Observant, insightful, loyal, self-sacrificing, ruthless, reserved, and sometimes self-righteous. Easy to overlook yet quiet in her leadership. She's the threat you always saw coming but underestimated anyway. Aelyn is my Thedas interpretation of Aragorn.
Sommer Hawke
Reluctant Champion and Mistress of Snark. Aesthetic includes dirty jokes, disaster bisexual, mid-battle trolling, and stabbies. 🗡🗡
Aoife Mahariel
Takes on the blight with a can-do attitude and a whole lot of 😬🤷♀️😱. Too stubborn to quit and too pure for this world.
After waiting over a year for @nipuni 's commission schedule to align to my budget, I finally finally got to commission her for Aelyn's Wonder Woman moment and I could. not. be. happier.
I commissioned @faerun for pixel icons of my girls, Aelyn Lavellan and Sommer Hawke, and LOOK HOW CUTE THEY ARE!! @faerun was wonderful to work with, I highly recommend them for all of your pixel art needs! Thank you so much!
I’ll tag @rhunae @pink-lyrium @solverne-02 @hansaera and anyone else that is interested, of course. :)
Aelyn Lavellan
More traditional forms of affection such as fluffy words or physical contact do not come naturally to Aelyn, and tend to feel a bit stiff and unnatural to her. Instead, she prefers to show affection by being emotionally available for those she cares about. She is a listener and problem-solver, and she has a knack for understanding people, situations, and manipulating both to get a positive outcome. However, as an introvert, she will rarely initiate that connection, and will usually wait until her friend leans on her for support, either directly or indirectly. That process of establishing trust is critical and meaningful for her, and once a friend trusts her enough to bring her into that circle, they have a loyal and selfless friend for life.
Her romantic relationship with Solas began similarly, but since they were both hesitant to initiate that emotional connection it took much longer for them to recognize the bridge they had built through small, private interactions. The quiet, trusting friendship they developed by spending quality time together slowly evolved into much much more. And as their relationship evolved into a comfortable sort of intimacy, they spent a lot of time just being together as they went about their interests, like Solas reading as Aelyn worked on correspondence, and checking in with each other on occasion. She also found that physical contact became important to her as their relationship deepened: a casual brush of the hand, a familiar touch on the small of the back or thigh. Those were small but vital reminders of their connection and comfort with one another.
I was tagged by @wicked-eyes-and-wicked-hearts. Thank you so much for the tag!!
Rule: Bold what always applies | Italicize what applies sometimes
Solas & Aelyn Lavellan (screenshots by @water-whisp)
height difference | mutual pining | first kiss | first love | wedding | in-jokes | lgbt+ | family disapproves | friend disapproves | would die for each other | fake relationship | arranged wedding | cuddlers | pda friendly | and they were room mates | holding hands | secret relationship | opposing world views | opposing personalities | opposing goals | getting a pet | have kids (only if Cole counts...) | want kids | grow old together | relationship failures | rests head on shoulder | share a bed | token dummies | relationship doubts | they have a song | first date | share a jacket/cloak | sharing a blanket | mutual interests | study buddies | bathing together | crash into hello | accidental nudity | laundry | same hobbies | cooking for each other | big fancy gala | sibling rivalry | hair stroking | dancing | laying in the grass | watching stars together | watching the other sleep |shared values | friends to lovers | enemies to lovers | lovers to enemies | childhood friends | slow burn | love triangle | toxic relationship | sitting on each other’s laps | can’t be together | hugs | forehead touches | neck kisses | car/motorbike rides | compliments | nicknames | falling asleep together | late night talks | gifts
I’ll tag @kittlesandbugs @bearly-tolerable @galadrieljones @thevikingwoman @water-whisp, and anyone else that would like to. :) (Sorry if you’ve already done this!)
When @roguedreadwolf came to me with the idea for this commission, I immediately said YES PLEASE. Who doesn’t love angsty, worshipful, post-Here Lies the Abyss sex?? Thank you for trusting me with your idea <3
My Ko-Fi || My Commissions
Pairing: Aelyn Lavellan x Solas
Rating: Explicit!
