Open RP Post

[ombranera]

SFW, NSFW, AU, OU, etc. Drop a prompt like it's hot and let's go!

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beautiful post all for meeeee

[byblow]

[ continued from here ]

"Right, well," Alistair says. "That's what I'm here for."

Taking blows. And delivering unpleasant news and witty one-liners, of course, always. And ducking his head in (his stupid long nose in the way, he hates it) to rest his mouth at the juncture of Zevran's ear and jaw and neck. He doesn't think of Zevran as soft, but he has soft places, unguarded by bone, and Alistair has already decided—over the course of all his brooding and dwelling and stair-tripping—that they're his favorites.

He has a series of brief impulses. Pointing out he didn't think he was Zevran's usual type—but Zevran isn't his, either, and not even because he's a man. Asking again if he's sure. If he'd really prefer this to how they've always been or if he's trying to keep Alistair happy. If he knows that Alistair will try not to be jealous and terrible if he carries on with the socks on the doorknob after this, but it will kill him, so maybe the should talk—

More delays. Nah.

"I love you," he says instead, because he hasn't said it yet. Not like this. He wraps his arm low around Zevran's back again and slips a hand just far enough beneath his shirt to curl against his side. Soft places.

just 4 u

[ombranera]

"Frightening me? Yes, Amora, that is what you are here for." He'd lost a few years watching Alistair fall- Zevran knew well what such a blow could do- had experienced it himself before. Jonas could have him killed for getting Alistair injured and he'd just been coming back around to the idea that perhaps surviving wouldn't be quite so terrible- and up Alistair sat. Breathless and hardly bothered, asking if he was well.

He'd lost the first scrap of his heart that day, even if he didn't think he had anything of him left to give. Even if he didn't know what it was he lost.

Zev tilts his head to the side easily, giving Alistair more room to work with if he chooses to work and it simultaneously is and isn't the usual practiced motion, all enticing sighs and postures and movement. It's...honest. Most of his training is too deeply ingrained for him to ignore but this? The shiver, the soft sigh- that is real. That is for Alistair and Alistair alone. Many have had him- many human men with their fumbling hands and their bruising grip but none of them treated him half so kindly. None of them had the long Therin nose to bump against his jaw an remind him of who this is. None of them simply pressed instead of bit.

Every inch of his body has been held and marked and touched and taken- rarely has it been given so honestly, nor accepted so graciously.

Never has he been nervous.

Alistair would laugh if he brought it up- he has half a mind to just to feel that huff of crackling warmth against his throat when he says three words that drop the bottom out of his world. Dancing around it is one thing? Saying it- he doesn't know how to respond. Can't do anything but press his hands against Alistair's shoulders and take a slow shuddering breath through it. "Like this. Frightening me like this."

[byblow]

Alistair hums, "Hmm?" against his skin, where he is struggling against the urge—not to bite, but to be less chaste. The space left between their chests feels occupied by something fragile and small that could easily be crushed. But though this isn't only lust, that is, definitely, a thing. A part of it. He can smell the oil in Zevran's hair. His is breathing getting deeper without changing pace, his hand shifting against Zevran's side.

Frightening, he said. He's frightened. Alistair lifts his head to check his face, to try to get a measure of that fear.

"It's only me, Zev," he says. His hand wanders higher, to his ribs, before he changes his mind about trying to coax Zevran out of his shirt just yet, if he's feeling unsteady. If he might feel exposed. Alistair shifts back away from him, one hand braced on the bed behind him, and grins. "I was thinking about you earlier today. Not even anything very scandalous, just, ah—anyway, I fell down the stairs. Out in the courtyard, in front of everybody." He's already reaching over his shoulder for the back of his shirt, to pull it off. "Want to see the bruise?"

