[Right. Well. He asked for penance and the Inquisitor took her time and selected a punishment for his sins that hurt so badly he'd rather face a hive tyrant, naked, with a combat knife.
[But penance is penance. The great news? EVERYONE gets to suffer. The Inquisitor somehow thinks this is team building. [At least as text he can just...not have to say anything.]
[ Felassan is the kind of asshole who would, under normal circumstances, absolutely try to puzzle out the punchline and ruin it. But these are not normal circumstances. This is Gadriel. It does not occur to Felassan that he could possibly be telling a joke. ]
[Hmmm, Maybe he selected the wrong joke. He will have to consult his text. Maybe he should have listened to the Inquisitor and stuck with those 'knock knock' jokes? ]
[How could you have missed the signs that it was a joke. The random text out of nowhere? The cryptic question? Gadriel's generally hilarious demeanor? THERE WERE CLUES.]
[ Felassan is tragically a grandpa who's to new to fantasy IMs to write "lol" or even "hahahaha." But he does laugh, alone in the woods, with his little bird device. ]
It comes to pass that if you invite a dreamwalker into your life, that you might one day soon come to dream of him. So it is with Solas and Felassan, on this night. It was not a conversation he approached without trepidation, nor difficulty: for one thing, simply calling for Felassan via the little birds felt... impersonal. And he still could not be sure that they would not be listened to. It was right that the petitioner go to the one of whom they asked, not that Felassan be summoned before him. Even now, the long shadow of Arlathan's tight fist still falls over his mind.
And of course, some things are still easier in the Fade.
"Felassan," He calls, from the edge of the dream. It is a green dream, a dream of forest glades and golden dust-motes. Solas hopes it will be a good one, "I would speak with you. Are you willing?"
"Maybe," Felassan calls back from beyond the trees.
He is no architect and never was. No painter — though film, if they'd had it, might have appealed. The clearing here is reproduction and collage, the golden slant of the light mismatched with the clarity of the stars overhead to create a time of day that never physically exists, the trees growing and dying in a time lapse that might fit a century into the hour, flowers spreading and receding like slow breaths. It smells like wood ash and petrichor.
He peers around a trunk to give Solas a once-over. That maybe was only a joke. He would be invited in no matter what Felassan found looking at him. But it's nice to see him here, like this, looking self-possessed and still himself. Felassan jerks his head to invite him further in.
"You were right," he says. "It's awfully empty here. You are my first visitor. Not even a wisp."
Solas would, ordinarily, regard this with the exasperated expression of someone for whom all courtesy is mere illusion, Felassan more brother than friend, and would you knock that off please as common a word of their vocabulary as breath itself. But something of that east distance, and lack of distance, died when Felassan did, and...
...and what replaced it was not father, nor less intense, but it was different. And the seed of it had grown until Solas simply bears the once-over with a lift of his chin, and a slight cant of shoulder and hip. He knows he must look acceptable, because Felassan seems pleased.
It is very different to their last meeting, in the Fade.
"Then it is my pleasure to be the first," He says, stepping forward. The grass brightens under his feet, briefly flourishing, only to die as each step lifts away. Even here, the fade greets him like an affectionate cat, "I had a very interesting conversation with Beleth, recently, and it gave me cause to seek your out. Do not doubt that I have questions... But I am all too aware of our shared history."
It is a rehearsed speech, of course. He had pondered for a long time on what to say, how to say it. How to broach the topic without backing his friend into a desperate corner.
"Tell me that you wish only a quiet visit from a friend, and I will not speak. But if you would hear what I have to say..."
Felassan huffs a single, quiet ha, when Solas says he's had an interesting conversation, walking a half-step ahead of him. She did say she would speak to him, and Felassan hadn't doubted her. It's only Solas's calm, practiced speech that makes it funny now. Even funnier: the offer not to speak. Felassan laughs for real at that, a quick bark, pivoting in the clearing to grin at him. Solas is perfectly capable of prolonged, contemplative silences, yes, but once he'd decided he had something to say, how many people would have done a blood sacrifice for the ability to tell him to leave it alone?
It's a trait Felassan is very fond of, actually. His laugh and grin are both more affectionate than sharp, and he hums, perhaps genuinely tempted by the option to make Solas stand there and suffer in silence for a while — but no. If Solas goes too deep into his own head, one of these days he might never climb back out of it.
"I didn't want to lie to her," he says.
Because this place seems to revel in lowering guards and revealing secrets. Because to dance around the truth while taking advantage of their hospitality and then be revealed might make him seem a snake, a schemer — a slow arrow, sure. Because he simply did not want to lie to her, lying there under the sky, after she'd been so kind and wonderful.
And because he's reckless, too, in a way he has not been since he was very young, or perhaps even then. Everything on Felassan's list of worst case scenarios — except dying in bondage, the very worst of them — has already come and gone, one of the last checked off when his words cut short in the last Fade-forest clearing they shared, and here they still are. Even with all the conclusions Felassan has already drawn and the apologies he expects he may be required to make, this conversation could not possibly be as bad as a thousand things that have already happened.
"It's nothing you should worry about, my friend. Everything is fine, and I would never..." Too laughable to even say. They're happy. They're good for each other. What small part of this has ever hurt is better now, not worse. He shakes his head, still smiling. "No, I'm sorry. You have a speech. Let's hear it."
I didn't want to lie to her, he says, and Solas cannot help the way he moves, the recognition of Beleth's assessment in the turn of his head, the bounce of his step. Ah-ha, it is the truth after all. He had not doubted her, of course, but it is one thing to know, and another to see.
He sees now, and is torn between a strange, new wonder... and a deep, appalling sense of having missed... everything. What did it mean for this to be true? For how long had Felassan been longing, saying nothing?
Everything is fine, and I would never...
"...Betray me?" He finishes, droll and quiet, smiling for the joke, despite dire memory's velvet claws, "She told me that you had long carried a secret longing, a hope that you feared could never be answered. She asked me if it was indeed hopeless, and proposed something new, between the three of us."
This now is not the afore-planned speech, which had been more than a little terrible, and had included a metaphor about trees and winding vines. He has always been a mediocre poet, after all— but he has found his feet in this conversation, and forges ahead with his hands clasped behind his back, still tense despite it all, awaiting a real answer.
"It is not hopeless, falon. But I would hear from you, what you want. Having only just regained your friendship, I would not casually discard it. But I..." The pause comes then, sincerity giving way to vulnerability, and Solas stumbles at the threshold, as he so often does, "...I care for you, and when I allow myself to love, I do so with all that I am. But I may lie, I may distance myself, I can be cruel, and prideful, and vicious. I am... difficult, as you know. I am not a safe person to love. Tell me you wish for things to be as they are."
... Betray him, yes, that's funny. Felassan's wince is a playful one, mouth pulled into a pantomime grimace, a silent point taken accompanied by no genuine dampening of his mood. He did do that, didn't he? But he wouldn't do it again. Not like this. Not for this. He wouldn't do it for anything less than something like a daughter and the freedom she'd finally learned to give up everything to fight for. And even if he would, Beleth wouldn't.
