ombranera | Open RP Post

"I have, here, an obscenely comfortable bed that I tire of sleeping in alone." Dorian and Bull had never been up here. Too much risk of seeing them walk out, too much tension in their shoulders. Zevran, himself, never truly liked spending the night with either of them if he could help it.

They did not need the additional scrutiny that came with his favor.

But that Alistair has his favor is well known and documented. What further harm could there be in this? "Perhaps next time."

"Next time," Alistair repeats. As if he'd actually make Zevran sleep in the hay. He might be able to find a way to make rolling in the hay something slightly better than just itchy and unappealing, but sleeping, when there is that obscenely comfortable bed to consider—

Anyway, mostly he just likes the words. And he likes Zevran's hand in his, but he lets go of it, finally, to get both arms around him.

"How long," he says, haltingly—"I mean, when—you don't have to tell me."

"How long?" Zevran raises his brows, smirk growing wide and wicked. "You've seen me naked, Alistair, you know perfectly well how long."

Oh he means the sentiment.

That is harder still. "How long have you felt this way? Is this why you tried to have sex with 'Your Highness' man?"

Alistair's face does a thing where he's trying to glare but also struggling not to smile, so everything goes a bit crinkly and grimace-y, and he bends one finger to poke Zevran in the back, not what I meant and now he's thinking of him naked and still experiencing that brief flare of guilt before he realizes he probably has permission. Most likely. Under the circumstances.

"—yyyes," he says, with some reluctance. The blushing shifts toward a deeper red. He's not usually one for using people. The only saving grace is that he didn't go through with it. "It wasn't his fault. I thought I was going to do something stupid if I didn't... And I didn't. So here I am, doing something stupid."

Good-stupid, though, probably. His smile comes back.

"I think this is one of the smarter things you have done, Alistair. Giving into the inevitable allure that is my charm." That hadn't felt inevitable until, well. This precise moment. He noses along Alistair's jaw because he can, drags his lips to press against Alistair's- again, because he can and this idle, meandering affection that goes nowhere and needs to go nowhere...

It's wonderful. To have this with someone he trusts.

"If you meant to ask how long I have wanted you? From the first moment I looked up with blood in my teeth. I have a soft spot for gingers with distinguished noses."

"Mm, it's good for something after all."

He nudges his nose against Zevran's, which is charming without being half so ridiculous. That wasn't really what he was asking, but it's all right. His hand on Alistair's wrist and that quiet, hesitant voice were enough vulnerability for one day.

"I think you'd have broken me, back then. Not in any good way. But you're right. I was always going to end up here." Like being caught in a force mage's pull, except instead of magic it's humor and heart and Zevran's head against his chest at night. "I have a soft spot for heroes."

Zevran nudges back, smiling in a way that is more felt than seen. Every word brushing against his lips and he is content with this distance. They can close it whenever they like. Why rush?

The hand, the Calling, that is why. But this is as new as it is familiar and he does not wish to spoil it by being overeager.

"How long have you...?" He closes the distance, lip to lip, chaste and light before pulling away enough to look Alistair in the eye. "Since Haven?"

Alistair hesitates—because if he's trying to mark a start, there's the moment in the caves in the Western Approach when he admitted what he wanted, or the moment in the stables when imagining life in Rivain meant imagining the back of Zevran's neck—but then he nods. Barely. He doesn't want to put out Zevran's eye with his Distinguished Nose.

"I was going to kiss you," he says, "as a joke, because you were worrying about my reputation. But it wouldn't really have been a joke, so I didn't. I probably should have. But I liked that you were—with me, you didn't have to—" Stuttering. That's what he's been reduced to. He shifts back a couple of inches to get a sheepish handle on his mouth. "I know everyone wants you."

