At Your Side (A Dragon Age fanfiction)

The Good Kind

Hawke made her way up the stairs, her heart pounding in a ridiculously adolescent way. It was hardly the first time she'd propositioned a man—what was so nerve-wracking about this one? It had taken her months to get up the courage to have this conversation in the first place, and she'd spent ten minutes standing outside the door of the mansion before pushing it open. They all did that now, barged in without bothering to knock. Hawke figured there were enough rooms in the mansion Fenris could hide if he didn't want the company, but he didn't seem to mind the intrusions.

As a matter of fact, he already had company. She heard voices as she reached the landing. Recognizing the rich drawl, Hawke came to a stop as if her boots were glued to the carpet. Isabela. Had she waited too long? Had Isabela swooped in while she agonized? Hawke leaned her head against the wall, feeling defeated. She hadn't forgotten the night she'd come into the Hanged Man and found the pirate dangling her assets in Fenris's face. What man wouldn't want Isabela? The woman was sex on a plate. Hawke didn't have any false modesty—she knew she could be pleasing to the eye when she wanted to be—but Fenris usually saw her sweaty and blood-spattered and hardly at her best, while battle only seemed to add a fetching flush to Isabela's cheeks and a wild-eyed lust that if anything made her more desirable.

Hawke wanted to cry. All this time, trying to smother her attraction to him, and now to lose him to Isabela just when she had worked up her courage? Her shoulders slumped, and she turned, leaving the way she had come.

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Fenris's keen elven ears had heard the distinctive sounds of Hawke coming up the stairs—the light jingle of her armor, the sure-footed whisper of her boots across the carpet. It was still mildly disconcerting to him that the others all felt comfortable simply barging into the mansion, but he was hardly going to ask them to ring the doorbell of a supposedly empty estate. And part of him, a part he kept tightly hidden, even from himself, liked it. It made him feel like one of them, as though he belonged somewhere.

After a moment, Hawke turned and walked back down the stairs, moving quietly. Isabela, still jabbering on about the tax collector, hadn't heard her. Fenris was irritated at the Rivaini suddenly. Would she never shut up?

"Thank you, Isabela," he said, cutting her off in mid-story. "I appreciate your efforts."

"Do you?" She lounged in his extra chair—Hawke's chair—with one leg thrown casually over the arm. In that position, it was obvious what she wasn't wearing under that brief sailcloth tunic.

"Yes." He stood up, waiting for her to do the same.

"Have it your way," Isabela sighed, getting up from the chair. She didn't look overly disappointed, however, and Fenris assumed she had better fish to fry elsewhere. He couldn't say he cared. All he really wanted was for Isabela to leave so he could find out what Hawke had wanted.

At last she was gone, and Fenris hastily followed her down the stairs, slipping through the shadows of Hightown. He rang the bell at Hawke's estate, waiting until Bodahn opened the door.

"Ah, messere!"

"Is ... uh, Hawke in?" He felt awkward asking for her this way, like some stammering schoolboy. It was not a sensation he enjoyed.