It's not so much living together as it is forced cohabitation. One small motel room under an assumed name in Ostwick. Even Varric's quick tongue had failed him when the Inquisition agent had escorted them into their motel room. The honeymoon suite, the desk clerk had informed them in a nasal monotone. "Tacky" doesn't do the room justice; it's decked out in shades of red and pink. Hearts and lace cover every imaginable surface. Even the chandelier's crystal pendants are heart-shaped. Surprisingly enough, the bed itself isn't heart-shaped, but it makes up for this deficiency by having a vibrate setting.
Cassandra's taking it all very well, Varric considers. There's a vein pounding in her forehead, and a dull flush spreading across her face, but she's accepted their fate with quiet dignity and grace.
"We'll be in contact within the week. The Inquisitor and Lady Montiliyet believe they can smooth over the, ah," the agent pauses delicately, "incident by then. Don't leave the motel room, in the mean time. Everything's going on the Inquisition's bill, and there's an agent one room over."
Varric remains standing stock still in the middle of the room when the agent goes to leave, hesitates in the doorway, and says "Good luck, lovebirds!" in a loud, cheeky voice before shutting the door. It might've been to cement their cover, but Varric resolves to write a stern letter to Nightingale and Ruffles.
Cassandra's somewhere behind him. There's the clink of ice against metal, and then a dull popping noise.
"Is that champagne?" Varric asks, eyebrows raised.
Cassandra drains her glass and tosses Varric a delicate champagne flute with cavalier disregard for its safety.
Outside, it's still light out, but this is an occasion for drinking if there ever was one, so Varric holds his champagne flute out while Cassandra fills it.
Cassandra mutters something with long, round vowels and clipped consonants before clinking their glasses together. She tosses her drink back and glares at the bed, with its heart patterned comforter.
"Could always be worse, Seeker. If we'd really fucked up, Nightingale might've put us in an even uglier motel," Varric says, taking a seat on the bed.
"You can imagine worse than this?" Cassandra says, one dark eyebrow rising up in question.
"Themed sex motel in Lowtown. Had a room devoted to tentacles," he says solemnly.
"I do not want to know how you know this, Varric," She takes a large gulp of her drink.
"Well, no shit-there we were, running from the guard when one of Isabela's friends…" Varric starts, a shit eating grin spreading across his face.
A heart shaped pillow hits him square in the mouth. "Hot Stuff" is embroidered on the pillow's other side.
Cassandra's severe mouth turns up at the corners, just a tiny bit.
"Are you smirking at me, Seeker?" Varric asks, mock-incredulity colouring his voice.
Cassandra's only response is to school her features into bland innocence.
"That's uncanny," Varric says. Champagne bubbles and fizzes its way down his throat, and Cassandra refills his glass. They're already about halfway through the bottle.
Cassandra snorts, and sets her glass down on the little bureau (dark mahogany-tinted wood with red and pink hearts for knobs), fingers nimbly unbuttoning her dark jacket. Beneath it, the slim holster for her gun rests snug against her side, black straps crisscrossing her white shirt. This too comes off, Cassandra checks the safety of her gun before setting it down, and rolling her shoulders. Varric can hear her joints popping from where he sits.
"Knew you were tightly wound, Seeker, but damn," Varric says.
Cassandra favours him with a glare and cracks her neck.
"Andraste's sacred snot. You going to do that the entire time we're here?" Varric asks, unsettled.
"Only if you're good," Cassandra says, before she pops her knuckles too.
"Either pop your joints or sass me, Seeker. My poor heart can't take both," Varric clutches his chest.
Cassandra gives Varric a look that's drier than the desert. Despite that, there's a small smile hiding in the corners of her mouth. It's an interesting thing, Varric thinks, that Cassandra is the more relaxed of the two of them.
Though that might be the champagne's influence.
Drawing his gaze away from where it's settled on Cassandra's face, Varric decides it's high time they investigated the room they're trapped in. For a week. The thought sends a shiver down his spine.
"What are you doing?" Cassandra pushes herself off the bureau and leans against the wall, all long limbs and ruffled hair.
"Compiling a list of assets," Varric answers, rummaging through the bedside table. There's a book that Rivaini recommended, a pair of fuzzy handcuffs, dice, a deck of cards, condoms, and a variety pack of lube. Further inspection reveals that the dice are, in fact, sex dice, and the deck of cards has naked people instead of suits. Tossing it all onto the bed, Varric turns his search to the other bedside table. Silk ties, a ball gag, massage oil, sex flash cards (Varric winces at these), and an assortment of what one can only assume are novelty condoms.
"Maker's breath," Cassandra says through her laughter as Varric lists each item, a bright blush staining her cheeks. Pinched between two fingers is one of the (hopefully) novelty condoms, which asserts that not only is it neon orange and guaranteed to taste like candyfloss, but also a "surefire partner pleaser". For some reason, it has a tassel on the tip.
