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He'd been there a week, and the Commander was already dragging him into the deep roads.
As usual, Garrett had ruined everything. Carver had finally been starting to fit in at Ansburg (Well, sort of), then mad dwarves had attacked. So off he'd gone tagging at Garrett's heels like a kicked dog into the deep roads again. And everything had gone to hell again. And they'd gotten stuck down there again. And Garrett had to be the bloody extra-special hero again. And the end result was Carver having to go to a whole new home again.
Alright, so maybe Garrett couldn't have predicted that a bunch of half tainted dwarves would be out for their blood. Literally. But still, it would have been nice to be the one leading the charge there for once! He was the bloody Warden, he should have been leading! Anders didn't count, the mage was only there because he was doing unmentionable things to Carver's brother (Plus, which Warden had gone a bit insane? Not Carver, that was who.).
Like some sort of idiot, he'd assumed he'd be able to skip back to Ansburg and get on with his life. Instead he'd been debriefed, then informed that he was being transferred to Ferelden. The undercurrent had quite clearly been that since he had helped slaughter some other Wardens, specifically one of their few mages (nevermind the fact the idiots wanted to wake up a bloody magister of old), they didn't want him around anymore.
He'd peeked at the report, of course. It had all been there; every bit of information that branded him and made him have to work harder than everyone else just to fit in. Carver was one of the unlucky blighters who hadn't chosen to be a Warden. Supposedly the Wardens didn't care about your origins... but they were bloody proud of themselves, so when you had someone like him who had 'lucked into it' (nevermind the scores of darkspawn he'd killed to get there) and someone who'd competed in some namby pamby tournament for the 'honor'... For some reason it was the preening idiot who got the commendation.
Story of his bloody life.
He had expected to have to go through the whole gauntlet of proving himself yet again... but Commander Alim Surana was nothing like the Wardens at Ansburg. Carver had heard stories of course, and he supposed he was honor bound to tell Varric that Anders hadn't been exaggerating the elven hero's looks... but that wasn't what was important to Carver. What was important to Carver was that the Commander read through half of the cover letter before rolling his eyes and saying that apparently the Commander at Ansburg still had that stick up the arse.
Whoever had written stories about the Commander obviously had fucked up priorities. All that stupid frilly verse describing the Warden as an elf made from sunbeams or whatever and they skipped the parts that made the Commander seem less like some hero from on high and more like... well... fun. And dangerous, but mostly fun, which didn't seem like something a Commander was supposed to be.
Two days later, Vigil’s Keep already felt like the home he’d always been meant to have. A very large home where everyone wore blue striped armor and made terrible jokes about broodmothers because they'd rather laugh than really think about it. There were Mabari under the tables not so subtly begging for scraps, drinking contests at dinner, and no one gave a fuck if the person you were arguing with was a Lieutenant because everyone knew the Commander didn't hold them to rank unless they were working.
There were no overarching prejudices, save the obvious Ferelden ones against Orlesians and everything involving pomp and drivel. The Commander himself had been conscripted, and since the conscripted were generally considered a rung below even the lucky... no one dared start the usual 'I'm more Warden than you' pissing contests. Or maybe those had been unique to Ansburg.
Most of all, loath though Carver was to admit it, there was the presence of mages, flitting about. Mages who were accepted as part of their large tainted family rather than held apart, and Maker take him but much as he hated his brother that made all the difference. Somehow.
Three days after Carver first arrived, the Commander decided to take him along on a 'run' to see how he fared in battle. A 'run' turned out to be going right through the ruins of Kal'hirol with the Commander and two completely insane dwarves.
To be fair, Commander Surana was just as insane as Lieutenants Sigrun and Oghren.
Almost as though he’d been listening to Carver’s meandering thoughts, the Commander grinned over his shoulder. The mage was so covered in blood that the contrast made his eyes seem like they were literally on fire, rather than just reflecting light from the magical 'torch' the man had hovering above them. Carver didn't have nearly so much blood on him and he was itching for a bath something fierce, so he couldn’t imagine how uncomfortable that had to be. Not to mention, what sort of mage wore full armor and fought with a sword and dagger rather than a staff? Especially when that mage was an elf? Sure, Fenris pulled it off, but the Commander was all lean and magey... Not that Carver had been looking, or anything.
Carver wasn't sure what was worse; that he had to follow this crazy person into who-knew-what... or that he found himself grinning back.
