Title: Five Times Alistair Wasn't Kissed

Author: Jade Sabre

Notes: In which I attempt not to name any other Grey Wardens, and fail miserably. (Naming characters almost always involves inventing backstories for them, and next thing you know, your fic is three times the size of a long drabble and still growing. Oops.)

I'm sorry about the delay in getting this up; I just moved across the country and don't have stable internet yet. I will do my best to keep updating!

Also, once again, I love reviews, lots and lots. (Of love. For reviews. Especially lots of them.)

Disclaimer: Dragon Age: Origins and all of its content belongs to the geniuses at Bioware, of whom I am sadly not one, though maybe I will run away to Canada and try my luck.

three

Being a man, Alistair concluded, was pretty great.

It helped that he was surrounded by other men who had mostly come to the same conclusion. Granted, they had also all come to the conclusion that within the next thirty years all of them would be dead, but that simply added spice to life. In between staring at maps while Duncan tried to hammer into his head the current political situation—something he'd been mercifully free of in the Chantry, and perhaps its only redeeming quality—and learning the best techniques for killing darkspawn, there was plenty of time for drinking and telling jokes with bodily humor as punch lines and making comments about each other's sisters. Ribald tales abounded too, of course, though most of them ended with the teller fighting darkspawn without his pants on and earning the eternal gratitude of whichever buxom lass happened to be standing nearby. It was a refreshing, welcome change from the Chantry, and even though he'd only been there for a month, the Grey Warden hall in Denerim felt more like home than anywhere he'd ever been before.

Of course, as one of the two new guys, he was called upon to make a fool of himself from time to time, but the first time he fell flat on his face was when they asked him for his stories. "Stories?" he said.

"Sure," said one of the larger, louder Wardens sitting down the table from him. "You've got looks and you must have charm, so surely you've saved a lass or two in your day."

While Alistair tried to discern the potential layers of innuendo in this statement, another man said, "Lay off the boy. It's not like the Chantry wants its recruits dropping their pants for the Revered Mothers."

"They don't?" someone else called, and Alistair blanched.

"Of course not, they're all hags," the larger Warden said.

"That's not strictly true," Alistair said, uncomfortably aware than anything he said would be heard throughout the entire mess hall and then repeated to anyone with the misfortune to be absent.

"Ah," said his original persecutor, a dark redhead named Mattin, leaning forward. "So you do have a girl in mind."

"Uh, yes," he said, trying to come up with a story that would be the right mixture of hilarity and vagueness. "A pretty girl, even. Trapped within the cruel confines of Chantry law, waiting for me to rescue her."

"And did you?"

"Let the boy tell his story, Gerd," Mattin said, and the larger Warden leaned back, his arms crossed.

Alistair felt the sweat starting to bead on his forehead. As a boy, he'd had no trouble telling wild tales; even in the Chantry, he'd been banished to the pots more than once for telling falsehoods. But these men were professionals, and he'd seen what they'd done to some of the other men who had attempted to push the boundaries of suspended disbelief. Eventually the thread would snap, and some poor soul would be standing on a table wearing only his smallclothes and howling poetry about how Queen Anora's eyes sparkled like moonlit diamonds. Which would be uncomfortable on too many levels to think about, and so he opened his mouth and said, "Well, no, because it turned out she had actually pledged herself on purpose, and quite objected to my attempts to help her sneak out by showing up in her room while she was dressing for morning prayers. Can't imagine why." He shrugged, and then added (with only a twinge of guilt), "If I were her, I would've left quickly—her breasts were much larger than any of those statues of Andraste, and the last thing you'd want would be to draw the Maker's attention away from his prophet."

He waited, as he always did when saying one of Garrott's blasphemies, but no lighting bolts came; only the thunder from Gerd slapping a hand on his back and laughing. "So what you're saying," Mattin said, under the other man's guffaws, "is that you don't have any stories."

Alistair blushed against his will and clamped his mouth shut, grinning up at Gerd instead. Mattin leaned back in his chair and called, "Willem!"

At this a tall, lanky Warden, strong-armed and bright-eyed, stood and sauntered over to their table. Upon closer inspection he had a scar running down his left temple, but since the wound so obviously should have killed him and yet he was so obviously alive, it only had the effect of making him look tough and heroic instead of ugly and maimed. Alistair gulped, and Mattin said, "I think we need to show Alistair the sights of the city," and Willem nodded, and Gerd clapped the newest Warden on the back, and Alistair began to wish he had voted for the smallclothes option instead.

o-o-o

"Showing Alistair the sights of the city" seemed to entail "letting Alistair go first as he wanders shady-looking back alleys while wearing nothing but a tunic and his smallclothes" as well as "laughing when the bandits wolf-whistled instead of attacked." Granted, the presence of three fully armed Grey Wardens at his back no doubt diffused their aggression, but he was afraid that some of it was actual interest, and Maker knew he wasn't—um, interested. At all.

