slipshot | IC INBOX for FADE RIFT

Sweet talking the guards to leaving Gavin in his care for a few minutes wasn't as hard as it probably should have been, but Zevran manages it without complaint. He slips into Gavin's room with a steaming mug of Antivan Drinking Chocolate in hand and a few cookies.

Bribery for a friend he has missed.

"How have you been?"

The fact that he even had a room was something in itself - but it was hard to convince a guard to let him sleep in a tree. So he had a room, and he was sitting in it, carefully working on a new string for his bow by spreading wax over it.

He looked up when the door opened, flinching a little as he snapped his head up. Fearful, at first - or, wary, perhaps, was the closer word - but when he saw that it was Zevran, he relaxed.

"I'm - fine." It was a lie, but he smiled anyway. It was a lie he wanted to be true. "Ah - come in, sit down."

"Bello." Gently, kindly- Zevran left him with the lie for the moment, settling next to him on the bed and offering both treats. He had not been able to make it to the cells, nor offer word and perhaps he felt guilty. No, there was no perhaps about it. He did feel guilt.

What a strange change of pace.

"Have they been treating you poorly, the guards? Must I have words with them?" He would. Pointed words. And then words with whoever was their superior, equally pointed.

The smile turned a little softer, a little more honest, as he took the mug and the cookies. He held the mug in his hands for a moment, letting the warmth seep through his fingers, the cookies trapped against it.

He shook his head.

"No. It's scouts, mostly, I'm just - supervised. Dax is - ah - he can have a harsh way about him, but he's alright, really. Just - ah - prickly. Are you- how are you?"

"Perhaps he needs to be pricked back." But if Gavin was unbruised and made uneasy by the idea, he would let it rest for the moment. Content to hook an arm around Gavin's waist and lean in for a casual embrace, it was easy to pretend that this was another normal night of anecdotes and idle conversation rather than the checkup it truly was.

"Things are well for the most part, the Kestrels are coming along nicely, the Wardens might be willing to throw in for the building in the valley, I have adjusted to the eye...but things are coming to a head, elsewhere. My Noble Problem seems to be complicating itself."

He leaned back, his waist was thinner than the last time Zevran had his hand around it, and he curled up against him easily.

"Noble Problems seem to always be complicated," He agreed in a murmur. "But there are good complications, and bad complications, right?"

"This would be more solidly in the bad, I should think." Nothing had been said (yet) but that night before the sickness when he'd painted a tattoo upon Michel's chest- the intimacy of that act- the way Michel carted him back and cared for him when he was ill-

Something was on the horizon.

"We have been...content as we are for some time now, nothing has needed to change. We understand where we stand with one another and that has been well and good. I think...he may wish things to change. That he is dissatisfied with how we are now and I do not know how to fix it." He did not even know if it was something he wanted to fix.

"Do you want things to change?" Gavin asked, tilting his head slightly as he took a careful bite of the cookie. "Because with everything... If you're not in the same place, Zevran, you can't force it. Why do you think he's dissatisfied?"

"To be honest? No. Things are comfortable as they are- pushing for more it...it does not end well for nobles and elves. How you and Maxwell have managed I will admit I envy- but..." Michel was Orlesian. That changed everything. "He lingers, as of late. There is something in his eyes that seems familiar to me."

"You say that like you believe that things between Maxwell and I will somehow end well," He said softly, offering a sympathetic smile. "I think the difference is only... that even though I know it won't, I - want it anyway. For whatever time I can. I know it isn't forever."

He wasn't sure that Maxwell knew that, but that was beside the point. Gavin would be there as long as he could.

"I think you know perfectly well what he's feeling, and what he wants," Gavin reminded him. "He has feelings for you. Of course he wants more."

Edited 2016-05-02 00:57 (UTC)

"You don't seem to have many of the issues I would in this. Perhaps it leaves me optimistic." Maxwell was kind and Gavin adoring- how could it not be good for at least a little while?

Hope was not something he often held, but there were scraps to be found here.

"I- I do not know that I return them. Or if I could- it is complicated."

"You don't think you can?" Gavin asked, his eyes twitching a little as he frowned.

He pressed his head against Zevran's and idly played with the ends of his hair between his fingers.

"If you don't feel the same way, that is one thing, but... why do you not think you could?"

"He is a reminder of everyone that has used me in the past, to put it kindly. I cannot look at him and see past that. He is more than that as well but- those shadows linger." It was difficult to divorce the two. "I can share a bed with him happily- but love him in the way he might wish..."

Zevran shook his head, nosing into Gavin's shoulder. "I could not."

He was silent for a little while, fingers moving to carefully rub into Zevran's scalp, in slow, even circles.

"... Then if he presses the issue, that's what you must tell him," he said quietly. "There's no way to... fix it, Zevran. If he has feelings that you don't, that's just... how things are."

"He would not wish to continue what we have- something I have noticed in him is a stupid stripe of nobility that is as endearing as it is troubling." No one was that chivalrous. It was impossible. "I am content how we are. Must things change?"

"Everything changes eventually." His voice was oddly quiet when he said that, his gaze fixated somewhere far away. "If you are content but he is not, it's not really fair to force him to stay. Just as it wouldn't be fair for him to force you to change."

"I would not. I merely know that conversation is on the horizon and would rather avoid it." He sighed, tipping his face up to peer at Gavin for a moment. "...is all well, with you and Max?"

IC INBOX for FADE RIFT

Action, post prison, post illz

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