Chapter Text
It starts, like many things Solas sets his mind to, with subtlety.
When he decided to paint the rotunda with a fresco, there was no announcement. First came the requests for limestone and brushes, woodwork constructions that she had initially assumed to be intended for repairs. Then the pigments, and a great many jugs of water and small bowls persuaded from the kitchens. A week later Saar walked into the rotunda one evening to find her own silhouette emblazoned onto the wall, towering, arm stretched out against the burning Breach. The smell of setting paint was thick in the air. Solas was bent over a collection of pots and brushes, chalk and paint spattered over his entire front. For days afterwards dried chalk dust and streaks of paint had transferred in frankly bothersome amounts to the sheets of her bed.
Or when her jackets started to disappear shortly before she intended to hand them over to the washers. The jackets were wide ones, comfortably loose in the shoulders even for her, sewn from fine linen or wool, in colors and patterns of a detail she could never have previously afforded. It still took her nearly a month to realize Solas had been stealing them from the end of her bed, or from the chair over which she threw them at the end of a long day. And that only because she had decided to drop in on him in his own rooms, and caught him red-handed. He’d worn them to sleep in until her scent faded from the fabric, when they didn’t share a bed. That last piece of information took some creative interrogation to get out of him. His ears had managed to go dark and ruddy, obvious despite his brown skin, and they hadn’t even gotten naked.
This begins with a quick kiss to the cheek, and the cold breeze of Solas fadestepping away from right out under Saar’s hand.
She blinks.
A few yards down the hall, Solas reappears among a whisper of green fog. He walks away, hands clasped behind his back as though nothing happened. Which is—well, weird, but not so unusual as to warrant real concern, and a moment later Josephine sticks her head out the door to the war room anyway and calls to Saar.
“Ah, there you are. I hate to press this on you, but three of the Dukes loyal to Gaspard now publicly insist the entire debacle at Halamshiral was nothing but an attempt of the Inquisition to seize the throne of Orlais, and apparently they all wish to duel you to prove it.”
Saar groans and doesn’t try to hide it. She rolls her shoulders, joints cracking, before she follows Josephine into the war room.
“Let me guess, you’re about to tell me why I shouldn’t take them up on it?” she asks.
Josephine smiles, the expression strained. “I have little doubt that you would win, but it would be setting a dangerous precedent. Even more so than what you did to Gaspard.”
She’s right in that regard, unfortunately. Saar managed to survive the Winter Palace without invoking Andraste’s name, and even with new allies to show for it: a cowed warmonger on the throne, Briala with the power of a marquise and at least somewhat aligned interests, and a handful of nobles who aren’t powerful enough to view the Inquisition as a threat but as a benefactor.
But solving every conflict with combat, and the justification that those with victory on their side are right… That’s not a path Saar wants to go down.
“Now, Leliana should soon be joining us,” Josephine continues, “but I’d advise you against the assassination attempts she will doubtlessly suggest…”
~ * ~
Solas absconds from two more kisses.
The first he presses to Saar’s lips as she’s about to make her way up the staircase that leads from the rotunda up to the library. The press is heavy because standing on the step above her as he is, he still has to go up on the tips of his toes to reach her, and it tilts his weight forward. His mouth opens easily, his hot breath against her lips—but again he cuts through the Fade before Saar has the opportunity to deepen it, and leaves the anchor prickling in her hand.
The second she lays below his ear, teeth grazing his skin. They’re sitting on a bench in the gardens, enjoying the last bit of sun, but how he presses close to her in response gives her half a mind to ask for more than a kiss. And then he disappears into cold fog just as a runner comes skidding into the gardens, a breathless call of “Inquisitor!” on her tongue.
Both times, Saar plans to ask him where this new habit comes from and what the fuck it intends to accomplish, aside from confusing her, but plans are all they remain. Being the Inquisitor necessitates constant, draining work. After Halamshiral, and the influx of recruits and various interested parties that visit has brought, it has only become more so.
~ * ~
As the fire at the Winter Palace dims and cools in Saar’s memory, the rotunda grows ever more colorful with it. The new fresco now stretches to the room’s full height, in intense colors and strongly stylised shapes.
“No research tonight, huh?” she asks as she drops onto the sofa that stands against the wall, strewn with furs and pillows. Solas glances up from where he’s cleaning his brushes from the day’s colors—red and gold bleeding into each other, painted flames licking up the wall—and shakes his head.
“No, I was beginning to…” He sighs and puts a clean brush away. “To lose sight of myself. There is such a wealth of knowledge to be found in the new shipment of books that it is easy to become distracted.” Saar glances at the table, which is practically invisible under the mountain of books and notes piled atop it. Distracted seems to put it mildly.
