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Chapter Text

The year was 9:32, the night was young, and Varric couldn’t remember the last time life had tasted this fucking sweet. 

Just a few sovereigns more. Then he and his unlikely, unlooked for, unparalleled partner in business and crime were going to delve into the Deep Roads, take everything that wasn’t nailed down, and return to Kirkwall triumphant, richer than Maker-damned kings.

Varric—with enough gold to keep his brother off his back and keep the good times rolling. Hawke—with enough gold to buy his mother’s old title and estate back; with enough gold no templar would ever look twice at him again; with so much fucking gold it’d make the best, most effective smokescreen an apostate could ever dream of. Hawke and Varric, Varric and Hawke—with the whole damn world at their feet.

It was all so close Varric could taste it.

Or maybe he just… thought he could? Taste it? Because he was very—very—prodigiously drunk right now.

The Hanged Man was buzzing loud with good humor, the mood loose, and Varric was drunk in the right way: the world around him a beautiful, benevolent blur.

And Hawke? Hawke was right there with him, and damn, was that a good thing.

Shit, that was the best thing.

He didn’t want Hawke to tip too far. Not into the melancholy that’d seize Hawke, sometimes, when deep in his cups: that’d have Hawke looking over ledges or into bodies of water a little too long, that’d have him cracking jokes that weren’t funny at all. That were concerning, frankly. The kind of jokes that made Varric want to shake him by the shoulders.

No, Hawke was here, and Varric was going to keep him here. Here, in this beautiful, drunken benevolence. Here, in this beautiful bubble of now.

Hawke was leaning, now, getting between Rivaini and Aveline as their voices rose.

“Av-ve-line,” Hawke dragged her name out sulkily. He leaned his elbows on the table, eyes round and wounded and guileless. “Don’t you know it’s rude to play favorites? Just how many people do I have to sleep with before you’ll call me a whore?”

He stuck his lower lip out, the way a child would. “It’s like you don’t appreciate all my hard work!”

Quick on the draw, Rivaini went along with the joke: perching her chin on Hawke’s shoulder, fixing Aveline with a theatrical pout.

“Don’t you appreciate his whorefulness, Aveline?”

“My whoretry?” Hawke pouted too, eyes rounder, more wounded, tilting his head to rest against Rivaini's.

“His whoritude,” Broody added flatly, fighting a grin.

“His whorindipity!” Daisy piped in, giggling, bright as a new copper.

At that—Daisy’s exuberance; the word ‘whorindipity’—Varric burst out laughing, delighted by the horror she’d wrought upon the trade tongue, and eager to contrive reasons to use it himself.

And Hawke was laughing: convulsing with it, leaning ever more heavily on his elbows until he was half-lying on the table. And Rivaini was laughing: crowing with pride, slinking around the table to cover the crown of Daisy's head with pecking kisses. Even Broody was amused: biting his lip, eyes suspiciously alight.

And Aveline— who’d been wasting the last ten minutes trying to rope Rivaini into some bullshit argument —she was laughing too, her edges softening, softening. Letting her anger go.  

Varric glanced at Hawke, then.

Face now flat on the table, Hawke caught his glance—and winked at him knowingly.

And wasn’t that just like Hawke, to diffuse tension with a flick of the wrist? Like it was easy? Like it was nothing?

Like the first time Varric had seen him do it, nearly a year ago now, when some huge, mean-looking human had taken objection to ‘dog-fuckers cogglin’ up’ the Hanged Man, and decided Hawke would be the one to pay for it. He’d shoved Hawke; he’d challenged Hawke to a fight—

Only for Hawke to agree.

And start stripping.

Stripping off his shirt, his trousers—all the while spouting off a stream of unhinged nonsense, each word nuttier than the last—until Hawke was squaring up to fight the guy stark fucking naked.

And that huge, mean-looking human? Backed off. Made for the door even as he tried to act like he wasn’t, trying to salvage his pride with parting shots about ‘batshit Fereldens.’

And once the door swung closed? Hawke had dropped the act. He’d turned to Varric, pointed at Varric with a wink and a snap of the fingers, and said, ‘Word to the wise? No one wants to fight a naked man.’

Junior had locked his eyes on the ground and hissed at his brother to ‘put your fucking clothes back on, so fucking help me.’

Aveline had scrubbed her face, long-suffering, and told her friend that he had ‘ten seconds before I arrest you for public indecency.’

But Varric? Oh, Varric had cackled so hard he thought he might cough up a lung.

Hawke was always pulling off shit like that. Always doing the crazy, clever thing. Always getting out of tight spots with a deftness; always coming up with a joke whenever he wasn't coming up swinging. Always—

…Surprising.

Yeah. That was it.   

Varric looked at his friend— unlikely, unlooked for, unparalleled; face flat on the sticky, undoubtedly disgusting table —and winked back at him.

That’s what you are, he heard himself think. A surprise.

Time slid by drunkenly, blurred at the edges. There were more jokes. More tankards. More hands of Wicked Grace. There was music, too, a song wafting through the air like smoke…

Here was Hawke: close now, suddenly… clear.

Crisp.

Like snow up on Sundermount. Like the first bite of an apple.

Hawke’s eyes were such a warm, warm black. Rich. Arresting. He gestured with expressive hands as he spoke, the pitch of his voice sinking lower, sonorous, as his Orlesian-Ferelden accent grew thicker, stronger, unleashed by drink.

“Non, non, Varric—that, precisely, is what you don’t understand,” Hawke was insisting; he was expounding; and yet he was smiling. Fervent, focused, gazing deeply into Varric's eyes and smiling, explaining some crucial point about…

…What were they talking about?

Varric wasn't sure; Hawke was still talking—

No. No, it… it was more than that. Hawke was rhapsodizing. He was in raptures.

“That, er—” Hawke clicked his tongue, searching for a word. “—impermanence? Is what I love most! Music—”

Hawke was cupping his hands, now, to hold something invisible.

He stared at it so intently Varric had to stare at it, too: the rapturous nothing in Hawke’s hands. 

“—Music exists in time, not in space. You cannot touch it. C’est ici; c’est parti!” Hawke flourished his hands, as if to make the rapturous nothing disappear.

“Music lives in a moment, and music dies in a moment, just like we do,” Hawke sighed like a man in love, happily consigned to his suffering, still smiling at Varric. Smiling and smiling. “Don’t you think that’s wonderful?”

Varric could only smile back at him, stunned.

Wonderful, his mind echoed in answer. Wonderful, wonderful.

Because when Hawke got like this? It was.

This was the sweet spot, wasn’t it? The blurry place well beyond the province of buzzed but just shy of boneless. Just shy of—

…Of melancholy.

But! When Hawke hit this sweet spot? Everyone he met dazzled him. Everything he encountered mystified him. And he would routinely open Varric’s eyes to a multitude of—of wonders, of revelations, that'd never before been visible. Not to him.

Hawke was prone to making bizarre, heartfelt declarations. Just last week, he’d come to an abrupt halt at the top of the stairs in the Hanged Man; took Varric’s face into his hands; proclaimed with a great, jarring solemnity, ‘Everything about you delights me;’ pressed a kiss to Varric's forehead; and then released him, like it was easy, like it was nothing; turned to keep walking—

Then fell down the stairs, ass over teakettle, having completely forgotten where he was and what he’d been doing.

He’d been none the worse for wear, thankfully. He’d landed hard on his ass; eyes wide, he’d looked up to find Varric frozen at the top of the stairs; and then he’d burst into laughter at his own expense. Lying back on the floor, grinning into his hands, unloosing peal after peal of helpless laughter.

Oh, yeah, when Hawke got like this? Maker's breath, it was wonderful.

He had a gift. A way of making things alright just by being there. Swill smacked sweeter. Laughs rang louder. Tales grew taller and stories spun gold. Everything Hawke touched spun gold. He could spin gold out of thin air.

Time kept blurring by… and Varric found himself saying as much.

To Junior.

Varric was sitting next to him; he tugged Junior’s sleeve at the shoulder to get his attention.

“You know what your problem is?”

Junior rolled his eyes, face puckering into a scowl, but Varric didn’t let that stop him. It’d been a rhetorical question—he was going to tell him regardless.

“You want to be impressive, but you never want to be impressed.” Varric took another swig from his tankard; he wiped the foam from his mouth with a broad pass of his hand. “You want to know your brother’s secret? How he charms damn near everybody?”

Junior shot him a look that could curdle milk.

“Oh, do tell, dwarf.” His sarcasm was acidic. “Tell me just how m—”

“He’s charming because he’s charmed, dumbass,” Varric cut him off. “He likes people, so people like him back,” he emphasized with three light slaps on Junior’s shoulder.

“Whereas you?” Varric made a pshh sound. “You don’t like anybody.”  

Junior’s face did something complicated, then. If Varric didn’t know better, he might’be thought Junior winced. That he might’ve… hit a nerve.

So Varric cut his losses. He hopped down from his chair and left Junior alone. Looked for someone else to talk to.

Even now, tucked fast in the heart of this beautiful, benevolent bubble, Varric remembered the rules. He wasn’t allowed to dig his barbs too deep into Junior.

