Canadian writer/editor/cat&pup mama/dress addict/traveler. My main fandoms are Lucifer (on Netflix), Dragon Age, and Mass Effect. Currently working on a bunch of original fic (including a novel co-written with my bestest bestie: @w0rdinista). My avatar is by the wonderful @aelwen.
She leaned heavily on her staff as she made her way through the kitchen and out into the garden. Not content to sit on her favorite bench in the moonlight and smell the blooming flowers, she continued onward, though the ground was damp and uneven beneath her slipper-shod feet. She plucked a few sprigs of the Andraste’s Grace she found near the gate and shoved them into one of her voluminous pockets.
With one moon full and the other waxing, moonlight painted the hills silver. She stumbled when her staff misjudged the depth of a depression in the grass—a rabbit’s warren, perhaps, or one of the holes the dogs were forever digging. By the time she reached the top of the knoll, the one with the view out over the lake in one direction and all the way to the village in the other, sweat beaded on her brow and her breath came heavy. She eased herself to the ground, mindful of the sore hip taking its sweet time healing, and leaned her aching back against the stone plinth.
“You missed quite the row tonight, love,” she said, weary eyes finding and following the lines of constellations the way she’d done with the astrariums all those years ago. The specks were blurrier than they’d been; perhaps Cassie was right and spectacles would solve the problem. “Livvie’s eldest wants to go to Seheron. Livvie’s having none of it. Then Dany said he might join his nephew for the trip, and poor Livvie turned the most unhealthy shade of puce. She kept looking to me to say something, but what could I say? When I was Rowan’s age I was traipsing the length and breadth of Thedas closing rifts with a magic-marked hand.” She sighed, a faint smile pulling at her lips at the memory. “You’d have known what to say, I think. You always do. Did.”
She closed her eyes, hiding the blurred stars from sight, closing her hand in the grass as if it were a hand she could hold. For another hour, she sat in the darkness, telling him the events of her day, the contents of her messages, the stresses and the struggles and the antics of the children. Finally, when the ache of her bones could be ignored no longer, she heaved herself once again to her feet, letting her staff take even more of her weight than it had before.
Pressing her lips to the cold stone grave marker, she emptied her pockets of the flowers she carried, turned, and began to retrace her steps home.
things you said when we were the happiest we ever were
“This was a terrible idea,” Garrus groaned, gripping the sides of his seat.
Shepard turned to face him, eyes alight and grin one shade away from pure maniacal. “It was your idea.”
“And it’s so fun!” Rose shrieked as they took a completely unnecessary turn, half-tipping onto the wheels on one side.
“So fun!” Tyrra echoed, her subharmonics thrumming with excitement. “Go faster!”
“Please don’t go faster.”
“Faster it is!” Shepard crowed, leaning forward as the Mako shot forward. “Who wants to go the hard way up the side of a mountain?”
A chorus of ‘me, me, me!’ rang out from the back. “Garrus?” Shepard asked. “You up for it?”
He had to hand it to her—her excitement about the damned tank always had been infectious. “Fine,” he said, “but try not to roll us the hard way down the other side.”
Rose/Cullen, 7. things you said while we were driving (or maybe riding in their case) Thank you ♥
things you said while we were driving riding
“What’s his name?” Rose asked, when the silence between them had gone on just a shade too long for comfort. Even after knowing him this long—after kisses on the battlements and shared glances and, Maker, the innuendo—she could not always read his moods, and his thoughts were even more elusive. Especially when they were alone. Still, he’d invited her on this trip to Ferelden and she’d thought—well. She’d thought. But now he sat silent as a statue atop his horse, mood and thoughts both a mystery.
Cullen’s hands tightened briefly on the reins, but the simultaneous tightening of his knees sent his horse dancing sideways skittishly. The big gelding glanced over his shoulder as if to say watch what you’re doing, idiot, and Rose bit her lips to keep from smiling. Anyone with the wits to look through the eyes the Maker gave them could see how little Cullen enjoyed riding. “Forgive me,” Cullen said. “My… my thoughts were elsewhere.”
