Title: Don't Mind Him. He's… Antivan. (3/5?)
Fandom: Dragon Age
Characters: Anders ♂, Zevran ♂, M!Surana (Lucien) ♂
Rating: M (L3 N0Â S3 V1 D1)
Warnings: Smuttery, bad ideas, terrified!Anders, references to past injuries
Notes: The afternoon comes, but things do not go quite as Anders intended… Fortunately, that's because Zevran has a deliciously wicked plan.
Lucien looked up at the sound of throat-clearing, to find Anders standing in the door of his office. "Yes?"
Anders took in the scene, before responding. The Warden-Commander looked pale and rumpled, a pen in one hand, and piles of documents stacked haphazardly across his desk. His other hand tugged tensely at his hair.
"You asked me to occupy Zevran, this afternoon, so you could meet with Bann Esmerelle? But, if he's not here, I'll just go looking." Anders paused. "He's a nice guy, Luke. You did well. …And you probably want to throw some water on your face and change, before Esmerelle gets here. You're looking a little rough."
"He'll be with you in a minute. Just wait in the hall." Lucien looked terribly distracted. "Oh, and Anders? Take the door with you when you go."
Anders looked like he might have something else to say, but the Warden-Commander's insistent look moved him along. Seconds after he pulled the door shut, he realised why, and had it confirmed almost immediately.
"Yes! Zev… Why! Why do you do this to me when I'm working!? No, don't stop! Keep — yes! That! Harder!"
Zevran had been right. The stone did echo, and the gaps under the keep's wooden doors did nothing to keep the sound out of the halls. Good to know, Anders decided, if he ever decided to get up to anything.
He leaned against the wall opposite the door, listening to the Warden-Commander have what sounded like a mind-blowing, heart-stopping orgasm. Anders was willing to envy that. Anything that could make Luke sound like that…
A few moments of silence passed, and then, "Zev? I love you. I love to love you. I love it when you do that. But, get the fuck out of my office. Literally, as well as figuratively."
"You would like me to take my fuck elsewhere? I can do that. But, just remember that you asked!"
The sound of a slap against leather did not echo down the hall, but Anders still heard it clearly.
"Ooh! You better kiss that and make it better, later, hero."
"OUT. I have to get ready for this meeting, and that's not going to happen with you standing here."
"Fine, fine. I'm going. I know he's waiting in the hall. But, don't clean yourself up too much, mi amore. I like this look on you."
"And another reason you're not invited."
The door swung open, and Zevran stepped out, looking slightly dishevelled, cheeks still reddened, and not with shame. Winking, he blew a kiss to Lucien, before hooking his arm through Anders's. "You are going to show me around, yes? A look up the keep's skirts, as it were?"
"Sounds like you've already had a look up Luke's skirts, today, which is probably the best view you'll get in here," Anders teased, leading him down the hall.
"I didn't think you'd know that."
"I'd have to be blind." Anders paused and pointed at himself. "Oh. Right. Healer. I've seen it all, whether I wanted to or not. Not that I mind Luke, but I mind him even less when he's not covered in blood and holding his organs in with one hand."
"Ah, the healer's curse, to have seen more of every man than any man wanted to see. Is my Lucien still leaving chunks of his spleen all over the Deep Roads, then?" Zevran's smile seemed honest and bright, as if he hadn't a concern in the world.
"I'm pretty sure I put most of them back in, before I closed him up. Did he always do that, then?"
"Did you know Enchanter Wynne? That magnificently regal woman with the splendid bosom?" Zevran gestured, as he spoke, to make his point. "I ask because you and Lucien are from the same Circle."
"I knew Wynne. Actually, I knew Wynne pretty well. She was my teacher."
"Ah! Of course. Healer." Zevran nodded. "It was Wynne who used to put his pieces back together. Always complaining about how he didn't watch for his own safety. She and me and Alistair who went with him, in Denerim…" He trailed off, and the lightness left him, for a moment. "It's good to see the power hasn't changed him."
"I get the sense that Luke is the proverbial immovable object. It would take a lot to change him. Speaking of which, is he always so rude to you?"
"Oh, yes, you were standing in the hall… So you heard the rest of that, as well. No, he is only so rude to me when I absolutely deserve it. I tease until he bites, and I would never pretend it was otherwise. I do so like being bit, sometimes."
"And spanked, if I read that pause right," Anders teased.
