So I heard tumblr was popular again? Anyway, have a short Cullen and Lydia early relationship fic <3
“Lydia?”
She couldn’t help but giggle as Cullen hovered over her, shading her from the morning sun. He had a careless, easy smirk that didn’t mock what Josephine referred to as her outlandish behavior. Lydia owned her outlandishness, her desire to walk barefoot through the garden and lay on the grass. Once, her mother walked barefoot through the grass at Ostwick.
“Come here,” Lydia said, thankful he wasn’t wearing his usual armor as she beckoned him to sit. He squatted and sat next to her on the grass, covertly scanning the garden to see if any of his soldiers were also rising early.
“It doesn’t matter if anyone sees,” Lydia promised, curling closer to him. “Trust me.”
“I trust you.”
His voice was gentler with her than with others. Did Leliana and Josephine know that? Did the whole Inquisition know they were lovers now? He trusted her. He—
He caressed her cheek. She closed her eyes, anticipating a kiss, anticipating all of him. “We can’t kiss here,” he muttered.
“Cullen.”
“Don’t pout.”
She exaggerated her pout. “A small one.”
He took her hand. He kissed her palm. He kissed her wrist. He kissed every finger. “There,” he said, offering another, final kiss for good measure. “For you.”
“I should love to be had. Especially by you.”
He grinned. “I could acquiesce.”
“What’s stopping you?”
His voice was low. “That I should also like to be had.”
Maker he looked so beautiful in the morning light. His beard was darker than usual. He neglected shaving solely because she told him she loved the scratch against her mouth. It prickled her fingers as she caressed his jaw and touched his cheek. Their skins were different shades, her hand tiny on his cheek. This wasn’t usually him, to lay on the grass in the garden unarmored where someone could surely find him And this wasn’t usually her, to so brazenly want. No, she couldn’t be so bold as to hoist herself on him, have him as he desired…
He wanted to be had. Just like her. He dreamed the same dreams she did. He laid on the grass with her.
She laid flush against him, hoisting herself on him like she always imagined. He laughed, not caring anymore that someone could see. Didn’t they kiss on the battlements where all could see? Wasn’t her love for him written on her face for months and months before this? They should let a woman be in love. They should let a man be in love. They should let him kiss, and cherish, and be hers before anyone else’s.
His lips were pliant against hers as they kissed, and then warm against her cheek after she parted from him, savoring. “I suppose it doesn’t matter,” he whispered between kisses. “Nothing matters. Only you.”
“You don’t mean that.” She knew him too well.
She kissed him before he could answer. She meant it to be quick and sweet but his lips parted and she could not bear to part.
“I wish only you mattered,” he said. “In my head, at night, you are the only thing that does.”
He smoothed a lock of hair away from her face, letting his fingers run through the loose strands. They wouldn’t alone for long now. Skyhold’s pilgrims came in the early morn to pray to Andraste in the chapel. Cullen was one of their occasional pilgrims. Lydia hadn’t seen him pray to Andraste since they kissed.
“Cullen…”
“I know. I shouldn’t think such things.”
And yet he smiled deviously, knowingly. “I should be very cross with you if I wasn’t in your head. Especially at night.”
“Oh. Well. I can’t have that.”
She laid her head against his beating heart. They laid in the garden far longer than she would have ever thought he would allow. But his head, sometimes cruel to him, made her the only thing that mattered sometimes. By the way his heart beat underneath her ear, she knew what all mattered to him there in the garden, and perhaps a little bit more than that.
“You are the only thing that matters almost always,” she said. “And I am sorry. Because I care. I care—and I know you do too, but I can’t stop only thinking about you.”
“Please don’t be sorry.”
“Cullen. I couldn’t even muster it. I couldn’t dare.”
But they did dare, there in the garden. It still wasn’t long enough.
Thorn asked again. It was the third time he asked since her shaking fingers began unbuttoning his uniform. She didn’t dawdle with the task. There was only one way she wanted Thorn’s thoughts.
“We’re married,” she said. “We are working together now.”