**********
Everything hurts.
When Aelyn Lavellan first became the Herald of Andraste, and then the Inquisitor, her mind was so full of buzzing thoughts that she could hardly track them all. Now, in the world after Adamant, there was only that one thought.
Everything hurts.
Her ribs ached where they had cracked, and her arms and her back and her neck, too. But it wasn’t only that. Aelyn hurt all the way from her throat down into her lungs, into the pit of her stomach. She hurt somewhere deep inside her chest, somewhere she could not touch, something she could not clear even with her deepest breaths.
She had been in a realm of nightmares, and even though she could feel the stone of the fortress beneath her palms, she was beginning to think she hadn’t actually woken up from it.
Her physical injuries were already healed by the potions and spells. She knew from experience that the soreness would fade, that still feeling some even after being healed was normal. But she had no idea what to do with the other aches as she sat in the bedroom Cullen had set aside for her, declaring that there was no need to move out immediately, that she needed rest. It was a dank, dark place, but the bed was comfortable enough, and the ceilings were high, and someone had made sure plenty of beeswax candles were lit, and so Aelyn shouldn’t have felt as trapped and scared and unable to breathe as she did.
Her eyes drifted upwards to the Warden banner hung above her bed. Her stomach lurched. She made the right decision. She did. Alistair was the leader the Wardens needed now more than ever. And how could she take him away from his partner, another Dalish elf who’d been called on to save their world?
But then Aelyn thought again of the look on Varric’s face when she returned without Hawke.
She moved to the edge of the bed, planted her feet on the floor, and ducked her head between her knees. In, out. All she had to do was breathe.
Everything hurts.
The wooden door of her room creaked open and a chill desert breeze snaked through. Then there was the soft hush of bare feet on the stone floor, and then Solas’s arms were around her.
Aelyn did not even lift her head to see him. She just went to her knees and let him catch her, carry her there. She buried her face into the crook of his neck and breathed in the smell of him.
“Ma vhenan,” he murmured, nearly crushing her with the strength of his embrace. “Aelyn, I -”
“Everything hurts,” she said, and it was the first time she had spoken the words aloud in the hours since the chaos ended.
As she shook in his arms, Aelyn realized that it might have been the first time she truly broke down since becoming Inquisitor. She was physically exhausted by the retreat from Haven, nervous when they chose her to lead them, and infuriated by the politics of Orlais. The last few months had not been short of tension and high emotion. But she had borne it all. She had shoved her own needs down. Everyone else mattered more than she did. That was what it meant to be Inquisitor.
Now she found she could barely stand, that each time she closed her eyes she saw the many eyes of Nightmare, saw Hawke framed against that arachnid silhouette, going towards her death unafraid -
“Atisha, ma vhenan,” Solas murmured again and again. “Atisha, atisha. I have you, Aelyn.”
But Aelyn did not fail to notice that there was a tremor in his own voice, and in his hands, for all that he was trying to comfort her.
She rocked back onto her heels, creating just enough distance between them to look him in the eyes. He was searching her face too, his eyes darting this way and that. He was as frightened as she was. Aelyn cupped his face in her hands, feeling the warmth of him, the softness of his freckled skin.
“Are you alright?” she asked, though she already knew the answer.
Solas laced his fingers around her wrists. She felt the calluses from his staff. She studied him in turn. There was a purpling bruise along his collarbone from where a terror demon had struck him while they were in the Fade. She could just see it through the loose neck of his tunic.
“So many times,” he began. He had to shake his head before he could go on. “I thought I lost you today. Over and over and over again. And losing you -”
His breath hitched, and Aelyn’s heart was a stone again - not a hammering, living thing but a dead anvil inside her chest, pressing all the breath from her body. She leaned her forehead against Solas’s.
“I do not think I can bear it.”
