The lack of smalls doesn't help at all, but Alistair manages to get his trousers off without his jaw coming completely unhinged or anything. He's listening, too, filing the information away on a mental shelf labelled How To Not Ruin This. (As if it would ever be anything less than glaringly obvious when he was pleased, as if he'd do anything involving sensitive bits of Zevran without care, as if they're ever in the same room for five minutes without teasing... maybe not the teasing Zevran means.)
What else—he stops staring at Zevran's cock,with difficulty, and gives his big toe an affectionate wiggling tug before taking his knees off the bed and stepping back. "Do you love me?"
Teasing. Not the sexy kind. Or maybe a little bit the sexy kind, while he's pushing and stepping out of his own trousers, smirking like he already knows. Because he does.
As comfortable and settled in his skin as he had become (this is far more familiar and easier to navigate than sentiment), it vanishes in an instant. Such an innocuous question, that.
Four words.
One teasing lilt.
All of Alistair to look at and- dancing around it is easier. Implying, hinting, saying so with actions- that is his way. There will be a gesture in time, a token with a lock of his hair but to simply come out and ask? Quite opposite than typical Fereldan Prudishness. Ask Zevran about sex and desire and he shall answer.
Ask about love and his voice is caught in his throat. "I-"
Alistair's face falls, for a second, and for that same second he's at risk of taking it personally, making it about his problems, doubting. For a second. Then he smiles again, less smirky this time.
"It's all right. You don't have to," he says.
Doesn't have to say it, doesn't have to love him—whatever makes Zevran press into his side at night, whatever prompts all of the tenderness and affection, it's either love or the closest and best thing Alistair has ever had, whatever Zevran wants to call or not call it.
Alistair remembers he's standing there naked and moves, crawling onto the bed to settle alongside Zevran—not over him—and draw his rough fingertips curiously up his bare thigh and over his hipbone. His smirk returns. Cautiously. If it's possible for a smirk to be cautious. "Just tell me I'm your favorite human again."
It isn't that he doesn't. He does. He does and it terrifies him in every way that he cannot seal away, in every way that has a name. He cannot deny that there is sentiment here that binds them together as much as their experiences, as their desire. But he has had this thing before.
He has lost it. And it had almost been the death of him.
If he names this thing and he loses Alistair-
It would be.
He rolls to curl against Alistair's side as is their custom, naked and aroused or no, hands slipping up to rest above his beating heart. "You are my favorite person Alistair. And my favorite human."
There, that's plenty—unsettled pieces settling, wobbly feelings grounding, the resurgence of certainty that even if this will end soon and painfully it's the right thing in the meantime. They fit. Zevran's head belongs against his chest, and his hand—Alistair covers it with his own while he turns to kiss him on the forehead.
"You're my favorite person, too."
A kiss for the bridge of his broad handsome nose, and one for his mouth, though that takes some squirming and shifting to get level.
"And the love of my life." He means it, smiling and sincere, but he's quick with another kiss—a long one—so there's no silence for Zevran to fill, and Alistair's hand leaves Zevran's to slide around the back of his thigh and hitch him closer. If that's a language he's more comfortable with. "Zev, I—" he says, but there's too much feeling in that, too, so he shifts onto his side to push against him and looks a little sly, in his unsubtle way, before he amends to, "Your Worship."
Something tangled and thorny eases in Zevran's chest at that. So simple a thing- a brush of lips, a few words. Words that are often hollow and pointless and as empty as most promises but this is Alistair. Someone that means what he says to a painful degree when he truly believes it to be so.
He has half a moment to try to convince Alistair he is being a fool- he is the love of no one's life, that cannot be so, such things do not exist. There are simply those you have in the moment-
But without time or breath to say anything and only a kiss to lean into, he forgets to be cynical. Forgets to be bitter, twisting instead to hook his thigh up over Alistair's legs, to line up their hips enough that the next grind is slick and shivery sweet. "Shh."
They don't need words for this part.
Of course, Alistair keeps talking. He shakes his head, pressing the glowing green of his palm over Alistair's lips. "No- no. Zev. Just Zev. Out there, yes but here, in this bed? I only...wish to be your Zev."
For someone that has fought tooth and nail over the past decade to never belong to anyone ever again- it is as close to saying the words Alistair wishes to hear as he can manage in the moment.
