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Neve could mark her life by rituals.
Her harrowing. The one that cost her leg. Aelia’s first ritual. Her second. Solas’. Aelia’s last ritual. Elgar’nan’s many, there, toward the end that didn’t turn out to be the end after all.
Every once changed her, and not always for the better. Her lot in life’s always been a mixed one, with twists at nearly every turn. That’s the one thing that never really changes about Minrathous, even as it slowly creeps toward a better future: if you dare to test it, it’ll test your mettle.
Neve doesn’t think she’s special for sticking it out, just stubborn.
She’s always been daring—Rana would say, reckless —but the hardest thing to dare has always been to care. To hope. That’s where Neve finds her only real regrets: in the fact that she tried, for so long, to push away that part of herself.
And she might have succeeded too, if it weren’t for the people she cares about the most pushing her—challenging her to dare, after all. Rook, Bel,
Rana.
Adjusting the bag of Hal’s fish (and veggies—personal growth) in the crook of her arm, Neve nods to the Tallow front deskman and climbs up to the third floor, but the race in her heart isn’t all from the quick climb. Because behind the last door on the left, she finds Rana just where she left her two days ago to help Bel out in Arlathan: at the tiny kitchen table, pouring over case their notes.
She seems to have taken the opportunity to organize them behind Neve’s back, of course.
Rana looks up, giving Neve her little smile, the one that lifts the rosy apples of her cheeks just enough to crinkle around her soft green eyes. And Neve’s stomach warms all the way through.
For over a decade, Neve had always greeted her the same way: “ Templar Rana Savas .”
She liked how it rolled off her tongue, and the way it increasingly got under Rana’s skin the more she understood it as an insult. But Rana’s not a Templar, anymore. She went through most of those same rituals, too, and they changed her just as much. In the end, Rana chose her conscience over duty, just as Neve chose hope.
And—Rana chose her . Neve, herself. She knows this.
These days, “ amata, hello, I missed you ,” hangs on the tip of Neve’s tongue, but she only manages to chirp, “Detective Rana Savas.”
Rana scoffs, but doesn’t stop smiling; her pleasure and excitement after two days apart is contained, but Neve knows it’s there, just as Rana understands the same. Whatever she’d prefer to say, she only manages, “Neve. I think I’ve made some headway on this cipher.”
“Maevaris will be glad to hear it,” Neve replies, placing their food in the spot Rana clears. “The sooner we root out the last of them, the better.”
They go on to chat idly about the case—work, the easy lubricant when they find themselves stuck—as Neve steps back to the door to hang her overcoat on its designated hook and place her boot in its designated place next to Rana’s pair. This is Rana’s apartment, so naturally, everything has a proper place; and Neve respects that, even though she’s a ‘floorganizer’ herself, as Harding would say. Her prosthesis is fitted to account for a heeled boot, making her lopsided when unshod, but—even though this is only Rana’s apartment, lease-wise—all of the furniture has been silently, meticulously rearranged so Neve has clear paths and ample handholds to get around without worry about falling.
Sometimes, it makes Neve so sentimental she can hardly keep her heart in her chest. Everything’s got its place in Rana’s apartment… including her things and her needs.
They’re both fools like that. What they’d twist and turn over trying to say is much easier to express by doing.
Without waiting to be asked, Neve takes two plates and napkins out of the little dish cupboard and brings them to Rana at the table, and then there’s an awkward moment during which they should obviously hug, or kiss. Like girlfriends tend to do when reunited after a couple days apart.
It’s not a secret to anyone, themselves included, that they’re together. But, well, after more than a decade of fluctuating animosity, escalating sexual tension, setbacks, disappointments, several instances of deeply ill-advised sex, light to moderate bullying, bureaucratic interference, and slight accidental codependency, among other uninvited emotional excursions that preceded even an admission that they liked each other… and factoring in their general personalities… well. Normal-couple interaction doesn’t exactly come naturally. If there weren’t a looming apocalypse to push them closer, who knows if they’d have managed it at all.
