AHOMYGOD, what are you doing, Mauss? Why aren't
you working on your elventy other DragonAge stories?
WHY AREN'T YOU SLEEPING? WHY ARE YOU WRITING
UNREQUIT ALISTAIR FLUFF NONSENSE?

Because, because k!meme. D:

x

"Nuffin' ta do but wait 'er out, y'see..." The old healer assigned to the hamlet they'd come upon scratched his beard and shrugged. "Sometimes they gets loose in mind and memory; sometimes it gets jarred a little. It always comes back, when the damage innit too bad. Got 'im here jus' in time, aye, I'd say."

Aen sighed through his nose, shrugging off Leliana's comforting hand. "Can he still fight?"

The healer, Danir or Dennyr or something, scratched his beard more vigorously. "Can 'e – ? Saints ablaze, lad! Jus' had his wits rattled clean out his skull and you wan ter know if he can still fi - "

"We thank you, ser, regardless." Leliana interrupts with a dark look tossed Aen's way. "Needless to say, we shall have need of your village's hospitality for some time yet, yes?"

"Eh, sure. Sure." The beard-scratching is calmed to a less hysteric level, and Aen tries very hard not to roll his eyes. It wasn't as if Alistair had never been concussed before – it came part and parcel with his having a remarkably thick skull after all, and they had a treaty to pursue in the nearby Brecellian forest that couldn't wait on a vague deadline of down-time for extended healing.

So, Alistair mixed words up and didn't know his own name, so what? It wasn't as if he had to introduce himself to the darkspawn before running them through. "You'll be wanting that recompense?" Aen prompted, eager to get Dennyr out of the stuffy barn they'd been allowed as quarters so he could do his own poking and prodding and line of questioning.

"Eh, I'm not one ta take advantage 'a strangers what got sacked near t'death by all this blight nonsense. No fault 'a yorn, that ambush. Glad ya cleared 'em out, byrate." A feebly waving hand, bony and long-fingered in the peculiar way most elderly mages were. "Jus' give 'im some rest and take 'er easy yerselves, an' that'll be my recompense, aye?"

Aen waved Leliana to escort Dennyr to the sagging barn door, turning to the stall with its fresh sweet hay bedding and heaving a sigh. Alistair lay stripped of his armor, tunic spotted with blood from the wound. He'd gone limp as a rag-doll after that ogre had knocked into him, which hadn't been all that unusual from any other fight where one was trying to shield-batter something the size of a house into submission.

"Foolhardy," Aen muttered, eyes narrowing down at Alistair as he stirred.

"Yeh'll want some leeches fer th' morn?" Dennyr chattered on with Leliana, who used her good grace to politely decline after a withering glare from Aen.

"Ugh, leeches," Alistair mumbled, laughing gently though his eyelids remained drooping. "Even I know that's dated, and I don't know much of anything right now."

Aen scoffed, leaning a bony hip against the soft worn wood of the stall. "For what it's worth, Alistair, I am sorry."

"You aren't going to leave me behind, are you? If I can't fight?"

Aen straightened, crossing his arms, peering through the gold-flecked dim of late afternoon. "No, of course not. Why would you ask that?"

A shrug, and a wince from the pull of it against a torn shoulder. "I don't know who you are to me, and I'm sorry for that. But I know, I know - " Quietly, fervently, "that I do not want you far from my side."

Aen's face feels at once too hot and the surprise lays thick layers of clumsiness over his usual sharp regard. He'd had sucha crush on Alistair since Ostagar, one that had gone largely ignored and eventually simmered into the usual flinty sarcasm and strife with which he treated most of his unrequit targets. "We're friends," he half-chokes, nearly a protest. "We fight together, and sometimes with each other, haha, and - "

"And I love you?"

Aen feels as if he's just tripped on a gopher hole, staring wide-eyed at his fellow Warden. "What," he breathes, heavy in the feet and light in the chest. "What makes you say that?"

A modest flip of the hand, Alistairshowing his palm in imitation of a shrug. "Is it not true? It feels true. It feels like I've known you my whole life; I know where you are in the room even with my eyes closed, and you talk as if you don't care whether I wake or die and I just know that means you really docare and it's honestly not that far a stretch to assume we're lovers." Alistair smiles, smug in his own percieved cleverness. "I'm right, aren't I?"

Aen stood at an impass. "Alistair, I... you've never said ..."

"Hm?" The spark of cheer dimmed behind bruised eyes. "Am I wrong?"

Aen's shoulders dropped limp, glancing around the barn to find that Leliana was not within helping distance. He shook his head, sighing through his nose. "I want you to answer a question for me, and then we'll get this sorted."

Alistair settled back into the hay. "All right."

Aen shuffled awkwardly into the stall, kneeling to crouch beside Alistair so he could place a kiss against the grimy bandage wrapped over his brow. "Does that seem familiar to you?" He'd meant it to be dripping with sarcasm, but still the hope struggled through like a spring bud through the snow.

"I don't know..." The smile shone through Alistair's words before it crept into his expression, a wry twist of the lips that wrenched Aen's heart near out of his chest. "Not really a proper kiss, that." Alistair's good hand came up against Aen's neck and he was being pulled into an actual, honest-to-Maker, kiss. All stubble scrape and warm dry lips and the pry of a tongue that had Aen falling forward into the embrace.

Arms weak with shock, Aen pressed carefully up from the broad chest.

Alistair was smug, eyes shining. "I remember the way you watch me. I do."

Aen wonders silently to himself how long it will take Alistair to remember exactly why they weren't lovers, and if he'd be so kind as to let Aen in on the mystery once he did.