Hawke's head snaps up faster than he can get his hand down; he's entirely used to being in this proximity with Anders, so there's no reaction like there would be otherwise to someone pushing inside his guard. "You actually think--"

Maker. This is a stranger. Or at the least--he is a stranger to Anders.

"You think if it wasn't, I'd risk your safety to show off."

One of those questions that turns down at the end; not quite a statement because it can't bear to be. He's managed to close his hand by now, gaze hooking onto Anders' own eyes and then sliding away. "Magic is far from the strangest thing most of them have seen."

'Them', being, as Hawke indicates with the incline of his head, the general populace roiling in all directions at odds with gravity. He's been here long enough to have made some kind of contact with everyone, as is his way, and so the fact that his thoughts are touching on them now turns a few heads, but garners no active hostility.

"I know it's not what you're used to," he hastens to reassure; his own initial reaction hadn't been so different. Summoning up the energy to be wary had been a pretty daunting task at the time, but what else was there to do? "I just thought--" That Anders would know. That after so long it would be a foregone conclusion that anyone who wanted him had Hawke to contend with first. "You really don't know me, do you?"

What he's supposed to do with that, he doesn't know. What he does know is that Anders will definitely have to be the one to pull away first; even shadowed with the vague understanding he has now Hawke can't make himself break his grip.