spader7:
my two favorite elves and forever otp<3
shimmy gives me all the zevris feelings and there’s just no end to themmm
Though they were both elves, they had little more than knife-ears in common. ‘Sharp as blades,’ Zevran said, touching one of his with a callused finger, just the very tip. This, they also shared—but the calluses could not be compared as such, for they were in different places, formed by different weapons and different weights. ‘I have always wondered if it was perhaps too apt—that we have ever been meant to defend ourselves in some way.’
One would not assume to look at him that he would think too much as well as speak too freely, but this was possible.
It was also a trait they did not share.
‘It is dangerous to see too much of yourself, even in the darkness,’ Zevran added, skin also warmed by the sun, worn like armor shaped from thick, boiled leather, and scoured in much the same way. Fenris’s shoulders twitched, for that was a dressing he knew readily. What he protected; what he could not protect.
Yet the tattoos—those were the greatest difference of all. One of them had chosen and the other had not. They may have formed the shapes of muscles that were theirs now to command in some way, to flex or twitch when a stranger’s hand came too close, but Zevran’s fingers stilled against his hip, while Fenris…
Fenris felt his knuckles curve against his heart.
They had nothing in common besides the ears, he told himself, yet there they were. Naked, scarred, bound by some metaphor, as though it was ever as simple as in one of Hawke’s lessons or the dwarf’s many books. It was not. They were flesh and burdens, weapons and shields, more than the sum of the scars they could not forget. They were not words or even—more difficult—sentences.
So perhaps they knew each other better than Fenris had thought.
‘Where did you get it?’ Zevran asked, winding the red cloth around his wrist, while a touch of gold caught the light at Fenris’s throat.
And perhaps, Fenris acquiesced, it was not about what they already shared, but what they could share. The gifts they wore, or exchanged, or even offered.
Zevran brought the little favor to his lips, like fire and blood, but it was neither—just an old strip of linen faded by sweat. ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘I think… I think I would prefer not knowing, after all.’