Thank you for this prompt! I was more than happy to fill it!

I wrote pure fluff and smut for this one – not even a little angst… because I’ll be taking these two to Heartbreak Central™ in a few days… TT^TT

Read here on AO3 instead.

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Athera glanced doubtfully at Skyhold’s dank prison cells, then smirked at Abelas. “Is this your idea of a romantic date?”

The Sentinel shot her a chiding look. “You must be patient. Some of the best destinations are the culmination of the most inglorious paths.” He reached out and took her hand. “Not much further now.”

Athera eyed him thoughtfully as he led her through the enclosed section of the prison and out toward the crumbling outer section, which opened out into a breathtaking – and vertiginous – view of the Frostback Mountains. The ancient stone floor in the center of this area had disintegrated completely, the ground giving way to the roaring waterfall that pulsed beneath the castle. Athera and Abelas skirted the edges of the walls, their bare feet carefully navigating the slippery path as he led her toward the outermost cell where the ground gave way to open sky.

He turned to her and took her hands. “We must climb partway down this wall. There are handholds, but I will give you some extra protection.”

He gently squeezed her hands, and a tingling warmth suffused her palms. She gave a little shiver at the unusual sensation, then smiled cheekily at him. “What, you don’t trust my balance? I’ll have you know I’m very nimble.”

“I know you are,” he said smoothly, and Athera bit the inside of her cheek in amusement as he graced her with a rare smirk. “But I do not take foolish chances. Now come.”

He began to climb down the wall, and as Athera followed him down, she marvelled at the effect of his magic on her hands; her grip felt stronger somehow and her palms almost sticky, but not in a disgusting way. She was quite sure that even if she tried to release the ancient stones of the wall, her hands would refuse to let go.

A short time later, her toes touched grass, and Abelas gallantly took her hand to help her find her footing as she looked around. He had led her to a narrow stretch of land, enclosed on the northeast by Skyhold’s majestic walls and sloping further down the mountain to the south. The waterfall had softened into a river that bissected this small stretch of land before flowing down to the south.

It was a lovely little spot. The grass underfoot was long and lush, and it tickled her ankles as she wiggled her bare toes. The area was scattered with hardy wildflowers that thrived in the cooler climes of the mountains, and the stars were startlingly bright overhead without the shroud of Skyhold’s torches to dim them.

“Wow,” she breathed. “This is a really nice spot. It’s so untouched.”

“Yes. It is very private,” Abelas agreed. “It is a purposely difficult path to follow.”

Athera frowned curiously. “Why?”

“It was once an emergency escape route,” he explained. “In case Tarasyl’an Te’las should ever be overrun.”

She released a tiny laugh at the thought. Skyhold overrun? The Inquisition’s castle might be ancient and falling apart in places, but Cullen and the Inquisition’s dwarven stonemasons all agreed it was the most impregnable fortress they’d ever encountered.

Abelas tilted her chin up to face him, and Athera’s amusement faded at the seriousness of his face. “Nothing is infallible, vhenan,” he said softly. He studied her face for a moment, then turned away to watch the rushing flow of the river. “Even the strongest structures can fall. It is often just a matter of time.”

Athera watched her sad but stoic lover for a moment with a swelling of painful empathy. She sidled up beside him, then twined her fingers with his. “We’ll keep Skyhold strong for as long as we can,” she told him. “We owe that much to those who came before.” She gave his hand a gentle squeeze. “I’m glad you’re here, Abelas. Your presence honours this place.”

He squeezed her fingers in return, but his eyes remained on the river, and they stood in silence for a moment.

Then Athera nudged his arm gently. “Hey. Let’s play a game.”

Abelas huffed quietly, and just as she’d hoped, a small smirk lifted the corner of his lips. He glanced down at her. “A game?”

“Yes,” she said briskly. “A game is a pastime that has no point except to be fun. It’s a foreign concept to you, I know-”

“I know what a game is, van’ash’ain,” he drawled, and Athera snorted with laughter. She released his hand, then plopped down in the long grass and patted the ground beside her.

“Come on, play with me. Let’s make up stories for the constellations.” She lay back in the grass and smiled as Abelas lay down beside her with a sigh. He folded his hands over his abdomen, but his temple brushed against hers from the closeness of their heads, and Athera quietly savoured the easy intimacy of his nearness.

