.
To Anders - child of a "rat-spit village" in the Anderfels, taken from home by the Templars to a glorified prison and living from hand to mouth in the intervals of freedom between recapture - Hawke and her sister Bethany never seemed mere refugees. They were always more, even if more was only a name, a crest and a useless will looted from the cellar of the estate their uncle gambled away through bad investments and worse judgement. They were fallen nobility, and they were a family. They lived with their mother, and their mother loved them.
Living with Hawke in that huge house she reclaimed, Anders has always felt something of an impostor. Funny, that. Fenris is the one who stands out in Hightown, and Anders could easily pass for an entitled local had he not insisted for years on wearing the same worn gear that saw him through the Blight. (Ironically, unintentionally, the new black outfit made him fit in better, somber and well-tailored, like something from the old portraits in the Keep waiting-rooms.) Yet it's Anders who has been out of place, always slipping back to Darktown or else to the Hanged Man, and Fenris who squats in a Hightown mansion by choice.
(He still thinks of it all in present tense. It's been not even two weeks, a time shorter than some expeditions.)
He knows the Amell heritage, has even had the displeasure of standing by to listen as Grand Cleric Elthina cooed over Hawke, wouldn't your grandparents be proud or whatever honeyed pabulum the old bat spewed up. The taint on their line means nothing with the inconvenient mage daughter safely packed away to the Grey Wardens, the inconvenient mage father safely in his grave. That first morning they shared together, when Anders asked Hawke (incredulously, hopefully, amazed) would you tell the whole world, the Knight-Commander, that you love an apostate? That you will stand beside him? he wasn't employing hyperbole. He fully expected that Hawke's choice of consort might one day come under scrutiny at that high a level, and he turned out to be right. She was no parvenu, she was an Amell, and if that didn't matter to Hawke, it surely mattered to Kirkwall.
This may be part of why they've never married. This, and his constant agonizing over how everything will always end in ruin. His refusal to plan for any sort of a future. His inability to see past the Gallows and its pull.
She's a scene-stealing heartthrob of a noblewoman, all the more glamorous for her roguish refusal to dress the part, and someday she'll make a fearsome matriarch. Anders is a man who came from nothing, who has nothing, who has outlived his own planned ending, and likelier than not, he'll hurtle toward the next available opportunity for disaster. He's got no desire to drag Hawke along with him this time.
She has said no promises and he can't imagine a better outcome than that. The unspoken corollary to I don't want you promising me anything is I can't promise anything to you.
Only kisses, like these. He can promise her kisses, and he can infuse them with other promises in turn.
"You know what they say about Grey Wardens," he murmurs against the corner of her mouth.
If Thedas had bumper stickers, Grey Wardens Do It Harder and Longer would be a top seller.
But then she says those words. It's not only a dare, though it is a dare, the best kind; it's an allusion, and an affirmation, and a question, too. He answers it the only way he can.
Years of combat magery have developed his reflexes and speed (and, all right, his muscles, more prosaically; besides all the running and climbing, when he's low on mana and the enemy presses too close, he's obliged to use his staff as quarterstaff). His reaction would be too swift to counter even if she wished, which he's rather hoping she doesn't: he removes her hand, holding it away from their bodies, and tilts sharply to the side, spilling her from his lap. She has time now to roll away, if she wanted, but he's bargaining she won't, and he's right.
He pins her there on the carpet, her arms over her head, his hands over hers as he balances over her body. His voice rasps, steel against velvet.
"You know full well that I'm already mad."
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So she smirks up at him, the dare still firmly in her eyes as she meets his own heated gaze without flinching. "Show me."
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Show me. Again, an allusion, and a memory that would be enough to fire his blood all on its own.
For his own sake, though, as much as hers, Anders enters slowly, inch by agonizing inch, aware that too quick a pace will end this sooner. That would let her off too easily, and he ought to live up to the memory she's invoked. To keep from focusing his entire awareness on that sweet slide in, at the same time he captures her mouth with his, giving the kiss all the force that he can't yet allow his other movements.
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(Andraste's tits, it's not exactly arcane knowledge, he would exclaim, a little indignant that anyone could go ignorant of these things, and it's entirely possible that he has had little informative talks with people like Guardsman Donnic, purely as a public service, to improve the mood of people like, say, Guard-Captain Aveline. It's also entirely possible that Isabela may have egged such lectures on. With diagrams. It doesn't take electricity tricks to keep your woman happy.)
He frees one of Hawke's hands so he can brace himself better. He rocks against her, all the while kissing her forehead, the line of her jaw, the fine curve of her cheekbone, drawing this out as long as he can. The task is complicated by the strength of his need and hers, a mutual urgency that rapidly grows past Anders' capacity for restraint.
"Marian -" He can't hold back much longer.
