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Hot-blooded and cocky
Autumn comes early to Kinloch Hold that year. The spires rising over the city pierce through dewy, clarified mists that linger half the morning; the air smells crisp, like the fresh pages of a new journal. The students track dead leaves through the lecture theatre, carrying thermoses of hot tea with them into the tiered benches.
The first lecture in the advanced math course is unutterably tedious, so Solas takes a Varric Tethras novel out of his bag and opens it under the desk, reading complacently while the professor works through a proof on the board.
Then he glances up; raises his hand. The professor looks over at him. 'Yes, in the back?'
'There's a mistake in the third line,' Solas says crisply. 'The indices should be the other way round.'
The professor looks at the board, a little line between her eyes, and then nods. 'Indeed.'
She corrects the mistake and carries on. The young elven man sitting next to Solas raises his eyebrows. Beneath them his eyes are violet, the tips of his lashes tinged gold in the light pouring through the barred windows at the top of the theatre. He has branching black vallaslin, spreading right to the roots of his dark hair. 'How did you do that?' he says. 'You weren't even paying attention.'
Solas sniffs. 'Well,' he says. 'It's trivial.'
'Oh, I see!' the other elf says. 'You're an asshole!' But he doesn't sound annoyed at all. In fact he seems positively entertained as he offers his hand and whispers, 'I'm Felassan.'
'Solas,' Solas says, shaking Felassan's hand and then looking back down at his book.
After the lecture he stuffs the novel into his satchel and takes the steps down to the bottom of the theatre two at a time, but Felassan quickens his pace to catch up. 'Hey,' he says as they step into the red-golden day, a little short of breath. He's wearing a black T-shirt and black jeans over scuffed doc martens, his hair bound up into a loose knot behind his neck. 'You seem like you know what you're doing. Want to come do the homework with me?'
Solas sighs, winding his forest-green scarf around his neck. 'Felassan, was it? I apologize, but the problem sheet looks very easy and I intend to get it done quickly. You will only slow me down.'
Felassan does not seem offended. On the contrary, he looks almost gleeful. 'Oh all right, if that's how you see it!' he says. 'We can have a race!'
Solas blinks at him. 'You want to race with linear algebra?'
'Why not? It's trivial, you said so yourself.' Felassan eyes him narrowly. 'Or maybe you're worried I'll be quicker than you.'
Solas shakes his head. 'You will not,' he says confidently.
Felassan grins. 'Come on then, prove it,' he says, and Solas sighs deeply but for some reason he finds himself following Felassan down the street, weathered stone arches rising on either side of them, leaves crackling beneath their feet. A man goes by on a bicycle wearing full academic dress, his robe billowing like a lick of black flame behind him
They go into the library - a cathedral of sunlit mahogany and whispering paper, smelling inexplicably of bergamot. Felassan strides authoritatively through the stacks, some more than twice his height. He clears a pile of books off a desk set into a bay window, then removes his watch to set the stopwatch, and looks up at Solas. 'Ready? Ok, let's go.'
It is quite ridiculous, of course, but nonetheless Solas has no intention of losing, so he picks up his pencil and begins scribbling matrices in his little black notebook. When he glances across the desk, Felassan is chewing absently at the end of his pencil, his T-shirt riding up his bicep where the sun falls along it, and Solas looks quickly away.
He finishes first, of course; he pushes his notebook across the table and then sits back and folds his arms smugly. Felassan rolls his eyes, but continues writing. Some minutes later he finally lays down his pencil and then picks up Solas' notebook to examine the answers.
'Well, you were faster,' he concedes. 'But number three is wrong.'
'It is not!' Solas says indignantly.
'Yeah it is,' Felassan says. 'It should have a negative sign.'
Solas seizes the notebook and glares down at the offending answer. Unfortunately, Felassan is right. He scowls. 'Well,' he says, all wounded pride. 'I was still quicker.'
'We can call it a draw,' Felassan says, and he reaches up to take his hairtie out, so his sleek black hair falls over his shoulders, picking up notes of soft pink from the sunset glow filtering through the window. 'Anyway, we did the homework. That means it's time for the pub.'
Solas takes too long to respond, because he does not immediately process this as an invitation. 'Ah,' he says finally, and then, 'I do not drink.'
Felassan shrugs. 'No problem. You can watch me drink.'
And yet, somehow, when they arrive at the pub Solas ends up with a beer in front of him. The beer is possibly the most horrible thing he's ever tasted, but he likes the way it makes him feel - light and effervescent, like he's floating out of his skin, leaving his body behind. He's always wanted to find a way to do that.