He said can and not could - like it was something that would happen no matter what. Maybe he was right. Aelyn felt the foreign magical hum of the Anchor in her left palm, saw the green glow that outlined it where she cradled Solas’s face. If it was not that archdemon - if it was not Corypheus - if it was not one of the Venatori or one of the Red Templars or a godsforsaken bear - there was every chance that she would not survive her time as Inquisitor.
There was every chance that Solas would not survive, either. His magical power and prowess confounded Bull, and Cole said a sadness deep as the sea lurked behind his grey-blue eyes, and when he had nearly fallen to that terror demon, Aelyn had felt her own soul leave her body.
She sat up onto her knees, taller than him now, and kissed him hard on the mouth.
Solas went to her like a drowning man towards the surface of the water, or a flower bending towards sunlight. He leaned back, swaying, groaning, his hands tight on her back, nearly clawing down her own loose tunic as she deepened the kiss. A flicker of tongue, and then another, their mouths opening and closing. She was in his lap now, straddling him, kissing him until she could no longer breathe, until the pain spiked sharp in her ribs and she pulled back, hissing.
Everything hurts.
That thought was not as all-encompassing when Solas was there, pressed against her, eyes bright in the darkness, mouth still parted, all open desire in her arms.
“I need you,”Aelyn said in a voice that did not quite sound like her own. Surely she was not so scared. So raw. “I need you, gods, vhenan, I need you.”
Solas stood and she rose with him, and they both winced and bit their lips, and then they both found each other again. For a moment there was nothing but hands and bodies - her hands pushing up Solas’s shirt, finding warm muscle beneath, tracing paths she had known before with a desperation she had never known in her life. His were on her shoulders, her back, her buttocks, the laces of her leather armor, the bottom part of which she had not yet removed. She got his shirt off of him first, and found a constellation of bruises her fingers had not been able to feel. His pale skin was dotted with them. She made a sound in her throat, or thought she did - she was still certain those noises had to be coming from someone else - and bent to start kissing them one at a time, like that would heal them.
“I put you in so much danger,” she murmured when she was on her knees again, her lips against his belly, her hands on his hips.
“Stop,” Solas said, his voice harsh now, his full pink lips a slash against his face and not a gentle bow. “You could not have kept me from your side if you tried.”
He was in the leggings he wore beneath his armor. Aelyn could see the shape of him, swelling up, against his left thigh.
“Aelyn,” he said, fingertips grazing her cheek. “It is alright. You did everything you could today. Let me take care of you.”
Aelyn did not want to be taken care of. She wanted to feel the truth of his words. That she was good, that she did good for others.
She hooked her fingers into the waistband of his leggings and began pulling them down, watching him all the while, watching the rise and fall of his chest as his breathing quickened, the prickle of gooseflesh up and down his stomach as the cold desert air hit his naked body. She watched the moment when he yielded, already half undone, when she wrapped her hand around his shaft and stroked him once, slowly, root to crown. He was full hard when she was done, shockingly hot in her hand, the skin soft as velvet, the head of him flushed red with his need.
“Aelyn,” he gasped when she wrapped her lips around him there. “Vhenan, I - ah -”
She loved this moment. Her body still ached and there was still the press of tears behind her eyes but she loved the moment when he was rendered speechless by the touch of her body. Her eloquent, intelligent lover, lost for words in any language. There was heat between her legs now too, stoked by the little gasps and moans spilling from his lips like rain as she took him further in her mouth, tested the thickness of him with little swipes of her tongue, cradled his sack with her other hand. His knees trembled when she drew back, sucking.
“Sit down,” she murmured, kissing each of his thighs. “Sit down on the bed. Let me take care of you. “Emma lath, let me take care of you. Please.”
Solas did as she asked, sitting on the bed, making room for her between his legs, and Aelyn returned her mouth to where it was, to tasting and sucking and swirling, to losing herself in these ancient, primal moments, to the little jolts of pleasure that made him twitch against her lips when she rubbed them against the plushness of his head.
