Characters/Pairing: Zevran/Anders
Rating: G
Word Count: 250
Prompt: from ojirawel: "Look okay I just finished Awakening the other day and I need pre-Justice-Anders and Zevran, and I don't care where it is. If it has to be an AU just stick it at college."
—
"It is," Zevran says at last, passing the paper back, "a very…passionate essay."
"But not enough to pass," Anders says glumly as he thumbs the bright red F at the top of the page. "Dr. Thekla said I failed to answer the prompt."
Zevran laughs, lounging beside him on the worn leather sofa, and even with a failing grade Anders can't help but smile. If his RA hadn't taken him under his wing his freshman year would have ended with his prank on the Phi Omega templars, but Zevran had known their president and…persuaded him otherwise. Anders hasn't asked how.
Of course, as Zev's arm drops lightly behind his shoulders, he figures he has a pretty good idea. "The assignment was on the ethics of human rights, yes?"
Anders lets out a rueful laugh. "Yes. He said he'll let me write another one if I stay on topic this time."
Zevran smiles, one of those terrible warm intimate smiles that makes the hair on Anders's arms stand up and his chest grow hot, and when his RA leans close enough that their legs touch from thigh to knee, Anders doesn't pull away.
"I will help you," he says, the suggestion as much a purr as anything, "and together we will persuade him otherwise, hmm?"
"Yeah," he says, throat dry, not entirely sure they're still talking about the paper. Maybe this time—
(Not sure either, as Zevran's eyes crinkle into a smile, the tattoo just outside his left eye wrinkling with it, if he cares.)
—
Characters/Pairing: Zevran/Fenris
Rating: G
Word Count: 560
Prompt: from anonymous: "Pairing: Fenris/Zevran; AU Setting: Modern Europe (Barcelona? Venice?); oh dear lord I am the silly today."
Original Notes: well here is a silly fill to keep you company (seriously i have no idea what this is)
—
The goalkeeper is taunting him.
At first it's only a soft chuckle as the ball ricochets off the uprights and Fenris wheels back to midfield. Then it's a whistle and a wink at the end of the first quarter-hour when a collision sends him skidding on his stomach across the grass; worse, the man has the audacity to extend a hand, after. Fenris bats it away in irritation and stands up on his own, checking the toe of his left cleat where it tore the turf before jogging back towards the rest of his team.
He sneaks looks, later, when he can. Barcelona's keeper is short, slim, with blond hair tied in a messy braid; he knows very little about him save his excellent handwork and his…more social reputation, but he had not heard that sociability to extend to the pitch.
One glance catches Arainai running a finger along his collar where sweat has stuck it to his tanned skin. The motion is slower than it needs to be, preposterously graceful under the stadium lights—he cannot be thinking this, not now in the middle of a match, and Fenris jerks his attention back to the ball.
He can feel Arainai's eyes on the back of his neck.
He scores at the end of the half. It's a good drive with the left forward, Carver keeping the ball until the last second; Fenris feints left and goes right, and though Arainai makes an excellent dive it's not enough to keep it out of the corner of the net. His shout is as much vindictiveness as satisfaction, even lost to the roar of the crowd; still, Arainai grins and lifts an eyebrow as if to say yes, and?
They win the match, 1-0, Fenris's score the only goal of the night. He finds Arainai in the crowd after, that red silk almost as much peacock as its wearer; he wraps a hand in it and tugs, and says, "What was the meaning of that?"
"Of what?" says Arainai, unperturbed, as if he is quite used to strange men approaching him in mixed vexation and curiosity.
"You know what I mean."
"My friend, I wonder if we should discuss this somewhere more comfortable. Paco Meralgo, perhaps."
Startled, Fenris releases his shirt. Around them the crowd moves and swells and laughs and shouts; Arainai watches him with a faint, ironic smile, his weight all on one leg, his shoulders easy and loose. Sweat, sliding into the collar of his red shirt—
"Fenris!" comes a shout behind them, and a grinning, sweaty Carver barrels through the crowd to wrap Fenris in a hug. It takes him a moment to push him off—as big as the man is he rarely realizes his own strength—and somehow the twisting sends him backwards until he is side by side with Arainai. "Fenris," says Carver, "we're going to go out and meet Spanish women. We're going to go to a museum too, maybe—Beth says there're some great ones here—and hey, keeper, great game—you want to come?"
He hesitates. Where Carver cannot see it, fingers brush against the small of his back. His eyes cut sideways; Zevran looks entirely unconcerned, watching him as if his answer means nothing at all.
Damn the man, Fenris thinks, exasperated beyond belief, and goes with him to dinner.
—
Characters/Pairing: Varric & Hawke
Rating: G
Word Count: 202
Prompt: from perahn: "Varric and Hawke, Robin Hood. :D"
Original Notes: (I am determined to stick to three sentences here, because you keep doing them so darn well.)
—
The creek was cold and the tree-trunk bridge narrow, and because neither of them would yield to the other they set a wager: an exchange of tales, with the winner the first to cross.
The lady, tall and cloaked in green, went first; hoping to impress him, she told a story of a corrupt magistrate waylaid on the road and relieved of his purses, and the curious relief of taxation in the nearby village that followed; and then the little man went after, with a tale of a crossbow that made the lady both weep and smile, and when he finished it was with such good humor despite the pain that her laughter slipped her foot on the tree-trunk and sent her into the stream below.
He crossed and she clambered to the bank, dripping wet, and when they had introduced themselves she said, "Your heart is too big, Little Varric, but I would have you join my merry band;" and he replied, laughing, "Marry, I will, for despite your sodden state you told your story well; and as for me, who tells tales for a living, there is no tale I wish to tell so much as that of the Hawke!"
—
Characters/Pairing: Sten/f!Brosca
Rating: G
Word Count: 163
Prompt: from maybethings: "CURVEBALL! Sten, f!Brosca, music industry"
—
Nobody expects the video to go viral—it's a strings duet with original pieces, after all, not exactly the cute young hipsters who keep doing a cappella covers of Top 40 hits—but something about the tiny square woman playing the bass taller than she is catches the public's eye, and the next thing anyone knows the Dusters are no. 9 on the charts and climbing.
It's not even that they need a third in the group, not really, but Leske has been arguing for a high voice to balance out the bass under his viola for ages, and when he finds a friend of a friend who's not only fanatically devoted to his craft but doesn't even want a paycheck, Brosca can't find a reason to say no.
(Leske fails to mention that the man's a giant, fails also to mention that his piccolo case has Asala engraved on it in silver gilt—but regardless, it's the loveliest music she's ever heard.)