#for some slight context: I’ve had several people now pop up in my life pretending to be other people/several people and while I’ve blocked | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

buttsonthebeach · 7 years

Text

River

Pairings: Solavellan, very minor Adoribull, and OC x OC (oh! and briefly mentioned Maevaris Tilani x Unnamed Husband)

Rating: Teen? I guess? For implied shenanigans? Nothing serious.

Note: Solas and Ellana’s twenty-year-old daughter has a (human Tevene) boyfriend and Solas is being a grump about it. Ellana decides to finally confront him. Humor and some sweet feels ensue.

This is a deleted scene from the epilogue of Awakened, so it does contain some spoilers for that fic. You can just read it as random grumpy dad!Solas fluff without further context and be fine.

****

Ellana never thought that fruit preserves would play an important role in her life, but a week into their family stay at Dorian and Bull’s villa, that opinion was rapidly changing.

The problem wasn’t so much the preserves as it was Lucius and Ashara and the preserves, and the fact that the two were very obviously coming down from the same room together each morning, and the fact that whenever they passed the preserves their fingers brushed, or that sometimes Ashara tried to keep the preserves from Lucius so he would have to put his arms around her in an effort to steal them back. But it really came to a head on the morning when Ashara got some of the preserves on the corner of her mouth, and Lucius reached out and wiped them away with his thumb, and their eyes met and Ashara blushed just enough that Solas finally stood and left the table.

As he seemed tempted to every morning that week.

Dorian laughed until he had to put his cup of tea down.

So, really, the problem was between the preserves and Ashara and Lucius and Solas, and Dorian wasn’t helping, and Ellana wasn’t sure who to scold first.

“What?” Ashara kept asking. “I don’t see what’s so funny.”

“What’s so funny is seeing the Dread Wolf himself, creator of the Veil, rebel god, acting like a child. Maker, his face. Do you think you two could do that again at dinner?”

Now Ashara was really blushing. Lucius wasn’t looking up from his plate.

“Hush, Dorian. Solas isn’t the only one acting like a child,” Ellana said at last, though there was little heat in her voice.

It was unseasonably warm, so they made plans to go to the nearby river later in the day when it got too hot for anything else. There was some scrambling for appropriate swimming clothes for everyone to wear - Ellana joked about swimming nude, which won her a scandalized look from her own daughter - and then it was time to go through the kitchen and see what they could pack. She found Solas in there, seated on a low bench, rewrapping the leather straps that protected his staff.

“Please tell me you aren’t planning on using that on anyone in particular,” she said.

“What?” he replied, distant.

“I take it you’re over your display at breakfast, then?”

“Display? I was simply done with my meal.”

Ellana rolled her eyes, though he didn’t look up to see it. She was holding the plate with the remains of his breakfast in her hand. If he didn’t feel like acknowledging what was going on, she didn’t feel like pressing at the moment.

“There are plans to go down to the river. Will you come?”

“Of course.”

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to. This has been an awful lot of socializing for you, this past week. I wouldn’t blame you for wanting to spend a little quiet time alone.”

“I will be fine, vhenan.”

She set down his plate and ran her hand along his shoulder on her way to see what they could pack. The corners of his mouth lifted in response to her slight touch and he looked up at last. So he wasn’t in a completely foul mood - at least not anymore.

She managed to catch Ashara alone before they left for the river to speak to her about it.

“You know, you might save a little more of your affection for Lucius when you are alone,” she said when they were waiting for the others to be ready.

“I’m sorry,” Ashara said. She fiddled with the clothes she’d borrowed from Maevaris’s older daughter. They did sit strangely on her narrower frame. “Have we been bad? We didn’t mean to. It’s just…”

“No, da’vhenan. You haven’t done anything terribly wrong. I know that restraint is hard when you’re in those first stages of love. I only wanted to point it out to you. You might want to consider that there are other people around you who might not - appreciate the displays of affection.”

“You mean Papae,” she said flatly, her blue eyes narrowing.

“Yes.”

“He’s being ridiculous.”

“And this surprises you?”

Ashara snorted. “Not really. It’s just - we only have a few more days here, then Lucius goes back to Minrathous and we go back to Enasan. I don’t really want to spend that time worrying about what Papae thinks.”

“Fair enough. I’ll talk to him, if you’ll promise not to try and irritate him.”

“I’m never irritating,” Ashara said, lifting her chin with a comical superiority.

“Yes,” Ellana said dryly. “And I’m the queen of Antiva.”

In retrospect, Ellana might have done well to speak to Lucius, as well. She would hardly have thought it necessary. He was a kind, even-tempered young man - a good balance to Ashara’s flurries of feeling and action. He watched her with a bemused adoration as she went on about whatever thought had popped into her mind. He teased her gently when she started to take something too seriously.

He was also the one who picked Ashara up and threw her straight into the river not long after they arrived.

