whenever i feel down i draw a sad Hawke…
i have this headcanon that (after fenris leaves him, leandra dies and kirkwall just keeps throwing new problems) hawke is trying to cheer himself and others up with his bad sense of humor, like always, but because of all the tension in the city and various personal problems (since everyone except hawke has their own lifes) some of them end up snapping at him. and while usually that wouldn’t bother him this time it gets to him and after a while he kinda closes himself off others and i’ll stop writing here because i slept for like 2-3h and it’s 4am now… again…
Recent commish from syberfag, of my Empty!Arms Garrett and his Anders.
So much love.
DAT BLUSH. DEM TOES. AUGH.
Happy birthday to spicyshimmy!
Your fanfic all are great! I will never forget the feeling the first time I saw your fanfic for my DA2 stuff, I almost cry ;u; you are so amazing.
well, i am crying. these two. this moment. hard faces and hard lives softening in the shadows they carry and the hands they hold.
oh, they’re not perfect on their own, far from it; maybe they’re not even all that good for each other. but they’re proof that first love can come long after the first fires of youth are all but burnt out, just a few fireballs lobbed in the night to light the way. hawke isn’t a healer and anders doesn’t know how to heal himself and neither of them knows how to accessorize, obviously, or how to stay in one place, or how not to burn cities to the ground. or stay out of the underground, or keep themselves from inviting the darkness in, toying with light too bright, too bright.
one big hand, one small hand. one awkward coat, one silly house-robe. one cat person, one dog-person. one feathered, one regularly furred. one beard and one not-a-beard-at-all. eyes open or eyes closed.
but the most wonderful thing about it is how little they match and how much they love each other anyway. how in need of family they both are. how they can pillow each other. how they’re all patchwork like a stitched up bolero with bandages wound around the torn-y bits, or like armor that’s pieced together out of odds and ends. they don’t make much, but they make memories.
hawke doesn’t have to wait ten years, a hundred years from now.
and—without realizing it—anders doesn’t have to, either.
they hurt each other, they lose sight of each other; they lose sight of other things, and don’t lose their edge. they lose their way. they lose their grip. they lose some love but it isn’t finite. it replenishes. it’s a narrow river and a deep, uncalm sea. and anders’s fingers brush hawke’s knuckles so that two empty hands aren’t empty anymore.
stupid, frustrating, desperate, stubborn, tragic, lonely—the recipe for a potion like love. they get it right, somehow, despite being so wrong all the time. maker knows they wouldn’t ask for a different path, hexes twisting and turning and smells and smog and everything. there are some people, people like aveline, who stand for all of them.
and there are some people who—for better or worse, in sickness and in health, possessed by spirits of justice and demons of charisma—stand with each other.
they all thought hawke was the champion of kirkwall, but that wasn’t the truth at all, not really. or anders was kirkwall and kirkwall was home and, on the run even when they were by a hearth, they made shapes like family, and one whole shadow.
Candles, firelight, and sparks.
You know that those fingers sparkle /eyebrows wiggles/
Some people get an Orlesian honeymoon, a proper chance to leave the City of Chains behind, somewhere that isn’t part of the Wounded Coast—and they don’t even appreciate the vacation, or the new freckles they’re wearing when they finally return, their shoulders practically aching for the old pauldrons again.
‘I’m surprised she didn’t wear the guard captain’s suit of arms to bed,’ Hawke says, because Varric told him it was important to be friendly after the copper marigold business made things awkward—for some reason—and Donnic shrugs, one-shouldered, muttonchops particularly unreadable that evening.
‘Wouldn’t you like to know,’ he replies.
But guard captain’s a real job, one that has its moments outside the mantle, undressed, possibly undemanding, Orlesian finger-foods and decorative pillows and low candlelight just a few of the charming accessories Hawke can only imagine. Championing Kirkwall isn’t so much a job as it is a lifestyle and working as a free healer in Darktown is the same; actually being justice is somewhere beyond that, no rest in dreams or in the grave, and you don’t take honeymoons from spirits or the cities they’re chained to.
Presumably. It’s not as though anyone’s written a proper guide on the subject, seeing as how the situation is unfailingly unique.
