#Varric x Cassandra | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

moonsugar-and-spice · 2 months ago

Note

🌧️ 8

Varric x Cassandra

Arriving in ultra-high fashion (which is to say egregiously late—but late usually beats never). Thanks for stopping by, enjoy!

Send me a prompt + a pairing and I’ll write you a ficlet.

+++

The storm had rolled in fast. Wind tore at the trees, clouds roiled and flashed like an angry sea, thunder shook the earth. Within seconds, they had been drenched.

Beyond the windows of the forsaken hunter’s shack, the world was an ever-darkening blur of grey fury as dusk slowly siphoned the last of daylight. Rain lashed the neglected roof and stone walls with no sign of fatigue, weeping through cracks in the ceiling, drowning out their breaths and Cassandra’s restless footfalls.

She paced the cramped cabin, the soft clink of her armor keeping time. One-two-three relentless strides to an old carving block, dark stains sunken in and around the wood. Turn. One-two-three back toward the ladder that led to a sleeping loft, partially blocked by the drooping, water-stained ceiling. Turn. Sparing only occasional glances to where Varric slouched resignedly upon the single bench at the dust-ridden table.

Earlier that day, he and Cassandra had been scouting ahead, searching for a safe path through the treacherous wilds. The rest of their party had waited several miles behind, now likely hunkered down as best they could. The two of them had been on their way back when the storm hit, had fortuitously stumbled upon the overgrown shack. The corpse of a long-forgotten fire lay huddled in the hearth, cobwebbed but dry. With a spark, the remains had wheezed back to life and now suffused the dingy place with a meager glow, a thin warmth.

Varric took another long draught from his flask. Already more than half-empty, by the diminished heft of it. The cabin’s door sagged on its rusty hinges, letting in sporadic darts of rain and a loamy tang. But the somnolent flames, the haze of liquor, Cassandra’s rhythmic movement all conspired to lull him into a trance. Firelight wavered over her set jaw and winked against her scar, limned the damp fringe still clinging to her forehead. She seemed caught in her own reverie—fingertips tapping against her thigh, eyes shooting daggers out the window on every turn, as if she might threaten the storm into submission.

Not that he would put it past her. If this storm had any sense, it’d start looking for a new job right about now.

As it was, Varric took advantage of the moment and let his gaze follow her.

Cassandra Pentaghast was a study in contrasts. Fierce, yet reverent. Imposing, yet merciful. Terrifying, yet… well, still terrifying. But beneath the warrior’s facade was a depth of compassion she seldom revealed. He had glimpsed it in her care for their comrades, in the moments of vulnerability she allowed herself. Her unwavering selflessness and mettle stirred and fostered within him a profound admiration. Though Varric often and habitually cloaked this fact in a timely jest or embellished tale.

And he knew her unrest here spoke to more than the storm’s fury. It embodied the mantle of a duty that seemed to settle more heavily on her shoulders. While each member of the Inquisition bore their share of the burden, Cassandra’s own personal conviction amplified the pressure she felt. The looming threat of Corypheus cast a long shadow over their every move. Delays felt perilous, every moment of inaction a potential disaster.

His flask thunked quietly on its return to the table, and Cassandra stopped just long enough to fix him with a look. There was the barest hitch of her breath as she blinked. A blooming flush as she realized he had been staring.

On reflex, she frowned anew, averting her eyes from his to the drink still wrapped in his hand. “Why do you always bring that thing with you?”

Varric raised an eyebrow. As if prompted, he lifted the flask to his lips and took another swig, shrugging. “Never know when it might come in handy.”

With a scoff, she shook her head, even as the stern lines around her mouth yielded to something gentler. “You’re incorrigible.”

The grin he returned didn’t quite reach his eyes. “It’s part of my charm.”

The hearth rasped and sighed, their shadows shifting on the wall like phantoms. An insect scuttled across the floor. His gaze lingered on hers a beat longer than it should have before Cassandra broke it to resume her troubled circuit of the cabin.