Solas must know that, with that spring in his step, that smile. This is not the manner of a man who fears betrayal. Nor one who intends to be cruel. Felassan's promise to do better means trusting him not to be. So he smiles at him with his head cocked, too curious to be embarrassed, even as he's listening to Solas lay his own simple heart out before him with too-fine phrases. Secret longing — someone has been reading too many romances, Felassan thinks, and prepares to say, too, before Solas says it is not hopeless and he's knocked off his certain, steady ground.
But he's casual about it, of course. He leans to the side, and because this is the Fade — a Fade — there is a tree there waiting to catch his shoulder at an angle that looks more nonchalant than like he needs to sit down. The fading of his smile is slow and incomplete. It simmers down to a wry whisper of what it had been. He shakes his head twice, the first a bemused and preliminary rejection of the entire concept of this conversation occurring, the second sharper and more specific: he's not going to tell Solas that. Don't tell him what to do.
"That is how things are," he says. He means: "I have loved you through all of that already. Sometimes because of it."
Hope makes him warier than the absence of it did. The thing about watching someone so closely for so long is that he would have seen it, surely, if Solas had ever watched him back.
"I'll tell you what I don't want. I don't want to be rewarded for my service." Like a servant, like a dog. "You don't owe me anything."
It should have hurt, truly, the assumption in that phrase: that it would be lesser, and transactional. But Solas can see the fangs for what they are: a defense, desperate and fearful. The truth came first: Felassan loved him, not as a soldier loves a king, nor indeed as a dog its master.
Because Felassan would betray him. Had. This was not a blind thing, with no limit, no end. As with Mythal, there could come a time that Solas lost his love, and his loyalty. Where that threshold stood, it was Solas' to step over it, or not, and reap the consequences; he saw that now.
"Indeed, I do not. Although, if you truly believed I would offer such a thing as the price of any service, as a Master overlording his servant, you would never have followed me in the first place," He replies, smoothly assured. He has cornered the prey now, and Felassan's lean is its own admission of that fact; Solas comes closer, and closer still, "I do not ask that you follow me now. Instead I am asking you, if you will stand alongside me. If that is what you wish."
He has always been the taller of the two. But he waits, a little too near, waiting, watching, looking for the first time with new eyes and seeing a new truth. It is entirely intoxicating, and yet his smile falters in the face of that stubborn nonchalance. No.
No, it had been thousands of years, and Felassan had said nothing, done nothing, and broken from him in the end. If he had ever wished to make more of it than silence and private fantasy, he had had more than ample opportunity. Solas was mistaken to hope.
"I apologize. I should not have pushed you. I thought it must change everything, to understand now..." It was not even that Beleth had been wrong, after all. And if they should be happy together, when he was not present, then it was good: she deserved every happiness in the world, with or without him. And Felassan was a very great joy, indeed; if he could not bear Solas' presence in such matters, then it was only reasonable. He steps back, then lowering his head slightly, watching Felassan as he does, as if he is not certain he will get another chance, "...But I have overstepped."
"I will not trouble you further. I am sorry to have caused you yet more grief."
Solas is right – about the fangs, about their falsity — but his accuracy doesn't shake Felassan out of his impassivity, straight away. Stubborn, yes, and sometimes slow, and more than either of those things he is trying to think. To adjust his understanding of the past and the future to take into account this unexpected present, with an old spy's reluctance to give anything away until he's certain what his next move is.
His faltering smile and his apology are not quite enough to spur him to action. Not on the surface. Felassan stays against the tree, eyes fixed on Solas's face, a silent furrow deepening between his eyebrows, and makes no motion to stop him.
But the Fade does. Felassan's power may be meager against Solas's, easily overwritten if Solas endeavors to do so, but this is his dream, responsive to his will in the absence of something stronger counteracting it, and Solas's backwards step is undone by there simply being less ground between them than there was a moment before. Undone and then some, an overcorrection that can be blamed on the force of the don't go that roils beneath the outward impassivity.
"It's not grief."
He knows what to do with grief. Quite practiced at it. But this —
The sudden recollection of Solas's face outside the house, here in Caldera, when Felassan kissed his knuckles. Four thousand years of everything he might try to hold onto slipping through his hands, and now they're suddenly full, if he wants them to be. And he must, because he has the dreamed fabric of Solas's shirt in his fist, and his other hand on his shoulder to pull him down. Felassan could dream himself taller, dream a rock of perfect height beneath his own feet, but it's truer this way, having to reach to kiss his familiar cheek and the less familiar corner of his mouth.
Surprised. He had thought himself so wise, so willing to understand. He knows his friend, thought he knew, but after so long he finds that was has grown between them has grown down and through, and deeper than he might have imagined. He is
Being pulled down, made to bend, to change his ways, his stoic face, the memory of what it is to be seized by his shirt, the dream of a kiss, barely-imagined, and he is
Solas leans back, just a moment, staring at Felassan wonderingly, certain and then uncertain, and then certain again but of one thing only. Yes. This is love, no different than before; what else could motivate him to trust someone so deeply as he did Felassan, what else could motivate him to remain so loyal, for so long, in the service of the man who had broken the world. What else could it be, shining fearful and courageous and defiant in Felassan's wicked eyes.
It changed nothing. It changed... everything.
He counters the harshness of Felassan's grip with his own, more gentle and no less fervent, pressing Felassan back, deeper, more passionately. He feels rather than sees the tree come into his back, the Fade nothing loathe to facilitate their passion, and— Oh, had he meant to go this far? Had he known what it would be like, to feel that ancient devotion rise in ardor under lips and teeth, to drink it down?
Solas is breathing a little harder, when he remembers that they should wait. That as intoxicating as this is, it is not the same as agreement, or conversation.
Oh, but he longs.
"We... should meet again, outside the Fade. Will you come home to us, ma'nehn?"
If Felassan looks something like heartbroken, looking back up at him, it's because he is. But it's only the hard outer shell, cracked by being kissed in a way that leaves no room for doubt in the sincerity of Solas's want, too hungry to be an apology or an obligation. Cracked further by the converging memories of his eyes fierce and terrifying after a skirmish, and his spine bowed by mourning and doubt, and his ankles crossed on a chaise while he read, and the angle of his chin when he was infuriatingly certain he'd done something clever, and now this — the heavier breaths they are both only imagining the need for.
Cracked further still by home and us and ma'nehn.
It's the us that lands the most solidly. It's what his thoughts can grab hold of most easily. He glances past Solas's shoulder as if he expects Beleth to be standing there already, looking either very pleased with herself or very impatient to be included, or both. She could manage both. A proud glint in her eyes and a wrinkled nose. But she isn't there, and it's the thought of her waiting that pulls him back firmly to the present. His expression sharpens until he looks more like himself again. Smirking. Sure of himself, of this. Ready for action.
"I'm not far," he says. "I'll make it by morning."
He hasn't let go of Solas's shirt or his shoulder. Felassan kisses him again. He means it to be brief, an until next time, but he snags and catches and lingers for several beats too long for that before he cuts himself off, quite abruptly, and lets go to hold both hands up to press Solas back to a less tempting distance with his palms.