There are a hundred and one excuses for why they don’t—just like there are a hundred and one uses for an over-sized tuber—and none of them actually made rather than implied. When they saw Aveline and Donnic off, Hawke was momentarily wistful, then dramatically so, shielding his eyes from the light with the palm of his hand.
‘She isn’t even going to appreciate their chocolate-covered strawberries, you know,’ he said, while Varric patted him on the back and told him jealousy was an unbecoming trait for a main character, no matter how handsome he was in his new smuggler’s robes.
The days passed, and Hawke continued to be handsome in his new smuggler’s robes, and he’d resigned himself to the facts of his life as they were: incomparable to other people’s, enjoyable when his fingers brushed the backs of Anders’s knuckles—not entirely by accident—or when their eyes met across a table at the Hanged Man, or when their knees bumped together afterward. A honeymoon wasn’t really necessary, though the Orlesian finger-foods would have been a nice addition to anyone’s life.
But then he found Anders waiting for him in the study. Of all the details, there was low candlelight.
‘Varric’s right, you know,’ Anders said. ‘You do look handsome in your new smuggler’s robes.’
‘And I look even better out of them,’ Hawke replied, already halfway there.
The estate was his now. All other implications aside, it meant he could leave clothes on the floor whenever he liked.
‘I know it’s not anything like an Orlesian honeymoon…’ There was a sparkle in Anders’s eyes like the sparkle at his fingertips when he lifted them, with just as much promise and, even better, the humor of a smile to match. ‘But there is one thing here you can’t get anywhere else.’
‘You aren’t,’ Hawke said.
‘I am,’ Anders answered.
And he did, showing Hawke the infamous electricity trick at last.
*
‘What trouble did you lot get up to, then?’ Donnic asks, and Hawke blinks it all away: the little shiver in tight muscle that still hasn’t faded; the heartbeat sent skittering behind his chest with every fresh, wicked crackle of raw power; the trick of Anders’s fingers along his back mirrored by the other trick, right between Hawke’s thighs. It took them somewhere else, all right, but to a time rather than a place, like a honeymoon to their youth instead of to Orlais.
‘Oh, nothing more than the usual,’ Hawke replies.
because Mallow and Shimmy said something about Hawke being a dog person, and clearly Anders is a cat person hahahahahahaha
There were times when Hawke wondered if he hadn’t found himself living with two dogs instead of one. After all, Anders met practically every last requirement of a fine mabari: always wandering off somewhere; leaving wet socks in every room around the house; getting rather growly and baring his teeth when a close friend’s safety was threatened; not to mention his absurd interest in things no one should have to see, smell or touch in the Kirkwall sewers. In other words, Anders had that same mabari propensity for mucking about in actual shit that Hawke—as a connoisseur of fine Fereldan mud—would never be able to understand, much less enjoy with him.
There were times when Anders curled up on Hawke’s bed and times when his whiskers got too long and needed trimming; there were times when he shed, feathers instead of short brown fur, but really, that detail seemed trivial in the grander scale of everything. He’d been known to enjoy a good belly rub, had very specific spots on his skin where he liked to be scratched—in a manner of speaking—and there were times when Hawke wished more than an implicit arrangement, an unspoken adoration and a mutual dependency was all that bound them.
But of course, you could no more collar and leash a lover than you could a mabari—at least not outside of Tevinter. You simply had to accept that they were bound to get into trouble on their own eventually and, if you were lucky, they’d come home after, tracking sewage over the front carpet, giving the house dwarf the fainting vapors trying to clean up before the stains set in.
Loyal. Faithful. Over-enthusiastic. A bit slobbery—but then, Hawke enjoyed sloppy kisses. All too eager to jump on him and refuse to budge, heavy and comfortable and, it seemed, on a face that could no more easily be read than a certain manifesto of recent infamy, smiling. For a brief moment, anyway, soft brown eyes and stubbly whiskers and everything.
No proper Fereldan would ever admit to loving a cat as much as a trusty mabari. But Anders did disprove the theory from time to time, draping his arms around Hawke’s shoulders after a late supper, settling his chin in Hawke’s hair and waiting, of course, for pets.
‘Hang on, I know this trick,’ Hawke said. ‘Wait until you want something, then sit on my head. So that’s how it’s going to be.’
‘For a long time, too,’ Anders replied, while Hawke rubbed his jaw—or rather, scritched his whiskers.
