3. [xestsemon au]

[birdhousesoul]

Anders has some idea Hawke and Malcolm will be in the village today, only he's not sure when. This place doesn't run on clocks. Things happen when they happen. In the meantime, he goes about his business. Unless anyone has a surprise woodchopping accident, he ought to have today to himself for a change, with no one in the village environs known to be sick or at the point of giving birth. It's a day for doing chores that take more time.

The planks of the clinic floor are in need of scrubbing, the hearth needs a good sweeping out, and after accomplishing both these tasks, Anders feels he himself is in need of scrubbing. This is ordinarily accomplished with a bucket of water and a rough cloth. He's had a square wooden tub made for soaking in, one he keeps in the clinic with a privacy screen shielding it from the main room, but he seldom gets to use it himself; it's more for allowing people to soak things that need soaking, swellings or cysts or pulled muscles. Today he has time to fill it.

He doesn't get into the bath until after he's already scrubbed clean, though, with said bucket-and-cloth method. In a place where it takes considerable effort to collect and heat the water for a bath, you make good use of that bath once you've got it. You don't pollute the water unnecessarily. It can be used by more than one person, and after that, the water can be used for laundry. He misses the station showers, sometimes. He misses the hippie laundry. Anders takes his time sitting in the water and absorbing its heat, every once in a while idly using a little fire magic to re-warm it, secure in the knowledge that he's not going to be needing an untouched mana pool for anything soon.

By the time he hears the door creaking to signal Hawke's arrival (and Malcolm making a curious noise in answer to that creak), Anders has only just hauled himself out of the tub and into a fresh pair of pants. He's drying his hair with a somewhat ragged linen towel as he steps out from behind the screen. "All right," he says, "your turn." And smiles, as it ought to be a pleasant surprise. They didn't plan any bath day. "Give him here." Malcolm's small enough yet that a basin suffices to wash him, and he's far too small to put in a bathtub.

Comments

[questionablewit]

The sight takes Hawke by surprise before the invitation can. She and Anders are on comfortable enough terms lately, casual, but to see him barechested and with loose, wet hair framing his face--smiling--takes her breath, and it shows, for a fleeting moment of hunger and wistfulness.

But she hasn't asked or offered anything on that level since he first arrived. The pacing here is all his, only what he can give. The way she left was a betrayal, she knew even as she did it, and she couldn't be surprised when he learned the truth that it put a barrier between them beyond her ability to tear down. She hasn't pushed, won't. What matters is Malcolm.

Doesn't stop her from wanting, however, and it's there so very clearly in her eyes for that moment.

Then the words sink in, and she gets herself under control, automatically reaching to undo the swaddling-sling she fashioned for carrying Malcolm when she needs to take him places. He's getting heavier as he grows, and carrying him that way puts strain on her back; once in a while she's asked Anders for the loan of his bathtub and skill with heating water for that reason alone. Like him, she almost always makes do with a bucket and a towel. The tub she has at the mountain hut is big enough to crouch in, but not to sit in, and heating enough water for it is an endeavor that takes hours. Actually soaking is a rare delight.

So Hawke smiles with very real gratitude as she hands Malcolm to Anders--Malcolm makes a quiet, bemused sound, he's half-asleep after being carried around for a while--and rolls her shoulders back, getting used to the sudden lack of baby-weight. She had a few more things to do, but nothing urgent, and a bath is too good a treat to be missed. "Now that's what I call perfect timing. Sure you don't mind?" He did offer, granted, but she's mindful of courtesy nowadays. This is his home, after all, and he might have other uses for all that water. She'll need to scrub off before she gets in the tub herself.

[birdhousesoul]

"No, I've suddenly changed my mind," Anders teases. "Really it's all a ploy to make a nourishing soup out of you. Yes, please, use the bath. It feels vaguely wrong to go to that much trouble just so I can sit in some water. Better if you two get some use out of it as well. Then I can feel accomplished."

