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Solas pressed at the juncture between his neck and shoulder. His expression was something more than pensive, something distant and sad. In the night and the honey-colored glow of the campfire he'd forgotten his mask.
Well, that wouldn't do.
Lavellan kept her ration of bread between her teeth and gestured Solas to her with a grunt. The mage was startled, then his brows pinched. Although he was careful to put his face back into a neutral expression, he looked scandalized to her.
"Mm'on. F'ts no'th gnnan 'urt," she said around the bread. Solas was non-pulsed. Rolling her eyes, swallowing the bread, she scooted closer to him, hands hovering near but not touching. "I won't touch you unless you say I can."
The words were hard to get out. The bread was caught in her throat in her haste. Across the fire, Cole watched them with eyes that saw too much but didn't focus at all. Varric was off with the troops, spinning a story that was miles away from the horrors of the Exalted Plains. They'd almost died today. All of them. In that fortress beyond the river where the undread wouldn't stop rising, Solas found them a ladder to climb and struck down the dead with what remained of his magic. Lavellan was exhausted and she couldn't imagine how the mage felt. His eyes were sullen and his appetite weak. They had a hard day of trekking back to Skyhold on the morn and she didn't want him withering away to nothing.
"What do you plan?" he asked.
"Always so suspicious," she soothed. She gestured with her palms again and his eyes flashed from them to her eyes. They settled over her vallaslin. Calming him was like tending to an abused horse. "I'm offering a shoulder massage. Nothing more."
At that his lips quirked. "Nothing? A pity then."
That earned him a playful shove that sent him near over. Too much? Too much. She had to remember her strength. Her battle ax was almost as heavy as he was, those gorgeous arms of his included.
"Look, you want one or not? Never heard one complaint about my massages."
"She's lying," Cole interrupted. "Curious, clever, careful. She doesn't want to spook him. Doesn't know how to talk to a mage. Hated them through fear, feared them by her hate. Not him though; not now. Trying to learn, trying to try. She feels weak when he's near, strong too and it's confusing."
"Thank you, Cole, that's enough," she told the spirit, tone even - though it was impossible to silence all her irritation. He stood and left to join Varric. Lavellan sighed, hands falling beside her thighs as she stared up at the sky. Clouds obscured even the brightest of stars. It made everything feel close but murky.
"Actually I could use a massage," Solas said before too much time passed. Lavellan watched him. Scars coated the right side of her face, skin torn like a gauntlet made of knives squeezed her. More than half her right ear was missing, jagged as the cuts over her lips. What wasn't scar tissue was June, God of Craft in pale green that might have been blue in another light. She was a warrior, a Reaver, and she'd been trained since childhood how to use her hands in craft.
He could indulge her. In this at least.
"R-really? Ehm, yeah. Uh, com'ere." Her voice was gruff, gruffer than usual. Solas didn't realize he was holding his breath until her palms settled over his shoulders and squeezed. "Whoa, you've got a big knot here. No wonder you've been in such a twist."
"That is not what I have -" his words cut off into a groan he was distantly embarrassed by as her fingers sunk into his shoulders. It hurt. It stirred something like panic in him, like an animal being pinned but then her thumbs came by and soothed and he melted. There was no other word for the way he fell against her. "Oh. Oh."
While her palms didn't cover his whole shoulder they did cover more than most other elvhen. Her proportions were more human, or dwarf than elvhen. And she trailed from that knot over his whole shoulder blade, squeezing his bicep (perhaps more than merited) and cupping the side of his neck. Solas restrained himself at first, stiff in her grasp. She was patient. She worked until his skin tingled with warmth, cold again when she moved her hands. All at once he let go and sank into her.
Not since - not since the end of everything and the beginning of this, this nightmare, had he let himself go. His body was weary; too fragile from what he was used to. Most of the time his skin felt too tight over his frame, like he couldn't keep all of himself contained. Then he was hollow, a fragment of what he once was. Giving into Lavellan's touch - letting her take care of his form - it was bliss.
"There we go," she said, voice a half-remembered murmur. "You carry too much on your shoulders. You can't save the world just by yourself, you know. And you shouldn't have to."
"Mm, isn't that something I should say to you?"
She kissed him once on the lips. It was quick and like the brush of an eyelash but he knew her touch and leaned for another.
"Yeah but I let go of it and I know there's other people to help. You feel like you've been carrying the world on your shoulders for the past few eons."
"You have no idea."
She chuckled, never stopping her work and Solas felt another groan slip past his teeth. He was practically mewling but he couldn't stop. She was strong, yes, but she was also so careful. He felt worshiped by her touch and yet slave to it. His palms tightened over her knee, a keen coming through his lips as she tackled the knot again and it pulled loose.
"Has anyone told you how beautiful you are, like this, with your throat bare," she whispered, against his jaw, too quiet for anyone else to hear. They were in the dark, yet light played over them. They were in public, in front of her troops, yet none of them watched. A thrill went through him. "In all of Orlais, nothing is more beautiful than you, here, giving as you are."
"Reading more of Cassandra's poetry?" he teased and it earned him a stronger squeeze that sent him trembling and breathing hard.
"Smug little snot," she chided, nipping at his chin. She stroked him again and once more before pulling away. Solas felt like he was going to fall clear over but her hands stayed at the small of his back as something to lean against. Meaningless pleasantries brushed against his skin as she steadied him.
After a moment his body was his own again and she pulled away completely. Even without her presence, his skin and muscles sang her praise, warm and loose.
"Thank you, Vhenan. That has not been done in . . . in quite some time."
"Yeah, that was pretty obvious." She was smug now and it was almost unbearable. When his brows pinched she swatted at his thigh playfully in what he assumed was meant to be an apology.
"Thanks for letting me try. After today - well. Ehm. No, always. You deserve to be happy and taken care of. You're not alone anymore."
He felt cold now. "And what do you know of what I deserve?" Then, at her expression, "Forgive me, that was unkind."
She shook her head. "No, I get it. You've got a past you don't like to broadcast. Take a look at my face, I get that." She gestured and yet it wasn't to her scars but her vallaslin. "But whatever your past was, that isn't who you are now."
"All we are is our past and past mistakes."
"No, the past can guide us, it can even affect us, but we can't choose it to be different. That's something we do now in the present. You can choose who you want to be right now and what to do."
He sighed and looked up, away from her because it was too much. Some of the cloud cover moved and there was a space in the sky where the stars could peer through.
"Is it really that easy?"
She snorted. "Not at all, but I figure if I keep telling myself that it might sink in."
He looked to her and in the glow of the campfire her scars were more exaggerated than usual, but her vallaslin was almost invisible. She was beautiful like that. He ached to take it from her permanently. Even if he couldn't erase his own past, he could give her freedom from her own.
Then he realized his hand had not moved away from her thigh. At his realization her hand came over his. His hand was slight in comparison, smooth against her calluses and deep set cuts that could only belong to a laborer. In the past she could have been so much more than that. He ached again, thinking of the old empire and what it could have been for her. But then when he looked up again her eyes were nothing but contented. This, now, here, was her life and she had chosen to share it with him. He felt sick with the knowledge, like a cruel beast and yet pleased and proud and satisfied to his very core. Even at his most humble, she wanted him, his time, his space, his skin. His thoughts perhaps most of all.
He turned his hand so they were palm to palm and she bent to brush her forehead against his.
If the now could always be this, he could be content for all of his days.