There was so much he had been wanting to tell her, ask her, for entirely too long. But the time had never felt right, and on the rare occasion it might have, the words tangled his tongue and knotted themselves in his chest. He needed to know whether this thing that had been growing between them for months only existed in his imaginings. Though he didn’t think it did. So, when she’d volunteered as scout that morning, he had stepped up to accompany her, hoping to carve out a moment where that ever-choking anxiety might be tempered by the purpose of their movement, the lesser demand for eye contact.

The trek had afforded him plenty of low-pressure alone time with her. More than one chance to speak his heart. Yet when he’d finally had it, he choked. Again.

One of her boots scuffed against the slanting floor. He watched her a few moments longer, his expression dimming on an exhale. “Stop pacing, Seeker. You’re making me nervous.”

Cassandra paused mid-stride and turned, shoulders stiffening at his remark. “Stop drinking, then. You’re making me nervous.”

Varric huffed a singular chuckle, but it was a hollow sound, lost under the clamor of rain and wind. Raising both hands in a show of concession, he took the flask and set it across the table from him. It came down louder than he’d intended. “There. Happy?”

For a moment, she didn’t answer. He could almost feel it, the reprimand straining the leash of her disapproval. But at last, her edges softened in acceptance, the hands at her sides closing once before loosening.

A gust rattled the grimy windowpane. With it came a lurch in the cabin’s pulse, a rise in the tick-tick-ticking of rain that pooled in the corner, drained between decaying floorboards.

Varric held Cassandra’s gaze the way one might a flame in a draft. Delicate. Imploring. One wrong move and it might gutter.

“Come sit with me.”

Cassandra stood there, warrior-rigid and tall and still, as if weighing his request. In the pause that unfurled, he thought she might refuse, simply retreat back into herself and her compulsive restlessness, deflect any prospect of vulnerability.

But with a sigh laden with more than mere agitation, she crossed the small room.

Old wood creaked as she lowered herself onto the vacant side of the bench, her armor brushing against him. The cool damp where his shirt clung fresh made him shiver, but he was certain the prickling on his skin had more to do with the growing warmth of her beside him.

Varric felt suddenly very hot. Painfully aware of the way they both developed a keen interest in the veins of the table. He cleared his throat.

“We aren’t going anywhere tonight,” his voice husky with drink and nerves and firelight. “May as well make peace with that and get comfortable.”

Cassandra eased against the table, folding her hands in front of her. “I’m not used to being idle,” she replied quietly, her thumb circling a callus on the other, worn by her sword over many years. “And… I suppose this storm has me on edge.”

Varric gave half a nod and murmured, “Storms’ll do that.” He didn’t say how it put him in mind of her—unyielding, a force of nature, starkly beautiful. Woe to anyone who got in her way.

The side of her thigh grazed his as she shifted. The hushed creak of her armor carried a whiff of damp leather and metal, sweat, a hint of cedar. And beneath it, a trace of something spicy-sweet he couldn’t quite place.

Varric stared hard down at his hands. Caught between this yearning to break the silence and the fear of what might come of it if he did.

Amid the grooves and pocks in the wood, a name and date had been carved that he hadn’t noticed. He traced it with a fingertip until skin snagged against a splinter trying to lodge itself there.

He wasn’t sure what he might be waiting for—some excuse to let the words die in his throat again, maybe. But it wasn’t coming. This longing that had been gnawing at him for months was eating him from the inside out. Every stolen glance, every not-quite-accidental brush of skin only added to it.

But, like most things stuffed into words, once said it couldn’t be unsaid. It left him adrift in a disorienting fog of doubt and want, uncertain which way to navigate. It was a strange and unpleasant feeling for him.

Without thinking, he reached for a familiar comfort. Halfway en route from the table to his flask, Varric’s hand was swatted from its trajectory.

“I said stop drinking,” Cassandra bit with command. “We need to be ready at dawn’s light and I refuse to drag you back to camp hungover.”

“Sorry,” he muttered. “Muscle memory.”

