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Solas feels a little too giddy. It may have something to do with his glass being constantly refilled by an equally giddy Varric. He can't even recall their topic of conversation, even though it dates back a few minutes, because suddenly they're discussing curtains of all things.
"What's wrong with the curtains?" Solas asks.
"Nothing is wrong with the curtains," Varric replies, uncorking another bottle of champagne.
Solas blinks a time or two. "Why are we talking about curtains, then?"
"I don't know why we're talking about curtains," Varric admits, shrugging, his eyes as wide as Solas' as they just stare at each for a very long moment before going back to drinking. The champagne is so very sweet.
Ah, yes. They're celebrating Varric and Cassandra's engagement. That still doesn't explain how the conversation shifted toward curtains.
"Chuckles," Varric says.
Solas pretends to read the blurb on the back of some book. The lines blur together because he is tired and his glasses have vanished to parts unknown, but he refuses to respond to the ridiculous nickname. It's stuck for years; it's time to let it die. He will murder it himself if Varric does not comply.
"Never mind," Varric sighs.
Across the room, Hawke apparently shares their state of, well, inebriation is putting it lightly. She's on a quest of her own creation, which at present consists of pestering Lavellan. She keeps pouncing at her, planting sloppy kisses to her cheeks and, occasionally lips, while whispering things that make Lavellan groan and blush a furious red.
Solas catches Anders' by the sleeve when he drifts by. "Get your wife off my—"
Anders grins a wide, teasing grin. "Off your vhenan?" he mocks, twisting the endearment into an ugly, throaty sound with his terrible pronunciation.
"Yes."
"She won't eat her, Solas. Let them have fun."
In the distance, Lavellan gently shoves Hawke, who explodes into boisterous laughter. Solas has never seen her so embarrassed. It doesn't help that Hawke keeps throwing unashamed looks his way and waggling her eyebrows. Talk about a useless talent and a horrible habit rolled into one.
"Anders," he chides.
"Fine, fine."
But it doesn't go according to plan, because Hawke follows Lavellan and then they're both in front of him. Instinctively, he reaches out to her, tucking the waifish little thing that she is against his side, intent on both reclaiming and using her as a crutch.
She's actually stronger than she looks.
"Solas," Hawke begins, striking a pose and thrusting her hip out. "I was just telling Lavellan about how I was thinking of going downstairs."
"Stop it, Hawke," Lavellan groans.
"You don't mind people going downstairs, do you Solas?"
"Go wherever you wish. This isn't my house," he remarks, punctuating each word with a sip of his drink.
Hawke's smile grows until it is predatory. She sways too; or maybe he sways enough for the both of them. It's hard to tell at this point.
The earth could be tilting sideways and he wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
"I can show Lavellan how to go downstairs," she whispers, winking. "You wouldn't mind, would you?"
Solas is frowning, throwing glances between the two of them. Lavellan is desperately trying to become one with the wall, but he holds on to her. "What is so important downstairs that you need to be two to fetch?"
Hawke brings the back of her hand to cover her mouth, feigning shock. But he knows her. She is hard, if not impossible, to provoke. She's practically invented the practice and delights in unsettling others.
"You would enjoy it," she says, or rather whispers, all hushed tones and suggestive glares. "We'll go get it right away and then she'll show you."
"Go away, Hawke," Lavellan all but splutters. She looks like a spooked rabbit, about to take off at any instant.
Mercifully, Anders chooses this moment to intervene. Says, "All right, love, I think you need some water," and steers Hawke toward the kitchen.
But they don't make it far, because the front door opens with a bang and Dorian storms in, announcing to the world, "I have come," and throwing his arms open into an embrace for the universe to partake in. Dorian, the messiah of nothing. How appropriate.
Hawke sees him.
Dorian sees her.
Recognition flashes over their features.
"Make me a drink," he yells at her from across the room.
Hawke enthusiastically flips him the double bird. "Make one yourself," she yells back.
