antivanleather | Fifth Drop - Again, until you decide to drop. Now I'm so high, so high, so high [Action]

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Fifth Drop - Again, until you decide to drop. Now I'm so high, so high, so high [Action]

plans.

His eyes snap open as the thought finishes and for a long moment he can't breathe or think past the remembered pain of a gaping wound and the cold, blissful slide of a knife through his heart. No Isaac, so kind, so cruel to cradle his head. No grit of dirt or stone under his cheek and digging into his back. No clash of battle or distant, strained cry that was so very familiar- oh. Katniss. She'd seen. He's still wrapping his mind around being alive, around breathing when his hands fly to his chest- whole and slick with sweat rather than blood. Alive. He is alive. It is no trick, it is no twist of necromantic intent. He feels no lesser than he had before. Well. Mildly ill and lethargic, yes. But he lives.

And remembers nothing at all of being dead aside from it being a decidedly uncomfortable process to achieve. If he spends too much time thinking on it, he'll drive himself mad. All he can do is take that he is alive with good grace and get to his feet. Laying here is becoming uncomfortable- but for a fair while he can't bring himself to move, relishing the simple act of laying out in the sun and being able to breathe without smelling his own death

When he does rouse himself from where he's settled in the woods he will, without any real sense of urgency- which is fairly odd for him, go first and foremost to Isaac's home. There was something he gave the Forgemaster to hold onto that he needs back. Afterward he finds himself wandering to the clothing shop to find a shirt. Perhaps shoes. Something beyond the plain white trousers the Malnosso gave him upon his revival. From there, it's home. Home to check in on his boys and be yelled at quite a bit.

At his house he'll pick the lock to the front door since he does not have the key upon his person or feel particularly inclined to calling attention to himself, slip inside, and make his way to the kitchen to brew himself a mug of coffee. If a hearty measure of brandy makes it way into the mug as well- can anyone blame him? He's settled there for the first hour he is back home, sitting quietly in the kitchen and sipping away.

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For all of that moment, Jack did not respond, caught in the first offering of that sort of thing from Zevran. But no dirty looks or other aggression followed it, and he found himself nothing but delighted by the lazy, sharp insult.

"Oohhh-!" he crowed, laughing though the sound as he twisted his head enough to cast a sidelong grin Zev's way. Idly, he felt along his back, half-smiling thoughtfully as he found the rises of his spine much more easily than before. "I suppose I hadn't noticed. Bitches have a horrible time discerning fine shapes through baggy old jumpers, apparently."

When laughter rather than questions followed, Zevran allowed himself to relax. Grin. Bite lightly at Jack's collar in recompense. "Bitches are also terrible at scratching backs. Lower, Jack."

He arched up against Jack's hand much like a cat. The sweater was large and lumpy and not the most flattering thing to wear but he hadn't had many options at hand at the moment. "What- do you wish me to strip it off?"

Jolting with the bite, as well as giving a little nh noise that failed at sounding more put out than turned on, Jack paused a moment before sliding his hand up under the garment and against the warmth of his skin. Lightly, he scratched against the welcome warmth of his skin with short, blunt fingernails, working up one flank and down the other.

"No need to chill your delicate hide," he mused, pausing a moment to take a light pinch of the skin over his side - or try to, at least. "Huh. Why are you thinner, anyway?"

Oh, that noise. That delightful, delicious, damning noise that more often than not set Zev right off into a full night of doing nothing other than pulling many more from Jack's lips- but now? Nothing more than a warm pulse in his chest. Affection. Admiration. He found it more endearing than arousing.

...odd.

He was distracted from his puzzlement by the warmth of a hand on his back, rubbing up against those scritching fingers.

"When I first arrived I had spent several months underground. Good meals were few and far between and we had spent what time that wasn't marching along a maze fighting off spiders and Darkspawn."