“I noticed,” she agreed, and the light filtering in golden dapples through the overhead branches did nothing to hide his blush. “I just asked his name. The horse, I mean.”
“The horse,” he replied, as if he’d never heard the word before. “Its, uh, name?”
“Oh, Cullen,” Rose said, “no wonder he’s looking at you like that. He’s your horse. You have to give him a proper name.”
“It’s Master Dennet’s horse.”
“Isn’t he the same horse Master Dennet always gives you?”
“I… suppose. They’re all much the same.”
Rose urged her own mount forward with a gentle touch, until she and Cullen were knee to knee. Reaching across the distance, she laid a hand on his horse’s shoulder. “Hey,” she said. The horse turned his baleful, dark eyes her way. “You have to give him a break. He’s Fereldan.” She ignored Cullen’s huff of affront. “It would be different if you were a mabari.”
The horse snorted.
“That’s hardly fair,” Cullen muttered.
Rose arched skeptical brows.
“Fine,” Cullen said. “His name is Pony.”
No amount of lip biting could keep her giggle from escaping. “Pony? You’ve named your giant warhorse Pony?”
He glowered, sinking down in his saddle. “That’s why I didn’t bloody say anything, isn’t it?”
In what could only be the equivalent of equine laughter, Pony pranced.
Kiara and Sebastian #3 Things you said too quietly. (My favorite fix couple!)
(thank you! *blush*)
things you said too quietly
“How about this one?” Hawke asked, holding up a froth of silk and ruffles in a truly horrific shade of pink.
Sebastian made a face, crossing his arms over his breastplate. On the floor at his feet, her mabari whined. Sebastian decided the hound agreed with him. “Certainly not.”
She dove into her closet, buried up to her waist in voluminous skirts and rustling fabric. A moment later, she pulled back, empty handed. “I give up. I don’t know what Mother was thinking when she had these made. They all look like cakes. Horrible, horrible cakes. Orlesian cakes—the kind that look nice on the outside but taste like shit when you bite into them. I’ll wear leathers. My leathers are nice.”
Sebastian chuckled. “And yet not at all appropriate for a formal dinner with at least one head of state in attendance.”
She threw up her hands and let out a despairing moan. “You’re the one who knows about heads of state! I don’t know about heads of state! You ought to be going to this thrice-blasted dinner.”
“And yet they are expecting the Champion of Kirkwall. I fear I’d disappoint.” Moving to her side, Sebastian set gentle fingertips against the small of her back and guided her to the trunk at the end of her bed. “Sit,” he said. “You asked for my help; let me offer it.”
Cullen’s hand was halfway to the hilt of his sword before he recognized the Herald’s voice. He turned on his heel, and saw her sitting at a small table obviously dragged aside to keep those sitting at it out of the way of bustling cooks and servants. She’d wrapped herself in a heavy cloak and her curls were in even more disarray than usual. It made her look young. Too young, perhaps, for all the responsibility heaped on her shoulders.
He understood that well enough, though she never complained.
“Sorry,” she said, without a hint of the mockery he dreaded. “I know better than to startle a templar. Especially a hungry one, stumbling around in the dark looking for a midnight snack.”
He stiffened. “I am no longer a templar.”
She raised her hands in a gesture somehow both apologetic and placating, which only made him more uncomfortable still. Here, perhaps, they were equal enough, but he could not forget that, at one time, such a gesture would only have highlighted the stark difference between their relative positions. Templar and mage. Protector and protected.
Jailor and jailed, if he was honest. And he was, now. More than he’d been, with the sweet song of lyrium always in his veins and years of training and rules and dogma to guide him. Dictate to him.
“Tea?” she asked. “I know just enough fire magic that it never gets cold. Very handy.” Concern briefly creased her brow. “Although—if that makes you uneasy, I can always brew more fresh.”
Ah you're probably already thrown to death with prompts, so don't worry about doing this! I couldn't decide what to send haha. So Shakarian with 1! Have a lovely day!
things you said at 1 a.m.
