Solavellan Fluff: Flower Crown

Read here on AO3. 

Solas holds the veilfire torch high and peers curiously around at the gloom in the hidden cave. Vivienne and the Iron Bull stand ready as well while Elia crouches beside the chest. Solas hears a soft creak as she opens the chest… then Elia snickers.

Bull turns at the faint sound of her mirth. “What’s in the box, Boss?”

“Just a minute,” Elia says, and Solas raises one eyebrow as she putters around with the contents of the chest, then tugs surreptitiously at her cowl. She gives a tiny, subtle cough, and a smirk pulls at the corner of his lips; Elia is in a playful mood, and he has no doubt that something amusing is about to ensue.

Finally Elia rises to her feet and faces them; then, biting her lip to quell a grin, she lowers her hood.

On her head is a crown.

A crown made of flowers.

Bull snorts with mirth and shakes his head. “Damn. How come you get first dibs on the flower crown? It would go perfectly with my eyepatch.”

Vivienne sighs musically. “Oh, darling. You can’t wear that. Nobody will take you seriously with a flower tiara on your head. You might as well run barefoot through the streets yelling about riding a halla all the way to Halamshiral.”

Elia smiles sweetly at Vivienne, but Solas detects the subtle bite in the Inquisitor’s words. “I don’t mind if they talk,” she says lightly. “I’d rather be known for what I do than how I look.” She shoots the tiniest sidelong glance at Vivienne’s opulent silk-and-velvet gown as she delicately readjusts the ludicrous crown on her head.

Solas watches with a rising tide of affection as she tweaks one ivory petal, but his admiration is for deeper things than the blossoms on her brow. It’s her attitude that truly makes him stop and stare. The only thing that Elia boasts is a quiet conviction. She lacks pretension, focusing on her goals rather than her image, and her methods are so idealistic and unjaded that Solas can’t help but admire her. It’s how he once wished to operate, yet he’s forced now to do the opposite: he must occlude the things he’s done and project a completely benign persona, hiding his true goals behind a duplicitous mask.

Elia rests one hand on his forearm, pulling him from his brooding. “What do you think?” she says, and bats her eyelashes flirtatiously. Her eyes are clear and free of guile, and Solas wishes he could protect her from everything bitter in this world – even him. Particularly him.

He gazes seriously at her. “You are beautiful,” he says softly.

A slow smile lights her face and sets her eyes aglow, and Solas is helpless to do anything but smile back. Vivienne tuts impatiently, and Bull wolf-whistles. “Can’t believe I’m saying this, Boss, but how about you two save your foreplay for later when there aren’t a bunch of insane lyrium addicts around the corner?”

Elia chuckles, then gently takes the veilfire torch from Solas’s hand. “Come on,” she says. “Let’s show these Red Templars my new crown.” She shoots him a tiny wink, then leads them toward the quarry.

Solas follows the eerie glow of the torch as she runs back up the stairs. The veilfire highlights the velvety glow of the petals on her head, and despite his melancholy, he smiles at the sight of her.

He might be forced to hide many facets of himself, but his love for Elia Lavellan is a truth he’s free to show.

If it strikes your fancy, Nil/Aloy for the kiss prompts, #31 (after a small rejection) please?

It does strike my fancy, it does indeed! Thank you for the ask @makocartwheels​ my love! Read on AO3 here. 

(Timeline note: this takes place before What Else Matters.)

******************

“Access base functions, then reset the MINERVA protocol… It should work… it…” A text alert in a helpfully forbidding red flashed up in Aloy’s Focus display, and she growled with frustration before dropping her screwdriver with a clatter.

“Damn it,” she hissed, and sat back on her heels. She’d been trying all day to jerry-rig her device to amplify the signals between the Tallnecks, but despite her best efforts, the endeavour was not going well.

I need damned parts, she thought, and ran a hand through her hair. If she was being perfectly honest, she suspected that she needed information too – some arcane knowledge of the Old Ones’ technology that she just didn’t have – and that’s what was most galling. She’d gone through every bunker and every ruin as thoroughly as she and Nil were able, and she’d collected every document she saw, and still she was incapable of this task that seemed like it should be so simple.

“Suntress,” Nil called.

Aloy clenched her jaw and took a deep breath before turning. “Yeah?” she replied.

Nil sauntered into the mouth of the cave where she was storing her half-finished device. They were about a half-hour’s walk from the Rustwash Tallneck, an easy distance for carrying the device – if only the bloody damn thing would work.

Nil’s pale grey eyes travelled over her messy workspace and her undoubtedly flushed cheeks. “Take a break. Stretch your legs,” he suggested. He smiled coaxingly at her. “The hunt calls your name, a phantom voice cloaked in blood. There’s a-“

“Not now, Nil,” she snapped. “I’m in the middle of something, okay? I can’t come hunting bandits right now. You’re on your own this time.” She turned back to the mess of wires and metal in front of her and picked up her screwdriver.

A few futile minutes later, the buzzing guilt in her chest finally compelled her to turn around, but Nil was gone.

Aloy sighed and looked down at her workspace. Then she rose to her feet and left the cave to find her husband.

He was fifteen meters away, busily looting a Longleg corpse. Aloy raised her eyebrows in surprise; she hadn’t heard the characteristic chaotic ruckus that usually accompanied Nil attacking a machine, but his signature red-fletched arrows in the defunct machine’s power cells were proof of his conquest over the metal beast.