The half-hearted smile he offered didn’t stick, slipping away as he drummed his fingers in front of him. They twitched toward Bianca, who lay within arms’ reach, silent witness to his predicament, then stopped, fidgeting with the hem of his sleeve instead.

“You know...” he began at length, “I’ve always had a knack for finding my way out of trouble. Give me an angry mob, a heist gone wrong, a burning trash heap of bad decisions, and I’d manage to fashion some joke or smooth remark to get me out. I found I could talk myself out of most scrapes, and drink my way out of the ones I couldn’t.”

With a subtle turn of his head, he dared a look and drew her gaze.

“But, not this time.”

Some deeper part of himself was grasping at his shirt collar, trying to pull him back from the edge of the cliff. But Varric knew if he didn’t extricate this thing in him now, there was a chance he might never.

“This time, I can’t just evade it with humor or another drink, or even distance. Not out here, Fate knows what I’d give for a little privacy,” he added, but the chuckle that followed came out thin. Varric steadied himself on a breath, letting all trace of a joke drain away. “Because what I’m feeling won’t let me off that easily.”

He let his eyes brush from the slight furrow between her brows to the flickers of gold in her irises to the soft parting of her lips, curiosity transmuting to a charged, unfolding anticipation.

“I guess what I’m trying to say, what I’ve wanted to say for a while is…” Varric pitched himself toward that ledge, and jumped. “I’m in love with you, Seeker. And I had this crazy hope that maybe you…” He trailed off, blinking.

Cassandra had gone stock still, her eyes wide with something beautiful. Something fragile. Something terrible.

Silence fell like a wet, woolen blanket. The fire, the storm, every sound seemed to collapse into a dull hum. In it, he heard the ungainly sound of his own tight swallow.

Cassandra’s lip curled into a silent snarl, even as her expression betrayed something deep—an ache, a question unasked—before she grated out, “Tell me that when you’re sober, you idiot.”

The aftertaste of liquor turned sour on his tongue. Varric wanted nothing more than to suck the confession back into his chest and cork it tight. Fingernails bit into his clenched fists, knuckles taut and white, as he worked for something more to say, a way to take the sting out of her response.

She looked wrought in stone for as hard and unmoving as she sat, if not for her eyes scoring a pattern in the wood, every plink of rain like the fall of a hammer.

And then she stood, sharp as a blade, putting her back to him as she marched to the window and leaned gruffly against the sill. A couple of dead flies skittered in the harsh current of air she stirred. Cassandra’s shoulders rose and fell in stiff measure, the lines of her figure silvered in a flash of lightning, and he braced himself for her silence. For the coldness of her rejection to fill the space between them like an unbreachable wall.

But with renewed ferocity, she spun back, her eyes flashing hotter than the hearth. “You choose now, of all times, to say this? Half-drunk while we’re stuck in a putrid shack. You’ve been sitting on this for, how long? Weeks? Months? And now—?” She growled, threw her arms in the air, shook her head. “How can I even be sure it’s real, Varric? That it’s not just the drink?”

“Come on. I’m not that far gone,” he argued. Outside, the loose shutters clapped a shrill rebuke against the cabin’s walls. With a throaty sound, half groan and half sigh, his eyes slid closed and he rubbed his brow.

She was right. He shouldn’t have said it, not like this. She deserved better.

“It’s been there long before this drink,” Varric pressed, his voice gravel, dropping his hand to lock eyes with her again. “And it’ll be there long after. Drunk, sober, it doesn’t magically change how I feel.”

Cassandra’s nostrils flared, and then she turned her back again, hands curling around the windowsill. But she didn’t lash out a second time. Instead, she exhaled, long and slow, her anger bleeding out, leaving only weariness.

“There have been… things… I’ve wanted to speak of as well,” she admitted haltingly, her voice softer. “But not tonight.”

A note of tension eased, like a grip uncoiling. Varric had been bracing for a clean break, something final, painful but uncomplicated. Instead, her words were a door left ajar, cracked enough to let in a sliver of hope that he hadn’t fucked up everything in this one untimely swoop.

For now, it was enough.