The warden nightmares still echoed in his head impotently, now nightmares of nightmares rather than the things themselves and no more or less often visited on his mind than any other. He wished that meant sleep were easier to find, but insomnia still plagued him from years of it being self-inflicted and it plagued him now. He was barely even dozing, his eyes closed and mind clear, so he's not too surprised when Hawke speaks up. His love's breathing had yet to even out.
"Yes, perhaps unsurprisingly. What's on your mind?" Because there must be something haunting Hawke's mind and preventing his sleep, hopefully something he could help with.
Adalwolfe rubs at the enormous bruise across his chest absently. It's all that remains of their encounter with the manifested Nightmare and it doesn't hurt very much anymore, and Anders could easily heal it away, but it's just a bruise and with everything else his love should be using his mana for, Hawke insisted he just leave it to heal on its own considering it won't even scar.
Anders' hand found Hawke's arm, light traces trailed along the skin there for no other reason than touch.
"Ever since I arrived at the circle. When I refused to speak, one of the newly harrowed enchanters there offered me an empty book and told me to write whatever I was thinking or feeling if I wasn't going to share it out loud. She told me 'a mind is a loud thing to stay silent in.' I haven't stopped since. Why?"
"'A mind is a loud thing to stay silent in.' I like that." He can feel the gooseflesh rise a bit under Anders' touches. It's a comforting sensation, even as it makes him shiver a little, and it pulls a smile from him in the dim ambient light.
"I was just thinking about the Fade. We found journals there too, some of the various notes people drop all over the place. One of them talked about a mage's harrowing and a cat..." He chuckles a little, feeling self-conscious suddenly that he thought this random scrap of paper in the Fade would even be connected to Anders. It's ridiculously far-fetched. "Just a silly thought, nevermind."
The movements of his hand go slow then still for the mention of the Fade, though he doesn't take his hand away.
It...could be nothing, many mages had harrowings and he was sure some of them involved cats, but something in his mind tickled for it in a way that simply letting it go wouldn't sit right for him. He squeezed Hawke's arm as encouragement. "...Really? What did it say, do you remember?"
"The demon the mage met was a cat that he had to fight and it told him that it would take him and the Templars would kill him. That wasn't what caught my attention so much, though, as a small bit at the end. 'They force this upon mages and call it good, but it is evil and unjust.'" He lets that hang in the air for a moment, shifting slightly to better look at Anders' face.
That tickled more and his searching for it brought a memory.
Heated scribbling late at night, his new bedchambers quieter for the fewer sleeping bodies around, but still only a bookcase acted as partition between himself and his roommate. Could it even be called a 'room' there was no door! Like they couldn't be trusted to even have a moment's privacy to sleep-
Anger fueled by fear and the lingering effects of the Terror demon that lingered around the edges of his dreaming still and it was their fault, they put him through that without any warning. He'd call it a direct attempt to find a reason to be rid of him if not for Karl's assurance that was their normal and he felt sicker for it.
"I...that sounds familiar. It might have been mine, I wrote more angrily and feverishly that night than I ever had. Irving smiled at me and told me how proud he was I'd managed to 'find my way' and Karl dismissed my anger and tried quieting my fears. He felt them too, but he was more concerned I'd get myself in trouble less than a day after being harrowed. I felt I only had paper to turn to then."
And yet, if asked without context, those sounded like words he might have said now. They didn't seem right for the angry but bright young man in Anders' vision, all flirtatious smiles and attempts to remain as slippery as possible for the moment he could get out of the trouble he put himself in. Yet he could remember that night and how clouded everything was for how righteously angry he'd felt until every last ranting word was out of his head and safely tucked away never to be voiced.
"If it was, it sounded like you in Kirkwall." He turns fully onto his side to face Anders. "Proof maybe you haven't changed as much as you might have thought?"
He smiles gently; it's a prodding observation but one made out of love. And it's much easier to voice than his other thought. His wondering at the Harrowing, at how it's this coming of age for mages and he'd never had something like that. No test as a young man to point to and say that's when he knew he was ready. He doesn't want to be Harrowed, not in so many words, but there's still something missing for him and he has to wonder if that's what it is.
