dalishstorm (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dalishstorm) wrote2010-06-23 01:11 am
dalishstorm) wrote2010-06-23 01:11 am
Succor
Original prompt: This anon was a bit shocked to only find one Taliesin prompt in the archive, and none with Zevran!
Would like to see H/C of some sort with these two, back in the day in Antiva -- one of them gets injured, somehow or other, and the other offers their own brand of comfort or distraction. Bonus if the injured party is unwilling at first but soon changes his mind.
This anon would prefer no Rinna and her associated angst.
---------------------------
Two things came to Zevran's attention when he woke.
Firstly, this room was unfamiliar. This wasn't a room at a seedy inn or the cramped quarters he shared with Taliesen back in Antiva City. It felt clean, the air still but fresh, light filtering in through small glass windows with little white curtains high on the whitewashed walls, making the room bright, but it was delightfully cool even bathed in sunlight. He lay in a soft bed, blankets carefully pulled around him but not tucked tightly, and wanted to relax back into it, closing his eyes. This was strange, entirely novel, but he liked it.
Secondly, he'd been drugged. Everything seemed hazy over a dull, distant ache, his head full of stuffing and his thoughts flowing slow like cold honey. Dulled senses strained to pick up on presences in the room, on scents and sounds in his surroundings, and Zevran started to panic. The last thing he remembered was engaging a pair of guards at the top of a set of sweeping marble stairs in their mark's country villa after the deed was done, as they'd been unable to exit by their alternate routes. He'd killed the mage present, but in doing so activated a glyph of paralysis, and dimly remembered a great brute of a man hauling him up by his hair and throwing him down the stairs.
Of course, this didn't explain his current situation at all. Those remaining guards would've killed him, unless—Zevran shuddered. He had no qualms about using sex to get close to a target, but there were things he'd thought he'd never have to endure again when Taliesen hauled him out of the pool of apprentices a couple of years early. After all, he was attractive, barely marked, and he looked young, still. They both belonged to a Crow Master, and were theoretically his possessions, but as a team had some autonomy, some say in how they did a mission and who could take what privileges. Such a prospect wasn't a happy thought, but one Zevran had to entertain, so Zevran tried to sit in order to get a better view of his surroundings.
Gritting his teeth against the screaming pain in his chest Zevran managed to get one elbow under himself, but the other arm was bound to his chest, immobile. Blankets slid just enough to let him glimpse his own battered flesh, horrible blooms of color peeking around the edges of clean, soft bandages like a brutal tattoo. Every muscle in his back protested the movement, too, so stiff he didn't think he could sit up any further regardless of his tolerance to pain. When the door opened Zevran jerked his head to face his captor, expression carefully neutral.
Taliesen simply smiled, reading the expression for what it was, and shut the door behind him. The human came to stand, hips canted, arms crossed, at the bedside, Zevran craning his head back to look up at the taller man. Strangely, there was some sincerity to his smile, not just the sarcasm Zevran was so accustomed to. “And so the sleeping damsel awakens, no need for fairytale magic.”
With a grimace more at Taliesen's implications than any physical discomfort, Zevran asked, “Where are we?” voice almost failing him.
“This is a farmstead on the outside of town,” Taliesen explained. “I could get you no farther. We're safe here, though; we've been here two days now, and no one has been so much as curious.”
Satisfied with the assessment of their safety, Zevran laid back, the bed linens now blessedly cool against his skin. “Why should that be? That no one is curious over two strangers, one injured, when their local lord has died?”
“The farm's owners are convinced we're mercenaries of some sort, not Crows,” he said. “Crows don't look after their own, after all.”
So Zevran's injuries had been fortuitous, in a way—darkly amusing, and he smiled as much as he could through the lingering pain under the drugged haze. Whatever he'd been dosed with was fading, but powerful. “Two days?” he asked.
Nodding, Taliesen said, “Two days. I was starting to wonder if I would be in the market for a new partner. That was a nasty hit you took, apparently. It could've used a healer, but we've no money for one here, and I couldn't get you back to Antiva City like this. We're lucky you didn't break your neck, going down the stairs like that.”
