Work Text:
They’re still dancing when they cross the threshold, as if the music of the venue had followed them down the street, between the twisting aisles of the shop, and up the stairs to the loft apartment. Ian giggles when Solas spins him forward, flaring his skirt as Solas kicks the door closed behind them. He catches Solas when he moves, arms lifting to circle his neck as they turn and pressing their noses together with a giggle.
Behind him, he hears Merlin chirp. He turns his face to look at her, unable to repress the grin that stretches his cheeks. The apartment is dark, shades drawn down, but darkness is no barrier for elves or cats. Her eyes sparkle in the faint glow of the fairy lights strung about the room as she watches them. She tilts her head at him, tail twitching, then bats her paw against the tablet he’d propped up before they’d left. The speakers he’d wired into the rafters fizzle a little when they connect, and now the music is more than imagined. She stretches, yawning until every single one of her teeth shows. Her meow is soft, almost like a laugh, and there’s a quiet thump as she abandons the counter.
“Wait–” he calls after her, “I’m sorry, dear. Do–”
Her purr is loud enough to be heard over the chorus of strings, and she doesn’t turn once as she makes her way serenely to the back bedroom.
Solas snorts and pulls him closer, tightening his grip about Ian’s waist. The hem of Solas’s dress catches, slick fabric snagging against the coarser weave of Ian’s skirt, but it doesn’t impair their movement.
“Come here,” he says, as if Ian could move any closer, and guides their steps to the open spaces between his flowerpots, to the bare stretch of ancient wooden floor that spans between the kitchen and his sitting area.
“Do you–do you want me to lead?” Ian asks, as he had before. They’d taken turns, yielding to preferences and songs and confidence, all night.
“No,” Solas assures, and they dance.
Ian loses count of the songs, loses his breath when Solas dips him. Nearly loses his footing, too, but Solas just laughs as he steadies him, relenting in the depth to allow him better purchase. When he draws Ian up, he meets him almost halfway with a hungry kiss. Ian gasps into his open mouth, Solas’s lips closing over his bottom one and leaving behind the impression of the sweet wine they’d shared what must have been hours before.
They are quiet when they part, and Ian's fingers move to trace the line of Solas’s lower lip. “You–your lipstick smudged.” He sounds like he’s apologizing, a little, and he runs his thumb helplessly along the stain, which only makes it worse.
“Yours, as well.” Solas is not apologizing. He leans back down, kissing the corner of Ian’s mouth with bare and gentle pressure. When he pulls back, his gaze catches at the place his lips had abandoned, and he smiles, eyes creasing as he admires the mark he’s doubtless left behind.
“Come here,” he says again, and leads him on another winding path between the flower pots, settling them both onto the deep cushions of the couch. He reaches around to tug one of the throw pillows free, setting it at Ian’s back as he scoots to yield the room Solas requires.
“What–” Ian’s question is interrupted by another kiss, deep and insistent, their teeth clattering in something like urgency. His chest is heaving as Solas relents, moving to trail softer impressions down his throat until his breathing settles. Ian’s skirt strains, pleats pulled flat with Solas’s weight where he leans between Ian’s legs. Solas sits back, fingers light at his hem.
He doesn’t move quickly, watching Ian’s face for any sign that he should stop.
“What are–what are you doing?” Ian asks. He doesn’t want Solas to stop, but he’s curious.
“I’ve been careful all night,” Solas answers, one hand lifting to the smudge of his lips. “For all of modern convenience, this particular brand seems to have fallen behind.”
“Sorry?” Ian offers.
“Don’t be.” That same hand reaches to trace a mark Ian can’t see, the press of lips at the corner of his own. “I think…”
Fingers at his hem shift to grip his ankle, lifting Ian’s leg until his skirt falls back, until Solas can press a kiss into the soft spot just above the bone. This mark Ian can clearly see, the memory of the touch leaving a smear of tint stark in the dim fairy lights. “I think,” Solas finishes his thought, “it prefers your skin to mine.”
“Oh,” is all Ian can say, heat flooding every part of him. Understanding and want build quickly and he nods— a short, quick motion. Solas presses another kiss into his calf. He’s slow, gentle, deliberate; and gooseflesh rises in his wake as he kisses his way up. Ian watches, folded with his back propped against the couch arm, as the trail of Solas’s lips grows more faint with each press. When a kiss to the inside of his thigh leaves no impression, Solas’s tactics change. Teeth, now, tugging at tender skin. Suction that stirs a darkening bruise.