It's a stupid thing to think, though, and he doesn't want to voice it, so he'll instead focus on Anders as a young man, full of righteous fury, writing as if his life depended on it. Anders in Kirkwall, writing with the same fervor as Hawke watches him from his bed - their bed - and Drools snores by the fire, unaware that those long fingered hands, stained with ink, are the most beautiful sight in all the world.
Adalwolfe reaches over and pulls Anders' fingers to his mouth for a kiss.
"Maybe..." It's a small concession, a budging in the direction Hawke had been insisting was right for sometime and Anders had been too stubborn and mired in self-pity to consider. Maybe it wasn't so different...maybe he wasn't so different now as he'd been then...or even from then to Kirkwall to now. Maybe Justice hadn't changed him so thoroughly so much as...changed a few key things that made it feel that way. It was a thought that needed more consideration than a conversation in the middle of the night.
He turned to face Hawke as well and offered a slim smile. "Maybe you're right, love, but I'm not prepared to do that much soul searching at this hour. What made you hold onto this? Simple curiosity?" To have that still be in his mind nearly two years later...yes, the stuff with the Nightmare might have stirred something, but it still seemed odd.
"I think about you all the time, and it was new information I hadn't explored yet." He continues to kiss Anders' fingers idly, more brushing them with his beard when he speaks instead just because his mouth is occupied with words. "But... It did make me think about the Harrowing a lot, too. How it's a rite of passage..."
He trails off, pressing Anders' fingers to his mouth as he wars with himself on whether he wants to voice what he's actually thinking. He promised Anders he would try and not censor himself. This feels like something he should keep to himself though...
"It's stupid. Maybe even insulting, though I don't mean it that way, and Maker knows I have no desire to actually be Harrowed. But it's... I don't know, it feels like something I missed." He sighs and kisses Ander's fingers yet again, this time as an apology. "It's a very stupid thought."
Anders watches as Hawke thinks, happy to enjoy the attention to his hand all the while. When He finally speaks, Anders is left starring blankly for a moment. "Hawke..."
He says it carefully, slowly, as he finds all the pieces in his head he wants in the right order for this. He wanted Hawke to be more open with him, he didn't want to scare him off by being so angry about the Harrowing itself, not when he knew where this was coming from.
Anders shifts and sits up more so that he can push Hawke onto his back and lay on his love's chest. A hand comes up to brush at Hawke's hair while Anders finds his gaze. "Love, the Harrowing, as a construct, is terrible. It's mired in secrecy that they force you to promise not to break so that their rules hold. They yank you up from your bed in the middle of the night without warning, take you to a chamber to force your mind into the Fade so you may fight a demon and hopefully win, all without warning or preparation. If you take too long, you're presumed a failure and kill you. I wouldn't wish the Harrowing on another mage if I could help it."
He leaned in to kiss Hawke's chin but made sure to find Hawke's eyes again as he continued. "However...the spirit of the Harrowing is to prove the mage knows how to handle temptations in the Fade and will resist a demon. As far as I'm concerned, you had your Harrowing when you helped Feynriel in the Fade. Torpor made you a deal and you turned him down flat, my heart. You've spent your whole life fighting and resisting demons and the only time you ever wavered? You were faced with the veritable king of demons. I doubt I could say that, had it been me. You've proven yourself to me, to others, and Maker I hope, to yourself more than once."
Anders breathes his admiration, the chronicle of what even Hawke couldn't deny was very much like a Harrowing, and that somehow quells the - as he said, very stupid - doubt in his heart. Somehow, in the way Anders says it, he doesn't feel poorly for feeling it in the first place, but the doubt is gone. Instead there's a mote of dignity that he hasn't felt regarding his magic in a significant amount of time.
He smiles a little and reaches out to press his fingers gently to Anders' face. "Does this mean I'm a fully fledged enchanter now? Twenty years late but better than never I suppose."
"Yes, but you get the benefit of skipping those first few months when you make a mistake and the others look at you like you've just said something dirty in front of the sisters because you should 'know better' by now. You can just go straight to being the capable one that all the apprentices have a crush on and titter about in the lunch hall."