[ombranera]

The great Zevran Arainai, undone by- well. Not an innocent to be certain, Alistair has had his lovers. He knew the mechanics of this, what went where and how it was done and knew enough about Zevran's own minefield of issues with sex and men and human men and noble men to take care- even if Zevran hadn't at all considered that they might end up like this when he revealed every soft place on him, everywhere not covered by bone. Those same places Alistair is touching now and slowly using to drive him to distraction.

He is here. He is undone. He is afraid for how wrong this went before. How it broke him.

How it'll ruin him to lose this- and it may yet ruin him to keep it. That is his position, as the ruiner, the seducer. To have their positions swapped is as unnerving as it is amusing. He frowns at the murmur, as if 'only Alistair' makes this less. It makes this more to the point of too much and they have not yet removed their trousers. "You fell down the stairs thinking about me?"

Alistair what.

"Exactly what about me caused you to fall down the stairs?" Too worried to be amused and this? This is a poor sign, how his hands slide to lift Alistair's shirt not to tease or touch but to make sure he's unharmed.

Brasca. This is bad.

[byblow]

"Your—Zev. It's nothing."

Exasperated, fond; despite the concern on Zevran's face, Alistair follows through with his plans to pull his shirt off over his head and drop it on the floor. The expanse of faint (truly) purple on his back can only help. Nothing's broken. He's gotten worse injuries from falling out of bed. He twists and bends and turns sideways to display some of it without unseating Zevran from his lap.

"I stopped paying attention and slipped, that's all. It's funny." Now. It's funny now. At the time it was embarrassing and one more injury to stack on top of his self-loathing and wounded heart. But that was hours ago, before Zevran let him kiss him. Now it's fine. "I was thinking about you," he says again, straightening up, but his voice has changed, and he catches one of Zevran's hands to trace the edges of one of his fingers between his own.

[ombranera]

"You fell on the stairs like a fool thinking of me?" That- that does not make sense.

Wait.

Alistair 'found every trap in the room with my face' Therin tripped on the stair, not normal. Blaming it on him? That is new. Zevran twists enough to peer at the bruising, muttering under his breath in Antivan. "What about me had you tripping?"

It could be flirtatious, it could be teasing- but Zevran is nothing but cautiously curious with that. Whatever he thought it- well it could be a compliment or it could be something he needed to change and-

There are few things in this world he might find worth changing for. Alistair? Is one of them.

[byblow]

"Your hands, at that par-tic-u-lar moment," Alistair says, staccato emphasis in place of elaborating on all of the other moments he's nearly walked into doors or dropped something in the last few days. He lifts the hand he's caught to kiss Zevran's knuckles with ridiculous, overdone chivalry and a smile that says he knows it.

But it's what Zevran deserves—not as recompense for all of the hardship, but because he's always deserved it, for being exactly as funny and clever as he thinks he is and kinder and braver than he can see—and it's what he's going to get. His knuckles kissed, then the underside of his wrist, then—

"—Maker. I fell for you," Alistair says against his skin. "I can't believe I missed that opportunity." It is probably for the best that he did. He can only ask Zevran to endure so much before he changes his mind about this whole thing.

[ombranera]

"My hands." Incredulity, thy name is Zevran. What in his hands could drive Alistair to such distraction? For all that they have kissed, for all that he has wanted- reconciling Alistair as a sexual creature is going to take some time. A little less if he continues with such overdone sweetness.

He blushes.

Zevran Aranai, lothario of Antiva City, blushes.

It's sweet- he is not prepared for sweetness and sincerity, for the press of lips so light and undemanding on his hand, his wrist, the words warm against the flutter of his pulse. He can feel the terrible joke before it's spoken. "You are ridiculous."

[byblow]

Alistair nods merrily behind Zevran's wrist, bright-eyed and pleased that Zevran has noticed. He is ridiculous. There's nothing to be frightened of.

The teasing mischief in his smile sharpens for a second when Zevran turns a color Alistair has never seen on him: that's my job, he could say, or you're not so tough. But he really isn't so tough, is the thing. Alistair's face softens again, goes a little overwhelmed on his own behalf; he's never had anything as rare or as nice or as easily damaged as a lapful of Zevran Arainai with his guard down.