“You were right,” Shepard said.
Garrus, nearly asleep, shook himself awake and turned to face her. She lay on her back, staring up at the stars—which, in and of itself was enough to alarm him—her hands folded across her belly, her feet crossed at the ankles. The slow rise and fall of her chest was so painfully measured he knew she was counting her breaths, seeing how long she could face the stars without rolling away, hiding her face, gasping for breath as if her oxygen line was cut.
Slowly, measuredly, he replied, “Usually am. But about what in particular?”
That she didn’t laugh—or throw a playful punch his way—at the cockiness said almost as much as her posture, as the carefulness of her breathing. “What you said. About ruthless calculus. I didn’t want—I still don’t want—to think that way, but you were right. I—we—not everyone’s going to make it out of this. So if people are going to die, I need to figure out how to… minimize the damage. Maximize the lives spared.”
“Shepard,” he said, lifting himself up onto an elbow. “I’m pretty sure those worries are above your pay grade.”
“It’s not funny.”
“I’m not joking.”
In the silence, he watched her hold her eyes open as long as she could, and then she did turn away from the nemesis of vacuum, rolling to face him. “How do I choose? What if it’s a billion lives here and billion lives there? How do I choose one over the other?”
He hesitated before saying, “How did you choose on Virmire?”
She flinched as though he’d slapped her, but she answered all the same. “Alenko was with the bomb. That was the mission objective. Ash… if Ash had been with the bomb, I’d’ve saved her. It wasn’t… it wasn’t personal.”
“Right,” he said. “And now? What’s the mission objective?”
She closed her eyes, inhaling deeply. After an even longer exhale, she said, “Stop the Reapers. End them. Obliterate them. Throw a wrench in their goddamned Cycle once and for all.”
“So that’s how you choose,” he said, running the backs of his fingers down her troubled cheek, gratified when some of her worry—just a little, just enough—eased. “Don’t think about all the—make it about the mission objective.”
“That’s cold,” she whispered. And then, before he could offer his own words, “But that’s war.” She sighed and then almost smiled. “Right twice in one conversation, Vakarian. Don’t let it go to your head.”
“Me? Never. I’m the picture of humility.”
She snorted, and in the language of Shepard’s dark nights, he knew the worst had passed. For now.
(Ahh! Since you didn’t specify Rose, I chose another of my Trevelyans, Vivial :D)
things you said with no space between us
Their swords slid together with a shriek of metal on metal, until the hilts locked. Sweat burned Cullen’s eyes, his muscles screamed, and if he gave an inch—a single inch—she’d have him. He knew it. So did she. The Herald’s blue eyes narrowed and she bared her teeth in a fierce, feral grin.
“You underestimated me,” she said, without even the grace to sound winded.
“I did,” he agreed. “I’ll not do so again.”
Her bark of laughter was triumphant, and instead of pressing the attack further, she spun away, out of his reach, dropping the point of her blade in a clear acknowledgement of the end of the match. “That’s all I wanted to hear.”
“Herald—”
“Vivial.”
He inclined his head. “Might I inquire where you had your training? You’ve moves I’m entirely unfamiliar with.”
She nodded, sheathing her blade, and settling her shield on her back. “No one person, in point of fact. And it’s rather a long story. Over drinks?”
He was so certain he’d misheard her, he didn’t reply at once. The last of her grin faded, and her confident posture began, ever so slightly, to sink in on itself. Cullen cleared his throat. “With me?”
“Certainly not with the practice dummy. Very dull conversation, that one. Uh. Very... wooden.” She shrugged, laughing nervously at her own joke. “Call it work, if you must. I’d like to know about your training, too.”
“My tale’s not so long, or so interesting, I expect.”
She tilted her head and the wind ruffled her short blonde hair. Her cheeks were still rosy with exertion. On her, it looked lovely. He rather suspected he looked like someone had pulled him half-cooked from a hearth. “Somehow I doubt that,” she said at last. “Unless, of course, Varric’s got you entirely wrong.”
