Flipping Coins…Act 3, post 'Alone'. Pretty self-explanatory smut, but Aedan's initial attitude might seem to make more sense if you read Steering Shallow first. Poor messed up kid. ;) This is not entirely pwp, but its pretty close. Also, it's a friendmance, such as it is, but the glowy wallslam kiss of the rivalmance is umm...better.

Bioware owns all, I'm just gratefully playing in their sandbox.

Offering

"If there is a future to be had, I will walk gladly into it at your side."

Aedan stood up, then, drawn into his arms by the heat and truth in his lucent gaze. Fenris' lips were firm and warm, confident even against hers. He'd found the smile she had been unable to keep from her face had given him any courage he lacked.

She twined her arms around his neck, mindful of his armor. Fenris' hands came tight against her back crushing her against him, then smoothing down over her hips, tugging her closer still, drawing her up to him. He feathered kisses across her cheeks, down her jaw and she dropped her head back granting him access to her long, white neck. She gasped as he nipped at the join of her jaw, calling upon a memory of what had pleased her once. Pausing, he could feel her pulse skittering in the artery, blue against her translucent, flushing skin.

Fenris had felt chilled to the marrow since the encounter at the Hanged Man, snapping Danarius' neck had been like smashing a hole in the dam, all the heat and hate that had kept him focused, drained away. His sister's words had fallen like hailstones, battering him. Then, this. Like one of Sebastian's miracles. Hawke, the heat of her like a glowing brazier in his arms, offering herself once again.

Offering, but not…the need to kiss the creamy skin, to touch her freely pushed aside the stray thought.

He stepped back from her to strip off his gauntlets and she drew back quickly, making a quiet noise. One of her hands went to her lips, fingertips brushing against where his kiss had left them tingling. Her other arm wrapped around her middle and he caught a faint edge of bewilderment in her eyes as she ducked her chin.

Aedan felt him pull away from her and dropped her hold like she'd been caught thieving in the Chantry, again. The sudden draft of cool air between them nearly made her whimper, pinned between the impulse to thread her fingers through his bright hair, to nimbly seek out the buckles of his spaulders and the conditioning of the last three years to resist that impulse at all cost. She'd been a fighter too long. Conditioning won out and she wrapped herself up, attempting to hold in the heat of his touch. Caught up in her thoughts, Aedan turned to the fire and didn't realize he had unbuckled the armor pieces she'd been considering, himself.

Frowning, Fenris watched her draw up to the fire. He reached out and slid his fingers into the short, fine silk of her hair, pressing his thumb against the knot of bone behind her ear. She sighed and leaned into the seductive rub. Not unwilling, then, he mulled as he stepped around her to tip her face back up with a slight pressure to her cheek. Her eyes were closed, shutting him off from the easiest way to read her, but her lips parted slightly and he kissed her again, nudging them open further.

His fingers, bare against her skin and oh, his tongue slipped against hers and Aedan didn't hold back the moan that escaped. She opened for him, tasting the wine he drank, feeling drunk herself on the drugging sensation of light licks and his other hand snaking over her hips again, pressing his fingers into the leather, into the flesh of her bottom, pulling her closer. Aedan chanced to set her hands at his waist, lightly. Fenris deepened the kiss further still and her fingers curled into the armor, nails scraping slightly. Not holding. His decision, his choices, this time. The thought ghosted through her mind. Take what he offers, but don't ipush/i.

Even lost in the heat of her lips, Fenris could feel cold tendrils of doubt stealing him. Three years he had yearned, holding himself away from her heat out of fear, trying to hold the past away. Even as fear had retreated he held back, not wanting to take from her what he couldn't guarantee he would be able to return. But with Danarius dead, he had been granted the nerve to beat back fear and reach for the passion that had claimed him once. Dreams of her fingers tracing down his skin, dancing between the lyrium lines. Her mouth, Maker, her mouth on his, hot and wet, pushing, taking and giving all in one motion. This reticence, though, this was not the Aedan Hawke who had pulled him in, crashing through ecstasy for a night.

Aedan felt him step away again, and there was no stopping the whimper this time. Fenris set her back, considering, but keeping his hands on her, running a thumb down her neck, curving his other hand around her tight waist. Tremors ran through both of them.

Finally she opened her eyes to look up at him, slightly shorter without the boots she'd discarded earlier. "Fenris?" She questioned.

He was nearly panting in the effort to keep himself from flinging her to the floor and burying himself in her, ignoring all the questions until later. The way she held herself, though, the shuttered eyes were ringing alarums in him, though. Something was wrong.

"Hawke. Aedan?" His voice shook almost imperceptibly. "Do you not…want this?"

Panicked, she clutched at his waist. "What? Yes, of course, I do."