She pointed up at the sky. “I’m going to pretend I don’t know any elvhen constellations. That right there looks like a qunari cutting off dwarf’s beard. I’ll call it ‘The Big Chop.’”

Abelas huffed again, and Athera turned her head to look at him with a grin. “Well? What do you see?”

He pursed his lips, but Athera could see the amusement crinkling the corner of his eyes. Finally he spoke. “I see two nugs and a snoufleur. I will not tell you what they appear to be doing. You can use your imagination.”

Athera snickered, then sidled a little closer to him. “Show me where you see that! I want to see it too.”

He lifted one hand to trace a pattern in the air, and Athera’s eyes widened as a green stream of light trailed from his finger, illuminating the pattern he traced. “There,” he said. “Do not blame me for this. I am not responsible for the arrangement of the stars.”

Athera peered between the starry sky and the pattern of light he’d traced, then cackled. “That does not look like a snoufleur and two nugs! It looks like a perfectly innocent clowder of fennecs.” She elbowed him. “You’re a dirty one, monsieur ancient high-class elf,” she teased. “Seeing nugs and snoufleurs getting busy…”

“I said nothing about the creatures ‘getting busy’,” Abelas retorted. The green-lit pattern faded from the air as he folded his hands primly over his belly. “You filled that in yourself. It seems to me that you are the dirty one.”

Athera grinned and rolled onto her side to face him, but his expression was utterly placid. He ignored her shit-eating grin as he traced another verdant pattern in the air. “Now that, on the other hand, is most certainly an arrangement of many forms ‘getting busy’, as you say.”

Athera rolled onto her back again and looked at the pattern he’d traced. “Wow,” she said. She tilted her head slightly. “Wow, yeah. That’s impressive, actually. And all crowded around that one figure. How are there that many holes on a single person for-?”

Abelas chuckled quietly, and Athera broke off and glanced over at him. His laughter was so rare, and the precious sound of it always lifted a matching flutter of joy in her belly.

She reached over and took his hand, then pointed to the sky again. “What about that? What do you see there?”

Abelas was quiet for a moment before speaking. “A warrior riding a halla,” he said softly. “Bearing a two-handed sword. Implausible for a warrior on halla-back, I know, but that is what I see.” He turned his head to look at her. “And you? What do you see?”

His handsome face was so close and so dear, and Athera sank into the darkness of his pupils for a moment before tearing her gaze back to the sky. “Honestly? I see Solas wearing Blackwall’s beard as a hat,” she blurted.

For a moment, there was silence. Then Abelas laughed.

It was a big, broad burst of mirth that sounded like it was coming straight from his belly, and Athera smiled as an answering flush of happiness filled her chest and lit her cheeks. “It looks really bad,” she added lamely. “The forked bits of the beard are hanging right over his eyebrows…”

Abelas rolled toward her and cupped her cheek in his hand. “You are ridiculous,” he said. “This is a ridiculous game.”

He was chuckling still, and Athera stared helplessly at him. Her ancient lover was a beautiful thing, with his high cheekbones and his strong nose and his incongruously lush lips, but when he smiled – Creators, when he smiled…

Athera bit her lip, then lowered her eyes coyly before meeting his gaze again. “Yep, it’s pretty ridiculous,” she agreed. “Let’s do something else.”

Abelas’s chuckle faded, but his smile broadened, softening and warming into something even more beautiful than before. His thumb traced her cheekbone, then lightly brushed her lower lip. “What do you have in mind?” he asked.

The smoothness of his voice was enriched now with a brush of innuendo. Athera inhaled quietly, but she could already feel her spine arching instinctively at his tone. “You use your imagination,” she said breathlessly. “You must have had something in mind when you brought me to this nice secluded little spot.”

He huffed out a rueful little laugh. “You are not wrong,” he said, then rose to a kneeling position. “Will you take off your clothes?”

Athera released a little laugh of her own. His tone was polite, but the bluntness of his words sent a pulse of anticipation straight to the apex of her thighs. “Well, since you asked so nicely,” she replied, then swiftly she rose to her feet.

Her fingers were clumsy with haste as they unbuttoned her light coat and the shirt underneath, and goosebumps rippled across her skin as the cool night air kissed her bare skin. She shucked her coat and shirt, then glanced at her lover.

His bold stare roved across her collarbones and down to her puckered nipples, and the hunger in his face shot a bolt of desire straight into her belly. She slowly reached up to the coiled bun that kept her long dark hair controlled, watching all the while as her lover’s eyes tracked the lifting of her breasts. One by one, she pulled the pins free from her hair.

