fadewalk | RP: Varric

The world was getting less real.

Hawke knew that it wasn't supposed to be really real, but she had been waiting for Varric to come back for... days. She knew it was more than a few. Because she had eaten, bathed, slept, woke and he hadn't been there. He'd insisted he was going to be there when she woke up and he hadn't.

Anders had, and for that she was grateful, sure, but he was a busy-body with a nose that was too big and a stupid coat and she could only take so much of his smirking. He had the absolute worst smirk.

She hadn't left the room much after the first day or two. She was still kitten-weak, and she was struck with the sudden fear it wouldn't be where she left it, and once she was back inside she was sure (even if it was completely mad and even she knew that) that if she opened the door she'd see Nightmare's thousand thousand eyes staring back at her.

Dying alone, that was one of Hawke's big ones, the big fears, and aside from the journal and the occasional check-in from Anders bringing her food or water, she was terribly alone. Spending time curled into a nest in Varric's bed, wearing one of his spare shirts, was about the dumbest thing she could think of when she bothered to really examine her choices.

But there she was, napping in a pile of blankets, wearing the shirt that didn't fit at all, refusing to think. He'd said he'd be there, he'd be there. She pulled the pillow tighter over her head.

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Meredith was on the loose and eluvians were sucking people (him!) into Maker knew what and talk of polluting timelines was zipping around and it was all going to shit.

Varric needed a drink. He needed to check in on his friends and make sure everyone was okay. More importantly, he needed to make sure Hawke was okay, even after Aria's assurances.

His room was the first place he went, still dressed in the weird crap they'd muscled him into--jeans and a t-shirt, a pair of aviators hooked in the collar. Maker, he was looking forward to getting back into his real clothes, once...

Varric relaxed when he pushed the door open and spotted long, lanky legs sticking out from a nest of blankets and pillows. The fear that had been high in his throat from the moment he'd been taken waned. "Let's no try smothering ourselves," he said, keeping his voice casual as he nudged the door shut. "It's not gotten as bad as that."

The intrusion of the voice wasn't enough to draw Hawke out from under the pillow. She'd been through that before. Varric's low rasp, calling her name, and she'd sit up, hair sticking out at ridiculous angles, and he'd be... nowhere.

It was the thump of the door closing that made her stiffen, and then curl tighter before slowly drawing the pillow off her head and peering carefully toward the door. She'd thrown a pillow at Anders the first time he'd woken her up, but this time she pulled it tight against her stomach and with an artless sort of grace, rolled up onto her feet.

Her hair was a mess, the shirt (a dark bronze silk that made her eyes seem a darker blue) was wrinkled, sleeves too short and shoulders too wide, and the tails only just this side of decent on her long pale legs. She had a crease in one cheek from the blankets she'd been burrowing into.

"You're late," she said, aiming for a drawl, and nearly making it. Anyone who knew her less well would have believed it, but for Varric? He could tell she wasn't half as steady as she wanted him to think.

Yeah, he was going to the void for it, but he wasn't dwarf enough to keep his eyes from dropping down her body until he forced himself to meet her eyes, one brow deliberately quirked.

Damn. She was wearing his shirt. Damn. She looked really good like that. He wasn't what he'd ever thought of as particularly possessive, but Hawke in his clothing? That was apparently going to be a thing for him now.

"Got held up by hipsters," he not-explained. "You've been ducking Meredith, I hope?"

Hawke was having a hard time keeping herself from bursting into tears of relief, and the glance Varric gave her made her tug self-conciously at the shirt. "Sorry, my options in here were limited..."

"And I challenged Meredith to a kidney stabbing, but Anders seemed to think that was a bad plan, and then no one would give me daggers because 'You're not recovered yet, Lady Hawke'," she parroted Neria's voice.

Hawke huffed and rolled her head on her neck, and muttered, "You'd think volunteering to die for a guy would earn you one simple favor from his wife."

"Remind me to thank Anders and the Warden for having more sense than a Hawke," he said, moving to his secret stash to pull out the good whiskey. He needed a drink, and Hawke could probably do with one too. "Let's leave the stabbing to the others for now; you and me? We're staying in here where it's a little less crazy."

He turned back around, holding out a glass--tipping his head back toward the bed. "There room? Or did you stake a claim while I was gone?"

Hawke snorted softly as she watched Varric rummage for his bottle. "Less crazy. Right." She had goosebumps thinking about how he'd carried her, ungainly as she was, up all those stairs. His shoulders looked really developed in that strange, clinging shirt.

"Oh, no, I mean, yes." She squeezed her eyes close for a moment and then looked at him wincing. "It's your bed. You get to kick me out of it." She ran fingers through her hair, creating slightly more order to mop before ruffling it into complete disarray again. It gave her something to peek out from behind, pieces of her fringe, as she blushed.

Anders, his conversation with her, was absolutely the worst, because now she was thinking about Varric not kicking her out of bed and blushing about it in front of him.

"You're all legs, but I should still fit in there with you," Varric said mildly. He took a sip from his glass. Casual. Hell, he could do casual all day. He was a born liar.

