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Midnights in the Chantry should have been a quiet, pensive time for contemplation. But every time Fenris found himself entering the Chantry after-hours, it was to deal with some loud kind of trouble. Templars, mages, demons, raiders…
This time, he was the trouble, stumbling in after a fight had gone wrong in a nearby alley.
He didn’t have proper medical supplies at home, and… he wasn’t sure he’d be able to make it home, anyway, and… Sebastian had promised he’d be here to help, if Fenris ever needed anything.
As his vision tunneled out, he just hoped that had been true.
Fenris woke up on a cot surrounded by candles, and panic struck him hard as he sat up and glanced around, taking in his surroundings.
“Whoa! Careful now, Fenris!” Sebastian’s familiar voice barely registers over the sudden pain that floods his senses, and Fenris grunts as he presses a hand to the newly-bandaged wound on his flank. “You should lie back down.”
Things sink in slowly as Fenris pieces together his surroundings and realizes he must be in the back halls of the Chantry. “Did you…?”
“I heard the clamor of your armor when you came in,” Sebastian sighs. “I was just going to find out why you came in when you fell over. It wouldn’t have felt right to let anyone else see to you, so I brought you back here and tended your wounds. You… will need fresh bandages soon, though. It’s bleeding again.”
Fenris knows he’s right. His motion had reopened whatever careful patching-up Sebastian had given him earlier, when he’d been unconscious, and now guilt pools up in his stomach along with other feelings of general discontent.
His lyrium feels like it’s burning him up from the inside, right now. It always does during fights and immediately after, but on bad days that sensation can go on and on and on, especially when his body is desperately trying to mend itself.
But to mend itself, sometimes outside help is necessary. Fenris knows that, too, but it doesn’t help him feel any better about any of this.
“Alright,” Fenris snaps, his voice impossibly quiet. “Just be quick about it.”
Fenris has seen Sebastian in many a fight, by now, watched him work wonders with his bow. He expected the archer’s hands to be rough, his touch firm, and they are, but… they’re gentle, too, and warm , and the sensations that linger on his skin in their wake are not unpleasant.
They are the opposite of un pleasant, in fact. Fenris knows that’s not something he should allow, but in this fleeting moment, he can’t help it.
As he watches Sebastian tie off the last of his bandages, with the low light of the candles softly framing his handsome face, Fenris… feels.
Midnights were never quiet in Hightown. Brawls were always breaking out between the different factions that prowled the darkness. Templars, mages, street gangs, guards… On certain streets, even between angry drunks that had been turned out from bars or the Blooming Rose.
But a certain amount of noise was comforting. It helped remind Fenris he was here, not in Tevinter or Seheron but in Kirkwall.
“It may be a burning trash heap of a city, but at least it’s our burning trash heap of a city.”
He takes another sip of his wine, straight from the bottle, and keeps listening to the sounds of the night. Somewhere nearby, a fight has broken out. He would know the sound of steel-on-steel anywhere, the whirr-and-clink of arrows lodging into stone…
“Take me if you dare!”
…And a familiar Starkhaven drawl, shouting reprimands. That’s unusual enough to catch his attention, draw him to the nearest window to scan the alleyways for his friend.
When he does spy Sebastian, down below, Fenris freezes up at the sight of him. His stark-white armor stands out brightly in the darkness, but has clearly been stained dark with blood.
Fenris sets down his bottle and plucks up his sword, leaping down to join him in the fray.
“I wish I could do better for you,” Fenris mutters, cleaning the blood off Sebastian’s back. “Perhaps I could run to the Chantry, ask someone to…”
“No,” Sebastian sighs, clenching his hands into fists. “It’s my own damn fault. Mother Elthina told me I need to stop this foolish vigilante business. I… should have listened.”
Fenris frowns as he squeezes out the rag and draws fresh water into it, resumes his work of tending Sebastian’s wound. He was lucky the arrow he’d been struck with had only grazed his shoulder, but he’d be wise to set his bow aside until it healed.
But he knows the Prince of Starkhaven well enough by now to know that will never happen.
“You just want to keep the city safe,” Fenris says, pressing his cloth to Sebastian’s wound again. “That’s an admirable thing.”
“I’m not doing this out of some noble sense of justice, Fenris,” Sebastian says, his voice cool. “I want… things I swore I’d leave behind.”
His oath has been coming up more and more, these days. Hawke, Varric, Isabela, Anders… they’ve all been pushing him about it, wondering where Sebastian draws his lines and why, wondering if he’ll choose to stand with the Chantry, or Starkhaven, or them.
But, for the first time, Fenris doesn’t think Sebastian is only talking about vengeance right now. Out of the Chantry, out of his armor… it’s impossible to avoid seeing the man he is, beneath that shield of faith.
“I don’t think your desire is foolish,” Fenris breathes. “Unless we’re both fools.”
Fenris isn’t sure what the last straw was, but he can’t feel anything but glad for it, not when he’s finally getting to feel the things he’s been craving for years.
Sebastian’s gentle hands, rough in all the right ways but still soft when they hold his hands, his hips. Sebastian’s lips, smiling into kisses, whispering words of affection and praise as they press against his skin. Sebastian’s eyes, looking at him, seeing the man he is, beneath his armored surface.
“When I return to Starkhaven you're welcome to come with me,” Sebastian whispers when they lay together, after. That's no longer a question, no longer a future he’s uncertain of.
“And do what, exactly?” Fenris scoffs.
Sebastian just smiles. “You’re a fine warrior. Together, we’d be unstoppable.”