"It just makes my knees weak," Zevran purred, leaning more heavily on Anders's arm.
"Luke would never forgive me if I let you fall on your ass. Do I need to carry you through the keep, so you don't swoon at the thought of another swat?"
"Oh, you mages, and your big, strong… arms." Zevran's teasing smile shot through Anders like a misfired tempest — sharp, electrical, and wrong.
"Seriously, though, are you actually flirting, or do you just run your mouth to see how long it'll take before someone punches you in the teeth?" Anders asked.
"Oh, both. Absolutely both. I am no longer in a position in which most people's opinions of me have any relevance to my survival or my lifestyle. Sometimes, I just … push, just to see how far politesse will let it go."
Anders laughed. "I can see why Luke likes you."
"Oh, no. No, I was different, once. This is not why he likes me, although he loves me no less as I am, than as I was. I was one of the most dangerous men in Antiva — to be honest, I am more dangerous now — and when I failed to kill him, he spared my life. And when I said I had nothing left to live for, he took me with him. I don't know what he expected. I don't know what he saw. But, it wasn't this."
"He just does that, doesn't he? Nate tried to kill him, too. He brags that it took four wardens to bring him down. And Luke… I don't even know. I think he just flipped him upside down and shook him until the dumb fell out."
"You have a particular way with words, healer." The sparkle in Zevran's eyes was genuine amusement.
"I'd better. I can read in five languages, and the punchlines are just as bad in all of them."
"A linguist! I wonder what else you can do with your tongue…"
Anders licked his lip and stopped in the middle of the hall. "Do you want to know? Because my bed is on the other side of that door, and I'd be happy to demonstrate."
"Under the skirts of the keep, under the skirts of another mage…" Zevran lifted an eyebrow.
"I was headed for the kitchen, so we could get some lunch. But, if there's something else you want from me, here's the place for it."
"Are you offering, or are you calling me on my shit?"
"If it's just shit, I'm calling you on it. If you're serious…" Anders swallowed. "I'm offering."
"Then I will make a counteroffer. Let us go to the kitchen and gather some things with which to eat, drink, and make merry. And then, let us come back here and make merry enough that no one but Luke will look us in the eye for days to come," Zevran proposed.
"I've got two sovereigns that says we can drive the seneschal to drink." Anders clapped Zevran on the back.
"I have a feeling that if I accept that wager, I will end up owing you two sovereigns," Zevran reasoned. "Tell me, what are the chances of some brandy, maybe a little cheese, fruit, cream, and a bowl of butter?"
"Butter?"
Zevran raised his eyebrows, suggestively.
"Grease spell."
"Butter stays fluffy for a while before it melts. I will teach you things that will impress your lovers for years to come." Zevran reached back and tucked a thumb into Anders's belt.
"Oh, yeah, sure. A professional killer is going to teach me to fuck…" Anders scoffed, as they passed a couple of soldiers, headed the other way, one of whom elbowed the other and turned around to watch them go.
"That sounds like a challenge. Fucking was the family business. I learnt from the best," Zevran warned, bumping Anders with his hip.
"You grew up in a box, Crow. Your own words." Anders poked Zevran in the chest and swung the kitchen door open with the side of his foot.
"That was later, after my Auntie Lorraine sold me to the Crows. Beautiful woman, Auntie Lorraine, and very talented. Five sovereigns for a slice of her time. I think she was once Orlesian. I think. I was young. I couldn't tell if she was faking the accent."
The way Zevran moved, Anders almost didn't see him pick up the bowl. He let go of Anders's belt and moved through the kitchen like he belonged there, elbows close, never looking anyone in the eye, but wholly aware of where everyone in the room was and what they were doing. Anders was extremely aware of that sudden shift between bragging, impolitic killer and elven servant, and the smoothness left him that much more wary of the Warden-Commander's lover.
Zevran dressed to a different station than the keep's kitchen staff, but the way he moved among them, all of them obviously thought he belonged to one of the banns, come to bring refreshment to some unscheduled emergency meeting. Anders leaned beside the door, picking at a loaf of bread, watching the master at work. Lucien had done so well — but that was Lucien. 'Oh, yes, you have amazing talents. Well, I'm going to save Ferelden from the blight. Come along… Troubles? Let me set those on fire for you. Can't have you distracted from my work.' And with the way Zevran flirted like he breathed, it was no wonder they'd ended up in some strange, semi-permanent tryst.
