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Loving Tamlen was so easy that, in a way it almost happened by accident.
They had been best friends, always together for as long as he could remember, and in all honesty it had always felt sort of inevitable. There was nothing sudden, no earth-shattering moment when he realized, oh, it’s you. Because it had always been Tamlen, and that statement alone had always been a core part of him. It was something he’d always known, had never doubted, and because really no matter what happened when they grew up, if they had children, there would never be anyone he loved in the same way he loved Tamlen.
So, when it was all taken away—a cave that didn’t exist, a shattered mirror, and something sick, dark, crawling through him, join us—it felt like his whole world was ripped open. Lhingrion was left with this aching, bloody hole where his chest had been pried open and his heart ripped out, and there wasn’t even time to mourn. He could stay for the funeral and then they were off, down to the south to become a Gray Warden and fight the darkspawn, never to return.
Even if he wanted to, it was impossible. As he lay bleeding beside the corpse of an ogre, arrows piercing him like a pincushion and darkspawn swarming, his clan was boarding a ship headed straight to the Free Marches.
And that was that.
* * *
By contrast, loving Zevran was so easy, it seemed to happen entirely by accident.
It shouldn’t have happened—who fell in love with their killer, after all? A failed assassination attempt set up by Loghain of course, all of his companions consistently droning in his ear about how this was a bad idea. In other circumstances Lhingrion would agree with them, and certainly he could sense the folly of his actions. The assassin gave his word not to try and finish the job, but the word of a killer wasn’t worth much.
Still. Lhin was tired of constantly being surrounded by shemlen. Alistair he liked well enough, but his fellow Warden was still drowning in his grief, and as much as he tried to help, it was trying in of itself. Leliana meant well, but her insistence that the Maker was for everyone, and her horribly clumsy words grated on his patience. Never mind the sharp, jagged barbs from Morrigan, or the insistent, preachy lectures from Wynne. Maybe it was foolish, to trust Zevran so easily, but the assassin had been able to pull the first, genuine smile out of him with just a little bit of light teasing.
Sure, he was a flat ear, and sure he could not in fact pick locks, but Lhin found himself liking the man nonetheless. There had been another elf, after that, and a dwarf, and a golem, a strange and happy mix of misfits that he would come to consider his new clan.
Elgara had been a little more difficult to win over, and he had to admit it had been hilarious to see Zevran streaking out of his tent, bare ass to the moon, when he discovered the giant spider on his bedroll.
The flirting… that was easy, seamless, instinctive from the very beginning. It felt like a lifetime ago—perhaps it was—but once Lhin had been considered downright charming. At the very least, he was the most likely to avoid the Keeper’s piercing, disappointed stare. He’d lost that, when he’d lost his clan, when the Wardens had been betrayed and he’d been shoved into the role of Commander of all fucking two of them and forced to deal with nothing but the humans who liked to spit on his kind. He wasn’t very charming anymore, that had died after the tenth or thousandth whisper of knife ear behind his back.
But with Zevran? It was natural, the two of them carefully pushing at each other, testing boundaries, pushing harder. Their first kiss seemed as inevitable as the sunrise, and the ones that followed rivaled among the stars. And they told themselves it didn’t matter, that it was just a little fun, stress relief, the Blight wore heavily on his shoulders and anything he could do to lighten the load.
There were no emotions involved, nothing romantic or binding. When it was over, it was done, and they would part ways as fond friends and nothing more.
Oh what fools they were.
It mattered, when Zevran slowly began to soothe that raw ache in his heart. It mattered when the assassin slept most peacefully pressed together in their bedroll. It mattered in the early hours when one, the other, both of them would wake up panting with screams still caught in their throat, instinctively reaching.
Creators it mattered so much when their pasts caught up to them, old love twisted into something cruel and ugly spat back in their faces.
Tamlen, tainted and twisted, a ghoul and a shriek, ruined by the darkspawn yet still enough of himself to ask—beg, sobbing, body curled up in the grass and hand gripping at his leg—for a merciful end.
Taliesen, the third piece of a broken puzzle, standing on a set of stairs in a back alley of Denerim, promising—arrogant, assured, brazenly gripping his daggers as though there was never any question—an old life.
It was like lancing a blister; necessary to start the healing process, but it left them both in pain, snapping and angry as festering, toxic ooze seeped from their very pores. Agonizing and bitter, but necessary.
Loving Zevran was so easy it terrified him, to tell the truth. Lhin wasn’t entirely sure when it had happened, when his Crow went from being a source of mutual stress relief to being something that he needed to survive. One day he had woken up to the sunlight streaming through the flap of their tent, saw Zevran there, warm, golden, alive and it hit him with all the force of an enraged bear. Strong, primal, this visceral knowledge that Zevran was a part of him. That Lhin loved him so wholly, so deeply, that to lose this would surely be the more than he could bear.
So, when he saw the genlock plunge a knife into the assassin’s shoulder, he thought to himself this is it.
