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“What do you mean you don’t know?”
Isabela is on her sixth tankard of Corff’s better ale, which Anders suspects just means it’s served in a clean cup. Either way, the effects are the same, and the pirate is having the time of her life, flitting between tables at the Hanged Man whenever she hasn’t draped herself over someone in their group.
It’s her birthday, so they’re all obligated to pay for her drinks all night. Anders owes Varric three coppers.
“I don’t know, is what I mean,” he tells her.
She’s technically sitting on the table, though most of her is on Anders’ lap, her arm wound around his shoulders. Her near-empty tankard dangles precariously in her hand, and at least a third of it has dripped on the table.
“That’s just… sad,” she pouts, and downs the last of her drink. She then waves the empty cup at Aveline, and gives her a pointed look. Aveline groans and pushes her chair back and makes her way to the bar. She has made it very clear she wants no part in any of this tomfoolery (her words), but both Merrill and Isabela pouted at her enough to tire her out.
Isabela hums and gives a small satisfied wiggle. Anders briefly thinks about gutted fish and Knight-Commander Meredith.
“Yes, well. They didn’t encourage birthday celebrations at the Circle, so I suppose I just… forgot,” he explains, while Isabela hugs him a little closer. She is definitely fully in his lap now, and she knows exactly what she’s doing, six drinks deep or not.
“But you were, what, thirteen when they took you? Didn’t you celebrate any before then?” Varric asks. It figures he’d be invested in this, too.
“Twelve, and yes, I did,” Anders clarifies. He longs for a strong drink, but the blasted spirit refuses to let him get drunk. He will still feel terrible the day after, if he drinks, though, which is honestly just plain mean.
Isabela pats his cheek and slides off his lap, reaching for her now seventh drink that Aveline hands her. Anders would bet good money it’s just water. Not that he has any money to bet, but he would. And besides, the water here tastes just as much like stale piss as the ale does, so Isabela probably couldn’t even tell the difference.
“This is water!” she exclaims. “Bitch.”
She drinks it anyway, while Aveline glares at her, her mouth a strained straight line.
Isabela sits back down on the other side of the table, directly across from him, and scoops Merrill into a side hug. The elf flushes deep crimson, and brings her own cup up to her lips with two only slightly shaking hands, and clearly tries very hard to focus on sipping from it.
“So, winter? Summer?” Isabela suggests.
“Spring, autumn?” Varric continues.
Anders rolls his eyes.
“Those are all the seasons, yes,” he confirms.
Isabela leans on her hand, the other one squeezing Merrill’s side, while the poor witch somehow keeps getting more red by the second.
“You don’t strike me as a summer person,” Isabela says. “Me though? Obviously a summer person!”
“That’s because it is, in fact, your birthday. And it is summer,” Anders says and lifts his cup in a toast.
Isabela raises both her arms in a celebratory cheer, and pecks Merrill on the cheek. Anders fears the elf may soon combust.
“Yes it is!” Isabela yells, drawing out each word several syllables too far. She then points at Sebastian and nods towards the bar.
“Maker, being born in the summer is the best,” she sighs. “It’s nice and warm, and the sea is so, so blue.”
“It’s very hot,” Merrill pipes up, and Isabela pulls her back against her side with a fond smile.
“You are not a summer person, though,” she then reiterates, pointing at Anders.
Anders shrugs.
“I really couldn’t tell you either way.”
“You don’t really strike me as the winter type, either,” Aveline, of all people on Maker’s green continent, points out.
Anders shrugs again, though it probably comes off a bit more frustrated than before.
“I really don’t understand why you are all so invested in this,” he groans.
“I am not,” Fenris notes from the other end of the table and takes a long drink from the bottle of wine he’s surely smuggled in from his own collection. Not that anyone cares.
“Thank you!” Anders says, gesturing at the annoying bastard who, for once, seems to be on his side.
“It is entertaining to see him squirm, however.”
Anders makes a rude gesture in the elf’s general direction.
“So, not summer or winter,” Varric continues.
“Why not?” Anders hears himself ask, against his better judgement.
“You’re not happy enough,” Merrill comments. “Or sad enough.”
Anders can’t for the life of him decide if he should be offended or not.
“Daisy’s got a point,” Varric agrees. He leans over the table and looks at Anders with an intensity that makes him feel like he’s being studied. Which he supposes he is. It’s deeply uncomfortable.
“I’d go with autumn,” Varric finally concludes. “Looks nice and colourful in the beginning, but then everything dies.”
Both Aveline and Sebastian nod in approval, and Anders swears he can see Fenris chuckle behind his bottle. Bastards, the lot of them.
“Why not the other way around? Why not cold and dreary, but then everything blooms to life?” Anders asks, now disagreeing on principle.
The entire table falls silent, and there are six pairs of eyes just staring at him.
“Blondie, you’re an apostate with a death wish,” Varric says, simply.
Anders wants to argue. He really does.
“Maybe it’s changed!” Merrill suggests suddenly. “When you and Justice joined up. You’re sort of like a new person now, right? Maybe your birthday isn’t your birthday anymore.”
It says a lot about the collective state of inebriation around the table that everyone seems to seriously consider this.
Anders thinks back on the day it all happened, and remembers a deep grey sky and the damp ground littered with scorched corpses, laid out over a bed of… fallen leaves. Damp, brown leaves. The destroyed clearing surrounded by skeletal leafless trees.
Maker dammit all.
He hides his face in his hands for a moment, before turning his gaze up towards the ceiling. He closes his eyes for a beat, and takes a deep breath.
“It was late autumn, with Justice,” he finally admits. “Almost winter.”
The table erupts in a round of entirely unnecessary cheers, and Isabela crawls over the table to settle back on his lap. She ruffles his hair and pecks his cheek, while he tries to pull away before he’s suffocated by perfect breasts.
“Now that that’s settled—” Anders tries, but gets cut off immediately.
“You need a party!” Merrill squeals, genuine excitement on her face.
“No, I really don—”
“Fenris has a big house, he could host—”
“I will not.”
“I have a perfectly good table right here,” Varric reminds them, and there is a chorus of ooh and oh right around the table in question.
Aveline clears her throat.
“So, we will gather at the Hanged Man, on a non-specific evening sometime in late autumn, to do… this.” She gestures around herself: at the table, the tavern, and their mismatched group of people. “Which is what we do every week, at least once a week.”
Another chorus of ooh and aah surrounds the table.
“At least buying him drinks will be cheap?” Sebastian suggests, finally. “Since he can’t drink.”
Anders wants to protest and tell them that he absolutely can drink, it just doesn’t do anything, but the group has already erupted in another round cheers. Isabela climbs on the table and has them all toast to her good health, after which she accidentally steps off the table and falls right into Varric’s arms, like a trembling damsel in one of his awful books.
The conversation soon moves to best ways to roast a nug, the approximate distance each of them could reasonably jump over an imaginary chasm, and who of them would make the best viscount.
Hawke finally arrives, late as always but just in time to be voted new viscount by the carefully selected council of mostly drunk adventurers.
Anders huffs a laugh, shakes his head, and drinks his stale-piss water.