Concern in Taliesen's voice was unusual, made Zevran shudder as if under a chill wind. The human moved off out of his restricted range of vision for a moment, returned with a roughly thrown ceramic cup, helped Zevran to sit up a little more properly and to drink. He honestly wasn't aware of his thirst until the offer was made, and both hated and appreciated Taliesen for enforcing moderation. In sitting up, though, other pressing concerns came to Zevran's attention, and Taliesen helped with that, too, no more than an amused, faintly sarcastic smile on his face. Being so weak shamed Zevran, but by the time all this was done he was too tired and achy to care.
“You were at the door,” Zevran muttered once back in bed, fighting against returning sleep. “Why did you come back for me?”
Taliesen sat down on the edge of the bed, still smiling, laughed quietly. “Don't get the wrong idea. We make a good team, and I don't fancy the idea of running solo again.”
With a little scoff Zevran rolled his head away to stare up at the ceiling. “Surely you could find some other pretty little elven boy to rescue from the apprentice's stockyard.”
“But I would have to train him,” Taliesen said, “and wait for him to be mature enough to understand all the nuances of what we do. And he'd probably blubber, too, instead of being mouthy and fighting back. I'll never admit to saying this, but sometimes I am wrong. Have you met another apprentice who has the balls to tell his betters they're wrong?”
Rolling his eyes, Zevran scoffed. “You are far from my better.”
Taliesen reached over to grip Zevran's undamaged shoulder, and Zevran winced anyway because hardly an inch of him wasn't sore or stiff or bruised. “You see?” Taliesen's voice was uncharacteristically light, though he pointedly ignored Zevran's wince. “They wouldn't be you, and it wouldn't be the same. It's you or nothing as far as I'm concerned, Zev.”
~*~Two more days, and this farm was turning out to be a strange sort of paradise. Zevran made it out into the orchard with Taliesen's help, because the little cellar room was quaint and cool and stifling. The heat of an Antivan afternoon was twice as terrible, but a welcome change, even with angry clouds boiling off the distant coast and the air heavy with a promise of rain. They had some time before they absolutely had to report back, and Taliesen seemed intent on using every spare moment to allow for Zevran's recovery.
Zevran understood, and was quietly thankful. An assassin so injured he couldn't work was a dead assassin. If he returned in such a shape, their Master might simply be done with him, or demote him, and Zevran would fight to his last breath before he returned to the way things had been before Taliesen. After struggling to be free of that abyss, he would not be pulled down again.
Such concerns seemed strangely distant, sitting in the shade of an ancient fig tree, breathing in the scent of wood and fruit and listening to the drone of insects, feeling the unforgiving sun softened to a lover's caress by the leaves overhead. A breeze would be welcome, but Zevran really couldn't complain when every other aspect of his surroundings seemed drawn directly from some florid prose.
Life with the Dalish had not been what he expected. He'd had low expectations for rural life in general, more so after his failed attempt to flee the Crows. This farm was orderly, as tidy as any of the streets in the nicer parts of Antiva city, the well water sweet enough that it didn't need to be cut with wine, all of the food absolutely fresh. Surely he wouldn't wish such a life, because the work wouldn't suit him, but he could stand to bask in it for a few days. It was strange and new, and not what he had expected, a pleasant surprise.
And Taliesen was not behaving as expected, something Zevran could hardly trust. Now, for example, the man was returning from some distant part of the orchard with a handful of the first of the year's main crop, settled down next to him and offered a few. They were just ripe, not perfectly so, probably missed by workers eager to get away to their break for the hottest part of the day. All of this being in the moment satisfied a need Zevran wasn't aware of having until now.
For a while they sat in silence, eating figs, Zevran trying to figure out what Taliesen was on about with all this soft touch behavior. So he asked again, cloaking his dismay in dark humor. “I wonder how long it will be before you decide you should have left me, how long before the pastoral life begins to grate on you, my friend.”
