Sorry I have been a bit slow to get your wonderful submissions reblogged to the event page; I have had a nasty flu for the past 2 weeks and it kicked my butt.
Today is the last day of the event and also to submit your pieces to be reblogged to the event page.
Thank you so much to everyone who participated and created such wonderful fan art and fanfiction for this year's prompts event!
I can't wait to see you all next year, and hopefully by then we'll have some new DA content to look forward to as well.
Pairing: (Bards Drabbles au,) Warden Inquisitor Isabeaux x Solas
Rating: PG - Heavy Innuendo
Once in the larder, the two elves startled to see Cole already there, his hands opened, daggers falling into a barrel that was formerly the home for pickled herring.
Isobeaux let out a startled laugh, her eyes glittering as she watched the spirit look between her and the flustered man a step behind.
“You better not have taken mine, Cole,” she said with a feigned glare.
“You said your daggers had a flesh sheath, how could I take that? It’s not hurting people…”
Isabeaux turned beet red, then let out a mighty cackle. Laughing so hard she doubled over while Cole looked at her perplexed. Solas, for his own good, kept an air of calm embarrassment while she continued to cackle and shake.
“I knew you enjoyed sparing, but I did not expect you to bury blades into flesh yourself, Inquisitor.”
His seriousious caused her laughter to double, tears streaming down her face as she grabbed his shoulder for support.
“Inquisitor, do you not want to share the frilly cakes with Solas, you thought the sweetness would make the stabbing more pleasant…” Cole’s innocent tone sent crimson across Solas cheeks.
“Oh Cole, your sweet bluntness puts my husband to shame. We most assuredly need some frilly cakes, care to help me gather them up?”
“Of course, Inquisitor! Er, I mean Izou.” He appeared by a cabinet, flinging it open in excitement, plates and cakes floating around him.
Izou watched him fondly, and her smile grew into a grin as Solas wrapped an arm about her waist.
“You truly surprise me, Ixobeaux,” He murmured into her shoulder, lips linger as he smiled
“Because I can appreciate a spirit's purpose?”
“No, because you can turn such an erotic evening into one that is full of laughter and warmth.”
She flushed, her hand clasping his on her waist. As Cole continued to load up plate after plate of sweet confections, Ixabeaux smiled softly,
“Thank you Solas, you make my time here worth while”
Pairing: Isobel Hawke x Fenris (will add link to AO3 later)
Rating: G
She had never seen a hart before, and the monstrous beast before her had her shaking in her boots.
Isobel was not sure exactly why Merril had insisted they needed a hart for this stretch of their journey, or why Fen looked about as thrilled to see the beast as she, but regardless, the creature was before her, snuffling and thoroughly destroying her carefully maintained hair, and she was over it.
“Look here you,” she poked the creature on the tip of his nose, careful not to hurt but to get attention. “We have places to be, and a weird mirror I don’t understand to transport,” she grabbed the reins that were dragging. “and you are going to get us there.” The beast stared at her with red, doleful eyes and let out a long, low kean that had Hawke’s hackles standing on end.
“Oh don’t give me that.” She had dropped the reins to cover her poor ears.
“Oh Izzou, you just have to treat him with respect and he’ll just adore you!” MErril chirped beside her, hazel eyes positively aglow in the early morning light.
“She’s right you know, these creatures can smell fear, much like that dog of yours.” Fenris had come up behind her, his bored tone not quite masking the amusement he found in her unease.
She grabbed the reins back up, watching as the hart shook his head in annoyance. “I suppose you’re both right.” She found her footinn in the stirrup and swung herself up. Looking down at her companions, she smiled uneasily as the best pawed the dirt.
“So,” she began, her hands gripping the reins tight, “ Who’s up here with lil ‘ol me? She fluttered her lashes and smiled prettily, her woad crinkling at the corner of her eyes.
“Oh, I could never dream of keeping you two sweetkins apart, “ Merril gently pushed Fenris before her, his eyes going wide for a bit when the hart turned to look at him doubtfully.
“It’s quite alright, maleficar, ladies first.”
“Oh Fen, you’re not scared, are you?” Isobel covered her smile with a hand. The broody elf’s face scrunched up in annoyance, then deftly made his way up behind her.
“Nonsense, Hawke,” he mumbled, a blush tinting his ears.
Merril smiled up at them, her friends' antics always good to raise the spirits.
Hiii happy happy Friday! For DADWC, I'm dyiiing for more Blackwall/Thalia ;u; How about "Captured" from the 14 Days of DA Lovers list?
