#I'M NERVOUS SDKLFJLSDKJFLS IF SOMETHING IS WRONG SOMEONE TELL ME PLEASE

[trvelyans-archive]

tentative

a commission for my king @sexysideoftheforce of his oc evangeline and her Bae zevran <3 thank you so much for commissioning me andy ! i hope you enjoy <3

-

“Can I confess something, Zevran?”

He shifted his head to glance over at her. “A fine question,” he said with a smile. It was a warm smile – it always was at this time of night, especially once she had stripped her shirt off and he had been tempted to remove his pants and gone through with it – but it seemed warmer in the soft orange glow of their shared tent, and her heart lurched a little. “Is there something stopping you?”

Evangeline pushed herself up from her bedroll and bit her lip, looking down at him. “I don’t want you to think any differently of me,” she responded, a half sigh of her own frustration. “Or… well… us.”

“My dear Warden…”

“Shh.” She held her hand up, closing her eyes tight as she considered what she was going to say. “I just… I need to be honest with you.”

“Then do so.”

How did he sound so calm? If someone told her that, she would be losing her mind. It did make her feel slightly better, though… maybe he wouldn’t be as mad or as upset as she had been telling herself all day that he would be. (She was just trying to prepare herself, in the event he did react poorly, but it definitely made things a lot scarier.)

“I just… I… I really like you, Zevran.” She swallowed hard, and even then she still felt like she was choking on the quickly growing lump in her throat. “I do, and I really… I enjoy being with you, of course.”

“Of course.”

She smiled, reaching up to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear before he caught her wrist and pulled it towards his face, pressing a kiss on the heel of her palm. It was kind of hard to gather her thoughts when he did – well, that. She had had the whole speech planned out that morning when they were walking through the forest, but she felt it slipping away from her faster than she’d thought it would. Maker, help me, she thought as a furious blush rose on her cheeks.

“Apologies, dear Warden. I did not mean to distract you.” Even though he let go of her hand, she decided to leave it pressed against his face, cupping his cheek gently while she inched closer across the bedroll.

“Sure you didn’t,” she retorted, smiling.

“Alright, perhaps I did.” Zevran smiled back. “However, you still have something important to tell me, hm?”

“Yes, I do.” Evangeline cleared her throat, looking skyward – even though it was obscured by thick canvas walls and a thick canvas roof – and letting out a long, slow breath to try and calm herself (to no avail). “I enjoy being with you,” she continued uncertainly, finally drawing her hand away to wring them both together, “and I appreciate that you… supposedly… enjoy being with me, as well.”

Zevran laughed. It was low and rumbling in his chest, and she felt the cracks in her heart threatening to break it open even further. She squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep breath in, ignoring the urge to get up and run out of the tent as fast as she could and as far as her feet would take her.

“But I… I think that I have feelings for Alistair.”

There was a long, long moment of silence. Evangeline cracked an eye open to see Zevran looking up at the roof with a thoughtful expression on his face, eyebrows gathered together in the middle of his forehead, bottom lip stuck out in a slight pout.

“I see,” he said slowly.

“But… I still have feelings for you, too!” she exclaimed, which drew his eyes back to her before she realized that that was exactly what she did not want. “Strong ones! I like being with you, like I said, and I like – um – well, I like most things – every thing – about you.”

He gave her a small smile, but his eyebrows were still furrowed. “But you like Alistair.”

“…Yes.”

“I see,” Zevran repeated.

Evangeline’s chin fell to her chest, and she bit her lip so her eyes didn’t fill with tears. She felt horrible, like she had led this poor man on when she actually had feelings for her friend. Even though she had feelings for Zevran, too, of course, she still felt… horrible. Rotten. Evil.

“Do you want me to go?”

His eyebrows furrowed as he sat up, reaching over to place his hands against her waist and tug her closer to him. “No, my dear, that is precisely what I do not want,” he said softly, pulling her towards his chest. “I admit, I thought perhaps there was something between you two… I have been thinking about asking for a while. It’s something that has kept me up many nights.” Despite the tension in the air, he winked at her. “Besides other things, of course.”

Evangeline was scared to lean her head towards him. Her cheeks were burning so hot that she thought the tent would catch fire if she touched anything.

