Chapter Text
His head is thoroughly wet with tears by the time she pulls away, just a little. His face is a disaster, blotched and red, and she is no better. It makes her laugh, the mess they are. Solas snorts ungainly, but his eyes are amused as she dries them with her sleeve.
He reaches up and brushes a thumb through the stains from her tears. She catches his hand and presses it to her cheek, feeling the strength, the warmth, his smell like a memory. He cradles her face as if she were a rare and beautiful thing. It is nothing to turn, just a little, to lay a kiss in the center of his palm.
It is not fixed. It is not over. Behind herself, the anger slinks to a low boil, the worry and fury and doubt. But it is Solas, Solas-
His eyes are shining like she has never seen.
She kisses them, gently, the tear-stains on his face, each freckle, the constellations that dance upon his skin. His lips under hers are chapped and worried, frayed from the dark months behind them. Each kiss is slow, barely brushing, full of wonder.
He did not think this moment would ever come.
The realization hits hard, stealing her breath. She presses her forehead to his own, mind racing. Without him, she faces quick death or bright victory. But he, he walks the road of the dead. No one beside him. No one had known-
His greatest fear, etched on a tombstone in the Nightmare. Dying alone.
“My heart?” he whispers, his hand on her cheek. She looks up, sees the worry in his face.
She fists the front of his tunic. “I am not letting you go,” she tells him, in a tone that brooks no argument.
A weary smile flickers on the corner of his mouth and he makes an agreeable sound. It’s a nice sound, sweet and happy, so she leans forward to kiss him. Unfortunately her legs have cramped on the cold flagstones and they seize as she moves. She yelps and pitches forward, which could have been romantic – falling into his arms – except her nose slams into his chin.
“Shit, shit, ow.” She falls back on her rear. “I’m sorry, are you-?”
“Are you injured?” His hands are warm.
“No, I’m fine, my leg just cramped.”
Solas sighs a little breath and his magic flows under her skin. Her nose stops throbbing quite so much, and her muscles relax. It does nothing to ease the embarrassment.
“I’m a mess,” she says, rubbing her palms in her eyes.
“Perhaps we should move to another location?” he suggests.
“Probably.” She tries to stand up, but his arms tighten around her and she falls into his lap.
“Solas?”
“Mm?”
“That means you’ll have to let go of me.”
“A foul trick,” he mutters. She slides out of his arms and rolls to her feet, pulling at his hand.
“Up you go, come on.”
He grumbles. “I am too old for this.”
“Too old for getting a kiss?” she teases. He looks down at her, scowling, so she bops up on her toes and kisses him lightly. It startles a smile out of him, so she kisses that too, then again, sprinkling them on his lips and cheeks and the line of his jaw, the cleft of his chin, the sweet, soft spot on his neck right above his collar.
He tries to catch her lips with his own, but she darts away to assault his earlobe. Again and again, she dodges until he is laughing, laughing, a golden sound that sinks into her bones. He buries his face in her shoulder and she wraps her arms around his neck.
She is so happy. This cannot be a lie.
Then comes a thunk from the door to Josie’s office.
Solas flinches like a wild cat, stiffening.
She frowns at the door and mouths spies?
He nods, eyes narrow.
Quiet, she motions, and they creep to the door. She presses her ear against the old wood and Solas follows suit. Mischief glints in his eyes.
“…Solas laugh?” Cullen is saying doubtfully.
“I know, I know,” Varric says. He can’t be more than an inch away from the other side of the door. “But that’s what I heard!”
“Come now, Varric” Dorian drawls. “If we are to make up impossible things, it seems more likely that the Inquisitor summoned a dragon and ate him whole.”
“Perhaps she turned into a dragon,” Cullen suggests reasonably.
“Oh, I didn’t even consider that.” Dorian is pleased. “What do you think, Josephine?”
“I think the Inquisitor deserves more respect than we are affording her,” Josie says, but the conflict is obvious in her voice.
“We’re not spying!” Varric protests, obviously hurt. “We’re concerned for her well-being.”
“Absolutely,” Dorian agrees. “We can’t have her actually eat Solas. Think of the indigestion.”
The Inquisitor in question hits her head gently against the door. Solas looks to be wavering between amused and resigned. She holds up three fingers. Then two. Then one.
