#like take a step back and honestly tell me morrigan is hot in dao

[brekkie-e]

It's insane to me how many gamer bros are complaining that Veilgaurd looks "like a generic flashy modern game" and making comments about how it looks like Fallen Order or Hogwarts Legacy. In the same breath saying that "Origins is really dead, I'm out." Type stuff. Like really? Really??? Origins is your hill to die on? You want it to look like Origins????

This Origins??? I mean I love it. I do. I have played it countless times. But if I could have Origins with Veilgaurd graphics I would TAKE IT IN AN INSTANT. Please wake up it is not 2009 anymore folks.

[lesetoilesfous]

Hi! Could I get a Zevran/Alistair in #49 from the sensory prompt list? (If you don't ship them uh could u write Fenders instead?) Something warm and summery? Have a great evening!!

This was such a delight to write, I hope I get more Zevran/Alistair! Thank you so so much for the prompt! (If you’d like me to write you a dragon age ficlet, send me one from here!)

@dadrunkwriting

Pairing: Zevran / Alistair

Characters: Zevran Arainai, Alistair Theirin

Tags: DAO adjacent??, beach shenanigans, Zevran cares not for silly societal conventions like sexual taboos and monarchies, they’re naked but they don’t have sex so I’m calling that mature

Rating: Mature

 Alistair hates sand. It gets everywhere. Take now, for example. It’s a sunny day in Amaranthine - it’s always a sunny day in Amaranthine, and salt is baked into his skin and crusting over his sunburn as he struggles to pull his smalls back over his sandy feet without filling them with grit. Alistair is busy hopping unsuccessfully in the sand when Zevran Arainai steps out of the ocean, and Alistair promptly falls on his ass. 

The sand is soft as silk and hot as embers, sinking under the impact before a jarring thump to his tailbone as Alistair falls through the softer surface and onto the hard packed earth beneath it. He doesn’t care. Zevran is standing, naked as the day he was born, wrapped about with long inky tattoos in the golden light of the late afternoon sun. Alistair is pretty sure that if the Maker does exist, the bastard has a terrible sense of humour. 

As he watches (belatedly remembering to close his mouth when a midge comes dangerously close to his soft palate), Zevran drags one hand up through his hair, dark gold and soaking wet, pulling it away from his face and arching his back, long ears dripping salt water. Then, suddenly, his eyes cut in Alistair’s direction, and he gives him a bright knife-flash of a grin. “Enjoying the view, your majesty?”

Immediately, the warm, lazy coil of lust that had been curling in Alistair’s nether regions dissipates. He scowls, and turns away, pushing himself to his feet as he tries to ignore the fact that Zevran is coming closer.  “Could you not?”

“What?” Zevran’s laughing Antivan accent is far too close for Alistair’s comfort, and he snatches his (now thoroughly encrusted) smalls up from the sand where he dropped them. “You are the old king’s son, no? This arl of yours does intend to place you upon the throne?” Zevran steps back, then,  openly ogling  as Alistair glares at him, yanking his smalls hurriedly up over his damp thighs. “Though I can think of better areas in which you could be placed.”

Alistair rolls his eyes, and tells himself Zevran will write off his blush as sunburn. “Again, seriously, does literally anyone care about what I want in all this?”

“Do you think that will make a difference?” Zevran sounds honestly curious. Above them, seagulls squawk and hover on the breeze rising from the crashing sea. Alistair picks up his shirt, and tries very hard not to notice the trail of golden hair that skates over Zevran’s muscular, scarred chest and down to - nope, he’s not looking.

“It would be nice if it did.”

Zevran hums noncommittally, glancing back in the direction of the others. Alistair follows his gaze. Sten and Wynne are both propped at the high end of the beach, as far from the water as they can get, whilst Leliana is playing what Alistair suspects is a potentially lethal game of trying to get Morrigan to join her in the water. Kallian is staring at the waves, with her hands on her hips and something Alistair has come to read as concern on her face. He follows her gaze, and catches a strange purple glow in the water. He supposes that explains what’s become of Shale.

Alistair manages to wrestle his shirt back over his chest, and winces as it sticks uncomfortably to his damp skin, pulling where the sleeves have grown just a little too tight in recent months around his arms and shoulders. Zevran turns back to him, still utterly naked, bronze and glistening in the sun. “Are you not warm? Ferelden is not a hot country.”

Alistair scowls, and tries not to blush further, which is doing nothing for either his dignity or his body temperature. “Yes, well, some of us have a sense of basic modesty.”

Zevran laughs, then, and it is as intoxicatingly wild as it was the first time he heard it. He steps closer, and Alistair tells himself that it’s the shifting sand making him walk like that, and nothing to do with swaying hips. Zevran sets one damp hand on Alistair’s shoulder, and looks up into his eyes. “Come, now, Alistair. I thought you were more amusing than that.”

It’s possible that the beach isn’t so bad after all.