Ian gasps, head canting back as his hips jerk. Solas chuckles, holding Ian by his knee and thumbing the dampness where he’d bitten. Another blossom, and another, and Ian’s eyes flutter shut as he breathes, hearing the soft whine of his exhales growing with his need.
Thrilling, unbearable ages pass before Solas finally bends his head, mouthing the hard line of Ian’s cock where it strains against his briefs. Ian can’t stop the sound he makes, the needy cry as he trembles, bucks, desperate and wanting.
“S-sorry,” he pants as Solas sits up, smirk off-center with the mess he’s made of his lip color. “I can’t–I can’t help it.”
“I don’t want you to,” Solas assures, fingers curling beneath the thin elastic of the waistband. “May I?”
“Please.”
Solas shifts Ian’s legs, drawing back and dragging Ian’s briefs with him. When they reach Ian’s feet, Solas pulls them free and places another kiss where he began, lips positioned deliberately atop their own mirror. He settles, arranging his own dress in a way that allows him easier movement. He lays Ian’s opposite leg to rest beside his hip, the bones of their ankles knocking against each other as Solas retraces his path. He’s still slow, still purposeful, and though this second pass is accomplished more quickly it feels as though it takes an eternity. Ian shakes, fingers curling into his skirt where it’s bunched beneath his seat.
When Solas drags his tongue along Ian’s shaft, Ian repeats his cry.
“Please.”
And please Solas does. He dips, sinking as low as he can, warm and wet and so, so, so good. Ian hears himself whimper, and Solas hums as if in reply, sending electricity up Ian’s spine. His head falls back again, stars and the ghost of fairy lights bright behind his eyelids as Solas lifts and sinks, lower and lower with each careful repetition.
Ian’s breathing is ragged in his ears, overwhelming the soft music that still trills between the rafters. He tries to tell Solas what he’s thinking: how good this feels; how much he wants him; how beautiful Solas looks with his lipstick ruined and his mouth pressed to Ian’s skin, but every time he begins to say anything the words are choked, insensible, drowned in his moans and tiny, broken gasps.
Magic warms the gap between his legs, and he forces a steady breath, a slow exhale, as Solas carefully pushes a single finger into him.
“Oh,” he sighs, shuddering as Solas’s mouth stills and he focuses on the movement of his hand, gently stroking and stretching until he can add a second finger, then a third. “Solas…” Ian manages, voice frail and faint, “Solas, I–oh.”
Around his cock, Solas hums, increasing the pressure of his mouth until Ian bucks, crying out as sparks flare somewhere in his middle. He hears Solas gag, feels him draw back, and he tries to apologize. He tries, he tries, he tries, open mouth struggling with the shape of his words, thighs shaking where he strains against instinct, but Solas curls his fingers, and Ian’s hips jump again. Up, into Solas’s throat. Down, onto his fingers. He groans, no apology possible, lost, lost, lost to this feeling.
Solas hums again, strokes him again, and he can’t. He can’t. He can’t do anything besides move, besides lift and fall and trust that the way Solas moans around him is meant in praise. He frees one hand from the tangle of his own skirt, palm braced against the back of Solas’s skull. Careful. He doesn’t want to push, he doesn’t want to demand. He’s begging. He needs him to stay, to keep going, to let him rise and fall and rise and fall and to feel the warmth of his mouth and the flick of his fingers. The sparks in his gut grow hot, heated, desperate, the muscles in his abdomen tightening unbearably with each building flare.
“S–ah! Solas!” He wants to warn him, as if Solas can’t feel the way he shakes, the way he’s completely gone. He wants to offer him a choice, pulls his own hand away to allow him to move, but Solas resists. Even as Ian’s hips still, even as his body grows taught and his toes curl, Solas swallows around him. The sensation is enough, is too much, and Ian’s spine curls as he shouts his name again.
Solas holds him in his mouth while he softens, swallowing again. He’s gentle as he slides his fingers free and sits up, lips swollen and dark beneath what remains of their tint. Ian watches him through eyes half-lidded, his own chest heaving and curls sticking to his forehead. Pride lights his lover’s cheeks, coos from his mouth as he reaches forward to push the sweaty hair from Ian’s face.