The pub is too crowded. It smells of wet leather and the hubbub of conversation reflects sharply off the winking green bottles stacked behind the bar, so Solas can barely hear what Felassan is saying. But he can see that Felassan is laughing and so he laughs too, and Felassan's eyes crinkle, such a sweet lilac. 'You're fun,' he says, more loudly. 'I like you.'
In all Solas' life no one has ever called him fun. He blinks, owlish and befuddled, at Felassan. Felassan smiles back at him and he seems so happy just to be here with Solas and Solas simply can't understand why.
He looks down, tracing a finger along a ridge in the table. Felassan is so bright and joyous and so patently in love with the world, and meanwhile Solas has already done too much, lost too much, hurt too many people. He has nothing to offer Felassan. He could only drag him down, away from this radiant youth, out of the light.
Bodies
Through that first winter Solas and Felassan spend many long afternoons competing over problem sheets, followed by evenings huddled next to the fireplace in the pub, listening to the cantankerous crackle of the burning logs and slowly developing a taste for beer. Solas is secretly worried that these sessions might come to an end when the advanced math course finishes, but they find other excuses.
In early spring, after the last frost, the university organises a picnic. Solas protests that he has too much work to do, but Felassan rolls his eyes and drags him along anyway. It's still chilly and the sky is its usual morose Ferelden grey, but everyone is behaving as if it's the middle of summer - gaggles of students playing cricket by the river or passing tubs of sticky flapjacks between them, clutching dented plastic cups of Pimms adorned with mint and fat chunks of strawberry.
The drink makes Solas feel soft, fuzzy-headed, and when Felassan comes over to bring him another cup he beams unsteadily. 'Thank you,' he says, and then for some reason he feels an urgent need to say something else, so he touches Felassan's hand and says, sincere and halting, 'Fel, I - I just wanted to - you're the best person I know.'
Felassan looks up at him, wide-eyed, running a hand through the ripple of his dark hair. 'Oh!' he says. 'Thank you. I mean - I'm sorry, I don't think I feel the same way. But thanks.'
Solas stares at him, and a flush of hot shame rises through his body, his skin prickling in the cool mist coming off the grass. He had not even realised when he spoke that he was asking Felassan for something, but all of a sudden he understands that he was, and it's embarrassing, ludicrous, he has no right at all to ask for that.
The shame presses him down, crushes his ribs into his chest. 'I - ' he says, helpless.
Felassan's face softens, and he throws an arm around Solas' shoulder. 'I'm sorry,' he says, and then, 'Hey, look. Come play frisbee.'
Left to his own devices Solas would have elected to vanish and render himself unconscious for several millenia, but Felassan leads him firmly across the lawn and thrusts the frisbee into his hands. 'Come on,' he says. 'Show me how it's done.'
He's so kind and it just causes Solas to feel even softer and warmer towards him, which makes the whole thing worse. He throws the frisbee but he's awkward, angular and clumsy, his feet slipping and sliding over the wet grass. His body has never felt more alien to him and the frisbee doesn't go where he expects, he can't catch it, everything feels glassy and reflected and wrong.
That night in his poky little room in college he paces back and forth beside the open window, letting the chill in until the air is so cold it hurts him. His mind unspooling the months that he and Felassan have spent together - the linear algebra, the pub, the excuses. Seeing, now, what he's wanted all along.
Does he want Felassan, he wonders, or does he merely want to be whole? It doesn't matter. He can't have either.
But to Solas' relief nothing changes after that day; they simply go back to the rhythm of doing homework together, griping about lecturers, bickering about philosophy in the pub, where the long spring evenings have now rendered the fire unnecessary. Blossoms emerge across Kinloch Hold, carpeting the cobblestones in white, and students start taking boats out on the lake, laughter reflecting off the water all through the long glistening twilights.
And then, a few weeks later, Felassan suggests that they should go for a walk together. He's never proposed such a thing before, and Solas doesn't know quite what to make of it, but of course he agrees. So they walk around Kinloch's botanical garden, which is arranged in neatly cropped squares - prophet's laurel twining along a trellis, bushy felandaris, the roof of a greenhouse shimmering mint-green beyond a line of oak trees. There are too many scents in the air to be individually distinguished; floral and then pine and then underneath it all a sodden, heavy peat.
But the garden isn't very big, and they come to the end of the path before the awkwardness of the new activity has quite worn off. Felassan looks at his watch. 'Let's go around again.'
'I have to finish my metaphysics essay,' Solas protests.
'Yeah,' Felassan rubs a hand along the back of his neck. 'I know, just - come on, a little longer.'
Solas yields, shaking his head tolerantly, and they set off once more. Felassan is talking too fast, pausing, glancing at Solas and then walking on. Solas doesn't understand what is going on with him, but he follows willingly nonetheless.
