“they had been the one to blush first?” for our boy tarquin
from this prompt list! thank you ^_^
Tarquin reclined in his chair, stretching his legs out under the table with a quiet grunt. Any remaining work for the Shadow Dragons had been finished nearly an hour ago, and nearly all had gone home, but he could still hear the constant thrum of rain against the side of the shop over the crackling fireplace. In his hurry to make it to the shop, he had forgotten his warm leather coat at the archives, which meant he wasn't going anywhere soon. It was warm here, and if he started the long walk home now, he'd be soaked to the bone and freezing by the time he fell into bed.
And The Viper was still here, too, his pretty blue eyes scanning over some document or another, and that really shouldn't have been as much of a deciding factor as it was.
He crossed his arms and let out a small huff, staring at the ceiling so he had something to look at besides the other man. More time was devoted to pretending not to stare at him than was appropriate, especially because, strictly speaking, there wasn't much to look at, save an inch or so of skin between his mask and the brim of his big, stupid hat.
It'd been some years since Tarquin had a real, heart-fluttering, butterflies-in-your-stomach crush. He had thought, optimistically, that he was too old for it.
No such luck, evidently.
On more than one occasion, he had woken from a dream where he heard the man's low, sleepy voice, close where he rested against his head against his shoulder, rumbling and unfairly comforting, woke up with an empty feeling nestled in his ribs, and spent the rest of the day feeling fuzzy at the edges.
It was wholly unwarranted, he thought, sneaking another look at The Viper despite himself. He didn’t even know the guy’s name— or maybe that was part of it? There was an appeal to a hidden identity, of course, if their prominence in pulpy serials was anything to go by. The peeling away of layers, one by one, in both a metaphorical and physical sense, was a concept too easy and too enticing for a writer to pass up.
He wondered where the clasp of The Viper’s stupid mask was at, anyway. Or maybe he could just rip the damn thing off his face on the off chance he had reason to.
“Warm in here?”
Tarquin nearly jumped out of his skin at The Viper’s voice, only then registering the prickling warmth in his cheeks. The man’s eyebrows were raised, the corners of his eyes crinkling in amusement.
How he managed to look so smug with so little face to work with was a mystery to Tarquin.
“Fuck off,” he responded, crossing his arms. It came out entirely too sharp and defensive, not helping his embarrassed flush. The Viper’s delight seemed to increase tenfold.
“We could douse the fire,” he teased, document evidently forgotten, “or take a quick walk outside. That might cool you down.”
“Fuck off,” Tarquin reiterated, more forcefully this time. He just knew his ears were bright red.
“Maybe—“
“I’m going home,” he said, nearly knocking his chair over in his haste to stand. “Goodnight, Viper.”
He had nearly made it out the door before The Viper’s voice stopped him.
“Quin?”
And damn him right to the Black City itself if that didn’t make his stomach do a little flip. He stopped in his tracks, tried in vain to collect himself, and turned.
“Yeah?”
“It’s Ashur.”
Tarquin blinked, his brow furrowing, his mind working double time to try and catch up.
“My name,” he said, still smug from halfway across the room, but also… something else. Something Tarquin could debate with himself about later tonight. Or for the rest of his life.
“Right.” He nodded. “Goodnight, Ashur.”
Ashur grinned like a cat who’d caught a particularly stubborn mouse. “Goodnight, Tarquin. Get home safe.”
The cold didn’t end up bothering him much in the end, and he was idly surprised that the raindrops didn’t sizzle when they hit his skin.
i know you added a devil emoji anon but this is like, 2% angst. sorry
(prompt from here!)
“So,” Varric started, leaning back on his palms, the very picture of nonchalance, “how’s your assistant?”
He knew his name, of course. He’d tried to give him a nickname of his own- Thumpy, for the force magic, or whatever it was- but Blondie had gotten weird about it, all cagey and huffy, so it was dropped. Now, he was Blondie’s Assistant.