Not unless he wanted Hawke to ice him out. Again. For a whole fortnight.

No, Varric hadn’t liked that.

Here? Here was good. Now was good. Where was Hawke?

Time blurred… and Varric was spinning a yarn about the docks, the harbormaster, and a bottle of cod liver oil.

Blondie was here, listening, a smile creasing his forever-weary eyes. And Macha—the woman with the templar brother, the one they’d saved from blood mages—she was here too. She kept glancing at Blondie with a sparkle in her eye. A little hopeful, a little shy.

But Blondie didn’t seem to notice. Hawke’s laugh was booming from across the room, now, greeting Tomwise and his brother “Tybalt, Prince of Cats!” with clap on the back—and that was where Blondie’s glance went instead, all his sparkle reserved for Hawke alone.  

Interesting, Varric thought, as if he didn’t already know.

Time blurred… and Varric was spinning a yarn about Bartrand, the Merchants’ Guild, and beards so long you could trip over them.

Broody was here, chuckling, trying to hide his grin behind his tankard. And his buddy Anso was here, too, more at ease these days with life on the surface. He was launching into his own Guild story; he paused, tapping Broody on the shoulder to ask some quick clarifying question.

But Broody didn’t seem to notice. Rivaini was leading Hawke in a dance, now, dipping him low to the ground; he yielded to her gracefully, sinking with a slow, muscular control—and that was where Broody’s gaze had fixed, flitting between them both.

Interesting, Varric thought, as if he didn’t already know that, too.

Time blurred… and Varric was dancing with Daisy. Her long fingers and his short ones; his ears full of her bird-bright laughter.

Time blurred… and Varric was tossing out some asshole on Norah’s request. Her approving nod; her voice calling over the noise, “Master Tethras—your next ale’s on me!”

Time blurred… and Varric was shuffling a deck of cards; he was handing the deck over so Rivaini could cut it; he was dealing out a hand of Diamondback, flicking a card to each player in one looping circle after another. One, two, three, four, five, six; one, two, three, four…

No, Varric couldn’t remember the last time life had been so sweet.     

He really had a good thing going, didn’t he? He had coin coming in on the regular, with the promise of more just over the horizon. He had misadventures, near-misses and scrapes, each more exhilarating than the last. He had an endless fount of ideas fizzing in his brain, plot twists and characters and reversals of fortune that jumped off the page whenever he found a spare moment to scribble one down.

…He had friends.

Not associates. Not contacts. Not informants. Real, honest-to-goodness friends. People who had fuck all to do with the Guild. People who… simply enjoyed his company.

Who knew that was a thing that actually happened? Varric hadn’t.

Not for people like him.

And yet, here they were.

A pirate captain without a ship and a blood mage without a clan. A former Warden and a former slave. Somehow, bafflingly, the new Guard-Captain in training.

And a down-on-his-luck apostate refugee who’d spent most of his life working a farm. A man who, on paper, should be the least compelling of them all.

His friends were funny. Fractious. As touchy a lot of waifs and strays as you could ever hope to meet. In a word? Perfect. Jagged and deeply flawed. Honest and alarmingly true. They bickered at the drop of hat and Varric wouldn’t change a single solitary thing about them.

To think he received all of this good fortune—the money, the inspiration, the people—all inside of one year.

And to top it all off?

In three days’ time, Varric was going to see Bianca.  

She had business in Jader, he’d arranged his own Jader-bound alibi, and now their rendezvous was right around the corner. And what could be better? What could better warm Varric the whole Deep Roads through, other than the afterglow of an entire week with Bianca?

Time blurred… and Varric began to blur with it, thinking of her…  

—But Hawke was here.

Crisp as Sundermount snow. As the first bite of an apple.

Interrupting Varric in the middle of some yarn he’d been spinning to point a finger in his face.

“Bullshit,” Hawke chuckled, punctuating that word with a little jab of the finger. “You’re having me on.”   

Varric was chuckling too, drawing his head in; he brushed Hawke’s finger away like a gnat, grabbing at it a little. “What are you talking about?”

“That—that business with the, what did you call it?” Hawke made a circle with his arms. Emphatically, like it was supposed to mean something. “In the house? There’s no such thing!”

Varric felt himself bubble over with laughter.

“No such thing as houses?” he teased; he was leaning in, towards Hawke, closer to Hawke. “Were you raised in a barn, Farmer?—I thought that was just a figure of speech.”

Hawke gave him a half irked, half amused look. With a light nudge he pushed Varric’s face away from his, fingers brushing, glancing over Varric’s cheek gently.

“You dick. You scamp, you utter rapscallion,” Hawke said; his eyes were… doing… something. Something interesting. “That’s not what I meant, Messere Riche, and you know it.”

“Do I?” Varric replied, just to be an ass.

…Maker, Hawke’s eyes were really something. Such a warm, warm black. Too warm to be likened to onyx or obsidian; to be likened to anything that wasn’t vibrantly, vivaciously alive. They reminded Varric of…

Of what?

Varric wasn’t sure. He began to blur again, trying to capture it, the… the simile, the metaphor, on the tip of his tongue…

—But Hawke kept making emphatic circles with his arms, at a loss for words himself. Kept pantomiming, kept Varric in the moment—

And, eventually, Varric caught on.

“…Runic plumbing?”

“Ouais! That’s the— Hot water, just like—like that?” Hawke snapped his fingers with a flourish. “No well? No boiling? No bakery next door, like the bathhouse?”

He blew a disbelieving raspberry, still grinning, his eyes… glimmering.

Yeah. Glimmering.

“You’re fucking with me,” he continued. “You must be.”

“I shit you not,” Varric grinned back at him; he was leaning in again, towards Hawke, closer to Hawke. “I can prove it to you.”

Hawke looked at him sidelong, one eyebrow arching dubiously.

Varric tsked; why wouldn’t Hawke believe him? He put his hands on the table, leaning his weight onto them.

“Bartrand got the Tethras townhouse all kitted out… pfff, ten, eleven years ago?”

Hawke hummed doubtfully. He took a swig from his tankard—and then he was looking away. Losing interest.

No. No, Varric didn’t like that.

So he touched him. Hawke’s forearm under his palm, under his fingers.

Look at me.

After a short delay, Hawke did. With those warm, warm black eyes of his.

“Hawke, I swear on my mother I’m not fucking with you,” Varric said; he was swaying a little, for all that his tone was serious and sober.

He tilted his head. “Well… right now,” he amended. “About this.”

Another short delay as the words sank in.

And then.

Slowly.

A smile began to unfurl over Hawke’s face. Broad, and crooked, and warm. His lips parting. His eyes glimmering, glimmering.  

“…Oh, fuck, can we go now?” Hawke asked; he believed Varric, finally, finally.

—He was touching Varric back.

His hand just above Varric’s elbow, circling, almost like a handshake, but… not. Gentler.

Hardly any pressure at all.

“Will you show me?” Hawke asked, so enthused he was shining. He shone so brightly Varric had to blink against it.

“Shit yeah,” Varric answered, grinning like a fool.

Varric stood, and yet it felt like falling. He had to steady himself on the table as he felt it: something falling, falling, inside of his chest.

“Come on, Hawke, I’ll show you.”

***

It took a while, leaving the Hanged Man.

Junior had something to say first, bristling at his brother in Orlesian-Ferelden patois. Hawke had to placate him, nodding amiably, responding in kind.

It rankled Varric. It always did.

Orlesian was the language of prestige in Kirkwall. The nobility learned it, so Varric had learned it, like every other Guild kid with a tutor. Kalna or ascendant? Didn’t matter. You flattered humans in Orlesian to disarm them into better business deals. You entertained humans in Orlesian in their theater boxes, choosing le mot juste to make witty little jabs about the actors who, naturally, were performing in Orlesian. If you took a human lover, you seduced them in Orlesian—because the only good dwarven reason to take a human lover was for their title, to be used to further the interests of your good dwarven House.

Patois was a different beast. A sonorous, slurring language that kept coming up whenever someone cut their eyes at Varric and decided they didn’t like the look of him. Whenever Junior wanted to shut him out of a conversation with Hawke. Whenever one of their dog-lord neighbors pointedly ignored him, addressing Hawke as if he were alone.

Varric didn’t like not knowing things.

But, no matter how he tried to parse it, patois wouldn’t give up its secrets. It was more than just the sum of its parts. Listening to it…

It reminded Varric of looking into a shattered mirror. He could only ever catch glimpses divorced from the whole. Words, phrases, a select few sentences? No problem. But the grammar, the way it all hung together?—eluded him.

So Varric didn’t know what had Junior’s smalls in a bunch right now. All he could make out was the word ‘uncle,’ and… something about worry. Either “I’m worried about you” or “You’re worried about me.”

Varric couldn’t tell it apart. Who was worried about who. Or why. Or what Gamlen had to do with it.  

Hawke gave Junior his coin purse—but that only made Junior scowl more.

Junior dug out a couple silvers; he tried to give them back to Hawke—but that only made Hawke dance away with a grin, holding his hands up, refusing to take them.

