fadewalk | RP: Logan Hawke, Anders (serhealsalot)

The hallways were quiet. The kitchens were quiet. Everything had just been strangely quiet for a while now. Alistair was in socked feet, loose linen pants and a soft unlaced shirt, standing over a small pot of porridge he was cooking... for himself? It was more porridge than even he could eat comfortably, especially considering it was porridge he was making, which no one could eat comfortably.

He rubbed at his forhead. Why did he feel like he was missing something? Well a bigger more something than usual anyway.

He'd have to ask... someone. When he saw... them? Zevran, his brain whispered. How many days has he been gone? He frowned, and looked out the small window slits that ventilated the room, and the question was gone already as he wondered for the thousandth time whether it was morning or night.

It was whatever time it was, but he'd woken up alone in his bed, with a headache from too much wine and his shoes on, feeling despondent. Lonely. Which was fairly usual, all things considered. He stirred again, frowning into the whitish-brownish-greyish paste. "Probably more water," he muttered.

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Logan snickered. "Darlin', I don't need to learn how to cook. I cook just fine." He smirked, guiding them to the apple tree with its low hanging fruit he'd observed before. He wondered if it was mostly untouched because nobody had noticed it yet, or if they just weren't too fond of apples. Heathens, the lot of them, if that was the case, with clearly ripe, perfect apples right there on the branch. He reached up and plucked one, turning it round in his hand before he offered it to Anders.

"Better than just fine, really," he amended, losing the smirk for a softer, almost embarrassed smile. "My mom's a terrible cook, but my dad was great, when he had the time, and what I didn't pick up from him I figured out pretty quickly on my own. So."

Of course Logan knew how to cook. Because he was perfect. Anders gave him a soppy smile combined with an eyeroll as he grabbed the apple and bit into it without inspecting it.

Because somehow he trusted Logan not to hand him an apple with a worm in it.

He chewed, eyes closing for a moment, because the apple was as perfect as Logan was, tart and juicy and crisp-ripe, flavorful in the way it almost impossible to find in store-bought apples. He swallowed and frowned at the piece of fruit. "I feel like this is something from a story and now that I've eaten it I'm going to be trapped in the realm of the evil fairies for all time." He shot Logan a grin and took another bite. "So you'd better eat one too."

After half an apple, which he was enjoying far more than the undercooked, scorched porridge Alistair had shared, he asked, "So, what's your specialty? The dinner you're going to make to really impress me?" His eyes sparkled as he arched an eyebrow at Logan.

Logan grinned at the obvious bliss on Anders' face as he chewed, and took a half step towards another branch to pick his own apple from closer to the main trunk of the tree. He gave a teasing salute before he bit in, and that - yes, definitely they were all heathens, because these apples were fantastic.

He took concentric bites all the way around his apple and considered the question for a moment. "I make pretty good chicken fried steak," he suggested eventually. "Apple pie for dessert, of course." He smirked.

"Farm boy," Anders said with a teasing but decidedly fond note in his voice. "Do you make your crust from scratch too?" He took another bite of his apple, chewing as he watched Logan with bright eyes.

He was definitely feeling better, his mana returning at a better clip, and for all his insistence, he had been very hungry and the apple was helping. "So if you've got dinner and dessert covered, what am I bringing?"

"Um, of course?" Logan actually sounded a little offended at the idea of not making pie crust from scratch. He wrinkled his nose with obvious disdain and sniffed. "Might as well just buy a pie if you're just going to use a pre-made crust . Crust's the most important part, or nearly, anyways."

He shook his head and took several large bites of apple before he could say anything more on the subject. "You mean besides yourself?" The question genuinely seemed to baffle him a bit.

Anders gave Logan an amused look at the grumbling about his suggestion about pre-made crust. The first apple was demolished to the core and then he blinked and blushed at Logan's question.

Besides himself? Like Anders was enough as he was? He shrugged. "Like... wine? Do you like wine? Or beer. I guess beer probably goes better with chicken fried steak?" He chewed on the inside of his lip briefly, giving this hypothetical dinner date entirely too much thought all of a sudden. "What about a board game?" Which he didn't own any of. "I could buy... Bananagrams or something and bring that over?"

Logan took the apple core from Anders' hand and tossed it aside carelessly so it landed somewhere in the bushes nearby, finished his own in a few quick bites and did the same. Turning back, he regarded the blush on Anders' face with obvious delight. "Hmm." He tipped Anders' chin up slightly and kissed him, licking the taste of apple from his lips and humming in approval before he stepped back and picked what was quite possibly the largest apple on the tree. He inspected it briefly before handing it over and picking one more for himself.

"Wine or beer would be fine," he finally said, smiling a self-satisfied sort of smile. "I like both. Ooh, or cider would go well with this particular meal." He chewed for a moment and then added, "But you don't need to buy a board game, love, we have several. And more I think in storage somewhere if we wanted." His brow furrowed slightly as he tried to remember which corner of their storage shed they'd probably stuck that kind of stuff when they'd sold the farm. "Anyways. You could just bring yourself, really, that would be totally okay. You're the most important part."