He kisses his cheek, where the blush is. He feels like he's been kissing everything in reach, constantly, but he's a little giddy off the fact that he can (without being a bastard or getting his heart broken) and the almost-as-new fact that he wants to. "Your hands," he says again, in belated confirmation, and moves the one he's holding to his own shoulder for safekeeping. "On me." Sheepish. Conscript the boy out of the Chantry— "I'm going to stop trying to flirt with you now."

[ombranera]

Perhaps this is safe enough- it is Alistair after all; the boy that sleeps in stables and wears wet socks and finds every trap with his face and his feet and whines piteously over splinters but shrugs off seeping gutwounds to ask after someone else's sprained ankle. Everything in him is...

It is everything Zevran is afraid of ruining by being him- but if he were going to taint Alistair, to break him, wouldn't that have happened already?

Like touching something fine and silver till the blood on his hands caused it to tarnish. That is his expectation, that is his fear beyond the mere loss. But held like this, looked at like this- he doesn't know what to do. What Alistair wants other than to simply hold him. "I think you are doing quite well."

He tips his head down, easier not to look at him and feel his skin so red and thy aren't even naked yet, Maker, what is wrong with him. "For someone that has no idea what it is they are doing, that is."

[byblow]

"Hey."

Whining, but also quiet. He pushes his nose into Zevran's cheek. It's not entirely unlike a dog trying to tell another to knock it off.

"I have half an idea what I'm doing."

And the half he doesn't know—which is the bottom half, to be specific—he's imagined. He'll figure it out. Surely this will be easier and less terrifying than his other first time, trying to learn what to do with a woman without even having had his own body to practice on—

That might not be what Zevran meant. Alistair falls still, considering, cheek to cheek and exhaling over Zevran's ear.

"I can prove it," he offers.

[ombranera]

"You didn't even know you wanted me until three days ago." It'd been frustrated, earlier. Now it is...wary. Amused and fond, yes, but wary. Before...he'd been angry that Alistair could change on a whim and upend everything, that he waited this long to come around to the idea. Most of Zevran is certain it won't work. Can't work. Alistair feels and feels keenly and cares deeply- he does not question that he thinks he is in love- nor does he question the honesty of his desire. But...

Too often have those that expressed no interest suddenly found themselves intrigued and after a night disillusioned. He does not think he could bear it, should that happen with Alistair.

Organizing these thoughts would be so much easier if Alistair wasn't breathing on his ear. It's faint brushes of warmth that have him shivering. "...how?"

[byblow]

"I'm an idiot," Alistair says, more dismissive than apologetic. He didn't know; he should have; he does now. It's as startling yet utterly predictable as the first snow of winter. The wonder wears off and it's clear it was always going to happen. His hands find the hem of Zevran's shirt again. "And three days is so long."

Not as long as five years. But still: long, when he hasn't been with anyone in years, or felt this way ever, or had any privacy to.

Deal with it.

You know.

How, Zevran asks, and Alistair slides his shirt up to his ribs. "Can I—?"

They could wait. They could cuddle. They could go get something to eat and take a walk. But his voice wavers on just those two words, so he doesn't try adding more.

[byblow]

Alistair doesn't connect the dots until he sees him.

He should have been able to, probably, but in his defense—first of all, the idea is preposterous. Second of all, he's very tired. He has a lot on his mind and several angry, armed people on his trail, and if it weren't for the letter from Zevran in his pocket he might not have paid any attention to the zealots in Haven until Hawke brought them round to his cave to visit.

But he does have the letter, so there is no cave. There's snow and ice and familiar trails, a swirling green wound in the sky, and a very odd look from the guard he talks to at the gate. I'm looking for an elf with, ah, he says, twisting three fingers through the air near his cheek. Fifteen minutes later he's sitting in a room in a chantry waiting for something called a Herald of Andraste, which feels an awful lot like sitting in another room in another chantry and waiting for a Grand Cleric. That never went well for him.