Sheepishly she approached him, but when he looked up at her, his face was devoid of reproach. He shot her a half-smile, then silently held out his hand. In his palm were the Longleg’s alarm signal antennae – precisely the parts she needed for her project.

He rose to his feet as Aloy gingerly took the delicate items from his hand. “The screeching tear of metal whets my palate for the fight, but I let it pass this time,” he said. “I thought you could use these.”

Aloy swallowed hard and looked up into his handsome face. There was no expectation in his expression, not even a hint of reproof, and Aloy had been so mean to him…

She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I… wasn’t nice. And you took down this Longleg for me…”

“Kiss me again and all is forgiven,” he replied smoothly, but Aloy could see from the humour in his gaze that he already had.

A heartbreaking pang of guilt squeezed her chest as she rose onto her toes and pressed her lips to his. He slid his hand onto her hair as he accepted her kiss, and Aloy hugged him tighter, hoping her embrace would convey her apology more clearly than her fumbling words.

Nil might not be bothered by her snappishness, but that was no excuse. If anything, it was all the more reason to keep her temper in check.

He slowly pulled away from their kiss, then lowered his lips to her ear. “Come hunting with me?” he purred, and Aloy nodded without hesitation.

I’ll do better next time, she thought.

A Solavellan kiss: Taarsidath An-Halsam

pikapeppa:

Kisses and hugs to my darling @hellarcanine​ for this kiss prompt. Here is #42 (out of pride) for Solas and Elia Lavellan. Read here on AO3 if preferred.

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Elia pants with exertion as she flicks the hilt of her spirit blade. “Is everyone alright?” she calls.

“Never been better!” Bull roars, and Varric waves a tired hand before sitting heavily on the ground. “Damn,” he gasps. “This girl was more vicious than that Fereldan Frostback. That was a piece of cake compared to this beast.”

“Exactly! This was magnificent!” Bull replies. “When are we going for the next one, Boss? Tomorrow? Tonight? We can make it to the Hissing Wastes by morning if we leave right now!”

Solas ignores them and strides over to Elia’s side. He takes her face in his shaking hands. “Are you all right?” he demands. His eyes flick across her body; a slash of blood crowns her shoulder from where the dragon’s tail nicked her, and she’s covered in soot and dirt, but otherwise she seems remarkably unhurt.

“I’m fine, Solas. I promise,” she assures him. “Not bad for a mage, wouldn’t you say? Landing the killing blow on an Abyssal high dragon?” Then she sighs and winces guiltily. “I feel like I should be proud, but I think Frederic might be disappointed that she’s dead…”

“Enjoy your victory, Boss! We’ll be drinking to you tonight!” Bull bellows, and Varric chuckles as he hefts himself to his feet again.

Solas continues to stare at her. His whole body is tight with residual anxiety. He was secretly disappointed that she didn’t specialize in rift magic – they would have had even more to talk about if she had – but he hadn’t accounted for how utterly horrifying it would be to see her running headfirst towards an enraged fire-breathing dragon with only a staff on her back and a hilt in her hand.

He slides his fingers into her sweat-dampened hair. “You killed a dragon,” he says stupidly. It’s an obvious fact, a waste of words to even say it, but he can’t get past the strangeness of it. His Elia killed a dragon. In this blunted world, a world that’s so solid and static and staid, a Dalish mage used an ancient elvhen technique to form a blade of pure magic. She struck this legendary beast low with the power of the Fade alone.

She smiles at him and strokes his wrist with her glowing left hand, and Solas can’t resist: he pulls her against his body and kisses her hard.

“Hahaha, yes! Taarsidath an-halsam!” Bull bellows, but Solas barely hears him; Elia grips his tunic for support as he bends her back, then her tongue is thrusting into his mouth, and Solas melts into her like lyrium into a dwarven masterwork. He vaguely hears the clatter of her spirit blade hilt hitting the ground as she wraps her arms uninhibitedly around his neck. The stench of burning rocks and melted bone is acrid, but her hair is electric with the scent of lightning and her tongue is hot and smooth, and Solas is lost. The blood still pounds anxiously in his ears and his muscles are shaky with exertion, but none of that matters, for he is lost in her.

Elia grips his neck in her hands, then finally breaks their kiss with a gasp. She leans back and grins at him, then starts to laugh.

He smiles helplessly at her breathless mirth and admires the sweat-streaked soot smeared across her vallaslin. Battles are the kind of memory he prefers to forget, but this – the relief of victory, the joy of love, the unequivocal, unquestionable pride pounding through his veins as he clutches his triumphant Dalish lover close: these are the moments he will never forget.

pikapeppa:

My love, I am the speed of sound
I left them motherless, fatherless
Their souls dangling inside out from their mouths
But it’s never enough…

I want you

I carved your name across three counties
And ground it in with bloody hides
Broken necks will line the ditch
‘Til you “Stop it! Stop it! Stop this madness!”

I want you

I have waited with a glacier’s patience
Smashed every transformer with every trailer
‘Til nothing was standing
Sixty-five miles wide

But still you are nowhere, nowhere in sight

Come out to meet me, run out to meet me
Come into the light

– “This Tornado Loves You”, by Neko Case