Work Text:
He has secret notebooks filled with excerpts, with scraps of his life rewritten, re-imagined—conversations that played out differently, alternate universes to reality, all the things he thought he should have said but didn't say because they didn't fit the carefully constructed persona he presents to the world. He thinks of himself as a writer, but more than that, he is an actor, a fake, a fraud. He isn't even a particularly good writer, even though he is a popular one.
At least, the things he sells aren't good.
But the things in those notebooks, never shared, locked away, he thinks, if he squints just right, they might actually be half-decent... maybe even... good.
Too bad they aren't real. They are things that will never happen. How could the entire world be changed if all the things tucked away into these notebooks had occurred, if different choices were made, if he'd only said something, done something, different?
The scrape of heavy glass on wood draws Varric's gaze; he recognizes the fingers—long, pale, slender, and covered with fingerless gloves; he follows their trail from the glass of whiskey up the muscular arm hidden beneath lambswool, skipping to the upturned bow-curved lips of a certain bald apostate. "Mind if I join you?"
"Not if you're buying," Varric answers with a grin. Later he'll rewrite this, tell Solas to go away and leave him alone, but for now, the apostate slides into the booth next to him, all warmth and closeness, and Varric tells himself he's sliding away to make room and not for any other reason.
Their fingers touch for a few seconds too long as he claims the offered whiskey. That won't happen in the rewrite.
"You don't normally make an appearance outside of your room when we stay in a place like this," Varric comments. He punctuates the statement with a sip of the whiskey and manages to force himself to meet Solas' eyes.
"You don't usually offer to pay for us to stay in a place like this," Solas counters. It's not wrong. They usually stick to Inquisition camps or their own makeshift campsites leaving dots of burned out fires across the whole of Thedas, but after this week Varric is tired... too tired to sleep on the ground when he can afford an inn.
He licks his lips, raises his shoulder in a half-shrug. "It's been a long week, Chuckles."
Solas hums to himself, takes a sip of his own drink, its contents hidden in a wooden mug rather than a glass. Mead, probably. The elf is obsessed with honey. "Would you... like to talk about it?"
The question is tentative, quiet, contemplative... and oh so inviting. Something cold and hard twists in Varric's stomach, making him wish he could say yes. But it's dangerous with Solas. The man looks at him like he can see through him. It happens sometimes, with people like Bianca and Hawke, and sometimes when they squint just right and cock their head, the Inquisitor. He's learned his lesson though, those people... he can't let them get too close.
"Not much to talk about, is there?" Varric asks. He forces his jaw to unclench and the whiskey into his mouth, and it burns away the urge for him to beg Solas to listen to him.
"I find," Solas begins softly, and then he pauses. Varric's eyes snap up from where they've locked onto the woodgrain of the table seeking Solas' face. He's never known Solas to be hesitant or unsure, and he wants to witness it. He meets those same, steady, storm-colored eyes, streaked with lightning, familiar and yet mysterious, with no hesitance showing in them. "I find," Solas presses on once their eyes meet, "it is easier to speak of regrets than to allow them to fester."
Varric laughs then, can't stop himself from doing it, and he hates the way it sounds, hollow and fake. Real. He wants it to be real. He wants to be able to laugh off Solas' discussion of regrets because he has none. "Easy to say when your regrets haven't doomed the world. Half this shit is my fault you know. More than half if you count that I was with Hawke when he failed to kill Corypheus. If we hadn't brought the idol back... if I hadn't asked Bianca for help..." He can't bring himself to speculate, so cuts off his statement with a sip of whiskey.
Solas looks like he wants to say something then, and for a moment Varric is caught up in imagining what it could possibly be, but the elf shakes his head resolutely. The silence that falls between them isn't awkward; Varric feels like it should be, like he shouldn't be okay with just sitting in silence next to Solas.
Varric loses count of how many sips of mystery liquid Solas takes, of how many times his lips meet his own glass and he tastes the liquid burn of finely aged whiskey, before Solas' wooden mug knocks resolutely against the table and Solas inhales and says, "you know, Varric, the things in your notebooks, they aren't any less real than the things that actually happened."
"How... how would you know what's in my notebooks, Chuckles?" Varric asks, raising an eyebrow. "I swear, if you say you saw them in the Fade or some shit..."
"You use them to record your hopes, your dreams, worlds of possibility..."
"Which by definition makes them not real," Varric snaps, irritation suddenly rising. "Don't... don't do that again."
"I... I did not think," Solas says softly. He can't help himself, he growls, and whatever Solas is going to say dies in the air between them. He can almost feel the elf picking up the pieces of it, trying to put it back together again. "I only meant to say, Varric, that those things matter, that they are real because they matter to you."
"Maybe to someone like you," Varric mumbles, "maybe to a mage who can just... wish things into being... but to someone like me? The only shit that matters is what happened in the real world; we can't fuck with things and make shit real that wasn't real before."
"Do you really think things are so easy for mages?" Solas asks, "that we can simply wish for things to happen, and they do? Tell me, how well did that work out for your friend in Kirkwall? How well did that work for Anders?"
"Don't," Varric warns darkly, so Solas doesn't. Instead, long, thin fingers fall between their thighs in the booth, palm up, curled invitingly, and Varric's shorter, thicker fingers entwine with them, squeezing Solas' hand tightly. He doesn't know why it's like this between them... doesn't know why they poke and prod and make each other angry, doesn't know why they push one another just to see how far they can go, can't figure out why they like to find unspoken wounds and expose them... but fuck, he thinks it might be because he loves Solas a little.
Not romantically, of course.
Solas' hand squeezes his and their eyes meet, and his heart rate picks up... and fuck it might be a little romantic. Maybe. In another world... an alternate universe... tucked away in one of his notebooks... maybe there is a world where Bianca isn't in the way.
Bianca... who has betrayed him one too many times. Bianca who has gone too far over and over again. Bianca who... he thinks... after all this time.... he probably should give up on.
Bianca, who, maybe, after today, isn't in the way as much as she used to be.
He clears his throat, blinks back tears, and finishes the whiskey with one gulp so he has something to blame if the tears start to fall.
"For what it is worth," Solas begins, voice tender and smooth, and Varric hates it when he sounds like this, hates that it makes him think that maybe he's not the only one being a little stupid about this whole thing, "the Fade cannot show me exactly what you have written. It only shows possibilities... it may even show things you will never write."
"Still," Varric whispers softly, voice cracking, "I don't want you to read those things either."
"I won't," Solas promises. "I can wait for you... I can wait until you're ready to share."
"Sure... because when I think of the guy who scammed the pants off Hero, I really think patient."
Solas laughs, warm and deep, and he leans closer to Varric, grinning broadly. "To be honest, Varric," he says softly, smooth baritone doing things to Varric it doesn't have any right to do... not right now. "I only did such a thing to impress you."
"It worked," he admits. Their shoulders are close enough they're nearly touching, and Varric can feel Solas' warmth rolling off him, and can smell... the alcohol on his breath, and he laughs lightly to himself. "I think whatever's in that mug of yours is stronger than you thought it was. C'mon, Chuckles, let's head to bed, before we say or do something we'll both regret. I think we've both got enough of those for a lifetime."
"I am not drunk," Solas counters. "We can stay like this a little longer. I think if I give in to your suggestion too soon, it would be a harder to recover from regret than if we sit in this booth for just a few more minutes." He gives Varric's hand another squeeze, but he sits up straighter, leans back against the booth, puts some distance between them.
Varric misses the warmth, and as he leans into Solas, placing his head on Solas' arm and closing his eyes, he wonders how many different versions of this he'll write. "Yeah... just... just a little longer," he agrees.