This time, when they reach the end of the path, Felassan says, 'I know, let's walk around the lake!'
'Fel, I truly have to finish the essay.'
'You don't need the whole afternoon, surely. Or are you behind in the class?'
Solas blinks at him, ruffled and indignant. 'I have never been behind in any class!'
'Well then,' Felassan says firmly. 'Come on.'
Lake Calenhad is a tranquil, mirror-bright shimmer, stretching out toward the smudged mists on the horizon. The grass around it is absurdly green and wet, the path shaded by trembling birches stippled silver in the cool half-light. Halfway around Felassan comes to a halt and gestures at a place beneath a willow tree, shaded by leafy fronds and a little out of sight of the path. 'Let's sit down,' he says.
When Solas sits beside him he feels the dew seeping through his jeans, so the day seems to flicker strangely between too sunny and too cold. The smell of moss and wet slate rises from the water, and buttercups tremble as the breeze passes over them. Felassan clears his throat. 'What you said,' he says, still too quickly. 'I - well. It's always been girls before. I haven't, I mean, I didn't - '
'Fel?' Solas says uncertainly.
'I hadn't thought about you that way,' Felassan says, all in a rush. 'But I - um. Now I have. Been thinking, I mean.'
Solas stares at him. At first he's just completely lost, and then the realization hits him, but he can't quite believe it.
'Oh?' he says cautiously.
Felassan gazes back at him, his eyes a warm, glorious violet, his cheekbones gilded with tentative sunshine. 'I changed my mind,' he says, and then he leans in, and their mouths meet.
And Solas gasps against Felassan's lips, because all of a sudden he remembers that he doesn't know how to kiss. Often enough he feels weary, scarred, ancient, but there's so much that he still doesn't know - all of the time he should have been learning he spent instead at war with himself, with his body, with the world. He has no idea what to do.
But Felassan knows. Felassan guides him gently, his hand on the back of Solas' neck, his tongue running along Solas' lips. When Solas opens his mouth their teeth clash a little, but Felassan just laughs into the kiss and adjusts, his fingers burying themselves in Solas' hair. He tastes like those stupid butterscotch candies he's always eating and that fills Solas with a tremor of aching affection because it's so specific, so very Felassan, and he puts his tongue out and tries to lick the sugar from Felassan's mouth.
When they break apart, Felassan tips his head to one side, smiles fondly. 'Was that your first - '
Solas looks down, heat rising up his neck. Felassan grins. 'Yeah, I could tell.'
He scowls. 'Shut up.'
'Hey,' Felassan says, and he raises his hand to Solas' face again, his fingers finding the curve of Solas' jaw. 'It's ok. We can practice.'
Solas looks at him, uncertain, and then somehow - Solas isn't quite sure how it happens - he's lying in the grass and Felassan is propping himself over him, leaning in, and soon enough they are pressed together, kissing clumsily, sweetly, surrounded by tumbles of birdsong and the sounds of moving water. Solas is conscious of Felassan's chest flush against his, a warm, comforting weight, and he feels brilliantly alive and present, as if he belongs in his skin at last, as if his body finally makes sense to him.
The long grass waves around them, the sun dips low in the sky. Felassan's mouth on his, Felassan's hands in his hair, Felassan, Felassan, Felassan -
Solas forgets all about the essay.
Vallaslin
When the spring vacation arrives Solas and Felassan take a train to Antiva together, carrying backpacks, staying in questionable hostels where they make the acquaintance of fellow travelers from all over Thedas. Felassan, of course, charms everyone he meets; Solas is simply happy to be along for the ride. If anyone asks they refer to themselves as friends, but Solas has a strong suspicion that the way they look at one another makes this story less than convincing.
In Treviso they sit at the edge of the canal, eating fried zucchini blossoms and drinking shockingly lurid orange beverages. The day is sweltering but they're under the shade of a laurel tree, and Felassan looks so pretty in the shifting, dappled light, his lips soft, his shoulders broad in his sleeveless T-shirt. Solas can't help it; he reaches out and with a finger he traces the line of Felassan's vallaslin across his cheek, sliding along the faint sheen of sweat there.
'Well that's not fair,' Felassan says, and then, as if inspired, he fishes a piece of ice out of his campari soda and leans in to run it across Solas' forehead.
'Excuse me!' Solas expostulates. The ice melts upon contact with his skin, water dripping down into his eyes. 'What was that for?'
'I'm giving you one to match,' Felassan says, and he touches the ice to Solas' face again, tracing out the spreading branches of his own vallaslin in shining, wet lines.
