faderift | [ OPEN ] Well I can't stand to be with myself, this liberation's seemingly rare

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[ OPEN ] Well I can't stand to be with myself, this liberation's seemingly rare

WHO: Zevran and Various
WHAT: Zevran sparring and dealing
WHEN: Throughout Drakonis
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: Violence, swearing, usual Zevran Content Warnings Apply. Open prompt below, poke me on plurk for a closed starter. Prose or actionspam welcome!

As much as he'd protested Alistair running off on some mission in the west- the time apart gives him that much more chance to train. He'd been doing so privately in the barn, occasionally squaring off against Settimo when they both had the time and patience for Settimo's paranoia and Zevran's over-adjustments for the blind side. Learning to fight with only one good eye is slowly driving Zevran to frustration. Settimo could not come at him hard enough to be a challenge, he could not learn his new limitations without a solid effort on both their parts.

Setting aside his vanity he takes to the training grounds- but working on stuffed dummies is only good for so much. Soon enough he is picking out soldiers and rogues to come at him in the dirt circle. Day to day it goes much the same. Zevran stands with bad eye covered and his swords, with his hands, with a single short sword and calls any that would step up to help him regain his awareness. It is, to be honest, slow going. More often than not if his opponent has any manner of skill he ends up on his ass. But he grits his teeth, stands, and goes at it again. And again. Afterward he recovers with the highlight of his training- a bucket of water to sluice off the sweat and grit of the day. Whether it's the relief the cold brings or the appreciative looks it tends to earn? He doesn't say. But thus he spends his days, training himself or wrestling with the fledglings, who will offer their own commentary and catcalling in Antivan during his other matches.

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Alistair hesitates outside the door, which is stupid. He's not angry, and only barely still hurt; he knows he's welcome back; and there's neither a sock on the doorknob nor any suspicious sounds from within. It's mostly exhaustion that makes him waver—he's the sort of tired that makes simple things feel overwhelming and minor worries, like the possibility that it's only distance that's allowed him and Zevran to get along again, knot around themselves until they're enormous.

Stupid, though. He knows. But he hesitates anyway, blinking hard and rubbing his eyes with his hand as if he can clear his head out that way, then his bearded jaw—it can fairly be called a beard at this point. He thinks sand falls out of it. Sand will probably be falling out of things for the rest of his life.

The quiet couple of seconds created by that stupid hesitation let him hear a voice, muffled and indistinct through the door. Zevran's voice. He waits another few seconds to make sure it really is just Zevran's voice and that the chances he's about to open the door on naked, entwined pillow talk are therefore minimal (but not zero, never zero), then twists his key into the lock.

"Do not give me that look." Zevran was, is, and continues to frown at Doghren from where the pup is attempting to look innocent, a few gnawed upon socks with fresh holes between them on the bed. "I made very fine knotted rope toys for you to chew on and thrash about like a beast."

Said knotted ropes he holds in one hand, swinging them in a slow arc in an attempt to attract the dog's attention. But no, Dogrhen only has eyes for the socks. Alistair's socks, to be precise. "These are toys. Socks are not toys. I know you know this, mabari you may not be but you are no idiot- Doghren!"

The pup had made an attempt to slink forward an inch, creeping little by little closer to the socks. She freezes, mouth half open, eyes wide and turned up to Zevran who lacks his own eyepatch. "Those are not for you. You know they are not for you, you had to dig them out from the bottom of the laundry pile to get at them. Look."

He scoops the socks up in one hand and holds them off to the side- the dog's head swings to follow. "Which of these are toys?"

The pup inches forward slowly- slowly- and darts forward to snag one of the socks, growling as she attempts to wrench it from Zevran's grip. "I- You. You are very stubborn for someone your size. Fine. These socks are for you. I will have to find new ones for Alistair."

"I could just stop wearing any," Alistair says.

