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Anders’ roommate was a dick.
Granted, Anders himself was also a dick (he wasn’t about to deny that), but Fenris took asshole-ish-ness to a new level. He left all these passive-aggressive little sticky notes everywhere, like yellow flags announcing, “Hey, Anders, your roommate still hates you! Good luck with college!” Okay, so they actually were about his clothes being everywhere, but it basically meant the same thing.
In response, Anders normally pushed his pile of dirty clothes further onto Fenris’ side of the room.
And then Fenris would play his music louder, and then Anders would leave his dirty dishes on the sink, then there would be a sticky note on his bowl with Fenris’ neat, blocky handwriting, and Anders left the shower curtain open.
Recently, they’d moved from passive-aggressive tactics to full-on pranking, starting with Anders’ dirty clothes all showing up in his bed. He was honestly surprised that Fenris had stopped turning his nose up long enough to move them. Anders retaliated by changing all the music on Fenris’ punk-metal fusion playlist to top 40 pop. His face was priceless, and it was impressive how quickly he’d ripped off his headphones. Later that day, Anders came back to the room to find that Fenris (and probably Isabela, honestly, she had decided to be a neutral party and cause mayhem for both sides) plastic-wrapped his bed. It was on.
Anders may not have been a prank expert, but he knew Varric well enough. Varric knew all the stupid information that people never told anyone, like how Hawke was allergic to pineapple or that Aveline’s favorite color was lavender.
Varric also knew that Fenris had an irrational paranoia about being attacked, and he mentioned it casually after a few drinks. “Using this against him would be a serious dick move, Anders. I know you two are in the middle of some sort of prank… thing,” he said. Of course he knew about that. “I already told him about you being scared of balloons—“
“I’m not afraid of balloons, I just don’t like it when they pop!”
“Whatever. I’m just saying, this is different. But if you are going to do it, take videos. ”
Oh, he would. He definitely would.
That’s how Anders ended up borrowing one of those plastic monster masks and hiding behind Fenris’ bed. It was a pretty good hiding place, as far as those went; with only the one light on near the door, Anders was nearly invisible. Now he just had to wait for Fenris to show up.
Turns out, Fenris had decided to stop being a loner who sat around studying all day, and he took forever to come back. Anders had scrolled through his entire Twitter feed, Tumblr dash, and ugh… even Facebook. He was just starting to think there weren’t enough funny pictures of cats on the entire internet to make this worth it when the door swung open.
Anders fumbled and dropped his phone, biting his lip to keep from some creative swearing. Okay, so filming may have been out, considering his phone was now halfway under Fenris’ bed. Now, he just had to wait for Fenris to get over there, and—
“When do you think your roommate’ll be back?”
That wasn’t Fenris.
Anders knew that voice, but he couldn’t place it. Definitely not low enough to be Fenris, especially considering Fenris replied, “I don’t know.”
There was a noise he could only describe as a wet smack, followed by the sounds of someone wrestling with a pillowcase. Oh, wait. It was probably one of them taking their shirt off.
They were making out.
Why were they making out?
Fenris chuckled, muttered, “you stuck?” and then there was a moan that was decidedly not from the bedsprings and a creak that was, as the two of them almost discovered Anders' hiding spot.
More kissing.
“Hawke,” Fenris sighed, and Anders shoved his hand over his mouth to keep from making a squeaking noise that would be embarrassing even if he wasn’t hiding behind his roommate’s bed while said roomie was getting it on with Hawke of all people.
Yeah, Hawke. The one Anders had an enormous crush on.
For a moment, he thought it must have been part of the pranking, but then realized they had no idea he was here. He could still jump out. Would it be awkward now?
The bed rocked back and forth. That was… thrusting. Oh god. It would be awkward now.
Isabela. He should text Isabela. Of all his friends, she was the one who’d probably been in a similar situation before. He shoved his mask off and stretched out to grab the phone that was still in the middle of the bed. By this point, neither of them were going to notice this. He was impressed with himself when he managed to condense his rather complicated situation into a two-sentence text.
