A Long Way to Go (a Dragon Age fanfiction)

The Restlessness in Her

Hawke looked around the room, her lips moving as she went over her mental checklist of what should be brought. Occasionally she would dart at a satchel, rifle through its contents, mutter some more, and either take something out or put it back in.

Fenris watched this indulgently for a while; his own needs being comparatively few, he had finished packing rather quickly. At last, when he saw her take the same embroidered pair of fancy gloves out that she had put in ten minutes ago, he said, "Hawke, leave that be."

"But what if I forget something?"

"And the Orlesians make fun of you for having insufficiently gaudy gloves? Perish the thought."

She glared at him. "The Orlesians are going to make fun of me anyway."

"Precisely my point. Your time is better spent in resting before the journey."

"How can I rest when there's so much to do?"

"I can imagine certain ways in which your mind might be diverted from the tasks at hand."

She grinned. "I'm never sure how you manage it, but you always make 'get naked and come over here' sound like Blessed Age poetry."

He raised his eyebrows. "In that case ... get naked and come over here."

"That works, too," she said rather breathlessly, shucking her clothes and strowing them about the room in a reckless way he was certain she would complain about in the morning.

Then her naked body was in his arms, a miracle he never tired of experiencing. He laid her back on the bed, kissing his way down from her mouth to her collarbone to her breasts to her abdomen and lower, using lips and teeth and tongue to wring the pleasure from her, drop by drop. And when she had achieved hers, she rolled him over and pinned him down and held him while her tongue explored the lines of lyrium—just enough to arouse, knowing by now when to stop before it became painful—and farther down, her dark hair tickling his thighs as her mouth moved on him.

"Hawke!" He thrust into her mouth, his hands tangled in her hair to hold her there. He closed his eyes, clenching his teeth against the intensity of his release.

Smiling, she moved up his body to rest in his arms, her head on his shoulder.

"Why are we taking on this task?" he asked her.

"Which one, the Duke's ball and stealing this jewel?"

"Do we have any other foolish risks planned? I was only aware of the one."

"Not that I know of," Hawke admitted. She sighed. "I don't know. I'm bored?"

"I thought you appreciated no longer having to fight a battle every time you leave the house," Fenris said.

"I do ... but without that, without being the Champion, I don't really know who I am." Hawke sat up, looking at him, her eyes troubled. "I mean, I've been fighting all my life, since I was six years old. And now I have no one to fight, and no political ambitions, and even if I wasn't married to an elf the other nobles would irritate me. I can't just sit around with nothing to do."

Fenris could have done so, quite easily. Between the distraction of Hawke in the bedroom, and the world of books she had opened up to him, and spending time at the Hanged Man playing Wicked Grace ... he would have been perfectly content to hang up the swords and leave that life behind. But he could understand the restlessness in her. During the years she had been in Kirkwall, she had only taken time away from the demands on her for brief periods after her sister had been taken to the Gallows and after her mother had been killed. Otherwise, she had been on the move almost constantly. He would have thought she would have been weary enough to be grateful for the respite, but apparently the inactivity had begun to pall.