#see if I could pair someone like Zevran-- who in theory will fall for just about anyone who's good to him god bless him-- with an obviously

[wild-houseplant]

WIP Wednesday!

Well, after a few solid weeks of having absolutely nothing to offer to WIP anyday, I come bearing a snippet from quite a few chapters into HWWT. In specific, the exact moment Rhodri gets the idea she might actually fancy the man who has been shamelessly flirting with her for around half a year. CW for internalised ableism.

My thanks and apologies to @heniareth @siriskulksnerding @icylook @ollifree and @anna-the-great-and-terrible that this is soooo very delayed. On the bright side, it came out on a Wednesday! the wrong one by two weeks, but a Wednesday all the same! X) Can I tag you bunch back?? @rlainarin can I pester you for snippets friendo? @D@

The Warden beamed like she’d been the one given the gift, pushing off harder with her foot to rock herself a little quicker. Zevran bit his lip in a half-smile and shifted his newly-gloved hands to admire his gift and the giver all at once.

She had barely fallen into her new rhythm before she froze mid-sway. Her fingers tightened around her knees, foot replacing on the ground.

“Ah. Forgive me,” she mumbled, eyes dropping to the ground. “I know I’m not meant to. I just– it just happens sometimes, before I even realise I’m doing it.”

Zevran shuffled closer and rested a hand on her shoulder. “Mm? Why would you apologise for something like that, my lovely Grey Warden?”

“It’s offensive.”

“Eh? Offensive to who?”

“... Everybody.”

He raised an eyebrow at her. “Everybody?”

“Oh, truly?” Rhodri barked a bleak, bitter laugh that damn near stole the throat out of him. “I see the way people look at me, Zevran.”

Zevran caught the ache in his face and schooled it into a saucy grin. “How do they look at you, then?”

“They stare.”

“Mmm, I do stare at you, it’s true,” he declared airily.

“I know you do.”

He wagged his finger playfully. “Ah-ah! Not for the reason you might think. Come now, you must know you are very beautiful, Rhodri.”

“So is Morrigan. So are Alistair and Leliana. You don’t stare at them like that.”

Zevran took his lip in his teeth. “Oh? You think it’s impossible that I find you much more attractive than I do them?”

She appeared to consider this a moment. “No, I suppose not.”

“Good. In any case, you might wish to reconsider your stance on moving your body.” He squeezed her shoulder. “We are not like these uptight Fereldans, my dear. We are Northerners! Expressing ourselves is in our blood!”

Rhodri shrugged. “Not like this,” she said hollowly.

Zevran shrugged back with twice the grandeur. “Perhaps, but it would be boring if we all went about it the same way. I happen to find your way to be very enjoyable. It isn’t often people are so open with me, and it’s most refreshing.” He winked as obviously as he could manage, adding in a purr, “Charming, too.”

Her breath snagged loudly. Enough, he thanked the Maker, to cover the swell in his own chest from watching her face soften. A blush was staining her face the colour of wine, and in the process doing a damned fine job of evaporating his recollection of her months-long oblivion to his advances.

At last.

He shuffled a little closer, steadying his enthusiasm with a careful breath. “I’ve a question for you, my Warden, if I may.” 

[jadewing-realms]

zevwarden week 2022 - day 3

Fandom: Dragon Age: Origins

Title: ZevWarden Week, Day 3 - Fights & Reconciliation

Pairing: Zevran x male!Warden; Zevran Arainai x Salem Surana (x Leliana, poly!Warden referenced)

Word Count: 1,510

Something has changed in the Warden. Zevran avoided it for a while, hadn’t wanted to think about it. Because he’s seen plenty of heroes fall, seen people who swore themselves to the protection of others suddenly turn sour. It’s easy, it seems, to let power win. Let it make you feel like you walk above it all while having the arrogance to act as though that power makes you a victim. 

He just never thought his Warden would become one of those people.

_______________

Since he was a child, Zevran had had a painful understanding of the idea that power changes people. From close friends to distant strangers, he’d watched people start out with seemingly good intentions only to betray them as soon as the appropriate amount of wealth or influence landed in their hands. 

It happened again and again. Every time, it pointed to an inevitable change somewhere along the line. A point of no return. A moment where that person, who once understood their fellows in struggle and pain, ceased to care.

It was knowing that that made it so easy to assassinate them. Those people had forfeited their right to be considered worthy of life the moment they stopped considering those less than them as such. Killing people like that, it was no less killing beasts.

Meeting the Grey Warden, though... Zevran had thought, for a while, that his theory had been broken.

This strange man, with his thin frame, eldritch scars and sharp, intelligent eyes. He had looked upon Zevran in the moment he learned of the plot to kill him with not horror or fear or condemnation. Instead, what was written on his face was simple understanding. And the sparkle of amusement. 

Perhaps that amusement should have been a warning sign, rather than the endearment Zevran had thought it was.

Or perhaps Salem Surana had simply changed.

It was no clearer than in the moment that the Warden averted his eyes, colder of late, and uttered a distant, “You could never understand,” when both Zevran and Leliana told him to stay for once. Let someone else handle the crisis this time.

Salem was tired. Anyone could see that. 

“This is not about understanding!” Zevran argued, words fast and harsh, hands gesticulating with his point. “What is there to understand? Not every fight is yours to win. And yet this one, just another petty chore from another petty noble somewhere, is somehow more important than everything else - than us??”

“Help us understand,” Leliana added, much more gracefully, though even she had a furrow to her brow that told Zevran she was fighting her own temper, the hurt flooding her heart. “Perhaps you are right, but we never will if you do not talk to us. That is why we’re here now.”

