You head back before it gets dark, before the sun even settles fully on the horizon, in fact. Days are long here, with no mountains on the horizon to cut off the sun’s light. But you do want to dry off while there’s still sun to dry in, and get back to Dorian and his magic drying powers before the heat escapes straight out of the cloudless desert sky.
All three of you are fairly loaded down with fish, and you take a great deal of satisfaction in showing them off to an impressed Blackwall, who now seems to regret not going with you since it’s now evident you were actually intending to fish. It’s definitely the last time you’ll be able to use this particular excuse to sneak off alone, but you’re astonished it worked even once, so that’s honestly fine.
The camp is already fully set up, and before long you’ve repurposed your fishing rods and twine into a laundry line for the fish, hanging them up to keep them out of the sand while you work on cleaning them. To your pleasant surprise, others join in. You’re used to this being the part everyone refuses to do, but it seems they’re as eager to get to the “eating fish” part of the night as you are. Blackwall seems to be a pretty skilled hand at it, which doesn’t necessarily surprise you. He clearly prides himself on being a rugged, handy man sort, and probably Wardens have to do all sorts of stuff like this, right? Who even knows where they go and what they do when there’s not a Blight, but it seems like it would probably involve rugged survivalism in some form or another. More surprising are the Inquisitor and the Seeker, who you can’t really imagine fishing. Well, the Inquisitor, maybe. Your image of him has had to rapidly adjust over the last few weeks. As for Solas, well, you’re just as surprised he doesn’t have a fish descaling spell primed and ready to go.
“Care to make a wager?” Dorian asks from over your shoulder, where he is absolutely not helping you clean the fish. He gestures between Blackwall and Alas’len, who are halfway through the first fish of a fish-cleaning race.
“Absolutely not,” you say, because you don’t want to have to justify the full confidence with which you’d vote for Alas’len. No one else knows how long he worked with fish in his youth. “Never bet against a Vint.”
“I haven’t heard that one before. Why not?”
“They’ll make a blood sacrifice if they start to lose, obviously,” you say with a snort. “You hear one punchline about Vints, you’ve heard them all, really. It’s going to be blood magic. The joke is always blood magic.”
“Of course,” Dorian says with a long-suffering sigh. “I should have seen it coming, honestly. Your new friend is surprisingly good at fishing for a desert man, though. I’ll be honest; I didn’t think you were going to come back with many fish.”
“Because of a lack of trust in my fishing skills, I’m sure.”
“Obviously.”
You sigh, biting back the retort you have because leaning into the loose angle was literally your idea. Your stupid, stupid idea. “Turns out, fishing is extremely easy when one party can electrify the fish.”
“Are you serious?” Dorian says with a laugh. “Magic for fishing?”
“I don’t want to hear that from a man with a magical umbrella spell.”
“So you caught so many fish by electrifying the oasis?”
“That would have killed all the fish!” you protest. “There were targeted bursts of lightning magic, sent through the line. Made reeling them in a lot easier, but we still hooked them fair and square.”
Dorian, at this point, has started laughing into his hands.
“Come to think of it, let’s not tell Blackwall,” you say, glancing over at how the two men are sitting nearly shoulder-to-shoulder, chatting amicably while they clean fish. “Or Sera. I don’t suppose you intend to help?”
“Absolutely not,” Dorian replies with no hesitation. “Not just for the sake of my clothes and the smell of my hands, but also because I have no idea how to clean a fish. I’m sure you knew that.”
“Does it look like I know what I’m doing?” you ask, gesturing to the large number of scales littering both your person and the ground around you. You’ve done this before, and you’re watching the skilled way Alas’len is handling his fish, but you’re hardly a fishmonger.
“You know where to cut them!”
“The bottom! You cut them along the bottom, Dorian, this isn’t surgery.”
“Oh, give it up,” calls Blackwall from across the fire, having apparently noticed your attempt at accosting Dorian with fish. “Like his majesty would ever dirty his hands.”
“You know, Blackwall, I was certain you disliked me because I was a mage, or of a certain persuasion, but you seem quite chummy with our new friend there, and I’m fairly sure he’s both,” Dorian replies flippantly.