Baby half-asleep? You don't waste half-asleep any more than you waste large quantities of warm water. Anders recognizes the drowsiness as soon as he's got Malcolm in his arms; and he joggles the baby a bit, gently, by means of bending his knees a bit deeply as he walks, to continue the motion of walking-with-baby that must have lulled Malcolm into this state.

At ten months, his molars will be starting to come in, a misery to the poor little thing. If he's not fractious, he deserves all the rest he can get. There's a largish basket that generally serves as makeshift cradle for Malcolm when he's here, padded with blankets and folded cloths, with a rag doll in it contributed by one of Anders' patients, and Anders tucks him into this, re-swaddling him for security.

Behind the screen, a bucket and some fresh cloths are beside the tub, on a low wooden stool that has rickety rungs but good balance, all its legs happily even in length. There's also a crock of soft soap, something Anders makes himself, speckled all through with little bits of rosemary and lavender buds.

Anders is talking quietly to the baby. Teo must be outside, sleeping in the sun.

[questionablewit]

Hawke chuckles. "I don't think I want to know what me-flavored soup would taste like," she says as she walks behind the screen, looking ruefully down at her clothes as she does so. She enjoys doing domestic things with her own hands, including cleaning her clothes, which means she can be happily annoyed by the state of them. "Or what it might nourish. Fleas, maybe."

Once behind the screen she strips off her clothes, folding them and placing them in a small pile on the floor. One cloth gets dipped into the tub, and she starts scrubbing at her skin, squeezing and rinsing off the cloth in the bucket of water, because she's not getting in that bath until she's wearing significantly less dirt and sweat. She takes a moment to smell the soap before making use of it, inhaling the clean, herbal scent and appreciating it.

"Are you sure this isn't a setup for soup?" She calls quietly, mindful of Malcolm, who can't be asleep quite yet. She can hear Anders murmuring to him in the background, low enough that she can't make out words, though knowing Anders and Malcolm it's a running narrative of near-nonsense and stream-of-thought. "Marian Hawke, garnished with rosemary, with some good brown bread on the side?"

Once clean, which she accomplishes as quickly as possible, she steps into the small tub, settling in with an unconscious sigh. The water's not hot, but it is warm, and feels wonderful on her scrubbed skin. She sinks down as far as she can go, until her head is resting on the edge and her knees are hiked up above the water.

[birdhousesoul]

Near-nonsense is about the size of it, yes. Over the past months, Anders has been improvising a long-running serial adventure involving his son as the main character, rather along the lines of Sebastian Vael's revolutionary identity, only this one has no Templars or Chantry and especially no Hubert. More to do with riding Teo as a steed to visit far-off lands, and solving mysterious puzzles there (moving barrels in order, say, or catching magic flying books mid-air), and being home again in time for supper. The last two installments have begun a story arc that ought to culminate in the rescue of a mighty wizard who is also a large rabbit.

It's arrant nonsense, of course, but it entertains Anders and it calms Malcolm, who seems to enjoy the sound of his father's voice almost as much as his father does.

"Well, I had the bread, I needed something to go with it. Hawke soup can't be that difficult." Anders raises his voice only a little, to be heard, without interrupting Malcolm's descent into slumber. "Remember that little boy who decided it would be great fun to fall out of a tree and break his leg? His mother bakes."

Bread is something Anders doesn't make himself. One might think that making ointments and lotions and medicinal concoctions wouldn't be too far different from cookery. Alas, anything that involves yeast or fermentation is not so much Anders' strong point. His cooking skills are limited to bog-standard Warden campfire fare. Proper bread is to be prized. And goat butter isn't to be scoffed at. Almost all the payment Anders takes for his goods and services are in the form of barter, or else supply of raw materials. When he gets something like bread, he'll share it. Hawke is still their son's primary source of nutrients; Anders tries to feed her up as much as he can. He doesn't care if it gets annoying sometimes, which it might.