Next, and much less irritating, were the long goodbyes.

Daisy didn’t want them to leave, the sweetheart. Neither did Rivaini. She tried to entice Varric into another game of cards, and when that failed, she coiled herself around Hawke to murmur in his ear. The way she was wont to, when she invited Hawke to sleep with her.

But Hawke just shook his head, kissed Rivaini on the cheek, and, flicking the brim of her hat, murmured a reply that made her laugh. The way he was wont to, when he turned her down.  

Hawke always turned her down.

Even when it seemed like he didn’t actually want to.

Interesting, interesting…

It took a while, but they managed it: Varric and Hawke left the Hanged Man. Let the door swing shut on all its noise, its odor, its dirt and delights.

Not that Lowtown was any less lively.

People were out in force, tonight.

You’d be forgiven for thinking it a holiday, but in truth it was simply the weather. The spring rains had finally eased. The night air was cool, no longer cold. The moons were shining brightly overhead, torches and lamps were blazing along the bazaar, and the people of Lowtown were raring to live it up now, before summer. Before the only reason they’d be up all night was because it was too damn hot to sleep.

Hawke paused to light an elfroot cigarette.

Varric paused too. He closed his eyes to focus on the night air: those chilly hands cupping his face, cooling the drunk-flush heat of his skin.

His eyes opened, and he noticed all the paper.

The square in front of the Hanged Man was littered with paper. Leaflets fluttering underfoot, stirred by the breeze.

Varric took a step—and a leaflet stuck to the sole of his boot.

He unpeeled it from his boot. Brought it up to his face to read it, squinting.

Ugh.

It was yet another diatribe. Extolling the virtues—ha!—of Kirkwall’s native sons; exhorting said sons to join the Friends of Kirkwall and ‘DRIVE THE FOREIGN WASTE’ from Lowtown ‘BEFORE WE ALL GET FLEAS!’  

Varric knew what this was good for.  

He blew his nose in it. Crumpled it. Tossed it back on the ground, where it belonged.

Then he scrubbed his hands over his cheeks, trying to sober up a bit. He needed to remember this; he needed to check in with Gallard tomorrow.  

Gallard should have a lead about these stupid shitting leaflets by now. There were only so many printing presses in Kirkwall. The Coterie should know, so Gallard should know—so Varric should know, so he could finally put a stop to these so-called Friends of fucking Kirkwall.

Gallard tomorrow. Gallard, the leaflets, tomorrow.

“Rather an odd way to advertise your fetish, don’t you think?”

Varric shot Hawke a glance, not understanding.

Hawke was reading one of the leaflets with a wry quirk of the lips. He turned the leaflet to Varric, and tapped it where it read, ‘HOW LONG MUST WE LIE WITH DOGS?!’

“Methinks they doth protest too much,” Hawke continued in a stage whisper. He took another drag of his cigarette as he gazed at Varric, conspiratorial, that wry little quirk ripening into a grin that crinkled his eyes.

His eyes dancing in the light of the lamps, in the light of the moons.

And there was… something about it. There was a simile, a metaphor, on the tip of Varric’s tongue, a… a point he wanted to make.

About what?

Varric didn’t know—but it wasn’t important; it could wait. Because Hawke was here.

He felt a grin steal over his face.

That fact cut clear through his drunkenness: banter came first, when Hawke was here.

“Ah, don’t be too hard on them, Hawke,” Varric stage-whispered in return, grinning wider and warmer as he spoke. “It takes a lot of work to be that stupid. I’d bet they haven’t even realized they have a fetish, yet—they’re still figuring out how to breathe with their mouths closed.”

At that, Hawke began to laugh.  

It was a long, low sound. A sound from the depths of his belly, from the base of his spine, rumbling through the hollow of his chest, through the hollow of his throat. Billowing out over his lips in loose, languid curls like smoke.

It was a sound Varric could feel.

But didn’t it make sense, that such a resonant sound would… resonate, like this? Resonate outward, and outward, until it touched Varric and resonated inside of him, too? Didn’t it make sense, that laughter would beget laughter? That such a sound would… flood him?

Varric thought so.

The warmth he felt, flooding him through… He couldn’t imagine anything that’d make more sense than this. 

So he laughed too.

For a little while, that was all they did. Laughing together. Lingering beneath the old, creaky figurehead of the Hanged Man, easy and at-ease together. Everything else— the leaflets fluttering at their ankles; the people ambling by, calling out to each other —meaningless, receding gently into the distance, just for a moment. Just for one moment more.  

Time blurred… but not far, and not much.

Varric led Hawke through the crowds into Lowtown Bazaar.

Into its twisting streets, well-lit tonight and raucous, rife with stalls selling fried fish and faulty enchantments, peddling ‘ancient’ relics and miracle cures, hustling scam after scam after scam.

Andraste's ass, he loved Lowtown.

Raw, real, hewn rough from the rock—Lowtown had a brutal kind of beauty to it, one Varric had loved since he was a kid. This was where he’d first been mugged. First been kissed. First heard someone say ‘Sorry’ and actually mean it. These blind alleys, these hidden passages: this was where he’d sneak off to escape a dull day of lessons. Or his brother. Or his mother, at her worst.

And with the arrival of the refugees, Lowtown had only gotten better.

His fellow Kirkwallers could bitch all they like, but the Fereldens were a breath of fresh air. They'd brought so much newness with them. New fruits, new flavors, cuts of meat cured from animals he'd never heard of. New songs, new dances, new—

New stories.

Tall tales—ancient myths—comedies lewd and tragedies epic. Heroes and villains. Witches and shapeshifters and kings. Each one new, beautiful in its strangeness, more precious to Varric than gold. 

Werewolves? Spectacular. Nuts, but spectacular.

It threw Varric, to be honest, that so many Kirkwallers didn't see it his way. Who wouldn't want fresh air in Lowtown? In this pit of pits? In this glorious, most sublime shithole of shitholes?

He was glad Hawke wasn't like that.

Wasn't closed off to new, wondrous things.

“You know what you should do, after the expedition?” Varric said. “You should get runic plumbing for the Amell estate. For bathing, laundry, whatever you want.”

He was swaying as they walked; he bumped into Hawke’s side again, misjudging the distance between them. “I’ll snoop through Bartrand’s office—I’ll get you the name of the guy he hired.”  

They were passing the Ferelden Imports shop. Lirene was out front, holding court with her neighbors. A fiddle. A reedy singing voice. A couple of kids playing a game, chasing each other, ducking and weaving through their parent’s standing legs. 

“You can’t just ask him?” Hawke asked.

He bumped into Varric once; twice; more; he was grinning; he was making a game of it, putting a little more of his weight behind each bump.

“Oh, I certainly could,” Varric replied.

He returned the favor; he was bumping into Hawke on purpose now, being a little shit, enjoying it immensely. Leaning his own weight onto Hawke. Grinning up at Hawke.

“But, you see,” he continued, raising one finger. “That would require talking. To Bartrand.”

Hawke hummed in understanding, his eyes dancing, dancing. “Too cruel a punishment.”

“Doesn’t fit the crime,” Varric agreed, grinning, grinning.

Oh, yeah, he loved Lowtown. And on a night like this? With a friend like Hawke?

Varric could almost believe Lowtown loved him back.

…Which meant.

Naturally.

That the other shoe was just about to drop.

The thing about Fereldens?—in Kirkwall, they’d all been lumped together as one. Those who’d never seen a city before the Blight, and those who’d never known anything but. Shipwrights from Gwaren. Charlatans from Amaranthine. Woodsmen from the same deep dark forest as Daisy’s clan, and seamstresses from towns so small they might be the sole person who remembered its name.

The only thing that truly united them all was a special hatred for Orlais, harbored deep in the heart.

But some Fereldens kept that hatred burning for people like Hawke and his family: fellow Fereldens they’d deny were Ferelden at all, from South Reach or similar, for the crime of speaking patois.

Some. Like the Fereldens in the alley coming up on the right.

They knew Hawke by sight, now. Ever since they’d first heard his accent, they’d gone out of their way to spit on the ground whenever he passed, to say something inflammatory. Like, ‘Keep it moving, mongrel.’ Or like, ‘Your mum lift her skirt for every chevalier what rode by, or what?’ The kind of shit that’d get Junior fighting ten men at once. That Hawke had long learned to let roll of his back.

You had to pass this alley to get to the Hightown stairs. That was the whole point. These assholes might not have picked out a name, yet, but Varric knew a gang when he saw one.

Their leader was a man with a comically big chin. He dropped down from the nearest stoop on light feet—

—and his mabari followed. Watching.

Waiting for the order.

Adrenaline focused Varric. The world sharpening. His mind sobering.  

“What’s this?” The man with the big chin spread his arms wide as he approached, in the manner of a host greeting his guests. “Satinalia come early?”

He let out a low, threatening chuckle; he was enjoying this. “Know it’s not my name day.”

More Fereldens now. Two, four— Seven that Varric could see. Their hands twitching towards their weapons: three bows, four swords—

Twitching: not yet touching.