"Mm. Enough said, I guess," he mused, frowning at the description. He'd gathered enough from Zev's various little quips and comments to deduce that he'd been engaged in some sort of grand and heroic quest when he'd been so abruptly detoured into Luceti, and read enough of Eugene's handy magic-and-sword-world compendium to have a vague impression of Darkspawn as a sort of zoms-on-steroids level threat, minus perhaps the infectious qualities. It wasn't a much more pleasant conversational prospect than the draft, and he finished the slow round of scratching only to move into an experimental kneading of the tender muscles he'd felt on his way across Zev's back. He wasn't nearly the masseuse that the elf was, but he could imitate the basics, at least. It was a start.

"In that case, you'll just have to somehow find the will to eat all the baked goods Eugene will be tossing at you," he pronounced, in a tone of almost mournful gravity. "I do hope you can face such hardship bravely."

"You have no idea how good it felt to see the sun afterward. To feel the wind on my face. And a warm body at my side." He cracked a low laugh, not at all thinking of what came after. Just the warmth. "Isaac was most accommodating when he woke to find me in his bed with him. Even if I was as confused as he."

As he spoke his voice dipped lower and lower, becoming a deep rumble of languid pleasure the more Jack kneaded and petted sore muscles.

"Mmm...I think I can manage that."

It went unsaid, that Jack had never met anyone who'd come back from the dead. But he fell into behaviours and assumptions that felt natural for the circumstance, and mercifully did not reflect deeply enough to realise that most of his assumptions were based upon how Eugene had been, coming out of surgery. So he just felt gratitude to hear evidence of an appetite, and did what he could for presumed sore muscles, and had no illusions that he would be moving away from Zev any time soon. Not that he wanted to.

"Wait . . . Isaac?" he queried after a moment of confused contemplation, trying to imagine the man cheerfully accepting sudden company and having some trouble. Then again, he was an odd one. "The same Isaac. Red-hair-and-pet-demon Isaac."

"Mhmm..." Low and lazy and half asleep. "Rosso mio."

There was a warmth to the endearment, something similar but not quite the same tone that he used when speaking Antivan to or at Jack and Eugene. Not quite the same depth of emotion, though there was sentiment enough in the statement. "His tongue is as talented as it is wicked. He was not gentle and I had no desire for him to be."

A rough coupling it had been. Biting and bruising and he'd been aching in so many delicious ways afterward and if he was normal he would shiver and sigh and start to pet Jack in inappropriate and fascinating ways. But he did not. He smiled and nuzzled Jack's shoulder instead.

"After the third round he invited that demon to join. It was very interesting. I may still have bruises."

". . . really."

Of all the shared experiences he could have had with Zevran, that was not the one that Jack had expected, and his eyebrows lifted out of proportion with the mildness of his remark. It was also quite the mental image, and he made a conscious decision not to dwell on it too much at the moment - though whether out of jealousy or the concern that he'd like it a little too much, he couldn't say.

"Now my first day of eating fruit until my tongue blistered feels awfully unambitious."

"We have very different priorities, Argento." Zevran murmured, lifting a hand to smooth it down the side of Jack's face. "You were a taken man, I, less so. Until I saw it rectified. And then untaken but often taken until the argument wherein I requested to be a taken man rather than an oft taken man and Isaac saw no point in indulging such sentiment and scornfully let it be known- and then I met you and Eugene and we were communally taken with one another without being taken entirely until the night in which we partook of one another thoroughly and then on occasion afterward until sentiment settled in and while you two are still deeply taken with one another I am equally quite taken with you but not...quite. Taken. By you."

Zevran's cadence was flawless. Perfect pitch, perfect delivery, so much so that Jack found himself listening raptly, as well as with a slowly growing warmth that began in his chest and creeped out along his veins, all the way to the tips of his ears by the end of the explanation. Confession? Nothing quite felt like a confession with Zevran, who delivered every new thing like a simple fact he had only not bothered to mention aloud, but the narrative was surely as close as he came.

It did not escape Jack, either, what word among all the versatile ones available Zevran returned to again and again. He smiled slightly, pink below the spotting of winter-paled freckles as he rubbed slowly along the line of the elf's neck, gathering an adequate response for that ambitious bit of wordplay.