*****
He'd been there a month, and that damned mage was driving him insane.
It was tempting to rationalize that the Commander was an elf, so that somehow didn't count...
Except that whenever he tried to rationalize that way, he'd remember how the mage once leapt off a boulder, screaming bloody murder as he laid into three darkspawn at once with that scary looking sword of his. The Commander was many things. Terrifying, insane, absolutely batshit... Delicate was nowhere on that list. Neither was girly. In fact, Carver was fairly sure that he'd be safer taking on a horde of ogres in his smalls than calling the Commander girly. At least he could run from the ogres before they killed him.
Therefore, it was entirely not his fault that he nearly choked on his tongue when Commander Surana and Sigrun started gossiping about the new recruits. Specifically, which ones they would 'do'. Even more specifically, certain... physical assets.
Covered in darkspawn blood, surrounded by tainted goo, and they were gossiping about whose arses they fancied most. The Maker hated him.
He was not going to wonder what they would say about him when he wasn't there. His ass was fine, wasn't it? Maker he was not going down that road of thought either. Down that way led madness. Or becoming like his brother, and frankly he'd prefer the tainted insanity to that.
So instead Carver following along, red faced and thankful for a helmet as he tried to keep his clanking to a minimum. Thankfully they ran into a band of darkspawn before the reached the surface again. The sweet wonderful surface. For some reason Surana liked dragging Carver along on his special missions. At first he had worried it would make it even harder to fit in, even harder to be seen as anything but someone else's tagalong (even if the Commander was so many times an improvement over his brother it didn't even compare)... but the general atmosphere was that the people who tagged along after the Commander got all the most terrifying, if less boring, jobs.
It was, however, a lot more heroic. Sometimes. Other times it was... awkward.
He pulled his helmet off as they finally trudged out into the sun, turning his face towards the light. Maker but he was covered in grossness. He was so gross that he was immune to the smell. In fact, his sense of smell might have just quit altogether. He was going to get back to the keep and discover that he was now denied smelling anything ever again. On the bright side, the keep was only four or five hours away.
"It's already late afternoon. Votes for camping by the stream? I for one am dying for a bath. Ugh."
Carver froze. The ruins they'd been camping in underground had offered at least some measure of privacy... Alright, so not really, but camping in the deep roads was a tense thing. And they didn't have tents, just bedrolls. You needed tents to camp in the forest, didn't you? Or you'd get... rained on or something.
By the time he even thought to voice a protest, he'd been so vastly outvoted that it wasn't even worth speaking up.
He dragged his feet on actually heading to the stream to wash up, insisting to himself that he was in no way avoiding anyone. Certainly not the Commander. Who cared if anyone saw him naked? Wouldn't be the first time he'd bathed around other people. And he definitely wasn't avoiding seeing someone else undressed. Nope. Not him.
He was a bloody liar and he knew it. Carver avoided the river as long as he could, hoping that Surana would come back before he got down there... but no. That didn't happen. Nothing could ever go Carver's way. Why did he ever even bother?
Finally he couldn't come up with any more excuses... so off to the stream he went, with his last clean pair of pants and a feeling of abject dread.
The first thing he saw as he approached the river was his Commander, waist deep in the water and completely naked... under one of those little tiny waterfalls that were everywhere in this forest, with the sun dancing all around him and... and...
Alone. Shit. Why had he procrastinated? If he'd just gone down to the river with everyone else then there would have been a whole group there and no one would have noticed if he was feeling a bit awkward because the women hadn't bothered to separate themselves out so worst case scenario they'd have assume he was peeking and... and... Shit. But it was only Surana here. Just the Commander. No one else. Why had he put himself into this situation? Because he was an idiot, that was why.
Better yet, why hadn't he gone further down the stream? There was a bend right there, he could just back into the trees and-- And the Commander was turning to look at him.
"There you are, took you long enough. Nate was betting that the darkspawn had followed us up and eaten you or something."
"I... uh. No. Didn't get eaten. Also no darkspawn. I mean, I would have yelled or... something." Carver resisted the urge to hit his head on something. Yelled. Of course. Not boasts about how he would have taken them all down, just claims that he'd scream like some sissy little girl. Maker.
