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peopleofthedas2011-08-11 12:50 pm
Menage 11: An Unfortunate Slight
Title: An Unfortunate Slight (Ménage 11)
Words: 2203
Rating: M for the utilization of prostitutes
Characters: Alistair/f!Surana (Philoméne) (/Zevran?) featuring Nathaniel, Anders, and a whore
Summary: Zev arrives in Amaranthine, ready to hunt down the would-be assassins. If he doesn’t decide to kill his team instead.
<- Previous: Will You Follow Me
Amaranthine, while it had a more unified look than Denerim, was further and final proof that Ferelden as a nation had no sense of poetry. It was too much grey instead of too much brown, and tall instead of sprawling – and of course, he had to admit to himself, its case was not helped by who he did and did not have as company.
They’d walked through the night, and the new Wardens seemed to accept that night travel meant quiet; but since dawn, Zev had bowed to necessity and encouraged the meaningless banter at which he excelled. The mage, Anders, seemed good at that principle, and quickly became tolerable. Then again, he had never been the problem.
Zev had spent the night trying not to dwell on it overmuch, but even now, he found his finger unconsciously tracing his own lip. To have gone so long himself without asking a single kiss from his Warden, only to learn that this bowman, this... Howe had forced one upon her –
Unfortunately, the Howe was also the easiest and most direct route into the heart of the noble conspiracy. They got a room at the inn under his name, the finest one available. Which was not saying much, but it was important that Nathaniel be visible enough to disgruntled nobles. Still, Anders complained when he learned that he and Zev would be staying in a cheaper room.
“We are the hired help,” Zev explained. “The displaced Arl does not share his room with the hired help.” With that, he turned and gave Nathaniel a cold, withering look. “Although he does remember that they are nearby, does he not?”
“Ah. Of course.” Nathaniel grimaced down at him. “Obviously, being a Howe, I’m going to do something treacherous, is that it? What, try to take Amaranthine back all by myself? Or attack the woman who spared my life – oh, right, the one who’s many miles away by now?”
Zev looked down calmly at his hands, tugging slightly at his gloves. “Anders,” he said, “go and pay for the other room, and we will meet you downstairs in a moment, yes?”
The mage’s eyes widened slightly. “This, ah, isn’t going to get ugly, is it? Teamwork, right? Yay Wardens?”
He answered with his most professional smile. “I am not a Warden myself, but I assure you, I never get ugly. We will be only a moment.”
As soon as Anders had hurried through the door and shut it behind him, Zev pushed Nathaniel’s shoulder against it with one hand and almost casually drew a knife with the other, grinning coolly the while. “Try it with me,” he whispered.
“...What?”
“I hear you tried to steal a dance with the Commander.”
A twitch acknowledging the subject, but then Nathaniel scowled. “And how exactly does that become any business of yours?”
Zev’s temper flared, and his arm was against Nathaniel’s throat in an instant. That only made the whelp’s mouth quirk up a little, confirmed in his guess. “Have I dared something you didn’t?” he asked, eyes full of insolence.
The dagger point in his side made the annoying smirk go away. “If she had invited you,” Zev said quietly, “you might have a point. But my informant is not convinced you had her permission, and that would make me particularly angry.” The slight nervous shift of the archer’s weight confirmed Zev’s guess, and he pressed his arm a little tighter against the man’s throat, nodding. “Either way, it is not to happen again. As of now, you are at my side because I suspect that a Howe at my heel will impress certain nobles. If I decide that you will serve better as an example, I will not hesitate.”
“Ah.” Resignation. “So that is why I’m still alive, is it?”
“You are still alive at the moment because the Commander has a heart too big for her delicate frame. My own ability to tolerate threats to her is much more limited.”
A moment’s silence before Nathaniel responded, quietly. “If there was ever a moment when I... would have behaved like my father’s son, it is gone now. I understand how the Commander inspires such loyalty, and I am no threat.”
That would have to do for the moment: the conversation was starting to cut too deep in the wrong direction. Zev lowered his arm and allowed Nathaniel to step free of the door. “We shall see. Now, you will stay here while Anders and I attend the evening service at the Chantry to establish that we are here. You, of course, are much too good to attend so soon after travel and with the help. But starting tomorrow you are to appear at morning services, and in the marketplace. You are trained as a rogue, yes? Your goal is to look like you are being discreet while remaining easy to find. This is clear enough?”
Nathaniel answered first with a sulky look but then with a curt nod, which was enough to allow Zev to move on to his next project, which was in fact to be seen at the Chantry along with Anders.
The Chantry in Amaranthine was a bit more to his liking than some he’d seen, though still not quite what he’d been accustomed to in Antiva. A little too austere, a little too timid about some of the more challenging symbols of the faith. Even so, the sound of the Chant and the smell of incense eased him into the correct frame of mind, and he stood in the rear pew with his head bowed and his hands folded, shifting his focus to –
– to Anders muttering about the relative attractiveness of various women in the rows ahead of them. Zev slapped the back of the man’s head and shushed him, then returned to quieting his mind. He ran the mental tally of people he’d escorted to their deaths since the last time, marveling again at how he had to pick them out from among darkspawn and demons and other monstrosities. So little forgiveness to seek, compared to his old life. Surely the Maker did not object to the little smile he got reflecting on it.
Once he felt the inner lightness of the Maker’s blessing, he lifted his head and looked again at Anders, who merely looked bored. With a sigh, Zev ushered him out of the Chantry. “Do you have no interest in the fate of your soul, my friend?”
