fandomtownies | The Beach, Thursday Afternoon

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@beach,
anders

The Beach, Thursday Afternoon

The Siren's Call had gotten Anders as far as a swirling blue vortex that he could just barely glimpse Fandom's castle through. He drew a deep breath, said some hasty goodbyes, and jumped over the waves toward home.

He reflected as he flew that, if nothing else, at least his adventure had given Isabela and her crew a good story.

He came up sputtering and coughing, facing a landscape that looked familiar, under a sky that decidedly wasn't. He was ten pounds thinner than he'd been when he left, weaker-legged from lack of exercise, with a new maturity in his movements and new fear in his eyes.

And he was home. He was going to lie on the sand and stare at the strange sky while he appreciated how very much that meant.

[OOC: Home at last, huzzah! Open post.]

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It'd been a while since Dante'd been out this way, and he hadn't really been planning on it. Rather, he'd decided to snag his bike and head down to Baltimore, but the location of the camp area meant he'd taken the other way down to the parking lot than he usually would've.

And so he passed by the beach, headphones firmly pressed against his ears, and almost didn't even stop to identify the hump spread-out on the sand. The only reason he even paused, briefly, was that he spotted something that looked like hair.

He squinted.

It was hair -- falling to Ander's shoulders in dirty blond waves, loose because Anders had lost his hair ties somewhere along the way. He squinted at the figure on the edge of the beach, then raised a hand in a hesitant wave and called out a greeting. It lookedlike Dante, he thought, but he wasn't completely convinced he wasn't seeing what he wanted to see.

"Hello?"

... He was being waved at. And shouted at?

Dante reached up, peeling the headphones off of his red-and-brown hair, and--

"...Anders?"

Sorry, Anders. You were going to have to deal with him staring at you like he'd seen a ghost.

"I think so," Anders said, frowning and licking his lips. "How long was I gone? You look -- confused."

Maker, he hoped it hadn't been years. That would be cruel.

Dante could not, in all of the past ten years of his life, remember anybody coming back. Not after making some kind of dramatic exit or vanishing into the ether or--

Any of that.

That was the stuff of optimism that just plain didn't happen.

So he stared for a few moments longer before he managed, almost absently, "Uh, half a summer," fingers still clinging to his headphones.

The words didn't make any kind of sense to Anders at first. He'd counted days in his cell -- every prisoner did, he supposed -- but somehow it seemed impossible he'd been gone barely two months here, too. Less.

"About the same as it was in Thedas," he said stupidly, staring back at Dante, taking in any changes he could spot. "I'm glad it wasn't longer."

He rose to his feet clumsily, dripping water as he did.

Outside of the newly-dyed - and already growing out - hair, not much had changed.

Anders, though-- Anders looked much more bedraggled, and not just because he was soaking wet.

Dante's brain finally finished rebooting. "You're an asshole," he said vehemently.

Considering he was also crossing the stretch of the beach to hug the poor sodden asshole at the same time, the word might not have had its usual connotation here.

"I've been going with 'selfish, thoughtless moron' myself," Anders said, returning the hug in the spirit it was meant. "But asshole's shorter."

He supposed he needed to explain where he'd been and why. But right then, grabbing Dante and not letting go until he was certain he was real seemed about right.

"You people get too fucking wordy anyway," Dante muttered. "Fuck. Cassandra said you were gone for good."

He wasn't usually this clingy, even about hugs, but if there was ever a reason to waive that shit for a moment, it was now.

"She wanted me to be," Anders said, bitterly. "I'm sure she'll be disappointed I'm not."

He stepped back just enough to see Dante's face properly. "She told you what she did?"

"Yeah, she's lucky I didn't kick her ass," Dante said, eyes narrowing.

Specifically, she was lucky Ada'd been there, or he really might have. "You okay? They didn't do shit to you over there, right?"

"I wish you had," Anders said. "And I think so? They didn't beat me or anything like that. Mainly they locked me up and told me how awful I was."

His wrists were rubbed raw in spots, suggesting there'd been a bit more to it.

"They wanted to send me to a different Circle in the middle of a desert, but I ran away when I got the chance."

"Good." Dante's gaze finally dipped away from Anders' face for a second, just to check on the rest of him; he touched Anders' wrist for half a second before pulling away.

"We're out camping now in these weird-ass tents," he said, "But how about we get your soggy ass back to the dorms first and dry you off?"

"Sounds beautiful," Anders sighed, with the faintest self-conscious touch of his own wrists. "Do you know how hard it is to get a hot shower back home? I missed that about as much as anything else. Plus" -- he sniffed himself -- "whoever I'm camping with will probably be happier if I don't reek of kelp."

"Seriously, no hot showers?" Dante asked. "That's just inhuman." He was backing up to the road, but he couldn't stop himself from checking over at Anders every .5 seconds. Just to make sure he hadn't gone up in smoke somewhere along the line.

Screw going back to Baltimore. Anders'd come back, which had shoved him right up to the top of the priority list. After the fucked up mess that'd been April, May and June, the guy seemed like a damn miracle.

"How the hell did you get back here, anyway?"

"Isabela," Anders said, grinning over at Dante because this part of the story made him happy. "Not the one here but the one in my world. I ran into her in a brothel and she agreed to give me a ride." A pause. "On her ship."

Dante grinned back at him. "But you also got a real ride, right?" he said. "Fuck, now I owe her some."