“Quite a while,” Taliesen said, glancing over at him. “I told you—it's you or no one, and I don't want to work alone again.”
“But this,” Zevran gestured with his good hand, taking in the orchard and their circumstances with a simple flex of his fingers and an open palm, “this doesn't bore you? This isn't holding you back? The time we were stalking that nobleman's son, and one of his men knocked me into a daze before we could kill him, you were so livid with me--”
“That's different,” Taliesen said, tone growing a little darker, eyes narrowing. “That was just an injury, and not one that should've hampered you. This time I almost lost you.” For a brief moment they fell to silence again, Zevran pointedly looking down at a particularly interesting bruise on his stomach, all to aware of Taliesen's eyes on him. He didn't like this, at all, because Taliesen was trying to imply that they were more than two men who murdered together, more like brothers—whatever that meant, because Zevran had no idea. This had to be a game, in his mind, because the only people who'd tried to get close to him after leaving the whorehouse had done so to use or hurt him in some brutal fashion. Taliesen was closer than he let most people come, but only by necessity, out of a thin sort of gratitude for pulling Zevran out of the life he'd been living as an undedicated apprentice.
A strong hand on his bare shoulder, “Zevran?” He finally looked up, to see Taliesen smirking. “Don't mistake what I'm saying. The time it would take to bring someone else to your level would be an even greater drain on my time. And they likely wouldn't have your aptitudes or your quirks—they make you easier to work with. I appreciate having you around.” Taliesen drew close, so close that Zevran couldn't ignore him any more, hot breath against his cheek, “I could show you how much I appreciate having you around.”
Scowling, Zevran pushed at Taliesen with his good arm. They played this game from time to time, and Zevran was in no shape to fight back, in no shape for Taliesen's often brutal lust. But the strange behavior made sense now, the soft touch—at least Taliesen understood he was fragile, physically, right now. But Taliesen only laughed, darted inside his guard, laid a hard, claiming kiss against Zevran's neck, surprisingly careful of the tender bruises as one hand trailed down to grip him through soft linen trousers. Zevran hissed, glaring down at him, “Taliesen,” put his good hand against Taliesen's head to push the man away.
Laughing, Taliesen ducked, squeezed him, pinned Zevran's good hand at the wrist with his free hand. Taliesen leaned in again, breathed against his ear, “Submit. Don't fight it, for once.”
Zevran struggled anyway, but Taliesen was larger, stronger, hale, so Taliesen laughed at him, dodged bruises to tease with his lips, refusing to let Zevran twitch away from any touch. In refusing to relent Taliesen eventually won out, Zevran stilling under his touch but refusing to relax. Taliesen was able to let go of Zevran's wrist, tugged the soft trousers and underthings down, finished teasing the elf to hardness. When Zevran hissed his name again, Taliesen glanced up, flashing a grin, before taking Zevran into his mouth, almost to the hilt in one smooth motion.
With that wet heat around him Zevran could hardly get a breath of warm, humid air, gasping breathless curses against Taliesen and his insatiable appetites and his wicked tongue, good hand digging into the grass at his side. The human smiled up at him with his eyes, never stopping in his slowly accelerating pace. Taliesen's fingers sought out all those places on hips and thighs left unblemished by the fall, dragging his calloused fingers up the inside of Zevran's thighs in particular, before he pinned the elf's hips in a hard grip with one hand to prevent any thrusting and cupped him with the other, stroking and fondling.
Finally, Taliesen took him all the way in, nose pressing into the soft blond curls at the base of Zevran's shaft. Zevran couldn't help but bring his good hand up to grip the man's head, taking as near a handful of the short, coarse hair as he could to exert some pressure and encourage this pace. At this Taliesen seemed just as enthused, just as eager for Zevran's release, and obeyed instead of playing with him as Zevran would've expected. He came with a strangled curse into Taliesen's mouth, tensing muscles and the involuntary motion of his hips painful, but that release worth it.