Malcolm lapses into a bubbly sleep, and Anders comes around to stand by the screen. It's courtesy, not modesty; they haven't got any secrets from one another; like Patrick Stewart, they've already seen everything. "Don't wash your hair with that soap, when you get round to it. I've made something better. No, actually, I'll wash your hair myself, if you'd like," he offers. "Ser Malcolm has nodded off."

[questionablewit]

Hawke will never complain about being given bread. She can't bake either, and no small part of the results of her trapping work is traded for staples like bread, milk and butter, the vegetables she can't grow on her own in her meagre attempt at a garden, and so on. She has credit set up with the local general store (such as it is), and a few other places; but any help Anders offers her, she accepts.

Anders attempting to mother her as well as Malcolm, that she once in a while complains about, to absolutely no effect. Washing her hair, however, would not count as mothering. Probably. It might, to his mind.

Regardless, she won't complain, and tilts her head to look back at the screen and Anders as she answers. "Something else? What is it? And please do." She might regret it later on tonight when she's alone and thinking of other things she'd like those hands to do, but Anders' scalprubs, like his backrubs (and bread, and baths), are too good to refuse. And a certain amount of scalprubbing is inevitable in hairwashing.

She doesn't comment on Ser Malcolm. He knights everything, does Anders. She sometimes wonders how Teo escaped a similar title.

[birdhousesoul]

"More of the same stuff, mostly," Anders admits, "but with other stuff in as well, so you ought not to come out of it feeling quite so much like you've got straw growing out of your head. Also, it's liquid."

He brings his bottle of homemade hairwash and clears the stool so he can sit behind her. Her hair's longer than his, now. There's a pitcher on the floor near the tub, for dipping into the water and pouring over oneself, and he nudges her shoulders forward, encouraging her to hang her head a little. That way, the water running off her when he pours will go back into the bath. Because he's considerate, and because he can, Anders uses fire magic to make it that much warmer before watering her hair as though she were a plant.

He does it again twice more before he starts in with the hairwash. He wants to make sure the water seeps down to her scalp.

"You do not have fleas," he informs her. "Really." They bathe and comb Teo obsessively to prevent it. Anything Anders could make to repel fleas and ticks would risk harming Malcolm or even Teo himself. He's tried a mild and narrowly focused application of Stunning Blast to make the fleas fall off, but Teo really doesn't enjoy that process.

"In fact, you're the picture of health." Probably because of all that kale he argues her into eating. Nice glossy hair, manifestly healthy. She's too thin, but that can't be helped. Anders makes himself think of her as a patient rather than as Marian Hawke, because that's the only way to keep from dwelling on the fact that she's not wearing anything. The water's mostly clear, the shampoo doesn't lather, and he really could see most everything, if he leaned forward a bit, if he encouraged her to lean back. He kneads the thin solution into her scalp with extra diligence.

[questionablewit]

"Have to be the picture of health, with you around," Hawke says absently, mind clearly elsewhere. She keeps a close watch out for parasites; they're more of a hazard for her than they would be for others, given all the work she does with skinning wild animals and tanning their hides. "I don't dare be anything else. So no fleas, or ticks, or any other nasty bedfellows. But I bet they'd still find me tasty if they were around, especially now that I'll smell like rosemary, and who could blame them?"

The combination of the warmer water, the clean smell, and the fingers rubbing into her scalp makes her want to purr, and she sighs quietly as she relaxes, leaning back a bit into his hands. "I will do anything you ask if you don't stop, you know. Even eat kale whenever you ask from now on, without protest." It's not that she dislikes kale; it's fine, as green leafy things go. But he comes across so much of it. Even so. "Whatever it takes to keep you doing that, because it feels wonderful." Her voice is dreamy and content, her eyes lidded.

[birdhousesoul]

She has no idea what that sounded like, Anders tells himself, and realizes his hands have stilled completely for a second. His brain had other priorities, like sending a rush of blood somewhere it shouldn't be needed. He ought to cover that reaction by going for the pitcher, or something else that would require his hands to move away. Instead, he resumes, because that's what she asked for, isn't it? Lightly, he says: "Right, what about spinach? No strong feelings opposing it, I hope."

