Dust motes for Dorlen and/or nap for Kael Zev?
22 - nap. Kaelan Tabris x Zevran Arainai
He was just so… soft.
Not physically, of course. No. Physically, Zevran was all lean, sharp lines from jaw to hip and back again. Kael would trace them with his eyes over and over, committing them to memory sure as any map, admiring the penmanship. The attention to detail. The dips and curves and strength, all drawn by careful, skilled hands.
Perhaps it was when Zevran moved? But… no. No, he moved with grace, but it was not soft. A blade gliding across skin or hide or plate. A jab to the ribs. The neck. The heart. Two steps forward then a lunge, a grin, and a retreat, all in the span of half a breath. That was how Zevran moved. It, too, was beautiful in its own way, but not the way that left Kael speechless.
No. The assassin’s softness arrived when he wasn’t trying to be anything. When he wasn’t trying to be anyone. When he was standing, lost in thought, his brow slack, his head cocked ever so slightly to the left. Always the left. Kael watched him in those moments - longed for them to arrive - but it never occurred to him that Zevran’s silence could be anything more than an absence of sound. That somewhere in that brilliant mind, he had absconded and sought refuge somewhere calm and free. A place where the world waited by the wayside for his signal to continue and no one else’s.
Now, lying beside him, tucked close to the sleeping assassin’s chest, Kael could feel it for himself. That softness. It reached out and wrapped him as surely as Zevran’s arms, drawing him in, letting him feel what it was like to just stop. Just for a moment. To breathe, and be nothing more than a pause in time. An interlude. Zevran’s face, so handsome and dashing and poised to react, was at complete and total peace. Eyelids fluttering gently. Brow relaxed and smooth. Lips parted ever so slightly, freeing whispers of breath. In and out. Slow and soft. Kael wanted to brush up against them - to share one of those idle breaths - but couldn’t bring himself to disturb him. Not when, despite everything, he had finally found somewhere to go.
Not for the first time, Kael wondered how long it had taken Zevran to find peace in small spaces.
And he would be very surprised to discover that it had started with him.