Anders decided that getting drunk probably was the right response to the situation, Justice or no Justice. Come to think of it, in some ways there really was no justice to this situation.
Justice failed to find the humor in that thought, but Anders also decided that was Justice's problem for the night, not his. Which of course ignored the fact that Justice's problems were his problems and vice-versa.
"Why," he asked Hawke in the careful tones of a man trying not to shout, "are they here?"
Hawke, looking as shameless as always, moved aside to let the others into the room. "Merrill is here for a magical second opinion and Aveline is a guard. She knows a thing or two about shackles."
"And Sebastian?" Anders asked, still not shouting, no matter how much he wanted to.
"Oh, Sebastian?" Hawke said as though he'd just remembered the man. "He's just here because this is so bloody funny."
Isabela burst into laughter, which Anders expected, but Lista also chuckled, although she was still apparently focused on dripping various things on the chain.
"I'm going to kill him," Anders said through clenched teeth.
"Not if I kill him first," Fenris growled.
"Grow a sense of humor," Hawke advised. "Because you're going to be hearing about this for years."
Varric poured the rest of the wine into Anders' and Fenris' glasses. "Drink up before either of you gets glowy."
"I've had enough," Anders said stubbornly.
"I say drink it," Lista advised. "Because it looks like I'll be here a while."
Aveline and Merrill both came to get a closer look at the cuffs and chain while Sebastian hung back at the door with Hawke, grinning at Anders and Fenris. He said something to Hawke that made the man laugh and call Isabela over.
"Did you two really get shackled together in the Black Emporium," Aveline asked, leaning over to examine the cuff on Fenris' wrist.
While Fenris explained the incident that led up to their being chained together, Merrill circled around to see Anders' cuff. She ended up climbing up onto the table to examine it, since the corner where the men were sitting was getting crowded. She stretched out on the tabletop on her stomach and scooted close to get a good look.
"Ooh, can I touch it? What does it feel like?"
"No, you may not touch it," Anders said, noting from this corner of his eye that Fenris was watching her with a fierce glower. "And it feels like a shackle. After all my run-ins with templars, I'm a bit of a connoisseur."
"But Hawke brought me here to look at it," Merrill protested.
"You're looking. Lista is testing, and Aveline and Fenris are glowering. That's enough."
She sighed and reached out to hover her fingers over the metal. Anders could feel the faint touch of her magic and pushed her hand away. "I said no!"
"I wasn't touching it!" she said reproachfully.
"Touching it with magic counts," Anders snapped. "Just look at the runes if you have to be here, but keep your fingers and your magic to yourself."
"Drink your wine, Blondie," Varric advised. "Before I have Aveline hold you down and we pour it down your throat."
"You want to leave me attached to a drunk abom—" Fenris began, then stopped, realizing that Lista was still there. "Abominable whiner," he finished.
Anders was terribly tempted to just pour the wine on Fenris, but some old impulse from the man he had once been rose to the surface. "I'll drink when you drink. As much as you drink and I'll drink you under the table."
Justice clamored in his head. Bad idea. Terrible idea. Foolish and self-indulgent and—
And Void take it, he was chained to Fenris and no work for the cause of mage rights was going to get done until he was unchained.
He picked up his glass and gave Fenris a hard stare. "Unless the big bad warrior thinks he can't outdrink a skinny mage."
"This calls for strip diamondback," Isabela called.
Fenris and Anders both said, "No," and drained their glasses. Apparently it was one word they could both agree on.
• • •
Two bottles of wine later, Lista pronounced the metal beyond her experience.
"Sorry boys, you've got a real mystery on your hands. Even starmetal reacts to this one." She tapped the last bottle she had taken out of its own heavily padded case. She had used it carefully, directing Anders and Fenris to move as far away from each other as possible while she dripped a tiny drop of liquid onto the chain. When it had done nothing but sit there, she had washed it down with another liquid that had released a vapor that reminded Anders far too much of the reek of spider guts.
"What is it?" Anders asked.
"Family secret. We dwarves have a lot of them."
"Ain't that the truth," Varric agreed mournfully. "She won't even tell me her full name."
"And I'm not going to," she said as she packed away all the bottles she had pulled out. "Trust me, it's better as a secret."
She patted Anders and Fenris on the shoulder when she finished and hefted her case. "If you get the cuffs off, I'll buy them from you. Varric knows how to get hold of me. Until then, he owes me for my time and supplies."
"You know I'm good for it," Varric said as he came around the table to escort her to the door.
"And you know I'll have your nuts in a box if you don't pay me by the next Merchant's Guild meeting," she said sweetly.
"Bring her by more often," Isabela said.
"I think I like her," Aveline agreed.
Varric grimaced and made a gesture as though to protect the anatomy in question. "Ancestors save me from castrating women."
While he escorted her out to the tavern's front door, Anders came to an extremely unfortunate wine-related realization: "I have to piss."