The door is still only half open where he'd frozen with his hand still on the knob and both feet outside the threshold, and he might look on the verge of tears. He's smiling, though. If there's any possibility he may cry in the foreseeable future, it's out of relief—because this does feel like coming home, which is a funny and half-foreign sensation, and Zevran is talking to the blighted dog, which means Alistair can cross torch Antiva City off his list of things to do.

The other things—things involving Anders and dead Wardens and maybe taking a bath at some point—he leaves at the threshold.

He steps the rest of the way inside, closes the door, and reaches immediately for the straps holding his breastplate in place, eager to be out of his armor. It's heavy. Everything is heavy. But Zevran's fussy, conversational tone lifts one weight, a big one, and Alistair keeps smiling a smile that is small and indisputably soppy.

"Let her have them," he continues. "I'll take the rope toys."

"Or you could wash them regularly like an adult instead of leaving them so long they might stand on their own." The reprimand is easy- offhand and habitual before the voice registers.

Doghren, of course, goes careening for the edge of the bed as though to leap into Alistair's arms, expressing everything Zevran has been trained to ignore. There is that tense stillness- that lack of involuntary motion- at least until Doghren draws too close to the edge. Zevran catches her with a hand and leans to set her down so she might bounce about Alistair's ankles properly. For himself-

He swings off the bed and stands, stepping in to help Alistair with his armor as though the argument never happened. As though this were another day. "You cannot wear rope upon your feet and still fit them into your boots, Cucciolo. And...what is this on your face?"

Frowning, he reaches up to rub at the angle of Alistair's jaw. What is this?

Alistair's always-narrow eyes are already narrower from heavy eyelids, so there's nothing left for him to do to convey his usual squinting skepticism but to shut one entirely, mouth pulling to the same side, while he visibly considers and discards the idea of washing anything more often.

Doghren gets a fond look and a nudge with his boot while she dances around it, but that's all. He's a dog person, but he's not that kind of dog person. Not that he'll admit to. If anyone asks, he'll still say that Doghren is being sent to the kennels as soon as she's grown, and he doesn't swoop down to collect her. Not yet. Armor first. And Zev.

Alistair doesn't stare at his eye anymore than at the rest of his face, which gets a sleepy but thorough examination. Looking for shadows. Lingering sharpness. He doesn't really understand how Zevran can be so nonchalant, but that's a common problem for him. He tries to keep up—for the moment, at least, while there's still all this metal in the way.

"Small animal," Alistair says. "Grabbed onto to my face. Couldn't get it off. I'm sort of attached to it now."

Attached? Eh? Eh? He grins wide for a moment at his own joke before he has to duck his head away from Zevran's hand to lift the plating over his head and set it on the ground near the dog, then the tassets and belt.

Some shadows. A softer sharpness. Eating better- eating more than drinking, working, getting sun, getting knocked on his ass in the ring- adjusting. Living. Something he hadn't quite been doing when Alistair was here last. Not quite himself but closer than he'd been before.

As if talking to the dog wasn't proof enough of that.

"We must remove it. You look terrible." It's awful, scraggly, and barbaric- probably why Alistair has kept it so long. Zevran simply assists with removing the rest of the armor, frowning at flecks of sand, none too subtly checking Alistair over for injury.

"Rugged," Alistair insists, but he can't muster a full fake pout. The mail is heavy but flexible, as much leather as iron scaling, and once it's unstrapped and over his head he only endures Zevran's examination for a moment before he crouches down to lay it on the floor. Doghren is chewing on the end of one of his belt's several straps. He rubs his head in greeting without trying to stop her. "I'm fine," he says, and looks up at Zevran from his crouch. "You owe Dorian that favor. But we lost Hercules."

They lost Hercules. They got Erimond. It doesn't feel like an even trade.

He can set that aside, too, for a little while.

When he stands and he grabs Zevran around the waist with one arm on his way up, so he's dragged onto his toes, which is enough added height that Alistair can keep low enough not to crush Zevran's face into his dirty, probably-smelly shirt when he hugs him. The rest of him might be a little crushed. Only for a second. After that Alistair loosens his arms, politely, and after another two he lets go entirely.

