fadewalk | RP: Logan Hawke, Anders (serhealsalot)

The hallways were quiet. The kitchens were quiet. Everything had just been strangely quiet for a while now. Alistair was in socked feet, loose linen pants and a soft unlaced shirt, standing over a small pot of porridge he was cooking... for himself? It was more porridge than even he could eat comfortably, especially considering it was porridge he was making, which no one could eat comfortably.

He rubbed at his forhead. Why did he feel like he was missing something? Well a bigger more something than usual anyway.

He'd have to ask... someone. When he saw... them? Zevran, his brain whispered. How many days has he been gone? He frowned, and looked out the small window slits that ventilated the room, and the question was gone already as he wondered for the thousandth time whether it was morning or night.

It was whatever time it was, but he'd woken up alone in his bed, with a headache from too much wine and his shoes on, feeling despondent. Lonely. Which was fairly usual, all things considered. He stirred again, frowning into the whitish-brownish-greyish paste. "Probably more water," he muttered.

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Anders smiled at Logan encouragingly, and nodded as he tried to explain. "Speaking crystals," he said quietly, and then looked up. "Do you have those? They were in the game, a quest item for one of the mage collective quests you had to be exalted with to unlock." He tilted his head, watching Alistair. "We knew each other through something like that. Or the journals only with your voices?"

He looked at Logan, eyes tripping over him with plain appreciation. "I like this better."

Alistair cocked his head at their explanations and then pursed his lips a little. 'Ah. Well, we don't have them at large, though I've heard of them? Tevinter spies carry them, they say. Or something." He took another bite, watching the pair make dopey eyes at each other, trying to imagine what it would have been like getting to know Zevran by his voice alone.

He blushed faintly at the thought, because his voice was plenty distracting, even without the rest of his... him.

"So, you had magic that could let you talk to each other, and you had some sort of game that told you the story of my world, well not exactly, since I'm not king, obviously. But you didn't think magic was real? And you weren't mages back there." Alistair shook his head in confusion.

Logan felt his face go warm and he looked down, smiling to himself. He poked at the meal some more and made it through a few more bites.

"That's about the long and short of it," he agreed with Alistair. "No magic at all in our world. Lots of technology you guys don't have, but." He lowered and raised one shoulder. "And yeah, the game and the talking magic, all one thing."

Anders was reminded viscerally of all the institutional oatmeal he'd eaten over his younger years and had stalled about halfway through his bull. He was currently in the process of pushing it against the edges of the bowl, as if spreading it out from the middle would hide how little he'd eaten. He was only half-aware he was doing it as he listened to the conversation.

Finally he pointed his spoon at Alistair and said, "But honestly, this Zevran thing... was it you? Or him? Or....?" He grinned and leaned forward, mischief in his voice.

Alistair still looked confused at the description of their crystal-not-magic-game method of courtship. But he was willing to let it go. He ate the oatmeal with the single-minded grimness of someone used to eating just to fuel his body. He choked hard on the mouthful he was trying to work down at Anders question.

It took him a moment to cough the oats free of his windpipe and then he said, "Really? Reeeeally? Did you have some weird hot thing for him as well?" He snorted and glowered at Anders before shaking his head and looking down into his bowl, still blushing.

Logan looked between the two of them with a small frown, his own bowl fairly well decimated. It was food, and he had gone without it for long enough a few times that he knew to take it where he could find it.

"Not me," he said cheerfully, "I see the appeal though." He gave Alistair a thoughtful look and screwed up his face apologetically. "Sorry. It's just..." he glanced at Anders. "We feel like we know you, sort of? We...spend a lot of time in the game. It's like having some of your favorite characters from a book come to life. And the story sounds like a good one." He shrugged. That wasn't really a good excuse for their prying into Alistair's personal affairs, now that he was a person and not just a character.

Anders shrugged with sidelong smile, not particularly apologetic as he said, "Sorry for prying. Well, not really. I mean, sort of. Zevran was always a bit of a crush, but the two of you?" He waggled his eyebrows with a sparkle in his eyes.