Though Ophélie was at the last button, Thorn put his hand over hers. He asked if this was truly what she wanted. Yes, yes, a thousand times. She wanted Thorn. Though part of her inwardly admitted it was a curious thing. She read in books that half academically interested her and half compelled her about these sorts of matters of the heart and so called “conjugal duties” before. Though not detailed about relations between two people that loved one another, the books offered a bare framework. There was that, coupled with what she managed to remember from all those talks her mother offered with unhelpful advice. All of it was theory. Thorn was a thrill to be near and something a little like home. He was real and being beside him with her fingers unbuttoning his shirt—a shirt with surprisingly bare thoughts— was too much and not enough. She felt she had to shove her head underneath a pillow and spend their wedding night as separate arks or let him consume her until the two of them merged. The latter would win. It would always win.
“Yes,” she said, still aware of her bare hands on his shirt, aware she only read his heart on his sleeve. He waited for her. He waited for longer than she had been waiting for him.
Show them to me, she asked him earlier. Was she being demanding by undressing him herself? Better to let Thorn do it. He wasn’t a man of touching and the first thing he saw to do when she told him she loved him too was tell her “no sudden movements.” He didn’t want to hurt her. She ached thinking she’d hurt him for so long, not telling him she loved him too.
She stopped unfastening. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “You did want to me to show you, didn’t you? Or would you prefer we merely—”
A commission for @savbakk featuring her lovely Witcher OCs Fenn and Neelke. Thank you so much for your support, love them <3
Featuring some ropes and body worship. Rated E.
“Come here.”
Fenn pat the bed, entreating Neelke to join him. She only smiled the faintest of smiles. Fenn made no sense as a man sometimes but made every sense in the world as a lover. When they first kissed and decided to give it a go his joy burst through the seams. When they started testing out the waters in other manners, he practically vibrated with excitement when she expressed the various activities she had in store for them. Fenn was willing to do whatever she asked. It was as if he simultaneously sought to woo her, entertain her, and obey her, in and out in the bedroom. There wasn’t a single part of him she ever expected and not a single part of him she didn’t appreciate. There wasn’t a single part she didn’t think she couldn’t love. Everything was brighter in his eyes. She was brighter in his eyes. She was sure in another life she may have been too quiet for him or too much of a logician.
Logic however, could be a part of the bedroom. If he was too eager and too excited, he could be restrained.
“Wait. Where did you get that rope?”
Smirking as she pulled the rope from her pocket, she crossed her arms. Fenn’s question wasn’t a challenge, but it was expectant of a declaration. He wanted to hear I got the rope for you and he wanted to hear all the ideas she had for him. Truthfully she didn’t have so many ideas, just one, but one was more than enough and required a bed rather than one of their usual hiding spots in the woods.
“Rope is everywhere,” Neelke said, toying with the rope in her hand, toying with him.
He smirked, a light pink blooming on his cheeks and his pointed ears. “Where did you get the idea?”
“From you moving around too much.”
“Too much? Come on.” He feigned a wounded pride, slumping against the bed. “I’m a good listener.”
She chuckled. He was so eager to please sometimes, especially when she did the asking. It was appreciated—very appreciated—but maybe she wanted to keep him restrained so she could please him and let him focus on feel. Maybe she wanted to explore every inch of him. She’d been picking his brain lately, trying to think more like him. Being more extroverted was a start, a stark contrast from her outlook, her desire to watch and offer only a few pointed but necessary words. Ropes were serviceable and efficient in keeping things down, especially entertainers and lovers. Ropes kept loved ones tight and secure. Securing a lover down said you’re mine.
Perhaps he could have understood the concept if she forewent the rope. He liked her on top and she liked being on top. He liked it when she told him what to do. Maybe if she was patient, he’d learn to close his eyes and indulge for a moment and mediate, relish the closeness of being skin to skin as she worshipped. She could teach without the project of the rope, but she liked her projects.
All ideas and theory embedded in the rope. She fell in love with the concept and idea of surrender, Fenn’s surrender, and had always asked that of him in some small way when they were together, little come heres and kiss mes and tugging on his shirt to pull him in for a kiss. He was taller but he acted like she was sturdier and stronger, knowing if he fell into her, she could keep them both upright. With a rope, she’d show him everything she wanted to show him since the day they first decided to try out a relationship. He was a gem and he deserved all of her.
“What are you waiting for?” She asked, holding back a sternness she could at times wield. She was willing to be patient tonight. She certainly would be patient with him.