Salem sunk back, seated on a chair covered in furs and loosely-knit throws at the head of the bonfire ring, where so many parties had been spent indulging in spirits and dancing around a roaring fire beneath the stars, now vacant. Deserted. “I have the burden of a responsibility that neither of you, gods willing, will ever have to bear.”

He spoke so coldly. This was not talking to; this was talking at.

Zevran felt his frustration build. “Bulls**t! Do not start spouting that self-righteous s**t at us, do not treat us like children!”

“We were with you at the end of the Blight, Salem.” Leliana had clenched her fists. “We share in your responsibility, we always have.”

“No,” Salem insisted, jaw clenching. “You don’t. Even when we fought the archdemon, there were machinations at play that you still don’t know about. Can’t know about. I...” At last, he looked at them, but it was with such... pity. “I wish to spare you; don’t you see? This weight... I don’t wish to see it on your faces.”

Zevran boiled over, lashing out with a hand and pulling the man up by the collar so that perhaps, he would have no choice but to look him in the eye. And get that arrogant pity off his face. “Spare us? Spare us? You f**king idiot, you push us away and call it sparing us?”

“Zev...” Leliana. Her hand rested on his shoulder. “Don’t.”

“Do not tell me that, tell him that,” Zevran bit back, looking back at her over his shoulder. There was a pointedness to her expression, though. Her grip on him tightened, her eyes, even more concerned now than they were before, darted from Zev to Salem and then back again.

Zevran looked back to the man he’d called his lover for so long now. Only to find him all but deflated in his grasp. That stiff-backed pomp and pity was gone, and in its place, was simply... exhaustion. Eyes not cold, but hollow. When had that happened? Salem brought a hand up to rest on Zevran’s, where he’d fisted it in the man’s collar. “It’s not fair. I know it’s not... I know.” His voice was shaking now, words spoken low, in that way that was clearly meant for their ears and theirs alone. He wasn’t even speaking for the woods to hear now. “I... don’t know a better option. I really don’t. I’ve thought it over, and over, and over and over and over but no solutions ever come. Just... dark dreams. And an overwhelming desire to protect... this. This place, this... feeling. The two of you. My lights in the dark, when the shadows close in.”

Zevran swallowed down the irate retort that jumped to his lips, the impulse to call him out on his talking in aimless circles and how he only ever did that to people he considered intellectually inferior. But... a tremor had entered the Warden’s voice.

This was not arrogance. It was fear.

Something about that made Zevran’s hand withdraw, releasing Salem to sink back into his seat. Sink he did, with more weight on him than even before, like if he had his way, the chair, no, the earth would simply swallow him up.

Something was very wrong.

He’d been so distracted. So infuriated, so convinced this was about status. That he and Leliana were being deemed second priority to some power play. Was that all there was to it, though? No. They were missing something.

“What do you mean?” he demanded, wary. “There is no danger here, only what can be expected from the wilds. And you do not need to prove your power to anyone here.”

Salem had already begun shaking his head. “No, it’s not... it’s not about that.”

“Then what is it about!?” Zev spat, patience thin.

Before Leliana could get an objecting word out, Salem jolted to his feet, abrupt enough to make both of them jump. “I am a Grey Warden! What that means... do you understand? No. There are some things you can’t understand, and if I can help it... you won’t. Ever.”

Zevran shrugged Leliana’s hand off, leaning in so Salem couldn’t avoid his scowl. “Why!? So you can lord it over us like this?”

“Because--!” One syllable escaped, Salem’s voice risen to match the anger in Zev’s but immediately dying out again. Just that one word seemed like the only fight the pale man could dredge out of himself. Instead, his hands flew to clasp Zevran’s face, startling him. “Because...” The tremor was back, twice as strong. “I.. I love you... so very much, and... I couldn’t bear... if you left.”

The words took so much for him to say, but he managed them still. Left? He was... afraid that they would leave? Why? The thought seemed to kill all trace of anger Zev had felt in him, like water dousing a flame. His guard dropped as Salem leaned into him, his own hands rising purely out of confusion and the instinct to comfort this person who, despite how frustrating he was, had all of Zevran’s affection.

Zevran shared a look with Leliana, seeing his bewilderment and growing concern reflected back at him from her eyes as she stepped in to put her arms around both of them.

“Please, Salem,” she muttered, resting her forehead against the Warden’s shoulder. “You do not have to protect us. Whatever you’re fighting... let us help you.”

“We told you,” Zevran added, what remains of his guard just enough to make the words unyielding, so he didn’t get any ideas about brushing them off again. “You do not have to shoulder this alone. We are yours.”

At first, it seemed like Salem might object. He opened his mouth, eyes closed, with a reflexive, “You cannot...” but he trailed off before he could finish. He stopped to think for a long moment, his hands sliding from Zev’s face to either side of his neck, as much holding him close as he was holding himself up. Like this grip on Zevran was the only thing keeping him on his feet. 

Zevran heard the surrender before it came, It was evident in the way the Warden’s shoulders drooped further, his body swayed, and he took a deep, shaky breath. 

“What... do you know of the taint the Grey Wardens bear?” Salem lowered his arms, wrapped them around Zevran’s waist and the great, untouchable hero all but shrunk between the two of them. Like he wanted nothing more than to disappear in their embrace. His curtain of silver hair, streaked now with more white that Zevran had never really noticed before, hid his face from the two that encircled him.

“What do you know... of the Calling?”