Taliesen, of course, swallowed every bit down, save what was left on his tongue when he removed himself and shifted up to kiss Zevran. Zevran understood this, too: if Taliesen didn't take his pleasure in some way immediately, it would be the thought of sharing this taste that he worked himself to later. So there was no affection in the kiss, only hard lust, exactly what Zevran was used to.
Still smirking when they parted, Taliesen asked, “Better?”
“I think I will require a few more such sessions before I am fully recovered,” Zevran quipped. “But it is a start.”
Would like to see H/C of some sort with these two, back in the day in Antiva -- one of them gets injured, somehow or other, and the other offers their own brand of comfort or distraction. Bonus if the injured party is unwilling at first but soon changes his mind.
This anon would prefer no Rinna and her associated angst.
---------------------------
Two things came to Zevran's attention when he woke.
Firstly, this room was unfamiliar. This wasn't a room at a seedy inn or the cramped quarters he shared with Taliesen back in Antiva City. It felt clean, the air still but fresh, light filtering in through small glass windows with little white curtains high on the whitewashed walls, making the room bright, but it was delightfully cool even bathed in sunlight. He lay in a soft bed, blankets carefully pulled around him but not tucked tightly, and wanted to relax back into it, closing his eyes. This was strange, entirely novel, but he liked it.
Secondly, he'd been drugged. Everything seemed hazy over a dull, distant ache, his head full of stuffing and his thoughts flowing slow like cold honey. Dulled senses strained to pick up on presences in the room, on scents and sounds in his surroundings, and Zevran started to panic. The last thing he remembered was engaging a pair of guards at the top of a set of sweeping marble stairs in their mark's country villa after the deed was done, as they'd been unable to exit by their alternate routes. He'd killed the mage present, but in doing so activated a glyph of paralysis, and dimly remembered a great brute of a man hauling him up by his hair and throwing him down the stairs.
Of course, this didn't explain his current situation at all. Those remaining guards would've killed him, unless—Zevran shuddered. He had no qualms about using sex to get close to a target, but there were things he'd thought he'd never have to endure again when Taliesen hauled him out of the pool of apprentices a couple of years early. After all, he was attractive, barely marked, and he looked young, still. They both belonged to a Crow Master, and were theoretically his possessions, but as a team had some autonomy, some say in how they did a mission and who could take what privileges. Such a prospect wasn't a happy thought, but one Zevran had to entertain, so Zevran tried to sit in order to get a better view of his surroundings.
Gritting his teeth against the screaming pain in his chest Zevran managed to get one elbow under himself, but the other arm was bound to his chest, immobile. Blankets slid just enough to let him glimpse his own battered flesh, horrible blooms of color peeking around the edges of clean, soft bandages like a brutal tattoo. Every muscle in his back protested the movement, too, so stiff he didn't think he could sit up any further regardless of his tolerance to pain. When the door opened Zevran jerked his head to face his captor, expression carefully neutral.
Taliesen simply smiled, reading the expression for what it was, and shut the door behind him. The human came to stand, hips canted, arms crossed, at the bedside, Zevran craning his head back to look up at the taller man. Strangely, there was some sincerity to his smile, not just the sarcasm Zevran was so accustomed to. “And so the sleeping damsel awakens, no need for fairytale magic.”
With a grimace more at Taliesen's implications than any physical discomfort, Zevran asked, “Where are we?” voice almost failing him.
“This is a farmstead on the outside of town,” Taliesen explained. “I could get you no farther. We're safe here, though; we've been here two days now, and no one has been so much as curious.”
Satisfied with the assessment of their safety, Zevran laid back, the bed linens now blessedly cool against his skin. “Why should that be? That no one is curious over two strangers, one injured, when their local lord has died?”
“The farm's owners are convinced we're mercenaries of some sort, not Crows,” he said. “Crows don't look after their own, after all.”
So Zevran's injuries had been fortuitous, in a way—darkly amusing, and he smiled as much as he could through the lingering pain under the drugged haze. Whatever he'd been dosed with was fading, but powerful. “Two days?” he asked.