“Varric,” Cullen huffed, rolling his eyes before he could think better of it. “Of course.”
“If you’d rather not…”
“No, Heral—Vivial. I’d be, uh, honored. And a drink sounds good. Might soothe my wounded ego after that loss.”
She chuckled. “Well, since you put it that way, I’ll also tell you how you could’ve gotten out of that move you thought had ended you and taken me just as handily as you thought I’d taken you.”
“Indeed,” he said, intrigued, falling into easy step beside her as they made their way to the tavern.
Kiara/Sebastian: 5 and/or 16 ; Rose/Cullen: 2 and/or 6! (and also I will happily take a prompt if one strikes your fancy! but no worries if not)
(I already did #5, so here’s #16 for Kiara and Sebastian. I may come back and do the two Rose/Cullen ones later, because I love them, too!
things you said with no space between us
“Why do we always—oh, Maker, yes—always get ourselves into these situations?”
Sebastian’s strong arm held her close, his brow pressed to hers in a touch more intimate than any mere kiss, and his hips—well. His hips did one of the several things his hips were very good at doing. The others being dropping into a perfect archer’s stance, scaling walls, and guiding a horse without use of reins.
“Because,” he said, in a low—very low—whisper so thick with Starkhaven accent she nearly groaned, “my wife is insatiable, and, I think, has something of a kink when it comes to making love in places where there’s a high risk of getting caught.”
“And my husband,” she returned, hitching her own hip a little to lift her thigh even higher, “is just—so—oh, don’t you dare stop that—biddable.”
He kissed her neck and laughed into the side of her throat. She shivered, so close—so close she could— “Aye, he is at that.”
Her biddable husband dropped his hand between them, his nimble fingers bringing close to diving headlong off the edge of a cliff and she pressed her open-mouthed cry against his shoulder to muffle it. Sebastian followed her a moment later, though only the tense and release of his body betrayed him.
She touched his face with her fingertips, feeling him smile against her, and ran her hands through his hair. “One day,” she promised. “One day I’m going to succeed in making you cry out. Loudly.”
He chuckled, which only made her shiver all over again. “You may try, love. I did have many years practice keeping that moment, mmm, private.”
“You love this, you bastard.”
She squeaked when his answer was to drag his tongue along the sensitive side of her throat, collarbone to jaw. And then she did groan. Rather loudly.
“D’you hear something?” said a voice from the other side of the door.
“The sound of everyone else having a lark while we’re stuck guarding empty hallways?”
“Nah, thought it was—well. Never mind. Wishful bloody thinking, more like.”
The footsteps moved on, while Kiara and Sebastian shuddered with silent laughter together in the dark.
The hour had grown late, and one by one Hawke’s companions took their leave, until only Sebastian was left. He’d meant to depart hours ago, but Hawke was in one of her strange moods, pulled tight as a bowstring.
She’d mentioned the impending anniversary of her mother’s death a fortnight earlier, offhand, during one of their archery practices, and he’d noticed the change in her since. Where once she’d taken a single glass of wine, she always had three or four. More shots went wide than landed. She’d let Fenris take all her coin at cards, without even pretending to play her best, the way she usually did.
She looked at Sebastian like he was a rope, and she about to drown. Though he knew it was the only way to save himself, he found he could not cut the line, no matter how dangerous the force of the waves.
With everyone else gone, they sat next to one another on one of the settees, him nursing an untouched tumbler of whiskey and she on her third. Her near hand closed and opened, anxiously scrabbling against the fabric like a trapped bird. He laid his hand over hers to still it, to prove to her she wasn’t as alone as she felt.
And she, she turned her head and kissed him, her lips warm and soft on his until she pulled back with an unhappy gasp.
He ought to have been the one to pull back. He knew that. He knew it.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “I shouldn’t have—I definitely shouldn’t have done that.”