"You look good," he says, with gentle, teasing pointedness. You look terrible, honestly, after such a long journey through such a terrible country. Rude.

"Awful. Like you've taken after Oghren and he is no role model at all." Grey Warden or not. The armor they handle bit by bit, Zevran making note of what needs repair and gauging his own patience for such things against his skill. Tomorrow he will start at it. Today? He has a beard to shave, a Grey warden to settle, a brother to welcome home. It feels...

It'd been terrible, the waiting. Knowing he couldn't mind Alistair's flank. The weight of anticipation heavy on his tongue like bile.

But he is home- a little more worn, a little bitter, but home. It's all he can hope for. "We should-" Whatever they should do is cut off by that hug- tight and crushing in the only real way Alistair knows how. He isn't gentle in his affections; he'd never learned how to be. Not that he's rough but it is grounding to have that crushing force turned on him for awhile. A childlike clinging to be certain that this is real and solid. That Zev is real and solid. Alistair withdraws and Zevran catches him by the shoulders, holding him a moment longer. "I missed you."

One of them must say it.

Alistair—at this point likely half-tangled in straps—stops what he's doing long enough to look offended. Nearly wounded. Oghren? "Too far," he says. "Too, too far. Now I'm keeping it to spite you."

He won't really.

He'll keep it because it's rugged.*

"Oooh, you missed me. In the King's tongue and everything," Alistair says, but if his tone is flippant, his smile is pleased. In the King's tongue and everything. Some of Zevran's switches to Antivan are for facility, maybe, to deal with the untranslatable, but sometimes it seems like a way to hold things closer to his own chest and a bit out of others' reach.

Alistair ducks his head back down to kiss his forehead, nose caught in his hair but mouth pressed firmly on skin. There's his sincerity, in trade. And:

"I'm going to do better, Zev." That could mean four or five different things. It does mean four or five different things. "Eventually. After I take a nap."

* He is not keeping the beard.

"No you won't." Zevran will not allow it. A day, perhaps two at the most he will give Alistair time to sleep on his own side of the bed and choose before he forces the issue. Perhaps less than that depending on how coarse the hair is against his skin. Which is something he learns sooner rather than later, Alistair leaning in, mocking, to drop a kiss to his forehead.

Simple, small things.

Tension he hadn't been aware of unspools in his shoulders for all that he glowers up at the man. The King's tongue. Must he be such a child? Zevran rolls his eyes and rubs at the space- scratchy. Perhaps tonight he'd see the thing shaven. There is no way he will be able to sleep with that pressed to his back or shoulder. "Bath first. You are filthy and I just had the sheets changed."

Dry and wry to make up for admitting that he missed him.

No, he won't. For all the posturing, he isn't actually fond of the beard. He hasn't even looked in a mirror to determine whether or not he should be fond of the beard. It's a depression beard. A journeying-all-the-way-across-Orlais-to-a-place-where-his-fellows-are-being-ritually-slaughtered-and-all-they-can-hope-to-do-is-throw-a-kink-in-the-machinery beard. He glares, though, head turning to one side in answer to the challenge. A silent watch me.

—but, again, he is not keeping the beard. And he's taking a bath. He knows these things. At the moment Zevran could probably make him do anything short of tattooing Loghain's name on his forehead.

Still, he says, "Uuunngh," and drops down to rest his cheek on top of Zevran's upturned head, leaning into him—not in an affectionate way. In a carry me, I'm pathetic, I'm going to collapse way. He doesn't put all his weight into it, but he does add enough to make supporting him take some small amount of effort. "I'll sleep on the floor."

He could step aside to let Alistair waver and fall and crush the dog...or. Or. He sighs and slips an arm up around Alistair's waist to hold him steady for the time it takes him to grab the kit on the desk he used for his own baths. It is not so far a walk, he needs the practice anyway, and Alistair is...exhausted. He weighs his options for all of thirty seconds before shifting his grip, bracing his legs, and putting his shoulder to Alistair's chest and hefting him with a grunt over his shoulders.