He opens his mouth to say something else, inhales the unnecessary breath for it, and instead only shakes his head, smiling and silent, before vanishing out of this world and into the one he needs to start crossing.
He isn't far. He could make it faster than he does, the way he once rushed from Halamshiral to Val Royeaux in a blur of sprinting and Fade-stepping. But he only walks it, steady, stopping not even to pick flowers — although he does pick them, swerving to swipe them up mid-step — and does the thinking Solas's worry and proximity hadn't left room for, and then some. As he approaches their door in the early light of morning, he's only turning ma'nehn over in his head like a gem in his hand.
He has already stopped knocking, exactly, when he visits them, except for rapping on the wall as he passes to the door, enough time for someone to shout that they need a moment if they have hypothetically decided to get up to no good right there on the dining table. He does it now, too, though he doesn't expect them to be there, or perhaps not even to be awake. Finding himself correct on the first count, at least, he's happy enough to busy himself dropping the little bouquet he's gathered into a cup of water and helping himself to their kettle.
The first thing that had happened upon Solas awaking was, of course, him being impatiently debriefed by Beleth's worried, pointed questions. Which, of course, Solas managed gamely, even amidst Beleth's huffs and pointed prods in the cheek when it could have all gone so terribly wrong. But it hadn't gone wrong, and once Solas has survived getting poked and questioned, there is elation, and embracing, and other pleasant distractions, to celebrate it.
Then, there is the waiting.
Beleth is rarely described as impatient. She waited ten years for Solas, which might be short to some people, but felt like several lifetimes to her. This wait is nothing compared to that, particularly when she's been given surety of the ending, but it still inspires an almost uncharacteristic restlessness. Sleep makes it easier, but she's keyed up enough that she's already awake, hair done, makeup expertly applied, clothing... well, the clothing is a simple shift and robe still, because. Well.
Because.
Because, when Felassan makes his presence known, Beleth can appear at the doorway to the kitchen, hand on the frame, and her robe is artistically draped to make sure that one freckled shoulder is visible, in a way that she definitely hadn't made sure to engineer for his arrival. Felassan has always been handsome, but something about him seemed to shine even more than usual -- He looked almost like one of the ancient elvhen murals come to life, the sun shining at his back, glinting through his hair, his smile as infuriating as ever.
She'd hoped to school her face into something a little more smooth and suave, but at the sight of him, her face brightens into a brilliant, joyful smile. It's only somewhat diminished by the smug look that follows on its heels.
"I told you so."
It's deserved, she's quite sure. And what's also deserved is what she had wanted to do on that rooftop, and had, as usual, managed to go about achieving that desire: Before Felassan could have a chance to sass her, she strode forward, grabbed the collar of his shirt, and pulled him down into a hungry kiss.
What is intended to only be a cheeky split-second glance over his shoulder, when she arrives in the doorway, is instead hooked and caught on her shoulder, as she might have hoped, before making its way to her face. Felassan has worn his share of eyeshadow and his hair, if pulled from its braids and bun, would be no shorter than hers; he knows preparation when he sees it.
It wasn't necessary. She was beautiful half-crushed by rubble and she was beautiful wearing silly cat clothes and flailing on the muddy bank of a river and she was beautiful being tossed around on the back of a furious bear. But she's beautiful here, too, and the fact that she's taken such care, this early, when she's already the one who's given him a gift twice over —
Understanding that softens the edges of his smile, rather than shifting it into a smirk, even when she's turning smug and gloating. He doesn't even open his mouth to begin trying to sass her before she's hauling him down, met with no resistance whatsoever. They have some catching up to do, after all, to pull even with what he and Solas got up to in the Fade. For fairness' sake, he really does have to put his hands on her waist and pull her closer, then after some seconds change his mind, break his mouth away, lift her up to sit on the edge of the table, and kiss her again.
The second break lasts longer. He stays close, but he reaches around and behind her to pull one of his collected flowers from the cup and tuck it behind her ear. (Apologies for the dampness of the stem. At least it probably isn't itchweed?)
"Everyone guesses right every now and then," he says. The inexorable urge to be be aggravating has caught up, as it always must, even with his forehead touching hers. "Don't let it go to your head."
"Vhenan is rarely wrong," Solas interjects, from the doorway, his smooth voice cutting low across the tableau presented so enticingly before him, "You may come to terms with it, eventually."
Solas should know: he keeps trying to know better than her, and each time he finds himself again the same position of being forced to reckon with her power. Sometimes for the worse, and sometimes... very much for the better.
But he does not seem to be upset.
"Enjoying yourselves?" He asks, every bit as much as if this were some casual thing, picking flowers by the roadside, or walking the streets on market-day. Solas holds himself slightly aloof, appearing nearly unaffected, but his eyes are soft, and his expression reserved; those who do not know him might call it cold, but Solas is smiling, in his quiet, uncertain way.
It is good. It is good, to see them together, like this. Dare he hope for an invitation?
Beleth protests neither her relocation nor the flower -- though the move makes her wonder if he had in mind what he had considered Solas and Beleth doing to the dining room table. Not that she'd be opposed (nor would it be the first time the dining table had witnessed such an event), but it felt polite to at least wait for Solas --
Ah, there he was.
She turns to Solas, adjusting the flower in her hair (and trying to subtly wipe some of the wet from her very carefully styled hair, thanks) as she flashes him a winsome, pleased smile -- trying not to look too smug. "True -- you will be right, eventually, Felassan. I have full faith in you." Then she hooks her leg around his waist, and lifts her hand, reaching for Solas.
"Will you just stand there, vhenan, or will you join us?"
And she says what needs to be said, so Felassan doesn't sully Beleth's enticing rhetorical question with what he would have said. He gestures it silently instead, tipping his head for a pointed glance at the spot on the floor where Solas's feet ought to be. Come here. Come get a wet flower of his own, slid to rest above his ear and drip down his neck with the same self-satisfied grin Felassan would have given him yesterday or the day before or eons ago, now that he's had a few hours to reclaim his footing.
Solas wouldn't hurt him, he'd decided along his path through the woods, and laughed quick and loud enough to startle sleeping wildlife, and amended the thought to: Solas wouldn't hurt him like this.
"I was right the day I met you," he says to Beleth in the meantime, content to remain trapped by her leg. "Quick work."
His approach is measured; he isn't exactly nervous, after all, only it is so new. Vhenan is easy to love, the rift between them closer to healed than it has ever been. Felassan's revelation is less certain ground; he is sure, very sure, of his own feelings, but to know how they fit together...
But he is being given an order, and Solas complies willingly, taking her hand as he does so. The flower is a gesture as cheeky and ordinary as ever Felassan has been, both a return to ancient form and in this new context a deliciously reframed invitation. He glances at Beleth, a warning and a confirmation all in one; something akin to asking permission, though he is not.
He catches Felassan's hand, as it retreats, and when his friend turns back from delivering his joke, Solas kisses him, sweet and soft and tender, and then lingers in the moment just long enough to make of it an invitation. His eyes flick over to Beleth again, to gauge her reaction, and to invite her in.
