Homework? Naaaaah

Anders stops counting after a while and grants himself this one thing to have all for himself. Some mornings he wakes up hard with the dream-scent of Hawke on his fingers and briskly does his business right before opening his clinic to Darktown’s citizens. Some nights the Old Gods’ call rings silent as he tosses and turns to more pleasurable visions, his hand inevitably wandering down to the tent in his pants. Sometimes he even takes breaks throughout the day. Eventually they all blur with the passing months (and years—years?) into an endless string of half-formed fantasies and fully formed wishes that always leave him wanting.

He would not have so much trouble abstaining were it not for the curious fact that Hawke still asks for him regularly, whether to help her gather this herb or that reagent for Solivitus, to treat the frequent wounds she and her group acquire on their misadventures, or to simply be an extra player at the table in The Hanged Man on Wicked Grace nights—or Diamondback, take his pick. Anders walks away with empty pockets at the end of every game, but decides it is worth losing to that blighted elf just to see her relaxed and smiling with her feet propped up on the table.

On certain days, Anders manages to convince himself that he does not need her. That he does not want her. That the mere glimpse of the nape of her neck does not send him into a heady tailspin of unwanted images and explicit sequences in the middle of combat. That he does not lo—no. So the sleepless nights, the restless afternoons, and every other hour in between can all be overcome by sheer force of will—of which he has none.

Hawke could never know how much he aches for her nor how often the image of her hair down interrupts his writing sessions, his manifesto left forgotten on the table for the umpteenth time as he takes himself in hand. Establishing a routine is far too easy as he pushes Justice to a corner in his mind and mentally wanders down the length of her back, tight and sinewy with muscle, skims his fingers up her thighs, buries his nose in her cleft, sucking and inhaling until he cannot breathe for want of her. Anders’ shoulders slump afterwards, although in frustration or exhaustion he cannot tell.

And when he just so happens to meet her eyes across the tavern—or cave, shore, forest, whatever—and Hawke being bloody Thomas Hawke, gives him a hint of a smile in acknowledgment, she has absolutely no way of knowing the heat drawn tight in his groin or the ongoing internal struggle between what he wants and what he/Justice wants. Or rather, the insidious part of his mind suggests, she knows exactly what Anders is going through whenever she looks at him and chooses to toss him scraps of her attention anyway.

Maker how he hates her.