[Open] I don't think you're ready for this jelly

[justice_is_blond]

WHO: Alistair and Anders and YOU
WHAT: Alistair tightropes. In a dress. While singing.
WHEN: Kingsway 21st
WHERE: Camp Shady Fucker
NOTES: There will probably be some awful sap because this is Nate's birthday, you've been warned. Otherwise, no warnings anticipated.

It's not publicized, but word has a habit of getting out.

Zevran has publicized matters, and now it's time for some morale boosting. There's a low tightrope stretched between two trees with a great many chairs, stumps, and logs set up as seating options. Today is the day for someone to earn himself new boots, shirts, and a shield, and it promises to be a show.

Come on up, pull up a seat, and enjoy the entertainment.

Comments

[ombranera]

"What?" He is trying to be helpful, but he lets his hands drop without further comment, preoccupied with standing as a barrier between Alistair and the rest of the crowd. The moment of spectacle has come and gone. Nothing more to see here. "You did well."

Falling or no, he was entertaining and earned himself a fine prize.

[byblow]

"I am exceptionally good at falling down, yes," Alistair says while scrubbing the cloth fairly viciously over his eyelids with one hand. With the other he's supporting Lucci on one knee and bouncing him up and down a bit.

[ombranera]

"You drew a crowd and were entertaining enough that no one questioned the prices of the sketches or food." Which weren't unreasonable- but were more than any Antivan would pay for the same. Ah, well. Live and learn.

"You will be getting a portion of the take on top of your very fine prize."

[byblow]

"Wonderful," Alistair says, with brightly sullen sarcasm. When he lowers the cloth his eyes are mostly clean, if still faintly smudged. "Keep it. Or pass it along to Teren for the Wardens. Anders wanted to make a fundraiser of it, too, but I put him off of it."

[ombranera]

"Alistair." Sighing, Zevran plucks the cloth from his hands and motions for him to tip his face up. "I am housing and feeding the wardens. Part of the money goes to that regardless- but what I would give you? Is for you. So that, perhaps, you do not need to sing while in a gown going across a tightrope in order to afford new boots, shirts, and a shield in the future."

[byblow]

"I don't need to. It was a joke."

A joke that he was making, rather than a joke being made of him--a line that started to blur a bit when it became a birthday gift for someone who dislikes him and might have disappeared when strangers started buying souvenirs. But he lifts his chin as instructed, resigned to compliance, and darts his newly freed hand over to tickle the baby and keep him from getting too restless and squirmy on his knee.

"But it's fine." Ish. "Now I'm set for another four years."

Only a slight exaggeration.

[ombranera]

Zevran's hands are, as ever, gentle when holding Alistair's face still and dabbing the remainder of smudged makeup from around his eyes. "A joke that got out of hand, yes?"

There is a twinge, a small one, of guilt for his hand in that. For profiting off of something that was to be relatively small and amusing. The particular edge to Alistair's smile hadn't gone unnoticed- it is half the reason he is here fumbling through what could be an apology.

Lucci remains unbothered, content to cling to Alistair's shirt and squeal. "You are still taking your part of the cut."

[byblow]

"Yes, well--"

There's an end to that sentence. It's: it's a good thing I don't have any pride to wound. But he's decided to stop throwing every unkind thing Zevran has said to him back in his face to make him feel guilty, because unlike this whole spectacle, that is beneath him.

So he catches himself in time. Yes, well, dangles there unfinished while he holds his head still to be cleaned, and when he opens his eyes again the squinty smirk is back, head tilting in a way that means he's being difficult on purpose now, just for the sake of it. He could take the money, give it to Teren himself, but he says, "No," with a tone like you're not my real dad.

[ombranera]

"I did not realize the cause when Anders asked me to throw in. I simply thought it a jest worth doing." Profiting off of the 'gift' so to speak was his way of getting his back. If only in coin, if only a little, if only on the back end. It isn't much at all and he knows this, but perhaps an indignity is easier to bear coming from him than coming from Nathaniel.

True resentment and hurt feelings aren't nearly as a musing as idle bickering. Stirring that particular pot? Funny.

This? Less so.

"You...are a brat." He flicks Alistair's earlobe as he pulls the rag away, his face now clean. "And you are going to teach Lucci your contrary ways, Alistair."

Case in point, the little bear reaching up to pat AListair's face and saying, seriously "Asstar."