Anders blushed further into the kiss, the casual way Logan could make every inch of his skin prickle with awareness with a brush of his lips, a small flick of his tongue. Anders was a little dazed when Logan handed him a second apple, and he stared down at it for a moment, listening to him talk.

He turned it over in his hand again, not looking for blemishes, just marveling at how perfect it was.

"The most important part? I'm pretty sure I'm not more important than pie." He gave Logan a small smirk. But it caused a strange, warm tingle, imagining this weird domestic future where he showed up at Logan's apartment with a six-pack of cider, or beer, or whatever, and was cooked dinner, and then they sat on the couch and made out while something terrible was on TV.

Logan suppressed a wider smile, his lips turning up at the corners despite his best attempts to flatten them. He leaned into Anders' side till they were pressed together all over again, letting himself relish the contact, the simple rightness of it.

"Your priorities, while admirable, are still wrong," he declared. "I'm pretty sure boyfriends win out over pie. Although it's my pie, so it might be a close thing." He lifted a brow, teasing, his blue eyes sparkling, and was more than a little impressed with himself that he hadn't stumbled over the word 'boyfriends' even if it had come out soft enough to ruin the rest of his affected arrogance.

"Alright, but is there a specific kind of pie I should watch my back around? Like, pecan? Or peach?" Anders grinned as Logan nearly draped himself over him again. He was a little like one of those giant dogs that seemed to think he was fit for a lap, and Anders loved it. If he leaned too hard Anders would topple, but he somehow didn't think Logan would do that.

He hooked an arm around Logan's waist and polished the apple on the front of his shirt, mouth twitching cheekily.

"Personally, I'm partial to my strawberry rhubarb, but the one you really gotta watch out for is Bethy's cherry pie. God, that pie is to die for, and she absolutely refuses to give me the recipe. She got it from some neighbor back in Lothering after I moved out, and she wouldn't tell me who so I couldn't track them down myself." Logan shook his head and looked mournful. "At this point I think she's just memorized it, because I can't find her notes for it anywhere, and believe me, I have snooped around. There's something extra she puts in it that I can't quite replicate." He pursed his lips in a full-on pout. "It's incredibly frustrating. I think she just likes to torment me."

He brightened enough to add, "My crust is better, though, because it's like a three-generation old recipe from one of my former employers that I've modified myself over the years."

Anders wrinkled his nose slightly. "Cherry pie?" he sounded a little skeptical. "Never was really a fan of all that bright red goo that came out of a can. I'm guessing hers doesn't though, given the look you're giving me right now." He laughed and gave Logan a peck on the cheek.

He squeezed Logan again and then tipped his chin up, looking at the apple tree. "Do you want to pick a few more to take back to the room? Eating nothing but apples isn't a great plan, but if all that's available is that and porridge, I'll take the apples."

Logan just shook his head disapprovingly at Anders at that, though he did chuckle quietly when Anders kissed his cheek.

"We should," he agreed, "because these are delicious. And I'm sure I can find us something better than that porridge later, if there aren't silence-tossing not-templars around to distract me." He frowned faintly, shook his head again at the memory, and considered the tree for a moment before he remembered how long this shirt he was wearing was. "Oh, hang on." He untucked it from his pants and tugged up the front like one would with an apron. "There, makeshift basket."

Anders started picking apples and loading them into Logan's shirt-front-sling, expression pensive for a minute. "So, how close to murder did you come when he silenced me and I fainted like one of those weird little goats that falls over when they're startled?" He gave Logan a sidelong look and a faint smile.

He squeezed Logan's wrist and moved to another bough of the tree to pick more fruit. "I mean, I'm not saying you should've murdered him, but you looked really spooked when I woke up."

"Goats. Heh." Logan gave a wan smile in response, not even able to properly argue against the comparison because really, it was rather apt for how abruptly Anders had gone boneless.

He rolled his neck and took a step after Anders, watching him pick for a moment before he answered. "Took me a bit to figure out it was something he'd done that made you pass out, and not some weird side-effect of your magic. And then...well, I didn't burn a hole in the wall this time? Though I'm not sure what would have happened if he hadn't pointed out my hand was sparking." He frowned down at the shirtful of apples he was holding. "It probably helped that I figured out who he was. If it had been Cullen or some other templar randomly silencing you for trying to help him...I don't know."

Logan wasn't above hurting people who hurt those he cared about, but murder? That scared him. It would be way too easy for him to kill someone, without even meaning to or planning to, with this new magic inside him and the way it seemed tethered to his emotions, his rage. He shuddered.

Anders winced when he realized Logan was answering his question honestly, like Anders thought he really would have killed Alistair. He turned to face Logan and reached up with both hands, framing his jaw. "Hey, Logan, that's not... I shouldn't have said that. I wasn't thinking. You wouldn't have killed anyone."