"You liked that I could be Zev." Not the Inquisitor, not the charmer. Just himself in all his flaws and strangeness. He wanted to be somewhere safe for him. Somewhere he did not have to worry half so much about how he was perceived. Gingerly, as though he could be anything but gentle with Alistair in this, Zevran slips a hand up to stroke his cheek. Trace the freckles there.

"It is one thing to want someone more than you love them. You...love me more than you want me, yes? You would have gone on quietly without saying a word until-" Until the calling.

Until this hand killed him.

Until he moved on with someone else, always keeping Alistair close but never giving everything that he could.

Alistair has to take another breath, because he knows where Zevran's hands have been—around necks, hilts, bottles of poison. On more corpses and lovers than Alistair could begin to calculate. And the hand Alistair moved to hold Zevran's wrist is enormous and clumsy and has more calluses than clear skin. But it's gentle, too. They can still be gentle.

After that moment, he answers a little unsteadily: "That was the plan." It doesn't sound like such a good plan when it's said out loud. When he knows for sure it would have meant missing out on the idle kisses Zevran keeps bestowing. He steadies and smiles. "But I wasn't very good at it. Everyone knows. I think Cullen even knows, and he doesn't know anything."

He's only teasing, meaner than he would be if Cullen could actually hear him. He slides forward off the desk and nudges Zevran with his knee to encourage him to move—aiming for the fancy sofa, not the fancy bed.

"I do love you more than I want you," he confirms, in case there was any doubt, "and if you change you mind I won't stop."

"I didn't." He tried not to notice. Tried to forgive those small indiscretions, tried to pretend all was well. That The Bull and Dorian were mistaken. That he could have this thing for a little while longer before he ruined it.

And he would. He has no doubt of that.

But until then he will try to enjoy it. "Alistair, I-"

There aren't words, not really. What does one say to that? To being loved more than wanted- even with Rinna there had been wanting. Even with that small moment he shared perhaps with the Bull and Dorian there had been more desire than affection. He didn't blame them, they did not know him. Alistair did. He follows without question, more dancing than walking with how tightly to Alistair's side he was pressed. "I will not change my mind."

"Mm, I snuck up on you," Alistair says, "because I'm sneaky."

He's not sneaky at all. But this snuck up on him--on both of them, apparently--from sharing body heat because Zevran was shivering to curling up when it was plenty warm, Zevran on his lap for a lark to Zevran on his lap because he fit there. Slow shifts. Inevitability. But all anyone here saw was the end result, which is--this. Minus the kissing. Maybe with slightly less clinging. Slightly.

"Good." Near the sofa he pauses, rocking from one foot to the other--dancing--while he considers his options. "I go all snotty when I cry." Options considered, he ducks down to scoop Zevran's legs out from under him. It's not really that easy, but he isn't really that invested in keeping his balance, happy enough to stumble back onto the sofa without ever recovering it and floomph down with Zev in his arms.

His hair is still down. There's a lot of it.

"If I stop talking and kiss you for a bit, will you think I only want you for your body?" he asks, tucking a strand back. "Because if so--" He leans his head back, all the way over the back of the sofa, to look upside-down out the nearest window. "--decent weather lately, for the middle of the mountains."

"I know, I have seen you cry." He may have, at one point or another, made Alistair cry. He shouldn't have- but sometimes the man earns it or Zevran is mean when he ought to be calm. It will never be perfect, mindless bliss with them. And for that he is quite grateful. They are of two minds about too many things for this to be perfect but it does not need to be perfect.

It simply needs to be.

"What are you-" Legs up and he tucks himself against Alistair's chest with a soft laugh, moving to mantle himself over Alistair once they land. "Mmm...Perhaps-"

And then, oh, the line of his throat is there and he has leave to touch it. Without a second's hesitation Zevran leans forward to kiss the soft skin under his ear, to drag his lips down to the fluttering skin where his pulse is closes to the surface- the angular jut of his adam's apple- all these little places he's touched or licked or bitten on other lovers that now hold that much more wonder simply because they are his.