Varric had no sense for magic- less, even, than most dwarves, he’d wager, and that was saying a lot- but he could practically feel the ripple in the healing spell as Anders’ hands twitched above the arrow wound in Varric’s hamstring.
“He’s fine.”
“Just fine, huh?”
Anders shot him a scowl. “Varric.”
He held up a hand defensively, still leaning his weight on the other. “Just making small talk. No need to bite my head off.”
He glowered for a moment longer, then dropped his gaze back to Varric’s injury. He was silent for a few long minutes, and Varric could hear the comforting sound of The Hanged Man slowly filling with patrons downstairs. Whoever it was that did the whole dinner bell thing with his Mabari would get a kick out of the way the distant starting of drunken arguments made him drowsy.
He had nearly fallen asleep in the time it took for Anders to speak again.
“I’m glad we found him when we did,” Anders murmured, not looking at him. “He hadn’t gotten my last letter. The templars must have intercepted it.”
Templars and secret mage correspondence was a recipe for disaster, true. Varric nodded, but didn’t speak— Blondie wasn’t the talk-to-fill-the-silence type (and Varric wondered if that was due in part to the extra passenger in his skull causing its own racket, though he’d yet to ask), but if you got him going, he’d usually keep it up for a good while.
“There’s a mercenary group that was heading further north, and he was supposed to go with them. Got the coin together for it and everything.”
“He wasn’t keen on the mercenaries?”
“He wasn’t keen on leaving.” Maybe it was just the angle, but Varric could swear he saw Anders’ face soften, lips twitching by scarce degrees. “He’s the smartest idiot you’ll meet. He all but reinvented force magic from the ground up, but he can’t figure out when it’s time to run.”
Varric shrugged. “You can let the bird outta the cage, Blondie, but you can’t make it fly.”
“It’s like he doesn’t care,” and, oh, that would certainly work. If there was one way to get Blondie talking, it was by getting him nice and angry. “He can’t even leave the clinic for fear of the templars. It’s like- it’s like he traded one prison for another, and he’s pretending to be fine with it.”
“Maybe he is fine with it. You consider that?”
Anders scowled for a moment longer, then he slumped forward, boneless, running one hand over his face. “...We can’t just pick up where we left off. Fuck, the first time he saw the outside of Kinloch Hold and was old enough to remember was when they sent him to the Gallows. The world is so much bigger than that, and he deserves to see it. And I’m not… I’m not the man he- knew. If not for Justice, maybe, but…”
“It’s not as big as you’d think. Being everything to each other in a little world still means being a whole lot in a bigger one.”
“No one said anything about everything.”
“Didn’t need to. Every time I come to the clinic, he’s giving you those big, sad puppy dog eyes.”
“He is not.” Anders was still covering his eyes, but Varric didn’t miss how the tips of his ears started to turn red. Speaking of precious.
“You wouldn’t know. He only does it when you’re not looking.”
Anders grumbled something, then shook his head and rose to his feet. “You should be alright to walk.”
“Thanks, Blondie.” Varric flashed his most winning, toothy smile. Anders just nodded, starting towards the door.
“Hey.”
Anders turned halfway, looking at Varric out of the corner of his eye. “Hm?”
“Talk to him, will you? Worst that happens is he leaves, and you’re trying to drive him away anyway, right?”
Anders turns back around and lets out a long, drawn-out sigh. “...Maybe. There's a lot of work to be done.”
Without another word, Anders was gone. Varric stretched, leaning back onto his pillow and letting out a breath he hadn’t realized he'd been holding.
Bethany recognized the sound of Nak’s voice calling from the doorway. She furrowed her brow, frowning.
“…Yes,” she called back cautiously. “Why?”
“No reason,” he said, too quickly. “Don’t worry about it.”
Well, that was a surefire way to get her worried. She closed her book and set it on the mattress beside her, standing and padding out to the sitting room.
Half slung over her elder brother’s shoulder was a boy, properly roughed up, who looked to be mostly skin and bones with shaggy, blondeish hair falling into his eyes where it didn’t stick to his scalp with sweat, donned in a long, stuffy-looking robe. Nak was also sporting a split lip and the beginnings of what would bloom into a nasty bruise on his cheek.