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But that self's been ressurrected for this interval, it seems, so while there's one sharper intake of breath mixed in with all the sweet cries she's making, she doesn't protest. It's not as though she has the presence of mind to object, not with gentle kisses placed all over her face and the not-so-gentle way his hips roll against hers.
Her freed arm wraps around his shoulder, and when she finally throws her head back in release her hand curls hard against the skin at the back of his neck.
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"She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita." ))
Anders doesn't catch the reaction, not exactly; well, he does, he's hyperaware of her every little movement, her every cry, but he credits this one to something else he's doing, and raises the tempo a notch. He still has some control, if only to determine how much control he allows himself to lose, and with what celerity.
He loses the last of it at the familiar flutter and clench of muscles around him, the way her body tenses and goes slack under his, the sound of her - Maker, was this much pleasure ever meant for man, this fierce joy that's shot through with something like triumph, that he's given her this much at least if nothing else, and pressure builds and builds and must have its release, and then he's crying out his own pleasure wordlessly, incapable of words, incapable of sense beyond sensation.
It's not so much that he manages to come at the same time she does, it's more that he makes himself wait that long and only then gives in.
He won't collapse against her, he's never been one for that. Anders holds Hawke close, their bodies still engaged, their legs entwined, and pulls them both over onto their sides.
He sighs, deeply, happily.
"I haven't lost my touch."
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"No, you haven't." It hasn't been like that for a long while, she can't remember the last time their lovemaking didn't involve a sort of desperate guilt or yearning. That they're recaptured something of their initial fervent pride in each other's pleasure is unexpected, and welcome. "Nor have I, based on some of your reactions. Good to know. I hate letting my skills get rusty."
Briefly she thinks of Sheeana, their one night liaison that never was repeated despite all the flirting they do, and realizes that other doors are now closed to her again, regardless of what happens after this. Hawke feels a pang for the might-have-been. I'm sorry, blue-eyes. She hides that moment of regret in nuzzling Anders, rubbing her nose against his while a hand strokes his hair.
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This is actually not what he said they could do all night, but to Anders, it's all in the same rough category. Accuse him of trying for a therapeutic effect and he'll make a face at you, what's that? beg your pardon? He's working on a more instinctual level than that, putting himself at Hawke's disposal in whatever way he intuits might make a difference.
"And neither of us has to say anything about what happens after that," he adds, quietly. "Because I'm fairly certain we can't possibly know. I don't want you promising me anything. Understand, Hawke?" Hawke, not Marian, because this is business he's proposing, and Marian is something different. If home is where the heart is, Marian is home.
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Hawke considers the rest of it for a while before she answers, choosing her words carefully. "I can't make you promises, even if I wanted to. I don't make promises I'm not sure I can keep." She looks at his lips, running a finger lightly across them. "You accused me of not knowing what I want, and there's a truth to that. But it's more accurate to say I don't know what I'm capable of doing."
Her eyes flicker up to meet his, and there's open vulnerability there, the first she's shown on her own behest instead of having dragged forcibly out of her. "I don't know who I am, Anders. The things I defined myself by..." are dead, or exploded, or in a world I can't reach "...no longer apply. I've been living despite it, but...stalled." The vulnerability fades as he gets a small smile of gratitute, and she brushes her fingers along his cheek. "I suspect I'll be able to work on that, finally, now that we've had it out. Congratulations on your perspiacity. But even if I knew what I wanted from you, what I could trust you to offer me were you inclined to offer me anything, I don't know what I want from myself. I can't do anything but take things as I go until I figure that out." She kisses him softly on the mouth. "So no, no promises. Just...now. Now is enough."
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"Don't know what you're capable of doing," he repeats thoughtfully. "I think I know a little of what that's like." He serves up this rueful understatement more tenderly than the words might suggest, and punctuates it by pressing her closer to him. She's always been the one to protect everybody, whether they deserve it or not. He wishes he could protect her from herself. Since there's no way he'll ever be able to do that, even if she would accept it from him (and it's a mortal certainty she wouldn't), he can only express the impulse physically, wrapping about her like the shields he casts in battle to keep her from harm.
"I'm glad you're willing to take that time." Not a note of falsehood mars the assertion. He's completely sincere. He almost wishes she'd taken this approach years ago, some middle way between his despair and her insistence. "I ... wasn't sure. I know you're not the same person now as the woman I first met, and you'll want different things, it's only I'm used to you wanting specific things."
Fondly he kisses her forehead. "The morning after our first night together, when I told you the Templars were after me, and I knew you could tell I was angling for an invitation ... Hawke, I didn't mean you to take it as you did. I meant to be more casual about it, to explain I was looking for a place to hide sometimes, that was all. Maybe keep a few things there, make it easier for us to be together without putting you in needless danger either. I planned out everything I would say, just to make sure I wouldn't pressure you, or seem to expect too much. But you ..." He has to laugh, a little, softly and with profound appreciation. "You turned the whole thing round on me, you know that? And I couldn't believe my good fortune, that a woman like you, from a good family, with serious assets," he cups her bottom as he says it, giving the word a little extra meaning beyond an estate in Hightown, "would commit yourself to an apostate, a renegade."