She laughs at Felassan's aside, even as she watches him put the flower behind Solas' ear. "I still pride myself on my efficiency." Mirroring what she had said, then, as well. At Solas' glance to her, she nods, though he's already aware that she's quite okay with it. Still, it's appreciated, in case she had suddenly gotten cold feet about it all.
She hasn't, of course. As Solas leans in, Beleth lowers the leg she had hooked Felassan with, so that instead she can slip her arms around him from the side, the hand towards his front slipping under his shirt, and her lips going to his neck -- easier to reach, now that she's been kindly given the boost of the dining room table.
It's only once she feels Felassan stuck quite securely between the two of them that she speaks again, lips brushing his skin. "Though I could blame both of you, as well. How could I resist falling for the most fascinating men I've ever met?" Which is, in her opinion, far more important than being attractive or charismatic. They both drew her in by being interesting -- two different flavors of it.
Solas' keen mind and eager willingness to share with her the world that he knew. His kindness, even when it was killing him, the way that he interacted with the Fade and spirits, so alien to her. Felassan's sly tongue, steadfast loyalty. Utter strangeness, and carelessness to how people felt about it. They were both unlike any man that walked Thedas before, or after.
And they both saw fit to call her -- her, born a mortal, a simple Dalish Hunter -- theirs.
Unlike some people, Felassan hasn’t been on a months-long honeymoon.* It’s been a while. Which has been fine. He hasn’t been counting the days anymore than a bear in hibernation. But woken up now by Beleth’s soft lips on his neck and her warm hand beneath his shirt, by Solas’s mouth on his mouth tasting real, his breath catches as surely as it did the first time he discovered what happened to his skin when someone else touched it. Hunger is the best seasoning, as they say.
It isn't really the first time, though, of course. Old reflexes from threesomes and moresomes past make it second nature to balance them: while he is sliding the hand Solas caught to the back of his neck and pressing him into a kiss that is less gentle, teeth deployed half playful and half ravenous, he's leaning into Beleth and slipping his hand up from her knee to her outer thigh beneath her shift. Truly an expert call, the shift. And when Beleth speaks and he turns his head to answer her —
"There is a simple explanation for us. What is your excuse, young one?"
— and nuzzles his way down into kissing her inexplicably wise, clever, fascinating mouth, too, with less lip-nipping but no less keen eagerness, he pulls Solas's hand along with him, around to his sternum, to keep him close and to insist that Solas touch him, too. He has wanted this for a month, or he has wanted this for a very long time — at the moment there is little difference. He just wants, now.
But he is perfectly capable of being reasonable and responsible when he cares to be, and he cares about this a great deal. So without fully extracting himself from either of them, he leans back far enough to look between them with the smile of a man who doesn’t understand where all this good luck is coming from, all of a sudden, but has no intention of turning it down.
“Do we need to talk about this?”
It’s a real question. They can say yes, they can say no. He isn’t going to argue either way.
(* Regularly scheduled disasters and near-death experiences notwithstanding.)
"It will change little," Solas acknowledges, which is no vote either for nor against the important work of laying down the foundation of their triumvirate, "She is my heart. Your dedication to me is above reproach, after so many centuries. If truly you have felt this way for so long..."
This way being, of course, as difficult to define as any emotion can be. Love? Yes, but in what manner? Lust? That much is apparant. Solas' hand splays obediently over Felassan's heart, and he keeps it there a moment, feeling the warm, living weight of him, the strength beneath the thin barrier of his shirt. He allows himself the liberty to touch, hand sliding almost carelessly to one side, over muscle, nipple, the delicate curve of his collabone, and further, up the slim, promising line of shoulder and neck. Solas threads his fingers into Felassan's hair in fascination, undoing the careful ties, and brushing his thumb across the point of his ear.
And even now, Beleth's clever hands are at work, and Solas bends his head to press a kiss against her brow. Oh, she is beautiful and wise! It is agony to wait.
"Ar lath ma," He says, meaning them both, "I am a fool, and so often blind; Beleth had already kissed me twice before I ever realized her feelings for me were more than teasing flirtation. But we have endured thusfar, and I am committed."
Beleth manages to start up a pout at young one, a very good one. It would have been a really devastating pout, if Felassan hadn't starting kissing her, moving his hand up her leg, his touch leaving her skin burning and wanting. Her mouth opens, and she would've had quite a clever comeback, really, but the words are swallowed in the kisses, and she decides that she has no excuse and doesn't need one, and Felassan can call her whatever he wants, if he keeps kissing her breathless like that.
And then he stops kissing her, and now she really is going to pout, only narrowly saved from it by having to stop to mull over his words. And now Solas is kissing her brow, and she tilts her head up to him, to get some proper kisses.
"I have said what I wished to -- I believe I have made all my thoughts clear. If you two need to talk, or if you have questions for me, I will of course accommodate." She reaches up to graze her hand against Solas' face, eyes turned to Felassan. "Though I fear I might need direction when it comes to... positioning. And whatnot." She glances aside, clears her throat. One day she'll discuss such things more easily (though her mood is quickly making the topic more enthusiastic). "I'm not inexperienced, but it has always been limited to figuring out... ah, configurations for two bodies."
There is, of course, the most obvious, but that seems a bit daunting, at the moment. She assumes anyone attempting it usually works up to the task, though.
And speaking of which. She'll reach for Solas' face, to give him another hard kiss. "But I place myself and my trust in both of your capable hands."
Felassan's eyes are so often sharp, focused and canny with distant amusement like the glint of a blade in the dark, but with Beleth's hand against his skin and Solas's roving and grazing his ear, they soften into the kind of adoration more traditionally reserved for the moments no one would have seen him looking. It lingers while Solas and Beleth kiss, while they talk, while they affirm their certainty, and even Beleth's awkward use of positioning and configurations doesn't banish it entirely.
Though he does smile. Of course. But less like it's funny, more like it's sweet, or at least like it's an even mix of the two. "Sometimes it's only a matter of taking turns," he says while he watches pretty lips work against pretty lips. "Being patient."
And who in this room is more patient than he is? Not even Solas. And besides pure patience, Felassan wants his turn on the sideline. Too active and handsy a man for only spectating, perhaps, yes, but he wants to fix his mouth to Beleth's neck while Solas employs his clever tongue between her legs. He wants to hold Solas pinned against his chest while Beleth's hips work around him. He wants to murmur into their ears and feel it when they make each other twitch and tremble.
He has a feeling they'll be willing to indulge him sometime.
Not this morning, though. Not for the first time in an age anyone has touched him this way and the first time in much longer that it's felt as if it mattered. Felassan strips out of his shirt, revealing skin and ink and faded scars with no ceremony and only a quick, forbidding glance at Solas — if Solas has any qualms about the fang on his ribs, any opinion at all other than hot, he better save it for later — and shakes his loose hair back into some kind of order. Then he turns his attention to peeling Solas out of his, avid eyes raking over his torso in search of what's familiar and what's new and what he's rarely been able to gaze at with such open interest, then slipping Beleth's robe off her freckled shoulders before trying to negotiate her out of her shift altogether so he can examine her just as eagerly.
