isabela It's a beautiful evening, crisp and clear and brightly edged, like only the best sorts of days can manage.
The very air tastes of the horizon, endless and blue.
You're camped earlier than usual, for a jaunt down the Coast, but there are ruins, tomorrow, and no one likes not being able to see the giant spiders coming.
The scritchy-scratchy of all those legs is bad enough when you've got at least half a chance to figure out where they're coming from before they jump on you.
Instead there are tents, and a fire, and good-natured squabbling about who takes which watch when, and if there's enough rabbit for dinner or if someone should go hunt down some more food; but of course everyone thinks it should be a different someone because no one wants to get up again.
Perfectly reasonable. You don't want to get up either.
Eventually there's dinner, and the sun is finally really setting, shadows long and cool and the sky turning dark and blue before you.
Somehow, as most nights seem to with Hawke, there's talking and gambling and perhaps you'd "borrowed" a bottle of something rich and bitter from the Rose to share, until one of the drinking games wanders its way through the camp, and makes its way to you, and you open your mouth and say truth.
You feel everyone go still before you can really see it, before the silence catches up with the itch down your spine, and you shrug, and pretend you don't notice the red glimmers of dying sunlight catching in eyes gone too wide in surprise.
"What, you're all too drunk to think of a single question?" You tease, and laugh, and take too deep a swallow so you can pretend the burn in your throat is just cheap rum.
"What's your favorite colour, Rivaini?"
Everyone groans, waste of a perfectly good question, but you smile at Varric, let your face go still and your voice smooth as you look him in the eyes.
"Gold, of course," and you know he sees the shifting of your eyes, the quick flick of your attention from the glint in his ear to the embroidery on his shirt to the few loose strands of his hair that glow in the firelight.
He blinks, eyelashes gilded by light and shadow, and you roll your shoulders, as if to cast the weight of your words to the wind, before anyone realizes what you've said.
Before you have to realize what you said.
He knows, though, Varric always knows, and after you pass the bottle, and everyone's teasing Kitten to take a larger sip for her turn, he lifts his hand to his mouth, and the barest shift of his fingers flicks a kiss at you through the air.
There's no rum to blame for the burn in your chest this time, but it's a good heat.
misdirection, (Isabela/Varric, G)
It's a beautiful evening, crisp and clear and brightly edged, like only the best sorts of days can manage.
The very air tastes of the horizon, endless and blue.
You're camped earlier than usual, for a jaunt down the Coast, but there are ruins, tomorrow, and no one likes not being able to see the giant spiders coming.
The scritchy-scratchy of all those legs is bad enough when you've got at least half a chance to figure out where they're coming from before they jump on you.
Instead there are tents, and a fire, and good-natured squabbling about who takes which watch when, and if there's enough rabbit for dinner or if someone should go hunt down some more food; but of course everyone thinks it should be a different someone because no one wants to get up again.
Perfectly reasonable. You don't want to get up either.
Eventually there's dinner, and the sun is finally really setting, shadows long and cool and the sky turning dark and blue before you.
Somehow, as most nights seem to with Hawke, there's talking and gambling and perhaps you'd "borrowed" a bottle of something rich and bitter from the Rose to share, until one of the drinking games wanders its way through the camp, and makes its way to you, and you open your mouth and say truth.
You feel everyone go still before you can really see it, before the silence catches up with the itch down your spine, and you shrug, and pretend you don't notice the red glimmers of dying sunlight catching in eyes gone too wide in surprise.
"What, you're all too drunk to think of a single question?" You tease, and laugh, and take too deep a swallow so you can pretend the burn in your throat is just cheap rum.
"What's your favorite colour, Rivaini?"
Everyone groans, waste of a perfectly good question, but you smile at Varric, let your face go still and your voice smooth as you look him in the eyes.
"Gold, of course," and you know he sees the shifting of your eyes, the quick flick of your attention from the glint in his ear to the embroidery on his shirt to the few loose strands of his hair that glow in the firelight.
He blinks, eyelashes gilded by light and shadow, and you roll your shoulders, as if to cast the weight of your words to the wind, before anyone realizes what you've said.
Before you have to realize what you said.
He knows, though, Varric always knows, and after you pass the bottle, and everyone's teasing Kitten to take a larger sip for her turn, he lifts his hand to his mouth, and the barest shift of his fingers flicks a kiss at you through the air.
There's no rum to blame for the burn in your chest this time, but it's a good heat.
You think you'll keep it.
At least for a little while.