He flustered, adorably so, kicking at the floor. “Uh—”
“Strip,” she ordered, sternness returning. “Now.” Then, because she felt giving, “please.”
“Are you?”
She knew he noticed her smile. “Fenn. I asked you first.”
He certainly made a show of what followed, tossing off his boots and his shirt. He was tall and lean and built with both agility and strength meant for sauntering. He turned around to take off his breeches, purposely and achingly slow as he pushed them down his ass along with his smalls. She gulped. He was tanned golden as his long hair down his back and shaped as a V, the ivy inked onto his back sweeping over his body. It was exactly the sort of tattoo he would have. She loved it and she loved it and she loved it.
“On the bed,” she ordered as she came over, deciding he was drawing it out far too much. He complied. She asked him to hold the rope while she stepped out of her boots, breeches, and smalls, but once she was on top of him straddling him, she snatched it back.
He grinned. “Oh. Fancy seeing you.”
She couldn’t help it. She laughed, letting his hands appreciatively grab her hips before his fingers dug into her skin to keep her there. She only pushed his hands up and out of the way when he tried to undo the buttons on her shirt, her body meeting the long line of his.
“Excuse me,” she said as their foreheads touched and they shared the same breath. “This is my turn.”
“It’s always your turn.”
“It’s my turn to worship you,” she amended, letting go of one hand to trace his jawline.
She wanted every part of her to be present and wanted every part of her to overfill and topple onto him like the way his brighter parts had fallen onto and inspired her. Taking the rope, she fastened his wrists in a knot to keep his arms pinned over his head. He could have easily escaped if he wanted. He respected her intent. It was all about the idea.
Settling against the bed and resisting the urge to touch her, Fenn let her begin to explore him in a way that made time stretch and slow. She still didn’t think she soaked all of Fenn’s sun. Either she never would, or she would have to replenish daily. This time if she explored and took her time, she would have him for months if she didn’t take every drop all at once.
She would take every drop at once. Fenn would replenish.
Her hands skirted down and across his body first, his breaths long and drawn out even with the faintest of touches. His pretty hair fell onto his shoulders, hair much longer than hers, though he always managed to get a good gripe on the short black strands when he wanted to. In turn he loved it when she gripped and tugged. She indulged for him, running her fingers through the long gold and pulling tight, enjoying his little soft hums that almost sounded like purrs. She wondered as she traced the lines of his shoulders and arms if she was too introspective to be an entertainer and pleaser like he was, because when she touched him she made notes of his strength and his sun, as if she had a little notebook in her mind to go back to later.
“Kiss me,” he said. “Please.”
She’d never heard him speak like that before. He didn’t sound helpless or needy. He sounded like the world shrunk down to her and all the wonderful things she could do to him and all the wonderful ways she could make him feel.
When their lips met and parted he poured all of himself like he always did. Not overcompensating because his wrists were bound together, but because he wanted to. She threw her shirt and breast band off after, let the two of them enjoy the feel of skin to skin. All the world was him, his kisses, and eventually the fill of him inside. Much to his amusement and delight he was thick and long and he was warm between her heat, but taking him in full rather than allowing only the tiniest bit of friction of her heat against him was another matter entirely.
“You feel so good.”
He alighted at the praise, glowing and bright. “You are beautiful,” he said as she rolled into him again. The innkeeper was right to put them far, far away. The fire illuminated the sharp lines of his face like the highlights of a painting and they were both loud, loud, and louder.
“Untie me. Please. Let me touch you.”
It was so earnest it compelled her to give him what he wanted. With his wrists untied and the rope loose, Fenn rose to meet her. He called her his girl. She told him he filled her well and she needed more of him. She never let all of herself fully leave him until she had him encased in full, his arms wrapping themselves around her back and holding her close. Her hands searched for his strands of hair to pull and tug, exposing his neck until they were always a breath away, a kiss away. Fenn was greedy in his catching of kisses while she was greedy in taking. She still found ways to toy and tease however, pausing for a moment and outlining the line of his pointed ear.
He pulled her closer in reply. She let him hold her back in a second reply, his smooth hands tracing the lines of the tattoo on her shoulder and the ropey sinews of her back before he pushed her down to the mattress. With her legs on either side of him, he slid down her body in all his awestruck appreciation. She saw bits of herself passed onto him in his eyes, luminous in their unabashed want. He was making notes of her, learned there were other ways of loving one another.