They, too, waiting for the order.

But Hawke decided to ignore them. He kept walking towards the Hightown stairs.

Varric followed his lead, keeping the gang in the corner of his eye.

“Oi!” The man with the big chin strode closer, face twisting in anger. “Don’t act like you can’t hear me, half-blood!”

Hawke slowed to a standstill.

He turned to face the man with the big chin. Leaned on his bladed staff— a scrappy halberd in appearance: the kind of weapon any farmer could scrounge up —and made a show of looking unbothered.

“Oh, the egg on my face,” Hawke replied casually, coolly. “You seem to know me, but I must tell you, I have absolutely no idea who you are.”

Hawke cocked his head to the side; his grin was full of teeth. “You must have one of those faces. One of those forgettable, inconsequential faces. Don’t you agree, Varric?”  

Varric was already drawing Bianca off his back. He held her loosely, ready to aim.

“The Maker must not’ve been inspired, the day He made you,” he bantered back, compounding the insult.

Compounding—why?—because pissed-off assholes make mistakes, that’s why. Because Varric never met an advantage he didn’t like, didn’t take, didn’t seize with both hands. Because he couldn’t not banter back. Not when it was Hawke.

“Or maybe He just knew you wouldn’t be worth remembering,” Varric added, smirking.

That hit its mark: the man with the big chin purpled with rage.

Trust Hawke to sniff it out that quick. Where the sore spot was. Where to dig in. Just another one of his talents, sizing someone up with a glance. Just another reason to be glad Hawke was on his side.  

The man with the big chin resumed his approach, face purpling further, hands hovering over his sheathed daggers.

The other Fereldens followed, mabari at their heels.

“You’re going to regret that, friend,” snarled the man with the big chin. Snarled it low, quiet. Dangerous.

But Hawke wasn’t going to let him be dramatic; he would ruin that for him, too. Even as Hawke shifted his stance, readying himself for a fight, he kept on digging, digging, digging to that sore spot.

“Shit, and he says we’re friends,” he stage-whispered to Varric, dripping with mock pity. “Can you imagine what that’s like? To be so unremarkable that even your own friends forget you?”

Varric was scanning the alley— Eight— Nine men he could see— Three mabari— Two exits, one behind him—

Yet he found himself snorting. The point of pissing the guy off might be strategic, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy doing it.

And he did.

He snuck a quick glance at Hawke, and saw Hawke glancing back at him, with a sharp, vicious smile.

Maker, he did.

“Don’t beat yourself up, Hawke,” Varric stage-whispered back. Loudly. “It’s a miracle he’s lived this long; how did his mother remember to feed him?”

Hawke barked a laugh—every bit as sharp and vicious as that smile—and the sound shot up Varric’s spine like a fresh bolt of adrenaline.

“What do you say we save her the work?” Hawke asked, tone darkening.

He was raising his halberd-staff in earnest—

The first mabari was beginning to charge—

Varric was taking aim— 

One of the Fereldens was bellowing, raising his sword high—

But.

Then.

A raw, crackling energy.

It rolled through the air over their heads, like some kind of strange, shared premonition of thunder.

Immediately it firmed, it narrowed—the raw, crackling energy now thin as a wire.

It lashed through the air.

Once—

Hawke stumbled, leaning hard on his halberd-staff— He clutched at his chest, gritting his teeth against a hiss of pain—

The charging mabari came to a swift, skidding halt— It looked back to its master, whining in confusion, in fear—

Twice—

Hawke leaned harder on his halberd-staff, his knees buckling under the strain—

Varric’s heart hammered in his chest— He kept Bianca leveled at the Fereldens, at the mabari—

But they’d stopped too. They weren’t looking at him; they weren’t looking at Hawke. Their eyes were fixed behind them. Beyond them. Towards the Hightown stairs.

In the direction of the raw, crackling energy.

“Templars,” spat the man with the big chin. “Fucking figures.”

He turned to his gang, and jerked that stupid chin sharply. “Fall back!”

And they did: the Fereldens and their mabari disappeared into another alley.

Varric didn’t waste time. The moment their backs were turned, he had Bianca holstered and was at Hawke’s side. Helping Hawke stand, supporting his weight—

Thrice—

Hawke staggered— Varric took more of his weight, steadying him, hurrying him—

They had to move; get out of here; go faster—

Varric was half-dragging Hawke, now, doing his damnedest to make it look like he wasn’t. Like he wasn’t the only thing keeping Hawke upright. Just two drunk buddies out on the town, slinging his arm around Hawke’s waist just for the sake of it.

Hawke was doing his damnedest, too. Damned to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Damned to go along with the ploy, slinging an arm over Varric’s shoulders.

Varric could feel Hawke’s fingers trembling, trembling, on his shoulder.

The next alley over led to a hex, and it was deserted.

Varric spied a friendly shadow darkening a doorstep. It was inside an even friendlier shadow, casting everything to the left of a hex stoop in darkness.

“Almost there,” he murmured, giving Hawke a subtle, bracing squeeze.

Trembling fingers pressed his shoulder in answer.

A few more dragging, agonizing seconds—

Then Varric had Hawke safe, sheltered in the heart of two overlapping shadows.

Templars. ‘Fucking figures,’ indeed.

They did this on patrols through Lowtown. At midday in the bazaar. At night in hexes or outside taverns. At irregular intervals, so you’d never know when. Templars would find a crowd, send Smite after Smite through it, then arrest anyone whose knees buckled. Anyone whose skin went clammy. Anyone who shook, and shook, and shook as they collapsed, puking their guts out.

Everyone could feel the raw, crackling energy of a Smite— its rolls of strange, silent thunder; its firming, thinning lashes of wire —but only mages took sick from it.

Time didn’t blur, now.  

The seconds were slow, weighty things. They filled ponderously, growing fat and gravid like droplets of rain on glass until they finally, finally passed, and Varric felt each one, no different than if those droplets were real, with physicality enough to bore a hole through his forehead.

Hawke was shaking all over. Varric could feel that, too; Hawke had laid on his side, racked with pain, and he’d curled around Varric a little, so Varric had curled over him a little in return. Bending over Hawke. Rubbing Hawke’s shoulder to soothe him.

Varric did that absently, though. He focused on what he could hear, on what he could sense in the air. He had to stay present; he had to—

He couldn’t think about last time.

No. No, he couldn’t afford to— It’d been awful, but they’d all got through it fine. That raid on Hawke’s hex—

Hawke’s fine; everyone’s fine; everyone’s safe.  

The raw, crackling energy— Another Smite— Closer, now, the templars were closer— 

      Everyone, corrected an inner voice, but the little neighbor boy.  

Rolling over their heads—

      The boy’s mother: pleading, screaming.

Firming into wire—

      ‘Have mercy, please! My son, he’s—he’s all I have! You can’t—'

It lashed through the air—

      Hawke’s mother: covering her face, turning away.

Once—

Hawke spasmed with pain, curling tighter—

Daisy’s clear across Lowtown, Varric told himself. Grounding himself, reassuring himself, rubbing Hawke’s shoulder. Blondie’s in Darktown. Hawke’s—

Hawke shook harder, his skin colder, clammier—

Varric felt his focus converge into one deadly sharp point.

Hawke’s got me.

***

Before this year, Varric had never asked himself if he would kill a templar.

He’d never had cause to.

He’d been a young man, barely twenty, when Knight-Commander Meredith executed old Viscount Threnhold. He remembered the outrage. The unrest. How Kirkwall’s nobility had tested her yoke, insulted, unwilling to bow rather than be bowed to. How the Guild had run to the abacus rather than the sword, determined to make a profit regardless of which human wore what crown.

In time, though, Kirkwall adapted. Dumar was installed, placating the nobles. The market stabilized, enriching the Guild through all its ups and downs. And Varric had adapted too. That’s what you do, right? The rules change; you change with them. That’s life. That’s how you survive.

But that was before Daisy. Before Blondie. Before Hawke.

Varric had cause, now.

And he didn’t need to ask himself if he’d kill a templar—

“Going to draw them off,” he whispered into Hawke’s ear on the barest exhale. “Stay here.”

—because he already knew the answer.

Void, he was already thinking of rumors to spread. Ways he could pin the murder of a whole templar patrol on that gang of shit-ass Fereldens.  

Varric stole from the friendly shadows of the hex into the next shadow, and the next, and the next. He made for the mouth of the alley on soundless feet, following the source of the Smites.

All the while his mind raced. It’d be better if he actually could draw the templars off; violence would only bring down heat on his friends.

Did he—? He checked—

Shit, fucking—he only had one sodding grenade. Would that be enough?

Varric was past the mouth of the alley, now. One step, two, melting into the shadows—

…Wait.

The strange thunder, the lashing wire: it was gone.

The Smites, they’d stopped.

…When? Just now? A moment ago?

Damn it, I’m still drunk.

Varric shook his head. He tightened his grip on the grenade in his hand. Grounded himself with the weight of Bianca on his back.

—And he saw them.

Over there, at the foot of the Hightown stairs. Four templars, swords sheathed, talking in a tight huddle.

