#i might draw him w beard(stubble?) more often

[doroinoue]

edgelord.png

[perlen-gold]

Storm Night

“I am not good at talking about how I feel.” said Fenris once.

Ordinarily it is not the rain that arouses Hawke. He was not awake to witness the birth of the storm, far away from the shallow piers of Kirkwall, across the heaving and hungry sea. After hours of silent hunting, dark and looming clouds have entrapped the aspiring stone buildings of men.

The rain gushes down in endless silvery streams, chasing any four-legged or upright stranglers mercilessly into desperate shelter. Violently, a myriad of furious drops besiege the quivering glass in the windows, its irate cadence ceaselessly drowning out the occasional crackling of the fireplace. For a brief moment the bed room is plunged in an uncanny flash of dazzling light. The columns of the four-poster bed flinch, ghosts briefly awaken upon the seashell white bed sheet. Above gloomy curtains shudder in trepidation as the searing white lightning strikes once, twice, thrice. The skies over Kirkwall are illuminated in wraithlike shadows full of clouded hunters and rumbling beasts, washed over by the piercing of light, and felled in forlorn battle by thunder and bolt.

In the blink of an eye, Hawke’s eye, amber-colored and wide awake, the short-tempered light disperses into the night.

The smell of fresh, hard rain mixed with the herb burn of the dance in the fireside that shelters the bedroom under-fire from the feud outside is nearly palpable. Once more the keen blade of light strikes and transforms the hunters into warriors and the warriors into tombs for the fallen and demised, cleaving through the stormy night.

That which usually rudely awakes Hawke from sleep is neither hunter nor tomb; a kick, unexpected and painful in the lulling reverie of slumber; a sudden stroke hitting some uncovered part of his body that leaves his knee, his thigh, his shoulder, his ribs a bruised mark as purple as ripe plums; an entangling wrench yanking imprisoning feather and fabric away; and sounds, sounds, sounds, muffled, leashed, involuntary, sounds seared in Hawke’s mind.

This night is different, though.

When he wakes up, thunder forces his eyelids fly open. He lies still and he knows something is wrong.

He looks around, searches. That which wakes him this night is the slashing of the relentless rain and the cold spot on the soft mattress beside Hawke.

After a short moment of blessed silence as the storm outside gathers its strength for the next oncoming assault, Hawke sits up and swings his feet to the dry carpeted floor. It is this bare patch on the bed beside him, bereft of any body’s warmth, that has imprinted itself upon his dormant consciousness.

On bare feet he walks out of the room, along the ghostly dark corridor.  Beyond the stalwart stone walls of the Amell estate dark and light continue to lash out at each other as sundered lovers. Listening to the weeping skies Hawke remembers Carver’s wide-stricken eyes and how he swallowed his own boyhood tears for his brother’s and sister’s sake during a similar night. So big a house sunken in a darkness so impenetrable, it is impossible for Hawke to judge whether he has been roused in the middle of the night or at the cusp of dawn and day.

Wrapped in the clattering sound of the endless rain he passes the stairs, two closed doors, the kitchen till a flicker of faintly orange light piques his interest hidden amidst shelves of books.

In bad nights, Hawke will resolutely grip Fenris shoulders in order to shake him awake from his violent thrashing. In good nights, observing his twitching jaw muscles, Hawke wraps his arms around Fenris’waist, cradling him, bringing him close to his chest so he can breath softly into his ear, easing him out of his sleep just to the verge of awakening.

On those nights that are worst, Hawke will wake to a cold bed and find Fenris swigging down abundant-flavored wine from dark bottles. During these nights, Hawke joins him. They drink, they talk about other things while Hawke laughs and smiles and mounts guard over the distant look in Fenris’ wakeful eyes. Then, occasionally, out of the blue, Fenris might blurt out some mutinous memento, granted by his former life under the unyielding Tevinter sun, that leaves Hawke unsmiling and Fenris with bitterness or – worse still – with a callous shrug.