“Such fascinating things,” Solas continues, “but a torrent of misinformation as well. An ocean, frankly. I cannot say how many treatises I could write on the falsehoods in the Encyclopedia of the Dwellers of the Fade alone.”
Saar chuckles and wriggles more comfortably into the soft contours provided by the sofa, long legs stretched out in front of her. She lets her eyes slide closed.
“Four?” she guesses.
A soft laugh is the only reply she gets to that. But not long after, the sounds of bristles being cleaned and the clatter of paint pots die away, and Solas joins her on the sofa, curling up against her side. His head fits neatly into the crook between her neck and shoulder, and one of his hands settles on her belly, a warm weight.
“At least two,” he murmurs. “Perhaps three. I have read far worse in Chantry-ordered literature, but many claims are galling regardless of who speaks them.”
Saar hums, absent-mindedly stroking the back of Solas’ hand. “You’ll have to tell me about all those fascinating things sometime. When I don’t have my head crammed full with Orlesian politics, that is.”
Solas’ hand on her belly inches lower, and he shifts to slide a fleeting kiss against the edge of her jaw. “I could,” he says, slow and quiet, “distract you, if you like.”
“…Here?”
“It is far too late for decent folk to wander the halls, is it not?”
That much is true: midnight oil is burning away in the lamps and Skyhold lies silent with sleep, only the wind whistling outside over the fortress. Saar has had a very long, very trying day, in a series of long and trying days.
“Come here,” she whispers, and shifts her legs.
Solas straddles her thigh. Nudges his mouth against the beat of her pulse and his hand below the fabric of her jacket. With a sigh and a shiver, Saar lets her head roll back, and her hands settle on Solas’ thighs. His muscles tense and shift under her palms, warm and strong, as he rolls his hips forward in a slow, teasing grind. His mouth is soft, and it easily finds the spot under Saar’s chin where a sucking kiss gets her blood singing.
Saar is quite content to enjoy his attention without raising it to a frenzy. Arousal simmers low and pleasant deep in her belly with no urgency behind it, and sleep laps at the edges of her consciousness. She thinks maybe she would not mind a bit of frenzy either, though, when Solas’ fingers skirt under the hem of her trousers—as long as it doesn’t require any exertion on her part.
But when she moves to wrap her arms around his waist, he’s gone and she’s left with nothing but cool, empty air between her hands.
She looks up. On the other side of the room, Solas comes to a stop from his fadestep. In the low light, she can barely make out his expression, but he points towards the door leading up to the library. After a moment, the sound of scuffing footsteps is audible, the creak of wood, and the door opens to reveal a mage who looks like they're about to fall asleep standing up. They’ve got a few books clutched to their chest and lurch towards the main hall, stopping briefly to deliver a half-hearted bow in Saar’s direction, along with a mumbled “M’ladinquisitor,” before finally disappearing into the main hall.
“I apologize,” Solas says once he’s made his way back to the sofa. “It appears we were not as alone as I thought.”
Saar pushes herself to her feet, shrugs her shoulders, stretches a little, and has to suppress a yawn.
“Don’t be, ‘s fine.” She cups Solas’ face in her hand and kisses his cheek. “Just get off my lap next time, I thought a demon was gonna jump us.”
Solas chuckles, clasping her hand between his. “I was simply… No matter. You look exhausted, vhenan.”
This time, Saar makes no effort to stifle her yawn, instead swaying forward and resting her forehead on Solas’ shoulder.
“I am,” she mumbles, “and that was a lovely bit of distraction, but…”
“Perhaps best continued when you are fully awake?”
“Yeah, that.”
~ * ~
Two days later Saar wakes up with an armful of warm, wriggling elf. Solas spent the night, a fierce chill driving everyone in Skyhold beneath covers and furs, and either close to their fires or into the arms of someone else’s warm body, or both. It was the first moment they’d gotten alone again after they were interrupted in the rotunda.
Now, with morning sunlight streaming yellow through the stained-glass windows, Solas’ body seems like a furnace. He’s glowing hot where he’s plastered to Saar’s front, his back to her chest. She yawns and removes the arm she had slung over him in the night, patting his flank.
“Don’t have to be so careful about not waking me,” she mumbles sleepily.
Solas goes very still for a moment, and then a high breath whistles out of him. “I must admit I was hoping you would wake.” His voice is rough with sleep, but the words leave him clearly, if quietly.
Saar opens one eye, but all she sees is the back of his head, and his ear turned slightly downwards in a gentle slope. There is a scent… She tilts her head forward, nosing behind his ear.
Ah. She smiles, curling her hand over his hip.
“Pleasant dreams, huh?”