“But it is something I have also… considered… in a different light,” he continued, rubbing small, soothing circles against her back with his thumb.

“What do you mean?” she asked, tilting her head and peering at him curiously.

Zevran huffed, leaning his head back so she could see the lump in his neck bob as he swallowed. “I have had feelings for Alistair as well,” he answered under his breath. “Against my better judgement, of course, but…”

“You have?”

He nodded, removing a hand from her waist to run it through his own hair. “I did not see them coming, if you were wondering,” he told her. “But… it is not fair for his arms to look like that when he chops wood, hm?”

She giggled, ducking her face to look at their legs, lazily tangled up with each other’s.

“And it is not secret that he has feelings for you, as well,” Zevran said, “and that he finds me attractive. Perhaps we should consider offering him a… proposition of sorts.”

“Like what?”

He smiled at her. “I do not see why you should have to give one of us up for the other,” he said, “and vice versa. Considering that have reason to believe he is interested in the both of us, perhaps… perhaps that is an arrangement that would work for all of us.”

Evangeline raised an eyebrow. “What, like… all of us? Together?”

He nodded. At first, she was a little taken aback, but the more she thought about it, the more the idea grew on her. She had to admit that the thought of being with both men at the same time made her stomach flutter like it had never done before, and she’d feel much safer if she knew she did not have to fight her feelings for one or the other – that they were both aware of them and maybe even delighted by them, too.

That is, of course, if Alistair would say yes. Evangeline couldn’t help but think that he might not.

“Tomorrow,” she murmured, “should we ask him?”

“Yes, amor,” Zevran replied, “I think we should.”

-

Alistair was the last one awake in camp the next night.

Evangeline and Zevran had disappeared into her tent a while before, and Alistair had watched them go wistfully. Wistfully for which one, he wasn’t sure. That was the big question, wasn’t it? The one weighing on his mind? Of course a man his age wasn’t concerned about the Blight or the Darkspawn or his dead mentor or potentially dead father figure – no, it was which one of his friends he had feelings for, and what he was supposed to do about them considering the two friends were already involved with each other and didn’t seem to want to change that anytime soon.

Sometimes it felt like the Darkspawn were easier to deal with. At least he understood them and what they wanted (which was to kill him). At least he knew how to deal with them.

He didn’t know how to deal with these feelings.

He was willing, at first, to ignore the feelings he had for Zevran and just focus on how he felt about Evangeline. He had this whole thing planned, a speech and a gift and everything, and the day he was planning on telling her he saw them sneaking off together to her tent, just like he had done tonight. It was… disappointing, to say the least. To say more than that, he was heartbroken, and on more than one front, too, just to make it worse. He would have been fine if Evangeline wanted to be with some other man or woman - at least Alistair still could’ve considered eventually telling Zevran how he felt. Instead they decided to get involved with each other, and… well, that was about as much as he wanted to think about that night. He went into his own tent, which was cold and dark and smelt of sweaty socks and roses, and sat there on his bedroll, knees pulled up to his chest, breathing heavily, trying not to cry.

And then, of course, he cried. But only a little!

He tried to paste on a smile around them the rest of the time, but at night he let himself feel it. The disappointment, the sadness, and how stupid he was. There was a time he thought Evangeline was interested in him – that they were both interested in him, how laughable – but it was just another thing that he got his hopes up about only for them to be dashed on the ground like… like… Darkspawn shit.

He felt himself starting to cry that night, too, but he told Wynne he was taking first watch, so he couldn’t. And then he wondered why he did that in the first place when he knew he’d just have to watch them retire to bed together.

Probably just to rub it in his own face, a reminder that nothing was easy and he shouldn’t expect anything good in the world anymore. Probably a failed attempt to get himself to focus all his energy on stopping the Blight and killing the Archdemon since there was nothing else to focus on, right?

He was so focused on not focusing about it and wallowing in his own Maker-damned pity that he didn’t hear them leave Evangeline’s tent and approach the campfire where he sat, looking down at him with eerily friendly smiles.

Alistair blinked a couple of times, convinced he had fallen asleep and they were some sort of trick of the Fade, but after a couple of awkward seconds he realized that they were definitely real and waiting for him to smile back.

So he did, but it felt a little more like gutting open a fish than actually smiling.