Anders shuffles away, exasperated.
Then they're pushing people out of the way in their hurry to find one another, and their meeting is messy, squeal-y, loud. They are an unmovable force, and all gravitate toward them. Which is just fine by Solas as at this particular moment he can't exactly stand either of them.
Or stand himself, for that matter—in the most literal sense.
Hawke is here because she always is. Dorian is because he's a friend of Cassandra's. Wonderfully small world, theirs has proven to be.
He leans against Lavellan who embraces him around the middle. From where she stands, she has her nose nearly in his drink and she runs her tongue over the rim of the glass, making a little sound of approval he wants to steal from her lips.
"Give me that," she says. Before he can lean down and act on his urge, she's finishing the champagne.
Solas is kissing her hand next thing he knows with Lavellan giggling at his display of familiarity and affection. She strokes his face with the pads of her fingers, little blocks of ice that feel divine against his flushed skin.
"Does it hurt?" he asks, breathing warm air on the inside of her wrist.
"Not right now," she reassures, ever patient. "You should sit down."
"What did Hawke want with you?"
She is red in the face again. "She was giving me life lessons."
Solas scoffs. "Because she's one to talk. I once saw her run from Anders in high heels after they haven't as much as spoken in three years instead of having a conversation like adults. Of course, she fucked him an hour later." He huffs for good measure to further illustrate his point. "That's what passes for communication with her, and she thinks herself wise now?"
Lavellan hums against his skin as she presses a kiss to his jaw. "The inappropriate words are coming out to play. You are drunk, hahren."
"Yes, well. It does happen on occasion, da'len," Solas shifts so he's the one with his arms around her, Lavellan pressed to his chest as he folds his hands over her stomach. "What did she say?"
"She was eager to share her knowledge of more intimate matters."
Solas clears his throat. "Excuse me for just a moment."
"Where are you going?"
"To smother Hawke."
Lavellan sighs. "All right. As much as I appreciate you going all protective hahren on this, you're going to have to let it go. Hawke's drunk. You're drunk. You'll be your passive-aggressive self and she'll be, well, simply aggressive. I can only imagine how that will end."
"With her breaking my nose, no doubt, but I am willing to risk it."
"I rather like your nose, so no."
"It's been broken before."
Lavellan tuts. "Yes, because that's the issue at hand."
---
She drags him into an empty room and makes him drink water.
He gulps down as much as he can and then he's kissing her, lips wet, cooler than hers.
Sloppy—quick —hot—cool.
Champagne—Lavellan—the smell of lilac woven in between the strands of her hair.
She is all those things at once and nothing is missing.
She doesn't really mind the juvenile display of affection, nor does she protest his thieving hands' intrusion as they sneak beneath her blouse—white, white, always white—to rest flat against her back, fingertips dipping into the slight hollows surrounding her spine.
Nothing is amiss at all.
---
"Nice curtains," Varric says.
The world tips sideways.
"Yes, very nice," Solas agrees.
He has nothing to hold on to except the stem of his glass; the golden liquid within swirls, threatening to slosh over.
"Ugh," Cassandra groans, "get out of my sight, both of you."
"I love you so much," Varric slurs.
Champagne dries on his lips.
---
He kisses Lavellan's cheek and feels very happy.
---
Cole comes to visit.
Solas doesn't expect him, but the boy has taken to being his shadow in the halls of the University. Perhaps the natural progression really was for him to follow him home.
Except that he's not here for him.
Lavellan and Cole seem to know one another, which adds to Solas' puzzlement.
Still, both are quiet, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the living room. Cole gingerly holds one end of some monstrosity of a hat while Lavellan holds up the other. There's a ball of yarn at her feet and a needle sticking out from between her lips. She frowns, contemplates the wide brim, and mercilessly stabs it.
"Stop staring," she tells him. "Shoo."
Properly chastised, Solas retreats to the kitchen.
