OPEN, sort of

[slipshot]

WHO: Gavin, a few specific people, but also OPEN
WHAT: Gavin returns from his adventure in the Mire, and has a few things he has to follow up on.
WHEN: Nowish
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: Gavin should come with his own warning but otherwise, CW for discussion of suicidal thoughts/tendencies (it's all in point number 2, so you can skip that if you want)

On the long march back to Skyhold, Gavin had decided on at least something of a plan of action. Well. Plan of action was probably giving him too much credit. He had a plan. And plan was also probably somewhat more organized than what he actually had: which was a vague idea of people and conversations he should probably have.

A vague idea of things he should probably do.

Because there were a few truths, that were becoming apparent to him, and they were these:

1. He was not likely to survive this war. This wasn't a huge surprise (he never did have a good sense of self preservation), but it was still something he had to acknowledge. This wasn't the kind of thing he could fuck up and then make up for later by smiling sheepishly with presents. Or bribes, as Zevran so eloquently put it. So. If he fucked up, he was dead. Worse - if he fucked up, he likely also made sure other people were dead. Which brought him to point number two.

2. He wanted to survive this war. This was a surprise, as half of his plan in coming to the Inquisition had involved gallant death, and meant that number 1 was proving to be a bigger problem than it would have been otherwise. Part of it was that he had found people here that he wanted to make sure survived it themselves. But another part, perhaps, came from having a back up plan. Maybe it was strange, to find some sort of odd peace by planning in detail one's eventual death if it was necessary. And as long as Zevran was alive, he had that back up plan. So surviving in the meantime was okay - because if it ever wasn't okay, he had a way out.

3. If he was going to survive the war and have anything left to survive it for, he had to stop running. Somehow. This had already been drummed into him by a few people, but it had never really taken. It wasn't until - ironically - he'd been talking to Alistair about throwing his life away by joining the Wardens that he'd actually started to think any deeper about what he was going to do after the Inquisition. Even what he was doing in the Inquisition. Harding would kill him if he ran away again, and that probably wasn't entirely an exaggeration. If 1 was destined to happen, then at the very least, it should be by Corypheus's hand and not his own.

All this meant that he had to be better, and he had to be better now. Not an indeterminate time later, when the stars aligned, but now. While he had time. While they all had time. While it would still mean something, and make a difference.

Maxwell and Pel. That was where to start, but they weren't the only ones. Merrick. Harding. Maria. So many of his friends.... There were a lot of apologies and the couldn't come with presents. Bribes. They couldn't even really be apologies, because he knew how hollow those sounded, from him, these days. He needed to make an actual effort.

So he sought out each one, wherever they were.


[HOW THIS WILL WORK: Basically if you want to have a chat with Gavin and already know him, tag in wherever you are and he will come find you. If you have not met Gavin but want to, hit me up on plurk or PM and I'll start up a different thread starter for you. Basically I just wanted a catch all for a bunch of different threads for him and then the description got out of hand.]

Comments

[hugeinorlais]

Varric was, by all counts, not exactly cheerful following his return from the Fallow Mire, but he was drier and that counted for a lot. The hearth by his table burned a little more intensely than usual and, despite his abrupt shift in attire (He really hated the grey, sleeve-less tunic he had on and the striped pants made him look like a tiny, subtle version of Iron Bull, but those other clothes had to be burned. There was nothing for it.), Varric was well within the bounds of 'toasty' and 'warm'. It was hard to be cranky when you were both toasty and warm.

He'd had an idea on the long march back from the Mire, one of the kind that felt like potential brilliance and/or an inevitable catastrophe, but it wasn't quite fully formed yet. So, as he spent the day turning it over in his head, finally thawing out (insofar as one could in Skyhold), he decided to disassemble, clean, and tune Bianca.

It took a while, doing this much precision work, and his table was covered in a carefully arranged array of tiny to medium sized parts, curious mechanical tools, and better than a dozen implements to wipe, polish, or otherwise scrub all the residual swamp out of his beloved portable siege weapon. He could do this all in his sleep, of course, and that gave him plenty of time to think and, to a lesser extent, people watch.

Skyhold was always full of strange people and eavesdropping was an art that Varric excelled at, but the person who kept catching Varric's attention was Gavin. It wasn't odd to see the elf running through the Great Hall, but he usually didn't have quite so determined or grim an expression plastered on his face. Whether he was coming or going, four or five times now, he looked like he had steeled himself to face down a rabid dragon.

By the time Varric had moved to oiling and polishing Bianca's wooden stock, he decided to interrupt Gavin's little crusade and try to cheer the kid up. It was the least he could do, given that they were friends, and he was a little curious about what had managed to put a serious expression on the elf's face. So, casually as anything, he snagged Gavin before he could march off to whatever other task he had to attend.

"Hey Lucky," Varric called as Gavin entered the hall on the garden side. "Come here, I got a question or two for you."

[slipshot]

Who knew how many times he had passed Varric - mostly because he had lost count. He had of course noted him, but Varric was, thankfully, one of his only friends that he was pretty sure he didn't owe apologies to. On this particular pass, though, the sober expression was a little different, almost cautiously optimistic, as he had just come from seeing Maxwell, which had gone much better than he had originally anticipated. He thought. Sort of.

But then of course he'd started thinking about it more in depth, and had started running likely scenarios over in his head, and had come up with about a hundred thousand ways that everything could go horribly wrong.

So, cautiously optimistic at best.

He stopped at the voice, his ears pricking as he heard the nick name, before walking over to Varric. He was already trying to push everything away in order to offer up a grin, but in truth it wavered more than it should have, and didn't reach his eyes.

