#bapei | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

squaretablehold · 2 years

Text

what if I posted the end of a fic idea without writing the beginning or the middle.... haha wouldn't that be ridiculous???... hahahaha....Unless. (varré/omc like, twice and neither ends well)

So the background to this is there's been a long standing tension between Varré and Juzan where Juzan thinks Varré could be a great doctor and good man if he'd just stop fucking killing people, and Varré has a crush on Juzan because he's equated love and connection with suffering and Juzan's fucking miserable all the time cause he hates being a white mask.

But then Varré meets a runner named Linden and Linden falls hard for Varré and starts trying to woo him, and Varré's confused by this cause Linden's not dying, why would he want to be around a war surgeon? But they get closer and right as Varré thinks this might be something real Linden fucking dies.

Varré breaks down about it and doesn't really know why and this scene is Juzan coming to comfort him because he's a decent friend.

"You've never lost anyone before have you." Juzan states.

"Don't be ridiculous," Varré snaps, "of course I've lost patients. I'm hardly perfect. Your flattery in this moment is perverse!" Varré sniffles and wipes his nose on the back of his glove as if to drive the point home, shooting Juzan a glare but doing nothing to pull away. The other surgeon lets out a sigh that sounds suspiciously close to a laugh.

"No, I mean you've never lost a loved one before." At that Varré freezes. Love? Did he love Linden? Is that why it feels like someone's carved his heart out and replaced it with caltrops? Juzan's still rubbing soothing circles into his back like he hasn't just shattered Varré's world and the warmth of his hand isn't the only thing stopping him from plummeting into the sky.

"No." Varré feels himself say. "I haven't."

Juzan lets out a long breath, and shifts closer on the cot, wrapping his arm around Varré and pulling him into a partial embrace. The war surgeon hesitates for just a moment before turning and burying his face against Juzan's shoulder. He winds his arms around his squadmate and clings, willing himself not to start weeping again but failing utterly.

"When I was eleven years old my baby sister froze to death."

Varré stills, shocked out of his stifled sobs by the sudden and terrible fact about himself Juzan's just shared.

"That's horrible," Varré mutters, not wanting to pull away but feeling like he ought to.

"Yeah, I thought the whole world was ending at the time, but then when I was thirteen both my uncle and my older brother got drafted into the army. We'd get the courtesy wood ash for them one after another the next year." Juzan continues softly, like it's a secret he doesn't know how to share.

"Wood ash?"

"It's what they send when they can't be bothered to find a body or their actual ashes," Juzan's typical derisive tone creeps back, and Varré can almost see the angry frown. Now he does pull away.

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because," Juzan tilts Varré's chin to catch his eyes from where they'd fallen to his lap, "I want you to know that you'll survive this. I know it doesn't feel like it, but you will, and it will get easier. The pain fades. Not all the way, but it does. What's left is how you hold onto them, even though they're gone." Juzan smiles then, one of his few genuine smiles, but it's tinged with a precious agony that steals Varré's breath away. It glitters in his eyes like candlelight over dark water, deep and beautiful and treasured in the other surgeon's heart. And Juzan offers it to Varré as a balm for his own, while smiling at him like he's worth it, like he makes it better.

Varré doesn't think as he surges forward to capture that smile in a kiss and drink in their shared pain, all he knows is that he wants this. This is what he knows, he knows pain, he knows agony, and he knows how to drown it in tenderness. He didn't know he'd loved Linden until it was too late, but when Juzan offered up his wounded heart bid Varré partake to mend the shreds of his own he knew he loved - loves - Juzan and all his dazzling pain.

Varré's first kiss will always belong to a dead man, but he thinks that maybe his second is even sweeter for knowing what to expect, for knowing to expect it. Or it would be, if Juzan wasn't pulling back and grabbing Varré by the shoulders to keep him at bay.

The two surgeons stare at each other, each one's mouth slightly parted. Varré's in horror at what this could mean, and Juzan's in a flustered shock. Ice creeps up Varré's spine as every damning second creeps by, his heart thunders like the hooves of a frightened animal and he has the strangest urge to run far away from how his friend's shock is turning into a pitious scrutiny.

It's Juzan that speaks first, "Don't- don't do this Varré."

"I-I-, " Varré stammers, his usually silver tongue turned leaden in his mouth.

"This isn't a good idea. You just lost Linden, you can't just…" Juzan heaves a sigh and drags his hands down his face. Released from his hold, Varré has to fight the urge to lean forward, his mind screaming that he has to fix this somehow.