No—arguing. They were arguing. More importantly, they were distracted.

So Varric gingerly, gingerly, crept closer through the shadows.

“…waste of lyrium…! …don’t you…?”

“…can’t seriously be… …not our place to…!”

He recognized three of them. Two were recruits, friends of Macha’s brother; one was more senior, a man he’d seen before with Thrask. The fourth… unfamiliar. A woman with a strong Starkhaven accent.

Starkhaven? 

“It’s against orders,” said one of the recruits with a note of finality. 

Wasn’t there a rumor about…?

An impertinent note, apparently: the senior templar shot her a withering glare, and, though the recruit pressed her lips together in a prim line, she cast her eyes to the ground in a show of deference.

But wouldn’t Thrask have said…?

“Smiting drunks just makes it easier for the robes to hide,” the Starkhavener replied. Level. Dispassionate. She crossed her arms over her breastplate. “Hauling in some lout who can’t hold his liquor back to the Gallows is a waste of time and lyrium. We c—”

“Fuck’s sake,” the senior templar cut her off tersely. He shot a glare at her, too. “Cease your preaching, ‘Sister,’ we heard you the first time.”

His lips twitched into a mocking grin. “And I’d think twice before telling us our business, if I was you. Last I checked, we—“ He gestured at himself and the recruits. “—didn’t let a Circle burn down on our watch, did we?”

‘Burn down,’ Varric’s mind repeated slowly, as if sounding out the words. ‘Let a Circle… burn down… our watch…’

He mulled it over; he went to scratch his nose—

—and found the grenade in his hand.

Still drunk.  

The senior templar was starting to hold forth, now, but Varric wasn’t listening anymore. He focused on the grenade in his hand. The only one he had.

Got to make this count.

He picked a spot across the square. Empty of people, far from the Hightown stairs and the templars.

He hefted the grenade—

Took aim—

Andraste guide my hand.

—and let it sail.  

And damn, did it sail. Arcing high, true, and beautiful. Varric watched it go with no small sense of superiority.

The grenade began its descent—

“Got an arm on you,” whispered an admiring voice, close to his ear.

Varric jumped out of his skin—

The grenade landed— An explosion— Glass breaking, wood splintering, his ears ringing—

Varric whipped his head around to face the voice, fingers scrambling, digging for the knife his boot—

The templars were shouting; he could hear it, their raised voices, even over the ringing in his ears—

And right here, meeting his startled gaze—

—was Hawke.

Hawke, crouched in the shadows beside him, grey-faced, but grinning. 

Varric blinked, bewildered.

Had he really been that out of it, he hadn’t heard—? And what about—? How did Hawke recover so—?

A look of understanding. Hawke tapped his shoulder, where a hidden pocket had been sewn into the seam of his shirt, and mouthed something Varric couldn’t fully hear. Probably the name of some healing herb: that’s what the pocket was for.

Hawke’s grin grew wry. He tapped a finger to the side of his nose—

His finger still trembling.

Varric’s eyes latched on it. Slightly, yeah, but still trembling. And…

…Varric caught a faint, stale whiff of vomit.

After he’d left to draw the templars off… but before they’d stopped Smiting… Hawke must’ve been sick.

Alone.

In the dark.

“…Maybe we should head back,” Varric said. He could just hear his own voice, now, the ringing in his ears receding.

It’d be the smart thing. The safe thing.

But, as Hawke tilted his head, his eyes began to glimmer again. A little mischievous. A little challenging.

“So you were lying.” Hawke pointed a finger at Varric’s face, more mischievous, more challenging. “What did you call it? ‘Runic plumbing’?”

He grinned at Varric crookedly, and that grin was a dare. “I knew it was too good to be true.”

Varric couldn’t back down. Not from a dare.

Not from Hawke.

“I’ll show you ‘too good to be true,’” Varric said, grinning himself. “Come on.”

I’ll show you anything you want.

***

So Varric led Hawke the rest of the way.

Across the Hightown Bazaar. Around nobles and their hangers-on, perusing wares that were marked up outrageously, imbibing the very same liquor found in cheaper bottles anywhere else. Around the pickpockets dogging them like a bad stench. Around guardsmen who were either on the take or were truly just that incompetent, to not notice all the theft happening right under their noses.

Then into Guild Square: the first of the three dwarven squares in Hightown.

True, a dwarf could live anywhere in Kirkwall so long as their gold was good. The squares weren’t Alienages. But the dwarves of Hightown were all neck-deep in Guild shit, and the squares? That’s where the money was. Where the tradition was. Any dwarven family rich enough to call themselves a House?—lived here.

Which was what made it so weird, to find Guild Square empty.

Guild Square was, well, the Guild. Their answer to Hightown Bazaar. On a night like this?—the rest of Kirkwall out on the prowl, their coin purses just begging to be plucked? Wild horses shouldn’t be able to drag the merchants away.

So why were the stalls shuttered?

Varric looked to the most imposing manse on the square: the one that housed the Merchants’ Guild.

Huh.

It was still occupied.

Each window on the ground floor was aglow, thrown open to admit the cooling night breeze—and each window was near rattling under the sheer force of the cacophony inside.

All the deshyrs were in assembly, and they were in an uproar, trying to shout each other down.

For the very first time, that awful racket made Varric smile.

He really was still drunk; it’d completely slipped his mind that this runic plumbing notion ran the risk of crossing paths with Bartrand.

And yeah, it was true that Bartrand would have to get used to Hawke at some point, and, admittedly, it should probably happen before they were all stuck down in the Deep Roads together, and, okay, sure, Varric knew that job was going fall on his shoulders, because when did it not? He’d been managing Bartrand’s prickly fucking moods his whole fucking life.

None of that meant Varric wanted to do it now.

Fuck no. Now was for now things.

They were crossing into Stone Square, and dead ahead, on the other side… 

The Tethras townhouse.

Varric came to a halt.

It was stupid. He knew that.

He just… hadn’t. Lived. There. For a long… long time.

He’d visited. He had every right to visit, even at this hour. He wouldn’t be unwelcome. Bartrand still kept his old rooms the way he’d left them, convinced that one day Varric would ‘grow up, quit playing ‘human,’ and come back home.’

It’d be stupid to bring Hawke all the way up here just to stop now. And why?—just because he’d been… unhappy, in that townhouse?

It was stupid. It was even stupider to hesitate here, in Stone Square, where someone might see him. Where anyone would know him by sight—

—like those Carta thugs.

Varric froze.

But luck was on his side, tonight. The Carta thugs didn’t stir; they kept lounging in a doorway three townhouses down. Whatever their job for the night was, it wasn’t roughing up the beardless Tethras weirdo and one of his entourage of humans and elves.   

They watched, though. Eyes glinting in the low light like daggers…

“Thank fuck, I’ve been gasping since Worthy’s.”

Varric glanced at Hawke.

Hawke was leaning his arm on the stone railing to the Helmi’s front door. Casually. Like he didn’t know House Helmi wouldn’t think twice to have the offending limb cut off for ‘polluting’ it. 

…Did Hawke know? Had that ever come up, over the past year?

Hawke didn’t act like it. He was pulling a slim tin case out of his pocket. He opened it. Took out an elfroot cigarette. Lit it with a match.

And, for some wordless reason, Varric… didn’t interrupt. Didn’t tell Hawke he should move.

He just… watched him.

Watched his eyes flutter shut, inhaling. His features softening. A tension releasing in increments.

Watched his lips part, exhaling. Slowly. Slowly. Savoring.

Watched his eyes flutter open… and, the moment his gaze met Varric’s…

Watched his features soften just a bit more. Another incremental release.

Hawke favored him with a slight smile.

“Want one?”

Varric exhaled; why had he been holding his breath? He cut his eyes in the direction of the Carta thugs, on the off-chance Hawke hadn’t noticed them yet.

It seemed Hawke had. He simply tilted his head at Varric and held up the tin case, to pose his question again.

—The tin case: it was steady.

Hawke’s fingers weren’t trembling anymore.

At that, Varric felt his own incremental release. A knot in his chest, loosening.

“Why not?” he shrugged with a nonchalance he didn’t feel.

He joined Hawke. He leaned against House Helmi’s stone railing like it was easy, like it was nothing, like he didn’t feel a defiant, frightened little thrill, doing it.  

Hawke lit the match for him. He always did. One of his funny, fussy little affectations: playing the gentleman.

He leaned in, towards Varric, closer to Varric, cupping one hand around the match to shield it from the breeze.

And Varric leaned in, too, towards Hawke, closer to— Or. Wait. Towards the match. Closer to…

He met Hawke’s gaze.

—And inhaled sharply.

Because Hawke was— He was doing that—that thing again. Gazing at Varric with a question in his eyes.  

A question Hawke wouldn’t ask.

A question Varric couldn’t read.

It’d been happening more, lately. During lulls in a conversation after a job, trailing behind the others together, their feet winding them back steady and true to the Hanged Man. During the decrescendo of a wild night, luxuriating in drunken sprawl together, taking in the dulcet tones of one of their friends snoring like a bronto. A moment almost quiet. A moment almost alone.

