goethbeforethefall | Inbox // IC Communication

While Solas explains, Felassan contemplates his own purely aesthetic belly button. (Of course he's as naked as a day is brief, shameless and shielded by magic from the crisp chill of morning.) The mention of Elgar'nan, however, jerks his attention back up, nose wrinkling —

But the excesses of Elvhenan's fashion, including its occasional excessive absences, spares Solas from being asked how he knows anything about Elgar'nan's bare torso. Felassan must only count himself lucky not to have already known that himself.

And if this wasn't quite a game before, the vengeance required by that da'len pushes it over the edge. The book is set aside, and Felassan rolls off the bed to step back into yesterday's breeches, and he asks, "What's on the other side of the Fade?"

He is grateful not to have to explain; not every memory from the old days was a good one, and very few that involved Elgar'nan ever could be. He chuckles to hear the bait taken, and the droll, unblunted edge of Felassan's teeth come into play. Yes, this was the game, indeed.

"I don't know," He says again, because it is wisdom to admit such things, "Perhaps there is another world, where there are people and spirits wholly different, and beyond that another veil, another Fade. All layered neatly, like wood and resin upon a bow, to be pierced and pieced by the will of a sufficiently skilled craftsman. The nature of our own world is mystery enough for most, but if you will walk alongside me, we may yet explore the nature of all worlds, and the connections between them."

"If, he says," Felassan mutters as if to himself, but loud enough to truly be for Solas, while he chooses from among the clothes Beleth collected for him.

And yes, fine, they have definitively established that circumstances exist under which Felassan would refuse to go any further down a particular road. They've also established he would consider it the end of his journey altogether, and the possibility offered here — a thousand new horizons to find — makes him feel young instead of weary, the look he casts over at Solas much brighter than that muttering would imply. It's only focus on his objective that keeps him from wandering off into the thought of it.

"Was there a time before spirits?"

"There is time yet to withdraw, if you so wished," The laugh this time is surprised, a twist of amusement in his voice, entirely unwilling. Solas' smile is proof that his name for Felassan was well-chosen, "You are not chained here, Ma'nehn."

If indeed, yes that was a fair reproach— but now that is an interesting question indeed.

"I don't know," Solas repeats, for the third time, because it is the truth, and because the game has a rhythm to it that is not to be denied. There are rules to everything, in some ways, "Some say that the first spirits arose in mirror to the earliest animal minds, or to echo the dreams of the Titans, or other elemental beings of their kinship. Some say that we arrived in the Fade from elsewhere, and are wholly foreign in origin, having adapted our nature so fully to our new home that we have become natives in truth. Still others decry that Spirits are eternal, and that the physical world was created by us, our dreams and power, our hopes and our seeming, the Fade a primordial landscape that gave birth to the physical, and to which the physical realm will one day be returned. I have never met any argument that could truly defend any conclusion, and so we may never truly know."

No chains save the way that smile makes his chest swell. Felassan smiles back, and then he listens. He has heard these theories before, of course. He did perhaps ask this very question, in the days he would have asked it without a mouth and heard the answer without ears. The answer is no less enjoyable. More enjoyable, even, with the way the steady beat of Solas's voice always soothes something in his blood as much as his words settle his thoughts, and he drifts closer with his buttons half undone to pull Solas in by the collar and kiss him.

Maybe that's a lost point in the game. But it's a quick, passing kiss, and then back to his buttons, so it's not a forfeit.

"Did we learn kissing from the dwarves," while he's on the topic, "or discover it for ourselves?"

Solas does not answer this question so quickly. He's quiet a moment and his smile changes, softer, smaller, turned inward to some private memory or personal thought. He breathes slow in the silence, listening to the rustle of fabric and his own heartbeat, seeing something from a time long ago and far, far away.

Felassan's kiss summons him back to his body, and Solas grasps after him with a playful grimace, and takes another from him while he is still touching his buttons.

"They learned it from us," He says, finally, soft and nostalgic, "Mating came naturally to the embodied, but in our curiosity and passion we discovered it ourselves. I do not know how many times it was found out, nor in how many places, but I was there on the first occasion. A spirit of Love was born from that place."