He was only half joking, really. Had Hawke been in a circle and settled in, Anders had no doubt he'd be exactly that: smart enough and creative enough to have his own projects, but kind and charismatic enough to have time for the apprentices and questions, patient enough even to offer lessons. The idea of Hawke stuck in a circle, bound to restrictions and looming shadows and blocked from being entirely himself broke Anders' heart, Hawke deserved to be as free as the bird that matched his name. And yet...some part of him knew Hawke would adapt as readily as he always does, and had he been there from the start, he would have been okay in the long run. Someone like Karl: unhappy and hating the system, but able to work within it and find what joys and peace he could. Especially if what he'd said was true about Anders being his Wardens: his shake up of his views and the change in his life.
Had Hawke been in the circle...Anders would have fallen for him then too, he knew it as surely as he knew his next breath would come. And Anders would have stayed. For Hawke, he would have stayed and made it work, followed the rules a bit more just to have concessions so maybe he and Wolfe could have had that bookcase separating their rooms, so maybe he could listen to those breaths evening out each night even still and dream of it being in some small house instead of their gilded cell.
"I could deal with that. Up until the first time we were caught with our robes up in a darkened library corner." He snorts, amused at the idea of a Circle library tryst, hiding from the Templars and other enchanters... It's hard not to think on the realities of that, though. How the moment they were found out, they'd be separated. Sent to different Circles. Still, the idea of a secret rendezvous in a somewhat public space has some appeal.
Adalwolfe tugs Anders into his shoulder, encircling his love in broad arms. "Hmm, I like how we actually met better, though. 'I have made this place a sanctum of healing and salvation!' Nearly dropped my trousers right there."
He chuckles and it turns into a hum as a hand comes up to touch lightly at Hawke's chest. "Really? So easy for me, love? Perhaps I should threaten you more often....or..."
His other hand slid down From Hawke's stomach and into his briefs to offer a different sort of light touch. "Or maybe I could show you the virtues of almost getting caught sometime...the thrill in it." He leaned in and claimed Hawke's lips as his hand curled around his prize. "For now, I might have a much simpler need of you."
At Anders' hand catching him, Hawke exhales excitedly against Anders' lips, leaning into the small distance in order to capture another kiss just after the first had ended. "I'm always easy for you, my heart. From the first time I saw you and forever after."
Another kiss, one of Hawke's hands buried in the hair at the nape of Anders' neck. "I would brave a hundred Templars-"
Kiss.
"A thousand demons-"
Kiss.
"And all the darkspawn in all the Deep Roads just to hear you say my name the particular way you say it. Just to have you look at me. Even just a glance."
He brushes the hair from Anders' face, leaning in for a much more languid kiss this time. His eyes are soft when he regards his love again, warm and full of feeling. "We don't have to wait a hundred years. There is nothing that can tear us apart."
The kisses and sweet words peppered between have him smiling and warm and so full of love bursting and rushing through his veins better than his blood ever could. He doesn't move his hand away, but the strokes are gentle and slow like the kiss Hawke bestows upon him. When they pull apart again, he looks at Anders with that warmth and what he says...it's truth. It must be because Hawke said it in that way he does when there's no argument to be had.
He hopes there's never a day where he can hear these words, see that face, and know this feeling and find he no longer feels like he must have cheated. He must have to be even thought deserving of what love Hawke had to offer. His sun. His light in the darkness.
He shifts so his other hand can sweep back through Hawke's hair to push back what hung in his face while the hand on Hawke's length paused, only his thumb brushing idly over the delicate skin. Amber eyes swept from feature to feature: smooth skin, creased lines, ice blue eyes, that crook in Hawke's nose Anders loved to kiss. He took stock of it all in a detailed and reverent way he hadn't indulged in for some time. "I love you so fully and hopelessly, Adalwolfe Hawke. You are the sun in my sky, keeping me warm and lighting my way through whatever darkness or demons or evil seeps in. There you are to keep me whole, sane, and safe. I wonder if you have any idea how much you mean to me and all that I would do for you."
"I may have an inkling," he smiles into the kiss he leaves on Anders' lips, and then on his forehead. His eyes. Hawke is also usually one for words, but right now, he's a man of action. A man who's fiance is holding him hostage with hand and pretty words both. "If I am the sun, then I may keep things bright, but you are the air in my lungs, the sweet scent of growing things. A low rumble of thunder promising a spring rain for all the flowers to bloom in. I never cease to be amazed by you, by your resilience, by your fortitude, your passion."
