Work Text:
The brawl had started in much the same way every brawl started in the Hanged Man. Which was to say, no one was really sure. One moment, things were fairly calm, fairly quiet…and then there was a loud laugh and a crash, then everyone was moving, someone was shouting, Hawke was standing on a table and pulling a dagger out from Maker-knew-where, the shouting turned to screaming, someone sent a chair careening into the wall, Hawke had climbed up onto the bar and launched herself into the fray…
All in all, a fairly typical night.
It was over just as quickly as it had started (and wasn’t that always the case), a few embarrassed patrons shuffling out to nurse their wounds, everyone going back to drinking and wallowing in whatever misery had brought them there in the first place, save of course for Isabela and Hawke, who were both grinning and chattering away like excited children. They took a little too much pride in being able to wriggle their way into bar fights, those two. Probably wasn’t healthy, but hell, who in Kirkwall had a healthy relationship with violence?
Varric had been at the bar when it started, meaning he was still at the bar when it was finished, and he couldn’t help but chuckle when Corff finally came around with his drink. “Kirkwall’s finest, eh?” he said with a sweep of his arm, gesturing broadly towards the overturned chairs left in the wake of the short-lived melee. “Gotta love ‘em.”
Setting the drink down well beyond Varric’s reach, Corff heaved a weary sigh through his nose. He did not appear particularly amused. In fact, the tired lines of his face suggested much the opposite; he leaned an elbow against his side of the bar before slowly pushing the drink towards him.
“Uh, long night?” Varric asked, grabbing the tankard before Corff could change his mind. “Looking a little peaked there.”
“Varric, you know I like you.”
He paused mid-sip. “Uh oh,” he said, voice reverberating strangely inside the glass. “Don’t like where this is going.”
“This can’t keep happening.”
“…what can’t keep happening?” He frowned, examining the barkeep more closely. “Can’t help but feel like we’re on two different pages here, pal.”
“I’ve been more than happy to have you staying here. You bring in good business. You’re a fine tenant. But this? This has to end.”
He shifted in his seat, turning away from the tavern at large to focus on Corff. “Forget what I said about different pages—you and me? Reading two different books. What are you talking about?”
With another morose sigh, Corff straightened up again and began wiping down glasses with a rag as he spoke. “I’m going to have to raise your rent, you know. It’s only fair, given all of the repairs and the cleaning and the explaining I have to do these days.”
This was a whole lot of…something. Usually Varric prided himself on being able to follow a through-line, knowing where a story was going long before it actually got there, but this? Well this was one hell of a mystery he was dealing with. “Wait, wait. Why are you raising my rent?”
“For the repairs, Varric,” Corff groaned, “I just said it!”
“What repairs?” he asked slowly, not without a fair amount of frustration. He couldn’t remember the last time anything in his suite had broken, much less needed to be replaced entirely.
Corff flipped the rag he was using in the general direction of their usual table. Varric turned just in time to catch Hawke pantomime for Sebastian what was either a strange method of stabbing or some sort of depraved sexual act. Going off of the expression on Choir Boy’s face, it was very likely the latter.
“Ever since Hawke became a regular here, I can’t help but notice things get broken more often.”
Well, he had him there. Hawke was something of a property damage magnet, in a sense. It followed her like a shadow; things just broke around her. Was it always her fault? No. Was it usually her fault? Eh. Everyone had their quirks.
“Okay…” Varric replied, still trying to add it all up in his head. “And…?”
“Maker’s breath, Varric! I don’t see what’s not to understand! If she keeps getting into these messes and destroying my tavern, someone’s going to have to foot those costs!”
That—wait. Wait. He narrowed his eyes, considering Corff carefully. “Uh…huh. All right, humor me for a second here. Why would I have to pay for the shit Hawke breaks, exactly?” Already he could sense this was going to be good. Maybe Corff figured Hawke needed someone more responsible to handle her money for her, or—oh, maybe he was afraid she’d go and get herself offed in some stupid scuffle and he wouldn’t be able to collect what he was owed. Then again, maybe…
Corff leveled his gaze at him, setting an arm on the bar as he leaned down. “Look. You’re the one who keeps lettin’ her come in here and get into it with the patrons.”
“Oh, I let her, do I? I let Hawke—”
“Whatever smart comment you want to come back with, that’s fine, but she’s your wife, so you’re going to have to deal with it, like it or no.”