“Alas’len is charmingly rustic, Dorian,” you point out. “He has that outdoorsy charisma.”
“Of course. Nothing more attractive than a man who smells like fish.”
“We can’t all have perfumed arsecheeks,” Blackwall says, rolling his eyes.
“Does it need to be a competition? Surely we can both agree to be extremely attractive in peace.” Alas’len wonders.
“That’s just how they are,” you say with a sigh. “You weren’t here for the ‘who is the most manly’ discussion.”
“You started that discussion,” Dorian reminds you ‘helpfully.’
“Surely he won?” Alas’len asks, gesturing with a thumb towards Blackwall.
“Yes, but there was a lot of debate about second place.”
“Who won?”
“Solas,” you reply.
“You were the only one who thought that!” Dorian reminds you again, just as helpfully.
“It’s not my fault I’m right.”
“Is it bad that I’m kind of happy about getting first place?” Blackwall muses.
“It was really no competition,” you inform him. “You’re a lumberjack who fights terrifying monsters professionally. Also, the beard.”
“The beard goes a long way,” Dorian agrees with a sigh.
“Does my knowledge of fish help me in the rankings?” Alas’len wonders.
“How are you so good at cleaning fish?” Blackwall wonders. “You said you live out here in the desert?”
“Indeed I do. I also know a great deal about camels, and how to find one’s way using nothing but the stars, and I am a fiend with thread and needle. When one’s way of life quite literally rotates around oases, fishing becomes a rather important skill; one of many.”
You taught him how to do this; how to take a skill and make it part of your new identity naturally. How to shape new ones around pieces of you that already existed. Hence Emma the linguist. Hence Ashkaari Bisette the Rivaini dancer. Hence Alas’len the desert nomad. Just a little bit of fiction plastered over a core of truth, and voila, you had a whole, believable person.
In actuality, Alas’len had learned the fish trade in Val Royeaux. He’d done everything from catching to cleaning and preparing to selling. He’d actually had quite a popular stall there for some time, and it let him hear all sorts of interesting things. That’s how it started, really. Hearing interesting things. You were the one who let it get too far. But what were you supposed to do? Banal’ras had never been in the business of telling people no, and you were no different.
“That poor fish doesn’t deserve what you’re doing to it,” Alas’len says with a sigh, snapping you out of your anxious nostalgia. You glance down at the fish you’re massacring. “Just… let me.”
“Gladly,” you acquiesce, sliding the fish towards him. “My hands are more suited to calligraphy than fishmongering, I think.”
“Didn’t you say you were a linguist? Fishmongering is selling them.”
“While we’re discussing things we’re good at, did you know she once put a dagger in a bandit’s eye from across a battlefield?” Solas muses out loud.
“Pertinent information, thank you,” Alas’len replies.
“That was luck,” you protest.
“Was it also luck with the demon?” Blackwell asks.
“No, that was pure, blackout panic. I don’t even remember what happened, I just woke up in a pile of goo.”
“And this time, alcohol wasn’t even involved,” Dorian adds.
You retort with all your linguistic wit, by flinging a fish intestine leftover from your butchery at him. Regrettably, he dodges.
“If you’d like to wash the shame off your hands, Miss Emma,” Alas’len tells you, “I believe Blackwall and I can handle the fish. Surely there are more pressing uses of your time than getting increasingly covered in scales and blood.”
“Surprisingly, yes,” you say with a sigh. “Somehow, I never seem to run out of pressing uses of my time.”
You normally would never do this. You’re quite private with your work, what with the need for intense focus. Your penmanship really can’t slip. But that’s when you’re not working to complete a tome while traveling across a desert. You’ve already accepted that the final few chapters of this tome won’t be your best work. Since you’re sacrificing quality, you’ve taken the route instead of making them very interesting. You normally focus on complex and beautiful symmetrical patterns, but without the necessary tools to really make doing so feasible, you’re instead making your initial capitals… fun, for lack of a better word. You can’t say you drew a lot of dragons before this manuscript, but by the end of it you’re going to be idly doodling them on every scratch piece of paper.