"I do too," Anders laughed. "Can you imagine? There I was, in a bar full of every kind of criminal you can imagine, and in she walks. I about kissed her on the spot. I hadn't thought through exactly how to get home."

"To be fair, most people wanna kiss Iz on the spot," Dante said, laughing softly. "Fuck, man. You got lucky."

The last bit of stunned had flushed out of his system; he flashed Anders a heartfelt grin. "Can't believe you actually made it back. Guess you really are a magician."

"I guess I must be," Anders agreed, smiling back in a way that made his whole face light up. "Maker, I'm glad to see you. For a while I was certain I'd never make it back."

"Yeah? Too bad," Dante said. "I already sold all your shit."

He did not manage to sell that one convincingly at all. In fact, he reached out to give Anders a gentle, companionable punch in the shoulder.

"Hasn't been the same here without you," he said.

"Just means you have to buy me new shit," Anders informed him, sidestepping the punch. "And better than what I had."

He glanced over at Dante affectionately. "There's nobody in Ferelden like you."

Dante snickered at the dodge, waggling his eyebrows. "You trying to make me blush now?" he said. "'Cause I gotta tell you, that's not easy."

The patter was, though. He felt elated.

"Just means I'm going to have to work harder at it," Anders said. (He was enjoying talking this way; it was much better than going through the whole sorry story of his last two months.) "Hmm ... what would happen if I said you had incredibly pretty eyes?"

He hadn't meant to start flirting, but, on the other hand, it made for an excellent distraction.

Dante was probably going to grill him about the last few months eventually. Right now, they were halfway to the dorms, and Anders had just washed back up on the beach like something out of a storybook.

It was insane. He had no idea how to even begin dealing with something good actually happening.

"Am I getting some color in my cheeks?" he joked. "Could be the weather."

... so he was falling back on old habits.

Edited 2016-07-01 14:09 (UTC)

"You are," Anders lied. "It's adorable." And then he made as if to pinch Dante's cheeks.

Now it was Dante's turn to swerve out of the way - or at least his head - batting at Anders' hands as they came near. "Hey now, nobody said it was okay for you to get handsy, man. Buy me dinner first."

Like he'd need dinner.

"Your standards went up," Anders observed. "Are you playing hard to get now?"

"Hard to get now means getting hard later," Dante said, because-- well, Dante. Still sure you'd missed him, Anders?

"But I guess I can pass on dinner because you did show up all wet."

Oh for god's sake.

"You need to get me into some dry clothes," Anders agreed, after a groan at the horrible joke. "I don't want to get pneumonia on my first day back."

They passed through the gates onto the dorm lawn as Dante nodded. "Did you swim like half the way here, or what?" he asked. "Usually people don't just... wash up on the beach."

Anders shook his head, glancing at the dorm with real appreciation in his eyes. "Just the last fifty yards or so. I had the ship sail around until it found a portal. Luckily it didn't take long enough for Isabela to get bored."

"Eh, she's got an attention span if she wants to have one," Dante said.

He gestured at the dorm entrance. "After you. Hopefully nobody'll catch you dripping on your way up." Beat. "So what happened before that, anyway?"

"I was in the Circle for a while," Anders said, gliding past the details as easily as he glided through the dorm lobby. "They were trying to transfer me to a different Circle. Guard left me alone one night, and I managed to get away."

Dante nodded, comfortable enough to leave that the way it was. At least at the moment. Outside of the marks on Anders' wrists, it wasn't like he had much reason to question any of it anyway.

"Sneaky," he said, hopping up the stairs, catching back up to Anders in just a step or two. "Shitting hell, man. That's wild. You get scared?"

He was looking over at Anders again, his hands shoved in his pockets.

Anders was about to laugh it off, but something about the expression on Dante's face made him want to be honest.

"Out of my mind," he admitted. "Honestly, if they hadn't tried to move me, I probably wouldn't have even tried to come back. Not for a long time."

Dante nodded. Once, watching Anders' face, too. He chewed on his bottom lip, stopping in place on the third floor landing. Reached out, tried to put his hand on Anders' shoulder, to stop him or... something.

Probably something.

Dumb flirting had put his thoughts at bay for a while, and talking too, but he was quickly running out of shit to say and yet there was no end to the jumble going on in his head. He just kinda needed to do--

Something, yes.

Anders looked at the hand, then back at Dante's face. And then he was talking, a great rush of words.

"I was missing Kathy," he said. "And then you went away, too, and -- never mind how I got the idea. I thought that if blood magic could show me some way to bring her back, it'd at least be good for something. When all it did was make things even worse. I should have known better."

"It's fine," Dante said. It sounded faintly absent, for all that he was keeping his eyes fixed on Anders' and his hand was sliding up to Anders' cheek and he was stepping in closer, too.

"I mean, it was stupid as fuck."

Because it was. Anything that had fuck all to do with demons was.

"But it's fine."

Because Anders came back.

"It was stupid," Anders agreed, and then they were at the door of their room and Anders was doing his best to get Dante inside so he could pin him against the wall.

It would be nice to feel something that wasn't sad or angry or empty.

"Fuck," Dante mumbled, own plans of doing the same dashed-- of course they were dashed, Anders had never exactly been passive.

He took the hint. Leaned in, caught Anders' mouth and kissed him.

For once, not like he was trying to get someone naked on the spot, but like he was shoving all his complicated emotions into a language he actually had a decent grasp on, because okay, shit, he'd missed this fucking jackass.

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The Beach, Thursday Afternoon

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