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dance with me

Short sweet fluff to excuse my slightly irregular posting. : )

He finds her presence somewhat distracting. Lavellan is crouched against the thick-set desk in the Rotunda, escaping her etiquette lessons for the upcoming ball. She has been there for a long time, perhaps several hours; Solas is relatively sure that she has missed dinner, though he can’t say he wouldn’t have been jealous if she’d left. He wants her here. With him. Every time she moves, her hair glinting wildly in the veifire light, shadows sliding up and down her skin, he stops writing, stops breathing. His hands itch to drop his notes, let the quill fall and kiss her until dawn comes and she is lost to lessons once again. Every time he glances over, unsure if she is asleep or just thinking, he is very, very glad she sought solace here, of all places, choosing to hide herself in the dim anonymity to which he belongs. To which he wishes to belong. Delicate fingers knot together, turquoise running over them like a river. His usually-neat writing is already dotted with ink blots. “I know how to dance,” Lavellan grouses finally, resting her chin on her arms. “Why do they have to teach me? The Orlesians are all probably more likely to try and murder me than to ask me for a dance.” He chuckles. She looks up at the sound, tilting her head nearly backwards to meet his eyes, her expression indignant. “I thought you liked learning.” “I do, but…” Propping her head back on her hands, she huffs a sigh that he can’t help but find adorable. “Dorian and Josephine are treating it like boot camp, not dancing lessons. They’re relentless!” He takes a deep breath of his own, the scratching of his quill pausing almost of its own accord. “Would you prefer to dance with me, vhenan?” At this rate, his ink will blot the entire notebook. Lavellan looks up hopefully. Her eyes are bright, drops of moonlight; her normally tense demeanour has relaxed completely. Skyhold’s great Inquisitor now stares at him with something akin to a child’s wonder, and he knows he would dance with the Nightmare itself if she asked. “You?” He reaches for a cautious half-truth. “I know some of the steps.” It is accurate. Mostly. Suddenly, he is furiously pleased for the stars outside, the soft darkness wrapped around the fortress that means the ambassador is asleep, and no messengers could enter to notice how his steps predate the Orlesian dances by centuries. “How?” He decides that ‘In the Fade’ is not what he wants to give to her. Not this time. Instead, he climbs to his feet, the chair scraping on the stone floor, and offers her a hand. The papers can wait for a little while longer. “They are not difficult to learn. Come on.” She clambers to her feet, reaching for him to help pull her up. Even through his shirt, her hands are hot, some of her magic seeping into the skin of her palms with her agitation. After giving her a minute to remember her steps, he holds out a hand, poised and ready. They stride the length of the rotunda, arms outstretched, an imaginary ballroom advancing in step behind them. When they come together again, they do it at such speed that all the torches flicker. Shadows dance over their bodies. The soft tap of her boots against the floor echoes up into the Rookery. Her hand slips into his, a gentle strength veiled behind her leather gloves, and they turn once again, only slightly out of time. By this point, she understands the steps; three weeks straight of dancing lessons will do that to anyone. But still, it isn’t perfect - not enough to face the ravenous lion that is the Orlesian court. Her short hair is falling, feather-light, around her face. As she turns her head, it is evident she has it down to an exact science… just long enough to hit him in the face, and just soft enough that he doesn’t mind terribly. It smells of soap and leaves, as quiet and gentle as a wild thing can ever be. “Lavellan,” he whispers reproachfully in her ear. She blushes, laughs, and looks mortified all at once. Then she steps on his toes. Solas winces; after all, her boots, however elegant, are tough leather for expeditions, and his feet are bare. Toes smarting, he pulls her through the next couple of steps. For all her uncanny prediction of the movements, she can’t seem to foresee which way he goes, and for several minutes, their footwork is a clumsy mess, stepping backwards and forwards at the same time, Lavellan stepping right when he goes left, or too quickly, so that he has to continue in the same direction until she gets a feel for it. His hand squeezes hers in sympathy. Despite all the blunders she makes, he can just barely remember when he was taught to dance; if not, he has seen the tries of countless others in the Fade. She is not alone in her mistakes. And she is improving - with every step she takes, her movements become smoother, surer, although she doesn’t see it. They have almost made a full circle of the room without colliding. “Creators,” she mumbles softly, stepping on his toes yet again. “Sorry.” Agh. Well. It was too good to be true. “You focus too much on your steps, vhenan. Perhaps you have forgotten that I am supposed to be leading?” Exasperation bites her expression, and she tosses a tired hand through her now-messy hair. “What do I do, then?” she snaps. “Fall flat on my face? Look at you instead and try and resist the urge to kiss you?” He startles a little; she has given voice to his own thoughts. At his reaction, she goes bright red. “Was that too forward?” “Well…” a teasing smile settles on his face, “there is no one here but us.” He presses his lips to hers, so full of love and fire and embarrassment. It feels as if a century has passed since he kissed her on the balcony. A mistake that he can quickly remedy. And as he does, he pulls her into motion. She stumbles at first, tripping and falling behind even in her sturdy boots; then all at once, she catches onto his movement, and relaxes. It is strange - he has become accustomed to trying to pull her around the floor, fighting her stumbling feet and her half-complete knowledge of the steps, that the second she doesn’t stumble he almost loses balance. She has her eyes tightly closed, face screwed up in anticipation of colliding with something. But they don’t. She lets herself go. Colours fill their vision, orange and scarlet and cerulean blue whirling into dizzying blurs as he spins her in a nearly perfect circle around the frescoes. He can imagine this scene, if it were somewhere else; the cold stone beneath their feet covered in light and vines and song, the paintings reaching higher, farther, the work of many hands and not just one; beneath his hands he can almost feel a dress, thick moonlight silk flaring in a circle, jewels threaded like starlight in her hair where there is usually only leaves and the stray twig. What he has here is merely a half-hearted mimic of the beauty of Arlathan. But the ancient stones would by now be nearly dust, and no human seamstress could make a dress so fine. As she comes to a standstill, Lavellan stumbles over her own feet and tips over into his arms. She only laughs. In this moment, she is unselfconscious and merry and out of breath, joy bubbling up in her like the rush of a river in the woods, and he wouldn't be anywhere else in the world. He wraps his arms around her, proud and laughing at the same time, and kisses her until his lips tingle, drinking in the look in her eyes, her smile, her scent, her presence. She will make him forget himself. They are as tightly wound together as the knot of a ribbon on a gift, and as he begins humming a tune so old that even the Dalish do not know the words, her head shoots up, eyes wide and eager. The movements they make are slow, gentle, a lover’s dance, as fine as any court routine, their foreheads pressed together and arms around each others’ necks. Then a voice rings out from above them. “Very good, Lavellan! Surprisingly good, considering how our last session went. Perhaps I shall tell the lady Ambassador that you no longer need lessons with us.“ Her eyes widen in surprise and she whips around, letting go of him to stare up at the balcony with a look of fierce embarrassment. “Dorian?” she hisses. It is evident she has forgotten how much voices in the Rotunda echo. Solas almost chuckles when said Tevinter mage appears at the balcony, in mid-speech, still with his head in a book. Specifically, the volume that was three volumes down his ‘to-read’ pile earlier that day. "I should have realised all we needed to do was put you two in a room together. That usually solves problems.” Her mouth forms an O of surprise and indignation, and she pulls out of the dance form, apparently intent on scaling the walls of the rotunda to strangle Dorian.  “Now is not the time, vhenan,” he says, tempting her back with a kiss on her cheek. “Concentrate.”