Not having quiet while working also isn’t totally impossible to work with. You might prefer it, and even require it when you’re doing translation work—people throwing random words into the mix really tends to throw you off—but the background chatter around the campfire isn’t really bothering you much at the moment. No one is directing any of it at you, seeming content to let you work without bothering you or looming over your shoulder.
Well. Okay. Most everyone. Just as you’ve really hit a stride with lettering, the only person bold enough to be a pester—that’s not even remotely true; you miss when that was true—comes over to peer over your shoulder. Not even peer. Loom over your shoulder, as you’re sprawled out in the sand on a blanket and he’s fully standing.
“Cole,” you say, after a very awkward minute and a half. “Sit.”
He, of course, sits down exactly where he was, basically right next to you.
“No, not in my peripheral. I’m going to bump you with my arms. And now all I can see is your hat,” you sigh. “Just sit behind me.”
“I can’t see from there,” he points out.
“If you want to watch, find a place to sit where you can see and I can’t see you,” you order.
He seems to mull this over for a moment, and then you feel him settle in on top of you. You pause again in your writing. “Cole.”
“You said—”
“I’m aware of what I said.”
“Should I move?”
You sigh again. “It’s fine. I think you might weigh less than Assaaranda did.”
“I see the two of you are very close,” Alas’len comments; whatever conversation he was having with Blackwall and the Inquisitor having been completely obliterated by the sight of Cole sitting down on your ass like a particularly determined house cat. “Or perhaps you’re just quite free with your affections? I was beginning to think I was winning you over, but alas…”
“That’s just Cole,” Blackwall interjects ‘helpfully.’ “He’s a spirit; he doesn’t quite understand some things.”
“He can hear you,” you grumble, not looking up. You’re still trying to finish your line of text.
“And just Emma as well,” Blackwall continues, making you wonder how bad human ears are. “She’s very… she’s not free with her affections like you’re thinking, I mean, I thought so too for a bit, but it’s, just… a. Cultural thing?” he sort of trails off at the end, clearly struggling in his attempts to find a way to explain to Alas’len that you’re not actually a slut, you just act like one. “She’s Orlesian,” he adds, hopelessly.
“I can hear you,” you say, but you can’t keep the laughter out of your voice. He’s just so earnest about it. ‘She’s Orlesian.’ Maker help him.
“It looks a certain way,” Blackwall protests, but he gets cut off by a disgruntled noise from the Seeker, who appears to have just noticed the position you and Cole are in.
“The Orlesians much be an affectionate bunch,” Alas’len muses.
“This is Orlais,” you point out.
“Only on paper.”
This is a fair point.
“The letters are so pretty,” marvels Cole from somewhere over your shoulders.
“Quiet you. And you lot, focus on your damn fish. I don’t want to deal with whatever happens if you don’t get them salted and drying quickly. If we were anywhere but the desert I’d be worried about bears.”
“Surely we’d be safe from bears with Blackwall here. He would merely add their furry might to his own,” Alas’len suggests.
“Nowhere is safe from bears,” you reply, because you’ve spent a lot of time traveling in Ferelden.
“Here, maybe?” Alas’len suggests.
“I’m sure you have your own version of desert bears.”
Alas’len considers this for a moment.
“We do have hyenas,” he says finally.
“You have what. Fuck me. Fuck my life. Why do you have hyenas.”
“Something has to eat the gurns, I suppose.”
“I want to go home.”
“You could,” Alas’len suggests, and it’s your turn to fall silent.
Eventually, they do finish the last of the fish and get them into the weird thrown-together smoking contraption that apparently everyone but you is familiar with. You get the concept. Smoking meats, it’s not that hard to conceptualize. How they managed to build a way to do that at a desert campfire is beyond you, however, despite having watched them do it. You really are learning the most peculiarly useful things on this trip.
“Finally,” Alas’len says, stretching with a groan. Blackwall is already heading off to his tent, yawning heavily. “This will be a rest well-earned.” He eyes you, laying exactly where you’ve been the whole time, although sans a Cole, who is on watch duty at the moment. “You worked just as hard for the fish,” he continues, “Perhaps it could be well-earned for you as well?”