He gave her his mouth, hair a golden line down his back and falling, hiding what he did with his tongue. She collapsed on the bed, closed her eyes as he drew her closer and closer. She cursed when he pulled away, even if he pulled away to kiss her, but his lips were skimming down her body again and one crooked finger of his was inside her as his tongue circled her clit. She came slowly and then all-together. As he watched her come his eyes on her drew and drew, extracting more from her body, asking her to feel better than she did already.
He came with her arms around her and with a heavy cry. “Don’t make us go back yet,” he said moments later, collapsed on top of her. She held him closer in reply. Of course not. They’d stay there forever if she could have willed it. She’d stay forever to make him as happy as he made her.
“I want to make you happy,” she found herself saying. “I want to make you feel good.”
His hands smoothed back her hair. “Neelke. You did.”
“I wanted to be here. Nowhere else. I didn’t want to think, just be. Worship you.”
He allowed their eyes to meet. His smile was a thousand suns. “You’ve always been here,” he promised. “And,” he kissed her forehead. “You are adorable when you blush.”
My half of an art trade with @little-lightning-lavellan, I got to borrow Solas and Mellan for some library smut! Thanks for trading with me! <3
In the library Solas reads a novel on old magic lore, his fingers caressing the worn pages. He has long and nimble fingers and broad palms with small callouses from his staff. They are hands of an artist and hands that have made her his canvas.
Solas’ hands mirror his mind as he reads, capturing the words so he may have them again later. Each flip of the page is a pronounced flap, louder in the quiet of the library. He devours the words, fingers caught in the pages. If she didn’t know the full artistry of his hands she’d wish she were a book with pages for him to read. It’s reading, reading, always reading for Solas. He reads everything and everyone but especially her. Mellan knows Solas has made her one of his favorite stories. Still there are her blank pages waiting to be filled.
He knows she’s looking. Her meditation is to watch him. She likes to daydream stories of the two of them as if they haven’t promised they are each other’s grand adventures. Such a life he has lived, such a long sleep he has had with no one save his spirits in the fade. He woke to this new world and to her half-filled pages. “What are you reading there?” she asks him, because though she knows the broad idea, she wants the finer details. Solas could talk for hours on the finer details. They are the details others would skip or deem irrelevant, but he understands all idiosyncrasies coalesce into a mosaic and whole. He knows details and idiosyncrasies are what make us more human.
“According to some,” Solas says, not sitting the book down but holding the page with his thumb, “when the veil is thin, our senses are heightened.”
“Fascinating,” she says, her feet dangling off the desk she’s perched on. “Do you believe that?”
There’s a ghost of a smile, betraying his pride. “I know it.”
“Why do you read what you already know?”
There’s another ghost of a smile and more hints of his pride. “I know what I know and what it true. How others interpret it is another matter entirely. It is fascinating.”
Post Tresspasser, Cullen and Lydia’s first Satinalia married. Read here on AO3
He wonders how he ever slept without Lydia. He wonders how his heart ever beat without her hand over it. Even when they eventually settle to their spots, though still near one another, he’s imprinted.
“Happy Satinalia,” she whispers in his ear before kissing his cheek, rising from her spot on the furs in their living room to rekindle the fire in the hearth with her magic. It’s been a sputtering, erratic thing since the Exalted Council. Someday soon she’ll confer with Dorian—perhaps he knows a solution working with the magisters in Tevinter. But she can still make fire, and married with a child on the way they can still make love as passionate as before, perhaps even more so, because they could have lost. Faced with what could have been lost, love is deeper. It’s surer. It’s a thousand yeses whispered in his ear when she’s underneath him and the firmer way her leg hooks and locks over his when he succumbs to the whole of her body.
When the fire is alight once more Cullen sits next to her by it, kissing her shoulder. Next year, she says, next year when we make and dress our evergreen tree for Satinalia, there will be a little one in the home. He both can’t wait and can wait. He wants to know their child and thinks he'll never be ready but mostly he can’t wait. His love has grown since Lydia. He has more to give. He has a world to give and Satinalias to share with ones he loves.
“I used to hate Satinalia.”
