I apologise if the last scene in this chapter is horrendously cliche...
And thank you, again a million times to everyone who has been so amazingly supportive of this, really you guys are so awesome I can't thank you enough!
Chapter Eleven
It didn't take Lavellan long to find him the next morning, not that he would have expected anything less given what had transpired in their dreams. He'd barely woken and dressed when she forced her way into his quarters, but he didn't flinch and he refused to give her the satisfaction of a reaction. It was petty and immature, but Fen'Harel goaded her, faced his bookcase and pretended, casually, to search for a tome.
"Bursting into my room so early in the morning, are you?" he teased and had he been staring at her, he swore she would have that furious, irritated look on her features that he found far more endearing than he did intimidating. "I could have been dressing for all you knew." He tutted, scolding her playfully. "Did you not sleep well?"
"You good for nothing tease," she hissed as her hand clasped tightly around his arm. She spun him around, slammed him into the bookcase so hard it sent several tomes crashing to the floor, fisted her hands in his robes and pushed a rough kiss to his lips. In truth, he hadn't quite expected such a reaction from her, although he was hardly one to complain.
He allowed his hand to reach up and cup her jaw, and when they parted he idly ran his thumb over her cheek as he gazed at her softly, longingly. She pressed her forehead to his own, the tip of her nose rubbing against his as he sighed, ever so gently, and pushed her away. Her features pulled into a frown, confusion and the smallest hint of hurt dancing over her features because she couldn't understand why he acted as if he didn't want her.
And he did want her, he wanted to pull her into his arms and feel her warm skin beneath his fingers again, he wanted to bury into her hair and drink deep her scent and he wanted that she would never leave. All the things he now ached for provoked by a single kiss that hadn't even technically been real. It shamed him that for decades he had managed on his own, never thought he needed another, and she'd broken him so completely, so easily.
"This... may not be the best idea," he offered softly because even as much as he longed for her, he couldn't bear to make her a target, and she would become one because he now had many, many enemies. "The others, they will talk."
"Then let them," was her, predictably, obstinate reply.
"They may try and use you to get at me," he added but still she would not have any of it.
"They can try."
He sighed, searched her face for even the slightest hope that he might be able to dissuade her. All he found was the look of a woman who had already decided what she wanted, and knew, no matter how much it took, that she would have it. He couldn't push her away, not with that expression on her features, so, instead, he whispered, defeated, "Lavellan, your stubbornness will be the death of me."
He pulled her into his embrace, pressed his lips to hers and kissed her as she curled her arms around his neck and pushed against him. His mind told him it was a terrible idea, that it could not end well for either of them, but his heart told him differently, and the only thing he could do was fold against her, abandon his reason and bend to his emotions and promise that, whatever happened, he would protect her with everything he had.
Her fingers tangled in Fen'Harel's hair, twisted around his thick dreadlocks and combed through his free tresses that intertwined between them. Her touch trailed over the left side of his head, where his hair was cut shear against his skin, her nails raking ever so gently against him and then, once more, lost themselves in the rest of his hair. So long it had gotten that he had to tie it back when she wasn't playing with it. It was surprisingly peaceful to lay with his head in Lavellan's lap in his study as she absentmindedly caressed him and he lazily flipped through the pages of a tome. After several moments, he felt her hands move to cup his face and she leant over him and kissed him, gently. Her copper hair, so much softer and better cared for than his, brushed against his neck.
He reached up for her, his fingers trailing along the side of her face as they parted and he gazed at her with what he knew could only be a hopelessly lovesick expression. Perhaps it should have embarrassed him, the way he'd bent so completely and tragically to her the moment her lips had graced his in the Fade. He really was hopeless.
"How are you even interested in me?" he mused.
"Well, it's not your cheery and positive personality, that's for certain," she replied. He scowled at her so grumpily, so entirely unimpressed that she laughed and pushed a quick kiss to his forehead.
"I was not jesting," he continued as he pushed aside the tome he had already abandoned. "How could you not view me, at best, as your hahren and, at worst, one who had been a slave master as worse as the rest?"
"You are both, and more," she replied gently.
"So you do see me as your teacher, then? Is it a fantasy of yours to seduce your hahren, or is it merely a coincidence?"
Her features drew into an unimpressed look that verged on a glower. "You are deliberately trying to bait me now."
"I would do no such thing; I am simply trying to judge your intent." Try as hard as he might he couldn't stop the grin that tugged at his lips. She scoffed at him and pushed him roughly out of her lap.
