museyboxy | Soulmate AUs

"For shit's sake."

Varric hauled Fenris up by his stupid pauldrons and shoved him into a chair. Any attempt at resisting or getting up would be met with a truly bone-chilling Dad Glare. Before Fenris got any stupid ideas like talking, Varric popped open the bottle of wine and poured them two obscenely large glasses, filled way too full for polite society.

"Tell you what, Broody. You have a drink and take a minute to pull your head out of your ass. Then we can talk."

With that, Varric plopped into his own chair, miraculously without spilling a drop, and sipped from his precariously full goblet.

The heaviest thing about Fenris was either his armour or his sword. How he counterweighted them, who knew - but he wasn't exactly fighting being hauled around. He was too soul-tired to fight now, in any way.

With wine in front of him, the best that could be said was that he was confused. What was Varric intending? After all of this, Varric expected him to be able to drink?

"You'll pardon me if I don't want to make an already horrible day worse by pulling a wine-haze over my eyes," he muttered, deciding instead to slump forward until his head was rested against his hands.

Varric made an irritated noise.

"If you haven't noticed, elf, I'm trying to drink my feelings. We've had kind of a fucked-up day, and I thought sharing a bottle with one of my friends might help."

Another drink, this time deeper and almost sharper, like he was aggressively drinking at Fenris.

"Or should I say it slower so you listen? F-R-I-E-N-D. Friend. As in, what I thought we were, before I knew you apparently thought me the kind of guy to shiv someone over a name." Varric shot him a pissy, slightly hurt look. "Thanks for the vote of confidence, by the way. The way you expect murder from me really warms all my cockles."

"You killed my soulmate," Fenris said, no tone left in his voice. A statement of fact because he felt it had to be true. "Unless the Maker is even more cruel than I'd thought before. Either my soulmate is a man I hated, who made me into a monster, who is now dead, or my soulmate is a man who has already found his soulmate, and I am doomed to be alone. I would rather be dead than live with the pain of either option, but I am forbidden suicide.

"What, pray tell, would you rather I do. Live every day knowing that either my soulmate was a beast of a man who practically flayed me alive to make me valuable, or you, who has given his heart elsewhere and has made himself untouchable? Giving someone this much pain can only be enmity."

But with that said, he drained the glass. Maybe it would numb him. Or at least start him on the road to unconsciousness.

"Well excuse me," Varric returned, sarcasm less barbed than usual. "Clearly I should have let the creepy magister with rape face drag you back into slavery."

He took a deep drink from his glass.

"That son of a bitch was a monster. He mutilated you, took your memories, and let his bitch sidekick torture you. He wasn't your fucking soulmate, he was your owner."

Then Varric took off his jacket, his gloves, pushed up his sleeves, and finally removed the ever-present wrist guards, a match to his tunic in slim-fitted gold-embroidered red. The names on his wrists surprised no one: Bianca Davri in stark Dwarven lettering, and a simple scrawl of Leto that bore remarkable resemblance to the scroll of his lyrium marks.

He stared at the wrist reading Bianca. The name there contradicted everything he had just said so passionately about Danarius, and yet- "Bianca can't be my enemy, but... he can't be your soulmate. Not possible."

"Then the Maker is cruel." There was no other option. Varric was given elsewhere. If Danarius wasn't his soulmate, then that meant... what? "I refuse to trail after you like a lost pup. I've been doing it for too long."

Years now. Hoping against hope. Against evidence. Loving the moments when he could forget about names and their meanings and simply drink and laugh and enjoy the few touches as they came. A hand on his shoulder. An elbow to his side. There was much to admire in Varric Tethras, and he had. But if the dwarf was his soulmate, but Varric's soulmate was elsewhere...

"Better if I leave the city and move on. No hunters will be coming after me now. Perhaps I'd make a suitable pirate."

He massaged a spot on his temple. Andraste's tits, he had a hell of a headache coming on.

"Would you listen to yourself? You sound like there are only two options here."

The shift in position, the way he swirled his wine lazily in the glass, something in his eyes: they all spoke of Varric slipping into storyteller mode. Not entirely, but there was a thing that happened to his body language when he started drawing on stories and tales in his thinking.

"Jumping to conclusions based on skinmates never worked out well for anyone," he pointed out reasonably, using the borrowed Avvar term. "Either the Maker's a jackass, you're soulmates with a dead slaver, or I wasted fifteen years of my life. Doesn't mean we need to go jumping on ships or getting drastic haircuts or anything."

There was only one thing Fenris cared to say as he reached out and took hold of the wine bottle.

"You would look ridiculous with short hair."

Years of drinking his troubles away gave him a tolerance that was either a blessing or would one day decimate his liver. Either way, he drank deep of the bottle and stood to approach the fire.

He seized on the subject change more gratefully than a dying man offered water.

"I don't know, I thought that de Launcet kid had a stylish look."

Once his glass was drained, Varric had no choice but to join Fenris by the fire, if only to snatch the bottle and take a drink of his own.

"You'd look great with Meredith's ringlets."

"Yes, I would."

He grabbed the bottle back.

"Though I'd have to let Merrill braid it."

He snorted unattractively.

"Shit, can you imagine? She'd be happier than her little frolicking heart could take."

"She'd explode." And that thought had Fenris snorting, too, because he could just imagine the sound that would come out of her. Some sort of high-pitched 'eee' before she frolicked herself into her own doom.