He twists his head so he’s able to look at her, a smile to mirror her own tugging at his mouth. Below, his hips push back against hers, nothing subtle left in the movement. Thanks to the cold neither of them has slept naked, but the cloth does little to dim their body heat.
“Yes, but I do—” he shudders as Saar slides her hand further, curving over his inner thigh, “—prefer the waking world to Fade-conjured illusions in this case.”
“I’m flattered.” She presses her smile into the skin of his neck and grinds her hips forward, her cunt growing hot with blood from the friction. Solas makes a soft, throaty sound, fumbling to push her hand to his center.
“Do you think there is—ah—time for something more elaborate?”
“Not really…” Saar draws up her leg and angles his hips with the hand gripping his thigh so she can properly rub against him. Drags him in close, skin tingling. Worms her left hand below his body to give him the touch he’s aching for. He jerks at the contact, pushing a small gasp from her.
“Ah—with my current luck, it’ll be a wonder if no one comes bursting through the door because half of Orlais has declared war on us.”
“Saar—” Solas is breathing fast, hips moving fitfully in her grasp, the scent of his arousal thick around them. It makes Saar’s heartbeat stutter in her chest, muscles drawing tight…
The mark on her left hand prickles. The warmth at her front disappears, replaced with a chill like someone blew icy wind straight from the mountaintops below the blankets. She flinches. The jolt sends her upright, braced on her hands.
Solas is gone from the bed. Saar can still taste the ice-tingle of the Fade on her tongue.
It takes her a moment to find him again, half perched on the balustrade that separates the stairway from the rest of her room. A short moment, barely more than a second, but long enough for the seed of something bitter and anxious to settle in her belly. Concern for privacy might’ve motivated some of these ridiculous escapes, but even so, it never led him to such drastic measures before. And the thought that he would flee like this when he disliked how she touched him instead of telling her, when No has never before been a difficult word for his tongue—
But the expression on his face holds neither fear nor anger.
He’s smiling. A small, teasing curve to his lips, a glint in his eyes like a… a challenge. Maybe an invitation. Saar can’t be sure, but the bitterness in her belly dissipates a little. She chews her lip, until it becomes clear he’s not going to volunteer an explanation.
“Are you going to come back to bed?” she asks. Solas bites his own lips and slowly shakes his head, his gaze never leaving her face.
“Not… not today,” he replies, voice breathy. He looks like he wants to. Saar knows better than to push. Still, the way he is watching her…
She has an inkling of what Solas is playing at, and that thought has her clit ache for friction. But for now, she simply gives him a playful grin, leaning back to brace herself on her elbow.
“If you stay, you can watch,” she tells him. “If you leave, close the door properly behind you.”
Solas says nothing. He doesn’t move either, but his throat jerks with a swallow. Saar’s grin widens and she sinks back into the pillows, sliding her hand between her thighs.
~ * ~
Out on the battlements, the wind is biting, even under the glare of the sun. Saar pulls her coat tighter around herself, crosses her arms in front of her chest and glares at the snow-covered mountaintops.
“Emma vhenan,” comes a soft call from behind her, and she half-turns to find Solas standing at the top of the stairs, clad in nothing but his usual tunic and trousers, naked toes on the cold stones.
“Cole told me you were upset,” he says.
“I swear, if that kid’s been rooting through my head again—”
“I am quite certain he did not. You never seek out this place alone unless something bothers you… do you?”
Saar huffs, letting her arms drop to her sides.
“Do you wish me to leave?” Solas ventures after a moment, and she shakes her head.
“No, stay. I’m thinking in circles anyway.”
He draws closer, until his shoulder nudges Saar’s arm, and she lifts it up for him to slip underneath, fitting himself against her side. She squeezes him a little when he lays his arm around her waist, the contact comforting in its familiarity.
“Aren’t you cold?”
“Not like this,” he says, shooting her a quick smile. But his expression quickly grows more serious. “Will you tell me what is bothering you?”
Saar sighs, dragging her free hand over her face. “Corypheus is moving a damn suspicious amount of his forces and we still don’t know where so I can’t go chasing after them, I’m still waiting on news from Clarel about that probably-fake Calling, and even Cassandra thinks it too risky for me to venture into Orlesian territory at this time. I feel like I’m gonna start crawling up the walls any day now.”
“The Seeker may have a point there,” he says mildly. “You did sign over the governance of Halamshiral to an elven rebellion leader while the empress’s body was still warm, almost killed the only other direct heir to the throne in a trial by combat into which you goaded him, declared him regent as though you had any authority to do so, and then forced the Council of Heralds to legitimize your actions.”
Saar barks out a hollow laugh. “No wonder they all want to duel me, thinking they can do better than Gaspard. Did Josephine tell you? There’s seven of them now.”
“She did this morning. And I agree with her opinion on the matter.”