“And here I thought you hated reading.”

In this particular night Hawke finds Fenris hunched over a book in the lone flame of a single candle. He could illume the lamps and torches in the library without so much as a flicker of his fingers but he refrains from doing so. Instead, he pulls up a plain wooden chair and sits opposite Fenris, elbow on the abraded tabletop, one side of his scratchy face in his hand.

“Why?” Fenris retorts brusquely.

Hawke cannot help but smile in remembrance.

“Because last time I tried to teach you, you ended up flinging my poor book aside with the result that it was crouching in a corner quivering from spine to edge. I have not seen it since. It is probably in hiding by now.”

Fenris’ even brow patterns into struggling concentration.

“It is easy enough for you to taunt. I expected you were going to teach me reading but the sole thing you do is unnerve me with your constant correcting and scoffing.”

“And here I thought you liked my dallying.”

On other nights Fenris might look at him, his eyes alight with that dark spring green glare that there dwells perpetually, till a sudden smile flickers across his curling lips. Tonight, he does not give in to his bait, though. There is an edge in Fenris’ voice that is not often prevalent, not when they are quite alone like this. Hawke strains towards it without Fenris’ notice.

The drum of tempest-tossed rain falls upon their ears. Hawke feels his smile grow softer.  

“Maybe you are just a dreadful student.”

“Maybe you are just a dreadful teacher, Hawke.”

A chuckle rises from Hawke’s chest, light and amused.

“I probably am.”

He can see Fenris’ skin is still damp on the undersides of his arms and the nape of his neck.

The deluging torrent is not as loud here but its unyielding tremor splashing the rooftop unforgettable.

Fenris leans back, his elbows raised, his hands abruptly restless on his thighs. With a sweep of the flickering candle flame all his riposting ire seems gone all of a sudden.

“I was a fool to believe I could learn a skill like this.”

Fenris does not raise his gaze when Hawke stands and comes round the table. He draws his chair to Fenris’ side, sitting next to him. Thunder anew rumbles in the invisible night as Hawke clasps Fenris’ right hand. He does so gingerly, with the slightest hint of tarrying deference just before their fingers touch as if to see whether Fenris’ hand will move away, ever so slightly.

After dipping it into blue-black ink he threads a gray-blue quill between Fenris’ almond-colored fingers (a griffon plume, ostensible, when it was actually taken out of a phoenix’ reluctant plumage.)

With great care, slowly, deliberately, the feather tip scratches in high curves and narrow prongs over the mottled sheet of parchment. The scraping sound seems to echo among the endless shelves of books even under the voices of the thunderstorm. Long after the scratching has stopped Fenris keeps staring at the straight arcs and meandering lines in blue-black colors. Brows lowered in reflective toil his fingertips brush over the barely dried lines, smearing them at the outer edges.

“What does it say?” requests he.

Indicatively Hawke’s index finger passes from inky character to character, pronouncing each consonant and vowel with great care. Once he has reached the final letter, the last shred of reluctance is brushed away of Fenris’ expression.  Superseded by a diffident smile that he is not yet poised to evince.

“Show me yours.” he asks, half plea, half demand.

Once more Hawke guides his hand over the torn piece of parchment, tip grazing, ink fanning out as a peacock indigo feathers.

“H,” he pronounces softly but sumptuously, “A. W …”

Again, Fenris gazes at the finished name for quite a long time before he begins writing it down slowly, painstakingly, yet perfectly, unaided. Twice he then writes his own name before switching the quill from his right to his left hand. Gradually, the letters, first bristle, become more fluid with increasing pace.

Arms folded, Hawke leans back and watches Fenris practice. First copying down the portrait of their names, secondly each letter individually, then rearranging them hesitantly and strained-eyed until new words are being born, the characters pronounced meaning suddenly becoming easier with each line. Soon there is not an inch of crammed parchment left to pen on and Hawke produces a whole new sheet from his writing desk while the storm outside howls and prowls with strenuous menace.