The ice is very cold but the day is so hot that it feels pleasant, shivery, a little frisson passing down Solas' spine. Despite himself he leans closer to Felassan, his lips parting. Water runs down his cheeks, down his neck, so his white T-shirt goes translucent and sticks to his chest. The vallaslin melts off his face, drips away from him, and for that moment, in the bright Antivan sun, Solas feels that he's been liberated; as if he could become someone else, as if he could be free.
Felassan looks at Solas for a long moment - water trickling down his throat, his shirt clinging to his shoulders - and then suddenly he says, 'Let's go back to the hostel.'
Solas blinks at him. 'Are you tired?' he asks, brow furrowed, but Felassan just laughs and takes his hand.
The dormitory is deserted - bunk-beds crammed too close together, luggage strewn on the floor, clothing hanging on the radiator. Felassan draws Solas down onto one of the beds; whispers in his ear what he wants to do.
Solas feels the blush rising to the tips of his ears. 'Someone could come in.'
'It's the middle of the day. They won't.'
Solas hesitates, their cheeks pressed together. Felassan's hands splay across his chest, tracing the places where the T-shirt is still wet. 'Look at that,' he says, nodding toward the window, through which they can see tall straight cypress trees and an arched stone bridge hovering over the river's misty purple. 'It's the most romantic place we'll ever be.' He looks sideways at Solas. 'You're nervous?'
Solas bristles. 'Don't be silly. Of course I'm not nervous.' He is. But he can see that Felassan is nervous too, and somehow that makes everything all right, so he lets Felassan peel the wet shirt from his body, reaches to take Felassan's shirt in return.
It's awkward at first, but there's warmth, there's laughter. Felassan keeps kissing him, little butterfly kisses pressed to his cheek and his temple; Felassan's voice in his ear murmuring only if you want to, it's all right, whatever you want, but Solas wants it all, he wants everything, he didn't know he was capable of wanting so much.
And then - it's nice, it's nice, it's nice. Solas didn't know it would be so nice. Afterwards he feels light and unbound, in disarray, lying cocooned under the covers with Felassan, both of them overflowing with bashful smiles. It seems so warm and safe. And so when Felassan passes a hand through his hair and whispers softly to him, somehow he finds all his secrets spilling out of him into the gentle twilight that has come over the room.
When he describes what happened to him, Felassan cries. Solas doesn't want Felassan to cry, not ever, but all the same it cracks something open within him. No one has ever looked at him like that before.
'You should not think - it is my fault,' he says, too quiet, mumbling.
'No it's not, Solas,' Felassan says, low and passionate. 'You can't think like that.'
No one's ever told Solas that before, either. Everyone always said it was his fault.
He huddles into the curve of Felassan's body and whispers an even deeper secret: it's still there, it always comes back, he'll never get away.
That makes Felassan cry more, but he cradles Solas' head into his chest, hands buried deep in his hair. 'I can help you,' he whispers. 'You'll be ok. I promise.'
He can't promise that. No one can promise that. But Solas thinks - hopeful, at least for that long, sweet dusk in Felassan's arms - that perhaps he doesn't have to do this alone.
Yearning
Sitting at the desk beneath the emerald glass dome at the top of the library, Solas takes out his phone and reads the message from Felassan, down to the last line on the screen: I hope it's going well. I love
His heart skips a beat.
He scrolls to the next line: getting your emails.
Ah. Of course. He glances behind him, his shoulders hunched, and he feels shame crackling aross his skin - as if someone might have read his thoughts, as if they might even now be laughing at him for his presumption.
But no one's looking. No one's even here. The library is empty; it's the summer. He's stayed on in Kinloch Hold to help a professor with her research, but everyone else has gone home.
He reads the rest of the message, and puts the phone down, so it is almost swallowed up by the emerald light pouring over him. He misses Felassan more than he's ever missed anything in his life. They've been apart for nearly two months - Felassan is home with his family, and his parents don't like Solas. He's too formal, too reserved, always talking either too little or too much. Stuck-up, he heard Felassan's mother say the last time they visited. He thinks he's better than us, his father agreed, and Solas wanted to tell them that this was completely wrong, that it hurt him, but he couldn't think of any way to make them understand.
The truth was that he simply didn't know how to be in a place like that, in the midst of a real family. Their easy warmth felt alien to him. He doesn't have a family of his own any more; he broke it himself, tore his family apart with his own pain. No matter how small he tried to become he couldn't hold the jagged edges inside.
He remembers the house in Arlathan, the years that went by with his parents consumed by his struggles, nothing to spare for anyone else. His brothers and sisters saw, and resented him for it. He cannot blame them.
He remembers, at the end, everyone looking at him with accusing eyes: We can't fight you any more. The house had been filled with laughter once - June and Andruil always pulling pranks, Sylaise egging them on, their father throwing his hands up and despairing over ever taming any of them. But the years of anxiety had drained the laughter away, fractured open ruptures beneath the surface. Solas' fault, of course.