Hi Gin!! You and @contreparry had identical requests for this one, and then I got even more ambitious and added this one from @melisusthewee:
Thank you all! Here is some spicy banter laced with angst from Kingdom Come AU – might go in a future chapter? It's several years post-Trespasser and Thalia has been reunited with Thom Rainier after being widowed.
For @dadrunkwriting and @14daysdalovers!
WC: 1653
---
After dinner, Thalia hovers nearby while Thom washes the dishes in the kitchen sink. He’s dismissed the housekeeper early again, preferring to keep the company just the two of them. Thalia shivered a little when he said this, wondering at his subtext.
She leans against the long wooden counter, watching him work. She is taken in by the methodical movements of his hands; the steam from the heated water coats their faces in a thin sheen of sweat.
“Would you like some help?” she ventures.
He waves her off with one large, dripping hand. “I’d never let a lady stoop to such menial work.” His gaze lowers to the sleeve of her tunic, dangling loose without her prosthetic. “Besides…”
“I can manage drying dishes quite well one-handed, thank you.” Images come to her: porcelain smashed on the floor after she lost her grip on yet another plate, tears pricking her eyes; Cullen reassuring her in low tones while grabbing for the broom; the dog nosing his way in to sniff at the detritus. “It just took a little practice, that’s all.”
“Wasn’t questioning your capability.” Thom has turned front, carrying on as if she hadn’t spoken at all. She thinks again of his sharp tone the other evening, when she offered a sliver of her previous life with a previous man. I’m not at all interested in what you did with Cullen.
She sighs. Cullen liked when she helped around the house. She suspected her growing up as a member of the nobility irked him more than he ever felt willing to voice. She grew accustomed to taking the initiative, to navigating menial work alongside the lost arm, in order to prove she was self-sufficient. That she didn’t view him as a servant.
Thom Rainier, it seems, is different. She can’t shake some of the things he growled in her ear, deep in the throes of coitus. Her face flushes at the memory — but she can hardly call observing him do all the chores slumming it.
“Well, is there anything you would like me to do?” Thalia asks, exasperation seeping into her tone.
“You’re doing it.” His voice is brusque.
“What, standing here and annoying you?”
He turns and grabs her around the waist. Thalia lets out a surprised shriek as his warm, wet grip soaks through her jerkin and he lifts her, with no apparent effort, onto the countertop. Once she’s sitting, he slids into the space between her legs and leans in close.
“I assure you annoyance is not what I’m feeling right now,” he murmurs.
Thalia can scarcely breathe when he’s this close. She wants to put her hand on his face, fingers in his hair. She remembers the uncomplicated pleasure of their union, and despises the flood of conflicting emotions that have resulted. But what did she expect? It never could be simple with them. And she promised she would try to make this — whatever this late-blooming thing is between them — work. If she can keep the guilt from creeping in and eating her alive.
She leans back, kicking her legs with feigned petulance. Her feet no longer reach the floor. “You really are the sort of man my mother warned me about.”
Thom lets out a sudden, oddly delighted laugh. “Is that so?” She has never mentioned her family to him before, she thinks. “What sort of man is that?”
Dastardly men, low-born and cunning, determined to deflower a lady. Thalia recalls this conversation with her mother dimly, as if it happened in another lifetime. It was eclipsed by rhetoric she received in the Circle, where the phantom men were not peasants but templars, determined to exploit their power. It amuses her in a feral way that she’s been touched by both sorts willingly.
This she does not say. Instead she angles her head coyly and tries to grasp her mother’s ludicrous language out of the recesses of her memory. Holding the class difference up to his face feels unwise. “In the end I think she meant all of them. ‘A man has his appetites’ — that’s what she said.”
Her hair has fallen into her face. The ends of blunted auburn strands tickle her cheekbones. Thom reaches in and brushes them away with damp fingers smelling of soap. “I’m not sure I can deny that,” he says, voice a low rumble.
“Yes, well.” Thalia leans forward, curling her hand around the collar of his black doublet. “Mother’s idea of intimacy was to lie back and think of Ostwick.”
Thom chuckles. Thalia presses her lips to his, giggling at the tickle of his beard against her chin, and his hands palm her face, dampen her hair with dishwater. She pulls away playfully, shaking out her waves. “And I must admit I’m curious.”
“About — my — appetites?” he asks between kisses planted on her cheekbone, eyelid, temple. “And yet I’m more interested in yours.”
Thom smirks, disentangling himself and returning to the dishes. Their shoulders touch in a desirable, electric way. “Based on the other night, I’d disagree.”
Thalia chews her lip. “I wasn’t even really thinking. I was trying not to, actually, or I’d’ve never worked up the courage.”