Felassan gives up that second kiss easily, especially because it brings them back to a tie, but without pausing his buttoning. And in the wake of it he steps back to fix Solas with a more skeptical look.

"Spirit-Speaker, Lord of Tricksters, Roamer of the Beyond," he drawls in affectionate preamble to a proposed addition: "Progenitor of Osculation — does Beleth know you're already a father?"

He's joking, and already half certain that isn't what Solas meant.

"Does she know that you are?" he counters, still smiling. Osculation, indeed— and which of them was the old man? "You do not fool me with your casual deflections, emma lath, I know you well."

Felassan likes to lead the inexperienced, every bit as much as Solas does to teach. He likes to care for and guard, to watch over. To protect. And that he extended that protection over Beleth was gratifying to behold. But it did not absolve him from teasing.

"I was merely an observer at the time. Participation came much later."

Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, Felassan has no idea that within days of meeting him Beleth took stock of his reaction to her clever and brutal resolution of the War of the Lions, when it was put on helpful display by the hot springs, and began evaluating whether Briala resembled him enough to be his child. Solas's riposte now makes something flicker in his eyes — not angry, not wounded, but some other variety of struck nerve.

It's a gentle strike, and he doesn't argue. The endearment might as well be a hand scratching beneath his chin. Besides, the game has rules.

"Had you gone to observe them on purpose?"

Getting more granular, perhaps, but he likes this topic. Or, more accurately: he likes the smile that thinking about it has put on Solas's face.

"Of course," Solas replies, unrepentant of the claim, "I was curious to know how our lost brethren fared, and of the nature of these new spirits, born wrapped in flesh. It was something none of us had ever witnessed before, even in the farthest dreams."

And in those days, that had been his chiefest concern: to wander, and watch, to learn all he could, to grow ever greater in knowledge and the wisdom to use it well. In those days, games like these were serious work, endless questions besetting him from all sides, whenever he did not seek out solitude. At the time it had seemed ordinary, and now it was one of his rare and most treasured pleasures; a chance to feel like himself, again.

Ah, and there he is, smiling at the wardrobe again.

Solas turns and sees that Felassan is watching him, and his moon-soft smile. Ah, so is that your game, you wretch? Butter him up, and then what?

"You are very curious about the subject of kissing this morning. Could it be you are planning something?"

Felassan raises both eyebrows. He's not. He wasn't. Not beyond the vague plan to make him smile and keep smiling. And — and! — he will not be baited out of asking questions by these conjectural accusations. But he sidesteps now, done with his buttons, to look into Solas's wardrobe over his shoulder.

While he's not quite broader than Solas, he would be, proportionally, if granted his height. He's built sturdier, with hands people would call strong before they'd call them elegant, and he settles both of them onto Solas's imminently holdable waist, and his mouth and nose against the back line of his shoulder. They smell like each other, Solas and Beleth. Like a shared life and shared laundry and shared soap and the lingering touch of Beleth's perfume, tilted to this side or the other of that overlap into something unique to each of them. He likes it. Even when he has his arms around only one of them, the other's there, too, whispering.

"Where is the line between healthy cynicism and paranoia, you think?"

Edited 2025-10-21 20:22 (UTC)

"In the reality that sometimes they truly are plotting against you, of course," Solas replies. He considers, only briefly, the merits of turning to face Felassan, and the image of it is enticing indeed: to be pressed back amongst the clothing, perhaps even to—

Yes. Enticing, indeed.

But equal to that temptation is the simple pleasure of the moment as it is, so-gently held, Felassan's cheek a pressure between his shoulders, like the warmth of a long-held promise, faithfully kept. Solas sways with his balance and lets it be for a moment more, luxuriating.

"Ar lath ma," He says, quietly, and a little wistful, "I have missed these talks."

The tone and the sentiment cut short Felassan's huffs of laughter and his nascent impulse to bite, and he says, "Ara erathe — "

He hardly had time to miss talking to Solas, between his last breath in Thedas and his first sight of him here. But he has missed these talks for four thousand years, and for thousands more had them with his shoulder slouched against Solas's or his legs thrown over his where they sat, while he wished for something more like this.