You catch the suggestion, and you suspect anyone who overheard would have as well—well, okay, not the Inquisitor. Or Blackwall.
It’s tempting. He has his own tent. You’re sure the Seeker is on top of him, with him being an unfamiliar mage and all, so it’s not like you could actually risk a nap there, but still. The familiarity of it calls to you like a siren, the unspoken promise of a night spent curled up with a body that already fits with yours. Warm comfort like Cole on your back or legs tangled between Sera’s, but without the burden of expectation that seems to be weighing you down more and more with every passing year.
In the end, though, you’re too skittish. Burn-shy, they called in Rivain, the way some mages would get after a spell gone wrong. It’s too soon, you justify to yourself. After all, Sera thinks you have… sexual issues, trauma or whatever she’s telling herself to justify your peculiarities. And Blackwall just got done explaining how you’re not a whore, actually, you just give off distinct whoreish energy. It’s just excuses, though. You’re not even fooling yourself. The crashing of your past with your present has you off-balance, and it’s made your familiar comfort feel less familiar and less comforting. Things are changing. You changed them. As always, if things are ruined, you really have no one to blame but yourself.
“I’ll stay up, I think,” you say, after both too long and not long enough. “It’s comfortable here by the fire, and there’s enough light to work. It wouldn’t hurt for someone to keep an eye on the fish, either. I don’t have a lot of faith in that contraption you threw together.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” Alas’len agrees, to your mild surprise. “I didn’t have all the materials I would have liked to. It should be fine, but it wouldn’t be a poor idea to keep a spare eye on it. Perhaps tonight I shall keep you company, rather than the other way around.”
You have no reason to object to that, and also, you don’t want to. You’re tired of objecting when you’re already missing the pressure of Cole peering over your shoulder.
That being said, not everyone is as good as you at pulling all nighters, and Alas’len has always been a sleepy boy. You don’t even think he lasts thirty minutes before he’s fallen asleep, using your legs first as a pillow for his head and then, as the night and your tome progress onwards, as something to generally curl up with. It’s hardly the first time you’ve played the roll of stuffed animal, and not just for him. You’re not the only one who craves the creature comforts of physical contact at times.
You catch some looks, but you are, shockingly, left largely alone. The Seeker’s gaze lingers when she turns in for the night, but perhaps the last time you bit off her head was enough for her to learn not to pester you about your insomnia. The most anyone bothers you is Dorian, when he gets up for his role as last watch, looking tired but irritatingly put together for three hours before dawn.
“Still up?” he asks, voice soft to avoid bothering the others. You simply nod, and catch a bit of concern on his face, but he doesn’t press. If he’s bothered by Alas’len using you like a body pillow, he doesn’t comment on it.
After a while, even your eyes are too tired to continue concentrating on such small letters, no matter how much you’d like to continue. You ‘rest your eyes’—a tale as old as time—curling up in the cool pre-dawn hours and relaxing by the fire, all tangled up with your friend. When your eyes are closed, you can pretend. Pretend to sleep, pretend it’s not dangerous, pretend it’s not complicated.
It’s a kind of rest.
The sun is barely peeking over the horizon, a sliver of burning light that drowns out the shadow of Satina as soon as it appears, when you’re finally disturbed from your private reprieve. Your ears twitch at the sound of bare feet on sand, a distinctly different noise to that of boots, and enough to catch your attention. You crack an eye open, more instinct at the introduction of a new sound into the white noise than anything else, and are a bit surprised to see that it’s Solas making his way out of his tent. It’s so early. While he’s often up before it’s time to leave, it’s normally just to stretch. He skips breakfast more than he doesn’t, and you’ve always assumed it was to grab an extra twenty winks. You’re not sure he’s ever been up before Blackwall, who’s normally up with the crack of dawn to start breakfast.
His eye catches yours, perhaps because you moved slightly, or perhaps he just felt your gaze. It seems foolish to simply roll back over if people are getting up, so you take that as as good a sign as any and stretch slightly. Although you are limited by Alas’len, who has wound up halfway on top of you.