A little shifting, a moment to grab the kit and nudge Doghren back into the room with his foot before he carts the man out and begins the walk.

"You will sleep in the bed once I am done with you. Don't squirm." Alistair is no heavier than Taliesin was when they'd done this for training- a long hall and shallow staircase is no slippery rooftop of Antiva City. It is simple by comparison.

Alistair had been squirming, in a useless way, trying to register his tired and half-hearted protest—because it is absurd—without being dropped on his head or hurting Zevran, but he stops when ordered and tries to just. Accept it. All right. He brought it on himself.

He decides to be impressed rather than embarrassed. And, on the plus side, the surprise and indignity woke him up a bit.

"Sooo," he says in the hall, tone reasonably even and conversational despite his dangling head, "this is happening."

In case Zevran wasn't aware that he was lugging an enormous human on his back, you know.

"So." He replies taking the next left just wide enough so he wouldn't bash any part of Alistair against the wall. "This is, in fact, happening."

Alistair isn't exactly weightless, but it isn't something he can't endure. So long as he keeps his mind on the target he can make the distance. It is the same test of strength and stamina he'd performed so many times before- now? it is a strain but not impossible. Another turn, the stairs, and he keeps right on walking. "You were going to collapse otherwise."

"Only for show," Alistair says, despite being uncertain whether or not that's true and whether it preserves his dignity or further destroys it. Not that he was using it for anything. Either way is fine. "If I'd known you could do this, I would have—" He has to pause to yawn. "I would have done a lot less walking during the Blight."

"Who do you think dragged Oghren from that mire in the wilds, mm? Certainly not Sten." The Qunari wouldn't be bothered to do so, if Oghren fell in? it was his own fault.

The last few steps were something of a struggle not to stumble- but he manages it. The hot springs, sparsely populated. He kneels- staggers, grip slipping and they might both stumble and skid across stone- or he can (does) twist and upends Alistair right into the heated water.

Well.

That was one way to wake him up.

"I'm a little taller than—"

Zevran will have to use context clues to figure out the end of that sentence, because Alistair is interrupted by being dumped into water fully clothed. He comes back up looking startled, but not choking. Flailing, though, a little. However sparsely the springs are populated, it's a good thing that Zevran was really onto something when he said Alistair didn't care what anyone thought of him. Wrong—he cares what a few people think—but not far wrong. Otherwise he might be upset.

Instead he ignores everyone else present entirely, finds his footing, slicks his hair back away from his forehead while he glares up at Zevran, and spitefully (toothlessly, playfully) spits his mouthful of water at his boots.

"Not my fault, you squirmed." Not as much as he could but- it is a wonder Zevran did not lose his footing on the stairs. Still. He dances away from the mouthfull of water and sets down the kit, toeing off the boots and rolling up his trousers to the knee.

"Strip and hand me your clothes, I will pass along the soap. If cannot be bothered to do it yourself I will wash your hair and shave that horrid thing off your face." One way or another- the beard is going to go. And for a little while, despite the blank space by one eye, despite the fact he'd walked all the way down here, that he's sitting in public without the patch as he settles on the edge of the springs, legs dangling in-

It feels normal. Like it did ten years ago, like it did ten weeks ago. As though nothing has changed.

Alistair keeps glaring for a few seconds. Charitable onlookers might mistake it for the glare of a man who doesn't take well to being bossed around—which isn't too laughable. He didn't take well to being bossed around by the Chantry, for example. But he does take well to being petted and guided by people he actually likes. So, no, this is just the glare of an overgrown child who's fussy when he's tired.

But Zevran looks—not cheerful, maybe. But better. Like himself. That permeates and softens Alistair's face into something reluctantly fond (just for starters) before he pulls loose the laces at the neck of his shirt. Ten years ago, ten weeks ago, he would have thrown it at Zevran. And his trousers. And his waterlogged boots. But he'll wait to do that sort of thing until he's seen proof of Zevran's ability to catch something smaller and softer without being smacked in the face.

