He could look at them longer. He will look at them longer. Later today, this week, over the next several months. When they've satisfied and exhausted each other his difficulty sleeping indoors will give him plenty of time to examine their scars and their freckles, the places they are long and lean and the places they are soft and curving, drowsy but avid, studying the land where he intends to build a home. When they rouse again his fingers will already be pressing or tracing, and he'll murmur what happened here. Or his fingers will be pressing and tracing in a different way, and he'll bite someone's belly button to rouse them faster.
Right now, though. Right now he's letting out a shuddering exhale, slow but buckling, like a muscle that's held something heavy too long trembling on the way to put it down. He could have held it forever. He could have loved them both ten thousand years and never touched them, the loneliness of it not a gaping wound but an old scar that only occasionally tugged wrong.
Beleth's idea is much better.
He leans to press his forehead to her temple, his nose to her cheek. Another new thing in the sea of new things he's found here: the contrasting sensations of her hands, hot skin and cooler metal. His fingers on her thigh grip hard enough to leave fleeting pale prints behind when he lets go to reach blindly back for Solas, to try to draw him close and closer still behind him. Millennia of closeness, but here's a new frontier. He chases down Solas's hand, and captures it, and imprisons it beneath his own not on his own skin, but Beleth's, fingers tangled. "Lasa ghilan," he says, with only a little cheek. He doesn't need anyone to show him how to touch a woman, generally, but this is a very specific woman, and he wants —
mea maxima culpa
He could look at them longer. He will look at them longer. Later today, this week, over the next several months. When they've satisfied and exhausted each other his difficulty sleeping indoors will give him plenty of time to examine their scars and their freckles, the places they are long and lean and the places they are soft and curving, drowsy but avid, studying the land where he intends to build a home. When they rouse again his fingers will already be pressing or tracing, and he'll murmur what happened here. Or his fingers will be pressing and tracing in a different way, and he'll bite someone's belly button to rouse them faster.
Right now, though. Right now he's letting out a shuddering exhale, slow but buckling, like a muscle that's held something heavy too long trembling on the way to put it down. He could have held it forever. He could have loved them both ten thousand years and never touched them, the loneliness of it not a gaping wound but an old scar that only occasionally tugged wrong.
Beleth's idea is much better.
He leans to press his forehead to her temple, his nose to her cheek. Another new thing in the sea of new things he's found here: the contrasting sensations of her hands, hot skin and cooler metal. His fingers on her thigh grip hard enough to leave fleeting pale prints behind when he lets go to reach blindly back for Solas, to try to draw him close and closer still behind him. Millennia of closeness, but here's a new frontier. He chases down Solas's hand, and captures it, and imprisons it beneath his own not on his own skin, but Beleth's, fingers tangled. "Lasa ghilan," he says, with only a little cheek. He doesn't need anyone to show him how to touch a woman, generally, but this is a very specific woman, and he wants —