“You’re up early,” you say, to break the awkwardness of early morning eye contact more than anything. Your voice is thick with what could be mistaken for sleep. You reach to rub the sand out of your eyes but given how you’re in the desert, it mostly just serves to make it worse and more literal.
“I didn’t have watch last night,” Solas explains. His voice is rougher even than yours was, the grumbling sound of the first words spoken after waking. The sound makes something inside of you purr in a way you’d prefer to ignore. You’re just feeling nostalgic, that’s all, and early mornings with company are one of the things that are firmly past tense for you. “I slept solidly and early.”
“Lucky bastard,” you grumble, without really thinking it through. Fortunately, he laughs. Alas’len begins to stir against your legs. You’re surprised Solas has yet to comment on your status as a pillow. It’s not as if you curled up with him when the two of you shared a hotel room.
“You have your reasons for saying no,” Solas says, his smile a little sad, “But my offer to assist with your sleep is always open.”
You respond with a very tired glare, and he puts his hands up in a quick surrender.
“Get a room,” Alas’len grumbles against your side.
“That’s certainly some advice coming from the ones curled up together by the fire.”
“How about the two of you get a room and leave me alone?” You stretch more, pushing Alas’len half off of you. He makes a grumbly, complaining noise, before opening his eyes and sitting up to stretch as well.
“Sunrise comes too early, even this late in the season,” he complains. “At least the fish survived the night after all. And look at that, no bears.”
“Or hyenas,” you agree. “What luck.” Your back pops as you stretch, and you wince. Sand isn’t an uncomfortable bed, but it’s never good when you fall asleep on your stomach. Alas’len flops back down bonelessly on top of you. You try to shove him off, but he’s gone limp like a spoiled cat.
“Since you’re both awake… and sore, by the looks of it… perhaps you’d both like to join me for some morning stretches?” Solas asks.
“uM,” you manage to get out, but he’s continuing.
“I suspect you’ll regret it if you skip. You tend to.”
“That’s technically correct, but—”
“I’m game,” Alas’len volunteers, because obviously he does, there was no chance he wouldn’t say yes. “I’m always up for testing flexibility… mine or others.”
You feel like this is going to be a long morning.
It is.
It was always going to be. You’ve got Solas (hot, extremely curious, which is a nice way of saying nosy, and more than a little oblivious to certain things) and Alas’len (hot, regrettably, as easy to see through as a brick wall, and an absolutely indefatigable flirt). It’s a nightmare sandwich, and you are the miserable cheese. To make things worse, you’re easily the least flexible person here, with the worst upper body strength. It’s awful. You’re not even that weak! You’ve spent the last few weeks swinging around a sword bigger than one of your arms! You recreationally pull yourself up buildings! And yet.
It makes sense for Alas’len. He’s always been quite focused on maintaining his mind and body; he’s had mostly physically demanding jobs; his entire fighting style rotates around being fast, strong, and astonishingly flexible.
Solas, however, is older than you and spends most of his time reading and sleeping, so you really don’t see how he justifies any of this.
And if that weren’t enough, the two of them have spent the entire time needling each other in wildly different ways, both equally stressful. When Solas isn’t trying to get information about Alas’len, he’s trying to get information about you, or your relationship. He’d probably be having better luck with it if he was dealing with literally any two other people on the planet. It’s one thing to try to pull one over on two of Val Royeaux’s best bards—in your opinion anyway—but on top of that, you and Alas’len have been in perfect sync for so long that even Leliana would have struggled to make the two of you slip.
Obviously. Or she would have figured something out by now. You might be bad at handstands, but you do have some talents.
Alas’len, for his part, is either flirting or having a dick measuring contest over who can hold the most impressive poses. Potentially both. It’s probably both. Most things he does can double as flirting in a pinch; it’s very annoying.