He comes closer to pass them all off at once and holds his hand out for the soap. He looks as perfectly unharmed shirtless as he did clothed, if a little more freckled about the shoulders. Sun damage doesn't count.

"Dorian's is worse," he says, on the subject of beards. That is probably not true.

Edited (no bears) 2016-03-13 03:49 (UTC)

Ah, the pouting. The playful pouting. Zevran has missed it so; how they could poke and tease and it would not be edged with things quite so tense or guilt or words unsaid- or things that ought to have remain unspoken. They are not level- he had gouged at Alistair's wounds too deeply for that- but they are closer than they might have been. Better than he expected.

Shirt and trousers and boots and smalls he takes one by one to set aside- he will hang them to dry later. The lack of proper tossing is something for which he is immeasurably thankful for. There aren't words. A reminder of his current limitations would be frustrating, if not devastating.

Soap he holds up for a moment, peering at Alistair. "Do not forget behind your ears."

Like he would chastise a child, though with the helms the wardens wear and sand being what ti is? Probably a half decent reminder. "Dorian I cannot pin down and shave-

Well.

I could. Mmm..."

"Don't you start that," Alistair says, with an elbow to Zevran's calf. He snatches the soap and turns his back to the wall of the bath to settle down into the water to scrub. Ears first, obediently. "We fell in love, Dorian and I, out in the desert. Brought together by beards and sand in previously unknown crevices and—"

And leaving Hercules behind, and seeing Wardens bound with demons. Alistair loses steam for maintaining that level of energetic ridiculousness, splashes his face with water, and finishes in quieter tones, like he's fulfilling an obligation to be silly.

"And I'm going to run away with him, so you can't talk about him that way."

"Start what?" All innocence as he pulls out a small vial of soap for Alistair's hair, already damp from being dumped into the water. A touch to his forehead to have him tilt backward enough that soap might not run into his eyes, and with a knee against either shoulder, cushioning Alistair from the worst of the rock, Zevran sets about scrubbing the grit and sand from his now wild hair.

A trim might be in order. Or he could grow it out- there's a thought.

"Oh, is that so?" Warm, lilting, teasing. The usual drag and drawl up till all goes quiet. Zevran's hands gentle against Alistair's scalp before he murmurs. "Is this where I become terribly jealous and fight for your hand? Because I can do that if you wish. Duel him properly with rapiers and open shirts and long flowing hair."

He should probably put up at least token resistance to being babied so badly, but he's tired, and they fought so recently, and he would hate to make Zevran believe he's suffering any lingering standoffishness over something as silly as his masculinity. And he likes it. So he cooperates, malleable above the shoulders while under the water he bends one leg to cross and bring a foot close enough that he can rub between his toes.

"Hmmm. Yes, please," he decides. "But you'll have to give him time for his hair to get long, so it's fair."

"That means leaving you to his tender mercies until it is that long- and that might take a fair while." Which is something he cannot allow for so many reasons, even in jest. Ten years they might have gone without save for the odd visit and letter- but now? Having Alistair gone for so long was...unsettling.

Having him run off with someone else, anyone else, no matter how absurd? Discomfits him. Perhaps under the teasing he would be jealous. It is an uncomfortable notion he puts aside in favor of scrubbing at Alistair's nape in a way that usually eases the man's mind. "Perhaps without the long hair then, mm? Or I might cut mine to match his instead. It would be quicker."

Alistair is slow to answer because he's gone very still, head falling forward, like—you know, like a dog. A dog rendered helpless by skritching. Because there aren't enough other opportunities to draw that comparison. He needs a few moments to process, then another few to lift his head and reluctantly—but it is necessary—twist to look at Zevran with an evaluating squint.

"Even the shaved parts?"

[ OPEN ] Well I can't stand to be with myself, this liberation's seemingly rare

hey boo

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