Though the declaration surprises him, Cullen admits he was much the same way. He used to hate Satinalia, because it was just the same as every other day. The holiday didn’t take away his ire, his paranoia, anxiety. His sadness. The day passed with snow falling from the sky and still he was the same lonely and unmovable pillar
“I was alone,” Lydia says.
He takes her hand. It is warm but still he brings it to his lips to warm it like he did the night he found her in the snow after Haven. He thinks he saw inklings of Lydia before he knew her, alone at the Circle near a gilded and grand tree. She could have been somewhere else, dancing as it snowed. Her happiness when she is happy is transcendent. He knows she doesn't like the cold. But she liked dancing in it. Cullen likes the little flurries that fall in her dark hair against ringlets of curls. They danced in the snow earlier. “The cold isn’t me,” she said, pulling him into her arms.
“But I am you,” he said.
Neither weren’t alone, both learning how to dance in the snow. Under their first Satinalia tree, they aren’t alone anymore. “You are free,” Cullen says, her hand still in his, and the word means more than it used to.
“We’re not alone anymore Cullen,” Lydia says, her thoughts his, her hand on her belly. She implores him with her eyes, touch me. Feel the little spark. She—their daughter, as they knew—was light and airy under his palm. She is like her mother already.
“Today is not like any other day,” Cullen promises. It is the first day of the rest of it all. He hasn’t been alone in a very long time. He has friends throughout Thedas and a family who drops in his home for dinner even when they have their own houses, but stew always tastes better when someone else cooks it. He’s in love with the great muse of his life, and a little more than that even.
"Happy Satinalia my love,” his wide says, kissing his cheek.
He kisses her back. He’ll never stop. “Happy Satinalia dearest.”
For @briarfox13 for her birthday and Christmas. Features her Saskia and Garrus during the Citadel DLC. Garrus wonders why Saskia dons his clan markings.
“You know sweetie, you don’t have to do that.”
Almost done, Saskia swipes one last stroke of paint across her cheekbone before setting down the brush for her blue paint. From the mirror attached to her vanity, her eyes meet Garrus’s. From her eyes he reads confusion. He reads a little sadness.
Oh shit.
He didn’t want that. Not at all. “Saskia—”
“Do you not like it?”
“Oh no, no of course not,” Garrus says quickly, scratching the back of his neck. He’d never want her to think that. In fact he’s damn flattered, flummoxed, and enchanted.
She wears his markings. She takes something that’s been a part of him for so long it’s faded into the fabric of his being and makes it a part of her own identity. Blue paint and a small brush have become a permanent fixture in her cabin on the Normandy and now on her vanity in Anderson’s apartment. She can’t be without it. She doesn’t know her face without it.
It was a simple thing. It began some time ago when she first began—right after they found each other again— but he can never quite get over seeing her paint them on as artfully as if she was a born Turian. “Hey uh, sweetie,” he says however, leaning against the doorway to her room. “Are you sure you want to do that? I mean if we’re going to do that first date thing we talked about it sort of doesn’t make since…”
She turns around at her vanity, smiling at him. “I still want to do it. But I don’t feel like myself without this anymore honestly,” she says, gesturing to her markings, skillfully applied. It didn’t take her long to learn at all. He showed her how.
They found more issues for blue paint that same day.
“Saskia…”
She rises, coming to his side. On instinct he wraps his arms around her waist and draws her in. As she throws her arm around his neck they sway back and forth. It’s times like this she’s a great dancer. It’s times like this she floats across the floor, though if tonight goes the way he plans, he’ll make a good dancer out of her yet.
“I love it,” he says, tracing the markings with his finger. “It’s perfect.”
“You’re a part of me Garrus. I want the whole galaxy to know.”
She laughs as he dips her, their lips meeting and parting with more kisses in between. “You’re a part of me too,” Garrus says. “I don’t quite feel like myself without you either. Not sure how I can go back, pretend like we’re in the dark times again before we knew each other and I didn’t know how much I loved you.”
“I believe in you,” she promises with a smile, a faint blush painting her cheeks. “And hey. Once we’re alone, maybe we can find another use for blue paint. Like last night”
He stirs, gripping her hips but leaving it like that, for now. “Oh,” he says, drawing it out. “Now you’re talking. And you know, alone…” He kisses her cheek. “We can pretend like we’ve known each other a thousand years.”