"You have," Alistair agrees, "snotty and splotchy and you're still willing to kiss me. That's how I know you mean it."

How he knows he means it is really that he's done it at all, that he'd risk it, that he reached back and destabilized ten years of friendship when Alistair is less fair than Michel de Chevin and less elegant than Dorian and much less familiar with the many uses of rope than the Iron Bull. And probably smells a little like dogs. Zevran's lips are on his neck anyway.

"It hasn't, uh." Maker. Alistair doesn't lift his head. He does abandon the search for clouds and shut his eyes. "It hasn't snowed in a while." Because he's not here for his body, see, he can keep talking—he tangles a hand in Zevran's hair, but he can keep talking. "Do you think it's done for the season?"

Less practiced, less familiar, less fair, less broad, less pretty- but honest. Sincere. There is ever an earnest core to all Alistair does even in his teasing. A familiarity born of having seen Zevran at his lowest, at his worst.

No one else would have stood by with a healer while he attempted to lop off his hand.

No one else would entertain the fantasy of running away with him to Rivain to live on the beach with a dog. "Quite possibly."

Lips still pressed to skin and following the spatter of freckles he knows to be there. No need to memorize the lines and shape of him- he knows every scar, every inch, and it makes this more rather than less. "Of course as soon as I am certain we will no longer need the hearth lit is when it shall snow again."

"That's what I'm for." He rolls his head to the side and then around to press his nose to Zevran's cheek without knocking him loose. "Make them move their big table and their maps up here, and you won't have to get out of bed except when a rift needs closing." It would never happen, for a lot of reasons. Not least because they'd both go mad. But it's a nice thought, for a moment, in a way that makes Alistair slide his free hand under Zevran's shirt—not too sexily. Checking for a scar where the shriek caught him. Alistair won't lose him if he never leaves the room. "And then you can have the bed carried to Rivain."

"What about dancing?" It would drive him crazy to have to stay here in this room with it's too fine furniture and too soft bed. Having Alistair would make it bearable but- he'd throw himself off the balcony in short order. For a moment he things 'ah, now we get to the fun part and he gives his hips an idle roll-

And then feels where Alistair's hand is headed and crackles a soft laugh instead. He sacrifices the hand braced by Alistair's shoulder to take him by the wrist and move his palm to that stretch of skin, the scar long since healed over. "Even then, yes? When I was being a shit."

"On warm days," Alistair says, ever accommodating and generous. "We can call Maryden up from the tav—"

He would have kept elaborating on that scenario (which would end with Zevran throwing himself off the balcony and Alistair following close behind) if not for the shift of Zevran's hips. His jaw goes briefly slack before it can reach the ern and he doesn't really see the point in continuing.

Even then. He nods first—distracted by the scar under his hand, with a somber line between his eyebrows—then looks up and smiles. He slips his other hand down and up under the fabric as well, grazing over his side on an unhurried upward path and dragging fabric up along with it. "Mm? You mean you stop sometimes?"

"You chose the wardens over me." He murmurs idly, sitting back on Alistair's thighs to help with peeling off his shirt. It gets him that much more naked and obscures his face and view of Alistair's expression after he drops that particular nugget.

Alistair always will place the wardens first. If he was not the kind of man that had that particular noble lean, Zevran would not adore him so.

It does not make the hurt sting less, of course, especially at a time when everyone was placing everything else before him and what he might wish. Shirt tossed to the side he loops his arms around Alistair's shoulders to pull himself in close once more. "Of course I stop. I have stopped now."

That's not fair, Alistair thinks.

But this isn't the time to argue. He knows that. This is—

"That's not fair," he says.

It is at least quiet, subdued, more sad than irritated. He still helps with the shirt as carefully as before, a glance at Zevran's face reproachful but not lingering before he ducks his head down to—not his neck and shoulder.