He hadn't known the history of Malcolm Hawke then, of course. But that isn't the point of this story.
"It was instant commitment, and Maker help me, I couldn't say no. Didn't want to. The way you looked just then, I could believe that anything was possible. You'd make anything possible. You and your eternal good luck, and your determination, and your charm." He loosens his clasp about her, pulls back a little to look her in the eyes. "You've still got that power, Hawke, when you decide you're ready to use it. And I'm not talking about charming me into your ... room, or whatever you've got in this place; I've got a perfectly lovely nest that's about one-twentieth my own. I'm talking about commitment to anything. Anything you think is worth believing in. The effect you have on people, not just me. You don't have to carry that burden forever, but you'll always have the choice. And knowing that," he takes a deep breath, "I think it's a good thing you're taking some time to reflect. A very good thing, indeed."
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Maker's name, when they met Anders might have been living in the slums of Darktown, true, but Hawke wasn't much better off, a refugee sharing a floor with her mother and sister in her uncle's Lowtown shack. He knew her there for a year, visited her there. But she's never been able to banish the gloss of what came after from his view, or convince him that none of it meant a thing to her, particularly after her mother's death. More than not being able to value it, she couldn't see it as anything but illusory. Hawke has lived as a farmgirl, a soldier, a refugee, a noble, and it's all been the same to her personally, albeit with varying levels of comfort; what mattered was what she could do for the people she was guarding. It wasn't unselfishness motivating her but compulsion.
Still, it occurs to her to wonder, if she and Anders were to pursue anything here--where they both have next to nothing, where his status as an apostate is suddenly meaningless--how their equal social standing might change things between them, if only in his perceptions. Or how it will change things even if they don't. It's a thought to keep in mind, certainly. For another time.
Most of what he says falls into her like rain on dry ground. She can't respond to it, not immediately. Finding something to believe in is a daunting prospect, and deserves thought; the idea that she might still have the power to lead so that people convince themselves they want to follow is even more daunting, and not something she trusts herself with yet.
She's not sure she believes him, wonders if the ability he's referring to was based on naïveté more than determination. But his faith in her steals her breath, almost as much as being granted the freedom to not take that burden of leadership up again.
She can't answer him, not in words. But she'll remember, and when she kisses her thanks, it's redolent with validation.
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Living with Hawke in that huge house she reclaimed, Anders has always felt something of an impostor. Funny, that. Fenris is the one who stands out in Hightown, and Anders could easily pass for an entitled local had he not insisted for years on wearing the same worn gear that saw him through the Blight. (Ironically, unintentionally, the new black outfit made him fit in better, somber and well-tailored, like something from the old portraits in the Keep waiting-rooms.) Yet it's Anders who has been out of place, always slipping back to Darktown or else to the Hanged Man, and Fenris who squats in a Hightown mansion by choice.
(He still thinks of it all in present tense. It's been not even two weeks, a time shorter than some expeditions.)
He knows the Amell heritage, has even had the displeasure of standing by to listen as Grand Cleric Elthina cooed over Hawke, wouldn't your grandparents be proud or whatever honeyed pabulum the old bat spewed up. The taint on their line means nothing with the inconvenient mage daughter safely packed away to the Grey Wardens, the inconvenient mage father safely in his grave. That first morning they shared together, when Anders asked Hawke (incredulously, hopefully, amazed) would you tell the whole world, the Knight-Commander, that you love an apostate? That you will stand beside him? he wasn't employing hyperbole. He fully expected that Hawke's choice of consort might one day come under scrutiny at that high a level, and he turned out to be right. She was no parvenu, she was an Amell, and if that didn't matter to Hawke, it surely mattered to Kirkwall.
This may be part of why they've never married. This, and his constant agonizing over how everything will always end in ruin. His refusal to plan for any sort of a future. His inability to see past the Gallows and its pull.
She's a scene-stealing heartthrob of a noblewoman, all the more glamorous for her roguish refusal to dress the part, and someday she'll make a fearsome matriarch. Anders is a man who came from nothing, who has nothing, who has outlived his own planned ending, and likelier than not, he'll hurtle toward the next available opportunity for disaster. He's got no desire to drag Hawke along with him this time.
She has said no promises and he can't imagine a better outcome than that. The unspoken corollary to I don't want you promising me anything is I can't promise anything to you.
Only kisses, like these. He can promise her kisses, and he can infuse them with other promises in turn.
"You know what they say about Grey Wardens," he murmurs against the corner of her mouth.
If Thedas had bumper stickers, Grey Wardens Do It Harder and Longer would be a top seller.
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