The twisted ropes of her hair fell loose from their bun, uncoiling and spilling down her back in a warm cascade, and she coyly pulled a section of hair over her shoulders to cover each breast.

Abelas’s smirk widened, and he settled back on his heels and ruefully shook his head. “Veraisa,” he whispered.

She smiled cheekily, then turned her back on him as she unlaced her soft nugskin leggings. Slowly and teasingly she rolled the leggings down to her ankles, purposely arching her back as she bent over, then kicked the leggings away. She slowly rose to her full height again and pushed her hair back over her shoulders, running her fingers through the thick mass in a purposeful ploy to tease.

Behind her, Abelas exhaled heavily, and finally Athera turned to face him. His face was utterly focused as he perused her naked body, his eyes practically incandescent in the gentle light of the stars. The intensity of his gaze called to the wanton that usually lay curled and quiet in her breast, and Athera took an eager step toward him. But Abelas held up his hand to stop her.

“Wait,” he said. “Stay there. Let me look at you.”

She stopped, then waited with rising desperation as his hot and languorous gaze travelled across her body. When his eyes came to rest at the juncture of her thighs, his tongue flicked out briefly to wet his lips, and a shiver of greedy goosebumps rippled across her skin.

This didn’t escape Abelas’s notice. “You feel a chill?” he asked.

Despite the brisk mountain air, she wasn’t cold, not really; blood was pumping through her body and pulsing in her core, lighting her from within with something hotter than mere warmth. But the tone of his question was loaded and the tilt of his chin was playful, so Athera happily played along. “Yes,” she replied, then lifted her chin. “Can you help me with that?”

He nodded his head. “Yes.” He lifted his hand, then traced an arc in the air with his finger.

A rippling buzz of warmth traced across Athera’s sternum in a smooth arc from collarbone to collarbone, and she gasped with surprise.

Her eyes snapped to his face. “You’re – the patterns you traced…?” she rasped.

He nodded again, and there was a distinctly satisfied curl to his lips now. “I am seeing constellations,” he said blandly. “Can I continue to trace them?”

It was a cheesy excuse, so very inexcusably cheesy, and Athera didn’t care one bit. “Gods, yes,” she said.

His smirk widened into a grin as he lifted his hand, and Athera clenched her fists and gasped again as a second streak of green light and heat spanned from her left nipple to her right.

She pressed her lips together, but a moan of pleasure escaped her nevertheless. The brushes of his magic purred with heat and a gentle perfect vibration, and Athera tilted her head back with bliss as her mind conjured a vision of his strong slender fingers on her breasts, a hot  firm pressure to join the sweet vibrating touch of his magic…

Two more verdant streaks of magic looped around her calves, followed closely by two more around her thighs, and Athera released a shaky whimper as the gently pulsing heat of his magic buzzed against her tender inner thighs.

She slowly opened her eyes to stare pleadingly down at her kneeling lover. His ardour was apparent in the swollen bulge between his legs, and Athera covetously eyed his hidden cock. Then Abelas pushed back his hood, and Athera watched with extreme interest as he stripped off his bracers and chestplate and tunic. Once he was naked from the waist up, he lifted his hand again and slowly twisted his fingers in a circular motion.

Three bands of magic appeared this time to join the rest: one around her waist that dipped below her navel, and two more around her thighs, right at the juncture of her hips, buzzing tauntingly right at the threshold of her feminine heat.

Athera mewled helplessly and jerked her hips. “Abelas,” she whined. The heated glow of his magic was maddening, a teasing taste of pleasure that only made her want his hands and mouth and cock all the more.

“Not just yet,” he breathed. Then he lifted one finger and drew a slow, small line in the air.

A buzzing beam of light tracked from her clit down along the length of her cleft. Athera cried out as the low and torturous thrum of heat pulsed against her swollen little bud. It vibrated between her lower lips in a gentle and excruciating caress, and Athera shuddered and bucked her hips helplessly toward the sensation before collapsing to her knees.

She shuddered with pleasure as Abelas’s magic continued to pulse around her calves, her thighs, across her hardened nipples, over the slippery little pearl between her legs. Slowly she lifted her face and stared at the ancient Sentinel through the veil of her hair. “Please,” she begged.

Finally, finally, he stretched out his hand. “Come here,” he rasped.