He flicked a glance at Logan, smile turning soft and warm. He was so kind, and compassionate, and good. He reached over and squeezed Logan's hand across the table.

Alistair frowned into his bowl, though he shot Anders a smirk and rolled his eyes. That one was trouble, with his sarcasm and his flirty eyebrow thing. "During the Blight I was... with Elissa, the only other Warden to survive Ostagar with me. It wasn't... good. She wasn't good."

He leaned back in his chair and ran his fingers through his hair. "She recruited Loghain into the Wardens at the Landsmeet, and I... I couldn't stay. I couldn't stand next to that man, that murderer." He fell silent and looked down at the table for a moment, face drawn and pained. "It was not a good time for me after that. I left Denerim in disgrace, exiled from Ferelden and the Wardens. I had nothing left." He had only just started to believe he had something to hold onto after all, and he'd apparently lost it in the confusion of the Fade and the eluvian and everything.

Logan shook his head at Anders slightly, but he couldn't help smiling at him either, and smiling more when Anders squeezed his hand. He caught the smirk Alistair shot his boyfriend with a slight lift of his brows and look of amusement, which he hid behind another spoonful of the porridge stuff. The smirk made him relax in his chair again, especially when Alistair started talking.

"She recruited Loghain?" He asked, when Alistair was done. "Seriously? That's - that's..." he shuddered. The man had...elements of his motivations Logan could sympathize with, his love for his country, his feelings for his daughter, mostly, but honestly he'd always disliked that arrogant bastard of an npc.

...which probably stemmed back to that weird near-crush thing he had for Cailan, now he thought about it, who was undoubtedly something of an ass, but a pretty, misguided, idealistic ass who deserved far, far better than the fate Loghain had abandoned him to. Logan cleared his throat quietly and tried to resist the blush he could feel creeping up his neck.

Hearing Alistair explain it made it more real to Anders, and the pain in his voice wasn't something he could make light of. He fell silent, feeling like a bit of an ass for needling. He glanced sidelong at Logan when he cleared his throat and blinked at the blush. Why was he blushing about Loghain? No one could like Loghain.

He tilted his head, peering at him curiously, before his attention was drawn back to Alistair as he spoke again.

"Yes, well, Elissa Cousland always managed to take what you thought was a straight forward, moral choice and make it... insane. Pragmatic in a way that left you wondering who was benefiting from all these hard choices." Alistair shook his head, scraping his spoon around the edge of his bowl, making it perfectly clean.

"And me, the idiot, falling in love with her, trusting that she really did know best. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't just Loghain. It was lots of little things. And a few big ones." Killing Connor had been one of the biggest now that Alistair thought back, but also one she'd succeeded in completely distracting him from.

"I wandered, and Zevran found me. Here. Only for him he'd found me in Kirkwall, and we'd been..." He flushed and waved his spoon indistinctly. "In Antiva for a while. Assassinating and the like." He flushed harder.

Logan pushed what was left of his meal, about a spoonful and a half, into a small lump in the very center of his bowl. It looked a little bit browner than the rest, and he gave the offending remainder a small frown, getting a tiny crease between his brows, before he sighed and scooped it all up at once and stuck it in his mouth rather quickly.

He hummed around the overlarge bite as he listened, swallowing thickly several times to get it all down. "I never thought what an evil Hero of Ferelden would look like," he mused, when his mouth was empty again. He grinned a little at the words 'the like,' blue eyes sparkling with amusement - it was easy enough to imagine what Alistair meant by that, between the blushing and the fact that it was Zevran he was with. It was kind of cute that Alistair was still as blushy as Logan had imagined he would be, despite all the differences between his history and the history of the Alistair in the game.

Anders had pushed his half-eaten bowl away. He'd probably regret it later, but it was terrible. And he wasn't used to eating a lot very often, and he'd be fine without half-burnt, half-undercooked boiled, unseasoned oat porridge.

He watched Alistair with sympathy. "Nothing quite like realizing the person you think you're in love with isn't the person you thought at all." He shook his head, trying not to think too hard about Logan's story about Rowan, or his own history.