That pulled a real laugh from him. Few things got to him quicker than Fenris's unexpectedly dry wit, a pleasant surprise every time. When he took the bottle back, he was gentler about it.

"While we're at it, we should get something pierced. You can't have a good rebellious makeover without at least two ill-advised piercings." He tapped his own pierced ears. "And I'd have to get creative."

"At least I have both ears. A ring on each tip might not be so bad." And then, with a sidelong glance and a smirk that was starting to ease (wine was good for something after all), he added, "Just don't tell me to get a tattoo."

"Flowers," he declared immediately. "Little flowers lining every single marking. Maybe some cute little bunnies- the dots could be their tails."

Deadpan af. He took another swig, leaning against the wall next to the fireplace easily. Damn, how could Fenris not see how easily their friendship fit together? Fuck their stupid destinies, they didn't need to change anything.

"For me, I'm thinking tramp stamp. Right here." He hiked his tunic up and showed off his hairy lower back helpfully.

And of everything, Fenris couldn't help his eyes wandering before he stopped himself, because that was the first time he'd ever seen that skin, and he'd known his own attraction since the first time he'd seen Varric - and now--

He didn't blush, but he did have to glance away and clear his throat to bring himself back to reality.

"I would already have enough flowers in my hair," he managed, voice holding an odd croak.

If Varric noticed anything, he didn't say, only lowered his shirt with a stupid melodramatic wink and grabbed the bottle. There were many reasons for Fenris to act strangely; it was a strange day. Varric preferred to keep the conversation flowing and try to prevent this friendship from dying.

"Exactly, it'd be a whole look. Going from dramatic and spiky to covered in flowers would be exactly your type of rebellion."

"I'll have to resign myself to dressing like an Antivan, won't I." Better to think of that than--

Than the line of thought he didn't need to follow.

"You'll have to pay my tailor bill."

"Hey, it's your angst-fueled makeover, not mine." He examined his nails nonchalantly. "I'll be too busy growing a beard and getting Legion tattoos."

Because Varric's version of rebellion could only be something dwarfy.

"Festis bei umo canavarum - you really would run me into exile doing that," he muttered, rolling his eyes. "I'd have to go traipse around Thedas with the damned Dalish, pretending I believed a word they said. Following a mage."

"What, all to escape the horror of my beardface?" he snarked, his grin all too shit-eating for the occasion.

It was really too easy to fall into self-aggrandizing flirtation with these people. Isabela, Hawke, Fenris, Anders- they all fed into it, all under the assumption that he was untouchable.

"Seeing you praise the Creators would be pretty damn funny. Especially if you insisted to Hawke that it's not a phase, dad, it's who I am."

A thought came to him. A distraction. Because this was too simple, too easy, and Varric's smile reminded him of what he was trying to forget.

And so he said it: "Do you think I could convince them that I'm the reincarnation of Fen'Harel?"

Something had to work. Because things couldn't be like this now, could they?

Or could they?

Could he have been wrong? Could there be such a thing as a soulmate being platonic? He'd never heard of such a thing, no matter the stories. Tevinter had tales of slaves' soulmates being their masters. The rest of Thedas didn't match, but every story of soulmates ended in either death or sweeping love, and...

And he wouldn't have either, but...

Maker, he needed time to adjust. To mourn. Not Danarius, but the end of a possibility. A mourning he'd been putting off for... for years now. But here he was, talking to Varric as if everything was the same. And to Varric, he supposed it was. He was the one who had to change.

Varric felt something in the air change between them. Shit, it was happening already. Things were shifting, splitting, drifting away.

Maybe he was getting sentimental in his old age, but Varric didn't want that. He really didn't want that. Acknowledging this shitshow meant dealing with the possibility of being wrong about Bianca, and just the idea made him a little panicky.

Still, Fenris deserved more than that. He was more than just a friend- he was scriba, the written. One of the names that would follow Varric until he died.

"I bet you could convince them of anything," he sighed, then pushed away from the wall and slid back into his chair.

He gave Fenris a deadly serious lok. "I want to tell you a story, elf. The only story I promised never to tell."

"Please don't." Fenris closed his eyes, arm resting on the mantel above his head. This close, the fire was almost prohibitively warm, but even that didn't seem to touch the chill that had settled into his bones. "I know you mean well, Varric. To make some point, to illustrate some situation that I'm likely not aware of, but I don't think I can stand to hear the story of Bianca." His shoulders fell. "I don't want to hate her more than I already do."

And he did. He hated her, wanted to take her by the shoulders and hiss at her what a fool she was for being able to leave Varric behind, no matter what it was that had separated them. A crossbow that bore her name wasn't a warm pair of arms to sleep in at night - a thought that nearly made him ill even as he thought it, but the truth remained.

He detested Bianca. How dare she treat Varric this way. And that Varric was still so devoted while she... did whatever she did...

"You love her," Fenris said, not looking away from the dancing flames. "I already hold enough animosity toward her for that."

"I..."

Hesitation. That alone shocked him. Actual hesitation, when thinking about Bianca. True, there had been dark thoughts and private doubts over the years: cold nights when his bed was empty and he knew hers wasn't, or bright mornings with a coffee and a rare letter from her, laced with enough love to hurt his heart and enough details about her life to inflame his jealousy.

Maybe there had been doubts. Maybe he had them still.

"I should just tell you. Maybe when you hear the story, you'll understand why I'm not jumping to conclusions."

About Fenris. About anything.

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