Surana laughed, fingers rubbing soap through his hair, "Could be worse! We left Oghren on his own once during the blight. Came back to find him drunk and surrounded by dead bandits. We'd been maybe a few hundred yards away, didn't hear a thing. To this day I'm convinced that he knocked them all over with his alebreath or something."
On the bright side, one never wanted to be compared to Oghren... so maybe yelling was a good thing. Sort of.
He had a feeling he was supposed to say something, but the words wouldn't order themselves in his head and he didn't dare even attempt to muddle through it otherwise. Shit, he was a guy. Surana was a guy; long hair didn't change that. He should... This should not be so awkward. "So... uh... Is the water really cold?"
Right, perfect excuse to wait until the Commander was gone.
The elf grinned at him, "Nope! Wonders of magic and all that! It's not all fireballs, you know, some of it is just heating up little waterfalls."
"Oh. Is that... uh... why you're still here?"
"Ugh, no. Sadly darkspawn blood and my hair are a terrible combination, not that darkspawn blood is ever a good combination with anything. Velanna has the same issue, but she was smart enough to cut hers."
"You shouldn't cut it." Carver tried to bite off the words far too late to stop them. Right. Yes. Tell the Commander what to do with his hair. Idiot.
Surana laughed, "You aren't the one trying to work this gunk out of it."
"I didn't mean. I mean-- Uh-- It looks nice. Like that. Long. I mean." Maker, what was it about elven mages that made him completely incapable of saying a damned sentence? And it wasn't like-- it wasn't like that. That was his brother's... thing. And even if it was Carver’s thing too, it wasn’t like he and the Commander could ever… Right, not thinking about that.
Alim grinned at him, for a brief moment looking almost predatory, "You think so, do you?"
"Um..."
"You know you really should get in. I'm almost done getting the blood out of my hair and as soon as I leave the stream will go cold again horribly quick."
"Right. Sorry."
"For what?"
Carver risked a glance towards the other man, confirming that the Commander did look bloody well amused. Great. Now he was Carver the Jester. "Um... Nevermind."
He tried to pretend that Surana wouldn't be watching while he stripped and jumped into the water, feeling like some sort of ungainly bronto with the Commander not ten feet away and looking like some sort of... shit. No. Comparisons were bad. Comparisons led to embarrassing things and he didn't even have cold water to cover that up.
So instead he just washed as quickly as possible, glancing up every few seconds to make sure the Commander wasn't watching him (he wasn't... which shouldn't have disappointed Carver yet for some reason did) and trying to convince himself that he was not ogling the elf. At all.
Somehow, Carver didn’t realize that the Commander finished with his hair long before Carver was done washing, and stayed to keep the water warm anyways.
The next day he kept as silent as possible the whole way home, then hid until dinner. He completely missed the amused looks the Commander gave him. He didn't miss the whispered giggles, but he also didn't realize they were about him.
*****
He'd been there a year, and Surana was going to kill him.
Of all the mistakes he could have made... getting shit faced and having the best sex of his life with his Commander was so stupid it wasn't even on the list.
Especially since he hadn't exactly slept with any men before so he was certain it couldn't have been near as good for Surana and oh Maker the elf was going to kill him. Boom. Fireball. He'd be nothing but a singed corpse. The smart thing to do would be to somehow get out of bed without waking up Alim and flee towards the border. That would buy him... maybe an extra day of life. Even a ship wouldn't be safe; Surana would just change into a bird and fly after him. Then kill him in some horrible fashion.
In fact, fleeing would have been an excellent thing to do if he didn't have an elf shaped anchor clinging to him and using his chest as a pillow. Was it even possible to sneak out in this situation?
It didn't help that while he was busy panicking, his dick was singing a litany of, 'pretty naked person on top of me!' over and over. Horribly distracting. Very very very distracting. In a very obvious way. Especially as memories of the night before kept flinging themselves into the front of his mind. Shit.
Alim stirred, making the cutest disgruntled sound Carver had ever heard, and Carver practically stopped breathing.
"Ahhhh, fuck. This is why I should never, ever, accept drinks from Oghren. You'd think I'd learn." Surana yawned, giving Carver a chagrined look that was so fucking adorable it shouldn't be allowed. "Sorry. Getting drunk and jumping someone isn't usually my style."
"I-I'm... I'm not completely certain you were the one who did the jumping." Shit, what did one say in situations like these? He'd gotten plenty of practice talking to women, but men? This was... this was new. Also, naked. They were both naked and Surana was mostly on top of him and oh Maker this was not helping his ability to think straight.