Solas is at first preoccupied with the enjoyment of Beleth's mouth. When Felassan begins undressing, he allows himself to be distracted by it and— the fang. For a moment, a question rises into his eyes, and his mouth opens to ask, but then Felassan is pushing at the hem of his robes and Solas decides that the more vital task is to shed his own shirt and pull Felassan in with both hands and feel the warm weight of his body in Solas' arms as they kiss.
Time enough for questions later. For now, it was enough to indulge in the fantasy thus provided.
And Solas too, is not unchanged. In ancient days he took great pride in his body, in keeping it clean of scar and blemish, and was often teased for the habit. But for years before he regained his strength, he was no more than an ordinary mage, with an ordinary mage's power to heal, and the marks of modern Thedas are clear on him. Here, the puckered scar, where Dalish arrows tried to take his life. There, where lyrium dragonfire had caught in his robes, snuffed out quickly, but not quickly-enough to save the patch of skin along his side and back, now permanently a different texture, the scar a reddened reminder of Corypheus' agency. Smaller things, scrapes, cuts, places where a too-oft scratched insect bite had left a new spot, like an over-large freckle, discolored... And there were freckles as well.
"As you say, Ma'nehn," Submitting himself thus to inspection, he reaches for Beleth to give Felassan a moment, "Peace, my heart. You will not find it so difficult. You are wanted here, and loved; anything you choose to do will be welcomed."
Most would consider Beleth a patient person -- at least for mortals. Felassan would undoubtedly win the prize, but she's spent a decent chunk of her limited life span plotting, planning and placing pieces and people. But there are particular situations where her patience flees, and if it weren't already on its way out the door, Felassan's clever hands helping her out of her robe and shift would chase it away entirely.
And she has her own scars. There are, of course, the jagged lightning scars that start where her left arm ends, racing up the arm and across the chest. But plenty of other scars join it, though none quite overshadow the anchor's mark. Thedas can be a harsh world for anyone, and Beleth was given a more violent life than most.
There are less violent marks across her skin -- the freckles that cross her cheeks trail down her shoulders, along her back.
But she's not thinking about that right now, nor any marks on any of them. Not with Felassan and Solas' hands both upon her. Quite near any thoughts she could claim have left along with her patience, and are promptly replaced by growing desire. What she wants? It's hard to state a specific thing -- the two of them, touching and kissing, her and each other, sensations and senses. She manages to gather enough of herself to decide one thing.
"I think you have been quite patient enough, Ma'atisha. The time for it is gone." She gives Solas another kissing, and a quick nip of his bottom lip, before she pulls away, giving him a knowing smile. Then she turns to Felassan. Her peace, waiting so long, and willing to wait longer, staring up at the sky and ready to let his desires simply sit there with him. Well, no longer.
Her hands go to cup his face, then she kisses him, hard and fast, hands trailing down his chest, down and down, until she reaches his hips, fingers of both hands dancing across skin, slowly growing closer together, meeting in the middle. And there, the careful, agile hands of an archer show their dexterity.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I AM SO SORRY Text @gadriel
[But penance is penance. The great news? EVERYONE gets to suffer. The Inquisitor somehow thinks this is team building.
[At least as text he can just...not have to say anything.]
What kind of streets do ghosts haunt
???
B)
Ghosts?
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[Hmmm, Maybe he selected the wrong joke. He will have to consult his text. Maybe he should have listened to the Inquisitor and stuck with those 'knock knock' jokes? ]
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Are there ghosts here?
How
In the cemetery, there are.
According to the Medicine Selle---
-
--that is not the point.
You are to answer the question.
how what??
how is this all going so badly for him XD
You are to admit you do not know. [The Inquisitor insisted that everyone knew how jokes worked. Turns out, that was a LIE.]
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And wait a minute. ]
Are you telling me a joke?
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NO.
Not anymore
since you RUINED it. [Harrumph. Now you'll never know that ghosts hang out in dead-ends. Your loss. ]
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Wait.
I don't know. What kind of streets do ghosts haunt?
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when I am being patronized. [Now you hurt his feelings, you MONSTER. ]
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[ And from the farthest, most rarely touched reaches of his defiant and allergic-to-subservience soul, he manages to find: ]
Please?
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fine
a dead-end
Now you know.
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A dead-end.
That's perfect. I'm going to use that one.
How do you become an executioner?
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is that a joke as well?
Because if so,
I do not know. [See? He understands joke structures! Kinda.]
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You axe nicely.
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... Of course that would be a require--
OH.
It is a pun. [He got there. Eventually. All by himself!]
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What brought this on?
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Is this also a joke? [New level of confusion. Once you walk down this bumpy path of humor, it is hard to tell where it ends. Gadriel hates it. ]
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I just did not realize you liked me enough to send me jokes for no reason.
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[Whom Gadriel knows better than to disobey.]
In Person, for a certain definition of "in person"
And of course, some things are still easier in the Fade.
"Felassan," He calls, from the edge of the dream. It is a green dream, a dream of forest glades and golden dust-motes. Solas hopes it will be a good one, "I would speak with you. Are you willing?"
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He is no architect and never was. No painter — though film, if they'd had it, might have appealed. The clearing here is reproduction and collage, the golden slant of the light mismatched with the clarity of the stars overhead to create a time of day that never physically exists, the trees growing and dying in a time lapse that might fit a century into the hour, flowers spreading and receding like slow breaths. It smells like wood ash and petrichor.
He peers around a trunk to give Solas a once-over. That maybe was only a joke. He would be invited in no matter what Felassan found looking at him. But it's nice to see him here, like this, looking self-possessed and still himself. Felassan jerks his head to invite him further in.
"You were right," he says. "It's awfully empty here. You are my first visitor. Not even a wisp."
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...and what replaced it was not father, nor less intense, but it was different. And the seed of it had grown until Solas simply bears the once-over with a lift of his chin, and a slight cant of shoulder and hip. He knows he must look acceptable, because Felassan seems pleased.
It is very different to their last meeting, in the Fade.
"Then it is my pleasure to be the first," He says, stepping forward. The grass brightens under his feet, briefly flourishing, only to die as each step lifts away. Even here, the fade greets him like an affectionate cat, "I had a very interesting conversation with Beleth, recently, and it gave me cause to seek your out. Do not doubt that I have questions... But I am all too aware of our shared history."
It is a rehearsed speech, of course. He had pondered for a long time on what to say, how to say it. How to broach the topic without backing his friend into a desperate corner.
"Tell me that you wish only a quiet visit from a friend, and I will not speak. But if you would hear what I have to say..."
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It's a trait Felassan is very fond of, actually. His laugh and grin are both more affectionate than sharp, and he hums, perhaps genuinely tempted by the option to make Solas stand there and suffer in silence for a while — but no. If Solas goes too deep into his own head, one of these days he might never climb back out of it.
"I didn't want to lie to her," he says.
Because this place seems to revel in lowering guards and revealing secrets. Because to dance around the truth while taking advantage of their hospitality and then be revealed might make him seem a snake, a schemer — a slow arrow, sure. Because he simply did not want to lie to her, lying there under the sky, after she'd been so kind and wonderful.