“I thought you two had gone to bed for the night,” he commented as they sat down beside him, Evangeline on the other end of the log with Zevran in the middle.

“We did not,” Zevran replied, smiling. “There was something we wished to speak to you about. We have an, ah, proposition of sorts.” He turned to Evangeline. “Yes?”

“Yeah,” Evangeline breathed, looking tense.

Alistair breathed out softly. “Okay,” he said. “What sort of, uh, ‘proposition’? Are you sure you wouldn’t be better off asking Wynne or Morrigan?”

Zevran laughed. Evangeline giggled. “No, no, we only need you, Alistair,” Zevran said.

Alistair’s breath caught in the back of his throat, and he let out a nervous laugh. “Okay, well… What is it?”

It had to be about their whole Warden business, right? He probably wanted to undergo the Joining or something to officially become a Warden. Alistair wouldn’t be surprised, nor would he turn him down. They needed as much manpower as they could get, after all, and having him join the Wardens officially would definitely help.

And then he remembered that he’d have to spend even more of his life with them, together, and he couldn’t help but prepare him for the backlash he’d get when he told Zevran ‘no’. If he’d be stuck alone in the Ferelden Wardens with just the two of them, he might as well offer himself up to the Darkspawn on a silver platter right now. At least he’d be doing something more useful than moping, which is what would happen if he had to be around the two of them together for a second longer.

Zevran pursed his lips. “Evangeline and I had a discussion about you last night,” he began slowly. “About our… ah… feelings for you.”

Evangeline winced. Alistair could see her do it. He furrowed his eyebrows, leaning back in his seat.

“O… kay?” he said, blinking. “What ‘feelings’ are these? Hatred, annoyance…?”

“Alistair, no!” Evangeline leaned forward in her seat, reaching across Zevran to place her hand on Alistair’s knee which just about made him dissolve into a puddle. “Feelings like… you know…”

“We are both interested in you,” Zevran finished. “In a more… intimate way.”

Alistair’s heart was thundering so loud in his ears he could barely believe what he had heard. “Sorry, what?”

“We were wondering if you wanted to be with the both of us,” Zevran clarified. “Together.”

None of them said anything for a long, long moment. Alistair’s mind was spiraling very deep into a gutter so quickly that he was scared his mouth would open and sewage would fall out. “At the same time?” he asked.

Zevran laughed. “Yes, if you would like,” he said. “Perhaps at different times, if that would make you more comfortable. We do not wish to overstep…”

Alistair looked over Zevran’s head at Evangeline, who hadn’t said anything. “Evangeline…?”

“I really like you, Alistair,” she murmured, smiling softly. “If you’re interested… I’m interested.”

“Of course I’m interested,” Alistair replied, “I’d be a fool not to be. But… I’ve never…”

He bit the inside of his cheek, frowning at himself. He would have felt embarrassed enough about being a virgin with one person, but with two…?

“That does not matter, my dear Warden,” Zevran offered quietly. “Evangeline was inexperienced, as well. But you couldn’t find a better teacher than me, hm?”

Alistair felt his cheeks reddening. “No way,” he confirmed.

“That’s what I thought.” Zevran looked over at Evangeline and tilted his head. He must have given her some sort of comforting look because her rigid shoulders quickly relaxed and, when her eyes met Alistair’s, he felt his heart melt in his chest, dripping heat into the bottom of his stomach as Zevran placed his hand on Alistair’s leg and gave him a gentle squeeze. “If you’d care to join us, tonight, in Evangeline’s tent, you can. If not…”

“I can,” Alistair breathed, mind spinning. “Absolutely.”

If this was a trick of the Fade, he never wanted to leave.

-

Zevran was the last of them to fall asleep.

Alistair had pulled the elf against him and tucked him underneath his chin. Evangeline, on the other hand, rested her head on Zevran’s chest and fell asleep with her face buried against Alistair’s stomach, where he had pulled her, too, with the hand that was still splayed against her cheek. Zevran smiled, looking down at it, pulling his own hand free from where his arm was wrapped around Evangeline’s shoulder and beginning to smooth gentle circles over the skin of Alistair’s knuckles.

There was no better way to fall asleep than this, he thought, closing his eyes and brushing a kiss against Alistair’s collarbone. None at all.