I decided to write this one for the Modern AU, in which Zevran is a Spanish soccer player who plays midfield for FC Barcelona, and Telhara is an aerospace engineer and single mom who lives in Bordeaux, France, with her ten-year-old twins Sathari and Saharel.
(Note: Sathari has a skin pigmentation disorder called vitiligo that causes patches of skin to lose their pigment, and sometimes attracts stigma.
Zevran/Warden Week – Drabble #2Pairing: Telhara Surana x Zevran ArainaiSetting: Modern AUWords: 484
There was always something that interfered.
It was easy for things to interfere, the way their lives spun them around one another in a chaos of back and forth flights from Barcelona, an overnight bag tossed under the bed, half-starved kisses interrupted by the summons of small voices, and an exhausting march of doctor’s appointments, tennis practices, and playdates that left Telhara with as little energy for him as she had time. Two celestial bodies crossing in the night, but never quite settling into steady orbit.
The first time, he tried for classic extravagance. A lamplit stroll over the Pont de Pierre after an opera at the Grand Théâtre, where a famous countertenor was performing. When he said he’d bought them tickets, Telhara thought it was a joke, and laughed.
“Something different,” he insisted. “It will be fun.”
Halfway through the second act, Telhara had two missed calls and a text from Alistair; his godfather Duncan, the closest either of them had to a real father, had suffered a stroke and died. Zevran held her, crying, in the theatre’s vaulted lobby.
The second time, months later, he arranged a simpler evening. A quiet Saturday date night. Dinner for two at her favorite restaurant. Three hours before their reservation, Saharel jumped his bicycle off a makeshift plywood ramp on a dare and fractured his wrist. Zevran drove them to the hospital, distracting Saharel with the story of his weekend in Ibiza that Telhara had forbidden him to tell.
“I think he’s old enough,” said Zevran. “A broken wrist, and no tears? He’s more a man than the llorónes I play with.” Zevran told him the censored version. Saharel listened, wide-eyed and rapt at attention, the pain all but forgotten.
The third time, he didn’t plan at all.
Walking downtown after taking the twins for ice cream, the four of them were caught in a sudden downpour and ran, laughing and splashing across the cobblestone street, to huddle under the awning outside a fancy bistro. But before he could hail a cab for them, Sathari grabbed him and buried her face in his Armani button-down.
“What’s wrong, princesa?” Zevran coaxed.
She sniffed and shook her head, mumbling that the people in the restaurant were staring at her. Zevran glanced in the window and found himself face to face with a sour-looking lady wearing pearls and too much makeup.
“Oh, sweet darling, she was not staring at you. It was my funny face that made her stare. You see? Like this!” Zevran crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue, and Sathari laughed.
Telhara smoothed her daughter’s hair, pressing a kiss to the top of her head, and looked up at him with all the unspoken gratitude in her eyes for two years being the father to her twins that she’d never asked him to be.
And this time there was nothing to interfere.