And because he's reckless, too, in a way he has not been since he was very young, or perhaps even then. Everything on Felassan's list of worst case scenarios — except dying in bondage, the very worst of them — has already come and gone, one of the last checked off when his words cut short in the last Fade-forest clearing they shared, and here they still are. Even with all the conclusions Felassan has already drawn and the apologies he expects he may be required to make, this conversation could not possibly be as bad as a thousand things that have already happened.
"It's nothing you should worry about, my friend. Everything is fine, and I would never..." Too laughable to even say. They're happy. They're good for each other. What small part of this has ever hurt is better now, not worse. He shakes his head, still smiling. "No, I'm sorry. You have a speech. Let's hear it."
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He sees now, and is torn between a strange, new wonder... and a deep, appalling sense of having missed... everything. What did it mean for this to be true? For how long had Felassan been longing, saying nothing?
Everything is fine, and I would never...
"...Betray me?" He finishes, droll and quiet, smiling for the joke, despite dire memory's velvet claws, "She told me that you had long carried a secret longing, a hope that you feared could never be answered. She asked me if it was indeed hopeless, and proposed something new, between the three of us."
This now is not the afore-planned speech, which had been more than a little terrible, and had included a metaphor about trees and winding vines. He has always been a mediocre poet, after all— but he has found his feet in this conversation, and forges ahead with his hands clasped behind his back, still tense despite it all, awaiting a real answer.
"It is not hopeless, falon. But I would hear from you, what you want. Having only just regained your friendship, I would not casually discard it. But I..." The pause comes then, sincerity giving way to vulnerability, and Solas stumbles at the threshold, as he so often does, "...I care for you, and when I allow myself to love, I do so with all that I am. But I may lie, I may distance myself, I can be cruel, and prideful, and vicious. I am... difficult, as you know. I am not a safe person to love. Tell me you wish for things to be as they are."
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Solas must know that, with that spring in his step, that smile. This is not the manner of a man who fears betrayal. Nor one who intends to be cruel. Felassan's promise to do better means trusting him not to be. So he smiles at him with his head cocked, too curious to be embarrassed, even as he's listening to Solas lay his own simple heart out before him with too-fine phrases. Secret longing — someone has been reading too many romances, Felassan thinks, and prepares to say, too, before Solas says it is not hopeless and he's knocked off his certain, steady ground.
But he's casual about it, of course. He leans to the side, and because this is the Fade — a Fade — there is a tree there waiting to catch his shoulder at an angle that looks more nonchalant than like he needs to sit down. The fading of his smile is slow and incomplete. It simmers down to a wry whisper of what it had been. He shakes his head twice, the first a bemused and preliminary rejection of the entire concept of this conversation occurring, the second sharper and more specific: he's not going to tell Solas that. Don't tell him what to do.
"That is how things are," he says. He means: "I have loved you through all of that already. Sometimes because of it."
Hope makes him warier than the absence of it did. The thing about watching someone so closely for so long is that he would have seen it, surely, if Solas had ever watched him back.
"I'll tell you what I don't want. I don't want to be rewarded for my service." Like a servant, like a dog. "You don't owe me anything."
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Because Felassan would betray him. Had. This was not a blind thing, with no limit, no end. As with Mythal, there could come a time that Solas lost his love, and his loyalty. Where that threshold stood, it was Solas' to step over it, or not, and reap the consequences; he saw that now.
"Indeed, I do not. Although, if you truly believed I would offer such a thing as the price of any service, as a Master overlording his servant, you would never have followed me in the first place," He replies, smoothly assured. He has cornered the prey now, and Felassan's lean is its own admission of that fact; Solas comes closer, and closer still, "I do not ask that you follow me now. Instead I am asking you, if you will stand alongside me. If that is what you wish."
He has always been the taller of the two. But he waits, a little too near, waiting, watching, looking for the first time with new eyes and seeing a new truth. It is entirely intoxicating, and yet his smile falters in the face of that stubborn nonchalance. No.
No, it had been thousands of years, and Felassan had said nothing, done nothing, and broken from him in the end. If he had ever wished to make more of it than silence and private fantasy, he had had more than ample opportunity. Solas was mistaken to hope.
"I apologize. I should not have pushed you. I thought it must change everything, to understand now..." It was not even that Beleth had been wrong, after all. And if they should be happy together, when he was not present, then it was good: she deserved every happiness in the world, with or without him. And Felassan was a very great joy, indeed; if he could not bear Solas' presence in such matters, then it was only reasonable. He steps back, then lowering his head slightly, watching Felassan as he does, as if he is not certain he will get another chance, "...But I have overstepped."
"I will not trouble you further. I am sorry to have caused you yet more grief."
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His faltering smile and his apology are not quite enough to spur him to action. Not on the surface. Felassan stays against the tree, eyes fixed on Solas's face, a silent furrow deepening between his eyebrows, and makes no motion to stop him.
But the Fade does. Felassan's power may be meager against Solas's, easily overwritten if Solas endeavors to do so, but this is his dream, responsive to his will in the absence of something stronger counteracting it, and Solas's backwards step is undone by there simply being less ground between them than there was a moment before. Undone and then some, an overcorrection that can be blamed on the force of the don't go that roils beneath the outward impassivity.
"It's not grief."
He knows what to do with grief. Quite practiced at it. But this —
The sudden recollection of Solas's face outside the house, here in Caldera, when Felassan kissed his knuckles. Four thousand years of everything he might try to hold onto slipping through his hands, and now they're suddenly full, if he wants them to be. And he must, because he has the dreamed fabric of Solas's shirt in his fist, and his other hand on his shoulder to pull him down. Felassan could dream himself taller, dream a rock of perfect height beneath his own feet, but it's truer this way, having to reach to kiss his familiar cheek and the less familiar corner of his mouth.
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Surprised. He had thought himself so wise, so willing to understand. He knows his friend, thought he knew, but after so long he finds that was has grown between them has grown down and through, and deeper than he might have imagined. He is
Being pulled down, made to bend, to change his ways, his stoic face, the memory of what it is to be seized by his shirt, the dream of a kiss, barely-imagined, and he is
Solas leans back, just a moment, staring at Felassan wonderingly, certain and then uncertain, and then certain again but of one thing only. Yes. This is love, no different than before; what else could motivate him to trust someone so deeply as he did Felassan, what else could motivate him to remain so loyal, for so long, in the service of the man who had broken the world. What else could it be, shining fearful and courageous and defiant in Felassan's wicked eyes.
It changed nothing. It changed... everything.
He counters the harshness of Felassan's grip with his own, more gentle and no less fervent, pressing Felassan back, deeper, more passionately. He feels rather than sees the tree come into his back, the Fade nothing loathe to facilitate their passion, and— Oh, had he meant to go this far? Had he known what it would be like, to feel that ancient devotion rise in ardor under lips and teeth, to drink it down?
Solas is breathing a little harder, when he remembers that they should wait. That as intoxicating as this is, it is not the same as agreement, or conversation.
Oh, but he longs.
"We... should meet again, outside the Fade. Will you come home to us, ma'nehn?"