"And I could say the same about you," she continued as she pushed herself onto her feet. "You didn't exactly attempt to discourage your da'len in the Fade."
She emphasized the word pointedly and she moved to leave but he stood and scrambled after her, grabbed her hand and she stilled and cast a curious, but haughty, look over her shoulder.
"Lavellan," he whispered. Her lips tugged into a smile and she turned to face him properly. Her finger trailed up his chest until they reached his neck and, then, she caught his chin in her grasp and angled him down towards her as she stepped closer. "You stopped being a student to me months ago."
"The same as how you stopped being the insufferable man I was given to and became the one I came to admire after I saw how you changed to free and fight for the slaves."
"I assure you that seducing you was not my intent when I chose to stand up against their oppression, although I will admit that it has become an enjoyable side benefit of my actions." He very near purred the sentence as he said it and she grinned at him so widely he couldn't stop his own lips tugging to do the same.
Her clasp around his chin tightened ever so gently, and she pulled him down into a kiss, her free hand curling around his neck as he slipped his arms around her and drew her closer. When they parted, she pressed her forehead to his, gazed into his eyes and he sighed, ever so gently, in content.
"By the way," she murmured and he frowned as he noted the mischief that flashed in her eyes, "That book you own, The Art of Magic in the Bedroom..." She trailed her sentence off as she said it and he cursed at the way his cheeks flushed with heat.
"I can assure you I have no clue where I acquired it, nor can I recall reading it for at least a century."
"And longer than a century ago?"
He glowered at her halfheartedly because he couldn't stop the faint laughter trickling into his voice as he said, "And you called me the tease."
She laughed, her eyes shining at him with joy as she pulled him in and, once more, kissed him.
It had been a trying day for Fen'Harel because he had been forced to kill to free a vulnerable, poorly treated slave. He returned home distant and struggling to control himself, and when he slipped beneath the sheets of his bed and tried to sleep, it evaded and taunted him mercilessly. What poor excuse of rest he did manage to achieve was broken by nightmares and scenes that not even he could manage to control. He struggled against the beast in his half-sleep, his body tossing and turning on the bed as he tried to rein it in. And he cried out each time the beast flared inside him, his body slick with a sheen of sweat that captured in tiny beads at the curve of his muscles. He fought it so hard, but it was a slow, agonising battle that he was losing. Then she came to him.
Lavellan slipped into his bed, knelt over him and, gently, placed her hands on him. Her touch was like a cool, soothing balm pressed against his skin that felt like it was burning and he curled into it, desperate to see that it wouldn't stop. She held him as he panted and jerked, her palms idly caressing his flexed and tense muscles and her mouth whispering soft, gentle nothings into his ear. And, slowly, she pulled him out of it. He grappled back his control second by second until he was lying awake in her arms, in command of his own body and shaking with the force his struggle had wrought on him. He reached out to her, his hand trembling and she caught it in her own, squeezed it reassuringly and pressed a gentle kiss to his tangled, sweaty hair. He folded against her, his head pressed once more into her lap as exhaustion overcame him and he drifted, finally, into a peaceful, untroubled sleep.
When he woke the next morning he found himself in the same position, the bedsheets tangled haphazardly over his waist and between his legs as her hand rested softly against his forehead. She'd slept the entire night uncomfortably upright with him cradled against her, warding off his nightmares with her gentle, soothing touch. And he realised, in that moment, how much he truly, desperately, needed her, and how much it would ruin him if she was ever taken away.
"Take me with you when you leave to help the slaves," she said after several moments and he felt guilty for the tired, sleepy notes that graced her voice.
"No, Lavellan, I cannot," he pleaded as he pushed himself up and gazed at her. "It is dangerous."
"And you are struggling to control it," she replied as she pressed her palm against his bare chest. He tensed under her contact and pulled the blankets tighter around his waist. For all their relationship meant to him, her past made him uncomfortable with the idea of her sharing his bed because he was haunted by the notion of what memories he might wrench up in her.
"Let me help you," she continued as she ran her hand up his collarbone, his neck and finally cupped his jaw. "You need it."
He reached up and placed his hand over hers, a sigh escaping him as his brow creased in indecision. Finally, after several moments, he caved and whispered, "Very well."
He did need her, desperately so. Without her, he would have lost himself to the beast months ago and, sometimes, it felt as if she was the only thing capable of drawing the humanity out in him.