foxghost asked: Sebastian vael/Bianca, drink me

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Characters/Pairing: Sebastian + Bianca
Rating: G
Word Count: 1,500
Prompt: Drink Me: one character toasts another.
Summary: Sebastian's not quite sure how this happened, but now that he's here, he's going to see this through.

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It's just him, a single squat candle melting into itself in the center of the table, and the crossbow.

Sebastian knows he's treading into dangerous territory being here like this, in silence, in secrecy. Varric is less than a stone's throw away, leading his bi-weekly writing workshop in the Hanged Man's noisy main room, and any moment might bring the dwarf back up the stairs for his pen-nibs or spare vellum or a thousand things that a storyteller would need to instruct others in the craft. But there's another layer of danger here too, not something he can put his hands on but a threat as deadly as any pair of blades to the back.

It's foolish. Sebastian knows it's foolish. But he's been in Kirkwall too long and he's read too much of Varric's writing, and despite its foolishness he knows that sometimes Hawke's jobs wrap up a little too neatly; that not all of Varric's tales are exaggerated for publication; that extraordinary things sometimes happen when a power he cannot understand demands it.

Which is, after all, why he's here in Varric's suite, a pair of Varric's tumblers in one hand and a round bottle of pale wine in the other, sinking into a low chair set opposite a crossbow as if it is a normal, expected thing to do.

"What do you mean you've never bought her a drink?" comes Isabela's voice in his head again, strident and scandalized as he's never heard her before, and Sebastian sighs as he sets the tumblers on the table with a hollow thunk.

They'd been out on the Coast on one of Hawke's herb-gathering expeditions, and without the immediate threat of raiders or slavers flinging arrows at them from on high they'd actually managed to carry on an entire, pleasantly uninterrupted conversation. At least, until Sebastian had mentioned that one of Bianca's bolts had nicked his ear in the last battle, and Isabela, Hawke, and Fenris alike had stopped midstep to stare at him.

And he thought Isabela had been joking about the drinks. But when he'd asked Hawke had nodded and even Fenris had coughed into his fist and turned away, and then Isabela had cocked her hip and grinned and told him that considering his history, he ought to have known to court a lady properly before expecting her favor in battle. If it had been the one instance he would have ignored the thought completely—but with Isabela's lifted eyebrow had come other memories, other incidents, his shoulder clipped with a bolt in flight, his hair rustled by something more than an errant breeze. Too many for coincidence.

So here he is, armor forgone in the favor of dark clothes better-suited for climbing tavern walls, plying another man's crossbow with alcohol in the middle of the night.

"Well," he says, popping the cork from the bottle of wine. "Bianca."

The crossbow, predictably, makes no response. Instead it lies there where it has been placed on the table, balanced on one outstretched arm, tipped towards him as if in expectation.

Sebastian pours a finger of wine into each tumbler, then—almost without hesitation—pushes one of them across the table. It catches on one of the planked sections where the wood is uneven and the wine sloshes up the inside of the glass. "My apologies," Sebastian murmurs out of habit, and shakes his head at himself as he places the glass just inside the curve of Bianca's reach. The lone, stubby candle's light catches along the ripples of wine, circling gold streaks until the almond-pale surface smoothes out again, settles.

She really is a magnificent weapon, Sebastian thinks, leaning back in his chair, all sleek lines and polished wood and just the right arrangement of grooves and strings. Even the mechanical bits of which he normally disapproves have their own sort of shine that makes them more than metal, more than gears and steel shafts: something else, something—elegant. Something beautiful.

"Bianca," he says again; then he adds, because it seems right, "Lady." In Starkhaven he would have bowed over her hand; here, he settles for a respectful inclination of his head. His head. For a crossbow.

He is not nearly drunk enough for this.

He takes a sip—gulp, really, if he's honest with himself—of wine, then replaces the glass on the table. A raucous cry echoes up from downstairs and Sebastian glances to the door, tensing, but there is no subsequent patter of dwarven feet on the stairs, no cheerful tenor heralding his imminent demise.

"Maker preserve me," he says to himself, and his fingers tighten around the glass. "I will have done with this. Lady," he adds, louder. "I hope you'll forgive my rudeness for not coming to you earlier. It was an oversight on my part to deny you the courtesy of a proper introduction."

As he expects, Bianca says nothing. But for a split-second light gleams on her untensed string and he thinks, startled, that it—she—it is pleased—and then, abruptly, the moment is gone again.

"That is," he continues awkwardly, unsettled, "we have fought together now for some years. And it has been—brought to my attention, as it were, that I have long owed you recognition for your efforts in battle. I consider my own longbow a worthy partner in my efforts, and though he lacks your—character, I would be displeased to find him—it—disparaged as a simple tool bent to the strength of my arm."

Sebastian takes another sip and leans forward, caught up in his own thoughts. "You truly are a marvel," he says to Bianca, and means it. "I think that even if the greatest archer in the world took hold of you, and the greatest dwarven smith in the world tuned your springs to his liking, no bolt would ever fly as true for him as they do for Varric."

There is definitely a glib star-flash along her string this time, but Sebastian knows even as he says it that it is true. "There is something to be said for trust in one's partner, whether or not that partner is… Hm. Vocal."

There is a pause, and Sebastian lifts his glass to his lips. Wood cannot creak amusedly, he tells himself. A gear cannot tighten with a sound like a snicker without a hand to twist it.

Candlelight winks along Bianca's string again, and this time it chases all the way down her polished oaken shaft to twinkle at the molded, well-used grip.

"Oh, no," Sebastian says hurriedly. "I couldn't dare. I mentioned the cocking ring once and learned my lesson swiftly enough—you will not ensnare me in such a trap again."

He blinks. Are her arms—flexing?

Sebastian stands, planting both hands on either side of his glass, and is pleased to find the table both solid and thoroughly, reassuringly impassive. "Good night, Lady," he says, looking everywhere but at the temptress lying so innocently across from him. "Bianca. It was a pleasure. Truly, we must meet again soon—or rather, Varric ought to bring you by. The Chantry, I mean. If you like."

Then—footsteps. Varric's footsteps, too, because of course Varric is coming, because of course Sebastian wants nothing more than to get away unseen after a dalliance with another man's crossbow. But he is not without his own skills, and before the key finishes turning in the lock Sebastian is out the window, sure-footed and silent despite his haste, sequestered in the shadows gathered in the alley below.

"Well," comes Varric's voice above him, and Sebastian flattens himself further against the wall. "That went surprisingly well, considering how few of them had ever heard of iambic pentam—"

There is a sudden, awful silence, and Sebastian remembers with painful clarity the two tumblers laid out on the table, the rounded bottle of sacramental wine pilfered from the Chantry's stores at the last minute.

"Bianca," Varric says then, his voice at once wry and terrifyingly precise, as if its owner meant to pitch it towards any listening ears below his window. "You've been courting again. I thought we handled this after the last few times Rivaini came calling while I was out."

Silence—and the pointed creak of a tightening string. Sebastian doesn't think it's Bianca's will at work this time. "Damnation," he breathes, leaning his head back against the brick; he sidles sideways, pulling the whole of his training to the soles of his feet, his hands, the insistent weight of stealth. Varric's head appears at the window—but by then Sebastian is free, safe in the dubious sanctuary of Lowtown's streets proper, and despite the gravity of the situation he cannot help his smile.

A lady courted—and a lady's favor given. "Your servant," he murmurs, bowing from the waist in her direction; then he throws his cloak back over his shoulders and, thinking of laughter caught along a bowstring, Sebastian sets off into the night.