"It looks like a sock puppet," Varric says, giving the thing a very suspicious look.
Cassandra cackles, which is probably the strangest thing he's ever heard from her. Granted, this is the strangest situation they've ever been in. Stuck in a shitty motel's even shittier honeymoon suite with half a bottle of champagne and a mound of sexy junk of indiscriminate quality. For a week.
There are worse fates, Varric concedes.
The sex toys go back in their drawers, though Varric keeps the cards just in case they need to play a game. Even if they are full of close up shots of genitalia.
On second thought, Varric thinks, maybe not. The cards go back in the drawer too.
Champagne splashes into his glass, and Cassandra pours more into her own, covering a yawn. She sits beside him on the bed, and Varric can see her slowly winding down from exhaustion.
Of course, Varric yawns too. They've been awake for hours; the drive into Ostwick started two days ago, taking a circuitous route from Hunter Fell. It was all entertainingly covert, but tedious nonetheless.
Whatever it was Cassandra murmured before, she says it again, the vowels stretching farther when she yawns in the middle of it. Their glasses chime together, champagne sloshing and bubbling.
"Seeker. Lie down before you fall asleep in your drink," Varric says, gesturing at the heart-bedecked bed.
Of all the glares Cassandra's given him, this one has the least ire behind it. It's far too sleepy-eyed to be angry. She looks ready to tear a strip off him, but when she opens her mouth, another jaw-cracking yawn replaces whatever she was going to say.
The look of consternation on her face is actually a little cute, Varric thinks.
Cassandra hands him her champagne flute, a little smudge of lipstick left on the rim. Pulling one of her long legs up to the bed, she begins unlacing her boots, kicking them off into a corner. Her belt goes next, and then her shirt. When she started undoing the buttons, Varric had averted his eyes, wondering if Cassandra was going to strip down entirely. To his relief (and a vague sense of disappointment, which is weird, and he refuses to think about it), Cassandra has a plain white undershirt on. Drawing herself up against the headboard (the heart motif continues here, along with a ridiculous amount of lace), Cassandra extends a hand for her glass, and Varric obliges her.
It occurs to him that this is the most he's seen the Seeker drink, ever. He'd assumed she didn't drink, or was at least a lightweight, but she's downing champagne like a fashionably disenchanted Orlesian noble.
"Would never have picked you for a champagne woman, Seeker," Varric says.
"Oh?" Cassandra raises an eyebrow at him over her champagne flute. "Should I be drinking nothing but water, or shots of hard liquor?"
Varric studies her for a moment, makes a show of it. "Hard liquor, definitely. Possibly while narrating your own story. Something like 'I walked into the bar-a dive if I ever saw one. Sad souls were scattered to the far corners of the joint, all focused on their own drinks,' while something jazzy plays in the background."
Cassandra snickers.
Noir would suit her, Varric thinks as he unlaced his own shoes. The genre was all about tough people fighting against a corrupt system. He's halfway through composing the story in his head when Cassandra clears her throat behind him.
Varric swings his legs up onto the bed, and from the way Cassandra's looking at him, they're about to have a serious talk.
"You may sleep here, Varric," Cassandra says, regally.
"Gee, thanks," Varric responds. "Here I was worried you were going to make me sleep in the tub."
"I do not mind sharing a bed with you," Cassandra says, looking awkward. "As long as you understand there is no… subtext to that statement."
"Perish the thought," he says dryly.
They sit in silence, until Varric breaks it with: "The bathtub is also heart-shaped."
Cassandra exhales heavily. "I hate this place."
Her eyes are barely open, and Varric plucks the champagne flute from her hand before it can topple onto the comforter. Ugly as it is, it won't be improved by a stain.
"May as well sleep, Seeker," Varric says as Cassandra slides down the headboard and curls up on top of a pile of heart-shaped pillows. Within a few minutes, her breathing evens out and Varric wonders how soon he can tease her about her snoring.
With Cassandra asleep, there's precious little to do in the motel room, so Varric pulls the book (whose cover depicts a windblown couple, mid-swoon) from the drawer and begins to read.
Within a few pages, it's obvious why Rivaini liked the damn thing so much. Smut of the highest degree. The sort of thing that would singe Cassandra's eyebrows off. She considers his writing smutty, when it's nothing more than glorified fluff.
When the words start swimming on the page, Varric marks his place and sets the book aside. The pillows are atrocious, but surprisingly comfortable. The Seeker's soft snores are strangely soothing, and Varric figures he must really be exhausted if sharing a bed with Cassandra Pentaghast relaxes him. He falls asleep to the sound of her breathing.