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“I owe a man my ear,” Anders says without preamble.
It’s not even the oddest conversation-starter Hawke has heard from him, but it’s still sufficient to make him stop what he’s doing, lowering his quill and raising an eyebrow as Anders shrugs out of his coat. The library fire is burning bright, and the table is still littered with the detritus of his last reading session with Fenris; a copy of Hard in Hightown lies open on top of a rather dry historical text about Andraste, and scraps of rough practice paper adorned with Fenris’s jagged script lie curling up like dying spiders across the table.
“I’m afraid to ask,” Hawke says, then sighs. “…No, that’s absolutely a lie, I’m far too inquisitive. Who is it?”
“A friend of Varric’s,” Anders answers, crossing to the coat rack by the door to hang up his feather pauldrons.
“A friend like I’m his friend, someone both kindly and good natured, with a gentle soul and a rascally gleam in his eye?” Hawke hazards, and pretends not to notice Anders’s snort of disbelief, “Or a friend like - ‘shit, this man cuts ears off people and makes necklaces out of them’, I ought to pretend to like him?”
“If it were the former, I’d hardly be so very concerned,” Anders points out. “His name’s Gallard. He said there was no possible way I could have the card I claimed and that I was, as liars went, awful.”
“He’s not wrong.”
Anders pulls a face at him in return, falling into the chair by the fire Hawke is starting to - with a hint of fondness - think of as his. His favourite woollen blanket is draped across one of the arms, and with a sigh of satisfaction Anders picks it up and begins unfolding it, spreading it out across his lap. “He wasn’t wrong this time. I’ll have you know my skills of misdirection and sleight of hand were the talk of the Fereldan Circle,” he says.
Hawke steeples his fingers and eyes Anders over the top of them, aware as he does so that he is pulling what Carver would describe as a father. Malcolm had worn spectacles in his later years, which Hawke is both frequently grateful he does not need and also rather bereft he does not possess; the father expression is much more fierce when one gazes at one’s victim over the top of them. “I think that says rather more about the Circles than that does about you, love,” he says. “Tell me about Gallard?”
“Orlesian,” Anders says, yawning. “… A friend. Or a friend of a friend, if you take my meaning.”
“Cotorie?”
“He played a perfect flush. Twice,” Anders says, with emphasis. “If he’s not Cotorie, he’ll be dead by morning; nobody that good at shivving cards makes it past Darktown without their say-so.”
“Were they harassing you?” Hawke keeps his tone light and neutral; he has an agreement with both Sandy and Big Dave Gusset, the Hightown Cotorie reps, that his exemption from their ‘protection’ taxation also runs to Anders’s clinic and his person.
“Of course not,” Anders says. “They’ve seen what happens to Templars who bother me. No, they’re just sending someone by every day, to put earrings on and off in front of me.”
Hawke frowns. “Anders, if they’re making you unsafe… look, I know you won’t let me settle your debts, but will you at least let me see what I can do?”
His lover smoothes the blanket steady around his lap, avoiding eye-contact. “It’s… I got myself into this mess, Hawke, I don’t -”
“I love you,” Hawke points out mildly. “If we weren’t who we were, and if we didn’t live in the world we do, I’d’ve married you, love. Then this really would have been my debt, too. Look, I’m quite attached to your ears, as I am to the rest of your body - let me talk to Varric, and we’ll see what I can come up with. You know I’m good at subterfuge, right?”
Anders squints at him. “Your idea of blackmailing a templar out of service was to claim you saw him doing ‘demony things’,” he points out.
“And it worked,” Hawke says proudly. He has a clipping of the dismissal meeting minutes, obtained from Selby, stuck to the headboard of their bed; he likes to look at it every now and then for the warm’n’fuzzies.
His lover sighs, then smiles; his copper eyes are bright and liquid in the firelight, and for a moment Hawke just looks at him, attempting to fix the image in his memory: the warm orange light, the smile, the small creases at the edges of Anders’s eyes; even the blanket, which is frankly absolutely hideous and pink to boot, fished out of his late grandmother’s trunk in storage.
If Hawke were asked to define home, he’d draw the picture Anders makes right now. It might be soppy, but it’s true.
“Thank you, love,” Anders says, breaking his gaze to look back at the fire. “Talk to Varric.”
“First thing tomorrow,” Hawke promises, and lays down his quill. “For now, I’m about finished here. Come to bed?”
Anders takes his hand without a second thought, and as handsome an image he’d made on his chair before the fire, Hawke can think of much better ways to admire him.
Varric, it turns out, has a suggestion ready-made. “I thought you’d come to me for this,” he says. “Surprised Blondie let you.”
“I can be very charming,” Hawke tells him.
Varric snorts in disbelief, although he’s grinning crookedly. “Is that before or after you’re returning bones to Chantry folk with the immortal words ‘your garbage, serah’?" Hawke opens his mouth to reply, but Varric holds up his hands. "No, no, don’t answer that, it was bad enough being present the first time.”
“I thought I was lightning the mood,” Hawke mutters.
“As it happens, Hawke, Blondie, Gallard is hosting another game tonight with a few other Coterie reps, mostly from Lowtown. We’re going, but you’re not entering - Blondie, because you’re terrible, Hawke, because you can’t shut up, and these guys don’t have much of a sense of humour.”