We can't watch you do this to yourself, Mythal said, and he searched her face and saw no grief in it - merely a cold, flat resignation. He had pushed her love past breaking point, as she had always threatened that he would.
We're letting you go, she said, then; and that's exactly what they did.
So here he is, marooned for the summer in an empty city with nowhere else to go. He works diligently - days alone in the library, nights alone in his little room in college. The vacation feels interminable. But Felassan writes to him every day, and he writes back. A whole novel's worth of emails have passed between them by the time the summer's through.
Solas doesn't tell Felassan everything. Sometimes it's very hard; sometimes he feels the past too close, its hold on him too strong. But he can't say that. He promised to try.
The days are so long and the town is so still and silent and he's a small solitary figure cycling with his satchel through those sunlit winding streets, beneath the ancient arches. It's too quiet and the sound of his bicycle juddering over the uneven cobblestones isn't enough any more to drown the battles inside his head. He feels something bearing down upon him; he feels afraid.
But Felassan writes to him every day. Felassan sends him photos - lazy selfies beside the pool, smiling eyes, glittering collarbones.
Felassan's last email that summer ends with I love you.
Solas stares at it for at least half an hour to make sure it really says what he thinks it does, and then, with trembling fingers, he types I love you too and presses send. And then wonders, half-overjoyed and half-terrified, what he's done.
Touch-starved
At first Solas thinks he's safe now. He must be safe because Felassan loves him. Felassan loves him and that, surely, will fix everything.
But it doesn't.
For a while, at least, everything is good. Better than he could have imagined. Solas doesn't have to be alone in his little room with its recalcitrant smell of wet carpet any more; he sleeps in Felassan's bed most nights. The bed is a narrow single with a scratchy polyester blanket and they have to sleep practically on top of each other, which Solas pretends to be annoyed by, and when they kiss too vigorously there's a good chance someone will end up falling out of bed altogether.
It's all very silly and impractical and Solas has never felt so happy, so grateful, so unworthy.
He likes the winter that year. It feels close, cosy. The whole city smells of nutmeg, and the hard frosts leave white fractal patterns on the windows. The ice lingers; the cobblestones are still slick and perilous in February when Solas and Felassan go past the bookshop on the green and see that it's been festooned with strings of pink hearts, as well as displays of Randy Dowager novels stacked in cases. Solas feels strange, embarrassed, for reasons he does not entirely understand. 'It's a ridiculous holiday,' he says quickly, to demonstrate that he does not care.
Felassan shrugs. 'Ok,' he says, and if Solas is perhaps a little disappointed that he yields so easily, the feeling is quickly enough suppressed.
But when he wakes bleary-eyed in Felassan's bed and goes into the mildewed bathroom attached to the room, Felassan turns around, clad only in a towel, and beams at him. There are tiny droplets of water caught in his eyelashes and it makes Solas want to kiss them off. 'Good morning sleepyhead,' Felassan says. 'Guess what day it is'
Solas frowns repressively. 'Fel - '
Felassan reaches out and draws a giant wobbly heart in the condensation on the mirror. It's ludicrous, cartoony and childish, like something done with crayons. Solas sighs heavily, to express exactly this sentiment.
Felassan writes 'S + F' inside the heart, messy and gleeful, then puts an arm around Solas' waist, leaning his head against Solas' temple. 'Come on,' he wheedles. 'Be my Valentine.'
'Felassan, honestly -'
Their reflected faces waver through the pearlescent mist: Felassan's goofy grin, Solas' valiant attempts not to smile. 'I got you chocolates,' Felassan says. 'You may hate Valentine's Day, but I know you don't hate chocolates.'
Now the smile is threatening to escape, so he has to turn his face to hide it in Felassan's hair. 'All right,' he concedes.
Felassan gives a whoop of victory, and it is ridiculous, truly, the whole thing is quite ridiculous. But Solas feels so utterly, breathlessly in love, and he makes an incoherent sound in the back of his throat, putting his arms around Felassan, and briefly he allows himself to imagine that they could stay right here, exactly like this; they could stay in this warm little room, untouchable, as if forever.
But he glances at the mirror - Fel's triumphant smile, and the heart melting, steam smearing the curves across the glass, seeping into a wash of spangled droplets. And a little agony whispers sharp and cold within him. Felassan doesn't realise, he can't see the way the light fragments, but Solas knows that the moment is already slipping away.
Like he told Felassan: it always comes back.
He doesn't know why. Just time, perhaps. But the war in his head gets worse, as it always does. The sounds get louder and the silences in between get sharper. One day he's all right, he's normal, he's exactly the way he's supposed to be, and then - brutal, sudden and incomprehensible, he's not.