Quite abruptly the ink-gleaming letters, bearing a childlike quality, loose their fierce focus. The subsequent line swerves out of line, then steadies, but the next does, too, and the one after that. Then the trembling begins.

At first it is only his hand, though Fenris keeps writing, writing their names, teeth gritted.

Mere seconds later the shaking has befallen his fingers, his legs, his shoulders hunched into his chest. His whole frame shudders under the shivering grip, as iron as his own grip on the quill.

Hawke has stood up.

Soon Fenris’ clammy hand cannot clutch the quill anymore. It falls, twisting itself out of his quavering grasp, dark spots of ink spraying everyway.

Few futile attempts later he stops altogether.

Hawke is standing behind his chair when it starts. With slow movements he wraps his arms loosely around his shoulders. He does not count the minutes, muss less the seconds.

Somewhen and somewhere Hawke feels Fenris startlingly cold hand on the side of his face, fingers cradling his charcoal black beard.

Rivulets of time run by.

Then Fenris picks the quill up again.

Leaning into the gentle touch Hawke lowers his weary head and rests his chin atop the crown of Fenris’ head, char stubbles shaving ebony shocks of white hair. By experience, Hawke knows better than to waste any words on that which has just happened.

So silence remains.

As Fenris finishes his next word it gives the impression of an even more childish scrawling.

Softly Hawke reads the letters aloud, feeling the fine strands of pearly white hair rubbing between his beard. “Garrett” Then, quieter, “where did you pick that one up?”

“It was stitched onto the insides of one of your shirts you gave me.”

Hawke feels a smile capturing his lips, first small, then warm and filling.

“Fenris?”

“Yes.”

“Come”, he whispers and takes his hand into his, the one that has the scarlet scarf slung about its wrist, leading him back to the warm shelter of the room of their bedroom.

Beyond the drop-gleaming windows the undying rain has lost its edge and grown somewhat quieter, enough to transmute into a deceiving semblance of repose. Back in the wide four-poster bed  they arrange for sleep in the same fashion they adopt each evening, night after night. Hawke lies on his back in the not-so-exact middle of the soft mattress, Fenris at his side, half-spread, half-outflung across Hawke’s chest, one long sharp-ended ear bedded against Hawke’s shoulder, collarbone, heart. As twisted as they might move during sleep – entangled into the warm blankets so one of them has to yank it back from under the other’s body – warped and tousled, on their sides, backs, sprawled on their stomachs – Hawke’s nose may be pitched by Fenris adamant fingers to stop his occasional but insistent snoring, his limps loose with sleep – however slumber may let them wander apart, this is the irrevocable way they settle for sleep.

Fenris’ ear near Hawke’s heart where he can harken its steady, willful beat.

Hawke knows Fenris can hear its wordless, confessing avowals for he can hear Fenris’ equally, a little  arrhythmic heartbeat through his hand on the elf’s back, the answer creeping up the arm he has slung around him.

“I am not good at talking about how I feel.” said Fenris once.

This ineptness is an inevitable part of the man beside him as is the color of his eye or skin and Fenris can no more shed it than he could change the length of his limps or stop the breathing in his lungs.

“I like this.”

“What? This?” Hawke pulls him closer in merriment.

“I like this kind of weather.”

Astonished Hawke listens to the rataplan of the rain. No lightening forks the dark martial skies outside anymore save for a distant rumbling afar.

“Bethany,” Hawke remembers, still startled, “liked storms, too.”

Suddenly, Fenris straightens up and with one swift, vigorous motion he pulls Hawke out of the sheets intentionally.

Out of the bedroom into the hall he is dragged by the elf whose strength is as unsettling as ever. Hawke, no weakling himself and impressively built, once probed the silver-bladed sword (Fenris cherished nearly as much as Varric did Bianca) for several minutes and strained to fathom how Fenris could bear running around with it all day long without having his tendons and ligaments reattached afterwards. How he commiserates and dotes on this brutality of his.