He'd been expecting a pinch, an elbow, a huff—but Alistair will take this, too. His mouth is under Zevran's hand but his nose wrinkles and his eyes squint from his grin above it. It's a little smirky, because that's just how his face works, but mostly warm and a little addled from the press of their hips and cocks and this probably isn't a good moment for him to actually question his sexuality for the first time but he does anyway. A flicker of wonder at whether he likes this because he likes men or if he just loves Zevran so much that it overflowed, there for a moment and then extinguished by how damn little it matters when there's skin, everywhere, because Zevran somehow seems to have more of it than someone his size rightly should.
"Zev," he echoes in agreement, muffled against the anchor, which he doesn't lick or bite. If it were the other palm, he totally would. Instead he makes due with shifting flat onto his back and dragging Zevran along with him, above him, one hand left on his thigh to keep him aligned—because it's a good alignment, Alistair likes it, no confusion or mystery about how to rock and slip back in answer—and the other elbow bent so he can lift his torso up and nose past Zevran's hand to kiss him again.
"Yeeees?" All stretched out and silly in the way that Alistair says such things, in a way that truly shouldn't be at all in place in the bedroom. And with anyone else? It wouldn't be. But this is Alistair, with whom he might be foolish.
It is strangely liberating.
Being on top is slightly more familiar, slightly simpler than attempting much of anything tangled together on their sides. For half a moment he considers reaching for the oil in the nightstand but Alistair's lips are terribly distracting. Better to lean in and share he warmth, tease his lips with the tip of his tongue, bury his hands in his hair as he grinds their hips together. This. This he knows, this he wants, this he understands far better than sentiment. It takes nothing at all to snag the hand on his hip and pull it back to rest Alistair's palm on his ass.
It's liberating; it's a relief. It's not Crowing. It's them, like they've been for years, only now particularly naked and particularly close. Alistair smiles wider. "Does that mean—" He has to pause for his breath to stutter. "—you won't want to have a go on your throne later?"
Joking. Alistair wouldn't—well, he might, if the hall were empty. But he's joking.
The smile falls off his face when Zevran moves his hand, mostly because his mouth is falling open for a deep inhale, then staying open to answer Zevran's teasing tongue with less art but plenty of enthusiasm and to suck loosely on his lower lip as encouragement to follow while Alistair eases back flat, where he can dig his heels into the mattress for leverage and assign both hands to the important task of kneading Zevran's ass in time with the roll of his hips.
It doesn't take long for him to go unsteady, breaths trembling and movements jerking. He would be embarrassed but for all of the slowness getting here, and the long months of gritting his teeth and coming into his hand thinking of something like this, and the longer months since anyone he genuinely wanted touched him. Or maybe he will be embarrassed later despite that. But right now he's shameless, too flushed from want to blush from shyness and secure enough in the knowledge that they aren't in a blighted tent and no one can hear that he doesn't bother trying to swallow or muffle the needy sounds in his throat.
"Maker," he manages, and he slips a hand loose and between them to keep their cocks pressed together. "Don't slow down—I'll take care of you, I'll—" Maybe being left hanging is less of a concern with two men. He can't really think that through at the moment, fighting to keep his eyes open and his hands steady.
"We could." A beat, a wide, wicked smirk. "We should."
Later, after they've learned more of each other in this way. After they have had this night and perhaps the next morning, the afternoon, the evening- There is much to explore and Zevran means to do so with all his focus and consideration. This is no mere lover he will have and abandon or even a casual acquaintance. Sentiment colors so much, makes the fumbling endearing, makes the graceless pace acceptable. He has had worse.
Alistair is warm and solid and eager, enthusiastic more than skilled and that is reason enough to muffle a hitched laugh against his shoulder or the side of his throat, braced above him and trying to slow the grind. TO steady it, to make it last but no. All those lonely nights have caught up with them at last, it seems, and Zevran enjoys how Alistair's skin goes pink and the twist in his throat, the unfamiliar scrape of his callouses against his skin as he finally reaches down to grab hold. "I know."
Zevran leans down, mouth open around the shape of Alistair's name tangled in Antivan endearments and sentiment, mumbling against the sharp angle of his jaw as his hips work in a tight circle. "I know, I know, you've done well- come, let me see you, let me feel you-"
They could, they should, and if Zevran keeps talking to him like this they definitely will. With Zevran’s mumbling against his jaw Alistair tries turning his head, mouth open and searching, but in the end he isn’t willing to dislodge him for a kiss. Zev is good where he is. Jaw things. Antivan things. Okay.
He says come and let me see and Alistair—he’s good at doing what he’s told, when it matters, but he’s also a contrary brat—and happy, a little overwhelmed with it, laughing breathlessly as the tension swells—he’s a contrary brat, that’s the point, and he’s sliding the hand on Zevran’s ass away and up to make a clumsy attempt at curling around his head and covering his eyes instead.
