[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]

"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.