“VARRIC TETHRAS!” she bellows, crashing through the door. Varric tumbles backwards onto his ass, Dorian levitates a good ten inches off the ground, Cullen half-draws his sword, and Josie nearly spills an entire bottle of ink. “How DARE you eavesdrop into the personal affairs of the Herald of Andraste, look at you, all of you. I’m ashamed. I swear, you’re going straight to the Void.”
Cullen stifles what must have been a cough, even though his eyes are laughing.
“Look at you!” she shouts through a smile. “A disgrace to the Inquisition, a disgrace.” Solas is a warm presence at her heels as she stalks through the room. She hopes he has his best, most scowly face on. “I am ashamed to know you, ashamed. I should hang you from the watchtower by your toes.”
She throws open the door to the bowels of Skyhold, glaring for dramatic effect. Varric is getting to his feet, studying her, smiling. Josie is trying to look serious, but her eyes give her away. Cullen looks one part embarrassed to two parts pleased, and Dorian just looks pleased.
“Don’t you EVER do that again,” she scolds. Dorian holds out his hand. She high-fives him and slams the door behind her, quickly pressing her ear against the wood on the other side. Solas, amused, follows suit.
There is only silence from inside the room.
Then someone – it can’t have been Josie – whoops in joy and everyone starts talking at once.
“Fifty crowns, dwarf, you owe me fifty gold crowns-!”
“Yes, yes, I do, Sparkler, and I’ll pay. Andraste’s tits, what did she say to him?”
“It’s about time someone around here got a happy ending.”
“The Lady Inquisitor and Solas, smiling – both smiling! I must tell Leliana.”
“If Red doesn’t know already, I’ll eat my boots. Cassandra, however…”
“Do you think now they’ll stop brooding around like two enormous storm clouds?”
“Chuckles? Never. It’s in his blood.”
“He was smiling when they came in.”
“She is the Herald, miracles are kind of her thing.”
“What is the process to nominate someone for sainthood?”
“Ha! A Dalish saint?”
“She’d hate it.”
“Yes she would. Let’s do it.”
“Dorian-”
“Wait.” The room falls still. Varric says, softly, “Did we hear them go up the stairs?”
They bolt up the stairs together, breathless with laughter, until they reach the Inquisitor’s chambers. She slams the door behind them, turns the key in the lock, and falls down giggling on the steps that lead to the rest of the room. He’s sprawled out on them, all long legs and dancing eyes. It’s easy, too easy, to fall into his lap, wrap her arms around his chest, breathe him in.
He’s warm and solid under her fingers and real, real, not a memory or a dream half-remembered. The world stops spinning for one long, sweet moment – the hitches in his breath, the scratchiness of his tunic against her cheek, the smell of him. Leather, yes, and dust, maybe herbs, but Solas, Solas, Solas. A magnet, a lodestone. She had tried (oh she had tried) to re-adjust, recalibrate, forget, but North kept pointing to wherever he was.
Dangerous, yes, dangerous, to be so wrapped up in him. The Inquisitor… as the Inquisitor, she should have walked away. The Inquisitor wasn’t a woman, though – she was a part to play, a mask, an empty suit of armor with a voice that echoed throughout Thedas. The Inquisitor was a legend, a myth in the making.
The woman inside the myth was much more fallible. She needed to eat and piss and sleep. She needed to laugh and cry and love.
“Vhenan,” he murmurs into her hair. “What troubles you?”
“Mmm.” She makes a pleased noise and buries her face into the curve of his neck. “You were never Fen’Harel with me,” she says. “Not even on that night.”
“No,” he says. “At first, I attempted to keep my distance. Maintain the façade.”
“It only holds so long.” She thinks of the days in Orlais, of moving around Skyhold when it is flooded with guests. She can lose herself inside the Inquisitor’s stride for days, sometimes weeks. But alone, or with those she loves –
“You came to trust us,” she realizes aloud. “Trust me. Why?”
His snort is not elegant. “You decided to trust me first. Weighed me and accepted me. When I spoke, you would listen. You came to me for wisdom, for advice. You decided I was part of this, of everything – that I was one of yours, and I was worth protecting.” He shifts her on his lap, pulling her closer. “It was, perhaps, one of the first discussions we had. At Haven. You said you would not let them harm me – not because I was an elf, or an apostate, but because I was one of your own. I asked you how and you said - ”
“However I had to,” she finishes.