"I did not need to know that," Fenris said.
Anders rubbed his forehead. "Yes you did, because you have to come along unless you want me pissing on your toes."
They soon discovered that it was rather awkward making use of the Hanged Man's privies with someone unavoidably two feet away at most. Especially when it came to simply getting his trousers open and down enough to take care of business.
"We have got to get these cuffs off," he muttered while Fenris kept his back discreetly turned.
"Would you care to inform me of another obvious fact?" Fenris asked. "Perhaps I have forgotten I am an elf, for instance?"
Isabela was sprawled across Hawke's lap when they returned. "Was it good for you?" she asked, leering.
"Shut up and give me the wine."
• • •
He woke in the morning sprawled under Varric's conference table with a full bladder, a foul taste in his mouth, vague recollections of telling stories of his various escapes from the Circle Tower, and a sleeping elf using his left arm as a pillow.
Shit.
He tried to ease his arm out from under Fenris' head without waking him. It wasn't so much out of consideration as out of a wish not to have Fenris tear his heart out in his sleep. That would just be the capper for a morning that was already shaping up badly.
Fenris snapped his eyes open as soon as Anders moved.
"No fisting thing," Anders said quickly. "I just wanted to move before you started cuddling."
"There will be no cuddling," Fenris almost growled.
"Obviously not," Anders retorted. "But there will be a trip to the privy, a glass of something other than water, and who knows, I might vomit. How about you?"
"I am not some fainting flower," Fenris said and this time he did growl.
Anders snorted. "You passed out before I did."
"I did not."
"You did. I remember. Merrill and I talked about—" He cut that off right there. They had talked about whether Fenris ever got tired of wearing that armor and how either of them was going to get out of his clothes to get cleaned up while wearing a manacle strung between them.
The conversation had drunkenly wandered into naked territory and he was not about to tell Fenris about that. "—halla," he finished lamely.
"That will teach you not to drink with a Gray Warden." Anders managed a tired smirk. "Our stamina is multi-faceted."
Fenris snorted, but he crawled out from under the table with Anders, although when he stretched his arms over his head to work the kinks out of his back after a night on the floor, Anders was unwillingly brought along for the ride.
There was a blanket-covered lump on the bed that Anders assumed was Varric, while Merrill was curled up, fully dressed at the foot of the bed. Anders blearily remembered that she had drunk more wine than she was accustomed to as well. Aveline had probably returned to the barracks, and if Anders knew Hawke, he was in Isabela's room down the hall.
As for Sebastian, Anders thought he remembered the man eventually excusing himself when he was the only sober person in the room. Coincidentally around the time Isabela suggested they play "I never."
Anders spotted a piece of paper stuck to the spikes of Fenris' gardbrace and plucked it off. The first thing to catch his eyes was a limerick:
There once was a mage from the Anderfels
Who practiced his lubrication spells
The magical hanky panky
Makes the glowy elf less cranky
Because Anders summons slippery gels
He recognized the handwriting. "Isabela."
The page also had some crude drawings of him and Fenris doing… He set the page on fire with a thought and dropped it on the table to finish burning. See if he treated her the next time she started itching.
"What was that?" Fenris asked.
"Friend fiction," Anders said, because it was easier than describing the drawings.
The two words were enough. "Isabela."
Anders nodded. "Exactly."
When they returned from the privy, Varric was still asleep but Merrill was awake and looking cheerier than anyone had any right to be on a hungover morning.
"Good morning!" she called, earning glares from both Anders and Fenris before they sat. "Oh, sorry, I forgot. I'll be quieter."
She settled into a chair on the opposite side of the table from the pair. "Are you still going to do it?"
"Do what?" Anders asked.
Merrill pulled her feet off the floor and tucked them under herself. "Go see Bethany. We talked about it, remember? After you let me finally get a proper look at the manacles? You do remember, don't you?"
His skin crawled to think of Merrill actually touching him and the manacles. For all that he was technically an abomination, he still could not abide even the idea of blood magic. What he had done was helping a friend. What she did was consorting with demons.
"Just tell me again."
"We were talking about the cuffs and you let me test them with my magic. I couldn't do anything and we were talking about other mages who might know more. Hawke came by and said that maybe Bethany would know someone in the Circle and you and Fenris said that would be fine. Do you remember that?"
She leaned toward them. "Did you drink too much last night?"
"Yes, Merrill," Anders said with a sigh. "I drank too much last night. We all drank too much last night."
"I didn't," she said cheerily. "And neither did Sebastian. I don't know why he didn't stay for the game. I never have to drink. Well, almost never. It really wasn't fair for you to say 'I've never made a deal with a demon.'"
"Do we have to start that fight again," Varric said wearily, still completely covered in blankets. "Because it gave me a headache last night; this morning it might make me have Bianca finish the fight."