And then Hawke would look at him. 

Varric could see the question in his eyes, but not what it was, not what it meant. He couldn’t fucking read it. It might as well be written in patois, or Antivan, or ancient sodding Tevene, for all the good it did. 

And the worst part?

…Varric wasn’t sure if he wanted to know.

Which made absolutely no fucking sense. Varric wanted to know everything. That was who he was. He pried; he stuck his nose where it didn’t belong; he was the damn proverbial cat, dying for, driven by, revived by his curiosity.

So what was the problem?

…Varric didn’t know.

And that bothered him.

But any decision Varric might have made this time, in this moment, was taken out of his hands—

—because his sharp inhale brought the smoke into his lungs too quickly—

—and Varric was coughing, red-faced, thumping a fist to his chest.

Hawke gave him a few amiable thumps on the back, and the moment was gone, just like that.

Stupid, Varric chided himself, face flushing even redder. So fucking stupid.  

***

Varric ushered Hawke into the Tethras townhouse through the servant’s entrance.

Less chance of startling some poor maid or valet from their sleep, this way. Less chance of waking anyone, if they didn’t use the heavily-belled front door.

Still, once inside, Hawke spent an inordinate amount of time wiping his boots on the mat.

“I think you got it,” Varric said quietly, his voice pitched low.

Hawke didn’t reply. He just kept wiping his boots, frowning down at them like they’d offended him in some way.

Varric left him to it. They were in the kitchen; he nipped into the larder to get a bottle of something expensive, and to load up a plate with finger foods. Pitted olives, grapes, cheese.  

When Varric came back in the kitchen, Hawke was still at it. Scraping the soles, over and over.

“…Did I miss something? Do your boots owe you money, or…?”

A muted, half-reluctant chuckle, and Hawke’s shoulders slightly untensed.

Unbidden, a memory. That time he’d dropped by Gamlen’s place and found Hawke on his hands and knees, scrubbing the floor.

Gamlen, steaming in another room. Leandra, staring out the sole window with empty eyes. Carver, Maker knows where. And Hawke, scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing lopsided circles of soapy floor, favoring his right hand over his weaker left. An old injury. One he didn’t really talk about.

Varric’s gaze flicked to Hawke’s hands.

Hawke’s hands were always too dry. The soap dried his skin out until his knuckles cracked. Until they bled.

Those very hands which were reaching, now, to relieve Varric of the bottle of wine he held.

Varric looked up—

Hawke had an easy grin affixed to his face, but, for all its usual crookedness, it looked… off-center. Not quite right.

“Tell me, will this make me forget my own name?” Hawke lifted the bottle to peer at its label. “Or is it true, what they say about rich people?”

He glanced at Varric with a glint in his eye. “That none of you have taste?”

But… if Hawke was joking… if he was still playing around… then Varric could joke and play too, right? It must be okay.

So Varric returned the grin, feeling a touch more at ease. “You tell me. Give it a try.”

He turned half away, gesturing for Hawke to follow him—then paused, and shot Hawke a glinting look of his own over his shoulder.

“Might as well get all your hits in now,” Varric added breezily, smirking. “In a couple of months, you’ll be too rich to make them.”

Varric made for the corridor, the staircase.

One second. Two.

Three...

And here was Hawke, falling into step at his side.

Varric snuck a glance at him.

Hawke was grinning down at the bottle as he idly messed with its cork. Halfheartedly trying, failing, to twist it free with his hand.

“That’s where you’re wrong,” he said, offhand and affable. He aimed his grin at Varric, and it looked natural now. Real. “I’ll just be a hypocrite.”

Surprised, Varric barked a laugh before clapping a hand over his mouth. It would ruin the whole thing, if they woke someone else up. If it wasn’t just them.

Hawke placed a finger to his lips, giving Varric a play-stern “shush” face.

Varric bumped his shoulder against Hawke in reply, feeling easier, and led him to the staircase.

They descended. The Tethras townhouse had been built to suit dwarven sensibilities, like its neighbors: the rooms grew grander the deeper they delved.

By the third landing, Hawke let out a hushed, disbelieving breath.

“All this, and only Bartrand lives here?” he asked, eyeing a tapestry.

Varric shook his head. “When my father got exiled, the whole House got exiled with him,” he explained in a murmur. “My mother, Bartrand, and all our other relatives. His siblings and their families; aunts, uncles, cousins, and their families…

“And all the unlucky bastards who’d been sworn to House Tethras’ service,” he continued. “Warrior caste, Servant caste, with their own families…”

They were turning the fourth landing, now. The deepest level. The grandest rooms.

Just standing here hit Varric with a sudden wave of weariness.

“Most struck out on their own, eventually,” he finished, voice lower. He suppressed a sigh. “But… some chose to stay here.”

His weariness grew as they reached the bottom of the staircase. As they started down the corridor. As he saw the door to his old rooms at the end, waiting for him.  

“…Guess they wanted something familiar,” Hawke said softly.

There was something in his tone that made Varric look at him.

Hawke had fallen a half-step behind, skimming his hand over the wall, brushing his fingers over the rise and fall of a bas-relief. Brushing over the inlaid enchanted lights that shed their dull, red-orange glow, imitating the lava-light of Orzammar.

Varric’s throat felt thick. “Homesickness…”

He trailed off; he wanted to qualify this. There were things Hawke didn’t understand. But Varric had come to realize there were things he didn’t understand either, this past year.

“…I can’t say I’ve ever heard anything about Orzammar worth getting homesick over,” Varric hedged, but it… didn't satisfy. Didn't get close enough to what he actually meant.

Varric opened the door to his old rooms—and it yanked open, swinging open too easily. He’d used more force than he needed to. He hadn’t meant to. What was wrong with him?

His grip on the knob tightened. “Living in the past, it—”  

His breath caught in his chest.

Why?

Varric didn’t know. Why didn’t he know?

He pressed forward. Over the threshold. Into his old, old rooms, deep under the ground.

“You can’t live like that.” His tone was brusque, and it was unlike him, so unlike him. “Gives you nowhere to go.”  

This was getting too real.

Varric didn’t want to think about this. He was still drunk; he was too drunk; he wasn’t drunk enough. Why did he do this to himself? Why was he here?

He didn’t want to be here.

Not in his old receiving room, next to the chaise Bianca liked to fuck on. Before she got married. Before they’d fallen in love. Back when it’d all been just a game, and the two of them young and dumb enough to play it.

No, Varric didn’t want to think about this shit, not with Hawke here. He didn’t—

He didn’t want to be another problem for Hawke to solve.

Hawke trailed into the receiving room without comment. He circled the intimate space, his steps stirring up plumes of dust that couldn’t be seen but tickled the nose. Then he stopped in front of Varric and gave him a sidelong look. One eyebrow arched. One corner of his mouth quirked up.

A beat.

Then Hawke was extending the bottle back to Varric. Like it meant something.

Varric took it. Like it meant something. What, he couldn’t say, but… something.

“You know,” Hawke said, offhand, affable, grinning slightly. “If I wanted to ruin your mood, I’d tell you that you sound exactly like Carver.”

“…If you wanted to ruin my mood,” Varric repeated.

“That’s right.” Hawke was grinning fully, now, and there was something wicked in it. Something wicked, something playful, and something knowing, in those warm, warm black eyes. “If.”

Varric huffed a soft sound at that, almost like a laugh.

A breath of fresh air, he heard himself think. Even here, four floors and ten years under the ground.

Varric glanced down, tucking his chin in, feeling…

Grateful.

Yeah. That was it.

Such an earnest thing to feel. And earnestness wasn’t really something Varric did, but…

He huffed softly again, to paper over it.

“…Good thing you don’t want to.” He gathered the courage to meet Hawke’s gaze, donned a smirk, and held the bottle up. “I’d have to deny you the pleasure of my company, then, and drink this all by my lonesome.”

Hawke tsked. “I’d just hate to think of the hangover you’d subject yourself to, if I called your bluff.”

“Because it’s my health you’re worried about,” Varric said, twirling his wrist to make the wine slosh audibly.

“Varric, you wound me.” Hawke placed a mock-aggrieved hand to his chest, even as he grinned that wicked grin, completely unabashed. “You of all people should know I can multitask.”

Varric barked another surprised laugh—and, this time, he had no free hand to clap over his mouth to muffle it.

And that made Hawke laugh, too.

And what could Varric do? What could he do, other than feel the natural response to that resonance, to that light, flooding him through?

…Funny, how friendship worked.

Varric wondered if he’d ever get used to it.

***

The bathing pool was just there, through his old bedroom.

Varric had to grope along the wall to find the right runes; he put the plate and the bottle down on the credenza, searching for them… Then the lights came on, more red-orange enchantments shedding their glow.

The second Hawke saw the bathing pool, his eyes went as round as a cat’s.

“Oh, fuck off,” he enthused, smiling broadly. He rushed to the pool’s edge and knelt to examine it. “It is like a bathhouse! You could fit four, five humans in this thing!”

Varric moved the plate and the bottle to a tray beside the bathing pool. “Proper humans, or short ones like you?”