In the end, you wind up sabotaging both of them on purpose, both out of spite and out of sheer exhaustion with the both of them. They’re both treating it like a game, and it’s beginning to genuinely grate on you. There are stakes in this situation. High stakes, although you have to admit that neither of them is in possession of all the pieces of the puzzle you are, to know exactly how fucking high they’ve gotten. To avoid strangling either of them, you instead spend the early morning “accidentally” knocking them both over as much as possible. You’re not fooling either of them any more than they’re fooling each other, but at least you get to be slightly violent. You’re getting to the point where you might start breaking ankles when Solas finally calls it, ostensibly because breakfast is ready.
Cheerful as ever, Alas’len swaggers right over to where the others are gathering near the fire to see what Blackwall has cooked up; you never would have pegged that man for such a cook before this trip. You and Solas both hang back, arguably for different reasons. He rarely eats much breakfast, and while your appetite has gone from ‘can’t be bothered’ to ‘if you don’t move your hand fast enough I’ll eat it too’ over the course of the trip, you can’t say you have much of a stomach for it right at the moment. Your relaxation from the night before is gone as if it had never been there. You’re stressed and irritable and remembering how many dire positions you’re in and with how many people. You feel like you’re balancing on a tight rope while juggling flaming knives, and these two fucking clowns have started to throw pies.
You should probably take a few deep breaths or something, before you punch someone. Probably the Seeker. She’s been a very prominent target for your anger lately.
“Such a nice young man,” Solas observes, and you snort a bit too loud. What a trite line, and not even close to true. “He reminds me of someone.” Your amusement, limited as it was, pulls up short. “Someone I used to know, or someone I met once, a long time ago.” He hums to himself, obvious as anything. You don’t think he’s even trying not to be obvious. “I can’t quite put my finger on it.”
“Perhaps,” you suggest, “he simply has one of those faces.” Your tone is mild and bored, and anyone who knew you—Alas’len, for example, distracted over by the fire putting his charms on Dorian again—would immediately sense the danger in the contrast between it and the tightness in your muscles. A warning, but unfortunately, one Solas isn’t talented enough to pick up on.
He snaps, as if remembering something, and you let out a short huff of breath. If only he was better at pretending. “I remember now. That fellow we met in Val Royeaux. What was his name again? Ba—”
You spin on your heel in the sand, hooking your other foot behind Solas’s and sweeping them out from under him. It’s a move you must have practiced a thousand times with Iron Bull, and Solas is much less sturdy. At the same time, you grip him, one hand wrapping around the rope of his necklace and the other clapping over his mouth. Not cutely, nor gently. With the force of a slap. With the pressure of someone who needs to prevent a dying scream.
Solas seems, if anything, too startled to stop you. He goes down onto the sand with you on top of him, legs still tangled in his, pinning them despite their comparative length. You hadn’t been that close to the others, but a tent now blocks you entirely from view. You lean forward over him, eyes boring into his stormy ocean blues.
“Solas,” you murmur, his name leaving your mouth slowly, as if you’re considering it. “I know we both enjoy these games we play.” It’s the first time you’ve admitted as much out loud, and it feels a little sacrilegious to call attention to it. “But if you try to play them with Alas’len’s life, we will both find out exactly where curiosity ends.” You remove your hand from his mouth, careful not to trace down his jaw the way you want to. “Do we understand each other?”
Solas stares up at you, eyes glittering. Perhaps he’s considering you in a new light. Perhaps he’s remembering who you were in Val Royeaux. Maybe he’s remembering the bandits, or the demons, or Underhill. You’d thought he was not naive enough to share any of the Seeker’s opinions about you, but who knows what goes on in that incomprehensible mind of his sometimes.
“I suppose I should have suspected,” he says, and your heart clenches. “I’ve seen you around cubs before, and never even your own.”
You breathe out through your nose, constrained enough—barely—not to read as relief.
“Now you get it,” you say, leaning back onto your legs and untangling your hand from his necklace. The teeth of the jawbone have left indentations in your palm. You wipe your other palm on your pants, as if to remove the sensation of his lips against them. “So do me a favor, Solas, and for once in your life… Don’t push.”
You shove yourself up off of him, hesitating only briefly to try and read his expression—indecipherable—as he’s sprawled out on the sand, before spinning to storm over to the fire to see what’s left of breakfast.