“Oh,” Hawke groans, irony and grin tugging at the corners of his mouth, “I am not going to like this.”

Down the shadowy stairs, through the unlit foyer, up to the storm-pondered font gate and, in an instant, gushes of rain and wind wash over their faces.  

The moment they leave the safety of the house Fenris opens his grasp on Hawke’s hand but the impulse of his powerful motion propels Hawke forward right into the battle ground of the storm. Before he can blink he is soaked to the skin.

Side by side they stand in the sheath of glassy rain, barefooted, barely closed.

Before them the skies are ashore with waves of gloomy clouds. The ever-raging warrior thunder, lightening his merciless blazing blade, is aloud with booming vengeance here and fighting the skies and the earths alike.

A stroke of electrifying light from afar paints the streets and walls of Kirkwall in sharp relieve, a miniscule, insignificant thorp cowering at the feet of blue and gray and black mountains awash by breaking, spuming , spraying waves of stormy sea.

Water streams down the sides of Hawke’s face, filling the tiny spaces between his seeping beard stubbles. Angry winds gush and billow.

Endless rivulets of rain, sapid with the aroma of the wounded skies, flow in streams along the inside of Hawke’s palms, cascade forward from his slack fingertips.  

Hawke closes his eyes.

In he breathes the taste of the thunder and the light, inhaling the raining waters.

All four of their naked, bare feet are engulfed by ankle-deep flows of water.

“Maker’s breath,” Hawke exclaims in a sudden mad fit of laughter, “how can you stand this all day long?”

Since there is no answer, lost in the grace of nature, Hawke finally opens his eyes.

Fenris’ face is only a blur in the embrace of the rains. Winds tear at the strangely pearly white hair glued to his cheeks. Innumerable drops of gleaming water are falling upon the cobbled streets from his naked arms, his pointed ears, the tip of his nose.

So fierce are the winds that their sheer physical strength all but overthrows them – even so, Fenris’ slender shape towers among them indomitable.  His elven face may be blurred by the spray of the gush and rain, his deep green emerald eyes, however, glitter with the rage of the roaring warrior and his blazing blade.

Once again the skies are cast alight and Fenris face flashed, his eyes lit as by a fire within.

Sometimes Hawke wishes he would simply start crying.

He is stepping towards Hawke.

Hawke is giving him a wet smile that he cannot hear through the chaos. His eyes are fixed with studying one single silver bead among a plethora which is running down along his curved neck and disperses wetly into his the well of his collarbone.

“We will both be stone-cold dead by the end of the night.”  

Thirst-ridden Fenris’ eyes blazing virid eyes find his, and his hard mouth, arms entwining around Hawke’s neck, finds his and is pressing against his lips tasting of rain and the aroma of his caramel-shaded skin. Hawke grasps him, savors him not heeding the chatty gossip that might burst from a prying eye behind the dark rain-stained windows around them – who would anyway?

“I am not good at talking about how I feel.” said Fenris once.

In the peach-colored rays of morning light when the horizon will be skewed with skeins of tangerine, Hawke will sleepily wave away Orana’s considerate knock at the door and her regardful eyes peering from behind the bedroom door announcing that breakfast is ready, and Hawke will feel inclined, as ever, to cover Fenris’ long elven ears lest he might give him that glare that brings Hawke to consider a tremendous pay raise each time he does so. Soon, Orana will be wealthier than half of his Hightown neighbors.

For now, however, they trip and splash back inside leaving wet footmarks all over the floor and carpets. Long after drying each other with nowhere near enough towels, the window aglow with firelight reviving honey and daffodil and gold beads, they fall back to sleep, hearts pounding, skins resting, as they always do.

There might and will be many a nightmare in the gloomy nights to come.

But for now, for the remaining fragment of this one short, storm-shaken night, Fenris eases peacefully in his arms.