“I love you,” she murmured, trying not to see the bruises now, trying to pretend this was any other night, that she had not left Hawke to die, that she had not seen every one of her worst fears play out before her eyes. She kissed everywhere she could reach on Solas’s body, took him in her hand, started up long, slow strokes of his shaft. “I love you, Solas, I -”
The tears were sudden, unexpected, unwelcome. They spilled down her cheeks and Aelyn hated herself for them. She buried her face in his stomach, ashamed.
“Atisha,” he said again, tugging at the hand she had balled up in the comforter of the bed. “Come here. Let me love you.”
She stood and Solas was there, quickly, pulling off her shirt and the last of her armor and her breastband and her smalls, each touch deft and sure. He kissed her while he did it. Her collarbones, each breast, each stiff nipple. He ran his nose down the center of her stomach, towards her belly button. His fingers skated along her buttocks again, down the backs of her thighs, and he pulled her onto his lap once more, and there was so much skin, and they were pressed so close together, and Aelyn felt so whole and so sad that there was nothing to do but cry again.
“I have you, I have you,” Solas said, again and again. He kissed her through her tears and turned them, and they were lying on the bed together now, legs twined.
“I’m sorry,” she managed. “I want you. I want to make love to you. I’m sorry I keep crying.”
“There is no apology necessary.” Solas kissed each of her cheeks, and then her eyelids when she closed them, and then left one long, lingering kiss on her forehead. “Come under the covers with me.”
They burrowed in, and the world was a warm nest, narrowed only to the space of Solas’s arms as he held her, as he moved over her, kissing her on the lips once more, long, deep kisses. She accepted the weight of him gratefully. It grounded her in the moment, kept her mind from spinning out. He’d softened since she stopped touching him but he grew hard as he rocked against her. She felt the stickiness of the fluids leaking from him and onto her belly. She was starting to get slick between her own thighs, to need more than just the aimless friction of their bodies rubbing together.
Something in the sounds she was making - the moans and restless whines - must have given her need away. Solas drew back and looked down at her. His thumb followed the contour of her cheekbone.
“Let me take care of you now,” he said. “As you cared for me.”
Aelyn nodded. She was swollen, too, aching between her legs, and the first touch of Solas’s finger against her bud was like lightning in her veins. She forgot there was anything but the pad of his thumb and the slow, resolute circles he drew around her hooded clit, the tease of his fingers against the lips of her sex.
“Beautiful,” he murmured. “You are so beautiful, Aelyn.”
One finger slid inside her, and then another. A near-perfect fullness. She groaned and pressed towards him. The sound he made was pleased. He shifted to his side to give himself more room, hooked one leg over hers to spread her wider, and to press his cock against her. Whenever she made a sound he pressed it harder into her thigh.
“Beautiful,” he murmured again when he shifted over her once more, when he began to kiss her all over. And again and again between the kisses.
Sometimes it was vhenan instead. He wrapped her up in his arms and with his words and he kissed her all over and even though it hurt sometimes, it was worth it. It was worth it to be so close to him, so lost in the powerful sensations of her own body that she forgot everything else. The pain in her chest was still there but it was manageable, now, because Solas was here, here with her, kissing her everywhere and telling her she was beautiful, marveling at the strength of her thigh as he put it over his shoulder, breathing in the smell of her when his nose was against the mound of her sex. She was not alone.
Solas licked her open, his tongue flat and warm and wet, and Aelyn forgot to think at all. There was nothing but him, and the way his hand clung to hers in the sheets as he licked and sucked and hummed against her until she came, the pleasure rippling out and out and out from her throbbing cunt to the ends of her fingers and toes.
He kissed her all over on his way back up to her. He pressed his forehead hard against hers.
“I do not want to lose you,” he said, once more as if it was something already written, like there was no way around it.
Aelyn looped her arms over his shoulders, pulling his body down against hers. She guided his head to the crook of his neck and held him there.
“You won’t,” she said. “You won’t, you won’t.”