Work is their comfort zone. Sex is an easy avenue for touch, connection, pleasure. It’s the domesticity, the casual intimacy, that’s—Neve wouldn’t say harder than mitigating an apocalypse, but she certainly wouldn’t say it isn’t hard .
So she settles for rubbing Rana’s shoulder before taking the seat beside her, and Rana settles for fixing Neve’s plate for her, like she’s taken to doing. A new little ritual, like Neve’s coat peg and boot spot—down to Rana always squeezing an extra lemon wedge over Neve’s portion of fish so she can make the same half-joke half-jab she always does:
“Won’t have you getting scurvy,” they say in unison, with Neve imitating (slight exaggerated) the superiority and rasp of Rana’s voice.
“You’ll thank me when you’ve still got teeth at forty,” Rana retorts, cool but still pink-cheeked.
Neve can’t argue with that, so she just shakes her head, chuckling, and lets comfortable silence settle over them as they eat. Sat close enough to feel the brush of Rana’s shoulder and hip when she shifts in her seat, she thinks about how hard-won this kind of mundanity was.
Not even a year ago, she confessed to Rook about how it felt like the city itself stabbed her in the back sometimes. She still takes her fair share of lumps, and they still have their setbacks, and Minrathous isn’t out of the woods yet and Maevaris’ reforms are just getting started, but go figure. It’s easier to bear with hope in her back pocket.
And it’s easier, too, when she doesn’t try to do it all alone.
Rana must feel her looking, so she looks back, her expression soft. Underneath the table, she finds Neve’s knee, giving it a quick squeeze and a pat. Finished with their meals, she pulls away to wash the dishes, shushing Neve’s offer to help on the basis that she picked the food up. Neve watches her hum at the sink, her long beautiful braid swaying across her back.
“Due for a wash?” Neve asks, even though she knows the answer; one could set a Nevarran watch by Rana’s wash regimen. She pampers that braid like a prized pet.
Rana shrugs and dries her hands. “I’ll do it tomorrow while you’re meeting with Lorelei and Tarquin.”
“What, and let your water go cold?” Neve counters, and feels a shred of sincerity press against her lips.
Bel had, of course, lured Neve into some girl talk over their visit. And had tripped over a few words, and then had to walk back what she felt was an accidental accusation that Neve’s relationship wasn’t going anywhere. Neve wasn’t bothered by it, and she wouldn’t say their relationship wasn’t progressing… but it has been slow going, when both of them hesitate to be the one to push.
Sometimes, Neve thinks they missed their best opportunity; that she’d have blurted out a big, messy, tear-streaked I love you had Rana been with her in the red-bathed Lighthouse just before the team set off to take on a so-called god. But by the time they did see each other again, in the disintegrating Archon’s Palace, Neve was too afraid she’d never be able to say it again. Second chances are too rare in Minrathous.
Yet, they got one.
It feels like they’ve got nothing but time now, so there’s no need to rush ahead of their comfort. But it wouldn’t hurt to stick a toe out ahead of the line, so Neve gathers herself enough to add, “It’d be a nice way to spend time. I—I’ve missed you.”
For a moment, it feels like she said too much, but Rana looks so genuinely touched that Neve almost wishes she’d said more. “Alright,” Rana says quietly. “I’ve missed you, too.”
There. That wasn’t so hard.
In her modest apartment, Rana finds it easiest to wash her hair in the sink, so she fetches her supplies and sets up as she always does. Neve has watched before from the desk or bed, but it’d always seemed like too private a ritual for her to intrude on. She could count on one hand the number of times she’s ever seen Rana’s hair out of its braid or the silk scarf she wraps it up in to sleep for any length of time, even though they’ve been practically living together for months. It feels silly to be a little nervous and excited for something so normal.
But something about watching Rana unwind her braid feels more intimate than watching her undress, maybe because Neve knows how much Rana cares about her hair. Some combination of genetic Tevinter vanity, and her hair being the only way she could express herself over nearly two decades in a Templar uniform, Neve figures. Something she could control, that could tell the world how she felt about herself no matter how the world felt about her. Neve’s clothes hold the same weight for her.