Besides, he was not letting her out of his sight.

Hawke took the glass from him finally, trying to not try to not let her fingers brush his. Her fingers hadn't been that clumsy since she was a baby trying to eat her own feet, she was certain.

"If you don't mind the fact I'm not wearing pants, my legs won't be offended by that." She sniffed the liquor and then took a large sip. More of a gulp really. She plopped onto the bed, knees canted together, feet wider apart. It made her legs look longer, more coltish than usual.

He minded that quite a lot less than he could let on, but seeing her still fairly weak quieted any stirrings of attraction he might have felt, awakening fierce protective instincts instead.

Varric swallowed those back, too, lest he frighten her--hell, himself--with the strength of his bloody emotions. "If Isabela can get away with it, I'm sure you can too," he said, downing the rest of his drink it one long, graceful swallow. He snagged the aviators and tossed them onto his desk, unsnapping the tie keeping his hair back. It fell around his face as he bent to pull off his strange boots.

"So, Anders looked out for you while I was missing in action?" Varric asked mildly.

Hawke's eyes focused in on Varric's actions, the clothes. "I like to think I looked out for him, but I guess that other thing too. He's a real mad bastard, that one. I like him." She frowned slightly. "What is going on with this shirt?" She reached out to pluck at the sleeve.

Always a handsy sort, it was weird she hadn't touched Varric before that, she realized. She was just so damn scared he either wasn't real, or would know as soon as she threw her too-long arms around his neck and hugged him until he choked that he'd know... things... he shouldn't know. How she felt, how stupidly helpless she'd felt while he was gone. Instead her finger lingered on the seam on the outer edge of his shoulder for a moment and then dropped away.

"Weird and long story," he said with a quirk of his lips. "Shove over and I'll tell it to you."

He waited until she'd scooted a little before climbing into bed, settling comfortably close but not too close. Not uncomfortably close. Varric had gotten depressingly good at measuring out the two, first over years with-and-not-with Bianca, and now Hawke.

"So, imagine a world where Fenris is a human and wears black framed glasses," Varric began, then spun the whole story for her--getting sucked into the eluvian, arriving in a strange modern Thedas, meeting a version of her that worked at a coffee shop. Computers, smartphones, cars.

The story was absurd and wonderful and Hawke found herself laughing earnestly at the story, his descriptions of grumpy hipster human Fenris in particular.

She tipped her head just enough to rest her temple against his shoulder. "You get to have all the fun. I just sat in here and tried not to worry too much about where you'd wandered off to. 'He wouldn't ditch you, Hawke' and turns out, I was right." She rolled her head so she could smile at him, now more of her face resting against the soft jersey of the t-shirt. "For once."

"Nah," Varric said, shifting so he could wrap an arm around her and pull her more fully against his chest. "Where would you be without your trusty dwarf sidekick?"

Hawke was liquid as she slid in closer to Varric, her eyes closing for a moment as she rested her head on his shoulder. When she'd first landed here and Aria had healed her she'd felt like her skin was coming off every time the Inquisitor touched her. It wasn't right. But when Varric had scooped her up she'd gentled, the shuddering and twitching easing out of her, and it was like that now.

"Dead. Insane. An insane ghost haunting whoever would listen to me ask where you'd wandered off." She smiled, eyes still closed. "I would be the most annoying ghost."

He gave into incredible temptation and lightly kissed the crown of her head. "I'm not going to argue against that," Varric said dryly.

Hawke curled closer, trying not to just drape herself over him, but the feel of his stubble catching in her hair, the press of his lips? That was... really nice, and friendly, and she wasn't going to ruin anything by assuming it wasn't just him offering her comfort.

"We could pick up a seance grift. You could get Isabela to read palms. I'll rattle tables and blow out candles. You can run promotions and keep the books." Her shoulders twitched as she laughed softly. "I'll use a spirit board to tell embarrassing secrets about the marks, and then they'll pay extra to keep it quiet."

"You know, that isn't a bad idea." He pretended to consider. "Might be worth some gold there after all. We can grab Broody, make him play security. Shake down anyone who tried to fleece us in return."

"Merrill could sell fake artifacts of the Elvhenan. Oh! Do you think we could talk Anders into one of those miracle-potion-and-hair-tonic outfits?" It wasn't a bad fantasy, everyone back together again, even if in it Hawke herself was a ghost.

"We could fast-talk him into it," Varric agreed. He didn't actually think they could, but hey, that wasn't the point of this. There was no place for reality in pure fantasy. "The gang'll be all back together again."

"Sebastian isn't invited," Hawke said, a little grumble in her voice. "Actually, he'd probably just follow us from town to town trying to discredit us. And at the end of every adventure he falls in a horse trough or pig slop and looks like an idiot." She rubbed her cheek against the soft cotton covering Varric's shoulder.

This was dangerous. She was relaxing, going loose-limbed, comfortable for the first time since she'd woke. She... what if she was dreaming? Her hand, curled between her chest and Varric's side twisted so it could knot in his shirt, and her shoulders went tight again.

