Title: Tangles
Fandom: Dragon Age
Rating: T
Length: 550 words
Content notes: N/A
Author notes: Written for the ‘hair’ challenge in fan_flashworks.
Summary: Sara Hawke brushes Anders’ hair in one of the few moments they have alone.

***

“Mother always made Bethany and I brush our hair before bed,” Sara said as she ran the boar-bristle brush through Anders’ dirty blonde locks. She was sitting cross-legged on the bed, with Anders sitting in front of her, facing away.

“Mmmm,” Anders said, sounding like he was only half-listening.

“It was supposed to make it all shiny and beautiful.”

“Maybe you’ll make my hair all shiny and beautiful,” he said. Sara smiled as she patiently worked her brush through the tangles, holding his hair so she wasn’t tugging on his scalp.

“It’s already beautiful,” she said. Then she licked her lips and added, “I like long hair on a man.”

“Lucky for me,” Anders said with a smile in his voice.

Sara started to alternate the hairbrush with her fingers combing through his hair. She loved the feel of the strands sliding through her fingers. She brought a handful to her nose – they smelled like herbs and slightly acrid smoke – then pressed her lips against them.

“I love you,” she said, then let his hair fall back down so she could resume her brushing.

Anders sighed – his shoulders raised with his inbreath, then fell with his exhale.

“This is nice,” he said. A pause. “It’s nice having you all to myself for a little while.”

Sara kept brushing as she contemplated his words.

“Do you miss it being just the two of us?” she asked.

“Yes and no. I don’t resent Fenris being part of our lives, but it’s nice to have some time alone together sometimes.”

“He has been staying a lot lately,” Sara admitted. She had been so overjoyed that he’d decided this was an arrangement he could live with, that she hadn’t thought about how Anders might be feeling.

“I don’t mind that, exactly,” Anders said. “But he could use a hobby to get him out of the house from time to time.”

“You mean, apart from hunting slavers down?”

“Not the healthiest or most reliable of pastimes.”

Now that she had untangled all the knots, she started brushing his hair from the top of his scalp, just like mother had taught her.

“I can talk to him,” she said as she worked her way down. “Maybe encourage him to spend a bit more time with Isabela and Varric.”

“I don’t want to discourage him from staying,” Anders said. “Just… he could maybe go out in the evenings occasionally. So I can get some time alone with you after I’m done with the clinic for the day.”

“Oh?” Sara said, with a sly smile. “Anything in particular you want to be doing during our time alone?”

“Depends.” Anders turned to look at her with his warm brown eyes and caught her hand holding the brush “This is nice,” he said.

Sara leaned forward and captured his inviting lips with her own. She dropped the brush onto the red damask coverlet, pulled her hand from his grasp, and entwined her fingers into his hair. She tugged gently, eliciting a small gasp, and she smiled around their kiss. Rising up onto her knees, she used the grip she had on his hair to tilt his head gently back before deepening the kiss, his gasp turning into a moan.

Yes, she liked long hair on a man.