"You are not…responding." He swallowed and he felt his brows tighten.

The absurdity of that forced a laugh out of her. "Get me out of this armor and I'll show you response."

He quirked his lips at the return of her sharper side. "Gladly. But…do you not mean to touch me, as well?"

"Oh." Aedan bit her lip and her eyes fell again. Fenris stopped himself from tugging that lip away to soothe it. He wanted those teeth against his skin and he felt his cock twitch against his laces.

Hesitant, she spoke. "I don't want to push. Last time I was…aggressive. I hurt you, Fenris." She looked up again and his heart constricted. There were tears in her eyes, his Hawke, for him. Then she whispered, damning herself for it, "I forced you…"

"You did not!" He cut her off, his gut twisting in horror at what he'd laid on her with careless words. Isabela had mentioned once that Hawke felt guilty about what had occurred between them, but Fenris had never imagined that Aedan felt like this. "Is that what you thought?" His hands were warm and firm on either side of her face, insistent, keeping her from shrinking away. So, she nodded, instead, not trusting her voice.

Fenris reeled, but didn't let go of the woman before him. He slipped his hands down to her shoulders, smoothing as he gathered words. "You have met Danarius. You heard what he said." He felt his jaw clinch at the memory. Aedan nodded again. She had heard. She had relished drawing her blade across that vicious mouth, slicing against his tongue before Fenris had finished him, far too humanely.

Levelling his gaze on hers, he asked, "Do you not think I know the difference between force and willing seduction? Besides," he added drily, "as I recall, it was I who pushed you against a stone wall, first." His voice finished in a growling purr and Aedan recalled vividly the shock of lust that had flared in her veins at the impact.

"I didn't complain."

"This is true." He agreed.

She tugged away from him and Fenris let her go, reluctantly. She reached to the table, and grabbing the bottle, drank again, wincing. Aedan had never developed a taste for the tannic, dry red Fenris preferred. Considering. Take what he offers. And if he offers everything you've been dreaming of, aching for? She arched her eyebrow at him and asked, "You're sure?"

Chuckling, throwing off the tension, Fenris replied, "Three years I have been dreaming of your clever fingers on my skin. Watching you pick locks and twirl knives and flip coins across your knuckles." He rubbed his hand across his lips and confessed. "I have been jealous of the corpses you pat down." He heard the slight whine enter his voice and bit down on it as she laughed, lightening her face.

Watching the play of emotion wash across her sweet face, Fenris saw the instant something shifted in her posture, the way she held her mouth. The reluctant girl was gone –perhaps- and Hawke was looking at him with smoke in her grey eyes. His mouth went dry as she unbuckled one glove and then the other, slinking towards him as she dropped them to the floor.

"I can't have you envious of the dead, Fenris." Her voice was low and warm, hitting him like the rum she and Isabela trotted out now and again. The silverite frogs of her jerkin went next, baring the fine linen tunic underneath. She turned her back to him and glanced back, "Peel me out of this, hmmm? Its wonderful leather, but it's a pain to get out of."

He slipped the jacket off of her shoulders and down her arms, leaving them trapped behind her as he dropped kisses on her shoulders, sucking gently. When the creased linen clung wetly in several spots and she was humming, trembling against him again he let her shrug the sleeves the rest of the way off. He traced the lines of her wings, dark against the thin cloth. Turning, she leaned in to kiss him with hesitant, soft lips.

The kiss turned hot and hard and Fenris felt the lingering chill in his bones start to dissipate as Aedan slid her small, strong hands against him. Up his chest and over his shoulders to twine in his hair and then stroke up the sensitive tips of his ears. He hissed and she smiled darkly. "Off." She tapped his armor, but his intention to comply failed as his vision went white. Reaching around him, she was trailing her fingers down his back, within the spaces designed to showcase the vining tattoos. She traced them from memory, keeping just outside the lyrium with sensitive fingertips, leaving his nerves sparking. Aedan had seen them a thousand times, run them in her mind. Followed them down in her dreams. She flicked open the buckles she found, top and bottom.

Fenris slid long, blunt fingers under her tunic, finding the hooks on her breastband and fumbled for a moment, before it gave, freeing her flesh to fill his roughened hands. Kissing him again, she sighed into his mouth as he stroked along the plump undersides of her breasts. He circled his thumb against a hardening nipple and she went limp. He took advantage, stepping to a chair and pulling her down into his lap and then closing his mouth over the peak of the other breast, through the linen.

Aedan moaned at the heat lancing through her veins, but finding herself in his lap, het hard length of his cock pressing against her, she shifted slightly to rock her bottom against him. He groaned against her, swirling his tongue over the linen against the pebbled flesh and dropped his hands to her hips holding her firm against his erection.