Alim rolled onto his side (which you'd think would have helped lessen the distraction now that the other man wasn't on him, but no) and grinned slyly at him, "You sound like you aren't sure if that's a good thing or not."
Carver pushed to sit up, one hand grabbing at his hair as he tried to get his thoughts in order. Between the pounding of his head and sheer panic, that wasn't happening. "Well... I'm not exactly..."
"Please tell me you weren't a virgin. I mean, there's nothing wrong with that, but drunken sex is pretty high up the list of bad ways to--"
"What?! No! No no. No. I'm-- Not even a little-- I mean, I haven't with men but--" Carver sputtered to a halt and glared at the elven man.
Alim snorted, "Well that's a pity. Your first time with a man is still a first time, and I could make it so much better sober." The elf stretched his arms above his head and smiled up at him rather slyly, "If my head wasn't pounding so damned much right now, I'd demonstrate."
Carver went red, struggling not to show his reaction to that. Right. Better. Because that could totally get better. Did he even want to know? There was a good chance that better would make his brain explode.
So instead of answering, he just tried to look anywhere but at Surana... and suddenly realized they were in the Commander's room, not his own. Which made sense, seeing as Carver's bed was a lot smaller. Why in the world did one little elf have such a big bed anyways?
Surana had books everywhere, literally... and Carver wasn't going to look more than that. The bed shifted as Alim pushed to his elbows, watching Carver far too sharply for someone who claimed to have a hangover. Carver swallowed, "So... No magical magey cures for hangovers?"
Alim laughed, falling back to lay on the bed. He looked so damned innocent like that, with his hair messy and his eyes alight, "Alas, no. Not from me, at least. I suck at Creation spells."
"Oh."
They were silent for a few moments, Carver trying to look everywhere and nowhere at once until he suddenly realized that Alim was ogling him. Him. He was. Had to be. There was absolutely no way that his eyes flicking up and down-- shit, talking was going to be impossible, if his dick had anything to say about it... Annnnd now Surana was looking there. Wonderful. Just great.
Carver tried to ignore the other man's eyes on him, swallowing again and wishing fervently for a bucket of ice water to shove his head into, "So... was this a one time thing?" Please let it not be a one time thing. Please please please.
"Depends, do you want it to be?"
"I..." He fought the urge to squirm, pinned in place by brown eyes that he suddenly realized had flecks of gold and green. More hazel than brown, really. Shit, he was trying to answer, not to get distracted by Alim laying there all bathed in morning sunlight and-- Fuck! "I'd like if it weren't? A one time thing, I mean."
What the hell was it about the other man that turned him into a babbling fool?
Alim just grinned at him, "I think I'd like that too."
Carver forgot to breath for a few moments.
"Won't it..." Carver didn't want to bring this up, he really didn't, but... He wouldn't be the dirty little secret. Not even for the Commander. He'd had his fill of secrets, and something like this... It would be better to pine from afar than to get what he spent months trying to convince himself he didn't want (hadn't known how much he wanted until this moment) and have to keep it a secret.
"Won't it... what?" Alim raised an eyebrow at him.
"Well. Favoritism and fraternization and all that..."
The elf laughed, grinning widely at him, "Carver. Really? Carver. Everyone knows that being one of my favorites just means that you have to work harder and get dragged into the messiest most life threatening missions. You're already stuck with that, just in case you haven’t noticed."
That... Was actually quite true. "Alright."
"Alright... what?"
"Alright I..." Carver ran a hand through his hair, managing a sheepish grin, "I'm not... good at talking about this stuff." Technically that was a lie. He was pretty damned good at talking about it to everyone except for the people that mattered. Case in point, now.
Carver froze as Alim pushed himself upright and ran his fingers lightly up Carver’s arm, leaning in to brush a kiss just barely against his lips, "Then don't talk."
It would have been perfect, probably. Too perfect, maybe, since Carver would have said something stupid and fucked it up. Except Alim suddenly giggled and ran his thumb across the stubble on Carver's jaw, "I'd forgotten how bristly you humans get."
Carver snorted, taking refuge in sarcasm, "Yes, well, so sorry for my genes. How can I ever make it up to you?"
"Oh, I'm sure I can think of a few ways."
*****
He'd been there three years, and the only thing worse than having to leave to check on his brother was leaving without Alim.