Alistair shrugged a little at Logan's comment. "I'm still not sure she was evil. She stopped rallied Ferelden, killed the arch-demon, stopped the civil war. But she was hard, and she was cruel, and you're right, she wasn't the person I loved."

Alistair pulled the pot back toward him, took another half-congealed scoop into his bowl before offering the remainder to Logan and Anders. "So, that's the tale of the bastard son of a king and how his dumbest choices led him to share his bed with an ex-Antivan Crow." He flushed again, unable to do anything else while talking about his relationship with Zevran out loud.

He hoped Zevran didn't hear about it and decide to cut out his tongue or something. He didn't think he would. He rather seemed to like his tongue. But... he also wasn't supposed to be telling people he was here. Or had been here? He took a bite of porridge with a grumpy frown.

Logan glanced sidelong at Anders at his comment, his expression difficult to read. With the two men he'd been in love with in his life - if what he and Rowan had had could even be called love, which in light of his feelings for Anders, he has beginning to doubt - he thought maybe he'd been on either end of that spectrum now. First in realizing that Rowan was much less than the man he'd thought he was, and now...with Anders...Anders was still the same person he'd fallen in love with, but meeting him made Logan realize how much more Anders was than what he'd imagined. Logan wasn't sure it was something he could quantify, exactly, but Anders' sexuality, his insecurities, his past, his passion - it was like everything about the man was magnified in person, which just made loving him that much...more.

Logan took a breath and realized he'd been staring. He gave Anders a small, warm smile to cover for it and reached out to squeeze his hand again.

When Alistair offered the pot back to the both of them, Logan grimaced and shook his head, not entirely sure he could stomach any more. He looked to Anders and found his bowl entirely pushed away and then frowned, though he didn't say anything about it, just gave Anders a look that said there would probably be a conversation about this later.

Anders could see Logan staring out of the corner of his eye, and it was making him flush as he listened sympathetically to the end of Alistair's story.

At first he'd worried that the look meant that Anders was less, of different, than what Logan thought, or wanted. But he wasn't an idiot - at least not all the time - and he could feel the warmth of Logan's gaze, even before he chanced a short glance which confirmed the impossible levels of affection he'd suspected.

He threaded his fingers with Logan's immediately when he reached to squeeze his hand and returned the smile with one of his own, a hint of amusement in it, just a touch of a smirk, to go along with his light blush.

Alistair finished his second bowl much quicker than the first, while he sat there and watched the besotted mages moon at each other. When nearly a minute had gone on with no one acknowledging him at all, he set down his spoon, an his re-emptied bowl, and pushed back from the table.

"Well. It was lovely to meet the two of you. I'm going to leave you to your soulful longing gazes." His eyes moved between them and before letting out a gusty sigh and shaking his head. "You both look like you're about three minutes from falling onto the nearest flat surface, and I'd like to preserve my memories of this table as an eating place and not a... well." He coughed looked away.

Logan startled a little when Alistair spoke again, taring his gaze away from Anders to look at him. He wet his lips. "Sorry," he said, sheepish, ducking his head slightly.

As to the flat surface comment, he wasn't sure if he was more embarrassed or appalled. There was absolutely no room in any of his plans for pinning Anders to anything in front of other people, nope, nope. No. Definitely not. Actually the thought that he might be giving off that kind of vibe was a little bit panic-inducing. He didn't ever want to let Anders go but anything more than the looking and the holding and the casual touching with other eyes on them was - that was - Logan gripped Anders' hand a little tighter and inhaled without breathing out, shaking his head emphatically.

He kind of wanted to go crawl in a hole and die, now.

Anders snorted and rolled his eyes at Alistair's comment, but he tightening of Logan's grip on his hand made him glance over at his boyfriend and frown faintly at what he saw.

He wasn't an expert on Logan's expressions yet, but he was pretty sure that one was not good. He arched his brows and then brought Logan's hand to his face and kissed his knuckles. "Logan? Love?" He shot Alistair a reproachful look, and stood, tugging at Logan's hand as well.

"Maybe we should head back to the room before we scandalize anyone else with enjoying looking at each other." He gave an irritated sniff.