“Well, I’m glad you did.” Of course he is. She’s never seen him so happy, as if her mortifying dissolution into tears after the fact never happened. “But now we’ve a bit of time to explore, don’t we?”
It is a delicious proposition — luxurious, a little. To have time to sort out desires, and not fit hurried love-making in between world ending crises? Even in peace time, communicating with Cullen about such things proved difficult. She blamed herself, mostly. Once she lost the arm and the Inquisition, it became an insurmountable obstacle to talk about much of anything for a long while. When he’d tried to bridge the chasm, she had only pushed him away further.
“Thalia.” She jolts, startled. Thom is watching her, thick brows lowered in concern. “You looked like you were folding in on yourself there. Am I being too forward?”
“No, no.” Is she truly so obvious? Or is it merely that he knows her that well? She twitches her mouth into an impish smile. “I think that would be nice. Exploring some… possibilities. I assume you know more than me, with your vast life experience.”
They both laugh, but it is true she likes him precisely the way he is. The grey gathering at his temples and threading through his neatly kept beard tug at some primal desire in her. If anything, it’s that she is so much younger that makes her insecure. All this time she has assumed he would prefer a woman more worldly — and no matter how much of the continent she travels, nor how many decisions she’s been forced to make, when it comes to him, she still feels as unprepared and inexperienced as the day they met.
“I don’t think you’re old,” she says defensively. “I just always assumed you’d have… er. Sophisticated tastes that I’d know nothing about.”
“What would make you think that?” he asks carefully, but she notes he doesn’t deny it.
“Well, you know, all those years in Orlais…”
“What about them?”
Thalia pressed the back of her palm against her mouth to stifle a nervous laugh. “One hears things about the conduct there, in… certain circles.”
She can hear, rather than see, his grin. “Are you asking me if I was a libertine during my time in Orlais, my lady?”
“Please do not try to ‘my lady’ your way out of this,” Thalia huffs. “It’s just… you had a certain reputation, and I thought…” She’s not really sure what she thinks. Just that it sounds salacious in a way that is both a little dangerous and terribly appealing.
“If I were to say ‘yes,’ what would you do with that information?”
“Ask you what it was like,” Thalia blurts.
“To what end?”
“I don’t know.” She feels the blush creeping up her neck and into her cheeks. “It always seemed far too bold for someone like me. I know I mustn’t hold a candle to all those Orlesian women…”
“None of that, now.” Thom flicks water at her, as if admonishing a cat. “You burn a thousand times brighter than any woman I met in Orlais.”
“Oh.” Thalia looks down, simultaneously chastised and glowing with praise. “Even if I haven’t been to those scandalous Orlesian parties, where — er, everyone chases each other in their underthings?”
Thom laughs so heartily he doubles over, grasping the edge of the sink to steady himself. “I’m sorry, love, you think what happened at these parties?”
“Did they not?” Thalia demands, horrified. Where did she get such an idea? The Randy Dowager, Dorian? Maybe gossip about Vivienne, or an account from her knavish cousin?
“I don’t know about everyone,” Thom says, cryptically enough to make her stomach flutter, “but if you’d like a little game of catch-me-if-you-can, you only have to say so.”
“Wait, really?” Is it that simple? And is that what all of this means — that this is something she’d like to recreate? In her mind, she holds the idea up to the light and squints at it.
“No one’s here but us,” he reminds her, voice husky. “We can do whatever we want.”
She swallows hard; the fluttering multiples.
“Though it’d be nice to know what you’d like me to do,” Thom says softly, “once I capture you.”
Desire shoots through her like lightning. “I, um,” she stammers, “I shall have to think about it.”
“Well, you’d better think fast.” Thom shoots her a mischievous grin that threatens to melt her on the spot. “I am almost done with the dishes.”
I'm having a hard time focusing on writing right now, but I wanted to share the piece I had been working on for this years 14 Days of Dragon Age Lovers prompts before the month is out.
After a long day on the road again, Sarovanya settles down with Leliana and asks her to share more of what she knows about the Maker and the Chant of Light. Leliana happily obliges, singing a version of the chant she'd learned as a lay sister.
Setup and rendered in DAZ Studio 4.21. Postwork in Photoshop Elements 8.0.
14 - Free choice
Morrigan: So... How old is Duncan?
Solona: Six.
Morrigan: Kieran's nine.
Solona: They seem to be getting along pretty well.
Morrigan: They're brothers after all.
I dusted off this uh... more than a year old sketch of when I was having fluffy feelings about Alistair-Warden-Morrigan family. This is by far not perfect and/or complete but something.
I called it One family back in the day.
And with this, I can still barely believe it, but I have officially finished this event. Almost a week later, but I started on the 5th day, so