[byblow]

Teaching Lucci to be contrary is the least he can do when the boy has apparently inherited Zevran's propensity for stripping him of all possible dignity. Asstar. He gives the baby an exasperated look, too, although it's much lighter on irritation and much heavier on sappy-eyed affection. And he lowers his head to allow whatever patting it desired.

"Anders warned me about Nathaniel," he says meanwhile. "Ages ago. It wasn't that big a deal."

Nathaniel, who he picks on all the time himself, and his friends or--people who sort of like him, usually, and know him well enough to understand--

And then suddenly anyone and everyone with five coppers and time to spare, however mean-spirited their interest, and a distinctly Big Deal vibe.

But it's over. He's fine. He lifts Lucci up and onto his shoulders.

"You shouldn't be feeding us. We're not that hard up," he says. Strapped, but not broke--they have what Clarel left behind in Orlais and thirty other mouths to feed outside of Skyhold. "Let me know what we owe you already, and I'll make sure everyone knows to keep going to Teren for provisions."

[ombranera]

Cheek patting commences, along with a brighter, more pleased "Awwy!"

"Ls are still difficult for him. And Rs. Most consonants in common." But 'Ali' it is that holds him and Ali has steady shoulders and hair to cling to with little paws- and so Lucci settles happily, burbling into his hair.

What a sight, his boys. Somber for a moment, Zevran turns his attention to nudging the plate of food closer to Alistair. Eat, you are too skinny (he isn't), eat, you don't eat enough (he does.) "Our work is profitable, it is no great burden. I am counting it against the worth of the care and feeding of a little Crow a decade ago and the kills I did for you then. When the debt is met? Then I shall speak to Teren."

[byblow]

Alistair's face stays stony and challenging for a few moments, and he says, "If you say so," without quite giving up the expression. But he has a baby holding pawfuls of his hair and babbling, which makes it a bit difficult to take himself seriously. And he doesn't really want to keep sulking.

He shifts his weight, like a physical manifestation of being willing to budge metaphorically as well.

"Look," he says, plucking up a skewer with the hand that isn't holding Lucci's leg for safety, "the next time you want to give an open invitation to an entire army to come watch me flail around, will you ask me first?"

[ombranera]

"..." Unaccustomed as he is to being in anyone's company long enough to both take them for granted and care whether or not he hurts their feelings? Zevran's eartips flick downward momentarily, the only true tell of his discomfiture. Unlike before he hadn't meant to wound Alistair's pride, hadn't intended to cause upset.

Sitting on it for a week is not in the cards.

"I apologize." These words do not become easier the more he speaks them- but he says them none the less. "It did not occur to me that you would find it..."

He gestures, vaguely, and returns his arms to their crossed position over his chest. Anyone else he would laugh it off. Anyone else? He'd pretend not to be bothered. Here he is...bothered that he has bothered Alistair. "It will not happen again."

[byblow]

That's plenty. No groveling required. Alistair crooks one side of his mouth up. It's not a full smile, but a quick look, hello, not angry, before he takes a hasty bite off the skewer so he can set it down again.

He needs both his hands to hold Lucci's legs, just in case, while he makes a dragon roaring noise—a quiet one, because for only the second time in his life, after the Landsmeet, he's been the focus of more attention than he knows what to do with and doesn't want any more—and swoops forward to crash-land the baby (and his own face, necessarily) against Zevran's chest.

Gently.

Mostly gently.

[ombranera]

The smile isn't what sells the forgiveness, but the eyebrows. The faint pinch and slide, the quirk that smooths out of a furrow. All is not precisely well, but all is better than it was before.

He will take it.

Lucci roars and giggles along with Alistair, thudding into his papa's chest- Zevran hooks an arm around them both. One about his son's back, one about Alistair's shoulders- and if he happens to bring his cloak with him to offer them all a moment of privacy? That is simply him trying to keep his boys warm. "You are going to spoil him."

[byblow]

"Good," Alistair says, though the word is smothered against Zevran's shirt. He turns his head sideways to add, "That's what uncles are for."

He thinks. He's pretty sure. Insofar as Alistair was ever anywhere close to spoiled, it was Teagan doing the spoiling, rolling him in mud or spinning him by his arms and tossing him off the docks--in a good way! a fun and voluntary way--when he visited.

And speaking of spoiling, he doesn't move. Give him a minute.