He's impressed, really. They had even managed to get the color of his hair right.
Well, almost. It's a bit too light. And the parting of the bangs is off-center, incorrectly.
But a look-alike to his beloved Warden Alim Surana, five years dead, is not what Master Zevran Arainai expected to see coming back to his office.
He doesn't even bother brandishing a dagger or any such nonsense; if the intruder makes a move his throat will be slit in an instant anyway. He simply raises an eyebrow. "May I ask what you are doing sitting on important Crow paperwork?"
The not-Alim smiles disarmingly, lifting up his hands to show that he is unarmed. As little as that means. An assassin of the Crows has at least three concealed blades at the ready on any given day.
But Maker, how he looks like him. His hair, styled in nearly the same way, shoulder length with a slight wave and two tight braids that hang in front of his pointed elven ears. The tattoos, dark above his jade green eyes and swirling gracefully down over his high cheekbones. Even the Tevinter-style mage robes he wears are the same.
"Consider me another bit of paperwork," he licks his lips slowly, running his tongue leisurely along the sides of his mouth. "A goodwill present, from your underlings." He places a tentative hand over the fastening of his robes.
Zevran scoffs, impressed by the audacity of what he assumes to be the latest attempt on his life. His ascent in the Crows had stepped on perhaps more than usual number of toes, and assassination attempts are nothing new. Checking his quarters and bed for scorpions and such has become a nighttime routine. But this reaches a whole new level of brazen. No doubt some upstart senior Crow still smarting from having the leadership swept out from under him had hired this pretender, thinking to kill him mid-coitus.
"Would you like to enjoy your gift now or later?" the elf purrs, a finger rising to his lips.
Zevran, face still, stares at him, watching his attempts at seduction. It would have been easy enough for a master Crow to find some trainee or junior Crow who resembled the well-crafted statue of Alim that stood watch over his grave at Weisshaupt. To have the gall to dress him up, to think that somehow Zevran would lower his defenses because of a look-alike, or that he would think the Warden had returned from the dead… Zevran isn't sure whether to feel insulted or amused.
No matter. He will deal with this threat as efficiently as he had all the others. First kill the unlucky assassin, then wipe out all who were responsible or somehow linked.
But seeing this false Alim stretched out over his desk, he can't help but indulge in the fantasy and imagine...
If Alim were still alive, he would probably be doing something or other with the Grey Wardens, definitely as commander of some sort, Zevran of course going with him. They could have grown old together, at least as old as a Grey Warden could get to be. This very scene could have been their life—after a hard day of bureaucratic matters, the Warden, strewn over all his Grey Warden documents, only to be surprised at his desk by his errant lover. Their happy ending.
Zevran laughs, the first time in months, maybe years, the sound foreign to his own ears. The not-Alim looks surprised for a moment, then visibly perks up with regained confidence. No doubt the idiotic little thing thinks that he charmed the legendarily stone-faced leader of the Crows with his own seductive powers.
"I take it you want to enjoy it now," the false Alim laughs. An annoying sound, harsh and dissonant with the lie Zevran wants so desperately to taste.
"Just shut up," Zevran growls. "Your voice ruins the effect your client intended."
Throwing caution (but not his five concealed daggers) to the winds, he pushes the other elf onto the desk and begins divesting him of his robes. Without even realizing it his fingers fall into their old places, untying the complex knots of the sash and unbuckling the side belts with speed and grace born from practice, slipping the furred shoulders off to reveal his Surana's lovely pale skin.
This man's shoulders are tanned, no doubt from long hours training in the sun, and much too broad and muscled. But Zevran continues regardless, shutting his ears to the too-hoarse groans coming from the man he is currently peeling black leggings off of. He leaves all of his own armor on, only unfastening his breeches for the ensuing act. Much better to have all his weapons easily in hand.
He shoves the elf face-down into the table, hands roaming over his body, intending to be quick about this ridiculous indulgence. But he can't control the flood of memories that have haunted him every day since the end of the Blight five years ago.
His own brown fingers, stroking the delicate expanse of Alim's throat, lightly rubbing at his sensitive nipples, encircling his narrow waist. His mouth, planting small kisses from the small of his love's back to the base of his neck, gentle as he can only be with his Warden.
The reaction is off; he tilts his head the wrong way, arches his back at the wrong angle, and his appreciative sighs are nothing like the soft little moans that Zevran misses hearing so much. But he's poured too much of himself into this already, and he has to see it through.
He slicks his fingers with the contents of the little bottle that the not-Alim brought, and thrusts them into him with far less force than he should have used on such a pretender. He strokes him the very way that had made Surana's cries awake the whole camp once. He can't help but smile at the memory. The man just grunts with crude arousal, and Zevran ceases the attention of his hand. With an odd sort of ache in his chest, he enters him with his own arousal and thrusts a rhythm sweet and slow, a far cry from the quick fuck he had planned.
He's making intimate love to a stranger, an enemy, and he feels filthy, as if he has desecrated all the memories he has of them, corrupting that pure and untouchable something they had shared. He's had sex with plenty of bedmates over the last five years, but never has he allowed himself to make love like he did with his Surana. He's fallen headfirst into some senior Crow's trap and he knows it. To his horror he feels a hot wetness welling up behind his eyes even as his body finds pleasure in the warmth of the body beneath him.
He comes with a shaking sob, feeling the escaped tears flow down his face, unshed since the Warden's funeral and finally finding release. Predictably, the pretender takes the opportunity to snatch a dagger he had undoubtedly stashed underneath the desk earlier and lunges at him.
Zevran easily knocks the blade from his hands with his own dagger, and the man, boy, really, is defenseless now, begging for his life.
"Please… don't kill me. You could keep me around, whenever you wanted to make love like that—" He stops mid-sentence to stare at the blade buried in his chest.
Zevran stabs him again and again in the face, mangling him beyond any measure of recognition. He is covered in his blood, hot and sickly sticky. He sinks back onto his haunches, panting heavily, watching as Alim dies a second time all over his documents.
He kicks the corpse out the window and collapses into his armchair, wondering why he did not throw himself off the tower of Fort Drakon five years ago.