"It was a joke." Alistair frowned at Logan, then Anders, and his eyebrows curved, expression turning apologetic. "I've been told I'm particularly bad at them, it's true. No one ever laughs. Well, at me, sure. Everyone laughs at me. Like you should be doing now."

He cleared his throat, and added a muttered, "Sorry about that. I didn't mean anything." He finished gathering the dishes, keeping his eyes fixed on the table.

He had spent too much time drunk and in the company of mercenaries and the associated rabble over the past year, apparently. Now he was driving grown men into painfully obvious anxiety attacks with his jokes about how soppy they were being.

Logan exhaled all in a rush when Anders pulled him to his feet, standing up a little closer to his boyfriend than he really needed to, which you would think would make things worse really because there he was being extremely visibly sappy again. But Anders had kissed his knuckles like some chivalrous gentleman for fuck's sake and Logan was pretty sure he could feel something shuddering loose inside of him. He wasn't used to people comforting him when he got like this, or sheltering him or defending him or whatever it was that Anders was doing exactly, and it was kind of amazing and made him want to just bury his face in Anders' chest and hold onto him until it passed.

He rubbed his mouth with his less than steady free hand and willed the knowledge that he was being ridiculous to make his sudden panic pass. (Not that that ever worked). "Sorry. I, um. It's fine, I just..." He waved his hand vaguely. "It was nice to meet you, anyways, Alistair," he managed.

Anders fully believed that Alistair hadn't intended to shame Logan maliciously, and he had to admit, they probably weren't fit for mixed company yet with the longing glances and sudden need to touch each other to remind themselves this was real. Or real enough to touch.

But he was still fuming as Alistair stumbled his way through an apology and Logan clearly wasn't comfortable as he accepted it. Anders stepped closer as well, angling himself half between Logan and Alistair. He was feeling better after the food, but still a little woolly headed, but his magic was starting to trickle back.

Not enough for much more than a wisp or a spark, but it was a startling relief to have the empty well inside him refilling naturally.

"It was interesting, at least." He smiled a little sharply. "What with the crash course in templar attacks and the terrible porridge." He considered for a moment, watching the way Alistair's face colored and how hang-dog he looked. He shot a glance at Logan and then sighed. "If you wanted to meet up again for food that wasn't... that. And maybe you could teach us a little more about how templars work? We should learn how to defend ourselves and we've just been fumbling. You seem like the best candidate we've met for that job so far."

It was physically painful to watch them angle toward each other. Alistair was about to shuffle off when Anders suggested they meet again for food and... training? Sparring? He frowned a little, mostly just a slight puzzle furrow of his brows, and glanced at Logan.

"Is that something you'd want to do? There's Cullen, there's other mages, there were at least two other Alistairs with more experience than me." Having something to do other than mope and drink and sulk and worry was appealing. But he wasn't sure that he'd be able to shake the moping and the worrying either way.

Logan gave a ghost of a smile when Anders stepped partially between him and Alistair. He took a few deep breaths quietly while the two of them spoke.

"Yeah, that would - that would be good, I think." He nodded a few times. They really weren't prepared to defend themselves very well here, not as mages anyways, and there were from the sound of it worse templars about than not-templar Alistair. And between Anders' attempt to be nice and the slightly hopeful look on Alistair's face at the idea, Logan didn't have it in him to refuse.

He bumped shoulders with Anders and shot him another small smile.

Anders smirked at the way Alistair perked up at the suggestion, and turned his head to watch Logan's reaction out of the corner of his eyes. He agreed. Good. Anders hated it when his compassion ran counter to his sense of righteous indignation and it got his wires crossed and he made the wrong offer to the wrong person.

But if Logan approved... He ducked his chin, shrugging slightly, and smiled back. "Good. Well, then. We'll be in touch? I assume the journals are good for that sort of thing?" He glanced over at Alistair who nodded in confirmation.

"Excellent." He looked around the great hall, and then turned his head back toward Logan. "I have no idea which of these doors is going to lead back to the guest wing," he admitted with a wry twist to his lips.