Their foreheads meet. They exchange the same breath. “We have,” Saskia says. “We have.”
He kisses her forehead before he promises to meet her at the bar.
A piece of @tokutenshi who won my giveaway! Her OTP, Ebrisa and Cullen. NSFW. <3
If Ebrisa believed in luck before coming to Skyhold, she would have believed she carried only the bad kind. Her family disowned her after her magic manifested, and circumstances sent her to Kirkwall before she joined the Inquisition. From there, the Inquisition’s first base at Haven was beset by an ancient darkspawn magister. Beset by a dragon and an ancient darkspawn magister days after her wedding. For as long as they knew each other, time was never on their side. She wondered if time and work—a sort of work which wasn’t really work at all—would give them another addition.
She had to believe luck would be on their side in that regard.
Indisputably, Cullen believed in luck. He had a lucky charm he gave her, a coin. And indeed, the circumstances that led her to Kirkwall and the then later the two of them to the Inquisition was the same path that led them together. Because he believed, Ebrisa could believe.
That morning however proved to be a test. Cullen tossed and turned all night, accidently smacking Ebrisa during the night with his foot, though he amply apologized with kisses when she told him in the morning. It was the new recruits, hires from Orlais who had only ridiculous style. According to however Josephine they were needed in the army to keep up appearances, and Cullen detested political maneuverings. Later with the pronounced furrowed brow Ebrisa saw in his office, she assumed this day hadn’t been any better than the last. Though Ebrisa’s day had gone vastly smoother, with only the casual scarps and mends in the healer’s tower and cheeky grins from young recruits who had a few new battle scars to show off later, she staved off the thought that someday sooner than she would like there’d be more grievous injuries to mend.
Instead of thinking of that, she tried to think of Cullen. She knew certain tricks to keep him from frowning.
They were newlyweds for all intents and purposes, but they were often busy and couldn’t indulge in their newness. Due to that, their daily afternoon lunch was sacred and distinctly theirs, though sometimes soldiers flocked inside his office. It didn’t matter if the Commander and Supreme Enchanter had a designated luncheon hour. Cullen’s office was always a rotation of messengers. But because of Cullen’s dreadful previous day, because he tossed and turned in sleep, and because the knit in his brow was so pronounced during lunch, indicating another strenuous day, Ebrisa decided to lock all three doors to his office before they sat together at his desk.
a fic commissioned by the lovely @elveny featuring the lovely Adriene Shepard and Kaidan, post ME3. The two of them enjoying their first Christmas after retiring. Rated M for soft smut
Kaidan and Adriene bought the old cabin up near Lake Louise in Alberta. When they first purchased it from the elderly couple, they were warned they’d be off-grid if not for the nearby town with the appropriate tech for emergency calls and vids. It didn’t bother either of them. They loved the stars they used to call their home as they sailed on the Normandy, but they never saw the universes on earth, their home. Even staying in Canada, they saw several new universes a day.
The cabin was meant to be a small autumnal getaway, but October became November and then December. Snow dusted the mountains like powdered sugar, and Lake Louise turned into frozen blue and white marble. “Hey,” Kaidan said that day it snowed in December, holding her in his arms. “It’s Christmastime.” It was their first since coming home. To celebrate, they decided to decorate. Up in the attic the previous couple left their old felt cardinals, red and silver bulbs and other decorations. They decorated their tree together little by little and bit by bit all through December. By Christmas Eve there were three snowmen outside, a plethora of snow angels underneath fallen snow, a brass star on top of the tree, and two presents for each of them underneath.
On that Christmas Eve, after spending the afternoon on the frozen lake overlooking the mountains, they made a fire inside. Kaidan cooked a hearty stew while Adriene made sweet hot chocolate with cinnamon. Their home smelled like sweet chocolate with herbs and musky wood. They ate and then had their hot chocolate, whipped cream getting on Kaidan’s nose and resembling a white mustache. “There’s whipped cream on your nose,” Adriene said. “Let me get that for you.” He knew what she was doing. The truth was she wasn’t that slick, at least not to him, and he laughed as she gave him a bigger mustache on his upper lip before he brought her in his arms to kiss her. His kiss tasted like sweet cream and musk and Kaidan. One thing lead to another like one thing always lead to another. Like usual, they didn’t make it to the bed.