He hasn’t succeeded, yet, when the tension breaks and the laugh turns into a ragged gasp and his legs bend at the knee with startled, twitchy haste. He holds onto the feeling for as long as he can, eyes shut and hands tense, and then he drawls, “So much for Warden stamina.”
It’s quiet and edgeless, paired with a smile that’s verging on drowsy. For a moment. One moment. The next moment he’s rolling upward to sit straight, herding Zevran up ahead of him, focus sharpening, slick hand moving and curling and stroking. He combs the other down through Zevran’s hair and onto his back.
Zevran knows what he's reaching to do. What Alistair's intentions are with the slide of that hand and the breathless twist of laughter and he wouldn't mind it- doesn't mind it- because it's them. It's not Crowing or quiet mortified fumbling in a tent. It's not posturing or binding or being held down, it's not owning and being owned.
It's- them. A little odd, a lot playful, a little uncertain where hands go and mouths go and a lot sure of how to grind their hips and where their hearts truly lie. It's them- it's Alistair (as though he could forget with that nose) and its beautiful. The scrunch of his eyes, the sharp stutter of his hips, the scrape of his breath. Humans are, on the whole, strange when they come. Faces a rictus of bliss, like taking a blow or holding in a sneeze. Undignified. Alistair, who has never been dignified, who has taken a great many blows, who is as human as any man he's ever known-
Charms him with that moment of tense quiet, face slack and familiar and beautiful for it, and the immediate drawl thereafter. He cold joke, he could roll over and make a show of it-
Or move as he's bid, let his arms loop around Alistair's shoulders and let him take the lead. It's the easiest thing in the world despite every instinct to the contrary- so he does. He clings and sucks in a sharp breath, Antivan twisting in the air between them- everything he'd never say in common, every promise he can't make, every word Alistair longs to hear but he cannot bear to speak- as his hips snap up into his hand and his head falls back, eyes half lidded and sightless as he spills between them.
"Nn." Words. Words ought to be a thing, he knows. A witty line, a smug grin- but all he might manage is a slow lolling of his head forward to bump their noses together and an equally sappy smile. "I have more practice than you."
"That's true," Alistair says. His voice is low and quiet, and his mouth is stretched wide into a smile he doesn't quite allow to show his teeth. "Let's say that's it."
In his defense, it might be a different sort of stamina keeping his eyes sharp and bright and the rest of him upright, not boneless and sleepy, while he holds onto Zevran and looks over his face like he doesn't have it memorized. He'd never really realized that he did, but he does—there's nowhere he looks, not the lines at the corners of his eyes or the flecks of color in them, that's at all surprising instead of familiar and expected. If he'd ever felt like any particular place was home before, he'd be able to make a metaphor out of it.
No metaphors. And when he notices how much he's staring, he blushes, belatedly, and shuts his eyes and lets his hands crawl over Zevran's spine as carefully as if they were searching for an injury. That's something he doesn't know so well.
"I think this is the most selfish thing I've ever done," he says, which is not entirely a joke. He's not twenty years old anymore, primed to follow someone around like a besotted puppy and damn the consequences. He knows better. This is going to hurt. If he's lucky it will hurt him; if he's unlucky it will hurt Zevran or the entirety of Thedas and he'll have to live with it afterwards. But it is also a joke, delivered with a smile. "I like it."
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no subject
Date: 2016-07-22 08:25 pm (UTC)What else—he stops staring at Zevran's cock,with difficulty, and gives his big toe an affectionate wiggling tug before taking his knees off the bed and stepping back. "Do you love me?"
Teasing. Not the sexy kind. Or maybe a little bit the sexy kind, while he's pushing and stepping out of his own trousers, smirking like he already knows. Because he does.
no subject
Date: 2016-07-23 07:02 am (UTC)Four words.
One teasing lilt.
All of Alistair to look at and- dancing around it is easier. Implying, hinting, saying so with actions- that is his way. There will be a gesture in time, a token with a lock of his hair but to simply come out and ask? Quite opposite than typical Fereldan Prudishness. Ask Zevran about sex and desire and he shall answer.
Ask about love and his voice is caught in his throat. "I-"
no subject
Date: 2016-07-23 01:47 pm (UTC)"It's all right. You don't have to," he says.
Doesn't have to say it, doesn't have to love him—whatever makes Zevran press into his side at night, whatever prompts all of the tenderness and affection, it's either love or the closest and best thing Alistair has ever had, whatever Zevran wants to call or not call it.