“What’s the matter?” He said as she walked back up the bank towards him, drenched and furious. The loose clothing she’d borrowed from Mae’s daughter was plastered to her every curve and angle now. “Didn’t you spend the entire walk here claiming it was better to go in all at once? That the shock to the body is actually healthy according to several studies conducted at the University of Orlais?”

“You -” Ashara sputtered. “That was -”

“I don’t think I’ve actually seen you speechless before, Ash,” Lucius said with a chuckle. He snuck an arm around her and pulled her closer to him. She put up only a token resistance. “Maybe I should throw you in there again.”

“I’d like to see you try,” Ashara said, pushing him back.

It led, predictably, to a bout of chasing around the waterline, and though soon they weren’t the only ones involved, when Ellana looked for Solas she saw that he had already moved further down the river from everyone, and was watching with a scowl. While Dorian and Bull lounged and Mae and her husband began setting out the food, Ellana decided to join her bond mate, and finally deal with things head on.

“All right,” Ellana said when she reached him, sitting down in the sand beside him. “Out with it.”

“Out with what?” he said.

“How irritated you are with them,” she said, nodding towards the ongoing display. Ashara and Lucius had separated from the others, even their friend Claudia. It was just the two of them now, crossing a sandbank to the other side of the river, hands loosely linked. “We’ve danced around it long enough. Just admit it. You hate that she’s found a lover. You hate that they’re running about the villa every day hand in hand stealing kisses when they think no one’s looking and that they’re clearly sleeping in the same room.”

“It is not that at all.”

He was indignant, and in denial, and there was a time that might have irritated her - his constant obstinance. There would surely be times in the future when it still would. But she had a feeling she knew what he needed now, so she simply leaned against him.

“Well then - enlighten me. What is it, exactly? Why can you barely seem to stand the sight of them?”

Solas flicked away a leaf that had fallen into his lap, harder than necessary.

“He calls her Ash. We gave her a beautiful name full of meaning and promise and he reduces it to a single mispronounced symbol that means only death and destruction in the human tongue.”

Ellana snorted, considered making a comment about human tongues, and thought better of it.

“Is that all?”

“He is intelligent enough but too quiet. He cannot possibly challenge her the way she deserves.” There was more heat in his voice now.

“And?”

“And he should not be encouraging these - displays. He is old enough to know better than to behave like this in public. And for that matter, he is too old for her.”

She had to laugh at that and look him in the eye now. “Oh, really? Remind me - did we ever figure out exactly how old you are compared to me? Even setting aside your actual age, you didn’t seem to have any issues pretending to be a man in his forties pursuing a woman in her late twenties. He’s only five years older than her.”

He did blush and press his lips together at that. It made him look younger. “That was different. You were - older. In many ways. Ashara is still a child.”

A shout drew their attention and Ellana saw that Ashara had successfully pushed Lucius into the river at last. She was bent double on the opposite shore, laughing, her dark hair still dripping around her face. And - she had to admit, it was strange to think of the daughter who climbed chairs in search of sweets to steal or begged her father to do one more little spell before bedtime now that Ashara was so tall, and now that Lucius who was taller still was coming towards her, clearly ready to scoop her back into his arms, wet clothes and all.

“She isn’t,” Ellana said. “Not really.”

Solas sighed and his face twisted back into a pained expression. He dug his feet deeper into the sand. “I cannot make myself accept that. I fear - I fear above all else that he will hurt her. Child or no, she is too young, too curious about the world and everything in it, for this to end well. I cannot begrudge him his human birth - but you know that alone will cause problems, before the end. I can only see that, when I look at them. The pain.”

Ellana looped her arm through his and rested her head on his shoulder. After a moment, she felt the weight of his head on top of hers.

“You are allowed to worry about her,” she said. “We both are.”

Lucius had put Ashara back down by that point. Claudia crossed the sandback to join them, the youngest of Mae’s children in tow. Ashara turned to them, shading her eyes against the sun and keeping her other arm tight around Lucius’s waist. She was saying something, but Ellana couldn’t make out the words. She felt a sudden rush instead: the person she’d known from the inside first, as stray flutters and kicks and sleepless, painful nights, was whole and grown and out in the world and she was a good person who drew other good people to her, and she was loved.

“We did well, you know,” Ellana said, though it was hard to get the words out. Solas was still, and then he moved so he could wrap his arm all the way around her shoulders and kiss her forehead.

“We did.”

They sat together on the warm, coarse sand and watched their daughter across the river as she laughed and ran in the shallow water. Ashara didn’t turn to see them until some time later, and by then almost all of the tension had ebbed from Solas’s shoulders, and the smile and wave he offered her in return was genuine. By the next morning his lips were pursed again at the sight of them, swanning down the stairs arm and arm, but Ellana just shook her head at him and smiled. He did offer to show Lucius what he meant about casting barriers later that afternoon, after all - and Ellana was well versed, by now, in watching small seeds take root and grow.

#solavellan fanfic #dad solas fic #ellana lavellan #ashara lavellan #lucius talvas #awakened #my writing #fluff #humor #have i mentioned lately how terrible i am at titles?#because i am

50 notes · View notes