She lifted pleading eyes, and oh, all he wanted was to kiss the worried corners of them until the frown lines disappeared. But he could not. It would not be fair. To either of them, but to her most of all. “Please pretend that didn’t happen. I’ve—it’s only I’ve had too much to drink. Probably won’t remember it in the morning.”
A lie, of course, but not one he could condemn her for. It was, after all, little different from the lies he lived daily, prostrating himself before Andraste while wondering when next Hawke would call on him.
“Pretend what happened?” he said, with forced mildness.
She smiled, but the sadness at the corners of her eyes did not disappear. “Thank you,” she said, only to him it sounded like, please go. Or, perhaps please stay.
Caught between worlds, he closed his eyes and wished--prayed? was it truly prayer, when he only wanted one answer?--for certainty.
For prompts, how about #9 ("things you said when i was crying") for Grace and Garrus?
things you said when I was crying
He dodged, just in time to avoid the case of medals she’d thrown. It hit the fishtank, sending ribbons and medals to the floor in a tinkling cascade.
“Shepard?”
“I’m fine,” she snarled, turning on him. Tears ran down her face, though her expression was murderous rather than sad. He knew that much about the language her alien features spoke. She scrubbed her palms over her damp cheeks, not that the gesture stopped the tears. He wasn’t sure she even realized they were still falling. “I’m not fine. Why’d they wait?”
He blinked, took a step toward her, and waited to see if she’d recoil or throw him out. When she didn’t, he took another step, then a third. He didn’t touch her, but stood close enough to touch, if that was what she wanted. What she needed. She bowed her head until her chin touched the chestplate of the hardsuit she still wore. Just on the edge of his peripheral vision, he saw the… the helmet. The old helmet. That she’d brought back.
“More than two years,” she said, softly. “What were they waiting for? They deserved their closure. All those families. They deserved better than this. Hackett—he couldn’t have known I’d come back to collect those tags, to plant that memorial. He should have sent someone else. He should’ve sent someone else years ago. I was dead.”
He didn’t flinch because it would have upset her, and standing so close, she’d have seen it. Felt it, even.
“They really did bury it, didn’t they?” Shepard said, lifting her chin to meet his eyes. “I’m—I’m not sure I believed it, until now. The ship that pulled their collective asses from the Sovereign-shaped fire, and they left her there, broken. Her people. My people.”
You, he thought, and didn’t say, remembering those hideous newsvids, the recruitment posters, the resounding silence about everything that mattered. After. “Maybe that’s why,” Garrus said. “Why he sent you now. So you’d know. What you’re up against. The resistance to the truth.”
She huffed a frustrated exhale, but this time when she rubbed the tears from her cheeks, they stayed dry. “Not sure that makes me feel better.”
“Not sure it should,” he agreed. “But—you’re right. They deserved better. And, after everything, I think they’d probably appreciate that it was you and not some Alliance scavenger team. You honored them. You cared.”
“I did,” she said. “I do.”
“Hackett’s still a bastard.”
She laughed a watery laugh and clapped a companionable hand to his upper arm. “Right now, Garrus? Insubordination or no insubordination? I think I have to agree with you.”
15 or 16 (your choice) for Sol/Naxus? Please and thank you! :D
things you said with no space between us
She was crammed up against his side, a piece of fallen masonry slowly pressing the air from her lungs.
“Hey,” he said, “you still awake?”
“And... miss this?” she gasped. The wheezing was a new development. Not good. “You’ll only… blame me… if I don’t write the… report myself.”
“I’m going to blame the intel that neglected to tell us we’d be running into buried batarian mines, actually. But if you’re volunteering to write the report, I won’t say no.”
Though the words were light, he couldn’t hide the panic in his subharmonics. Her short, stubborn laugh made him wince; she could feel it against her spine, where her body’d shielded his from the worst of the blast. “Sol—” he began.
She grunted. “Don’t. I’m fine.”
Even she could hear the lie voice in her subharmonics. In the silence, the wheeze of her breath sounded worse.
“Do you—can I—how about a drink? When we… when we get out of this.”
“We… we always… get drinks.”