Alistair remembers he's standing there naked and moves, crawling onto the bed to settle alongside Zevran—not over him—and draw his rough fingertips curiously up his bare thigh and over his hipbone. His smirk returns. Cautiously. If it's possible for a smirk to be cautious. "Just tell me I'm your favorite human again."
no subject
Date: 2016-07-28 02:54 am (UTC)It isn't that he doesn't. He does. He does and it terrifies him in every way that he cannot seal away, in every way that has a name. He cannot deny that there is sentiment here that binds them together as much as their experiences, as their desire. But he has had this thing before.
He has lost it. And it had almost been the death of him.
If he names this thing and he loses Alistair-
It would be.
He rolls to curl against Alistair's side as is their custom, naked and aroused or no, hands slipping up to rest above his beating heart. "You are my favorite person Alistair. And my favorite human."
no subject
Date: 2016-07-28 06:55 am (UTC)"You're my favorite person, too."
A kiss for the bridge of his broad handsome nose, and one for his mouth, though that takes some squirming and shifting to get level.
"And the love of my life." He means it, smiling and sincere, but he's quick with another kiss—a long one—so there's no silence for Zevran to fill, and Alistair's hand leaves Zevran's to slide around the back of his thigh and hitch him closer. If that's a language he's more comfortable with. "Zev, I—" he says, but there's too much feeling in that, too, so he shifts onto his side to push against him and looks a little sly, in his unsubtle way, before he amends to, "Your Worship."
See how he likes it.
no subject
Date: 2016-07-28 07:05 am (UTC)He has half a moment to try to convince Alistair he is being a fool- he is the love of no one's life, that cannot be so, such things do not exist. There are simply those you have in the moment-
But without time or breath to say anything and only a kiss to lean into, he forgets to be cynical. Forgets to be bitter, twisting instead to hook his thigh up over Alistair's legs, to line up their hips enough that the next grind is slick and shivery sweet. "Shh."
They don't need words for this part.
Of course, Alistair keeps talking. He shakes his head, pressing the glowing green of his palm over Alistair's lips. "No- no. Zev. Just Zev. Out there, yes but here, in this bed? I only...wish to be your Zev."
For someone that has fought tooth and nail over the past decade to never belong to anyone ever again- it is as close to saying the words Alistair wishes to hear as he can manage in the moment.
no subject
Date: 2016-07-28 10:52 pm (UTC)"Zev," he echoes in agreement, muffled against the anchor, which he doesn't lick or bite. If it were the other palm, he totally would. Instead he makes due with shifting flat onto his back and dragging Zevran along with him, above him, one hand left on his thigh to keep him aligned—because it's a good alignment, Alistair likes it, no confusion or mystery about how to rock and slip back in answer—and the other elbow bent so he can lift his torso up and nose past Zevran's hand to kiss him again.
no subject
Date: 2016-07-28 11:40 pm (UTC)It is strangely liberating.
Being on top is slightly more familiar, slightly simpler than attempting much of anything tangled together on their sides. For half a moment he considers reaching for the oil in the nightstand but Alistair's lips are terribly distracting. Better to lean in and share he warmth, tease his lips with the tip of his tongue, bury his hands in his hair as he grinds their hips together. This. This he knows, this he wants, this he understands far better than sentiment. It takes nothing at all to snag the hand on his hip and pull it back to rest Alistair's palm on his ass.
no subject
Date: 2016-07-31 03:55 am (UTC)Joking. Alistair wouldn't—well, he might, if the hall were empty. But he's joking.
The smile falls off his face when Zevran moves his hand, mostly because his mouth is falling open for a deep inhale, then staying open to answer Zevran's teasing tongue with less art but plenty of enthusiasm and to suck loosely on his lower lip as encouragement to follow while Alistair eases back flat, where he can dig his heels into the mattress for leverage and assign both hands to the important task of kneading Zevran's ass in time with the roll of his hips.
It doesn't take long for him to go unsteady, breaths trembling and movements jerking. He would be embarrassed but for all of the slowness getting here, and the long months of gritting his teeth and coming into his hand thinking of something like this, and the longer months since anyone he genuinely wanted touched him. Or maybe he will be embarrassed later despite that. But right now he's shameless, too flushed from want to blush from shyness and secure enough in the knowledge that they aren't in a blighted tent and no one can hear that he doesn't bother trying to swallow or muffle the needy sounds in his throat.