Some vestigial yearning frays and hushes the words. But he has bare skin under his palms. He has the right and the confidence to curl his fingers over Solas's sternum and slide his knuckles to his well-explained navel. That reality catches up to him and he smiles. It's detectable in his voice and in the stretch of his mouth against Solas's spine, where he's going to kiss him, in just a moment, after he corrects himself with some cocky look what I've got pride to, " — ara theneras. Will there be an end to time?"

"I don't know," He replies, musing. Felassan's hands are busy, cool and rough and welcome under his tunic. He has not yet selected a robe to go over it, and is all the more accessible— he leans into it, breathing deeply, and Felassan's touch puts a hitch into his voice as he speaks, "Before time's beginning, all things were as one. But if it ends, it will be attenuated so profoundly that there will be no line, no possible dividing point between its end and a point where it has not ended. Or perhaps it is all illusion, and time will loop back on itself to the beginning, and the world will be born again, and untold millenia later, here too will we be, once more."

It is difficult to reach for Felassan like this; most all that he can touch is wrists and hands, the silhouette of their shape through his own shirt. He wants to touch, but he is afraid; what if doing so forms some signal to stop? Solas does not wish for it to stop, and so he puts his hands up, slowly, and with deliberate care places them on the carven frame of the wardrobe. He is at your mercy, Slow Arrow.

"Perhaps it already has, and we are here for the second time, or the ten-thousandth. Or for the first and only time, and never again."

The offer of trust in that gesture, more than the control, (though it’s some of both, unequally,) hooks into his gut. For a second he’s still, then exhaling against Solas’s back, then resuming his exploration. Solas never wanted this body, but Felassan can’t love it any less for the pain that came with its creation. He loves their scars. He loves the abrupt end of Beleth’s missing arm, when she sets the prosthetic aside. And he loves long plane of Solas’s stomach, the gentle curvature of his side, and the muscle in his chest when Felassan reaches high enough to find a nipple with his thumb, dragging his tunic up where the hem is caught and bunched in the bend of his elbow.

He’s certain they have never been here before. Not like this. Maybe he’s been certain of that ten thousand times.

“If everything repeats,” he asks, nosing above Solas’s collar so the question is mumbled with teeth and tongue against the base of his neck, “could we never choose differently?”

He waits for Solas to begin answering to slide one hand lower instead, pulling loose the lacings that keep his leggings in place.

Felassan's voice is the hot air at the nape of his neck, the tender promise of teeth and wet-warm tongue. Solas bows his head more deeply, silent invitation, and only belatedly remembers to listen to the question, and remember the words.

"One of the great questions," He says, quietly and yes, a little distracted, "Are we truly free to choose, or is the future already written, and we mere shadows, cast by the inevitability of fate? Bele—"

Felassan's fingers at the front of his leggings, clever and seeking. Solas breathes more deeply, and nearly loses his place.

"...Beleth discovered an alternate future. What would the world have been, had she never become Inquisitor, or taken a hand in the politics of Orlais, of the Wardens, or Thedas as a whole? Complete ruination. The world drowned in blight-tainted Red Lyrium, utterly destroyed before a year had passed. The steps she took to change that fate... I believe there is a choice. Freedom is no illusion."

Solas bends, and here is the moment Felassan’s mood could shift. He could hand over control to blood and nerves, grow grasping and ragged-voiced with desire, press against Solas’s back and pant against his skin. But he doesn’t. It satisfies another desire, no weaker, to pull himself back from the edge of it. To keep his focus honed on the body beneath his hands and the spirit inside it rather than his own. He does like to protect and take care. The teeth he scrapes against Solas’s neck aren’t too gentle but they are precisely placed, the stretch of tendon and the junction of neck and shoulder turned taut by the bow of Solas’s head, while his hand touches him first like he’s new, fingertips exploring like Felassan hasn’t already memorized the shape of him and wants to learn.

“Why do you believe that,” he asks, “and not that she would always see that future and always act to change it?”

His voice is low, curiosity genuine. He doesn’t really need convincing. He only wants to know what Solas thinks, and why, just as much or more as he wants to know how long his hand can work at this pace before he gets restless.

He is expecting it, and does not quite know what to do when the moment arrives, and the rush of blood does not come. Fortunately, his role here is a simple one: Solas need do nothing, nothing more than be still, answer, and take what is given. Whatever is given.