"I'd say he's taking it rather well, wouldn't you?" Mattin said behind him, but Alistair didn't dare look. The other men had a habit of poking him with real, non-metaphorical swords if he stopped paying attention to his surroundings.

"Very well," Gerd said. He'd whistled himself, making Alistair even more nervous, but he'd assured the younger man he never bothered with fellow Wardens. "He seems downright used to it. Don't they dress you in the Chantry?"

Alistair bit his tongue rather than say something about sleeping with dogs and not owning a proper pair of pants until Isolde showed up and demanded the bastard develop some decency. His legs were cold and his boots were covered in stuff better left to the imagination—much, much worse than anything he'd tromped through in a pigsty. The quiet chink of armor behind him only intensified his self-pity, and he crossed his arms tighter and said, "Left or right?"

"Left," Willem said, his voice bored. He was some bann's second son and was the next-newest Warden in the group and Alistair wasn't jealous of the fact that Willem was handsomer but he was jealous of the fact that Willem got to clean his fingernails while he stumbled through the muck. Another group of lowlifes hiding in the shadows whistled and cat-called, and he wasn't even sure what half of those things even meant, and anyway if some of them were referring to what he thought they were referring to he was quite sure they were lying, because the cold and general sense of public humiliation had shriveled up what was left of his, er…wares?

He was so busy glowering that he nearly knocked over the sudden short person in his path; stumbling, he hit the alley wall and came away with soot and Maker knew what else on his tunic while a chipper voice with a flat accent said, "Willem, darling."

"Margni," Willem said, still cool. "Alistair, apologize to Margni."

Alistair looked down and found himself looking at a dwarf woman wearing about as much clothing as he was. "Er—sorry," he said. "It's dark, and I have terrible night vision—"

"Oh, Willem," cooed another voice, and a human woman detached from the shadows, not so much wearing clothing but cloth artfully arranged around her curves. She circled Alistair before standing next to Margni, tilting her head. "He's a handsome one."

"I only bring the best," Willem said.

Gerd laughed. "What's Mattin doing here, then?"

"Stuff it," Mattin said, followed by what was probably an expletive or two, but Alistair was too busy squealing at the cool touch of a hand on his arm.

"Very 'andsome," said a girl with dark hair and an Orlesian accent. "I sink I vould like a bite, no?"

Alistair firmly fixed his gaze on the alley wall, even as he felt another hand running up into his hair and yet another on his arm and lots and lots of female voices all around him—smooth, deep, sultry, soft, tinged with breath, and so very very unlike the straight loud chantings of the Revered Mother and her initiates, let alone the words that slipped from between their lips, handsome and me first and oh my and yes please. It was hard to feel cold with so many bodies around him, but what little pride he had left he focused on his head and not anywhere else and he said, quite clearly, "Please back off."

The press of curves disappeared, and the Orlesian stepped up to him, taking his chin in her hand and pressing until his mouth opened and his lips made a funny fish face that he was certain couldn't possiblybe attractive. "You are sure," she said, and the breath from her voice touched his lips, so cold it burned, "you would not like a taste?"

Her breath smelled of apples, and he did like apples, and he did like her, but this was wrong, not just Chantry-wrong but people-wrong, duty-wrong, and so he reached up and pried her hand off his face and kissed it, gallantly. "Quite sure, thank you very much," he said, releasing her, and the sighs of all the girls fluttered around him.

"Really, really sure?" Mattin said, sliding up between two of them and putting his arms around them.

"This is your chance," Gerd added, although he was alone.

"Oh come," said Willem, taking Margni's arm in his hand, "leave the boy alone. He's made up his mind."

Alistair glowered at him. "Yes, thank you, you can all go away now."

To his surprise, they did; the women melting back into the shadows, Willem and Margni slipping into a door he hadn't realized was there, Mattin with his lips on one girl's ear while the other giggled, Gerd stumbling into the walls as he went around the corner—probably the corner where the boys were hiding. Alistair felt a tight knot in his chest ease, and his back straightened with the knowledge that he'd made the right choice, done right by the girls (even if everyone else wanted to do wrong by them) and by himself. Sure, the Revered Mother would probably be proud of him, which wasn't something he thought often, but the warm swell of satisfaction made up for any lingering horror on his rebellious side. Yes, he had done well tonight. He deserved to go change into clean clothes, maybe even sink into a bath, the curl up under the nice warm blankets in his nice warm bed in the Grey Warden hall, which was right—

Right—

"Um," came a lone voice, thin and high-pitched with hysteria, floating above the muck of the dark back alleys of Ferelden's capital, "a little help please? I seem to be lost."