There was a moment where he was positive he’d misheard him, that maybe what Corff had actually said was something more like ‘She’s your strife,’ or ‘It was her knife,’ or even ‘She’s like the Blight.’ That had to have been it, right? The noise of the tavern had just made it sound…different. Because there was no way Corff had actually said what Varric thought he’d said. Still, he wasn’t the sort to leave shit like that to chance. He chuckled lowly, leaning farther across the bar to try and minimize the noise. “What was that?”
Corff rolled his eyes, setting down the glass he’d been polishing. “I said she’s your wife, mate. If you can’t keep her from running around and—”
Well.
Shit.
“Corff,” Varric said, suddenly finding himself wishing another fight would break out behind them. “Hawke and I aren’t—she’s—Hawke isn’t my wife.” And oh Maker, he hoped that would be the end of it…but the look on the barkeep’s face dashed those particular hopes to the ground.
“Come off it.”
“No. No. It is…so important to me, Corff, that you hear the words I’m saying and take them to heart, all right? Hawke and I. Are not. Married. I don’t know where you got that idea, but it’s completely—”
“You’re not getting out of it. The blood I’ve had to scrub out of these floorboards—”
“Corff.” The was an overwhelming desire to simply drop his head onto the bar itself and die. “Please. Listen to the words coming out of my mouth: Hawke and I are not together.” He raised his eyebrows, watching Corff’s expression with grave acuity.
What he was praying to see was some sort of realization. Some sort of understanding. Maybe a touch of mortification, truth be told.
But he could pray all he wanted. When—when—had any deity ever taken pity on him?
Something like uncomfortable pity crept across Corff’s face at the comment, and he picked up the glass again, busying himself with cleaning it out. “Look, whatever rough patch it is you’re going through, I’m sure you two can work through it. Chin up.”
“No, I—” Groaning, he dropped his head into his hands. “Yeah. Fine. Okay. Thanks. Thanks for that.”
As Norah bustled over to shout an order over the din of the tavern, Varric couldn’t help but glance over to the usual table, trying not to wince at the deep uneasiness the misunderstanding had brought about. He watched Isabela and Hawke did their best to convince Fenris to abandon his drink and dance with them (to no avail, of course), all the while trying to reason it all away. It was just Corff, after all. No one really relied on Corff for information. It was probably just some silly notion he’d gotten into his head after observing one too many late night meetings between the group, that was all.
It wasn’t like it was going to be an issue.
***
Except it absolutely fucking was.
It wasn’t every day. Hell, it wasn’t even every week, but Corff had put it into his head, and now that he was looking, Varric had started to make some…startling observations.
Most of the time, it was a little thing. Tiny. A comment here or there that he probably wouldn’t have noticed otherwise. A joking “Say hello to the missus,” from Elegant (Lady Elegant, those days) when buying a vial of something nasty, or a “How is Hawke?” during the niceties before some Merchants Guild drudgery.
They weren’t all like that, though. They weren’t all veiled, unimportant asides that he could explain away as being teasing jabs. Not when the armorer called to him from the other side of the market one day, producing Hawke’s new gauntlets with a flourish.
“What am I supposed to do with these?” Varric had asked, dreading the answer.
The armorer had appeared amused, if not a bit perplexed. “I assumed Her Ladyship would appreciate getting them as soon as possible. Are you not here to pick them up?”
So he had looked at the gauntlets for a good, long time before finally taking them, all the while muttering to himself, “Her Ladyship, huh? Yeah. That’s. Yeah. All right. Sure.”
And of course, nothing could ever top Hubert’s panicked shouts of “Talk some sense into your woman before she ruins me!” in Hightown’s square. Hawke had been there for that one, but if she’d realized what his implication had been, she showed no sign, instead just grinning that worrisome grin of hers and continuing to haggle prices.
It had become obviously, abundantly, painfully clear that it was not just a simple misunderstanding. It was not just Corff.
Maker’s balls, it was all of them.
Which meant…
Shit.
***
It was hard to say what pushed him over the edge that night in particular—no one had said or done anything, at least not outwardly—but as the lot of them sat around the usual table, a few bickering over the cards fanned out in front of them, some looking tiredly down into their drinks, he realized that he needed to know for his own peace of mind. Sod the consequences. He couldn’t live wondering anymore.