It comes back. And it's immense, catastrophic. It's so far beyond him that he cannot even imagine how to fight.
Kinloch Hold is different now. The spires loom over him, cruelly pointed; the bells in the evening echo too long, full of pain and portent. In the old stone he sees a papier-mache of griefs laid down by everyone who has ever lived here. This city is a battleground. It always was.
He stops sleeping in Felassan's room. He stops sleeping at all. He doesn't want to sleep because he always has to wake and remember what he is, and then he's pressed down and down and down by waves of blistering shame.
He hasn't been to a lecture in months. It doesn't matter; he writes the essays, he does the problems, he comes top of every class anyway. He feels barely alive, something shivered and hollow consuming him from the inside out, but no one notices that anything is wrong. No one but Felassan.
Sometimes it makes it worse that Felassan loves him. He shouldn't. Solas doesn't deserve it.
One evening when he's in bed, curled into himself, Felassan comes into his room and looks down at him, his jaw trembling. 'You can't keep going like this, Solas,' he says, his eyes too shiny. 'Maybe you should take some time off.'
Solas isn't going to take time off. He'll make it through to the end, no matter what it costs him. What is the point of him if he can't even do that?
He turns over. He's too thin these days. Even the mattress bruises him.
Felassan sits on the side of the bed. He gnaws at his lip. 'I love you,' he says, helpless. 'Please, Solas - '
Solas hasn't let Felassan near him for a long time. He couldn't stand the thought of it; Felassan's hands on his body would make him real and he doesn't want to be real. He wants to open up the air like an origami flower and disappear into it.
But now, suddenly, it's different. He can smell the salt of Felassan's sweat and his skin aches for touch. It's been so long. He moves back, and Felassan gives a shaky sigh of relief; he kicks off his shoes and crawls into the bed, fully dressed, wrapping his arms around Solas.
'You'll get better,' he says, his face pressed hot and damp into the crook of Solas' neck, his shoulders trembling. 'You'll get better. You will. I believe it.'
Solas closes his eyes and feels the heat of Felassan's body seeping into his bones. He feels Felassan's fierce, furious, unyielding love billowing all about him, too big and bright for that shadowed little room. It makes him ache. It makes him want to live.
But Felassan doesn't understand, he's never really understood. The world has always been so simple and kind and straightforward for him; in his eyes, everything is possible.
Sometimes Felassan's faith makes Solas feel strong, but more and more these days it just makes him feel ashamed. Felassan shouldn't believe in him. He doesn't know how to win the war.
Farewell
Somehow, against all odds, Solas makes it through. And somehow, impossibly, inadvisably, Felassan is still by his side.
After their last examination the streets are full of students celebrating, shouts and laughter echoing loud and sharp beneath the arches. There are still daffodils in the flowerbeds, and the air tastes effervescent, saturated with supermarket champagne. Solas and Felassan bypass the celebrations and stumble together back to Felassan's room, which is now adorned with a row of little cacti along the windowsill and posters of hummingbirds on the wall. Solas still likes it much more than his own room, where too much pain lingers.
Felassan sweeps piles of now-redundant notes off the bed and they fall into it together; clumsy, clothes tossed haphazardly onto the floor, mouths and hands hot, urgent, grasping, shuddering against one another. For a little while, then, it's almost like it was in the beginning, when the whole thing still felt like an impossible miracle from someone else's life. Solas closes his eyes and kisses desperately, blindly, and he wishes so fiercely to remain there, to have always been there, to slough off the past and the future like broken, useless wings.
Then they lie curled beneath the covers. Felassan is holding him too tightly, as if he knows. The cheap blanket thrown over them is as scratchy as ever, still smelling of plastic even after thousands of washes, but there's a poignancy to it now; as if nostalgia is already setting in, though they haven't even departed yet.
Solas doesn't want to tell Felassan, but he knows he has to. As the night falls and the bells begin to ring, tolling ponderously through the purple gloaming, he gets out of bed and puts his clothes back on. The discarded notes waft beneath his feet like the white blossoms that fill the streets of Kinloch Hold in April, and Solas remembers their first spring, picking the petals out of Felassan's hair and kissing him for every one; how Felassan gazed at him with shining eyes and Solas wanted to say I love you but he couldn't because it was too soon, so he just kept saying 'I like you,' like an idiot, and Felassan laughed, hugged him, pressed their cheeks together, the crisp mineral scent of the sunshine on his skin -
He squeezes his eyes shut, steps over the notes. Solas organised those notes for Felassan, colour-coded them, highlighted important sections. He's tried so hard to give something back - the notes and the courses, the laundry, the chores. And whatever he can do with his mouth and his hands, anything, not enough.