"You're hurting Varré I know, but don't use me as wound dressing. It isn't fair to either of us."

"That's not what this is!" Varré insists, "I wasn't even sure I loved Linden until he died, but you…" Varré goes to grab Juzan's hand but stops when it flinches away. Something gnawing, cold, and ugly starts chewing its way through the pit of Varré's stomach, something with words he doesn't want to hear.

"I felt this way before I even met Linden," Varré whispers, watching Juzan's hand because he can't bare to see the look on his face. It's a lie but it feels truer than anything he's ever known. How had he ever not loved like this? How could something that seems to flow through every part of him as surely as his blood have ever not existed? It's impossible.

"Even if I believed you, I don't- I can't…" Juzan huffs a breath as he folds over and buries his hands in his hair. He grips it in the way Varré knows means he's struggling terribly and his heart leaps to soothe even as it aches and cracks apart all over again at the only thing Juzan could mean.

"Do you not feel the same for me?" The smallness of Varré's voice surprises him. He thought it'd be louder, more tremulous, reflect some of the howling desperation that's screaming through him. He's not sure what he expects to see when Juzan looks up at him but it's certainly not a guilty sort of pain that makes his surely masochistic little heart flip in his chest.

"I'm sorry. I could. I think I could, but not now, not like this. Not as a white mask."

And with that admission Juzan might as well have shoved Varré backwards off a cliff for how everything tumbles around him. He can't breath for the wind rushing in his ears even as he's frozen in place.

It takes a moment for what Juzan said to sink in, and when it does Varré's shock turns to anger.

"Oh? So you could love me if I wasn't what I am?" He bites out the question and relishes Juzan's shocked expression.

"That's not what I m-" Juzan cuts himself off, the realization that Varré's misinterpretation of his words rings just as true playing dizzily across his face.

"Fuck, Varré, don't take that the wrong way."

"And how should I take it? I was raised to be a war surgeon all my life, so if you find that distasteful you may as well pull out your dagger and start carving my face off yourself." His accusative and gruesome comparison fails to elicit Varré's desired reaction from Juzan. Instead the other surgeon takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, and speaks in a carefully gentle tone.

"You're angry cause you're hurting, and you're misunderstanding me."

Somehow the attempt at patience and understanding from the normally abrasive man only riles Varré up further.

"I understand perfectly! You can't do what you must for the good of the army and insist on torturing your patients as if that'd make your hands any less bloody. You're a failure of a war surgeon and instead of facing the truth you've convinced yourself we're all evil, unlovable, wretches. Is that it, hm?" Varré isn't sure when he leapt to his feet to try and tower over Juzan, but he only realizes it when the other man glares up at him from his seat on the cot. There's a familiar hatred there that makes Varré's blood run cold. He's pushed too far this time hasn't he, bringing up their disagreements as doctors.

"Fuck off, Varré," Juzan huffs as he grabs his mask and stands. He heads for the exit, but Varré catches him by the arm as he passes.

"Where are you going? We're not done here!" His voice cracks on the last word, that missing desperation from earlier finally making itself known.

"We are." Juzan states as he wrenches his arm from Varré's grasp and puts on his mask, shattering any intimacy that might have remained between them, "I have patients."

He says it like an accusation, an indictment of Varré not having patients to tend to, and that twists whatever knife had seemingly found its way into Varré's gut. He stands there alone in the tent unsure of where to go from here. Linden is dead, and Juzan rejected him. Nobody loves a white mask it seems, a bloody killer in the guise of an angel. No one can stomach it, they're not meant to. A killer is only loved when life is too painful to continue, and so Varré must face his life without. He must snach bits and pieces where he can, and eek out a heart on the fringes with his own kind. He tries to tell himself he can be content with that again, as he once thought he was. But after knowing the warmth of love, his mask feels far too cold against his lips.

#varré #varre #white mask varre #juzan the former white mask #wip fic #the amount of back and forth tension and worldbuilding that lives in my brain for this is stupid #i researched medieval military ranks and communication systems for it #also some people make ocs to ship them with canon characters for fun and wishfufillment #i do it for character development angst and yearning #i doubt I'll ever actually write this whole thing out but enjoy suffering premoghwyn varré anyway #i gave him TWO potential boyfriends and then yoinked them away because this is frOMSOFT BAPEY!!!#don't ask who linden is #he's generic leyndellian solider number 4 who just so happened to also be a varré enjoyer #im posting this now before i get to embarrassed and then i'm going to pass out and not think about it until tomorrow

11 notes · View notes