#also you know there was some solo solas after those make outs hahahaha

[buttsonthebeach]

I hope you don't mind me dropping another prompt for you! "Passionate kiss", Solavellan~

Oh man, this one got away from me in a good way! Have some post-balcony scene, pre-sleeping together Ellana and Solas, with a mini-retelling of “Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts” thrown in, AND a Hamilton quote I’ve been dying to use since I first started writing these two crazy kids.

If you are interested in my original/longer WEWH retelling, which is from Bull, Vivienne, and Varric’s POVs, you can check out the chapter “Helpless.”

@stardustlings - I think this also fulfills your prompt for “when did Ellana realize she was in love with Solas”!

Pairing: Solavellan, Inquisition timeframe

Rating: Mature for some steamy make-outs and sexual references (incidentally, it references Ellana’s first husband Mahanon and the fact that they were quite young at the time of their arranged marriage, but they were both considered adults by their clan. Just a heads up.)

****

Ellana had slept with her small share of men. Always casually, always with an understanding between them that it was a dalliance. Rarely more than once with the same man. Sex for her was a physical release like any other, like going for a long hike through the woods and climbing the tallest tree she could find, or practicing trick shots with her bow, or hunting, or sparring with one of the clan’s hunters or warriors (which did, now and then, lead to sex). She needed it sometimes, when her own fingers weren’t enough, and there was no shame in seeking it.

It was different with long-dead Mahanon of course. Mahanon and his brown eyes and his nervous, fumbling hands and his determination to please her. They’d found sex together. Found something in those six months they were bonded that she might have even called lovemaking, by the end. She wondered now, a decade later, if what they had was really love, or just the rush of two adolescent virgins who’d been asked to play house by a desperate new Keeper. She wondered sometimes what they would be like now if he hadn’t died. How many children they might have had. If that love would have grown or soured. It was a pointless exercise, anyway. There was no going back in time. She remembered him fondly when she did think of him.

What Ellana hadn’t had much of in her life was men who would kiss her.

Really kiss her.

Not until Solas and his full soft lips and his hands clutching her to him in the Fade, the little shake of his head when he drew back, and then the way he dove back for her, again, like he was drowning without her lips. Or like the way he did on her balcony - slow, gentle, and consuming.

Or the way he did in the alcove of the door that led from the rotunda to the ramparts the day after - a soft, reverent press of lips. He let out a little breath when he pulled back. His lips moved like he wanted to kiss her again. He’d been holding his breath for her.

Then, of course, there was the kiss a few days after that, the eve of their departure for Halamshiral, when she stopped by late at night under the pretense of telling him what time they would leave in the morning, the good night kiss that wouldn’t end. She’d put her hand on his chest when she said it. Good night. He’d put his hand over hers, just to keep it there, and then his other hand under her chin, lifting it towards him.

“Good night, vhenan.”

It was a soft kiss at first, lips fit perfectly together. Then she cupped his cheek to hold him close - and then his arms slid around her back to hold her - and then she was holding his face in both her hands and he’d sucked her bottom lip between his. When she opened her mouth against his he followed, flicked his tongue against hers, and the grateful noise she made came straight from her chest. His hands dropped down to cup her ass and bring her closer, higher, so she was on the tips of her toes, and that made her wobble, so it was natural that they fell towards the couch, her underneath him. She had a moment to look at him then. His eyes dark. His lips pink and his face flushed. Her heart raced. What a wonder it was to be kissed by someone who wanted you for who you were and not just for a night. To be kissed by someone who loved you. She’d forgotten.

She pulled him down by the collar of his tunic and kissed him again, hard, and this time he was the one who made a grateful, hungry sound. He didn’t seem to know where to put his hands. On either side of her head - on her cheek - on her side, just barely grazing the swell of one breast. She wasn’t entirely sure either. She wanted ran her hands over the smoothness of his scalp, down his neck, along his shoulders, down his back. Steady wet heat pooled between her legs - an ache began, a pressure, a need to have this man, this man, closer and closer and closer. And the noises he made as they kissed - needy and greedy and worshipful noises, all hers. She threw one leg over his hip, hauled him closer, pressed their bodies together and felt at once the swell of his own desire pressed against her thigh and she had to rub against it. He groaned, dropped his weight further, ground once, twice into her center, and she didn’t even have the dignity to be embarrassed by the high sound she made. Yes. He wanted her, he wanted her -

He pulled away.