Though, sometimes - he remembers Felassan grasping his shoulders, looking down at him, his eyes split by a bolt of silver-grey. Conflicted, almost distressed. 'You don't have to, Solas,' he said. 'I don't - ' and he broke off, gripped his own jaw with his hand as if trying to hold something together.
'I want to,' Solas said.
'Do you?' said Felassan, and Solas couldn't answer because he didn't even know what he wanted any longer, he just had to do something before he was crushed by the weight of everything he owed.
He squares his shoulders, closes his empty hands in a futile clasp so his nails dig into his palms. Then he turns around and shows Felassan the letter on his phone. An offer for a graduate position, in distant Rivain. It might as well be another world.
Felassan sits on his bed, cross-legged. 'I'd like to see Rivain,' he says, looking up at Solas. His eyes are bright with hope. 'Maybe I could get a job there too. We could move together.'
But Solas can't ask Felassan to come to Rivain with him. He's asked too much of him already. He's seen how it's weighed on Felassan - worry eating at him, weariness dragging dark hollows beneath his eyes, blue shadows jostling with the branches of his vallaslin.
Felassan has become so quiet. He's laughed so seldom, this last year. He used to laugh all the time - where has it gone?
The guilt coils thick and heavy in Solas' chest, snakes a burning tendril up his throat. 'I am not sure that would be a good idea,' he says stiffly.
Felassan doesn't even seem surprised. He curls his hands around the edge of the bed. 'Why not?' he says.
Solas looks down. He remembers his family: we can't watch you do this to yourself. Felassan shouldn't have to watch either. He's already seen too much.
Sometimes now when Felassan holds him Solas remembers other times: Felassan's arms around him when he was shaking through the night, Felassan's hands against his chest, finding ribs too close to the skin, Felassan crying quietly into his hair, asking him to try, please, to try …
He doesn't know how Felassan can stand to touch him after that. How he can stand to be with him. Solas can't even stand to be with himself.
Somehow he has to make it go away.
'It's better like this,' he says heavily, picking up his coat and turning it over and over in his hands. His fingers find the elbow where the tweed has worn thin, plucking uselessly at the protruding threads.
He can't go on with someone who remembers him like that. He has to leave it behind; draw a veil over the past, start again, become someone else.
He has to believe that's possible, still, even though his first attempt at a fresh start has worked out so badly.
Felassan is quiet. He doesn't plead. His eyes are a bruised, haunted indigo; he looks so very far away from the laughing, carefree boy that Solas remembers from that first autumnal day, and the guilt climbs higher, swallows the light. He can't endure the thought of what he's done to Felassan. The years he's stolen from him.
Felassan looks up at him, and the little tilt of his chin is so familiar it makes Solas' eyes sting. 'Who's going to look after you?' he says.
Solas has no answer, but the one thing he knows is that it should never have been Felassan's burden to bear.
History
When Solas receives the invitation to the reunion, he ponders for a long time about whether he'll attend.
He doesn't even know if Felassan will be there. If he's there, it will hurt. But if he isn't then there's no point in Solas going at all, because he barely spoke to anyone else for most of his time at the university. They probably wouldn't even remember who he is.
Really there's no reason for him to go. It's a bad idea.
He goes anyway.
Kinloch Hold is bright and autumnal, spun into spidery threads of red and gold just like when he and Felassan first met. The crunch of the leaves seemed sweet and inviting on that day, but it sounds harsh to his ears now. Thin and scraping and cruel.
The city is the same, and yet it isn't. He's been away only a few years and yet it seems much longer. As if he's slumbered for centuries and the world has moved on without him.
The reunion is in the dining hall: arched ceilings, wooden crests mounted high on the walls, painted dignitaries with grim expressions peering out from beneath gilded frames. Solas remembers sitting at those benches with Felassan, their ankles twisted together beneath the table, fingers brushing between bowls of soup or steaming jacket potatoes. He didn't understand then how rare it is to find such an instinctive, unselfish intimacy. How quickly it would all slip away.
His stomach cramps. Someone offers him a tray of champagne glasses but he knows that wouldn't go well; he feels too fragile already.
Last night, somehow, he found himself standing outside the building where he and Felassan lived for those years. Greasy brick, streetlights reflecting knife-sharp off the naked windows and he remembered it all, the heady exhilaration of their beginnings, then the precipitous, bleak descent. Gasps tore ragged from his chest and it was as if they were coming from somewhere else altogether - the shame of what he was then, the shame of what he still can't let go - and he had to lean over, hands braced on his knees, a grown man sobbing in the street. And yet no one seemed to see him. It was as if he had finally become nothing, as he's been trying to do for so long.
