teapirate:
(art) Of Champions and First Enchanters — Garrett Hawke and Orsino. Orsino doesn’t quite look like himself but Garrett’s got the right idea—that elf sure could use a lot of hugs.
A small HAPPY BIRTHDAY wish gift for raaawrbin! -whose original style and amazing little comics always is a joy to watch :D
Pencils, psCS5, Intuos3, own-made photo textures etc and so on so forth. Quick-link to high-res view here.
i was hit with writer’s block for raaawrbin’s birthday, trying to decide how to write about the pairing, until i saw this lovely piece. happy birthday, raaawrbin!
Hawke knows his way around a healing spell or two, all learned from his father’s hands. At times it’s felt as though they were cast with his father’s hands.
Neither were meant for the task specifically—gravity was their strong suit, and heavy things crashing down again—but Hawke knows stubbornness can often approximate cleverness, and cleverness is all he’s ever known of true success.
He doesn’t call on spirits. He so rarely presses his palms to staunch the spilling of his own blood. It’s just a precaution, something small to stand against everything big.
Father was a collection of those small things. Stitched all together, they were warm.
But Hawke knows the look of a man who doesn’t heal himself—the same as he knows the look of the man in the mirror in the morning, the same effect as a glance over a shard of some enchanted glass-work in Xenon’s shop, one that offers glimpses into personal heritage and legacies and especially pasts.
Hawke also knows how to undo the stiffest of collars and slide free the trickiest of laces—that’s a part of healing—as though the hands he inherited from Father didn’t just pick up the spells they needed but customs and complexities, too, a rogue’s sensibilities hidden behind the staff.
Patchwork. That’s the word for it. Standing beside the palest of skin and the finest of robes, Hawke can’t help but feel like a man made entirely of that patchwork, sewn piece into piece and not quite whole. Collecting others. Needing them to be strong.
‘Remarkable,’ Orsino says, as though he’s come to an exciting page, even if the research here is of a different sort: Hawke’s fingers seeking out pain in the shadows, pain in the gallows.
Now he’s starting to pick up a little of Varric, too, titling things before they’re ever finished.
As though they don’t all do it sometimes.
‘I’ll pretend you were talking about me and try not to let the compliment go to my head,’ Hawke replies, mending that slight, rare bruise on Orsino’s shoulder because it’s so obvious now he won’t do it himself.
‘But there are times,’ Orsino replies, ‘you do not have to pretend.’
‘And this is one of them?’ Hawke asks.
The sleeve slides down Orsino’s arm, Hawke’s breath against the back of his neck, both of them made up of too much but not yet everything.
‘So it is,’ Orsino says.