His golden eyes were feverish with lust, and Athera was only mildly comforted to see that he seemed as desperate she felt. Shakily she crawled toward him, gasping for breath as every shift of her legs brought the buzzing heat around her upper thighs to brush against her exquisitely sensitive labia.

As soon as she was within reach, Abelas dragged her close with a firm grip on her arm and pulled her against his chest. He splayed one hand on her ass and pumped his hips against her, his still-clothed groin riding against her considerably more naked one, and Athera sobbed with desperation at the hint of his hardness, so damned close but still veiled by his bloody breeches.

His glowing magic was ruthless, massaging and teasing her budded nipples and her budded clit with just enough pleasure to drive her insane, and Athera clutched convulsively at his neck, his shoulders, his waist, tugging on his lean muscled body, pressing her hips against him. “Please, please,” she begged. “I need you to touch me, I really – Abelas, I think I might explode-”

He silenced her with a furious kiss, his tongue plunging deep into her mouth, then he gently pushed her back and lay down beside her. He wrapped one hand around her thigh and tugged. “Come,” he urged.

He wet his luscious lips, and Athera needed no further cues: eagerly she crawled over him and straddled his face, and without another second’s delay, he pressed his lips to her pussy.

Athera arched her back and undulated against his mouth. His magic was still there, a teasing little buzz around her clit, but it was joined now by the firmer stroking heat of his tongue as he laved the length of her pussy, and fenedhis, it was absolute bliss. She ground herself against his handsome face in a slow rhythm, meeting and matching the careful slippery stroke of his tongue as he played her body higher, pushing and building her pleasure into a crescendo. When Athera finally met her climax, a tremulous and feral sound of ecstasy filled her ears, and she vaguely recognized it as her own.

Her limbs were still trembling with pleasure when Abelas tapped her thigh, and she bonelessly shifted off of him. Hastily he unfastened his breeches and shoved them away, his breathing harsh and eager, then he grabbed her hips and dragged her across his lap.

The head of his manhood nudged against her folds, and they gasped in tandem at the long-awaited contact of skin on slippery skin. Athera clasped the back of his neck and undulated against his cock, her movements smoothed and sped up by the firm grip of his hands on her hips as he dragged her against him, rocking the blissful length of his cock against the softness of her heat-

Then suddenly he was inside of her, his steely girth filling her up, and Athera clenched her nails in the back of his neck and cried out.

Abelas gasped at the bite of her nails, then groaned and thrust into her hard, and Athera scrabbled at his shoulders for balance as he slammed up and into her in a rough and relentless rhythm. His palms slid from her hips to her back, up along the line of her spine, his fingers twining in her hair and pulling carefully…

A light brush of pain lit her scalp, and Athera moaned helplessly and leaned her head back into his tugging hands as she rode him. His relentless magic was still between her legs, a light pulsing heat that teased the periphery of her swollen bud while his cock sent harder pulses of bliss through her abdomen. Then his mouth was at her throat, teeth grazing and lips sucking lightly, and she might end up with a mark on her neck but she didn’t care, she didn’t care – it didn’t matter, not when Abelas was filling her like this, not when he was fucking her like this, when he was clutching her close and gasping against her throat and she was rising with him, his hands in her hair, her hands on his neck – their faces pressed close, Abelas kissing her like no one had ever kissed her before, his tongue in her mouth and her heart in her throat as her climax finally came, stealing her vision with a burst of white light as her lover’s lips stole her breath.

Abelas shuddered and groaned into her neck as he came, his teeth pressing sweetly into her skin, and Athera wrapped her arms around his shoulders to hold him tight. As his breathing slowed, his hands loosened in her hair until his arms were settled around her waist in a firm embrace.

The night was quiet and still around them, broken only by the welcome sounds of the breeze through the grass and the rushing of the river, and Athera kept her voice low so as not to break the peace. “This was a fun game,” she whispered. “We should do it again sometime.”

He slowly lifted his face from her neck, then smoothed her damp hair back from her face. He cupped her jaw and gazed into her eyes. “I do not enjoy games,” he announced. “But I would gladly do this again with you. It was… fun. To say the least.”

He raised one vallaslin-painted brow, and Athera grinned at his playful expression. Abelas was smiling – her taciturn ancient warrior of a lover was smiling – and that, more than anything, made this little game worthwhile.

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Read more Abelas and Athera on AO3.