They were up on the battlements, Alim perched on the edge with his legs swinging hundreds of feet above the ground... as though he didn't even care about the possibility of falling. Of course he didn't. This was Alim. The mage would probably just change into a bird before he hit the ground even if he did fall.
"You sure you don't want to come with me?"
"Eh, on one hand, yay for slaughtering Templars... on the other hand every time I leave, something explodes. Literally. Boom." The elf tossed his hands up, casting a bit of flame into the air just in case Carver hadn't gotten the 'boom' part. "And I'd rather get through the month with nothing important exploding."
"Well, technically the Templar slaughtering isn't even guaranteed." He laughed. "I'll probably just spend most of the month having to deal with my brother being... himself. Would it make me a bad person to just drop hints about us and hope they connect the dots at the most awkward time possible?"
"You're asking me that? Me? Because you know that's what I'd do." His lover leaned towards him, grinning wickedly, "What would be perfect would be to find some way to make it so they only realized it when they were about to get naughty. Like... Hm. I'll have to brainstorm on this."
"Maybe one of your... uh... spells?"
"Hmm... Maybe if you mention one of the ones I know Anders was around for... But you aren't very good at subtle. Maybe I should send a letter with you? I'm much better at subtle than you are."
It had taken awhile, but Carver had eventually stopped getting jealous every time Alim alluded to the reams of lovers he'd had before Carver. It just didn't matter, because Carver was the one Alim had spent the past two years in a relationship with. That was the important part, everything that came before really wasn't any of Carver's business.
Plus, all that 'experience' meant the sex was bloody well good.
"You aren't subtle. Unless by subtle you mean stabbing and pulling rank, in which case of course you're subtle."
"I can be subtle. Sometimes!" Alim protested, "Subtler than you, anyways."
"Yeah, well, I won't need subtle. Worst case scenario... Okay, worst case scenario I'll get there to discover everything went tits up the day before and they're all dead. But worst not-dead scenario I'll show up and have to follow Garrett around for a bit of rampant slaughter. Otherwise we'll have the most awkward brother reunion chat ever and then I'll come back home."
"If you don't take the chance to torment Anders a bit I'll be exceedingly disappointed. Oh, and tell him that there's this wonderful thing called paper. You use it with a quill. To write letters. To your friends. Specifically to let said friends know that you weren't actually chopped to bits or hauled off by Templars. Wouldn't take much, just a 'Hi, still alive, got possessed by Justice, ran away, want to brood on my own.' would have done nicely."
"You know we could have just gone there at some point so you could yell at him in person."
"That would spoil the point of holding a grudge, love."
Carver wrapped his arms around Alim's waist, pulling the other man back to lean against him and nibbling on his ear. It was so damned peaceful right now that he could forget about the bad dreams or the tainted ruins beneath their feet or the god child that he couldn't resent because Alim wouldn't be alive without it... And he could ignore the existence of his brother and Anders and whatever mess they were getting themselves into. No problems. No stress. No Calling looming twenty or so years in the distance... just them.
"You keep doing that and we're going to have goodbye sex right here."
Annnnd leave it to Alim to shatter anything peaceful. Carver flushed, biting rebelliously at the elf's ear. "I'm not leaving for two days."
"Exactly, and short of an explosion I don't plan on letting you leave the bed. Or cobblestones. Whatever. Point is, you don't get to wear pants for a couple of days."
Wonderful, now he was blushing. "I... Think that might cause some problems. Unless you're planning on bringing me food, in which case I'm all for it."
"I can do that."
"Uh... By food I mean good food. Not veggies, fruit, and more veggies. Like, you know, proper food.”
Alim snorted, "What is it with all you shemlem and your aversion to anything intrinsically healthy?"
"I'm just saying that green is a very ominous color."
Alim twisted in Carver's arms, frowning at him. He was probably going to give some hugely boring lecture on the nature of plants and yadayadayada so instead of letting his lover talk (because as soon as Alim started talking he always got his way, it was a fact of life) Carver kissed him.
Everything in the world narrowed down to Alim's lips against his, the kiss chaste and innocent for a fraction of a moment before one of their heads tilted and suddenly everything was tongue and hands grasping at each other's clothing, and they probably should have gone inside because there was only one way this could end.
Kirkwall seemed worlds away, and as far as Carver was concerned, it could stay there.