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Cracked further still by home and us and ma'nehn.
It's the us that lands the most solidly. It's what his thoughts can grab hold of most easily. He glances past Solas's shoulder as if he expects Beleth to be standing there already, looking either very pleased with herself or very impatient to be included, or both. She could manage both. A proud glint in her eyes and a wrinkled nose. But she isn't there, and it's the thought of her waiting that pulls him back firmly to the present. His expression sharpens until he looks more like himself again. Smirking. Sure of himself, of this. Ready for action.
"I'm not far," he says. "I'll make it by morning."
He hasn't let go of Solas's shirt or his shoulder. Felassan kisses him again. He means it to be brief, an until next time, but he snags and catches and lingers for several beats too long for that before he cuts himself off, quite abruptly, and lets go to hold both hands up to press Solas back to a less tempting distance with his palms.
He opens his mouth to say something else, inhales the unnecessary breath for it, and instead only shakes his head, smiling and silent, before vanishing out of this world and into the one he needs to start crossing.
He isn't far. He could make it faster than he does, the way he once rushed from Halamshiral to Val Royeaux in a blur of sprinting and Fade-stepping. But he only walks it, steady, stopping not even to pick flowers — although he does pick them, swerving to swipe them up mid-step — and does the thinking Solas's worry and proximity hadn't left room for, and then some. As he approaches their door in the early light of morning, he's only turning ma'nehn over in his head like a gem in his hand.
He has already stopped knocking, exactly, when he visits them, except for rapping on the wall as he passes to the door, enough time for someone to shout that they need a moment if they have hypothetically decided to get up to no good right there on the dining table. He does it now, too, though he doesn't expect them to be there, or perhaps not even to be awake. Finding himself correct on the first count, at least, he's happy enough to busy himself dropping the little bouquet he's gathered into a cup of water and helping himself to their kettle.
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Then, there is the waiting.
Beleth is rarely described as impatient. She waited ten years for Solas, which might be short to some people, but felt like several lifetimes to her. This wait is nothing compared to that, particularly when she's been given surety of the ending, but it still inspires an almost uncharacteristic restlessness. Sleep makes it easier, but she's keyed up enough that she's already awake, hair done, makeup expertly applied, clothing... well, the clothing is a simple shift and robe still, because. Well.
Because.
Because, when Felassan makes his presence known, Beleth can appear at the doorway to the kitchen, hand on the frame, and her robe is artistically draped to make sure that one freckled shoulder is visible, in a way that she definitely hadn't made sure to engineer for his arrival. Felassan has always been handsome, but something about him seemed to shine even more than usual -- He looked almost like one of the ancient elvhen murals come to life, the sun shining at his back, glinting through his hair, his smile as infuriating as ever.
She'd hoped to school her face into something a little more smooth and suave, but at the sight of him, her face brightens into a brilliant, joyful smile. It's only somewhat diminished by the smug look that follows on its heels.
"I told you so."
It's deserved, she's quite sure. And what's also deserved is what she had wanted to do on that rooftop, and had, as usual, managed to go about achieving that desire: Before Felassan could have a chance to sass her, she strode forward, grabbed the collar of his shirt, and pulled him down into a hungry kiss.
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It wasn't necessary. She was beautiful half-crushed by rubble and she was beautiful wearing silly cat clothes and flailing on the muddy bank of a river and she was beautiful being tossed around on the back of a furious bear. But she's beautiful here, too, and the fact that she's taken such care, this early, when she's already the one who's given him a gift twice over —
Understanding that softens the edges of his smile, rather than shifting it into a smirk, even when she's turning smug and gloating. He doesn't even open his mouth to begin trying to sass her before she's hauling him down, met with no resistance whatsoever. They have some catching up to do, after all, to pull even with what he and Solas got up to in the Fade. For fairness' sake, he really does have to put his hands on her waist and pull her closer, then after some seconds change his mind, break his mouth away, lift her up to sit on the edge of the table, and kiss her again.
The second break lasts longer. He stays close, but he reaches around and behind her to pull one of his collected flowers from the cup and tuck it behind her ear. (Apologies for the dampness of the stem. At least it probably isn't itchweed?)
"Everyone guesses right every now and then," he says. The inexorable urge to be be aggravating has caught up, as it always must, even with his forehead touching hers. "Don't let it go to your head."
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Solas should know: he keeps trying to know better than her, and each time he finds himself again the same position of being forced to reckon with her power. Sometimes for the worse, and sometimes... very much for the better.
But he does not seem to be upset.
"Enjoying yourselves?" He asks, every bit as much as if this were some casual thing, picking flowers by the roadside, or walking the streets on market-day. Solas holds himself slightly aloof, appearing nearly unaffected, but his eyes are soft, and his expression reserved; those who do not know him might call it cold, but Solas is smiling, in his quiet, uncertain way.
It is good. It is good, to see them together, like this. Dare he hope for an invitation?
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Ah, there he was.
She turns to Solas, adjusting the flower in her hair (and trying to subtly wipe some of the wet from her very carefully styled hair, thanks) as she flashes him a winsome, pleased smile -- trying not to look too smug. "True -- you will be right, eventually, Felassan. I have full faith in you." Then she hooks her leg around his waist, and lifts her hand, reaching for Solas.
"Will you just stand there, vhenan, or will you join us?"
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And she says what needs to be said, so Felassan doesn't sully Beleth's enticing rhetorical question with what he would have said. He gestures it silently instead, tipping his head for a pointed glance at the spot on the floor where Solas's feet ought to be. Come here. Come get a wet flower of his own, slid to rest above his ear and drip down his neck with the same self-satisfied grin Felassan would have given him yesterday or the day before or eons ago, now that he's had a few hours to reclaim his footing.
Solas wouldn't hurt him, he'd decided along his path through the woods, and laughed quick and loud enough to startle sleeping wildlife, and amended the thought to: Solas wouldn't hurt him like this.
"I was right the day I met you," he says to Beleth in the meantime, content to remain trapped by her leg. "Quick work."
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But he is being given an order, and Solas complies willingly, taking her hand as he does so. The flower is a gesture as cheeky and ordinary as ever Felassan has been, both a return to ancient form and in this new context a deliciously reframed invitation. He glances at Beleth, a warning and a confirmation all in one; something akin to asking permission, though he is not.
He catches Felassan's hand, as it retreats, and when his friend turns back from delivering his joke, Solas kisses him, sweet and soft and tender, and then lingers in the moment just long enough to make of it an invitation. His eyes flick over to Beleth again, to gauge her reaction, and to invite her in.
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She hasn't, of course. As Solas leans in, Beleth lowers the leg she had hooked Felassan with, so that instead she can slip her arms around him from the side, the hand towards his front slipping under his shirt, and her lips going to his neck -- easier to reach, now that she's been kindly given the boost of the dining room table.
It's only once she feels Felassan stuck quite securely between the two of them that she speaks again, lips brushing his skin. "Though I could blame both of you, as well. How could I resist falling for the most fascinating men I've ever met?" Which is, in her opinion, far more important than being attractive or charismatic. They both drew her in by being interesting -- two different flavors of it.