Hawke hummed noncommittally, not paying him any mind. He was wholly absorbed, ghosting his fingers over the pool runes, over the surface of the water.

“If you’re not careful, I might try to court you,” he said. Offhand, affable, like it was easy. Like it was nothing. “This is the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen!”

Varric laughed it off, and the sound skittered over the tile strangely.

He cleared his throat. Scrubbed a hand over his face. He, uh. He must be drunker than he’d realized.

Nothing for it but to get drunker. Where was…?

Varric tried a credenza drawer, and… yep: a corkscrew, just as he’d thought.

He sat heavily on the tile beside Hawke, and took the bottle of wine. “You haven’t seen it in action, yet,” he replied belatedly.

The wine uncorked with a hollow pop!

Hawke tried to snake a hand in, to steal the bottle from him—

But Varric was faster; he was always faster; Hawke was so bad at this, and it never failed to make him laugh, when Hawke actually managed to be bad at something. Varric twisted away, laughing. Took a hearty swig.

The wine went down smooth as silk. It hit his stomach, and he felt it… expand. Resonating outward in waves of warmth. Wave after wave after wave.

Varric sighed his bone-deep appreciation.

Then he twisted back around to press the bottle into Hawke’s hands.

“How’s this for taste?”

Closing one eye, Hawke made a show of peering down the neck of the bottle with a dubious, exaggerated frown.

Varric lightly shoved him on the shoulder, earning one of Hawke’s quick grins.

Hawke lifted the bottle high—too high, exaggerating—and drank.

Paused.

Gave Varric a gobsmacked look.

And, with a quiet, understated kind of bafflement, said, “Oh. Oh, no.”

Varric had to stuff a fist in his mouth to keep from laughing at him. And he did, if only because he just had to hear what Hawke would say next.  

Hawke blinked at him. Licking his lips, he stared at the bottle and blinked at it, too. “Maker’s meaty balls, that's dangerous.”  

It was the seriousness of Hawke’s delivery that did it.

Varric dissolved into laughter.

That was the only word for it. He dissolved, into giggles, into bubbles fizzy and effervescent, lightheaded and lighter than air. Dissolved, dissolving, dissolving into the tile… into the water…

Time began to blur, again.

They were in the bathing pool, now. Varric had wanted to show him; Hawke had wanted to see; and there was room for four or five humans, besides, though… they were…

Closer.

Closer to share. To share the wine, the olives, the grapes and the cheese.

Closer, and… naked.

But that was just like a bathhouse, right? It wasn’t weird.

Was it weird?—that it… didn’t feel weird?

Varric didn’t know. And that probably should’ve bothered him, but it didn’t.

He wasn’t bothered at all.

He was smiling; he'd been smiling so much his face hurt. Was that a thing? How would he know? He’d never had a friend before.

Not like this.

Time blurred… eating, drinking, joking… and then Hawke was shaking his head. Clicking his tongue. The amusement he wore… thin. Brittle.

Why was it brittle?

“I don’t understand you. You could have this—” Hawke gestured with a wide, expansive arc of his arm. “—every night, but you choose to stay in Lowtown instead.”

“Lowtown’s…”

How was Varric supposed to explain it? He would’ve thought Hawke had already known. How did Hawke not already know?

“…real.”

With a slow, theatrical pomp, Hawke brought a hand down to clap the rim of the bathing pool. “Feels real to me.”

At that, something inside lurched. Hooked, pulled, plucked a string in Varric that didn’t want to be plucked.

That didn’t want to be touched at all.

There was an elfroot cigarette in Varric’s hand. He took a long drag of it; longer than he’d intended to, but he didn’t stop. Just kept dragging, dragging the smoke into his mouth, into his lungs.

“There’s… strings attached,” he exhaled on a billow of smoke. Exhaled it flat. Brusque. Punctuated with a flick of ash into the bathing pool. Unlike him, so unlike him.

Hawke let out a short, brittle laugh.

Pluck.

“I wonder what that’s like,” Hawke said. Not quite offhand. Not quite affable. His amusement still brittle; why was it so brittle? “To have your pick of realities.”

Pluck.

“Said the mage,” Varric replied low, half-mumbling, “with no sense of irony.”

Hawke made a sound like a chuckle, and it skittered over the…

No. No, it wasn’t like skittering.

It was like hearing something shatter in another room. Strangely distant. The softness of it false.

Varric didn’t like it. He— He needed to bring Hawke back.

Back into the bubble.

Beautiful. Benevolent. Full of wonder, of revelations, of rapturous nothings for Hawke to cup in his hands.

Time blurred… and Varric was deploying the aromatic oils, the bright alchemical soaps that fizzed and popped on contact with water. He was showing Hawke what all the runes did, the subtle inlaid spouts that shot out massaging streams…

And it was working.

Hawke was dazzled; he was mystified; he took it all in and he breathed out the beauty, the benevolence, that Varric had missed so terribly. Hawke made the bubble; Hawke limned its shimmering border with gold; Hawke—

Hawke was the bubble.

There was just… something about him. Something that made Varric want to give him things. Just to make those dark eyes go big and round like that. Just to have more things to talk about, in the event they ever ran out.

Time blurred… and Hawke was lamenting Lowtown Bazaar’s southern pickings at length.

“You don’t even know,” he repeated for the third time. “You don’t want to know what I know—”

“About p-potatoes?” Varric cut him off; it was a struggle to get the word out in one piece, laughing around it.

“They don’t deserve the na—they’re so sad, Varric, they’re pathetic,” Hawke insisted, frowning outrageously. “What I wouldn’t give—ohhh, blackberries; you don’t understand, Varric, the blackberries—and the cheese! Oh, good cheese, druffalo cheese—”

“The fuck’s a druffalo?”

“…Are you serious? What do you mean, ‘the fuck’s a druffalo’?”

There was an explanation Varric didn’t quite follow. Something about beasts of burden, about an animal that sounded pretty much exactly like an ox but emphatically wasn’t.

It was worth it, though, to see Hawke work himself up over cheese, of all things.

So Varric leaned into it. He started boasting; he made it into a bit, a joke, to work Hawke up even further. He didn’t pay attention to the bullshit leaving his mouth. He was too blurry, too bubbly, too focused on Hawke. On the reactions he was getting.  

Hawke was laughing; laughing at him, but that was the point; it was exactly what Varric wanted. Making Hawke laugh, it… it was…

“I would pay good money to see you geld a druffalo,” Hawke said, replying to some ridiculous boast Varric had already forgotten.

“You doubt me?” Varric leaned into the bit further; he was leaning towards Hawke, closer to Hawke.

Hawke’s eyes were such a warm, warm black. They grew even warmer; they held a laugh inside. “I doubt you.”

“It can’t be that hard if you can do it, Farmer.”

Hawke chuckled, his eyes glimmering, dancing. Making Hawke’s eyes glimmer, it was…

“You don’t know what ‘geld’ means, do you?” Hawke asked, indulgent, full of mirth.

“Sure I do,” Varric lied, grinning. He was about to make a shot in the dark, and he had a good feeling about it, about the reaction he’d get. “I used to geld my mother once a week.”

And Varric was right. It paid off.

Because Hawke laughed. Louder than thunder, larger than life, booming right from the belly. His body racked with delight: a bell struck, and struck, overwhelmed, overwhelming—

—overwhelming Varric. That resonance, that delight, in his own body. Racked with it too.

“Y-you—” Hawke was spluttering, struggling to speak, wiping tears from his eyes. “You used to c-castrate your mother? Once a week?”

Varric had to breathe through it—through the rack, the resonance, the delight. He had to keep going; he had to keep riffing; he needed to ride this as long as he could.

“Yeah,” he exhaled, breaths hitching. “Sh-should’ve done it more often. A d-dutiful son would’ve castrated his mother daily.”

Hawke’s laughter hit another peak. He sank further into the bathing pool, hanging off the rim by his elbows, hollowing his collarbones. The water lapping him. The water rippling outward; outward to Varric, lapping him too—

And Hawke smiled at him.

It wasn’t a grin. It was… softer than that. Fonder than that.

As he sagged into the pool, Hawke smiled at him softer, fonder, and riffed back, “H-hourly.” 

And that—that—was when it happened.

Kiss him.

The thought appeared whole. Fully formed. An impulse compelling him towards Hawke, closer to Hawke.

Kiss him.

Varric didn’t.

His mouth. Look at his mouth.

Varric did.

He looked at Hawke like he’d never seen him before.

The lean line of his body. That one rogue curl escaping the cloth he’d loosely tied around his hair. The flush of his brown skin, revitalized by wine, by the warm water beading down his chest. Those new nipple piercings, lapped at by water. The tattoo above his heart.

Varric knew Hawke was attractive. He wasn’t blind.

It just hadn’t mattered, before.

He’d noticed Hawke’s mouth, sure, but he’d noticed the same way he’d noticed Rivaini’s generous thighs and Daisy’s long, elegant fingers. Nice to look at, but only ever that: nice. Nice the way a painting was nice. Nice the way a pretty verse from the Chant was nice. He hadn’t been moved.