Varric kissed the crown of her head again. "Whatever you just started thinking," he mumbled, voice echoing in his broad chest. "How about you don't?"

"I really missed you, Varric." Hawke wasn't usually given to the overtly sentimental. It was obvious that she loved her friends, with a kind of mad loyalty and reckless self-effacement that got her into trouble, but she didn't just go saying it.

Out loud.

Where the people she was talking to could hear her.

Edited Date: 2015-09-06 08:16 pm (UTC)

He stilled, eyes closing--squeezing shut. Varric gathered her closer, until she was half-sprawled across his chest, his arms tight around her. Fiercely protective. "I missed you too," he murmured; and Maker, he had to fight to keep the endless depths of emotion out of his voice. The loss. The gutted, hopeless confusion of knowing Hawke had been lost. The heartbreak. "So how about we stick together from now on, huh?"

At first the way Varric froze made Hawke's stomach drop with dread. There it was, she'd gone too far. Cuddling was all well and good, but bringing feelings into it, that crossed a line. She should have known.

Her panic was cut short when he squeezed her closer, and she threw her arm across his chest, hugging him back just as tightly, nodding into his collarbone. "Still waiting for you to write that happily ever after ending, so I guess you'll just have to be in it."

"And then they ran away from all the crazies and started a nug farm in the ass end of Antiva," Varric murmured against the shell of her ear. "Where they lived until they died of extreme old age, neither of them even the slightest bit a hero. The end."

Hawke shivered as Varric's voice rasped low and intimate against her ear. But it was a good shiver, even if it opened up a yawning ache inside her.

She tipped her face up, which brought her mouth very, very close to his, and smiled, all wistful and lopsided. "You don't even like nugs, Varric."

"Eh," he said, breath warm against her lips. "Things change."

"Change can be good." Hawke wet her lips carefully, like she was tasting the words he'd just said.

It could be.

It could also be very, very bad.

Varric tipped his head back, breaking that strange, breathless tension, and laughed. "True," he said. "Except I'm getting old; I'm happy with some ale, a plugged-up hole in the sky, a fire and a good book. All this change shit is bad on the bones."

"Old. Right." Hawke felt like her stomach was going to fall out through her feet and onto the floor and roll under the bed. "Throw in a couple of pretty dwarven barmaids to impress with your stories and that does sound a lot more like your happy ending than a nug farm in Antiva." She patted his chest gently. "You deserve all of that."

"You're coming along, whichever way it goes." He was firm on that.

"Well, that's decided then." It might never be more, but like Hawke had told Anders, she wasn't willing to risk what she had for wild hopes and the kinds of dreams that kept a girl alive when demons were at her door.

Varric tilted his head to look at her again. "You need sleep?"

Hawke shrugged a little and then shifted away to stretch like a cat. "I could sleep." She probably could too. She was still recuperating from all that running and fighting and dying, but she'd also been just napping for days. "If you're tired. Unless you want me to go. Because it isn't like I want to sit here and watch you sleep because that would be weird."

"What?" Varric teased. "You don't think I'm pretty enough to watch sleep? I've been watching you for days."

"I know you're pretty enough. What if I was suddenly overcome with how pretty you are and then you woke up and--" Hawke gasped in horror, "--I'd braided flowers into all that gorgeous hair." She reached up and tugged a piece of it where he'd let it lose before climbing into bed. "So, you know, if you don't want me here thinking about which colors go best with your eyes, you should give me the boot in the ass."

She smirked. This was firmer ground. "Of course then I'm going to stumble over a barrel of daggers and who knows what will happen after that."

"I'm willing to take that risk, especially if the alternative is having you rummage around for barrels of daggers and torn trousers."

Varric leaned closer, snagging Hawke around the waist again and pulling her back into the nest of covers. "Sleep," he said, spooned up behind her, forehead pressed against the nape of her neck. "And keep those long human legs to yourself."

"Is there a torn trouser barrel? Where is it? How big of a barr--" Hawke broke off as Varric's arm looped around her waist and she slid up against him like she fit there. Well, except for all the parts that were overflow. Like legs apparently.

"Yeah, wouldn't want you getting leg cooties. Who knows what would happen." She snuggled down, her own arm draping over his, hand falling to trace his knuckles with idle brushes of her sensitive fingers, mapping scars and creases.

"The dwarf lay there, wondering how it was possible for the Champion to be talking even as she tried to sleep," he muttered against her hair, twitching his fingers around until they were sort-of almost holding hands.

"The dwarf is going to be really thrilled when the Champion talks while she sleeps," Hawke grumbled affably, letting her fingers curl with his as she blinked slower, then yawned.

"If she's going to be spilling her darkest secrets, he will be overjoyed."

"M'flattered you think I've got secrets you don't already--" Hawke broke off to yawn again, let out a little sigh before continuing, "--know."

"Guess we'll find out." He closed his eyes, settling in comfortably. "G'night, sweetheart."

"Mmm, s'nice."

Turned out, all she needed was her trusty dwarf at her back to keep the nightmares at bay.

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