Maybe Zevran has killed someone or other, he thinks, and now Alistair will have to explain that he didn't know and wasn't involved, and they won't believe him and won't care that he's a Warden and he'll hang. Hanging wouldn't be the worst thing that's happened to him this week, but he could still do without, if it's all the same to everyone invol—

The door opens. His inner monologue stops, his eyes snap up. Three seconds to take in the armor, the deferential guard, and the glow; then the dots finally connect. Twenty different things happen on Alistair's face in smudgy overlapping succession before he settles into a baffled, worried half-smile.

"I was going to say, Zev, I'm in a little trouble—" A line in itself unremarkable, but with his plan to lean nonchalantly on something or other while smirking, maybe it would have been charming and scampish, who knows. Instead he's standing up straight, no smirk, only a concerned search of Zevran's face and glowing green hand. "—but it looks like you have me beat."

[ombranera]

It's been- difficult. Go to the Conclave, a contract said, it will be easy money, it said. Zevran went and did as he was paid to do. Made certain one person died and someone else did not. Or- that'd been the plan.

Zevran has never been terribly good at the whole 'planning' business, or at the very least sticking to them. Ten years to improve a skill he never had in the first place and while he is past the oldest 'they ambushed us, come quick' actual ambush plan he is no military mastermind. Or even assassin mastermind. Something went wrong, he cannot recall what and now...he sympathizes keenly with everything Alistair and the Warden went through ten years ago. Suddenly he is no longer cracking witty jokes from the side but the one to which witty jokes are cracked.

Occasionally they are even funny.

An army of the faithful and he is as a devout Andrastian as an Antivan possibly could be (highly) while being an assassin as well (moderately). He needed help. So- he wrote the one person he could think of, and well. He'd not written Alistair since he told him "I'm off to this Conclave on a job, I will write back when I'm done".

And then three months went by.

But he remembered, wrote, gathered his very own merry band of misfits and this much? he knew how to do. Befriend them all (or at least bribe them into liking him), run every errand, do every favor. Having one person he actually trusted and cared for on hand to speak to without the oppressive weight of being Thedas' Last Hope is not so much to ask, is it?

"I thought as much." He lifts his hand, the glowing one, and waves. If Alistair cannot manage the humor, Maker knows that Zevran can. "I apologize for not writing sooner. My last job became terribly...complicated in short order."

[byblow]

"Apparently," Alistair says, doing Eyebrow Thing #29, which means I don't see how you can be so calm about this but I'm not going to panic and look ridiculous in comparison.

He's heard things. Not many things, busy ferreting after corrupt Wardens and red lyrium and poking his fingers into the wasps' nest of inprisoned darkspawn magisters and their purported deaths, but—things. Reconciling the Herald of Andraste with Zevran will take him a few minutes (or hours or days), and in the meantime he looks at the guard in the doorway with obvious uncertainty, unsure whether Zevran is being guarded like a prisoner or guarded like a dignitary.

"Are you all right?"

[ombranera]

To which Alistair earns Eyebrow and Smirk to the 6th degree with a chuckle in G minor. Or: I am slowly going out of my mind but, you know, never let them see you sweat. Unless it's sexy sweat. The guards are lost somewhere between the eyebrow thing and the smirk and he would have thought they'd become acquainted with his particular brand of humor- but alas, not just yet.

"What, this?" Zevran gestures in a way that clearly means shoo but does not actually look like he's attempting to shoo the guard away. They even leave in a timely fashion! Leliana will likely be cross with him but at this point, when isn't she? "I am fine. A little more magical than when we last spoke, but well enough. And you?"