There was a pile of apples between them, hammocked in Logan's shirt, so Anders couldn't just cleave to him like he wanted, but he pulled him in for a brief kiss. "And as for the sparking, we're going to learn how to control it, right? Between the other me and Alistair to help with templar stuff, we'll figure it out."

Logan exhaled. "Well, I wouldn't have meant to, anyways. But I-- no, you're right." He nuzzled forward into the kiss as best he could with both his hands occupied. "We'll figure it out."

He shifted, lifting the corners of his shirt so the apples all tumbled together, and glanced down at how many Anders had gathered. "I think that's probably enough, don't you?"

Anders looked down at the apples and nodded. "I don't think eating more than six each over the next day or two is a good plan, so yeah, that's plenty." He looked back up, watching Logan for a moment, a little worry in his eyes still.

He turned and looked around slowly. "So. I'm going to have to figure out the basic layout of this place in case we ever get separated. Otherwise I'm going to be stuck just sitting in one spot like a five year old that got lost at the zoo waiting to be found."

Logan snorted. "Probably not," he agreed, voice round with humor. He pursed his lips at the look in Anders' eyes, the worry there in the intensity of his gaze, and stepped forward so he could bump shoulders with him, gently enough that the apples were more or less undisturbed.

"The image is kind of adorable," he teased. "But I don't think that's what you were going for. Do you wanna try and lead us out of here?" He grinned, mischievous and ornery. "I can be the annoying voice in the background telling you when you're getting warmer."

"Hmph." Anders smiled though, and shrugged helplessly. "Well, at this point it would just be guessing." He shot Logan an embarrassed glance and then started toward the doorway that was definitely not the one they'd come through that led back into the keep, but would probably put them in a hallway that was closer to the guest quarters without having to double back through the great hall again.

He opened it and frowned at the corridor on the other side, and gave Logan a querying glance. "Anywhere close to warm?"

Logan arched a brow and ambled after him, clearly ready to find this endeavor very amusing, judging from the look on his face. Well, that and, again, it did offer him a very nice view of Anders' ass.

He tried not to blush at the thought.

"Mm-hmm. That's not how we got here, but I think it'd be a faster route back to the guest wing, so we can give it a shot."

Anders smirked at the tiny tinge of a blush on Logan's cheeks and the way his eyes skipped up when he'd turned his head. Well. He could work with that. He grinned a little as he looked right and then left along the corridor before turning left - another complete guess that happened to be correct.

He also managed to put a little twitch in his step, not swaying exactly, but just a little bounce. The incredibly tight leggings were obscured, somewhat, by the long tunic, but even that only hugged midwaydown his hips, leaving the lower curve of his ass visible in the skin-tight black fabric.

Logan gave a low noise of approval in his throat, though whether that was for the choice of direction or the fact that Anders was obviously aware of him watching him, even he wasn't entirely sure. He was sure that the best word to describe Anders' hips and that little shimmy to his walk was 'sin'. He paused mid-step as something occurred to him, and then quickened his pace to mostly catch up, still walking half a step behind Anders.

"I had a thought," he began, conversationally. "I don't even know how you feel about dancing."

"Dancing?" Anders stopped as the corridor branched, or got complicated, with stairs leading up and down and a t-crossing leading left and right. "This place is a bloody maze."

He exhaled shortly and then shook his head and gave Logan a sly, sidelong look. "I like dancing. I mean, nothing formal. But I dance at clubs or parties or whatever." Anders was a very good dancer in those kinds of settings, actually, and more than one of his brief relationships had started with a very particularly roll of his hips to the beat of overwhelmingly loud music.

He pointed up the stairs with a questioning eyebrow raise.

Logan chuckled. "Well, it is a castle. I think that's usually par for the course? Not that...I've ever really been in a castle before. Hrm." He tilted his head and considered the stairs up, which he knew they would have to take eventually, and the left-hand hall, since he thought going up right now might bring them to a mostly unfamiliar part of the next level. Still, up was definitely the right direction. He nodded and waited for Anders to take the lead again.

"I haven't done much dancing in a long time," he admitted as they continued. "I used go swing dancing a lot - most of the guys I've worked with would do that on the weekends. Sometimes clubs when I was working in a city, but...less so since Mom and Carver moved in." He hadn't much thought about the correlation there. He had Varric now, to hang out with, a real, good friend, and not just a coworker who didn't actually know anything about him. And coming home smelling like alcohol and sweat and whatever the crowd had been smoking wasn't something that he wanted to do with his mom just down the hall. Especially since half the time he came back smelling like some stranger's cologne no matter how the night went. And then sometimes his seasonal jobs, like the one down at the docks, were little better than graveyard shifts, so it was a moot point, anyways.

The more he thought about his life from Anders' perspective, outside looking in at his current choices, the more he was beginning to think he'd forgotten how to relax in the last few years. It wasn't bad that he was more responsible than he'd been when he was on his own, to his family, to his friends, to his guild in a way, but did he even have much of a life outside of all that, outside of working and saving and taking care of people? The fact that the answer was probably no was distressing.