Adalwolfe's gaze softens and he slides his hand to cradle Anders' head so he can gaze into his eyes. Warm whisky brown, always searching, never satisfied but often pleased. "If I lived my life over again alongside you a hundred times, I'd fall in love with you in each and every run. I'm going to make love to you, Anders. With all the tender care and unfathomable passion of the first time."
It's not often he makes such declarations, usually feeling a bit hokey in doing so, but there's something about how they're coiled around each other, how Anders has already professed his feelings, that makes it less embarrassing and more simple fact. He loves Anders, and he'll show him in every possible way.
Adalwolfe shifts, sliding a bit in Anders' hand, and kisses him slowly, deeply, and encompassingly.
He loses himself to the kiss, for more than a moment, there's nothing sweeter or kinder than the feeling of Hawke's lips against his. Like the first time he says and for a moment Anders can feel the jump of ecstasy of that first moment when he'd desperately claimed Hawke's lips for his own in his clinic. There'd been a rumble then, something that spoke of disapproval and a whisper that he shouldn't be doing this that ran through his head that he'd might have thought his own feeling if not for how perfect kissing Hawke felt. He'd never felt such a clear distinction between his desires and Justice's than in that moment.
The feeling had faded with time and Justice's approval, but now it was just him in his head and he could revel in the perfection of being with the man who would always hold every part of him. He was not a man who liked to be trapped, but Adalwolfe Hawke was not a cage, he was armor to wrap Anders in so he could feel loved and protected.
He pulled away from the kiss only when breath demanded and lightly squeezed at Hawke still gently held. "Yes...show me, love." He wanted to feel those beautiful words Hawke had gifted him traced into his skin under his champion's fingers and lips.
Anders squeezes lightly and Hawke's breath hitches. Even so, he's determined to do as directed, to show Anders just how much he loves him. "I don't think I can overstate the power you have over me, my heart. You are the reason I breathe, the reason I'm able to face the day."
He kisses Anders gently, with depthless sincerity. "I found you three times in different worlds, in ours when you gave me a cause, in the Fleet when you brought with you hope, and here too. Here where even for all the terrible things we've already faced, we've regrounded our love anew. In all the multiverse, I know I am the luckiest version of myself because each time I'm lost, its you that guides me back. My beacon, my lit lantern in the deepest dark."
The kisses punctuate each sentence, kisses to Anders' lips. To his face, his shoulders. A kiss planted sweetly over his heart.
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"Yes, perhaps unsurprisingly. What's on your mind?" Because there must be something haunting Hawke's mind and preventing his sleep, hopefully something he could help with.
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"When did you start keeping journals?"
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"Ever since I arrived at the circle. When I refused to speak, one of the newly harrowed enchanters there offered me an empty book and told me to write whatever I was thinking or feeling if I wasn't going to share it out loud. She told me 'a mind is a loud thing to stay silent in.' I haven't stopped since. Why?"
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"I was just thinking about the Fade. We found journals there too, some of the various notes people drop all over the place. One of them talked about a mage's harrowing and a cat..." He chuckles a little, feeling self-conscious suddenly that he thought this random scrap of paper in the Fade would even be connected to Anders. It's ridiculously far-fetched. "Just a silly thought, nevermind."
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It...could be nothing, many mages had harrowings and he was sure some of them involved cats, but something in his mind tickled for it in a way that simply letting it go wouldn't sit right for him. He squeezed Hawke's arm as encouragement. "...Really? What did it say, do you remember?"
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"That part sounded like you."
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Heated scribbling late at night, his new bedchambers quieter for the fewer sleeping bodies around, but still only a bookcase acted as partition between himself and his roommate. Could it even be called a 'room' there was no door! Like they couldn't be trusted to even have a moment's privacy to sleep-
Anger fueled by fear and the lingering effects of the Terror demon that lingered around the edges of his dreaming still and it was their fault, they put him through that without any warning. He'd call it a direct attempt to find a reason to be rid of him if not for Karl's assurance that was their normal and he felt sicker for it.