"Maker," he manages, and he slips a hand loose and between them to keep their cocks pressed together. "Don't slow down—I'll take care of you, I'll—" Maybe being left hanging is less of a concern with two men. He can't really think that through at the moment, fighting to keep his eyes open and his hands steady.
no subject
Date: 2016-08-05 09:52 am (UTC)Later, after they've learned more of each other in this way. After they have had this night and perhaps the next morning, the afternoon, the evening- There is much to explore and Zevran means to do so with all his focus and consideration. This is no mere lover he will have and abandon or even a casual acquaintance. Sentiment colors so much, makes the fumbling endearing, makes the graceless pace acceptable. He has had worse.
Alistair is warm and solid and eager, enthusiastic more than skilled and that is reason enough to muffle a hitched laugh against his shoulder or the side of his throat, braced above him and trying to slow the grind. TO steady it, to make it last but no. All those lonely nights have caught up with them at last, it seems, and Zevran enjoys how Alistair's skin goes pink and the twist in his throat, the unfamiliar scrape of his callouses against his skin as he finally reaches down to grab hold. "I know."
Zevran leans down, mouth open around the shape of Alistair's name tangled in Antivan endearments and sentiment, mumbling against the sharp angle of his jaw as his hips work in a tight circle. "I know, I know, you've done well- come, let me see you, let me feel you-"
no subject
Date: 2016-08-22 06:20 am (UTC)He says come and let me see and Alistair—he’s good at doing what he’s told, when it matters, but he’s also a contrary brat—and happy, a little overwhelmed with it, laughing breathlessly as the tension swells—he’s a contrary brat, that’s the point, and he’s sliding the hand on Zevran’s ass away and up to make a clumsy attempt at curling around his head and covering his eyes instead.
He hasn’t succeeded, yet, when the tension breaks and the laugh turns into a ragged gasp and his legs bend at the knee with startled, twitchy haste. He holds onto the feeling for as long as he can, eyes shut and hands tense, and then he drawls, “So much for Warden stamina.”
It’s quiet and edgeless, paired with a smile that’s verging on drowsy. For a moment. One moment. The next moment he’s rolling upward to sit straight, herding Zevran up ahead of him, focus sharpening, slick hand moving and curling and stroking. He combs the other down through Zevran’s hair and onto his back.
“No match for Antivan… Antivanness.”
no subject
Date: 2016-10-11 08:41 pm (UTC)It's- them. A little odd, a lot playful, a little uncertain where hands go and mouths go and a lot sure of how to grind their hips and where their hearts truly lie. It's them- it's Alistair (as though he could forget with that nose) and its beautiful. The scrunch of his eyes, the sharp stutter of his hips, the scrape of his breath. Humans are, on the whole, strange when they come. Faces a rictus of bliss, like taking a blow or holding in a sneeze. Undignified. Alistair, who has never been dignified, who has taken a great many blows, who is as human as any man he's ever known-
Charms him with that moment of tense quiet, face slack and familiar and beautiful for it, and the immediate drawl thereafter. He cold joke, he could roll over and make a show of it-
Or move as he's bid, let his arms loop around Alistair's shoulders and let him take the lead. It's the easiest thing in the world despite every instinct to the contrary- so he does. He clings and sucks in a sharp breath, Antivan twisting in the air between them- everything he'd never say in common, every promise he can't make, every word Alistair longs to hear but he cannot bear to speak- as his hips snap up into his hand and his head falls back, eyes half lidded and sightless as he spills between them.
"Nn." Words. Words ought to be a thing, he knows. A witty line, a smug grin- but all he might manage is a slow lolling of his head forward to bump their noses together and an equally sappy smile. "I have more practice than you."
no subject
Date: 2016-10-21 09:58 pm (UTC)In his defense, it might be a different sort of stamina keeping his eyes sharp and bright and the rest of him upright, not boneless and sleepy, while he holds onto Zevran and looks over his face like he doesn't have it memorized. He'd never really realized that he did, but he does—there's nowhere he looks, not the lines at the corners of his eyes or the flecks of color in them, that's at all surprising instead of familiar and expected. If he'd ever felt like any particular place was home before, he'd be able to make a metaphor out of it.
No metaphors. And when he notices how much he's staring, he blushes, belatedly, and shuts his eyes and lets his hands crawl over Zevran's spine as carefully as if they were searching for an injury. That's something he doesn't know so well.
"I think this is the most selfish thing I've ever done," he says, which is not entirely a joke. He's not twenty years old anymore, primed to follow someone around like a besotted puppy and damn the consequences. He knows better. This is going to hurt. If he's lucky it will hurt him; if he's unlucky it will hurt Zevran or the entirety of Thedas and he'll have to live with it afterwards. But it is also a joke, delivered with a smile. "I like it."