“So, while we’re all here,” Varric began, trying to appear casual as he painstakingly repositioned one of the cards in his hand. “I’ve got something I’ve just been dying to ask.”
“Ooh,” Isabela crooned in a low singsong tone. “Well this should be interesting.”
“Ignore him,” Aveline said, voice firm as her stare when she glanced up from her cards. “No doubt it’s some half-baked scheme to distract us while he’s losing.”
Hawke clucked her tongue, frowning animatedly while stealing a surreptitious glance at Anders’s cards while his head was turned. “That does sound like something he’d do.”
“I’m honored you all think so highly of me. Now…” Varric did set his cards down then, scanning the faces around the table. This would be the tricky part. It couldn’t be Hawke, for…obvious reasons…and it had to be someone who wouldn’t lie or worse, try to be funny. Immediately that shortened the list of potentials to Aveline, Fenris, Sebastian, and Merrill. Quickly, he ran through each of them in his head. Aveline had been with Hawke the longest, had seen her through quite a few unpleasant life events, so she probably wouldn’t want to say anything that might make her too uncomfortable. So she was out. Fenris was a solid maybe, but Varric wasn’t entirely sure he, himself, could handle what the elf might say in that deadpan, matter-of-fact voice of his, so…probably not him either. Sebastian was…okay, no. Sebastian was just annoying. No.
Merrill it was.
“Daisy,” he began again, folding his hands over his cards. “Question for you.”
“Oh, for me?” Merrill perked up, shifting to fold her legs up under her. “I’ll do my best!”
As though some secret code word had been spoken, the entire table became immediately engrossed, their games and drinks forgotten in favor of whatever was about to unfold. Under normal circumstances, there was nothing Varric loved more than having a captive audience.
These circumstances were anything but normal.
“Okay now, being as honest and specific as possible, Daisy—can’t stress that enough—could you tell me…how do Hawke and I know each other?”
Beside him, Hawke herself reeled back. She squinted, turning to fix him with a deeply, deeply confused look. “Wait. What? What do you mean, how—”
Varric held up a hand to cut her off before waving Merrill along to answer. “Just…hang on,” he muttered to Hawke, already bracing himself for impact.
Merrill didn’t seem confused so much as uncertain. Her eyes flicked between Varric and Hawke, almost as though expecting this to be a joke she hadn’t been let in on. “Well…” she started, drawing the word out apprehensively. “You both…live here in Kirkwall…”
“Oh good,” Fenris sighed, “She’s been paying attention.”
“I meant—I meant,” Varric raised his voice to be heard over the wave of chatter from the others. “What’s our relation to each other?”
In an almost perfect reproduction of her earlier response, Hawke turned to him, face a comical mask of bewilderment. “Our relati—”
“Oh! Well, you’re married! Aren’t you?”
Hawke’s mouth had been open when she’d begun to ask her question, and open it stayed, even as she looked across the table to Merrill. Her words had, for all intents and purposes, died on her tongue, leaving her to make quiet, half-formed sounds of surprise. Slowly, she narrowed her eyes and searched Merrill’s face, looking for anything other than her usual earnest cheer. When she found nothing, her head whipped back to Varric.
Not that he had anything to say. He shrugged, palms up, as if to intonate ‘Hey, what can you do?’ despite being at an absolute loss, himself.
“I—wait. Wait. Okay, just…just wait.” Hawke blinked rapidly, perhaps in hopes of clearing away the sudden tumult in her head. “Waitwaitwait…you think…” Once more she looked from Merrill to Varric and back again, smiling in an uneasy way that seemed to suggest she was waiting for someone to start laughing. But no one did. “Wait. What?!”
“Well, you are, aren’t you?” Merrill tried again, clearly abashed. “It just seems—” she looked to the others surrounding the table, silently asking for help.
Hawke was also looking at the others, though her face said something entirely different than Merrill’s. “All right, no. No! All of you! I—show of hands, who’s of the impression Varric and I are married?”
For a moment, there was nothing.
And then the hands went up one by one, most accompanied by shifting eyes as they all began to realize that maybe something was amiss.
“All…all of you?!” Hawke spluttered. “What on—no, not you lot!” She shouted as she caught sight of the neighboring tables’ patrons, the majority of whom had also tentatively raised their hands into the air. “Why would I be talking to any of you?! Fuck off!”
