faderift | (no subject)

WHO: Gavin and OPEN
WHAT: After returning to the Mire, Gavin goes around delivering any mail that had arrived at Skyhold for people.
WHEN: Now
WHERE: Fallow Mire
NOTES: There's probably going to be some shippy shit with him and Maxwell sorry not sorry

Open.

Gavin has two satchels slung over his shoulder, full of mail, humming as he walked through the camp. For the letters whose recipients he knew by name, he simply went directly to them with a smile and a wave, to hand them their post. It wasn't until they'd all gotten their letters that Gavin started looking through the ones with unfamiliar names.

He frowned - because reading was hard - and had to spend several minutes mouthing out each name, or asking someone else to read it for him, before calling out for the person in question and just sort of hoping they, or someone that knew them, would hear him.

For Maxwell.

"Maxwell! Got something for you," Gavin called as he jogged up to the man, grinning from ear to ear as he pulled out the scroll. The seal had already been broken - by Leliana's spies, of course - but they'd done a pretty good job of putting it back together.

"Letter came for you, at Skyhold."

For Varric.

Of the two satchels, one, in its entirety, was for Varric. So he left the dwarf for last, and went to find him once the rest of the deliveries were finished, before holding the entire bag out to him.

"Here, you ah - you got a lot of mail. They asked me to bring it back for you, from Skyhold."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Well if you need someone to warm you up, just let me know," He teased with a grin, pulling off his own boots so that he could warm his own feet better. "Also, if you need someone to hold up a blanket around you while you dry out next to the fire, I can also help with that."

He dug into his pockets, but while he usually had something to nibble on, he came out with only lint and sighed a little.

"Alright, I'm warning you they are pretty awful, though. So, an archer, a templar and a mage walk into a bar--"

Varric laughed at the suggestions--Gavin was more than friendly, even though Varric had never taken him up on his flirting, and it had become an amicable sort of pattern between them--but he did consider the blanket thing for longer than he, perhaps, should have. He fished out another fistful of letters as Gavin told his first joke.

It wasn't bad, not as far as three guys walk into a bar jokes went, and it even managed to have an archery pun in it. Varric snorted a laugh at the end, it was just marginally too good for an open groan, but he did seem a bit less severe as he gradually chucked all but one of the letters in hand into the fire. The one he kept was set aside and another fistful was fished out of the bag.

Gavin's second joke was better. Varric thought he'd heard all the Raider from Jader jokes but, apparently, they ran even bluer than the ones Isabella and Sera told. The end was crass enough that a smile actually cracked across the dwarf's face and he turned to look at Gavin as he chuckled.

"Okay, okay--you win, nobody can scowl through that," Varric ceded and, with a last offhand glance at the haphazard stack of letters in hand, he just tossed the whole awkward handful into the fire. Once that was done (though he still had the better part of the bag to go through), he dusted off his gloves...or he would have, if they weren't wet. He grimaced as he peeled them off and dropped them, with a wet slap, onto one of the stones that surrounded the bonfire.

"So, how was the walk back to Skyhold from here?" Varric asked casually and took a seat next to Gavin. He wasn't often without his gloves, it felt odd. His fingers were calloused in the usual places--where he held his pen, various joints where bits of Bianca rested--and he had a couple of pinkish scars, but they were otherwise unremarkable. Being damp for this long did have one benefit--the scummy water of the Mire had managed to get most of the semi-permanent ink stains off his fingers.

Not out from under all his nails, unfortunately...unless he'd just crushed that one hard enough to bruise. Shit he was tired of being wet and cold; Ferelden was an awful country.

Gavin watched each letter burn up, and then the whole pile of them burn up, and crooked and eyebrow at Varric. The fact that the dwarf looked significantly less severe now, however, made the crooked eyebrow melt into something closer to a bemused, and fond, smile.

"Now I'm really curious which one you kept," He murmured in a half tease, before shrugging.

"I came down with Bruce and Zevran. Zevran's always good company, or course, but Bruce was... Well. Do you know him, at all?"

