She'd thought she'd known how much she missed being in his arms, but she was wrong. Nothing, nothing, compares to the reality of having him here with her. She breathes him in, her nose tucked into the curve where his neck meets his jaw, and lets her fears and worries and rational brain take care of themselves for the moment so she can just be here with him, enjoy the smell of his skin, and maybe allow the ragged wound in her heart to begin to heal. His arms tighten around her shoulders. She feels safe, and wanted, and warm with feeling.
She could spend forever here, and gladly. Unfortunately, her knees don't agree.
"Come on," she says into his neck, then pulls away. His arms drop with gratifying reluctance, and he watches her face as she gets to her feet and offers him her hand to help him up. For a moment, she's not sure whether he's going to take it. She waits, her hand outstretched.
Will she forever be waiting on this man?
Then his lips quirk and he puts his hand in hers, allowing her to help him rise. She draws him by the hand through the door and up the stairs to her quarters, but instead of letting go of his hand, she turns and pulls him to her, wrapping her arms around him and resting her head on his shoulder with a sigh. He returns the embrace with far less hesitation than before.
They stand that way, silently basking in each other's presence, until she sighs and says, "I'm so glad you came back."
"I could never have imagined such a welcome," he says. His cheek rests on the top of her head, and she can feel his breath ruffling her hair.
An unexpected laugh bubbles up her throat. "If you're worried about your reception, perhaps you should write better messages," she says, pulling away a little to look at his face, which is frowning at her in a way she shouldn't find so appealing, or amusing. "I will come to Skyhold in three days' time isn't exactly calculated to reassure."
He laughs, rueful, chagrined. "No," he agrees. "I can understand why that might have been alarming."
"You signed it Solas," she says, watching him carefully. "Is that what you'd like us to call you?"
"In truth, I wasn't sure whether you would recognize my hand," he says with a shrug. "And as for my name..." He hesitates. She can feel tiny movements in his fingers as he flexes them against her back in a nervous movement that she thinks he would never permit himself if he knew she could feel it. In the end, he smiles, just a little thing that lightens his eyes. "You may call me anything you wish, vhenan," he says. "Though I do not look forward to some of the questions the others will have once you inform them."
"Especially Sera," she teases him.
His groan is heart-felt. "I believe you enjoy my torment," he says, narrowing his eyes at her. He can't hide the grin playing around his mouth, though, and she doesn't bother hiding hers.
"Perhaps," she says, deliberately aping his most precise and stately manner of speaking, the one he uses when he's being clever and stuffy. "Or perhaps I'm just looking forward to what she's going to do to you for leaving."
The amusement fades from his face. "Then you would have me stay?" he asks, and suddenly there's slack in his arms around her that wasn't there before. His hands have moved to either side of her waist instead of holding her to him. She feels cold. She pulls her arms back closer to her, until her hands are instead covering his amulet.
"Is that what you want?" she says, her eyebrows drawing together. "I won't keep you caged here like a prisoner, no matter how much you may prefer to act like one."
He glances away, avoiding her eyes, and she lets him. She can still watch his face, his eyes the color of clouds in a thunderstorm, the way his brows crash together to form harsh lines across his forehead. "I have nothing in this world except my love for you," he says to the far mountains through her balcony doors. "No ties except to your Inquisition. I am adrift now in a world in which I have no place." He looks back at her then, and leans in to rest his forehead on hers. This close, his eyes are so intense, so heated, that she couldn't look away even if she wanted to. "But even if that were not true, I would not be parted from you, not for the Fade and all its secrets, not for lost Elvhenan itself." He sighs, closing his eyes briefly. She clenches his shirt with both hands. She can sense him withdrawing and she will not accept it, not this time. Blast and damnation, she'd thought they were done with that. "That is what I want, and that is what I have no right to ask from you."
"Why won't you let me decide what rights I give you?" she demands, holding him in place, though he makes no attempt to move. "I want you here, with me, for always. Don't I get a say in it this time?"
"You won't thank me in the end," he warns.
She gently shakes him by her grip on his shirt, glaring. "Not even you can tell the future."
"You are correct; that is not amongst my powers," he says. He regards her for a moment, searching her face for something she doesn't understand, and then pulls her back to nestle against him. His hands sweep up her spine, pressing her against him almost tenderly. "But I can recognize a trend when I see one."
"Then maybe I should make the decisions for a while," she says, soft, breathless. Her eyes are caught on his lips; she wants to kiss him so badly -
Well, and why shouldn't she?
She pulls herself up onto her toes with the grip on his shirt and lightly touches her mouth to his. She'd allowed herself to forget the shape of his mouth, the softness of his lips, and oh, the way he kisses her back, with such restrained ferocity that all she wants is to find out what that kind of passion would feel all over her, surrounding her, inside of her.
Instead, she reluctantly drops back onto her heels. She's not going anywhere - she can't, not with the way he's holding her so tight against him - but she needs a moment. She's pleased with the way she feels, though, the tight anticipation twisting her up inside, and his eagerness, how he chases her mouth for just a moment after she breaks the kiss. She smiles at him. "That was too soon," she says softly. "But I can't regret it." She's surprised by the husk in her own voice, and she wonders how she must seem to him, so affected by something so small - but she's not ashamed of how her body responds to him, and his own desire is writ large on his face. They are, at the very least, together in this.
He studies her like he does one of his moth-eaten Fade tomes, which was a terrible comparison because now she's imagining him fact-checking her. She can't help the laughter that wells up then, and she clings to his shirt, giggling, until she calms. "Sorry," she says breathlessly, offering him another smile as penance, though she makes no attempt to explain what's amusing her.
"It is not your apologies that I want, vhenan," he says slyly, laughing when she thumps him, even though she's pleased by his words, by his change of mood.
"If you're staying, then I'll have someone make up your quarters," she says, though it comes out far more like a question than she'd prefer.
His hands roam up and down her back in gentle, soothing caresses. "Is something the matter?" he asks her, raising his eyebrows.
She looks around her, at the gigantic bed, the frankly lavish carpets, the balconies, the huge, vaulted ceiling. "These rooms are really too large for one person," she says, glancing back at him. He's watching her very closely indeed now, and it makes her unaccountably nervous. "It might be more efficient to share them." He regards her for a long time, silent and considering, so long that she rushes back into nervous speech. "And I get awfully lonely up here, all by myself. The books probably need caring for, too, I don't know anything about archiving - "
He takes her face in firm hands and kisses her even while she tries to keep talking, kisses her through her sputtering, kisses her until she falls silent and kisses him back for all she's worth, with all her heart, with the sudden, hopeful joy that fills her up until there's nothing left.
"I would be happy to," he says, and she's confused until he goes on to clarify. "For the books, of course. They ought not be neglected."
And then he has the nerve to smirk at her, and she thumps him again, of course, but she can't stop grinning long enough to scold, her face still trapped between his long, slender fingers. "Good," she says softly. "The books missed you."
"As did I. Ar lath, ma vhenan," he says, and while she'd never doubted it. he is so serious, so intent on her face, that she realizes there's a difference between knowing and believing. She'd known that he had feelings for her. Now, oh now she believes it, lets it smooth over her rough edges and suffuse her until there's no room left for doubt, for disbelief, for false pride or for self-restraint.
There's just him, and her, and all the things they mean to each other, in this place which is now theirs.