“Dinner, then. And drinks. Hell, I’ll even throw in dancing, and you know how I feel about that, only—Sol—”
“I’m fine. I’m… agh, fine. Dancing. Yes. I’ll try and… and make it… for the dancing. Gotta… vid… laugh.”
“Shh,” he said, voice like a caress in the dark of the collapsed tunnel.
“Don’t—like—the—agh—silence.”
“Oh,” he said. “That’s—I can fix that. I ever tell you about that training exercise on Menae where I disgraced myself in front of six generals and the primarch? Well, it all started when Klixus—you know him?—dared me to drink most of a bottle of brandy on an empty stomach…”
She couldn’t move, and he didn’t dare to, but she felt the press of his warmth against her, the reassuring flick of his mandibles as he spoke, and thought about how, if she had to get blown half to bits on a routine mission, at least she was in good company. It would even be worth it, later. When she held him to the dancing.
And I'm going to be shamelessly greedy and suggest Grace Trevelyan and Cullen - 13. things you said at the kitchen table, because I'd LOVE to listen in on their conversations...
(I love you so much for asking this
things you said at the kitchen table
“My daughter tells me you’re fond of shortbread.”
Cullen resisted the urge to rise from his seat—she’d already told him thrice to stay put—and cleared his throat. “I, uh. Yes, ma’a—my lady.” Rose’s mother turned, raised her brows, and stared at him until he further corrected his address to, “Um. Grace. Are the, the others? Arriving soon?”
“Oh,” she said, waving a hand breezily, “no others. Calla’s taken the children for a ramble and Rose and her father are out doing whatever it is they do when I’m not around. Shooting contests, I suspect. His arrows and her lightning. Disproportionate number of lightning-struck trees when she’s home. No, I thought you and I could have a chat, just us. It’s always good to know a little about the man your daughter’s enamored with, after all.”
He blinked. His life flashed before his eyes. Just a little. The last few years, in any case.
“Now, now, Commander,” Grace Trevelyan said, patting the back of his hand as she slipped into the chair opposite him. “I trust I’m not near as frightening as old Tevinter godlings or Skyhold in the winter. Have a cookie.”
He did. It was very good. He wondered if she’d made them herself. Odd hobby for a Bann. Not that he’d dream of saying so. “Thank you, my lad—Grace.”
She poured him a cup of tea and smiled. “Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?”
“I… knew a Grace once,” he said, pushing crumbs around his plate with one fingertip. Under the table, his foot tapped out an uneven rhythm against the stones. “She was—”
“An old flame?”
He’d always thought his death would come on the battlefield, or protecting the weak from those determined to harm them. He’d never envisioned slow death by embarrassment in the kitchen of his… his lover’s mother. Grace laughed. “You’re allowed to have them, you know.”
“No,” he said. “No, certainly not. She was a blood mage. It, ah, it’s a terrible story, actually. Forgive me.”
She winced, then nudged the plate of cookies closer to him. One more, then. It would be rude, otherwise. Or two. Three at the most. “Perhaps we’d best replace those memories with better ones, then. Shall I tell you embarrassing stories about my daughter while she’s not here to defend herself?”
“Please,” he said, with no small amount of relief, banishing the old ghosts of the Gallows, at least for a time.
He does not wear his pristine armor here, nor the robes of the brotherhood he has forfeited the right to claim. His linen shirt is finely-woven, picked with gold embroidery at collar and hem and cuff. His trousers are also fine, though she knows were she to look closer, she’d see how worn the knees are.
These are the clothes he wears to pray, always. This is the garb of a supplicant who never falters, no matter how his knees ache from kneeling, no matter how low the candles burn. These are also the clothes he wears when he helps in the kitchen, heedless of flour on the gold stitches, where she knows very well his dedication to kneading bread is yet another form of prayer.
Just as fletching his own arrows is prayer. Just as following on Hawke’s heels is. She thinks, sometimes, even he does not realize how devout he is. Whatever he prays for, she hopes the Maker listens.