Nodding, Taliesen said, “Two days. I was starting to wonder if I would be in the market for a new partner. That was a nasty hit you took, apparently. It could've used a healer, but we've no money for one here, and I couldn't get you back to Antiva City like this. We're lucky you didn't break your neck, going down the stairs like that.”
Concern in Taliesen's voice was unusual, made Zevran shudder as if under a chill wind. The human moved off out of his restricted range of vision for a moment, returned with a roughly thrown ceramic cup, helped Zevran to sit up a little more properly and to drink. He honestly wasn't aware of his thirst until the offer was made, and both hated and appreciated Taliesen for enforcing moderation. In sitting up, though, other pressing concerns came to Zevran's attention, and Taliesen helped with that, too, no more than an amused, faintly sarcastic smile on his face. Being so weak shamed Zevran, but by the time all this was done he was too tired and achy to care.
“You were at the door,” Zevran muttered once back in bed, fighting against returning sleep. “Why did you come back for me?”
Taliesen sat down on the edge of the bed, still smiling, laughed quietly. “Don't get the wrong idea. We make a good team, and I don't fancy the idea of running solo again.”
With a little scoff Zevran rolled his head away to stare up at the ceiling. “Surely you could find some other pretty little elven boy to rescue from the apprentice's stockyard.”
“But I would have to train him,” Taliesen said, “and wait for him to be mature enough to understand all the nuances of what we do. And he'd probably blubber, too, instead of being mouthy and fighting back. I'll never admit to saying this, but sometimes I am wrong. Have you met another apprentice who has the balls to tell his betters they're wrong?”
Rolling his eyes, Zevran scoffed. “You are far from my better.”
Taliesen reached over to grip Zevran's undamaged shoulder, and Zevran winced anyway because hardly an inch of him wasn't sore or stiff or bruised. “You see?” Taliesen's voice was uncharacteristically light, though he pointedly ignored Zevran's wince. “They wouldn't be you, and it wouldn't be the same. It's you or nothing as far as I'm concerned, Zev.”
~*~
Zevran understood, and was quietly thankful. An assassin so injured he couldn't work was a dead assassin. If he returned in such a shape, their Master might simply be done with him, or demote him, and Zevran would fight to his last breath before he returned to the way things had been before Taliesen. After struggling to be free of that abyss, he would not be pulled down again.
Such concerns seemed strangely distant, sitting in the shade of an ancient fig tree, breathing in the scent of wood and fruit and listening to the drone of insects, feeling the unforgiving sun softened to a lover's caress by the leaves overhead. A breeze would be welcome, but Zevran really couldn't complain when every other aspect of his surroundings seemed drawn directly from some florid prose.
Life with the Dalish had not been what he expected. He'd had low expectations for rural life in general, more so after his failed attempt to flee the Crows. This farm was orderly, as tidy as any of the streets in the nicer parts of Antiva city, the well water sweet enough that it didn't need to be cut with wine, all of the food absolutely fresh. Surely he wouldn't wish such a life, because the work wouldn't suit him, but he could stand to bask in it for a few days. It was strange and new, and not what he had expected, a pleasant surprise.
And Taliesen was not behaving as expected, something Zevran could hardly trust. Now, for example, the man was returning from some distant part of the orchard with a handful of the first of the year's main crop, settled down next to him and offered a few. They were just ripe, not perfectly so, probably missed by workers eager to get away to their break for the hottest part of the day. All of this being in the moment satisfied a need Zevran wasn't aware of having until now.
For a while they sat in silence, eating figs, Zevran trying to figure out what Taliesen was on about with all this soft touch behavior. So he asked again, cloaking his dismay in dark humor. “I wonder how long it will be before you decide you should have left me, how long before the pastoral life begins to grate on you, my friend.”
“Quite a while,” Taliesen said, glancing over at him. “I told you—it's you or no one, and I don't want to work alone again.”