“Don’t tell papa,” he said quickly.
“Nak,” she said slowly, trying to convince herself as she spoke, “you did not bring a runaway apostate into the house.”
“We’re apostates!” he argued, jostling the boy at his side just enough to elicit a pained groan. “Dad’s an apostate!”
“If the templars find out-“
“They’re not going to find out! I’ll- I’ll figure something out.”
“What are you going to do, hide him in the closet and feed him your scraps?”
Nak was silent. Bethany felt the beginnings of a headache twinge behind her eye.
“Nak.”
“It could work!”
“He’s not a dog, Nak!” Bethany argued, throwing her hands in the air in exasperation. “Besides, how is a closet any better than the tower?”
“Well, there’s no templars, for one.”
“There’s dad. There’s Carver. There’s me, and I don’t want a stranger living in my closet!”
Nak frowned at the floor. “He’s not a stranger. He said his name was Anders.”
“And you believed him?” Bethany gaped, then screwed her eyes shut, hoping that by the time she opened them, her brother would have come to his senses. “No. No, I don’t care. You have to get him out of here before dad gets back.”
“Fine,” he grumbled. When Bethany opened her eyes, Nak had laid the Anders boy out on the floor, his head cradled in his lap. “Help me heal him up and we’ll go. You can tell Dad I got hungry and ate my dinner early.”
“You aren’t serious.”
“Please, Bethy, you know I was never any good at it. I’ll do your chores for a week.”
Bethany crossed her arms, glowering down at the pair. Nak looked back at her for a moment, then stared at the wall behind her.
“If it was you, I’d want someone to help,” he said quietly. “I wouldn’t want you to be on your own.”
Bethany frowned at him for a while longer, but she could feel her resolve breaking. With a long, put-upon sigh, she dropped to the ground and began to hover her hands over the Anders boy’s bruised ribs.
“Two weeks,” she said. Nak gave her a small, relieved smile and a nod.
“He walked me to the edge of town, gave me a sack of cheese and bread, and sent me on my way,” Anders said with a shrug, running a finger over the edge of his mug. “The templars caught me eventually, of course, but it was kind of him. I never caught his name. I always thought one day I’d go back and…”
“Rekindle your young love?” Varric asked, crossing his arms and leaning forward on the table.
“Thank him,” Anders said, though his small smile betrayed his amusement. “If memory serves, though, that was near Lothering. There wouldn't be much to go back to.”
“Maybe Hawke knew him? Lothering was one of those little farm towns, wasn't it?” Varric asked, turning to Hawke.
Hawke shrugged, hiding a small smile behind the rim of his mug. “Doesn’t sound familiar.”
what if they had died instead for ur solavellan?? or a dif prompt, i just think they’re neat owo
ooh i’ve been wanting to write something for them!! thank u anon
prompts from here!
warnings for implied/referenced death of a child and parent as well as implied/referenced suicide. warnings also for me bullshitting some halamshiral lore just roll with it ok
“One of the many things the empress denied us was the right to burn our dead.”
She always did this— Shai spoke to the air as she dreamt, as if she was certain they would reach Solas’s ears eventually.
A safe bet, as it turned out. They usually did.
She followed as Shai walked the uneven streets of Halamshiral, paws padding silently in the shadows, head low. Carefully, she stepped over a pile of debris, her traitorous ears twitching as the other woman spoke again.
“You are no Andrastian-“ and wasn’t that an understatement, “-and I imagine you care little for our funerary rites, but as you have yet to deign to response, you will just have to listen.”
As if she couldn’t simply leave if she so desired. As if she couldn’t whisper a promise to the wind and have it carry her great paws all the way back to Tevinter.
As if she had an empty gnawing at the wall of her chest that only ever seemed to cease at the sound of her voice.
Well. She stayed, at any rate.
