Five Misfires
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Summary: Five times Zevran and Bell Tabris try (and occasionally fail) to connect.
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1.
One night, Zevran tried to seduce the Grey Warden.
He'd been thinking of it quite regularly since he'd joined her retinue. Overtures had been made, after all, and they hadn't exactly been brushed aside. She enjoyed his company, laughed at his jokes, and had a habit of slapping him on the back after every battle that would have been endearing if it hadn't hurt so much. Their relationship was progressing… swimmingly.
Additionally, Zevran was of the firm belief that very few relationships existed that could not be improved by adding a carnal element.
He began this enterprise quite carefully. He was solicitous all evening. Brought her dinner, talked strategy (something that he was delighted to learn that she actually valued his opinion on), and they were still cozily ensconced with each other by the fire long after the others had begun to go to bed.
When the fire eventually began to die down, he took his chance.
Brushing her ash-blonde hair behind one long, pointed ear, he leaned in until his breath was sure to ghost suggestively over the tender skin of her neck. He then said something long-rehearsed that was almost sure to shock her, and quite certain to inflame her.
He saw her eyes widen, and her breath stopped.
Laughter was to be expected. Laughter could just as easily be turned into sighs, and sighs into moans, and moans into a Very Good Night for a homesick Crow.
What he did not expect was for her to fling herself to the ground absolutely howling with laughter.
At first, he took it in stride. He even laughed nervously himself.
But then she didn't stop.
Three minutes later, when everyone in the camp had already poked their heads curiously out of their tents to see the entire debacle, Zevran excused himself. Bell had already gotten to the point where she could barely breathe for laughing, and was weakly thumping the ground with one hand while she raggedly tried to suck in air.
Disgruntled, he returned to his tent. Alone.
2.
The elf in Redcliffe was the sorriest excuse for a spy Zevran had ever seen.
He very obviously didn't know his own story. One minute he was there to meet his brother, the next he was apparently under orders to stay. From his brother. Who he was definitely, definitely here waiting for.
Inwardly, Zevran sighed, and was wondering how exactly he was going to explain to Bell (dear, sweet, highly trusting Bell) that as Loghain's man in a past life, he had learned to read the signs, when Bell actually surprised him.
It seemed that he'd only had time to blink, but when he looked again, Berwick was on the ground with Bell's foot wedged in his neck, his broken chair scattered around him.
"What do you know?" she roared into the poor elf's shrinking face.
Sten's usually impassive face actually registered surprise at this point.
"Er," said Zevran, cautiously reaching out to take her elbow. "Perhaps a little finesse might-"
"I'm not telling you anything!" cried Berwick indignantly from the floor, half-choking, and going beet red from Bell's foot. "You'll have to kill me first!"
Zevran and Bell, blinking, regarded him.
"It occurs to me," said Zevran casually. "That seeing as I was much more forthcoming in my interrogation, this gives me the liberty of informing you that there are some rather marvelous meat hooks in the kitchen of this establishment."
Leliana sputtered indignantly behind them, but Bell cracked a smile. She jerked a thumb in Zevran's direction, eyes never leaving Berwick's face. "I like this man," she sneered. "He is a professional."
"His interrogation?" wheezed Berwick.
"I tortured him for hours," said Bell sweetly. "He's only just recovered full use of his thumbs."
Zevran refrained from mentioning that his meeting Bell had concluded with a very friendly conversation while she tied up his wounds and made soothing, surprised noises when he informed her that he was an assassin.
He started when Bell looked meaningfully at him, and made a show of painfully bending and unbending his thumbs.
"String him up by his ears, Zev!" she bellowed after that, and that was precisely when Berwick broke like cheap pottery.
Afterwards, Bell clapped Zevran on the back and said she'd never been prouder of him. Surprisingly, he was touched.
3.
Bell returned from the Circle Tower with an elderly mage and a promise of more to come, and she was so weary when she reached camp that she didn't even bother taking her armor off when she crumpled near the fire.
Leliana eventually wrangled her out of her hauberk, and got a plate of food in her hands and some hot tea in her belly, and plucked and fluttered over her until Bell managed to eat at least half.
Alistair seemed absolutely humiliated by whatever had happened in the Tower and had secreted himself away in his tent without a word.
Leliana remained by Bell's side, flustered at her own inability to help her friend open up, when Zevran made up his mind.
He appeared at the Bard's elbow, and at a quiet word, she gave him an unreadable look, and moved away. He then settled himself on the log behind Bell, and when he sank his thumbs into her shoulders, she let out a breath.
He felt the screaming tension at his first touch, but it seemed to lessen as he dug his fingers into the grain of muscle and soothed the knots he found there.
"I- " she started, unsteadily, but he shhhh'd her, and brought his hands up to his temples, where he rubbed small circles until her neck went limp and he was cradling her head in his lap.
