Stack the Deck
(Maria Hawke/Fenris | 1,310 words | Fluff | no warnings)
Fenris could have caught Hawke before she reached the stairs if he’d really been trying, but that probably wasn’t the point.
Hawke had left the Hanged Man when he’d excused himself for a few moments, and he’d been chasing after her since he’d returned to the table to find her gone. He knew quite well what she was doing, because she’d spent the whole evening “accidentally” running her fingers over the inside of his wrist, whispering so close to his ear that her lips often skimmed the sensitive skin, and tilting her head back in the way that occasionally exposed the small red marks at the joint of her neck.
She’d also been cheating at cards to no avail, but that was nothing new. Fenris hardly noticed it anymore, since Hawke slipped the extra cards into his belt more often than not these days. As he jogged up the stairs to Hightown, he retrieved three from his waistband alone. He would almost certainly find more tucked away on his person when he finally reached her manor and disrobed.
Perhaps this sort of thing was odd to do with one’s lover, but Fenris didn’t especially care. He could hear her laughing from here, after all, and the sound of it lightened his steps. As he rounded the corner at last, he spotted Hawke at her manor door, stepping into the firelit foyer.
“Hawke,” he called, speeding up.
She held the door open for him, beaming across the courtyard as if she hadn’t seen him in days.
“Oh, dear,” she said, with not an ounce of concern in her voice. “You’ve caught me.”
“You didn’t hide yourself very well, if that’s what you were trying to do,” Fenris told her as he stepped through the door. She swung it shut behind her with a soft click and he caught her waist in his hands, pressing her back against the wood.
“Heavens,” Hawke said, still smiling, “how forward, messere.”
“I seem to recall having you twice before breakfast,” he murmured, kissing her cheek as he spoke. “How could this possibly be forward, Hawke?”
She seemed disinclined to explain herself, and laughed breathlessly when his lips trailed over the curve of her ear. Fenris huffed and directed his next words there in a murmur.
“Was there a reason for this little game, or did you tease me all night so I would chase you home?”
“Hm?” she said, angling her head away.
Fenris obliged the silent request and nipped at the soft skin of her neck. It felt just as good as it had this morning.
“I’m winning a bet,” she said after a moment.
Fenris leaned back to look at her, brows raised.
“Oh! No, not that,” she said, and produced a playing card from her sleeve with the casual flick of her fingers.
If he hadn’t known better, Fenris might have thought it was magic, but no—these were only the skills she’d learned as a pickpocket when her family had first come to Lowtown. She’d solemnly sworn never to pretend to pull a coin from his ear again, but that hadn’t kept her from producing various other objects from elsewhere on his person or her own.
“The Angel of Death?” he asked, reading the card, “Were you losing all night on purpose?”
“Yes and no,” she laughed, producing another card, then another, and another, from her sleeves, then her decolletage, then her belt, and so on. When she finally stopped, Fenris was staring at more than half a deck stacked neatly in her left hand.
“And the bet?” he said after a moment. She smiled again, eyes lit from within, and produced a card from behind his back.
“That I wouldn’t make it out of the Hanged Man before Varric realized I’d taken most of his Wicked Grace deck,” she said, and plucked yet another card from the front of his belt. “Angel of Temerity. I was proud of that one.”
“Of course you were,” Fenris said, resting a hand against the door beside her head. “What have you won?”
“Two sov off of Isabela,” she said, tipping her head up so she could meet his eyes. “Would’ve been three, but I couldn’t quite get the last of the Angels. I think she had it in her bosom all along, the blighted pirate.”
Ah.
Slowly, Fenris reached into his pocket and pulled two cards from it. One was the Knight of Dawn, but the other…
Hawke gasped.
“No!” she said, reaching up to touch the second card. “Fortitude! But how?”
“I take my cards with me when I leave the table,” Fenris told her, extending the cards. “Or someone would steal them.”
Hawke gasped and would have pressed a hand to her chest, but he’d caught her fingers when she’d reached for his cards.
“I would never,” she said, the dimples on either side of her mouth deepening despite the solemnity of her words.
“Never,” Fenris said flatly, not letting go of the pair of cards, “and yet you are doing so now.”
“You offered!” Hawke protested. “Fine, then. What do you want for them?”
Fenris considered her for a moment. The long walk to Hightown had brought a flush to her cheeks. Her hair, formerly wound into her customary braid, had already begun to come loose. Ringlets sprung from its twined length and brushed against her neck. Beneath dark brows, her eyes laughed at him.
“What are you offering?” he countered, leaning closer.
“Nothing you couldn’t have for the asking,” she laughed. “A kiss for the two of them.”
“No.”
“You don’t even want them!” Hawke protested.
The skin at the corners of her eyes wrinkled when she smiled; Fenris marked it whenever it happened.
Especially when he was the one who’d made her smile.
“But you do,” he said, keeping his grip on the cards she was trying to tug away. “Two apiece and I will let go.”
“One apiece,” she countered, “and that’s my final offer. Surely you wouldn’t haggle with your dearest beloved over so—”
Fenris cut off the rest of her sentence with a kiss, and caught the edge of her smile on his lower lip for his haste. He did not mind it, of course. Hawke was smiling half the time when they kissed regardless, and feeling the shift in her when she turned her full attention to him was a pleasure in and of itself.
“One,” she murmured, tilting her head away. She returned to him before he could think of something to say in return. This time, she let go of the cards and traced the line of his jaw as she kissed him, fingertips running along bone until they reached his chin.
“Two,” he began when she pulled away, but she was kissing him again before the rest of the syllable tripped from his tongue.
This kiss lasted the longest of all, until Fenris was leaning harder against the hand he’d braced against the wall, until he’d half-forgotten what they were still doing in her foyer at all. When she tipped her head away at last, he blinked at her for a moment, surprised at the sudden absence of her.
“That has to count for at least four,” she said, and Fenris felt something brush against his ear.
“Thank you, my dear,” she added. Fenris turned his head.
The cards. Of course she was holding the cards.
“Why argue,” he asked, taking a step back, “if you intended to take them in the first place?”
“It was the principle of the thing,” Hawke said, shrugging.
Fenris scoffed and shook his head, but she only smiled up at him and pushed off the door.
“Come on, then,” she said, hooking her fingers into his belt and tugging lightly. “Let me give you the rest.”
And Fenris, as they’d both known he would, followed gladly.
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