He is out of the direct line of sight, but he can still hear, can still catch glimpses of two fair heads as both tend to an article of clothing that should have been burned eons ago.
"Would you like a rabbit or a fox?" Lavellan asks. "I can also do a halla."
"Halla aren't red," Cole says. "You only have red yarn."
"They can be red if you want them to be."
"Oh. Can I have two, then?"
"You can have as many as I have thread."
She told him not to stare and, well, he's not exactly staring, merely observing while his coffee cools.
"Children would like those," Cole comments. He's managed to prickle his finger with a discarded needle and sucks the digit into his mouth.
"Children aren't getting any," Lavellan replies, harsher than he's ever heard her. "Sorry," she mumbles to no one in particular.
Cole tries on his hat, a few halla doodles made of yarn now dancing about the brim. His smile is crooked.
"Hello, Professor," he says.
"Hello, Cole," Solas says, elbows resting on the counter. "How is your semester going?"
"Semester, yes," Cole says, seeming content with the not-quite-answer.
His fingers keep tracing the bright halla as Lavellan unlocks the door for him. He stumbles a little on the way out.
"I don't know what to do with myself," she says.
Her hand stills on the doorknob.
---
Anders sends him a picture of a cat with the caption Hang In There.
Then a shrugging smiley face.
It's confusing and annoying.
---
He likes waking up like this, with cool palms pressed to his chest and warm lips at his ear. He is still groggy and one arm comes up lazily to wrap around a narrow waist while he nuzzles the air and then, ah yes, some hair. Hair that promptly gets into his mouth.
"Oh, hello there," Lavellan says, rolling her hips against his and now he's very much awake.
She leans down, kisses the scar between his eyebrows.
"Good morning," he returns.
"You should get naked," she says matter-of-factly.
"Hm, yes," Solas agrees.
It doesn't take long and soon she's squirming atop him, bare flesh pressed to bare flesh, hungry lips meeting in between shallow breaths, and cold fingers twining with burning ones.
He sighs against her throat when she finally slides down onto him. There's that flush that starts at her cheeks and travels past the valley between her breasts whenever her breathing grows ragged, and he traces the rosy path with a finger, connecting the patches of color.
She moves once, twice, the exquisite drag of her hips stoking his arousal and he slides his palms to cup her breasts. She cranes her neck to brush her lips against the pulse in his wrist.
"This is good," she whispers. "Just this. Right?"
"What's wrong?" he asks.
She rolls her eyes, laughs, and leans down to nip his lower lip.
---
He wonders what a Rorschach test would say about him.
The curlicues of her vallaslin are forever burned behind his eyelids—his very own, unique inkblot—and the only word that comes to mind is lovely.
---
Lavellan raises her wounded arm into the light; there are still so many puncture wounds from syringes marring her skin,
"Oh, look," she says, pensive, "this scar looks like an anchor."
---
Varric and Cassandra get married.
Hawke mutters something about getting fat in the near future while Anders grins like a fool.
Cole talks of bright halla and big hats.
---
He finds her abusing a stick of charcoal. Her fingertips are dirty and she sighs, dragging them down his cheek when he sits down next to her.
"Where's the drawing?" he asks, smiling.
"Here," she says, further smudging his face with black.
He smiles again. Wipes the charcoal away with the back of his sleeve.
"I can't go back to work yet," she says, very quiet. Her teeth are busy worrying her lip and the last of the nail polish has chipped off her thumb.
"Is that what upsets you?"
"I fucked everything up, and for what?" Lavellan shakes her head. "An arm? What a moron."
This is about more than her arm and chilly palms. This is about bright little halla she'll only ever get to sow on Cole's hat and how she grieves something she never thought she wanted.
He kisses the tip of her nose. "This is good," he says. "Just this."
She thaws at his echoing her own words. "We don't need a lot, do we?"
He takes her hands, blows hot air onto them as he always does. She smiles and nudges him with her foot.
This is enough.