Solas' keen mind and eager willingness to share with her the world that he knew. His kindness, even when it was killing him, the way that he interacted with the Fade and spirits, so alien to her. Felassan's sly tongue, steadfast loyalty. Utter strangeness, and carelessness to how people felt about it. They were both unlike any man that walked Thedas before, or after.
And they both saw fit to call her -- her, born a mortal, a simple Dalish Hunter -- theirs.
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It isn't really the first time, though, of course. Old reflexes from threesomes and moresomes past make it second nature to balance them: while he is sliding the hand Solas caught to the back of his neck and pressing him into a kiss that is less gentle, teeth deployed half playful and half ravenous, he's leaning into Beleth and slipping his hand up from her knee to her outer thigh beneath her shift. Truly an expert call, the shift. And when Beleth speaks and he turns his head to answer her —
"There is a simple explanation for us. What is your excuse, young one?"
— and nuzzles his way down into kissing her inexplicably wise, clever, fascinating mouth, too, with less lip-nipping but no less keen eagerness, he pulls Solas's hand along with him, around to his sternum, to keep him close and to insist that Solas touch him, too. He has wanted this for a month, or he has wanted this for a very long time — at the moment there is little difference. He just wants, now.
But he is perfectly capable of being reasonable and responsible when he cares to be, and he cares about this a great deal. So without fully extracting himself from either of them, he leans back far enough to look between them with the smile of a man who doesn’t understand where all this good luck is coming from, all of a sudden, but has no intention of turning it down.
“Do we need to talk about this?”
It’s a real question. They can say yes, they can say no. He isn’t going to argue either way.
(* Regularly scheduled disasters and near-death experiences notwithstanding.)
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This way being, of course, as difficult to define as any emotion can be. Love? Yes, but in what manner? Lust? That much is apparant. Solas' hand splays obediently over Felassan's heart, and he keeps it there a moment, feeling the warm, living weight of him, the strength beneath the thin barrier of his shirt. He allows himself the liberty to touch, hand sliding almost carelessly to one side, over muscle, nipple, the delicate curve of his collabone, and further, up the slim, promising line of shoulder and neck. Solas threads his fingers into Felassan's hair in fascination, undoing the careful ties, and brushing his thumb across the point of his ear.
And even now, Beleth's clever hands are at work, and Solas bends his head to press a kiss against her brow. Oh, she is beautiful and wise! It is agony to wait.
"Ar lath ma," He says, meaning them both, "I am a fool, and so often blind; Beleth had already kissed me twice before I ever realized her feelings for me were more than teasing flirtation. But we have endured thusfar, and I am committed."
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And then he stops kissing her, and now she really is going to pout, only narrowly saved from it by having to stop to mull over his words. And now Solas is kissing her brow, and she tilts her head up to him, to get some proper kisses.
"I have said what I wished to -- I believe I have made all my thoughts clear. If you two need to talk, or if you have questions for me, I will of course accommodate." She reaches up to graze her hand against Solas' face, eyes turned to Felassan. "Though I fear I might need direction when it comes to... positioning. And whatnot." She glances aside, clears her throat. One day she'll discuss such things more easily (though her mood is quickly making the topic more enthusiastic). "I'm not inexperienced, but it has always been limited to figuring out... ah, configurations for two bodies."
There is, of course, the most obvious, but that seems a bit daunting, at the moment. She assumes anyone attempting it usually works up to the task, though.
And speaking of which. She'll reach for Solas' face, to give him another hard kiss. "But I place myself and my trust in both of your capable hands."
nsfw
Though he does smile. Of course. But less like it's funny, more like it's sweet, or at least like it's an even mix of the two. "Sometimes it's only a matter of taking turns," he says while he watches pretty lips work against pretty lips. "Being patient."
And who in this room is more patient than he is? Not even Solas. And besides pure patience, Felassan wants his turn on the sideline. Too active and handsy a man for only spectating, perhaps, yes, but he wants to fix his mouth to Beleth's neck while Solas employs his clever tongue between her legs. He wants to hold Solas pinned against his chest while Beleth's hips work around him. He wants to murmur into their ears and feel it when they make each other twitch and tremble.
He has a feeling they'll be willing to indulge him sometime.
Not this morning, though. Not for the first time in an age anyone has touched him this way and the first time in much longer that it's felt as if it mattered. Felassan strips out of his shirt, revealing skin and ink and faded scars with no ceremony and only a quick, forbidding glance at Solas — if Solas has any qualms about the fang on his ribs, any opinion at all other than hot, he better save it for later — and shakes his loose hair back into some kind of order. Then he turns his attention to peeling Solas out of his, avid eyes raking over his torso in search of what's familiar and what's new and what he's rarely been able to gaze at with such open interest, then slipping Beleth's robe off her freckled shoulders before trying to negotiate her out of her shift altogether so he can examine her just as eagerly.
So that's a no on having questions, on his end.
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Time enough for questions later. For now, it was enough to indulge in the fantasy thus provided.
And Solas too, is not unchanged. In ancient days he took great pride in his body, in keeping it clean of scar and blemish, and was often teased for the habit. But for years before he regained his strength, he was no more than an ordinary mage, with an ordinary mage's power to heal, and the marks of modern Thedas are clear on him. Here, the puckered scar, where Dalish arrows tried to take his life. There, where lyrium dragonfire had caught in his robes, snuffed out quickly, but not quickly-enough to save the patch of skin along his side and back, now permanently a different texture, the scar a reddened reminder of Corypheus' agency. Smaller things, scrapes, cuts, places where a too-oft scratched insect bite had left a new spot, like an over-large freckle, discolored... And there were freckles as well.
"As you say, Ma'nehn," Submitting himself thus to inspection, he reaches for Beleth to give Felassan a moment, "Peace, my heart. You will not find it so difficult. You are wanted here, and loved; anything you choose to do will be welcomed."
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And she has her own scars. There are, of course, the jagged lightning scars that start where her left arm ends, racing up the arm and across the chest. But plenty of other scars join it, though none quite overshadow the anchor's mark. Thedas can be a harsh world for anyone, and Beleth was given a more violent life than most.
There are less violent marks across her skin -- the freckles that cross her cheeks trail down her shoulders, along her back.
But she's not thinking about that right now, nor any marks on any of them. Not with Felassan and Solas' hands both upon her. Quite near any thoughts she could claim have left along with her patience, and are promptly replaced by growing desire. What she wants? It's hard to state a specific thing -- the two of them, touching and kissing, her and each other, sensations and senses. She manages to gather enough of herself to decide one thing.
"I think you have been quite patient enough, Ma'atisha. The time for it is gone." She gives Solas another kissing, and a quick nip of his bottom lip, before she pulls away, giving him a knowing smile. Then she turns to Felassan. Her peace, waiting so long, and willing to wait longer, staring up at the sky and ready to let his desires simply sit there with him. Well, no longer.
Her hands go to cup his face, then she kisses him, hard and fast, hands trailing down his chest, down and down, until she reaches his hips, fingers of both hands dancing across skin, slowly growing closer together, meeting in the middle. And there, the careful, agile hands of an archer show their dexterity.