Felassan's teeth elicit an indrawn breath, his hands a sigh. Callouses there, scratching with strange satisfaction, the fingers gentle to explore the shape of him. It is a tortuous tease, and yet... yes, it is satisfying. He is able to follow the path of Felassan's exploration as if tracing it on a map, behind his closed eyes. Solas hums a soft sound of encouragement, and slow, lazy pleasure, and—

Ah, yes. The question at hand.

"I have no answer for you, emma lath. How many times, in our journey, she nearly died, or I did? How close we came to disaster! She told me, in that other future, it was my dying wish that she undo what had come to pass in that lost year..." He trails off, distracted by the seeking grasp, the scraping edge of a fingernail, palm loosely grasping. What was this, some strange way to accustom him to honesty? A reward, that would proliferate...

Solas inhales and refocuses. Ridiculous. No. It is merely Felassan, contrary as always, his pleasure in teasing come round again to manifest itself in new form, entirely pleasurable.

"...I must believe in the truth of free will, in our capacity to shape our futures, and to exist as people, rather than blind forces of nature. Otherwise, what is there to live for? We are not made to be slaves, not even to causality itself. If I cannot hold faith anything else, I choose to believe in that."

Felassan can remember the first time Solas suggested to him, a spirit formed from a world of empire and hierarchy, that this was not their first and most natural state, and the idea caught him like a flame on a wick. He remembers Solas's first sidelong, carefully couched implication that they could be free again — and the first time he said it uncarefully, righteous and seething.

By then Felassan knew what he wanted. He could have kissed him, instead of just standing there at Solas's elbow, a blaze in his eyes and his heart but the rest of him frozen.

There'll be no making up for it now. He does kiss him, though, as Solas says we are not made to be slaves; Felassan's mouth presses open to his back, his shoulder, and if he has to hold Solas's arm and lift onto his toes to complete his wet, toothy journey up the line of Solas's neck, that's fine. He's not above it. His other hand pauses its expedition — not to tease (much) and certainly not to punish, but to hold a demanding, supplicating palm below Solas's chin. There's magic to slick a palm. But to live in a body that can spit is magic, too.

"Were we made to be anything at all?" he asks into skin. "Is there something that we owe the world?"

"You and I? Certainly," He replies, half-turning his head now, as Felassan's progression becomes more indulgent yet, "But not Beleth. She was born free."

Ah. Well. Yes, alright, if that's your request. Lubrication, of a sort, animal creature that you are. He is committed to seeing where your explorations take you.

"We were made to be as we were, to enact and impart our names and natures, whatever they were. Perhaps that is the lure of embodiment, for many: to be free from the obligation of their inborn purpose. A Spirit must be what it is— an Elf need only be what they wish to be."

Except, of course, that isn't true, not entirely. An elf, after all, could never again become a spirit. But perhaps these details go best without saying.

It goes without saying; Felassan hears it anyway. For a moment he's still, even with his dampened hand wrapped around the firm heat of him, thinking. What do you do about loving a version of someone they never wanted to be, all the hard and thorny parts they would have been happier without? When the pride and the temper and the moments of foolishness and indignity are just as vital as the gentle thoughtfulness, the far-reaching interests and reflective knowledge that mark every iteration of Wisdom Felassan has encountered —

— you shut up and love them, probably. He settles back into the task. A kiss behind Solas's ear before he lowers flat onto his feet again. Fingertips to the column of his throat, the underside of his chin, to encourage him to keep his neck bared even if there aren't any teeth for it now. On his cock Felassan's hand is somewhat more dedicated to its purpose, but it's a matter of degrees, fingers still reaching to experiment even as his palm keeps up a slow and simple stroke. He wants another sigh, another hum. He wants him unfurled.

"When have you felt most yourself," he asks, "since you woke?"

It is a terrible question. A thousand answers spring into his mind.

In the Fade, their feet not cold in snow that does not exist. Her teasing voice, the simple upwell of gladness at her touch, an unthinking joy.

A moment of silent companionship, moving through damp grass, touching without sight, a doom ahead, as yet untouched. In love.

The fierce, righteous happiness of vengeance, of putting the world to rights in fury and fire, despite the grief, wholly one within himself, in the brief moment before it all twists to blackness, a pin struck— ping! against the world.