“Yes.” She can feel his soft smile. “Like a mother bear, protecting her cubs. You woke up in chains and promptly decided that everyone in Thedas was yours to care for. I was yours – you placed your trust in me. Despite myself, I could not help but do the same.”
Now she snorts. “Romantic as ever.”
“Is it romance you wish?” his tone is arch and he stands, holding her in both arms. She yelps and clings to him. “Shall I carry you over the threshold like a knight of old? Bring you roses? Recite you poetry?” He sweeps up the stairs, grand in his plain tunic and leggings. “What is my heart’s desire?”
“A kiss?” she says, laughing at how weightless she feels in his arms. The scratchy wool hides a strength she would never have expected from an elvhen apostate.
“Oh?” he says with pomposity. “I offer you the stars in the sky, the wonders of the deep – this is all you ask for?”
“A kiss from the Dread Wolf,” she teases, then regrets as his back straightens stiffly. “No, better. More rare. A kiss from a man named Solas who, in his own way, knows wisdom.”
He sits down hesitantly on the rich red velvet couch that sits before the hearth. A fire crackles merrily, waiting for them. “More rare indeed.”
“Did the Dread Wolf kiss a lot of women?” she wonders. “Did Solas?”
“As the Dread Wolf -” he pauses, and she almost is sorry she asked. “The Dread Wolf made alliances as they were needed. I stopped – he stopped when potential… allies became too frightened to say no. Solas -” he breaks off with an aggravated puff of air. “The two are not as easily disentangled as you seem to think.”
She makes a small noise of understanding. “I understand. I know you’re only here with me because I’m the Inquisitor, after all.” It is meant as a joke, but the shadows on his face grow dark.
“No,” he says. “Never say such a thing.”
“Then it’s because of my irresistible womanly wiles.” She wiggles her hips in his lap and is immediately fascinated by the results. Before she can investigate further, he moves to the side, leaving her sitting on the couch. “Ack.”
“Vhenan,” he says, with enough urgency that she forgets to be annoyed. He captures her hands – the right, unmarked. The left, seared from the imprint of his soul. She meets his eyes, and the depth of emotion there terrifies her. “I am here because I love you.”
“And because I drank from the Well and found you out.” She refuses to lose herself in him.
“You did,” he admits. “No more secrets, no false pretenses. You know, and you forgave me.”
“No,” she corrects him. “No one said anything about forgiveness, not – ugh.” She stands up from the couch, the thoughts too big in her head to sit still. “I’m still thinking, Solas – what you said and didn’t say, what you did, Solas, what you wanted to do. I’m… not okay about that.”
The mask shutters over his face, but not before she glimpses the fear, the worry, the hurt. “Do you wish me to leave?” he asks, careful.
“No,” she says, climbs back on his lap, straddles his knees, pins him down. “No. But I can be mad and still want you.” She cups his face in her hand, brings his eyes up to meet her own. “I can be upset about all those things, and still be happy that you’re here. With me. Not down in your rotunda, shutting yourself away. Preparing to die in the dark alone. I can be furious with you, Solas, and I can love you.” She sniffs, though she doesn’t mean to.
His face is unreadable. He touches her like fine porcelain, draws her in until he can wrap his arms around her, bury his face in her clavicle. “You are within your rights to call for execution,” he says, voice muffled in the cloth of her shirt. “The Rite of Tranquility. Exile, banishment, imprisonment.”
“You’re right.” She nods into the top of his head. “And so I will demand my dues.”
“And they are?”
“A kiss.” He pulls away just enough to look at her through narrowed eyes. She folds her arms, stubborn, laughing.
“How can you treat this so lightly?” he asks.
“I have you back.” Her voice breaks. “You came back and I have you, and it’s not – and you love me, it’s not my fault but I fixed it. I thought, I thought – maybe you left because of me, because of my vallaslin -”
“No, no!” he says. “They are you, no, you have made them beautiful -”
“I thought I wasn’t good enough,” she says. “I thought you didn’t love me.”
“No.”
“I have you back,” she says, stubbornly. “I fixed it. I found you.” She swallows. “I love you.”