“In our final act, we commemorate her sacrifice. It acknowledges her as prophet, and it deprives us of the intimacy of our own deaths, inviting her into the most private chambers of ourselves. Our bodies, if they were ever truly ours, are forfeit.”
Perhaps she should have stronger feelings on this, as the invention of death is, technically speaking, hers. She wrinkles her nose slightly, but says nothing.
“It does not endear us to her, of course. My father used to worship like she would descend to Halamshiral and reduce the empress to nothing if he only prayed hard enough. For me, though, and maybe Mathias, it was little more than an acknowledgement of fact- The Maker and his bride do not love us, but they created us.”
Shai’s hair had never gotten quite long enough to move much, always cropped close to the skin. At its longest, when Solas had last seen her in flesh, when the mark had nearly taken her, it had grown enough to barely cover the top inch of her forehead. She had run her hands through it a few times, back in Skyhold, felt the softness between her fingers, the way she would sigh against her lips or the soft spot under her jaw. She hungered to do it again now, watching the dull way it caught the light of the fade as she moved.
“There is no room for a pyre, and not enough land for burial even if one is more inclined to the Dalish way. The alienage gets smaller and smaller and elves die faster and faster. Sometimes, if blight or some lesser sickness takes too many, the Chevaliers will take the bodies away and light them all up in a great bonfire beyond the city walls, but no bodies were ever burned in Halamshiral in my childhood.”
Shai stopped walking. It took Solas less than a heartbeat to identify the building, even charred and collapsed as it was. It was no different than any of the other former shacks, but the way Shai reached out and reverently ran her fingers along the blackened doorframe said it all.
“Mathias was burned,” she said, so quiet Solas had to strain to hear. “Much of Halamshiral was that day. We lived and died as fodder in the empress’s Game, and were only allowed our final worship when it was serendipitous. And still, she sits on the throne, and she will never know the faces of even one of those she killed.”
She had been here once before, outside of the fade, shortly after the ball. Shai had told her not to pity her.
Solas could only promise to try. It was a promise that got harder and harder to keep.
“If he had lived,” she said, and Solas felt as though she was no longer the addressee, “if I had been the one to fall instead, perhaps father would still be here. I was not worth staying for, but maybe… Mathias was his own flesh and blood, and he was so much smaller. I was only some girl who darkened his doorway and never let it light again. I could care for myself. I was not worth sticking around for, I suppose, or some such thinking. I cannot ask him now.”
She leaned forward to press her forehead to the doorframe, eyes fluttering closed.
“It amazes how one can grow used to absences so painful. How one can grow around not being enough to stay for.”
In the quiet of the fade, Solas could hear the way her breathing became labored.
“I wish you had left earlier. One cannot feel an absence unless they felt the presence as strongly. Wretched dog. Wretched Solas.”
The way she said her name always stirred something in her, the way her strong Orlesian accent twisted it around her tongue. It was, in every sense of the word, wrong, and Solas hated the way she turned the moniker shared by every corrupted spirit of wisdom into something unique and precious and worth scraping her teeth against.
Feeling too strongly the way her legs urged her towards the other woman, Solas turned and darted back the way she came.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Forgotten Realms (Roleplaying Game)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: Original Male Character(s)/Original Male Character(s), Original Half-Orc Character(s)/Original Tiefling Character(s) (Dungeons & Dragons)
Crestfallen was once not only of Levistus's bloodline, but also his temple. With his oath broken, he can't return home to the Frozen Wastes, and thus decides to join Grobus, a half orc cleric of Pelor. His new normal is taking some adjusting to, but no matter how hard he pushes, Grobus is there to help steady him. Maybe one day he'll even find it in himself to return the favor.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
“Kadan,” he greeted with a relieved sigh. He said the word like a squishier thing might say a soft and sappy nothing name like sweetheart or beloved. From any other being, the Viddathari would find it intolerable, but from the Qunari, it made the Viddathari’s crystals hum pleasantly.
sten/shale, 1k, rated g. vaguely veilguard-era with qun convert shale