She was quiet for a time as he bent over her, kneading at her shoulders
Her eyes closed, she said in a very small voice, "I never seem to save everyone."
"If you did, then you would be perfect, and thus, very boring," he murmured in return.
She snorted, gracelessly, then swiped at her eyes, reluctantly rolling out of his grasp to take hold of the wineskin Leliana had left near the fire.
She sloshed it at him, craning her neck around. "Find me about four more of these, then help me get so drunk that I can't dream." she said roughly.
In the back of his head, he knew that once, the prospect of a beautiful woman (who let him touch her) ordering him to get her blind-drunk used to be a treasured fantasy, but somehow he wasn't feeling it.
To his great disgust, he eventually tipped her (drunk and still miserable, but mostly insensate) into her tent without so much as a grope.
4.
Of course she fell for the Templar.
Not that Alistair really noticed.
It wasn't that Bell was bad at flirting, precisely- more that she was largely incapable of social interaction that didn't include vigorous hacking with swords. When she wasn't actively making Alistair very, very nervous, she merely confused him. Zevran wasn't sure if it was entirely her fault, but their relationship seemed permenantly mired in the sandbar of misfortune.
Of late, Zevran and Leliana had begun exchanging long-suffering glances across the fire whenever Bell managed to turn whatever conversation she was in with Alistair into an excruciating ten minutes of awkward non-sequitors. He almost thought that he might be able to turn this into some sort of relationship with the lovely Orlesian, until he caught sight of those odd looks of yearning the bard sent Bell's way whenever she wasn't looking.
It seemed Zevran wasn't the only one Bell had unknowingly left out in the cold.
One night, Alistair tried to thank Bell for saving the Arl of Redcliffe and his family, and for not getting angry when he'd kept the secret of his parentage from her.
She blushed to the roots of her blonde hair, and babbled something about friendship and camaraderie and walking corpses before giving a high, painful laugh, and walking away very quickly
That night, around the fire (and with Alistair well out of earshot) she sighed heavily and said wistfully, "How do you seduce men?"
Zevran drained his wine cup in one pull, rubbed the bridge of his nose, and began to delicately outline how to win the affections of sheltered Templars.
5.
Not a word of the conversation between Riordan, Alistair, and Bell reached the others from their leader's mouth, but its importance impressed itself on the rest of the group when Morrigan disappeared.
Alistair had at least let on that that they'd spoken of defeating the Archdemon, and that Riordan himself had promised to deliver the final blow.
Bell wouldn't talk.
Bell wouldn't talk about a lot of things, generally. She hadn't let on about her wedding until they'd reached the Alienage. They'd had to hear about Niall from Wynne, who'd said that she'd never seen Bell so upset. When Alistair had taken Bell aside and quietly told her that he could no longer be seen with her when he was King, she hadn't said a word. Just nodded curtly, with all of them looking on, then retreated to her quarters. Naturally, she was likewise silent about Morrigan.
When pressed by Leliana, Bell's lips had tightened, and she'd said only one thing.
"I have a plan."
He caught her by herself, the night before they reached Denerim, the entire army of Ferelden stretched across the valley like a patchwork quilt of campfires.
She was leaning against a tree, away from the camp, her arms folded awkwardly in front of her. Her fingernails were chewed raggedly down to the quick. Her eyes were too bright, and too red, and she looked so trapped, and so frightened, that he was reminded sharply of something he'd rather forget.
She looked like Rinna.
She looked like she was going to die.
Her voice cracked when she spoke, the circles under her eyes so dark they looked bottomless. "Don't," she said stiffly. "Don't bring me back just yet. Just let me-"
He kissed her, then.
Slid one hand up her neck and cradled the back of her head as he pressed close and kissed her. Didn't try to speak, didn't overwhelm her with the enormity of his intentions- he just kissed her. Firmly and thoroughly and as gently as he knew how, he kissed her.
He should have kissed her like she was going to die from the first moment he'd met her.
Zevran finished it, not her. Pulled free and rested his forehead against hers, breathing deeply.
Her eyes were half closed, her breath fluttering like a wounded bird. She swallowed, trembling, and he knew that Alistair had barely been able to bring up the courage to touch her before he ended it.
More his folly.
At long last, Bell's eyes flickered open and fixed on his, and she tried on a brave, crooked smile that barely fit. "Try anything once, right?" she said.
Zevran breathed out through his nose, and, slowly, let her go. When he found the strength, his smile matched hers. "These things you say," he chided her gently, and chucked her under her chin. Somehow, she managed a laugh.
He eventually extended his arm like a courtier and filled her ear with vacuous and occasionally filthy nonsense until they returned to camp.
He never touched her again.
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