"Bruce..." Varric repeated and reached up to let his hair down and retie it. It was easier done without gloves and raking the damp strands off his forehead made everything a lot less annoying.

"Severely normal looking human guy, quiet, sort of--" Varric finished tying his own hair and made a vague miming gesture around his head. "--curlish, way too nicely done to be an accident, but not nice enough to be intentional hair-style? Kind of awkward?"

"That's the one," he agreed immediately. "He's one of the healers. Nice guy and I like him because he generally just lets me babble on about whatever and shares cookies with me. But I've never shared a tent with anyone quite so squirrelly about being there in my life."

He sighed, and then shrugged. "Maybe it's an elf thing. It's almost always an elf thing."

Varric frowned slightly and rubbed his hands together before holding them out toward the fire. He didn't expect there would be a way to work the numbness out of them or the ache from his joints, but it was worth a shot.

"I've met him, talked about my book," Varric said. "Guy's got one of the earliest copies, carries it around with him--looks like a druffalo chewed on it and spat it out but, hey, points for effort."

Varric shook his head slightly.

"Didn't seem like the kind of guy who has an elf thing," he declared seriously. He wasn't an elf (and Maker knew, dwarves never got quite as much shit as elves), but he knew enough elves that he'd learned to keep an eye out for that particular brand of asshole. Bruce was shy, a little bit of a recluse, but he hadn't seemed like any sort of asshole to Varric...and, frankly, that was saying something.

"I'd wager he just doesn't have a lot of close friends. Wilderness recluse who gets awkward in a tent with other people? Yeah, sure. Racist? Eeeeeeh, probably not."

But, then again, he wasn't an elf and Gavin was Dalish. If anybody knew the particulars of subtle (and not so subtle) racism better than the Dalish, he'd eat his coat.

"I hope not," he agreed easily. "And you're right. Maybe he just doesn't like sharing with people." Varric was excellent at finding the good in people and Gavin was all too happy to accept that theory, and nodded along.

He turned to look at the fire, to watch one of the letters burn up.

"Is that what these are?" he asked. "Letters from people who have read your book?"

"What these?" Varric asked, abruptly confused, and cast a quick, uncertain glance back at the fire. His own faculties caught up with him a moment later and he shook his head. He was certain what he'd thrown out.

"No, no--" Varric assured him quickly. "I don't burn fanmail." Well, not most of it.

"These are just guild letters, critics, Sebastian, that sort of tinder," Varric assured him. That was, in fact, why he had been checking. "Most fanmail goes to my editor and she stores it for me. I don't hand out my current address, after all."

"Well, you are a very popular man," Gavin agreed with a wry smile. He had no idea who Sebastian was, or why he was named specifically, but as Varric was just as likely to make up a story about him rather than tell him the real one, he didn't ask. If Varric thought he should know, he'd tell him. And in the meantime:

"I wouldn't think you'd need to give it out, considering how many of your fans seem to be in Skyhold proper. If they don't know where you are yet, they're bound to know soon. You should start recruitment campaigns," he added with a tease.

"Shit, you think?" Varric asked. The question was only a partial thought, but it was enough to carry the slightly worried edge that crept into his tone. Sure, he knew that a lot of people in the Inquisition liked his books but...well...it had never occurred to him that he was effectively out in the open for all his fans and critics to find him. That was a troubling realization.

"Maybe I should look into getting an office," Varric suggested distractedly and then pulled a face. No, he was too much of a people person to sequester himself...he would just have to...well, get used to it.

He shook his head.

"I officially demand a chage of topic," Varric announced and regarded the elf beside him. "You traveled down here with Friendly and Hightown, you can't tell me nothing else happened but some awkward tent stuff."

(no subject)

you can just assume he finishes the joke because i didn't think this through....

I will assume it was hilarious. Thinking up jokes and riddles on the fly in RP is the worst.

ty for your understanding :'|

I played the Joker once, I know this pain well.

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