Isabela’s response, “ask them if u can join lol,” came right as someone’s pants landed on Anders’ head. Black skinny jeans. Definitely Fenris’.
“They’re going to fuck,” he replied, “and NO, I’m not joining!!!” Was this a three- or a four-exclamation-point situation? He went with four in the end.
There was more moaning. He was going to repress this later.
“Wait I wanna hear this, I’m calling you!”
He immediately texted “DON’T” because even if he didn’t have his text tone on, he left his ringtone as loud as possible so he’d wake up if someone tried to call him while he was napping (definitely napping and not even a little passed out because he tried to pull an all-nighter for studying reasons). Of course, Isabela didn’t know, or didn’t care, and just as the bed frame shook again, “I Like Big Butts” started blaring from his phone.
“What the fuck!?” Fenris yelped, while Anders scrambled to hang up on Isabela. He couldn’t remember how iPhones worked, suddenly. Was it even possible to hang up on her? Fenris’ pants were still on his head.
“Anders?”
Apparently, closing his eyes and desperately trying to convince himself that this wasn’t happening did not work. “Hey, Hawke,” he squeaked, as Hawke pulled Fenris’ pants off his head. Anders now knew that Hawke was the one who’d been taking his shirt off.
“What. The. Fuck.” Fenris repeated, as Anders hauled himself out from under the bed. This time, it wasn’t a question. “What are you doing!?”
Anders was thankful when Hawke put an arm across Fenris’ chest, so Fenris couldn’t punch him in the face or anything. He liked his nose intact. It was already strange-looking enough; it didn’t need to be broken. “Listen, there’s a reasonable explanation for this,” he began, but Fenris wasn’t having it. Even with no pants on, he was terrifying when angry, one dark eyebrow arching. Was that a hickey between the lines of tattoos on his neck?
“Oh, I’m eager to hear it,” he said. Hawke didn’t move his arm, but settled himself between the two of them like a barrier.
“I… uh… it was part of a prank, you know, to get back for the plastic-wrapping…bed…thing.”
“The what?” Fenris asked.
“You plastic-wrapped my bed!” Anders said, annoyed that he had to explain this on top of everything. Hawke had chest hair to rival Varric’s.
“I did no such thing,” Fenris snarled. It was an actual snarl.
“Um… that may have been Isabela and Carver,” Hawke interjected. “And by ‘may have been,’ I mean it definitely was, and they snapchatted me a video of them doing it.”
“So, let me get this right. You were hiding behind my bed as part of some inane prank in response to something I didn’t even do!?”
“…yes.”
Fenris shoved Hawke to the side and slapped Anders. “Okay, that's fair, he definitely deserved that,” Hawke said. Anders did not think he deserved that. Anders also thought he did not deserve Hawke’s riotous laughter which followed, but it happened anyway.
“Hawke! Stop laughing, this is serious! He was purposefully trying to pull some bullshit prank to freak me out—nefarious things, Hawke, he was planning nefarious things,” Fenris concluded.
“I was not!”
Hawke was still laughing. “Come on,” he said, throwing Fenris’ pants at him and finding his shirt over by the sink, tugging it on, “let’s go.”
Fenris wiggled back into the skinny jeans and walked over to him, but Anders stayed on the bed. They were probably going to finish their… sex things. In Hawke’s room. “You too, Anders,” Hawke said. Oh no. Anders was not joining the sex things.
“Where…?”
“We’re going to IHOP,” Hawke said. “And we’re going to eat pancakes and laugh about this, and you two are going to set up boundaries for being roommates. Also, pancakes.”
Anders couldn’t look at Fenris during the entire pancake-eating discussion.
Hawke told the waitress.
It was probably the worst day ever.
But, the next morning, Fenris reached under his bed and found the monster mask, and his screaming made up for everything.