[questionablewit]

Hawke makes a small sound of protest as his hands pause, which fades into another happy sigh when he continues. "Mm, no, spinach is fine. So long as it's cut up small." No, she doesn't notice (or rather, doesn't interpret) the hesitation on Anders' part; she's too lost in scalprub bliss. However, she does lean further back as she continues to relax. By now, Anders has a view, whether he wanted one or not. "Any green leafy vegetables of your choice. To go with the Marian soup and the bread." There's a logical inconsistancy in there, but she doesn't care; it's just idle chatter to keep the conversation going, and thus (hopefully) his hands working at her scalp.

[birdhousesoul]

Anders leaps on the logical inconsistency. It's the safest direction for his thoughts to take. "You can't eat the soup if you are the soup. Sit up straight and tilt your head back," an instruction unrelated to soup, very related to hair-rinsing.

Of course, he has to dip the pitcher into the bath to obtain the water for this rinse, and that requires leaning over and past Hawke. He should've handed her the pitcher and asked her to fill it herself. They're uncomfortably close for a moment — uncomfortable for Anders, anyway, if only because it's not uncomfortable enough — the hollow of his midsection brushing the round of her shoulder as he bends.

Once that's over with, he pours slowly with one hand, a thin stream not to exhaust it too quickly, and uses the fingers of the other to disarrange and separate the soapy locks of hair for better rinsing. "Another round, I think."

[questionablewit]

"Says who? I'm the mighty Hawke, I can do anything. Including eat myself as soup, if I want." It says a good deal for how much Hawke's recovered over the past two years that she can make such a joke, and do so idly, without bitterness.

But she obeys, sitting and tilting as requested. The brush of his bare skin on hers is unexpected, and the heat of it lingers after he moves away. She has to bite her lip to keep from reacting to the sudden presence and absence of his touch, and suddenly is very, very aware of the fact that she's not wearing anything, and Anders is wearing little more. Her breathing becomes shallower, quicker, for all that she tries not to respond outwardly. "Another round of soaping, or rinsing?" she asks, as lightly as she can manage.

[birdhousesoul]

"Both, and in that order. First soap, then rinse." The words come out lower than he intends, and with a rasp. "That's how it works, you see." Banal and utterly unnecessary talk, as Anders tries to calm himself.

He suits action to word, and if his fingers work more toward the base of her neck and at the hairline just behind her ears than they did before, if now and then a stray caress glides against the back of her neck or the rim of her ear, that's surely accidental.

[questionablewit]

This is familiar, an echo back to the White Room, long ago now, when he gave her a backrub that gradually metamorphosed into something else. I never could resist the urge to try my luck, he'd said. Even when it means pushing my luck.

Something they have in common, she and Anders. And not the only thing at this moment, given the way his fingers slide along areas that really don't need shampooing even if they are in the near vicinity of her hair, the way his breathing's changed to something harsh and ragged. She's painfully aware of him sitting behind her, the heat radiating from his chest and arms and hands.

Malcolm's asleep. Teo's by the front door and would warn if anyone approached. If Anders was having a bath himself, he doesn't expect anyone else. It's as private a time as they ever are granted.

It's very, very hard for Hawke not to push her luck. Her arms have wrapped around her knees during all this, and she locks her hands together, mostly to keep herself from doing something stupid with them. Like capturing his hands and moving them to the places she'd rather they were caressing.

But she can't stop her breath from catching when he touches the shell of her ear. Or that spot on the side of her neck, the one that used to make her moan if he used his mouth on it. Even Hawke doesn't have that much self-restraint, especially not in these conditions.

[questionablewit]

Hawke lets out another low, breathless chuckle. "Yes," she agrees. She can't quite make herself move yet. If when she does get up there's an imprint of her body left in the mattress behind her, she wouldn't be surprised.