He couldn’t bring himself to his lover’s side, couldn’t do anything but scream as the Archdemon clamped its jaws tight around his midsection, lifting and snapping. By some miracle—duty, the People never shirked their duty—he kept a grip on his long dagger, plunging it into the beast’s eye, into the brain. All he did, to ensure they would grow old together, only for it to go like this, and he wasn’t even at Zevran’s side.
It was that thought that chased the Warden into burning oblivion.
* * *
Lhingrion was wrenched into awareness with an agonized scream, eyes flying open and body wrenching into an upright position. A mistake, really, as the movement set him on fire, his nerves lighting up like a storm as his injuries made themselves known. Instinctively his hand curled around his midsection, finding it heavily bandaged, and the elf panted hard as he tried to will the pain away.
Awareness slammed into him at the realization of two things; one, he was no longer on the tower of Fort Drakon, looked to be in a room in the royal castle, and two, Zevran was nowhere in sight.
The last thing he remembered was watching that jagged dagger pierce through dragon-hide leather, and he felt something in his rib cage splinter, shatter into a thousand pieces. The tears burned hot, running down his face, dripping onto the bandages that seemed to cover him from the neck down and it didn’t matter. Everything he’d done, the Ritual, to make sure they would be together, and it wasn’t enough.
He wasn’t enough.
Lhin shoved the heels of his hands into his eyes as grief broke over him, crashing like the waves of the Storm Coast. He had failed. He had failed Tamlen, failed his Clan, had failed Zevran and it was all too much. His entire body crawled, anguish and self-loathing writhing through his veins like carrion beetles and the only thing he wanted—craved—was to rip out of his own skin and let it end.
His broken sobs must have attracted some attention, he could hear the sound of something clattering to the floor outside the door. It all sounded like it was coming from a mile away, struggling, swearing, the sound of armor hitting stone roughly as the door creaked open.
And then there were hands on his wrists, pulling at him, pushing him back. Lhin tried to fight, wanted nothing more than to claw himself into pieces, to finally end, but they wouldn’t budge.
Lhingrion had been wrenched into awareness, leaving pieces of himself behind in the deep black, but consciousness came with a shuddered inhale.
He smelled leather, eyes squeezed shut and unseeing, lungs drawing in air even as it hurt. He smelled cloves, the familiar prickle of deathroot, and something warm that his brain could only supplement as home.
“Zev?” Green eyes sprang open in surprise, vision blurred but there he was.
“Braska! What have you done to yourself, Amor?” Careful, shaking hands released his wrists to catch his chin tilting his face to the side to inspect the long, bloody scratches. “As though killing an Archdemon and being thrown off a tower isn’t enough. I step out for five minutes to get food, and of course you decide to wake up.”
It couldn’t be the Beyond, his body wouldn’t be in such pain, which meant… which meant they’d both survived. It was real, not some trick of the Fade, some lie.
Zevran was alive and he was there, touching him as though Lhin was made of glass, golden eyes wide, brimming with tears, filled with worry.
Just like that his world seemed to right itself—the rest of Thedas could hang for all he cared. They were alive, they had won and…
And Zevran was babbling.
“—the others will want to see you.” He continued, palm splaying across the side of his face, thumb tracing the curve of his vallaslin up his cheekbone.
“Later.” Lhin said roughly, and now that contact had been initiated, he couldn’t keep his hands off the assassin.
He had seen the blade cut into his lover, wrapped and bloody hands lifting to shove open the collar of the shirt. A silvery scar twisted across golden skin, not very impressive, not very ugly, as though he’d received it years ago. Of course, he’d been healed, Wynne had been with them on top of that tower, and Lhin could only imagine how badly mangled his own body had been.
“Later?” Zevran repeated, expression open and soft as he eased himself down onto the bed, ass pressing into the curve of his hip. “What a fine way to treat your friends.”
“Fuck them.” He swore. “I thought I lost you. I—I saw—“
“You saw? I watched you get snapped up like a mabari treat, and then flung off the tower! It was a miracle Elgara and Nirali were there, or you would be a smear across the cobblestones.” Zevran shook his head. “You are cruel, my dear Warden, to make me witness that, and you owe them your thanks.”
There was no loss of contact—his hand wrapped around Zevran’s bicep, the Crow’s palm to his chest—as though the thought of even a millimeter of space between them was too painful to bear. And it was; Lhin needed to touch him, needed that physical, tactile reminder that somehow they’d survived.
“Later.” He would hate how his voice broke, the pleading whine in it. “Please, vhenan, I need my world to be contained to this room, to just you, for a little longer.”
Calloused fingertips hooked under his chin again, tugging up this time, until he felt the press of lips against his own. It started out as a chaste kiss, a silent acquiesce, a soft reassurance. Lhin let a wounded, desperate noise rattle loose from him, pressing forward, gripping the live, familiar body tight. He would see the others, would take stock of the state of the world, and those that still lived in it, later.
Right now the only thing he needed was to lose himself in the taste of the Crow, to surround himself in that smell, to be wrapped in those arms.
Loving Zevran was easy, easier than breathing and, in that moment, small and personal, confined to the luxurious room, it felt more necessary to his survival than air.