"I . . . we, Gene and I. We don't take what we're sure hasn't been given to us." He looked down, seeking out Zevran's eyes, corner of his mouth curling more surely. "And it seems especially unconscionable to take someone who's actually been sold in his lifetime, especially with that sort of thing being illegal in our world."

He laughed softly, then turned his head, kissing the hand that had been resting against his cheek. The admission came bashfully, something he'd not intended to confess any time soon, if only for Zevran's sake. He was the man who'd insisted again and again, after all, that he could not be held or bound by conventional rules. "That doesn't mean that the temptation to take isn't there. But it doesn't seem right."

"...and if I did not mind? The taking. As it would not be a purchase or a branding or use as one would a tool that one found-" His voice absolutely did not crack and his hands didn't clench in Jack's shirt and it did not bother him to say the word no matter what he was accused of later but he was deep in his cups and his voice might be a little quavery at the end of the word. "expendable? Without use or a point or any value beyond what was on hand at the moment and to be tossed aside when one is finished-"

He cut himself off of that, not wanting to vomit all his further issues over Jack. not wanting to vomit at all. He swallowed back something thick and not at all resembling his heart before resting his cheek against Jack's shoulder and breathing until he could form words and sentences properly in his mind.

Seven Silvers.

He hoped it had been worth it. He wondered what he would be worth now. What Jack and Eugene would see fit to pay for him or his services and he twisted his mind away from that strain in favor of remembering the temptation and warmth and how very flattering those freckles were under a blush.

"Not at all opposed to the taking, here. All for it."

Not-minding was better. Not perfect, but better than that disconcerting standard of everyone in a constant state of taking and being taken, the whole world painted in subtle shades of predation. The smile melted from his face with the unsteadiness that crawled up through Zevran with his question. Weaving his fingers into his hair, he pulled his face against Zevran's hair, listening to the loathsome words but not determined or cold enough to try to quiet him.

He knew there was ugliness in the world that Zevran came from. He knew that no-one came out of those things unmarked, no matter how well they could laugh and chatter away lesser trouble. But to hear when its tension and cold crawled up into Zevran's throat, how it tinted the world so much that the colour of it fell onto even Jack's features . . .

He swallowed thickly, then tugged Zev closer in a tight hug, kissing the crown of his head firmly.

"Let us accept, and we'll do it in a heartbeat, all right?" he murmured, low but decided, a note of cheer still bravely holding steady through his voice. "I don't usually speak for Eugene, either, but . . . just trust me. You won't be able to stop us. Promise."

"...I am not accustomed to men making promises. Less so of them keeping said promises." It seemed a safe enough admission to make. Life was life, work was work, and Crows did not give their word for anything because they could not possibly be able to hold themselves to it. Assassins they may be, but honorable? They tried, after a fashion. At least Zevran always had. One had to make the romance of the job work for them if they wished to remain sane without spiking one's brandy with powders and prostitutes.

Not that he didn't enjoy when the time came but he did not let it waste him into illness and careless death or debt.

Now, though, curled close and held tight like he'd always imagined a true lover's embrace might be, clutched and cherished and protected by one of the few he could trust to allow himself to be truly vulnerable around...it all seemed so very far away. The Crows. The training. The weight of Rinna's death. His own. Everything.

"But...I believe you."

Jack couldn't think of a response to Zevran, at first. Talk was cheap, even more so before the outbreak, and to offer it as his only currency might be too meagre a payment for a man as pragmatic as Zevran. All he could do was promise, and hold tight, and hope.

All these comforts, house and food and health, but still come things were no different from how they had been in Abel.

The words that followed caught him off-guard, and he caught his breath slowly, looking down at Zev in near-disbelief. But then he grinned, huffing a soft laugh and nuzzling into his hair, a gesture as full of liveliness and affection as his stillness had been full of acceptance. They were words that were more than their sum, coming from Zevran, who had so much reason to mistrust and question.

"Won't let you regret it," he rushed, breathless and grinning, kissing the smoothness of his hair.

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Fifth Drop - Again, until you decide to drop. Now I'm so high, so high, so high [Action]

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