"I...that sounds familiar. It might have been mine, I wrote more angrily and feverishly that night than I ever had. Irving smiled at me and told me how proud he was I'd managed to 'find my way' and Karl dismissed my anger and tried quieting my fears. He felt them too, but he was more concerned I'd get myself in trouble less than a day after being harrowed. I felt I only had paper to turn to then."
And yet, if asked without context, those sounded like words he might have said now. They didn't seem right for the angry but bright young man in Anders' vision, all flirtatious smiles and attempts to remain as slippery as possible for the moment he could get out of the trouble he put himself in. Yet he could remember that night and how clouded everything was for how righteously angry he'd felt until every last ranting word was out of his head and safely tucked away never to be voiced.
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He smiles gently; it's a prodding observation but one made out of love. And it's much easier to voice than his other thought. His wondering at the Harrowing, at how it's this coming of age for mages and he'd never had something like that. No test as a young man to point to and say that's when he knew he was ready. He doesn't want to be Harrowed, not in so many words, but there's still something missing for him and he has to wonder if that's what it is.
It's a stupid thing to think, though, and he doesn't want to voice it, so he'll instead focus on Anders as a young man, full of righteous fury, writing as if his life depended on it. Anders in Kirkwall, writing with the same fervor as Hawke watches him from his bed - their bed - and Drools snores by the fire, unaware that those long fingered hands, stained with ink, are the most beautiful sight in all the world.
Adalwolfe reaches over and pulls Anders' fingers to his mouth for a kiss.
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He turned to face Hawke as well and offered a slim smile. "Maybe you're right, love, but I'm not prepared to do that much soul searching at this hour. What made you hold onto this? Simple curiosity?" To have that still be in his mind nearly two years later...yes, the stuff with the Nightmare might have stirred something, but it still seemed odd.
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He trails off, pressing Anders' fingers to his mouth as he wars with himself on whether he wants to voice what he's actually thinking. He promised Anders he would try and not censor himself. This feels like something he should keep to himself though...
"It's stupid. Maybe even insulting, though I don't mean it that way, and Maker knows I have no desire to actually be Harrowed. But it's... I don't know, it feels like something I missed." He sighs and kisses Ander's fingers yet again, this time as an apology. "It's a very stupid thought."
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He says it carefully, slowly, as he finds all the pieces in his head he wants in the right order for this. He wanted Hawke to be more open with him, he didn't want to scare him off by being so angry about the Harrowing itself, not when he knew where this was coming from.
Anders shifts and sits up more so that he can push Hawke onto his back and lay on his love's chest. A hand comes up to brush at Hawke's hair while Anders finds his gaze. "Love, the Harrowing, as a construct, is terrible. It's mired in secrecy that they force you to promise not to break so that their rules hold. They yank you up from your bed in the middle of the night without warning, take you to a chamber to force your mind into the Fade so you may fight a demon and hopefully win, all without warning or preparation. If you take too long, you're presumed a failure and kill you. I wouldn't wish the Harrowing on another mage if I could help it."
He leaned in to kiss Hawke's chin but made sure to find Hawke's eyes again as he continued. "However...the spirit of the Harrowing is to prove the mage knows how to handle temptations in the Fade and will resist a demon. As far as I'm concerned, you had your Harrowing when you helped Feynriel in the Fade. Torpor made you a deal and you turned him down flat, my heart. You've spent your whole life fighting and resisting demons and the only time you ever wavered? You were faced with the veritable king of demons. I doubt I could say that, had it been me. You've proven yourself to me, to others, and Maker I hope, to yourself more than once."
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He smiles a little and reaches out to press his fingers gently to Anders' face. "Does this mean I'm a fully fledged enchanter now? Twenty years late but better than never I suppose."
A joke, but a warm one.
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He was only half joking, really. Had Hawke been in a circle and settled in, Anders had no doubt he'd be exactly that: smart enough and creative enough to have his own projects, but kind and charismatic enough to have time for the apprentices and questions, patient enough even to offer lessons. The idea of Hawke stuck in a circle, bound to restrictions and looming shadows and blocked from being entirely himself broke Anders' heart, Hawke deserved to be as free as the bird that matched his name. And yet...some part of him knew Hawke would adapt as readily as he always does, and had he been there from the start, he would have been okay in the long run. Someone like Karl: unhappy and hating the system, but able to work within it and find what joys and peace he could. Especially if what he'd said was true about Anders being his Wardens: his shake up of his views and the change in his life.
