spicyshimmy:

iheartapostates:

Climb into my arms
With blood on your clothes
You’ve got a glow
You’ve got a glow

- Okkervil River, A Glow

Varric wrote stories, ink on his hands; Anders healed strangers, blood on his fingers. But in the end, it was Hawke’s palms on Anders’s shoulders, against bare skin, by the glow of firelight even the best of narrators could only imagine.

How it felt—fingertips on pulse points, calluses on freckles. Something rough against something smooth, something cold against something warm. The face a tired man made when his hair was drawn up off his neck and his back was turned, when the feathers were off, when the night was long. 

What did they say, alone together? Or did they not bother with words at all?

The private, the mundane. The intimate, the gentle. The strong. 

‘I don’t think I’m in the mood for any sandwiches tonight, Hawke,’ Anders offered, the smell of Darktown still stuck under his nails. 

‘Let’s see if I can’t cook up something better, then,’ Hawke replied. 

And Varric drew the curtain, on bare flesh and little scars, all the wrinkles they didn’t have time to count, the heart beating inside its ribcage, Hawke’s thumb at the nape of Anders’s neck. The way—for all the big things they’d done—they realized they’d have to live with reflecting firelight, but being small.