“Vhenan.” His face is awe and wonder. “Where you are, I am home.”
“Yes,” she sniffles, rubbing at her eyes. “Good. And you’re going to stay?”
A small breath, almost laughter. “Yes. Yes. I will stay.”
She glares at him. Her eyes are red. “I’ll still need that kiss though.”
He surges up to meet her, to tell her the things that cannot find words. He kisses with abandon, with joy, the thundering relief of one who long expected to die. She laughs under the assault and he kisses that too, running his hands up the outside of her legs. They skim under the hem of her jacket, his fingertips fire on the line of her skin.
This is an excellent idea. She reaches down to slip her hands under the bottom of his tunic, but he is wearing an undershirt, damn, tight against his leggings. He reaches behind himself, tugs his tunic up over his head – oh, much better WAIT.
“Hold on!” she says and he freezes like her words were made of ice. His undershirt is tighter against his frame, making incredible shadows in the flickering light of the fire. They are both breathing hard. “You should – maybe, don’t do that.”
The joy falls from his face, almost imperceptible. “Ah.”
“No, it’s just – if you take off any more clothing, I mean any more, I’m going to want to have sex with you.”
A wicked smile curls across his mouth. He slowly begins to lift his undershirt.
“No, no, no, no, stop!” she lunges forward, capturing his hands, glaring at him. “Solas! I want to have sex with you.”
“Then perhaps you should let go of my hands,” he suggests in a low, golden voice that goes straight down her spine.
“No, wait!” She takes a breath. “Solas. Do you want to have sex with me.” It comes out in a rush, all one word.
“Yes,” he says.
She lets out a long breath, but doesn’t let go of his hands. “Oh. Good. You didn’t before.”
“I would not. Not – it was not right. That you didn’t know.”
“Right.” He’s there, in the firelight, she’s on his lap and blast she can feel him, hard under his leggings. “Okay. Sex. Yes. Um. I have witherroot, so I can make tea in the morning, so that’s…” He shifts underneath her and she whacks his shoulder. “Stop. This is important. What – what do you want to do, what do you not want?”
He says, “Isalan pala na,” which means “I want to make love to you” and is incredibly unhelpful given the circumstances.
“Ugh.” She glares at him. “Okay. My boundaries. No arse stuff, I don’t have the right slick for it. I don’t like piss, shit, or blood in bed. But hands, mouth, edhis, yes, good, okay. Your turn.” She seems to be distracting him so she slides off his lap and smiles at him wickedly.
He blinks, and she watches him gather his thoughts. It takes a while. She is perversely pleased. “I dislike-” His fingers stretch, settle. “I dislike extreme imbalances of power.”
“In bed, or in general?” she teases. “You mean like Bull.”
“Yes.” He nods, swallows. Her eyes follow the line of his neck. “Also, insulting, degrading. Name calling. Bed-play focused around shame. Exhibitionism. Voyeurism. Sharing.”
“Right, that’s good. Any thing you don’t want me to touch?”
He shakes his head, and the mischief is alight in the corner of his mouth. “I will be interested when you obtain the ‘right kind of slick.’”
She grins. “Oh? For you or for me?”
He cocks an eyebrow with a smirk and, yes, now they have covered their bases. There seems to be no reason why they are still wearing trousers.
Solas seems to have no disagreement.
She has imagined this moment for, well, too long to happily admit to – the warmth of him, the strength of him, the pleasure rippling through her bones. But there had been no way to imagine the way he breathed when her clothing fell away, the gentle reverence with which he touched her skin.
They were only themselves, together – a whole universe of two. He was searing fire, serious and driven, the weight of thousands of years pressing into his skin. She was the wind, dancing, teasing, stoking the flames. She led him, quicksilver, across the room. He pinned her to the floor and called the pleasure out of her, and she laughed with joy into his skin.
And the moment they came together, he made a soft noise like a lost thing. She hummed with joy and ran her hands across his back, grounding him, holding him, keeping him safe. If they stayed like that for a very long time, it seemed only natural. If tears were shed into the hollow of her collarbone, she would never say.
The wind did not howl so horribly, that night. And when they slept, it was in peace, knowing that the shadow of the wolf had been banished from their door.