He’d never looked at Hawke before and… wanted to…

To know.

To know the plush of Hawke’s mouth beneath his fingers. Beneath his own. On his—

Varric’s face burned. You weren’t—this was embarrassing—you weren’t supposed to think that sort of thing about your friends, right?

…Maker save him, how long had he been staring at Hawke’s mouth? Varric’s face burned hotter; his gaze fled—

Only to snag on the line of Hawke's jaw.

Kiss him.

On the slope of his neck; on the angle of his shoulders.

Kiss him there. And there.

There were… so many things Varric wanted to know.

Lick him.

What he tasted like.

Take his shoulder into your mouth—

If he’d taste like snow.

—and bite him.

If he’d taste like an apple.

Look at his—

Varric tore his eyes away with a ragged breath, and, on reflex, attempted a grin.

It was nothing. A weird nothing, but nothing more than—

It was stupid. He was going to see Bianca in three days; he was probably just—

It wasn’t like there was any chance that—

Varric took the wine bottle. Tilted his head back, screwed his eyes shut, and took a big swig. He was burning; he was blushing. Like an idiot. Like a damn kid.

This is stupid. You know it’s stupid. It means n—

“…This isn’t, er,” Hawke sounded distracted. “Your family’s whosit-whatsit.”

Varric opened his eyes.

Hawke had the corkscrew in his hands, and was examining it with more fascination than it deserved. Still dazzled. Still mystified. In love with the world.

Pluck.  

Varric winced.

His eyes flicked down. He watched as Hawke's fingers traced the handle of the corkscrew, explored the engraving on it by touch.

Oh, the engraving: Hawke was talking about the crest.

“That’s because it’s not.” Varric’s voice was a little rough, a little ragged; he cleared his throat. “It’s Hugin’s.”

“Hugin?”

“Bartrand’s Second. An Orzammar thing,” Varric waved it away. “His right-hand man, basically, since they were kids.”

Hawke blinked those big, round eyes of his. “Do you have one? A Second?”

A flat, muted chuckle escaped Varric; a deeply unpleasant feeling wriggled inside him. “Uh, no.”

“…Am I your Second?”

Pluck.

What was Varric supposed to say? Was he supposed to waste the next hour explaining caste? That a Second was given to you like a toy, to be your playmate and your bodyguard—to be your first fumblings in the dark, more often than not, whispering honey in your ear; to be your confidant, the only person you could ever really trust—and yet never to be your equal? Never your friend?

To think of Hawke as his Second…

‘Mages cannot be our friends,’ echoed, unbidden, the memory of the Knight-Captain. ‘Mages cannot be treated like people—they are not like you and me.’

Pluck.

Varric rubbed at his chest. There was an ache, in there; Hawke was plucking strings he didn't even know he had.

“No,” he said, rubbing the ache in his chest. His plucked strings, painfully strumming. “You’re not my Second.”

Hawke’s brow pinched, and the warmth in his eyes… guttered. Like a candle in a draft.

Varric looked away. Swallowed. Scrambled mentally for a new subject.

“So,” he affected a grin. A lie, a shield, a way out. “Are you and Rivaini ever going to…?”

He tried to keep his eyes off Hawke. He really did, but his eyes wouldn’t listen; they went to Hawke too quickly, too eager to gauge his response.

Hawke met his gaze steadily. 

“Why?” he asked, tilting his head. He might’ve been grinning. His eyes might’ve been glimmering or glinting. It was too subtle to tell. Too guarded. “Interested?”

A silence like a held breath.

It made Varric exhale. It made him look away again, his false grin faltering—

It made him lie.

“Humans don’t really do it for me,” he shrugged, like it was easy, like it was nothing. Like he meant it. “Half the time, it’s not even about me—it’s about some kidnapped-by-the-Carta fantasy.”

That part was true, at least. The best lies always hid inside a truth.  

Hawke’s nose wrinkled with sympathetic disgust. “Eugh.”

“Tell me about it,” Varric said in the cadence of a joke. He made himself grin at Hawke to sell it; to ensure Hawke wouldn’t see through him. “Once, this human waited until she was riding me to—I shit you not—ask me to growl at her. So she could pretend I was a bear cub.”

“No!” Hawke gasped, aghast, amused. He fought a grin and lost; he covered it with his hand, choking on a laugh. “What? Oh, that—that shouldn’t be funny.”  

It was weird, to make Hawke laugh—to get what he wanted—yet feel… hollow.

Varric didn’t want to talk about shitty sex with shittier people. He wanted—

Damn it, he wanted to know.

“And...? Don't tell me you'll sleep with Martin but not Rivaini,” he angled, before forcing a chuckle. “I'm still wrapping my head around that one, to be honest with you.”

Hawke shrugged one shoulder airily, looking away. He turned to the rim of the bathing pool. Started picking at the olives on the plate, fiddling with them absently.

“What’s there to wrap around?” His tone was… deliberate. “We need the discount; Martin's poisons are expensive.”  

Pluck.

Varric stared at him. Brow furrowing. Chest aching.

Is—? Is he saying what I—?

Before Varric could ask, Hawke sighed gustily.

“To borrow a phrase?” He gave Varric a quick grin: a flash of teeth. “Friends don’t really do it for me.”

Then his eyes flicked back to the olives. He flattened one with his thumb. “Martin’s alright, I guess, but I wouldn’t call him a friend.”

Pluck.

Varric shook his head, a different kind of heat rising in his body.

“So, you’re... you’re saying, what, exactly?” He shook his head again; his teeth wanted to clench. “That you only sleep with people you don’t like that much?”

Why would Hawke do that to himself? It didn’t make any sense. It—

“—doesn’t sound like much of a good time,” Varric continued. Without choosing to. Without thinking. “And isn’t that the whole point? To have a good time? Rivaini— Or Blondie, or Br—”

Hawke’s shoulders tensed.

No. No, it was more than that. He went rigid, tension shooting through his shoulders, making them one stiff line.

Hawke blew out an incredulous breath. “What are you on about?”

Was he playing dumb?

“Are you—?” Varric began to ask, because, apparently, his mouth didn’t need his permission to speak, anymore. “Don’t play dumb, Hawke, you know what I’m—”

“Do I know?” Hawke interrupted sharply.

It was a rhetorical question. Varric knew that.

But, as Hawke asked, he turned and fixed Varric with a pointed look. Held Varric’s gaze. Held him in suspense.  

Hawke’s eyes had never been so… cold, before.

Pluck, pluck, pluck.

That heat in Varric’s body, his sudden anger, leeched out of him.  

Hawke broke their shared gaze first, scoffing under his breath.

“I know they want to fuck me,” Hawke said. Muted, flat, tetchy. He scoffed again, face twisting. “You don’t get through a life like mine without figuring out when people want to fuck you. I just also know—”

Pluck, pluck, pluck, pl—

“A life like y—?”

Hawke waved a hand in terse dismissal. “—also know they’ll get over it. It’s nothing. Less than nothing. It’s not—”

A horrible pause.

And then Hawke was leaving.

He was putting both hands on the rim of the bathing pool; he was starting to lift himself out of the water; he was leaving—

So Varric touched him.

Hawke’s arm, just shy of the shoulder. Under his palm. Under his fingers.

Don't go.

Hawke stilled; his eyes snapped to meet Varric’s.

Varric took his hand back a little fast, swallowing. He chanced a grin, and that grin was a lie. A shield. A way out.

“I’m—I’m an asshole,” he said, at a loss. His grin quirked wider; he glanced away with a false, nervous chuckle. “Ignore me.”

Another horrible pause.

Varric kept his eyes on the water.

…And the water shifted. Rippled. Its level rising as Hawke sank back into the bathing pool

“I don’t… want to ignore you, Varric,” he said quietly.   

There was no reason for that to shoot up Varric’s spine like adrenaline. To pulse inside his wrists like an ache. To flood him with so much… relief.

Varric didn’t trust himself to look at Hawke. Instead, his eyes went to the plate, to the bottle…

Unbidden, a memory.

It’d happened last month. A jilted lover of Rivaini’s had burst into the Hanged Man: a woman who, bafflingly, had chosen to throw away her Chantry vows to chase Rivaini down all the way from fucking Seleny. A real piece of work. She’d taken one look at poor Daisy and shrieked, ‘I am a Montilyet! And you’d toss me aside for this? A taste of rabbit?’

Junior and Hawke had hauled the bitch out in short order. Rivaini had rubbed soothing circles on Daisy’s back, tutting, and decided to console her with the immortal words, ‘And that, Kitten, is why you don’t fuck rich people.’

It’d brought down the house; it was too funny not to. And Hawke had laughed. He’d raised his tankard in a toast; he’d clanked it heavily against Varric’s; and, eyes crinkling into a smile, proclaimed, ‘To becoming unfuckable!’

So Varric picked up the wine bottle. Extended it towards Hawke.

“To becoming unfuckable?”

One second.

Two.

The bottle lifted from his hand— Varric looked up—

—and he found Hawke smiling at him.

A slight smile, but a real one.  

“…To becoming unfuckable.”