“Which one?”
“That you should not accept any of these challenges. Val Royeaux is far too dangerous a place for any member of the Inquisition to be at the moment, most of all for its leader.”
“It might get them to back down.”
Solas twists out from underneath her arm and pushes himself in front of her, a deep furrow between his brows. It makes the small scar above his right eye crinkle up.
“Please do not risk your life on ‘might’, Saar. The Inquisition cannot afford to lose you, nor can—”
“Relax,” Saar says gently, and settles her hands on his shoulders. “I wasn’t about to march down to Val Royeaux all by myself.”
“You must pick your battles wisely,” Solas insists, his expression losing nothing of its intensity. “No war has ever been won by extending yourself to the breaking point in every skirmish, and fighting a war on two fronts has rarely led to victory.”
“I know that,” she whispers. She slides her hands along the curve of Solas’ neck to cup his cheeks, and leans her forehead down against his, a gentle knock. “I just need… some way to let off steam, maybe fight a few dragons. Being cooped up’s getting to me.”
Solas lets out a shivering breath and curls his hands over her wrists, pushing into the touch.
“I suppose that is understandable,” he murmurs.
“Hey, before…” Saar nudges her nose against his, the shadow of a smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth. “Were you about to say ‘nor can I’?”
He freezes. She can practically see his skin grow dark with blush. Feels the heat of it under her palms.
“It… would be incredibly self-centered of me to say something like that.”
“So that’s a yes, then?” Saar is smirking wholesale now, delight growing unexpectedly bright in her chest. When Solas lets out a sigh that sounds suspiciously like ar lath, his hands reaching up to clasp behind her neck, he barely has to tug for her to bend down and kiss him.
Against the cold wind nipping at them, Solas’ mouth seems even hotter. It’s tempting to lose herself to it, but Saar remembers how such endeavors ended the last few times, and so she eventually pulls back. Solas’ attempt to follow her is stopped with two fingers across his lips. She gives him a long look before she speaks.
“If we continue, are you going to flee halfway through again?”
His eyes widen slightly. The mark on Saar’s hand prickles—but this time, she knows what it means. As Solas moves into a fadestep, she steps right into it after him. Lets the path he carves carry her forward until she throws a barrier around them, the magic disrupting the path and dragging both of them back into the slowness of the world. Before he can try the same thing again, she loops her arms around Solas’ torso, another barrier ready and waiting like caged lightning beneath her skin.
“What kind of game are you playing?” she asks, low. Solas makes a noise, something cracked and involuntary. He arches in her arms, and Saar’s about to loosen her grip—but it’s not to get away, it’s to move closer.
“I had assumed you knew,” he whispers. “I thought you knew, after last time.”
“I don’t,” she says, sharply. “I’m not a blighted mind reader, and I don’t appreciate being toyed with just because you refuse to use your words.”
Solas swallows heavily, his entire chest moving with it. His head turns, and then his hot breath hits the side of Saar’s neck, sending a tingle down her spine. She looks down, finds his gaze fixed upon her face, his pupils blown wide. That tingle spreads over her back, arcing along her skin down to her fingertips.
“My apologies,” he says, voice thick, “I should have clarified—my intentions. I wanted to see—”
This time, Saar makes no move to stop him as Solas fadesteps away. Doesn’t attempt to close the distance between them either, when he reappears several feet away.
“I wanted to see what kind of hunter you are,” he says.
The blood in Saar’s ears starts to roar.
“Why?” she manages.
“Because,” he hesitates, blinks, licks his lips. Opens his mouth again. “I want you to hunt me down.”
Saar’s throat goes dry. So that inkling was right. Something like butterflies fills her belly; she feels lightheaded, her skin burning hot.
Solas’s eyes grow even darker, watching her. His posture shifts, loses the stiffness it held moments before. Gains the tension of a hare poised for flight.
“If you can,” he adds quietly, a mischievous tilt to his mouth.
She swallows. “And when I catch you?”
“What gives you such confidence that you will?”
Because he wants her to. Her heartbeat thuds like war drums in her chest. Because she wants to. The chase, that is what he asks for—the capture another matter entirely, and one she doesn't want to consider yet, too dangerous to think about when all her body screams at her to move, move, movechasehunt—
She’ll burn that bridge once she reaches it.
“What made you think that now is a good time for this?” she asks, one last attempt to be sensible about this.
Solas smiles and cocks his head. Lightning sparks across his hands. “If my memory does not deceive me, you said mere moments ago that you wished to ‘let off steam’. Or did I mishear you?”
Saar chuckles, cracks her neck, and with a deep breath, summons a barrier behind him that reaches four yards high and stretches the entire width of the battlement.
“All right, kadan,” she says. “Run.”