A teasing word, challenging another to a chess-match, and hearing with a thrill of satisfaction his acquiescence.

But had any of it been himself? Who was he, at the core of it? He had been Solas. But not... not himself. Not fully, not truly. Or was his true self that wretched, weeping creature he had become, broken and bleeding, confronted by the horror of the past, witnessed by a ring of enemies and those for whom he most wanted to show a face that was not streaked by indignity? He had never craved more, for it all to be undone, for it all to wash away and leave him clean, as once he was and would never be again.

"I don't know," He groans, finally the game's rules reasserting themselves even as he begins to regret their entanglement. Solas isn't having as much fun, anymore— though the slowly building physical pleasure is a strange counterpoint, goad and balm all held in one hand. Ha.

"I don't know."

Felassan inhales against his back. What he'd hoped for — for Solas to know this one. However brief, however simple the moment. Some flicker of peace that Felassan could add it to his collection of glimpses into the years that passed out of his view, like stars in a black sky.

But he can't be surprised that it isn't so easy as that. To ask Solas of himself instead of the wider world, generalizations and philosophies, was a gamble at best. A misstep at worst. Solas hasn't moved away from him, though, so that's all right. In fact:

"Then I believe I win," Felassan says into his back, and he turns him around, with gentle insistence at his shoulder and his hip, so Solas can see that how Felassan looks at him. It's not devoid of gloating, this look, but it's a smaller part than the concern and apology and adoration and (separate from the adoration, more clear-eyed than starry) love.

The other part of the game is still in effect, though. The part where Solas is at his mercy. Felassan moves one of Solas's hands back to the frame of the wardrobe, behind him now, and he trusts him to place the other where it belongs on his own and to let himself be kissed on his mouth and neck and collar bone, while Felassan tries to make up for the misstep with firmer grip and faster stroke and only a little teasing.

Edited (as discussed) 2025-11-09 18:24 (UTC)

"Another victory," Solas replies, the traditional closer, but the punishment is in this case so much better a prize than when ever before they played this game.

Felassan is not disappointed in him, and he does not leave Solas with a laugh and a huff, or a thrown pebble, or a taunt. He stays, and stays closer, and Solas forgets entirely when he meant to do with his hands until Felassan, gently, reminds him.

He is too busy chasing kisses, and succumbing with a groan to the increased pressure, and pace. It is torture, sweet and simple and poignant, and it is not very long at all before Solas comes with a soft, gut-wreched gasp, spilling over Felassan's fingers and more. Perhaps it is all to the good that they have not found reason yet to line the stone floor with rugs, for winter.

Solas forgets his hands again, and long fingers thread through Felassan's hair, cradling his jaw and ears so that Solas can kiss him again and again, slow and fervent and loving. A soft, dark, hedonistic moment between them, with the pleasure of victory and defeat, of sex, of the old game made new and lovely, still humming between them.

"You have devised a new way to play this game," he notes, quietly. Outside, there is a bird at the fountain, calling to its fellows, and the slow-rising smell of cinnamon and warm oats is spreading across the courtyard. Home. Family, "I find it difficult to regret that I failed to satisfy your curiosity."

There is time.

Felassan is for a second insufferably pleased with himself. Or it would have been insufferable if anyone had been made to suffer the full brunt of it. Solas is spared that fate by the his slow and fervent kissing and the brush of his fingers against Felassan's ears. For all Felassan's bossiness, for the grip he still has on Solas's hip and the cat-with-cream smile still tugging at his mouth, a different sort of satisfaction seeps into him, warmer and more pliant. This. Yes. What he'd waited all that time for.

"Next time," he promises and challenges, just as quietly, once there's space between them to say it into. Though the gleaming edges of his smugness have been blunted by the affection, that's not enough to keep him from looking Solas in the eye while he sucks the side of his finger clean.

A fraction of the little mess they've made. For the rest, a still-damp towel from the rim of the bathtub, first handed to Solas and then tossed down so Felassan can wipe the floor with it beneath his foot. He insists on helping to tighten the laces he undid, batting hands away if he has to, and waits until Solas has that much of his dignity returned to say, "I didn't intend for that last one to hurt."

He'd already been fighting dirty enough.

"Will you tell me about it?"

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