Not far. He just raised up on one knee and planted his other foot on the floor. He was out of breath. Flushed all the way to the tips of his ears now. He looked down at her.

“I apologize,” he said. “I -”

Now he rose completely from the couch and turned his back. She caught a motion of his hands that he probably thought was discreet, and had to suppress another thrill despite her confusion.

“Have something to hide there?”

He froze. Of course, she said it before she thought about it. Damn her.

“Solas, I’m not bothered that you were - ah - that is to say - I was rather enjoying myself.”

He turned around and folded his hands behind his back. Then he seemed to reconsider, and offered her a hand instead, helping her off the couch.

“I had that impression.” His voice. Damn him and his voice. And the quirk of his lips. Never a full smile from him, but she knew what it meant. “I did not draw away because I was bothered by you. And I was reasonably sure you were not bothered by my - state. It is only that we must both get an early start tomorrow, as you so thoughtfully came and told me.”

It wouldn’t take long some part of her mind shouted. She’d had her share of those encounters. Quick, searing, breathless affairs. But she stilled herself and looked into his eyes instead. There was something else here that held him back. He’d been alone for a long time. She shouldn’t rush him.

“Yes. True.”

Solas looked down, quickly. “I hope I have not disappointed you.”

“No - of course you haven’t, vhenan.” She curled her fingers into fists just to hold onto the sweetness of that word. “I am happy to steal any moment with you I can.”

The truth of those words followed her back to her own room. She would take any moment with him she could. Even in the midst of death, of chaos, of the gnawing, debilitating fear she felt at the thought of what waited for her in Halamshiral - in the midst of the nightmare that was Haven, that was Redcliffe - she would take any moment with him that she could. She’d run down to his room impulsively the day he told her he loved her, and said the words back to him. Now she felt their weight.

I love him.

Again and again on that trip to Halamshiral those words ran through her mind - when she caught glimpses of him riding ahead of her, or when she saw him bickering with Dorian and Vivienne about some particular of magic, or when he sat next to her at their campfire and helped her run through the list of Orlesian nobles whose names she needed to know, never once losing his calm, even when she swore and threw down the paper whose words still seemed to swim in front of her barely literate eyes. She thought it when he stopped and offered to help a farmer whose well had run dry, when he closed the eyes of a soldier who’d been left for dead, when he and Blackwall played Diamondback in the evenings. He was kind, and brave, and worldly, and there was nothing that his mind couldn’t do, and somehow he loved her.

The sight of him alone kept her anchored in that long, hellish night of secrets and betrayals and masks. It was the only thing that could lift her heart at the end of the night when she stood, tired and sore and disillusioned, on the balcony in the warm night air. He put his hand on the small of her back, and she felt the weight of the words again.

I love him.

They danced, and eventually he leaned in and kissed her slowly, deeply, just out of sight of the party, and she felt them settle into her bones. She loved him, and it was not a small love, or an easy love, or a young love like the one she’d known. It was a root that went from her chest deep down into the earth. It took her breath away.

“I love you,” she said when the kiss ended. Quietly. A whisper against his mouth. Not the brash confession she’d offered him hours after he kissed her on her balcony. A promise.

He closed his eyes. He kissed her forehead, and, without looking at her, gave the words back to her.

“I love you.”

Both their voices were more unsteady than the first time they said it. Ellana wondered why. They were solid words - but there was a helplessness in saying them. An utter surrender. They held tight to each other in the shadows outside the ballroom, and in the back corner of her mind, in a place not consumed by fear and darkness and all the danger to come, she began to imagine a world where they could make good on that promise. That surrender.