Hawke sighs. “No appreciation for a good joke, the Coterie,” he laments.
“Because you don’t know any,” Varric says ruthlessly. “Well. Maybe your flirting, I guess. Anyway, we’re going to the game, but we’re going to enter someone else: a third party to play for us. Someone clever, cunning, with a lucky streak ten miles wide. Someone dangerous, but who won’t piss off the locals with banter.”
“Merrill?” Hawke guesses.
Varric rubs the bridge of his nose. “Yeah, she was my first choice, but she’s busy tonight,” he admits. “So we’re going to go with the second best option instead.”
“I don’t care who they are, so long as I can keep my ears,” Anders says.
“Good to know, Blondie,” Varric says. “Game’s at the warehouse on the 3rd dock at 8pm. I’ll meet you with your champion. Well, your other one, I guess.”
Hawke folds his arms. “I’m beginning to feel distinctly unmanned,” he complains, and Anders touches his bicep gently, rubs his hand there in reassuring manner.
“Thank you, love,” he says, and his eyes are as warm and gentle as his voice, and Hawke’s stomach does that ridiculous and embarrassing flippy thing it always does around Anders of late. “Without you, I don’t know how I’d…”
“Well,” he says, clearing his throat and breaking his gaze, so that that dreadful autobiography Varric swears he’s writing any day now won’t be page after page of descriptions about his sappy starry-eyed gaze, “You’d probably be coated in a lot less dog slobber.”
“Funny you should say that,” Varric says, with a grin.
“I’m beginning to think you only love me for my dog,” Hawke mutters.
“Sssh,” Anders says absently, his eyes fixed on the card table; six burly Coterie sharps are clustered around it. Gallard is at its its head, a man built like the proverbial brick shithouse with one hard black eye, the other hidden behind an eye-patch decorated with - cliché after cliché - a gold-embroidered skull and crossbones.
Opposite Gallard Dog sits patiently on his chair, tail wagging as it has been non-stop since he entered. Varric, to the dog’s left, is eyeing him with concern.
“Sometimes I get the feeling that my life is indescribably strange,” Hawke mutters, settling back against the wall. They’re armed, all of them; Fenris is skulking in the alley outside if things go south and this doesn’t work - but still, it’s a little unnerving.
“I’m going to raise a sovereign,” Gallard says, and his comrades mutter hasty agreement; there’s a soft clink of coins as gold coins are tossed into the immense pile in the middle. Varric is still watching the dog, thoughtfully, even as Gallard leans forward heavily and says, “You in, mutt?”
The dog barks, jumps in place, turns a circle in the chair, barks again, and scratches his ear with his hind leg. Anders reaches out and grabs onto Hawke’s forearm, his grip almost white-knuckled. “This is it!” he hisses.
“Hah! You play a dangerous game,” Gallard snarls. “Fine! Ears it is! I raise… my left!”
“Me too”s chorus around the table, although Varric shakes his head and drops his hand. “Sorry, ladies, gentlemen,” he says, “I guess I’m just too attached to these earrings of mine.”
Dog pushes his hand forward, drooling a little over the cards; his tail is a blur. He barks three times, commandingly. “What am I seeing here?” Hawke asks.
“Freedom,” Anders breathes, with a beatific expression.
“Right,” Hawke says, lifting his eyebrows. “Freedom.”
“Call,” Gallard snaps, and as one he and his men turn their hands over; he’s got a matched set of three Serpents and Anders bites his lip, but Dog just barks once, derisively, and flips his own cards over with his nose. A full hand of Grace: five Songs cards. Hawke knows enough to know it’s the best one on the table, and even if he didn’t, Gallard’s face draining of colour would give it away. Anders punches the air in victory.
Varric leans forward. “This belongs to the champ, I think,” he says, mildly, and pulls the huge heap of gold toward the Dog, who eyes it thoughtfully. “And I believe some ears were also on the table? Unless… we have an IOU on Blondie’s ear. Might be willing to strike a bargain?”
“Fine,” Gallard says, with a sigh. “You win this round, you fiendish mastermind. The debt is paid. Your idiot friend with the soft and bleeding heart can keep his ear, and also his fingers and his clinic.”
“What,” Hawke says. “Your fingers? Anders -”
“Old news, everything’s fine,” Anders says, grinning; he rubs at the shell of his ear. “… This was the best idea you’ve ever had, love -”
“It was Varric’s idea,” Hawke says.
“- And I promise, no more body parts.”
“That was an option?” Hawke blinks. “Just what do you get up to on your weekends with Varric…?”
“Oh, this and that,” Anders says vaguely. “… Although. Are templar ears exempt from the rule, do you think?”
Hawke sighs heavily. “I don’t see why not, if your opponents accept them as valid currency.”
Anders’s smile is like a miniature sun. “This is why you’re my favourite champion,” he says cheerfully, and laughs then the dog growls at him from the table. “Sorry, old boy, you’re my second favourite.”
Mollified, the dog sniffs, and resumes watching Varric count its winnings into a leather drawstring bag. This isn’t even the strangest thing I’ve witnessed, Hawke thinks.
Kirkwall. It does stuff to you.