A memory of a memory, now just another thing he will have to try to forget. He blinks it away, looks around again. There's still no sign of Felassan, and Solas thinks he must not have come after all. Perhaps that's for the best.
But some instinct drives him out, down the hallway toward the gardens. An arched mirror on the wall reflects the stars in strange marbled patterns, flickering indigo veins cast across his skin. Then the cool, jasmine darkness falls over him, and the night opens to him, and Felassan is there.
Of course he is. He's right there, where he's always been, leaning against the crenellated wall and gazing out across the field beyond. He wears black jeans and dark maroon doc martens and Solas is, briefly, taken aback by how beautiful he is. He thought perhaps he might have exaggerated that in his memory, but if anything he failed to do it justice. He is, once again, baffled by how any of this could possibly have happened. Why did someone so beautiful waste so much time on him?
Felassan is smoking. He didn't smoke before. Solas wants to tell him that he shouldn't smoke, that it's bad for him, but he has no right to tell Felassan anything and besides even for him the hypocrisy would be a little too much.
'Solas,' Felassan says. His voice is quiet, unflinching. He doesn't sound surprised.
'Fel,' Solas says, and then flushes, regretting the nickname. He has no right to that either any more.
'You look well,' Felassan says, his eyes sliding over Solas' form, taking in the pressed chinos, the crisp white shirt. He doesn't ask about the shaved hair, which is good because Solas could not possibly have told him that it's because the memory of his hands in it just hurt too much.
Is he well? Perhaps he is. Or perhaps he's just better at hiding it now. 'Yes,' he says.
Felassan takes a drag from the cigarette, looks at Solas from beneath half-lowered lids. His boots glint cherry-red in the half-light.
'I wanted to - ' Solas clears his throat. 'I wanted to say that I am sorry.'
'Yeah?' Felassan says. 'Is that all you've got?'
Solas presses his lips together. 'What else do you want?' he says, and he wishes his voice would not come out so clipped and cold.
Felassan sighs and stubs the cigarette out on the wall, adding a black stain to all the others the centuries have left there. He looks out over the lake, so laden with memories. Solas blinks hard. It has been years. It shouldn't affect him like this any more. Why can't he exorcise all the wounds in him?
'I was there, all that time,' Felassan says, his voice low, a little cracked. 'I tried so hard. And then you left me.'
Solas looks down. 'I know,' he says, and he wants to explain. He wants to tell Felassan that it was for the best, that he had to set him free, that there was no other way. But he's grown at least enough over the last few years to understand that saying any of that will just make Felassan more angry, so in the end he says nothing at all.
Felassan watches him, eyes narrow. 'I've wondered sometimes,' he says. 'Was it about me at all? Or was I just the only person who refused to be driven away?'
Solas wants to tell him that isn't true. He wants to tell Felassan that he was always in love with him, that he's still in love with him, that he will be in love forever. But that wouldn't be fair to Fel, after all this time.
And maybe, in some part of himself, he wonders if what Felassan says might be the truth. Maybe he just couldn't tell the difference between love and loneliness.
'Yes,' he says. 'Perhaps that is all it was.'
Felassan jerks back, as if Solas has stabbed him. His eyes shimmer, the same colour as the silent water beyond the wall. The years of their separation lie shivering between them, staining the dusk a darker purple. Solas thinks of the things that have happened to him since they parted. It was worse before it was better; there were people who saw the vulnerability in him, people who sought it.
Felassan anticipated that, no doubt: who's going to look after you? No one, of course - no one since him.
'Fine,' Felassan says in a low voice, and he turns his face away, shading his eyes to look back across the lake. As if trying to find the place where -
Solas swallows; for a moment the pain burns too bright. He stands there, silent, and he feels brittle, hollow, the moonlight stripping him raw. He has been waiting so long to see Felassan again, he acknowledges to himself, but for what? Forgiveness? Or did he just want more recriminations?
Enough. He thrusts his hands into his pockets, begins to move away.
And then - 'Solas,' Felassan says, and Solas turns back. Felassan is little more than a silhouette against the distant stars, gazing quietly at him. 'I'm glad you're all right,' he says. 'Or, well, I hope you will be.'
Solas feels his lip tremble. He wants to put his arms around Felassan. He wants Felassan's arms around him. He wants to say - I'm sorry, I regret it, I made a mistake, please -
He can't say any of that. 'I will be,' he says instead.
And then he turns and leaves him.
Felassan is different now, he thinks. Of course he is. Felassan always had a kind of innocence, in Solas' eyes - joyful, sure of himself, unbroken. Perhaps Solas thought that he could inherit it, that he could become unbroken himself by being with Felassan. But he should have known that it could only ever be the other way round.