She twisted fluidly and slid down, pulling his chestplate off as she went and casting it aside. A pocket of resin popped in the fireplace sending up a shower of sparks to illuminate his lean, muscular torso, the warm smooth olive skin with lyrium curling its way down. Aedan spread her fingers over, skimming the edges of the lines, deftly flicking one, then the other flat nipple.

Her other hand strayed to his laces, pausing to firmly cup his balls through the leather and making his hips buck. Fenris realized his eyes had closed and not wanting to miss seeing her between his legs or one moment of the slight smile she wore only for him, he opened them. Smiling she was, intent on her work. She stroked down his chest again, coasting around his navel and he stretched indolently under her. Callidus digitus, oh clever fingers, indeed.

She bent down to his unlaced trews and looking up at him through her red-gold lashes, swirled her tongue against the head of his straining cock.

"Ungh," Fenris hauled her up and kissed her laughing mouth. Aedan marveled again at the strength in his lanky frame. She was small but muscle weighed plenty. He held her to him, pausing in their rush and she felt doubt creep in again. "Fenris?"

He heard the edge in her voice and he tightened his arms. "No. It's fine. I just…" he breathed deep, inhaling the aroma of her, leather and grass and apples. She always smelled of apples. "It's been too long. I'll spend."

Oh. "So?" She asked, one word full of promise.

His low voice spiraled down her spine. "I want to be hilted in you, first." Fenris yanked her down to his mouth, biting and soothing the plumped lip she'd snagged earlier while he shoved his hand into the front of her leather trousers, forcing the laces loose and slipping two long fingers into the slick heat throbbing between her legs.

"Ahh." Her hips twitched forward and she clutched his shoulders as he found her and rolled her clit between the calloused edges of his fingers. Again and again and she was clenching around the emptiness.

She dragged her hand down and slipped it into his trews, tugging him free. Her hand wrapped around the hard, velvety length. He pulsed against her hold. "Aedan." The gravel of his tone rippled across her and she let go to sit up, pulling her knees under her and straddling his hips, kneeling against the rough wood of the chair. He steadied her, hands on the smooth muscle of her waist that writhed as she swiveled to push down her trousers. In the gleam of the firelight, he spied the fraying edge of her tunic. Slipping his hands up, he grasped the edges. The cloth ripped satisfyingly, straight up, baring her white breasts and rosy nipples to his view.

She paused in her movement to eye him. "Really?"

"You had time enough to remove it properly." He smirked before he closed his teeth on her nipple.

"Fenris, oh." She flexed her spine as the tug blazed down her and sent her inner muscles clenching again. Her hands flew up to his shoulders again, strong fingers digging into the cording flesh and she bared down trying to fill the ache. "Now. Oh, Maker, Fenris. Please."

"Yes." He ground the word out, aching hard himself and shaking under her hands. She shifted and he guided himself to her cleft. The head of his cock slipped in, bathing in the soaking heat of her and he thrust up just as she dropped, sinking him deep. Fenris clutched her hips, bruising as she worked them, sliding up and releasing down. The feel of his cock rigid in the welcoming tight depth of her sheath enticing her to move, to get more. He pressed one hard thumb to her clit, rotating and she let out a shuddering cry and leaned forward to suck the tip of his ear into her mouth, sending shocks of pleasure down through his straining body.

"Venhedis." He bit his tongue trying to hold on to the driving need to come. His angle wasn't quite right, he didn't have the purchase he needed to bury himself in her wet cunt.

Aedan's head cleared for a minute and she realized his problem. She pulled him towards her as she sent herself falling back to the floor, twisting to land on her nicely padded backside.

The impact made him pull out, but Fenris found her again, snapping his hips forward, finally, finally driving his cock fully into her gripping sheath. She pushed her trousers off with her foot and wrapped her legs around his waist, one heel digging into his arse to drive him on.

"Don't stop, don't stop, Holy…" A rippling spasm sent her over and the tremor of her orgasm pulled him over with her.

"Hawke!" He shuddered a minute before sprawling over her, dropping his forehead to her shoulder and lapping at the sweat gleaming on her skin, kissing softly as she trembled beneath him.

Aedan shifted under the weight, cradling him, her hand stroking against his shaking back as their breathing evened out and their hearts slowed from the hammering rhythm. At some point, they had entwined their fingers and he brought her hand up. He saw the tattoo that wound around her wrist and he kissed the place it knotted over itself, his breath gentle against the sensitized skin.

She smiled at the softness of it, this private sweetness of Fenris that it was her privilege to have to herself. She breathed deeply, the scent of his sweat spicy and male.

Take what he offers. And if he offers everything?

Aedan Hawke had always been a little greedy.

-000-

Afternote:

This is my first smutfic in a very long time. Please be gentle.