"Sure, what's on your mind?" He asked, immediately being drawn to the wealth of random bits of crossbow and picking one up to look at it somewhat distractedly.

[hugeinorlais]

If Gavin had been anybody else (save perhaps Hawke), Varric would have snapped the towel in his hand across the elf's fingers as he reached for a piece of Bianca. As it was, Gavin was so distracted and serious that he barely managed a smile as he shuffled over. That, more than anything, was enough of a surprise that he let Gavin get away with twiddling one of Bianca's disassembled gear assemblies.

"Huh," Varric said, his brows arched as he looked the elf over with a critical eye. "I should ask you the same question."

He clucked his tongue idly and turned his gaze and attention back to the stock in his hands. Getting the bits of dirt out of the grain and the detailing on the wood was a long, tedious process, but it was cathartic. Varric didn't so much need catharsis, not right at the moment, but Gavin on the other hand....

"Then again, you look like a guy who needs a lot less of whatever is on his mind. Take a seat," Varric told him idly and, with one hand, folded up the threadbare towel he was using to polish the wood. He thrust both the piece of his crossbow and the cloth at Gavin and, before the elf could protest, said: "Here, if you're going to get handsy with Bianca, you might as well start at the beginning."

Unfortunately, while he was going for annoyed, he totally missed the mark. To his great chagrin, Varric sounded a bit worried, and tried to cover that note of concern by clearing his throat. He could pretend he was worried about Bianca. Probably.

"Small circles, oil is the open jar. Somebody got you running mail again, or are you just really enthusiastic about pacing?"

[slipshot]

Gavin blinked as the sacred items were thrust into his hands, and then flushed with embarrassment, his ears turning red as he looked down at them. He should have known better than to touch Bianca - he hadn't even been thinking about it. He set the piece he had been looking at down, and then carefully followed Varric's instructions - dipping the cloth just a little bit into the oil and then rubbing small circles on the wood - happy to have something to look at that wasn't Varric.

"Ah - no. Just... Trying to find a few people." There's a pause there as he turns the piece of crossbow over to start working the other side. "I'm not particularly good at conversations that actually mean anything, usually, so... Why not get them all over at once?"

[hugeinorlais]

Varric whistled lowly as he retrieved a small multi-tool and started carefully reassembling one of Bianca's four arms. He didn't have to keep a particularly close eye on his work, but after hazarding a short glance at Gavin, he decided that staring at the elf was probably not going to yield a more comfortable conversation.

"Well that sounds exhausting," Varric declared as he worked. A series of tiny, almost musical mechanical noises accompanied his adjusting the springs. "I'd offer to buy you a drink but, after you almost de-pantsed that last guy, I'm thinking we should avoid the stronger stuff."

Varric cocked a brow and, as he wound a gear into place with a quiet click, shot the elf a sly look.

"So, speaking of stripping clothes off people...really, that guy?"

[slipshot]

That made him flush - both the memory of just how drunk he got, as well as the bemusement in Varric's voice.

"Yeah," He said, his voice somewhat quiet. "That guy."

He kept doing the same spot over again, before he realised and shifted his circles somewhere else. He was very distracted, but not enough that he would let any harm come to Bianca. She was just going to be extra shiny.

"I would normally say 'that obvious?' but - well - I'm not sure even a deaf qunari would miss it, when I'm quite that far gone."

[hugeinorlais]

Varric almost laughed--he caught himself, fortunately, but it was a near thing. Gavin was a lot of things but watching him get bashful and quiet? That was new by Varric and no amount of concern could have kept the ridiculously fond, insufferable grin off his face. Gavin, thankfully, was extremely focused on Bianca and didn't see him as he stifled his amusement.

It took Varric a second to choose the proper level of shit to give him.

"Subtlety is overrated," Varric assured him idly and lifted another piece of Bianca's arm assembly. It slotted into place with ease, despite being ridiculously complex, and Varric hummed a bit.

"You swept him off his feet yet or should I have a pointed conversation with him about sweeping you off yours?" Varric asked, his tone laced with a delightful sort of smugness.

"If you're not sure he's equally besotted, well, I can always bring Bianca along for that chat," Varric offered cheerfully as he wound a wicked looking gear into the safety latch on the crossbow arm. "Nothing quite like asking people about their romantic designs while openly carrying a portable siege weapon."

[slipshot]

Gavin laughed despite himself, a low chuckle. "I think I'll spare him that particular heart attack, if it's all the same," He murmured.

"I don't know about sweeping, but - ah - I'm pretty sure there's a mutual something there." If kisses counted for anything. He paused, the cloth stilling in his hand. "No, I am sure. No point beating around the bush. But I ah... well. You know how it is. I'll just go along for the ride for however long it lasts, and hope I don't get assassinated in the meantime."

[hugeinorlais]

"Wierdly, I know exactly how that is," Varric admitted, his tone hovering closer to earnest agreement than jesting. He was silent a moment, caught between a joke, just waiting at the tip of his tongue, and the sinking feeling in the back of his throat. He swallowed silently as he finished putting one of Bianca's arms back on.

Clearly this thing, whatever it was, was new enough that Gavin was just barely willing to label it. That made asking questions difficult...especially the sort of questions Varric wanted to ask. The fact that this human noble had Gavin, Gavin of all people, wound so neatly around his proverbial finger that Gavin was blushing and embarrassed? That...was really too close to Varric's experience for comfort.

Sadly, there was no way to express that without sounding like a doddering old uncle, or something less flattering.

"Hey, I ever tell you about Bianca?"

Varric was a pretty good actor when he needed to be, he even sounded casual to his own ears, but there was nothing casual about that question. He hadn't told Lucky about her, or anyone, and he didn't really plan on sharing the whole thing, but it was the only way to get his point out.