Dressed down to her undershirt and pants, barefoot on the clay tile floor, and now loose-haired, Rana just looks so… domestic. Not a Templar, not a detective—just a woman, relaxed at home. With her lover.
Feeling tender and bold, Neve gets out of her chair. “Could I?”
Rana gives her a look like she’s not sure what’s gotten into her, which Neve knows well, and looks a little bashful herself. But she’s always been willing to follow Neve’s lead, so she doesn’t shrink away.
“How’s this? You wash,” she says, fetching a trifolded paper from her desk, “and I’ll read.” Flashing the paper shows Neve that it’s the latest from the serial they’d been following with the book club. “And, yes, I sent off copies to the others already.”
“Good deal,” Neve agrees gently.
If Rana were washing her hair alone, she’d have to take the time to heat several large pots of water, but Neve could boil it practically right out of the tap if she wanted to. She stops at moderately warm, though, because she may be a wash-’n’-wear girl herself, but she knows a thing or two about (Rana’s opinions on) haircare. She’d watched this ritual plenty enough times to know the order, and the products, and the process.
It reminds her a bit of looking forward to her exams because she knew she was going to ace them and show those bluebloods what’s what—although, admittedly, she’s somehow more nervous for her debut as a shampoo girl than she ever was in the circle. Probably because she actually cares about this.
Sitting backward on a chair, Rana leans back and rests her nape on the lip of the sink so Neve can gather her hair up in it. They’re cramped together, with both of them sharing the same small space in front of the sink; Rana sits stiffly with her arm digging into Neve’s stomach, and Neve has to stand at a weird angle to reach everything. For the first minute of wetting her hair, Neve resigns herself to the discomfort and focuses instead on the silkiness of Rana’s hair under her fingers, the warmth of her skin seeping through their clothes, the familiar and comforting scents of her soap and shampoo.
But fortunately, Rana realizes they’re being silly and shifts, removing her elbow from Neve’s liver and instead wrapping her arm around Neve’s waist, making just enough extra space to put them both in more comfortable positions. Her hand is heavy and warm, her thumb sneaking underneath Neve’s wide belt to stroke at the dimple in her lower back.
They don’t usually interact this much, physically, outside of bed; and they were both people who were always more comfortable with sex than intimacy, before. She idly wonders if Rana’s ever let a woman she was seeing wash her hair before.
It’s so long and heavy that Neve also wonders how Rana never complains of a sore head. Then she wonders if Rana always has it bound up when they’re together because she likes it that way, or if she isn’t yet comfortable enough to fully ‘let loose’, so to speak, around Neve. That one, perhaps Neve will ask sometime. Much as she loves that beautiful braid, she wouldn’t mind a few more opportunities to run her fingers through these bouncy waves, and she certainly doesn’t mind the relaxed pleasure that settles over Rana’s face as Neve massages her fingernails over her scalp. Maybe it does get sore, after all.
As Neve gets to work, Rana lifts the serial up above her face, out of reach of any splashing, and begins to read aloud. She’s no actress—after only a few sentences, Neve can tell she’s about to read the entire thing in the same even tone, regardless of the scene, speaker, or punctuation. There’s something so squarishly charming, so Rana about it that Neve can’t stop the affectionate chuckle that bubbles up from her chest.
“What?”
Looking down, Neve meets Rana’s eyes looking up at her. They’re so beautiful, so expressive; because Rana’s never been an actress, never able to hide well how she’s feeling. Neve has seen her eyes lit with anger and frustration, dulled by disappointment and grief; hot and hungry, hazy and satisfied; glittering with smug superiority, cringing with doubt; stricken with terror, and glowing with hope.
In them now, Neve sees the playful sparkle Rana always gets when she thinks Neve’s going to tease her, and she’s excited for the volley. Another one of their little rituals—one that’s changed as much over the years as they have. What used to be an expression of mistrust and animosity became one of camaraderie, then friendship, now love.
It’ll be nice to hear it spoken aloud, when they’re ready. But for now, Neve’s perfectly happy with their little rituals.
“I was just thinking,” she muses, swiping a line of suds onto Rana’s pretty jaw, “I wouldn’t mind making a habit of this.”