With a wink, Zevran stepped past him, back out into the hall, with a tray laden with food in one hand and two bottles of the Warden-Commander's best Antivan brandy in the other.
"Luke's going to kill us," Anders muttered, following him out.
"Why do you think he keeps the brandy? It's mine. If Lucien wants some, he can lick it off me, later." Coming to a corner of the hall, Zevran stopped suddenly, and Anders bumped into him. "Tell me about the room with your bed. Is it just your room, or is it the Warden bunkroom…?"
"Just mine. We don't have enough Wardens in all of Ferelden to be fighting over the good rooms, yet."
"Does it have a bath?"
"No, I have to share the bath with Nate and Oghren and some of the soldiers."
"Then we are going to my room, instead. This I do know how to find." Zevran turned the other way down the hall. "I appreciate warm and clean, when I have the option available, and it is very definitely available in a place so civilised as this."
"This is civilised?" Anders scoffed.
"I have a room with a bath, and elves and mages are regarded as men like any others. It's more civilised than Denerim, don't you think?"
"I think you're a lot more dangerous than Lucien lets on."
"You were not expecting a well-educated assassin? For shame. Of all people, you should know better than to have expectations."
"On the contrary, my life has been surprisingly predictable, to this point, with only a handful of notable exceptions — namely you and Luke."
"But, you haven't much enjoyed your life, to this point, have you? Perhaps it's time to look away from what should be happening and start seeing what could be happening. Don't ignore what's there. Just ask yourself how you could better exploit it."
"Boyfriend's busy, so you lure the resident sex god back to your room, for an afternoon of buttery good times?"
"For one, yes." Zevran smiled pleasantly up at Anders.
Zevran turned and backed into a door, pushing it open.
"Wait, no. This is Luke's room." Anders stopped and looked around, as if expecting to see a door to a room he didn't know was occupied.
"Of course it is. Where did you think I was staying? And since I'm staying in it, it's my room, which I am bringing you back to."
"Because he's going to love that. I'm going to do his boyfriend on his bed, in his room, while he's in a meeting with the bann we all want to choke the life out of?" Anders raised a disbelieving eyebrow. "I could just go ask Oghren to knock my head off, for as well as that's going to end."
"You underestimate Lucien. Come, did he not ask you to keep me occupied by whatever means you saw fit? Was this not after I made clear my intentions toward you? He knows exactly what I'm doing. And if there's a spot on his pillow that smells of you, I'm sure he'll press my face into it, later." Zevran shrugged, entirely unconcerned. "Lucien is more giving than you expect. Again with your expectations."
"If I get killed, it's on you." Anders sighed, following him into the room. "Of course, you are an assassin, so …"
"That's professional. This is not." A hint of warning flashed through Zevran's eyes as he set down the bottles and the tray on the table beside the bed, moving Lucien's pile of books out of the way.
"Luke was professional, and look where that got you."
"Lucien was different. That is not a situation I will find myself in again, if only because I will be dead. I tried to charm him into it, you know, slitting my lovely throat. But, I was too beautiful to die. And he was so very handsome." Sitting on the footboard of the bed, Zevran slid his boots off. "I will make myself less beautiful, the next time I ask someone to kill me. It will be easier."
"I can't imagine you begging for death…" Anders had no idea what to do with his hands, but his eyes lingered on the striking elf, now bootless.
"Good. Because I didn't." Zevran caught one of Anders's nervous hands and looked up at him. "Healer, now is not the time to fear me."
"Is it not? Seemed like the perfect time for it, to me. I'm gorgeous when I'm terrified. Ask any Templar." Anders pulled his hand free and laid it against Zevran's cheek. "It smells like Luke, in here."
"Are you so disinterested in Lucien?" Zevran asked, tilting his head to stand with the hand. "I do not think he is disinterested in you."
"Disinterested? No. Terrified? Yes." Anders laughed, running his finger and thumb along the curve of Zevran's ear.
"As you say, you're gorgeous when you're terrified."
"Cheater," Anders mumbled, as Zevran pulled him into a kiss.
"Grandmaster," Zevran corrected, on the next breath.
That was all it took. Anders hauled the Crow up by his fluttery Orlesian shirt and tossed him backward onto the Warden-Commander's enormous bed. Catching one of Zevran's feet, Anders grinned, then dragged his tongue along the sole.
"We'll see about that."
"You are even more beautiful, when you are overconfident." Zevran grinned, and the game was on.