[byblow]

When the guards go, Alistair's shoulders relax, but he hasn't had time to smile fully before Zevran asks. His face tightens, and he doesn't answer. He doesn't dream he's fooling anyone, but there are more important things. Zev's hand is glowing. Alistair holds his own, non-glowing hand out with an air of expectation—give him that—and belatedly finishes smiling, at half force.

"Does it hurt?"

[ombranera]

"If I say yes will you kiss it better?" Drawling and teasing, scrabbling for whatever threads of normal are left. Leliana cold and determined, he suddenly the hero- Alistair must be the same. Or at the very least he must be similar enough that Zevran can look at the world without screaming. Bu no; he's tired, he's not sleeping well, Zevran remembers that haunted look.

So he teases. He tries, offering Alistair his glowing hand.

[byblow]

For his effort Zevran gets a brighter smile, sharper, and a burst of an exhale that might have elevated to a laugh under better circumstances. The hand, Alistair takes like a curious object, something fished off of a corpse or out of a crevice in a cave; he bends his head to examine it, then pokes the center of the glow with his thumb and the look of a man who is half expecting an explosion.

None comes, and Alistair isn't sucked through a sudden vortex into the Fade, and Zevran—presumably—does not die.

"Huh," he says, and looks up from Zevran's palm to his face. "Andraste herself, was it?"

[ombranera]

There's the usual dull ache that radiates from palm to elbow- not quite so intense that he needs to grind his teeth against it but not so insubstantial the subtle tells Alistair might remember are entirely absent. An edge to his smile, a stillness to his hand, a slow, measured exhale. He won't tell Alistair to let go, won't make a fuss. "I honestly could not remember. It makes for a marvelous nightlight, however."

[byblow]

"If you find eerie green light soothing, sure," Alistair says. He does read the signs, does relinquish the hand—with an air of apology, for the poking, but not too much of one. He won't fuss. Not so blatantly, at least. After a moment he decides, "This would happen to you."

Wrong place, wrong time, big names and luck that could either be very good or very bad depending on the angle it's viewed from. It fits right in with his other stories, really, even if the scope is a bit more—monumental. Maybe Zevran will wind up with a statue of his own somewhere. Maybe. They might round the ears off.

He puts his hand on Zevran's shoulder—the other one, the one not attached to anything that glows, subtle fussing—to give it a bracing squeeze. "So," he says, "can you protect me, if I need it, or should I be asking someone else?"

[ombranera]

Zevran is momentarily caught offguard by that- and has his mouth open to ask 'what do you mean' before the meaning sinks in and he simply must laugh. Louder, realer- far more honest for the thready edge of hysteria that coils through the mass of it, rough and weary and slightly helpless before he drags himself back to some somber measure of composure. Even then? It does not laugh. "You know, now that I think of it? I cannot imagine anyone else having this sort of luck."

Terrible luck. To be Spared, to drive out the Crows, to survive against all odds. And now he is the one making the difficult choices.

Impossible ones.

It'd been easier when Jonas made them, but Jonas is not here. Zevran slips a hand up to squeeze Alistair's wrist, smile less pained. "Have I not always kept an eye on your flank, Alistair?"

[byblow]

Alistair doesn't wiggle his eyebrows, because that would require energy and levity and a comfort for that sort of joking that he doesn't currently possess, but he does quirk them up, just once, as if to convey that the possibility of wiggling has been considered. "You are good at that," he says. "I've been declared a traitor and so on. Again. I think I managed to lose the Wardens who were following me—I know these mountains better than they do—but if they find out I'm here, I'm."

In trouble. But not nearly as much trouble as Zevran seems to be in. That's almost comforting.

[ombranera]

"Again? Whatever have you done this time- eat the Wardens out of house and home?" It had to be serious, whatever it is. Wardens do not often call one another traitor- but they have all apparently gone missing.

Except for Alistair.

Something else to add to his increasing pile of everyone else's problems only he can solve. Maker's breath, when will it end?

"If they come for you, they will not find you. I am not about to hand you off to just anyone, especially when we've got so much to catch up on."