The rest of the Hanged Man went back to whatever they’d been doing a moment ago, though at a noticeably (read: suspiciously) lower volume.
Varric sucked a hard breath through his teeth. “Yeah, that’s…what I thought.”
“Why would you think we’re married?!” Hawke asked, hands flat on the table as she leaned over it, threatening to topple her own drink. “I don’t—I can’t even—”
Still obviously caught off her guard, Merrill spoke up first. “You’re always together, the two of you, and hardly ever apart, so…”
“It was the two of you who came looking for me when I first arrived in Kirkwall,” Anders pointed out. “And you did regularly refer to one another as ‘partners,’ which—”
“Business partners!” Hawke interjected, eyebrows so high they were in distinct danger of disappearing up into her hairline. “We’re business partners!”
“Who regularly have very late, clandestine meetings in a poorly lit tavern,” Isabela added slyly from over the rim of her drink.
“Business meetings!” Setting her head in her hands, Hawke looked at each of them in turn, something like realization blossoming in her eyes. “Aveline,” she said, shaking her head in disbelief. “How could you think—”
“Well I assumed it wasn’t legal,” she bristled, suddenly exceptionally interested in buffing out a smudge from one of her boots. “That it was more a…casual arrangement, and you were just waiting for the right opportunity to tell your mother.”
Hawke turned again, still blinking hard. “Fenris?”
He shook his head once, holding a hand up. “I don’t want to be a part of this.”
“Tough shit. How—”
“Ah, forgive me, it seems I’ve chosen my words poorly.” He sat back, crossing one leg over the other before defiantly raising his tankard to his mouth. “I will not be a part of this.”
Head hanging even lower, Hawke was all but literally staring at the table itself by that point. “Sebastian?”
“I…well. Hmm. I knew it certainly hadn’t been sanctified by the Chantry,” Sebastian said, sounding nearly as flustered as Merrill had, “But Aveline said it best, I think, where—”
Before he could finish, there was an audible thunk as Hawke let her head drop onto the table.
“To be perfectly fair…” came Isabela’s voice as she piped in again, “I’ve heard Varric say, on multiple occasions, I may add, that he was spoken for.”
“And when exactly did I say it was Hawke doing the speaking?”
She seemed to consider the question for a moment…and then shrugged. “Never said it wasn’t Hawke. I simply thought it was a given.”
Lifting her head, Hawke rubbed at her face in exasperation. “We’re not married.” Her voice came out muffled by her hands, so she raked her fingers into her hair to uncover her mouth. “We’re not married!”
And then, though impossible to tell who, someone at a nearby table called out, “Then maybe one a’ ya should get on with it ‘n ask!” There was a general consensus of agreement from the Hanged Man’s other patrons, forming an affirmative hum of voices and scattered applause from all around them.
Hawke rolled her eyes to the ceiling as if asking Andraste for divine assistance. “We’re not together!” she clarified, shouting to the masses instead of any one person. The result was another surge of voices and, in a surreal twist, a fair amount of disbelieving laughter.
“Mhm…” Norah hummed as she collected the empty glasses from their table, “That’s what they all say.”
“Who?!” Hawke swiveled around in her seat to track Norah as she walked back towards the bar. “Who says that?! Who in their right mind would say that?!”
“That went about as well as expected,” Varric grumbled, picking his cards up again despite knowing that the game had been well and truly derailed. He glanced back up when there was a flurry of movement to his other side; he eyed Isabela warily when she slid into the open spot.
“So,” she said thoughtfully, looking into the contents of her tankard as she swirled them around and around. “If the two of you aren’t actually an item…does that mean Hawke’s…” she pretended to weigh her words, going so far as to purse her lips. “On the market, so to speak?”
“Oh no. No. Not a conversation I’m having with you. Absolutely not.”
He watched as she shrugged and finished her drink in one long pull. “Fine! If you don’t care, I suppose I could simply…” Isabela set her empty tankard down, offering him another prim shrug, “…ask her myself.”
“Rivaini…”
Not for the first time since Corff had started the whole damn mess, Varric found himself sorely wishing someone would start a drunken fight, if only to momentarily take the focus from off of them all. As he watched Isabela and Anders closing in on Hawke, the thought occurred to him that he could be that person. Oh, he could easily be the person to get it started.
Just another night at the Hanged Man. Just another fucking night.