“But this,” Zevran gestured with his good hand, taking in the orchard and their circumstances with a simple flex of his fingers and an open palm, “this doesn't bore you? This isn't holding you back? The time we were stalking that nobleman's son, and one of his men knocked me into a daze before we could kill him, you were so livid with me--”
“That's different,” Taliesen said, tone growing a little darker, eyes narrowing. “That was just an injury, and not one that should've hampered you. This time I almost lost you.” For a brief moment they fell to silence again, Zevran pointedly looking down at a particularly interesting bruise on his stomach, all to aware of Taliesen's eyes on him. He didn't like this, at all, because Taliesen was trying to imply that they were more than two men who murdered together, more like brothers—whatever that meant, because Zevran had no idea. This had to be a game, in his mind, because the only people who'd tried to get close to him after leaving the whorehouse had done so to use or hurt him in some brutal fashion. Taliesen was closer than he let most people come, but only by necessity, out of a thin sort of gratitude for pulling Zevran out of the life he'd been living as an undedicated apprentice.
A strong hand on his bare shoulder, “Zevran?” He finally looked up, to see Taliesen smirking. “Don't mistake what I'm saying. The time it would take to bring someone else to your level would be an even greater drain on my time. And they likely wouldn't have your aptitudes or your quirks—they make you easier to work with. I appreciate having you around.” Taliesen drew close, so close that Zevran couldn't ignore him any more, hot breath against his cheek, “I could show you how much I appreciate having you around.”
Scowling, Zevran pushed at Taliesen with his good arm. They played this game from time to time, and Zevran was in no shape to fight back, in no shape for Taliesen's often brutal lust. But the strange behavior made sense now, the soft touch—at least Taliesen understood he was fragile, physically, right now. But Taliesen only laughed, darted inside his guard, laid a hard, claiming kiss against Zevran's neck, surprisingly careful of the tender bruises as one hand trailed down to grip him through soft linen trousers. Zevran hissed, glaring down at him, “Taliesen,” put his good hand against Taliesen's head to push the man away.
Laughing, Taliesen ducked, squeezed him, pinned Zevran's good hand at the wrist with his free hand. Taliesen leaned in again, breathed against his ear, “Submit. Don't fight it, for once.”
Zevran struggled anyway, but Taliesen was larger, stronger, hale, so Taliesen laughed at him, dodged bruises to tease with his lips, refusing to let Zevran twitch away from any touch. In refusing to relent Taliesen eventually won out, Zevran stilling under his touch but refusing to relax. Taliesen was able to let go of Zevran's wrist, tugged the soft trousers and underthings down, finished teasing the elf to hardness. When Zevran hissed his name again, Taliesen glanced up, flashing a grin, before taking Zevran into his mouth, almost to the hilt in one smooth motion.
With that wet heat around him Zevran could hardly get a breath of warm, humid air, gasping breathless curses against Taliesen and his insatiable appetites and his wicked tongue, good hand digging into the grass at his side. The human smiled up at him with his eyes, never stopping in his slowly accelerating pace. Taliesen's fingers sought out all those places on hips and thighs left unblemished by the fall, dragging his calloused fingers up the inside of Zevran's thighs in particular, before he pinned the elf's hips in a hard grip with one hand to prevent any thrusting and cupped him with the other, stroking and fondling.
Finally, Taliesen took him all the way in, nose pressing into the soft blond curls at the base of Zevran's shaft. Zevran couldn't help but bring his good hand up to grip the man's head, taking as near a handful of the short, coarse hair as he could to exert some pressure and encourage this pace. At this Taliesen seemed just as enthused, just as eager for Zevran's release, and obeyed instead of playing with him as Zevran would've expected. He came with a strangled curse into Taliesen's mouth, tensing muscles and the involuntary motion of his hips painful, but that release worth it.
Taliesen, of course, swallowed every bit down, save what was left on his tongue when he removed himself and shifted up to kiss Zevran. Zevran understood this, too: if Taliesen didn't take his pleasure in some way immediately, it would be the thought of sharing this taste that he worked himself to later. So there was no affection in the kiss, only hard lust, exactly what Zevran was used to.
Still smirking when they parted, Taliesen asked, “Better?”
“I think I will require a few more such sessions before I am fully recovered,” Zevran quipped. “But it is a start.”