Had Hawke been in the circle...Anders would have fallen for him then too, he knew it as surely as he knew his next breath would come. And Anders would have stayed. For Hawke, he would have stayed and made it work, followed the rules a bit more just to have concessions so maybe he and Wolfe could have had that bookcase separating their rooms, so maybe he could listen to those breaths evening out each night even still and dream of it being in some small house instead of their gilded cell.
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Adalwolfe tugs Anders into his shoulder, encircling his love in broad arms. "Hmm, I like how we actually met better, though. 'I have made this place a sanctum of healing and salvation!' Nearly dropped my trousers right there."
He laughs and kisses Anders' cheek happily.
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His other hand slid down From Hawke's stomach and into his briefs to offer a different sort of light touch. "Or maybe I could show you the virtues of almost getting caught sometime...the thrill in it." He leaned in and claimed Hawke's lips as his hand curled around his prize. "For now, I might have a much simpler need of you."
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Another kiss, one of Hawke's hands buried in the hair at the nape of Anders' neck. "I would brave a hundred Templars-"
Kiss.
"A thousand demons-"
Kiss.
"And all the darkspawn in all the Deep Roads just to hear you say my name the particular way you say it. Just to have you look at me. Even just a glance."
He brushes the hair from Anders' face, leaning in for a much more languid kiss this time. His eyes are soft when he regards his love again, warm and full of feeling. "We don't have to wait a hundred years. There is nothing that can tear us apart."
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He hopes there's never a day where he can hear these words, see that face, and know this feeling and find he no longer feels like he must have cheated. He must have to be even thought deserving of what love Hawke had to offer. His sun. His light in the darkness.
He shifts so his other hand can sweep back through Hawke's hair to push back what hung in his face while the hand on Hawke's length paused, only his thumb brushing idly over the delicate skin. Amber eyes swept from feature to feature: smooth skin, creased lines, ice blue eyes, that crook in Hawke's nose Anders loved to kiss. He took stock of it all in a detailed and reverent way he hadn't indulged in for some time. "I love you so fully and hopelessly, Adalwolfe Hawke. You are the sun in my sky, keeping me warm and lighting my way through whatever darkness or demons or evil seeps in. There you are to keep me whole, sane, and safe. I wonder if you have any idea how much you mean to me and all that I would do for you."
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Adalwolfe's gaze softens and he slides his hand to cradle Anders' head so he can gaze into his eyes. Warm whisky brown, always searching, never satisfied but often pleased. "If I lived my life over again alongside you a hundred times, I'd fall in love with you in each and every run. I'm going to make love to you, Anders. With all the tender care and unfathomable passion of the first time."
It's not often he makes such declarations, usually feeling a bit hokey in doing so, but there's something about how they're coiled around each other, how Anders has already professed his feelings, that makes it less embarrassing and more simple fact. He loves Anders, and he'll show him in every possible way.
Adalwolfe shifts, sliding a bit in Anders' hand, and kisses him slowly, deeply, and encompassingly.
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The feeling had faded with time and Justice's approval, but now it was just him in his head and he could revel in the perfection of being with the man who would always hold every part of him. He was not a man who liked to be trapped, but Adalwolfe Hawke was not a cage, he was armor to wrap Anders in so he could feel loved and protected.
He pulled away from the kiss only when breath demanded and lightly squeezed at Hawke still gently held. "Yes...show me, love." He wanted to feel those beautiful words Hawke had gifted him traced into his skin under his champion's fingers and lips.
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He kisses Anders gently, with depthless sincerity. "I found you three times in different worlds, in ours when you gave me a cause, in the Fleet when you brought with you hope, and here too. Here where even for all the terrible things we've already faced, we've regrounded our love anew. In all the multiverse, I know I am the luckiest version of myself because each time I'm lost, its you that guides me back. My beacon, my lit lantern in the deepest dark."
The kisses punctuate each sentence, kisses to Anders' lips. To his face, his shoulders. A kiss planted sweetly over his heart.