“Please,” he says, just loud enough for her to hear the way his voice breaks, “please, please, please.”
“Something troubles you, Sebastian?” she asks, stepping into the light as though she has not already been watching him for a full turn of the glass, has not already seen the evidence of his distress firsthand.
“Revered Mother,” he replies, not rising from his supplication, but bowing his head to greet her. Ever polite, ever trusting. But his face, in the light of the guttering candles, is haunted. Harrowed. “It is—it is nothing new. It will pass. The Maker will—it will pass.”
Her poor boy. She has used him ill. And she is not finished yet.
Were she to kneel, her prayers would not be for guidance, but for forgiveness, and she is not certain Andraste would deign to intercede on her behalf.
“She’s perfect,” Cullen said, voice soft with awe, accent rougher around the edges. “You’re perfect.”
“You’re hogging her,” Rose reminded him.
Cullen flushed as he looked away from the bundle—so tiny—he carried and Rose’s heart gave a twisting triple beat even as her eyes filled with tears. Happy ones. Maker-I-didn’t-know-I-could-be-this-happy ones. “Forgive me, I—”
She sniffled the tears away. “And I was joking. Come here, the both of you.”
Like a good soldier, he obeyed her at once, sitting close beside her on the bed without once jostling the sleeping baby in his arms. He offered her to Rose, who shook her head. “You’re better at this than I am.”
“Younger siblings.”
“Not just that. You’re calm. You’re… you’re not afraid.”
He chuckled, shaking his head. “Afraid? No, love, I’m terrified. It would be foolish not to be, I think. She’s so… fragile.”
“Good thing her Da’s so gentle, then.” She leaned over, smiling down at the perfect little pink face. “She looks like you.”
Cullen smiled, turning his head to press a kiss to Rose’s brow. “She looks like a newborn.” A second kiss landed lightly on the crown of the sleeping baby’s head. “Her hair’ll be red, like yours.”
“And I suppose there’s no escaping the curls.” She reached up and ruffled his; he’d let his hair grow a little, and he no longer kept it quite so ruthlessly pomaded. “She really is perfect.”
(Oh! I know I just asked for something, but if it's ok) Shipping meme #5 for Solana & Naxus?
things you didn’t say at all
Naxus never tired of watching Sol work. When she was engrossed in a task, her hands moved with confidence and her expression was unguarded. He could tell with a glance if she was frustrated or confused or triumphant, emotions scrolling like lines of code he was intimately familiar with.
Now, though, he wished he could not read her emotions quite so clearly. She’d been fussing with his apartment security for hours, cursing inventively under her breath all the while. She’d already amassed a small armory in the spare room, triple-sealed all his windows with top-of-the-line shatterproof (“And not entirely legal,” she said mildly, “don’t tell.”) material, and stocked his kitchen with enough meal replacement packets and bottles of water to… well. To keep two people alive for months, if need be. On short rations. Until the guns finally jammed, or they ran out of heat sinks she couldn’t repair, or the shatterproof windows shattered.
He’d seen what those Reaper weapons could do. He’d never once thought he was merely fighting geth at the Citadel. Not with lasers like that.
While she’d been home, helplessly watching her mother die, her deft hands and clever brain unable to stop the one thing she most wished to stop. From fixing the one thing she most wanted to fix.
So he didn’t stop her from preparing, from controlling all the things in her power to control. Didn’t stop the window-sealing or gun hoarding; didn’t stop the ever-increasing creep of food out of the pantry and into the living room. He didn’t say, “Sol, love, I’ve seen what those lasers can do.”
And when she said, “Look, if—if I’m not here, you need to know all the codes; I’ve sent copies to your omni-tool—encrypted of course—and there’re at least three hard copies in the house, in case your ‘tool’s not working. If—If I’m not here, you can—there’s enough food—” he took her in his arms and nuzzled her face and replied, “You’ll be here. I’ll be here. We’ll both be here,” and was gratified when her expression—so open, always so open to him—told him she had no idea he was thinking about Reaper lasers and how quickly Cipritine would burn.
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