They lie there in silence for another few moments, breathing and recovering and letting their bodies cool, before she speaks again. The edge of laughter that's been present in her voice ever since he first kissed her neck is still very much evident. "No interruptions. Looks like you'll get to be the one to wash the baby." She turns her head to grin at him.

[birdhousesoul]

"So I will, too, when he wakes. I think it's all a conspiracy between him and the mabari, myself." Anders' breath is less labored now, but he's still a little winded, and the chuckle he manages is all but soundless. "They're out there playing cards right now, and giving one another knowing looks."

[questionablewit]

"I wouldn't put it past Teo," Hawke concedes. "He's always been too smart for anyone's good, especially mine." She rolls on her side to rest her head on Anders' shoulder. Hopefully it's not too familiar or presumptuous a move; she knows that this act hasn't given her blanket permission for everything, though she hopes it's lowered some of the boundaries between them. "But Malcolm doesn't know how to play cards, unless you or Teo have been teaching him, in which case I think I object to our son learning to gamble before he even has teeth."

[birdhousesoul]

"Teo had better be the one to teach him. Bad enough he inherited my nose; should hope the boy doesn't have my luck as well." Anders threads his arm through the space afforded by the curve of her waist. That's permission enough, if she's looking for it. "Perhaps they're killing time some other way, then. I still say it's a conspiracy." He turns his head to kiss the top of hers.

[questionablewit]

"Just at the moment you're in bed with a beautiful naked woman," Hawke points out, snuggling against him. "Your luck can't be that bad, given those circumstances. A conspiracy to what, exactly?"

[birdhousesoul]

"Mm. Fair point." There's decided appreciation in his voice, and not a little satisfaction. "A conspiracy to make their lives less complicated, of course."

[questionablewit]

Hawke laughs quietly. She's doing that a lot this afternoon. "Not to mention that if we're distracted, they're free to get up to all sorts of mischief? Maker help us." Hawke leans up on an elbow so she can kiss Anders' nose. "No insulting your nose, incidently. I'm very fond of that nose, on your face and his."

From nose to mouth is not a long distance, so she kisses him there as well. Their second kiss in a year and a half, and if it's less passionate it's no less heartfelt. No less wanted. "You think this will make things less complicated, then?" It's hard not to sound hopeful, and she doesn't try.

[birdhousesoul]

Anders doesn't hesitate to return the kiss, with interest. "A rare thing, I know. To think sex could make anything less complicated." But he turns serious. "I don't know, sweetheart. What do you think?"

[questionablewit]

Hawke takes another, slower kiss and returns to her previous position of resting on Anders' chest and shoulder before she answers. "I think it will make some things more complicated and some things less complicated. But I also can't think of anything I want more than this." One hand splays on his chest. "Our child asleep nearby, and your arms around me, and Teo guarding the door. If there's a better life than this out there, I can't imagine what it is."

[birdhousesoul]

"I ought to ask how it'll make things more complicated, then. Forewarned is forearmed, and all." He strokes her shoulder idly. "Since you can't tell me this won't happen again, now that it has."

[questionablewit]

"More complicated for a number of reasons. Because you live in the village and I live in the mountains, and nights are already too long; they'll be even longer with this as a possiblity instead of something I tell myself I can't have. More complicated because I don't know what permissions you'll allow me, because it upsets the balance we've managed to forge over the past months." She takes a long breath. "More complicated, because it raises the questions we've been so careful not to ask. I know you can't forgive me, Anders. I don't ask that you do. But can you live around that? Can you love me despite that?"

[birdhousesoul]

"It's true there's not much else to do in the mountains once the sun goes down," Anders notes dryly. Unspoken but present: You're the one who chose to live in the mountains. He's not too thrilled with the idea of being an outlet for recreation, and it irritates him a little, even though he knows that's not what she meant. This isn't the Denerim Pearl, and he's a different man from the one who spent pleasurable hours there.

Fortunately or not, before he can say anything else, a quavering cry rises beyond the bedcurtain. Malcolm has woken. "Duty calls," Anders murmurs, and plants another kiss atop Hawke's head before he slips out of bed.