Anders stared at him. “I’d have figured you for more of a here-and-now kind of person.”
“Ah, yes, of course. But there is no reason one cannot mind both, is there? It is the Maker who gave us all of this in the first place, yes?”
“By ‘all of this’ you must mean Templars, Circles, Towers, and a life of constant escape and re-imprisonment?” The mage sighed, apparently at himself. “Sorry, that was a bit morose, wasn’t it? I’m not like that really. Chantries make me a bit touchy.”
“I see. Then I will keep my deeply ingrained Antivan sensibilities on the subject to myself! But I think you will find our next obligation more pleasant. We are going to find some whores.”
Anders’ brown eyes widened with a surprise that did not look at all unhappy. “I’m good with that... but... what makes it an obligation, exactly?”
“Being the lead henchmen of a disgruntled noble, bello. If we do not avail ourselves of the local talent, we are not believable in our roles.”
The problem proved to be actually tracking down the whores. Amaranthine did not have a free-standing whorehouse like any other civilized city, nor did its only inn make them obviously available. In the end it required several quiet conversations and little payments to get them into the room where the available women awaited possible clients.
Anders immediately singled out a buxom redhead, paid his money and walked out with her; but Zevran took his time. If one was going to take the trouble to hire a professional, after all, it was worth taking a moment with the selection. He found his attention drawn to a small, quiet girl who smiled and opened her posture in the appropriate way but did not approach him directly. He went to her instead, smiling and kissing her hand, and she blushed a little at his politeness. After some polite chatter, they agreed that she could spare him a bit of her evening, and she led him to the room reserved for her to use.
Both the room and the bed were small but relatively clean, which was a pleasant surprise given how understated the business was. That said, the presence of business was more obvious back in the room, where he could hear how other nearby transactions were progressing. When the girl started to list off her prices, he raised a finger to her mouth to stop her.
“Ssh. I am in no hurry, bella. Let us just sit for a moment, hmm?” He touched her slightly disheveled hair. “Tsk, let me brush this out for you.”
She smiled a little, surprised. “Good luck, ser. It’s dry, and it won’t sit much better than it’s doing.”
“Do they not sell rose oil in Amaranthine?” He stepped toward the little chest of drawers and looked over his shoulder at her.
“Top drawer,” she said. “It’s very expensive.”
“Ah. But perhaps I have – yes, I happen to carry several simple oils with me. They are useful for a number of things.” Smiling a little, he retrieved her brush and returned to her side, gesturing for her to sit on the edge of the bed. When she did, he climbed up behind her on his knees and started pulling her hair back gently with one hand and then the other. At first she tensed her shoulders just a little and started to turn her head, surprised at his behavior, but she quickly settled in, ready to accommodate his desire to play with her hair.
“So tense,” he said kindly. “In professions such as ours there are so few chances to relax fully, yes? We must always be reading new people for information rather than being ourselves.”
She took a moment to answer, during which he started making small circles on her scalp with his fingertips, encouraging her to relax. “That’s true,” she said at last, and smiled a little. “Not many of the men who come here understand the work.”
“Whereas I spent the best part of my childhood among women such as yourself, so I have some sense of it. Ah, yes,” he added, running his fingers through her hair and feeling the static in it, “it is very dry. You have such an inhospitable climate up here in the mountains! You must make a habit of adding some oil to it on occasion for moisture. Rose if you can afford it, if only for the smell, but any oil will do.” He dabbed a little rose oil onto his fingertips and then stroked them through her blonde tresses, which soaked it up quickly.
She sighed and rolled her head back a little bit. “Smells beautiful,” she muttered. “You shouldn’t waste it.”
“Tsk. I can afford it, my dear. It is no trouble.” He moistened his fingers again and caressed her hair, toying with it for several minutes as it absorbed the oil and softened. The smell and the feel of her warmth close to his body relaxed him almost to the point of getting drowsy, and he smiled just slightly to himself as he brought up the brush at last to finish the work.
When he lifted the ends of her hair to his lips, she leaned back into him and brushed her shoulders against his chest, ready and willing to move on to the expected terms of service. With slow, gentle movements almost like reverence he removed what little clothing she had and then his own, keeping her turned away from him. After a couple of attempts to face him she acquiesced to his preference, and they lay down with him curled close against her back.
He ran his fingertips down her spine, slowly. Over her ass and her hip, moving to explore the front of her – not exactly the shape in his hand that was in his mind, somehow, but it was soft and smooth and responsive, and her sighs aroused his attention. He breathed in the scent of rose he had left in her hair as he nuzzled into the back of her neck, kissing it with a gentleness he himself had not expected. For just a moment he wanted to turn her and put her arms around him, but then he realized that would ruin it. Her face would be wrong, and her eyes would be empty of any real connection, any awareness of him as more than the warm body of an unobjectionable client.
He entered her, and as she whimpered with some unreadable combination of artifice and real pleasure, he buried his face in her hair and closed his eyes.
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I really liked how you handled this, with him knowing but not knowing what he was doing with the girl at the end.
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I AM writing, promise. I wrote a page today. Partly I blame Formspring, because when I play there Phi's well into post-Menage territory so I have to bounce back and forth mentally. And partly I blame having to post the story in a linear progression: there actually IS stuff written that you haven't seen, but I can't post it until after stupid Kal'Hirol, which is being a pill. *kicks Kal'Hirol*
But bless you for caring enough to prod! I'll try to get more up soon.
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And really, I care so much that I'd prod you *every day* - and only the understanding that it would be spamming is stopping me :)