He remembers at the last moment. Even if he isn't angry in a way that frightens. His head jerks back up more quickly than it lowered and he tries pressing his forehead against Zevran's instead, nose next to nose, looking down at his cheeks. He really does have the best skin Alistair has ever seen. The hands that settle flat on his bare back rub in a way that's meant to be more soothing than exploratory, but. Maker.

"I thought something was off," he says, teasing—more weakly this time, distracted. He's going to kiss him. He does kiss him. Slowly, but not chastely; he doesn't know how to be worth ten years of wanting, however idle it might have been, but he makes a go of it.

"You will always choose them over me." The smile he offers isn't particularly kind- but the sharpness of it is turned inward. Selfish, perhaps, to wish to be first for someone. To be the most important thing. He knows better, Alistair knows that he knows better, and it is entitlement of the highest regard to expect Alistair's love, his desire to change this. "And that is- I will not always be alright with this. But I will try."

He can do that. Promise to try. To accept his place as something less important as though it is a great struggle. It isn't. Alistair knows it isn't.

It is the norm. To be expected.

Even with Bull, with Dorian, certainly with Michel-

He puts it from his mind, focusing instead on the press of their foreheads, the pass of Alistair's hands, the slide of his lips. In this he lets Alistair lead- not wanting to delve into tricks and practice. Wanting to try, perhaps, being natural.

Alistair's jaw works with arguments he manages--barely--not to open his mouth and let loose: that it's isn't them, it's himself, his integrity and honor and tainted blood; that he hasn't had to choose between Wardens' lives and Zevran's and doesn't intend to; that if for some mad reason the Wardens came for Zevran, they couldn't have him.

It would only make it worse. Kissing is better. It might give him time to think if he could think about anything, but not thinking is fine, too--just teasing swipes of his tongue on the odd press of his mouth and his hands finding the softer skin on Zevran's sides, just beneath his ribs, until Alistair is smitten and dazed enough to insist on smiling, when he shifts back, with none of that melancholy.

"We're going to end this right, so I can live with myself," he says, "and then--" they're going to Rivain, and Alistair will braid his hair every morning and hover uselessly in the kitchen while Zevran ruins dinner with spices and tell him he has to pick out a birthday if he wants a threesome, and they'll get as old as they're able "--I'm naming the dog Furlock." Maybe that's not the sort of thing he should say while hooking his fingers into the front of someone's trousers. Too bad. "Or Arfdemon."

"Rivain." It isn't skilled, the kissing. It isn't artful or deep or particularly moving. But it feels somehow more earnest for it. He needs no tricks (though he will pull them out later all the same), he needs no posturing. He might wish to for the familiarity but-

this is good. Whatever this is, wherever it goes.

Zevran's hands skid under to tug at Alistair's shirt, brows raised. "You are overdressed."

A beat.

"And you are not naming the dog Arfdemon."

"Oh, now I am for sure," Alistair says, contrary eyebrow raise and all, while he more cooperatively loosens the lacing at his collar. He reaches behind his neck to grab and shuck out of his shirt. It only gets caught on his chin for a moment. "Arfie—"

Disentangling.

"Arfie for short."

He drops the shirt aside and slides down against the couch beneath Zevran—not too far, only stretching his legs out and freeing his hips so he can try valiantly to squirm his feet out of his boots without untying them, but low enough to grin up at Zevran by an inch instead of down at him.

"Maybe just Archie." He lifts his chin up to kiss him again. "Archie isn't bad, right?"

It should be absurd- and to be honest it is but somehow that only makes this all the more charming. Enough so that Zevran makes no attempts to help Alistair. Watching him fumble is far more satisfying, after all.

For the moment he is content to sit back on his heels and slowly unknot the lacing at the front of his trousers, nodding along as though what Alistair has to say is of great import.

It is, a little.

A bit.

"Archie." Mmm. He combs his fingers through Alistair's hair, considering. "Compared to the alternative? Archie is perfectly acceptable."

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