That was dangerously close to thinking again, to acknowledging the bruises and broken bones and the people left behind. So Aelyn kissed him when Solas raised his head again, and when his own tears escaped him. She ran her hands over every inch of him she could reach, trying to memorize the strength of his shoulders, the way the muscles in his back bunched and moved as he centered himself, as he reached down to guide his cock into her waiting warmth.
The gutted sound he made when he pressed all the way into her nearly made her come again, her cunt fluttering tight around him. He gasped at that and thrust a little, two quick in and outs, trying to get as much from the sensation as he could. Aelyn was full of him now. Whole. There was nothing but this. Nothing but them.
“Stay still a moment,” she said.
“Is all well?” Solas asked, brushing some of her white hair from her sweat-damp forehead. “Are you in pain?”
“No,” she said. “I want to hold you.”
So Solas lowered himself again, and they held each other. It was perfect stillness. They began to breathe the same breaths. There was pain, yes - he was heavy on top of her, and there was the sweet ache of where they were joined, the longing for him to move within her, but mostly there was just the stillness. She could feel Solas’s heartbeat against her chest.
“Ar lath ma,” she said, quietly.
“Ar lath ma,” he replied.
He raised his head - their lips met - and then they began to move together, her hips a rising tide against his, each thrust slow and controlled and exquisite. Solas braced himself on his hands, getting more leverage. Aelyn wrapped her legs around him, deepening the angle. Her heart sped up when his eyes slipped shut and his mouth fell open at how good that was.
“You’re beautiful, too,” she said. “You’re beautiful like this.”
His thrusts stayed long and powerful, made his stomach ripple. Aelyn could feel every inch of him rubbing against every inch of her. He readjusted, and the root of his cock rubbed against her already sensitive clit with each careful stroke. She gasped, threw her hands over her head, and Solas found one at once, and laced their fingers together, and held on tight. He stretched himself out over her, and the angle changed again, and then he really went to his work, the shorter, sharper thrusts that left him a groaning, panting mess. He kissed her. The kisses were sloppy and Aelyn loved them, loved how his whole body stiffened if she bit his lip, if she feathered her lips along his jaw. She loved how wet and alive she felt. She loved the flexing of his buttocks as he made love to her.
“I cannot last like this,” Solas said against her throat. “I cannot last like this, you feel so good -”
“Let me make you come,” Aelyn said. “Let me make you feel good, vhenan.”
A scrambling, a quick rearranging, muscles protesting, and Solas was on his back, and Aelyn was above him, and she got to watch his whole lovely body as she rode him with slow rolls of her hips. She got to watch him toss his head back, and claw the sheets, and study every inch of her as she rode him.
“Vhenan, vhenan -”
He repeated it again and again, each repetition more desperate than the last. He held tight to her hips and followed each rolling motion of her body, and that was how she brought him over his edge. His whole face went slack with relief. He jerked his hips up into her and she ground down onto him, trying to make each moment perfect - and it was perfect. It was perfect because they were together. It was perfect because she could drop forward when he was done and lie there with him, cheek to cheek, and feel the twitches of his aftershocks within her body. She could lie there and feel safe and whole as they both came back down to earth. She could lie there and ignore the green glow of her left hand, and the Warden banner above them both. Solas put his arms around her at last, drawing the covers up and over them, completing their cocoon. The world outside it did not exist.
Except that Aelyn woke up much later and it was all still there. Her memories of Nightmare’s realm, of Hawke as they left her behind, of the constellation of bruises all over Solas’s body. She sat up, and she looked at him, soft and sleeping at her side, and he was a wonder, and that filled her with dread.
For the first time in her life, Aelyn Lavellan had something truly worth losing, and that was a beautiful and terrible thing.
Solas woke eventually, and drew her back down to his side. He kissed her temple.
“I am here,” he said.
Everything still hurt, inside and out - but that simple acknowledgement from the man she loved made it all something that Aelyn could bear.