He leans down to taste the way Ian pants, and there’s still sweet wine in the kiss, though it's all but overpowered by the salt he’s swallowed. Ian groans, catching at the back of his neck and pulling him deeper, chasing the flavor.
Solas presses into him, and Ian can feel his need hard and defined beneath his dress. He lowers a hand in question, testing his palm against it. “Can I–”
Fingers catch at his, guiding him away. “Not yet,” is the answer, and Solas kisses him again, pushing his tongue past Ian’s teeth and filling his mouth with his own taste. Ian sighs into him, trembling as the fire in his skin begins to cool.
Solas runs warm fingers down his side, testing the way Ian’s muscles still jump, and Ian giggles into their kiss until it breaks.
“Please,” he says, still breathless, but certain. “I want–I want you to feel good, too.”
“I want,” Solas’s words are hot where he murmurs them into Ian’s neck, pressing them into his skin like a vow, “to make you come again.”
Sleepy contentment has already begun to try and overtake him, but the heat of this promise snaps his eyes wide as Solas sits back. Ian feels his mouth slacken, feels a little bit of a fool for the expression on his face, but Solas only smirks. What a vision he is, lipstick smeared down to his chin, as he reaches back to the place between his shoulders where the hitch of his zipper rests.
His smug expression doesn’t last long.
Frustration overtakes his brow as he tugs, the zipper resisting his work, until Ian sits up, bracing his hands against Solas’s biceps, trying to tug his arms down before he does any damage.
“Hold–hold on!” He can’t help it, the way he laughs. “You’ll tear it!”
“I am not certain that I care,” Solas says, tugging again.
“I do!” Ian protests, reaching behind to feel where the fabric has caught between the teeth. He pushes Solas’s fingers away, exploring how the zipper has snagged on itself, the slink of the fabric caught hopelessly in the hitch. “It’s–it’s a nice dress, and it looks–it looks lovely on you. It would–it would be a shame to snag it.”
“It’s in the way.” His tone is one of complaint, though it lacks any real disparagement. Ian grins, pressing lips into the exposed rise of Solas’s collar bone. His own lipstick is ruined, but fresh enough to leave its memory against pale freckles. Solas lowers his hands, settling them against Ian’s hips and running his thumbs along his bones while Ian works the uncooperative pull.
“Next time, something–something less tight, if you–if you wanted to fuck me in it,” he suggests, because that is the problem. The zipper snags, because the span of his shoulders strains it where he reaches, and only offers Ian a chance at freeing him when he relaxes. Ian indulges, a little. He drags his hands away from the pull to feel the fabric slide across smooth muscles, testing its tension against the deep breath of a heavy sigh. Ian giggles, penitent with his next kiss, as he returns to his work.
The dress is all slink, form-fitting fabric that reflects the lights winking in the rafters. It’s easy to snag, slipping beneath his fingers where he works to free it from the zipper’s catch. It had sparkled at the venue, too, candlelight glimmering where he’d twirled, Ian lifting to his toes to allow him the room to spin. But now, as he says, it’s very much in the way. There’s no real way to slip the fabric up past Solas’s hips, not without bunching it unbearably, and doing that will not allow him to move the way he clearly wants to.
“I didn’t know that was something we might do until–”
“Until it was,” Ian agrees, pressing another kiss into the softest spot of skin beneath his jaw. “I know.”
And he does. That’s how sex happens for them, sometimes. They aren’t thinking about it, aren’t planning, and then suddenly they need each other.
“Here,” he says, as he manages to press the fabric away from the zipper, a little clumsy for being blind and backwards. He knows well enough how to lift the teeth away, to pull first up and then down, but he’s more familiar with this dance when it’s behind his own back and not someone else’s.
When he manages, when he tugs the zipper down, fingers leading it slowly to his waist, Solas sighs. A deep, contented sound, breath warm where he rests his head in the hollow of Ian’s shoulder.
“I needed–I needed a minute, anyway,” Ian tells him. He might still. His skin is on fire, still burning, still electric. Solas hums, drags his tongue along Ian’s neck, nips him softly, and Ian laughs again, pushing away from him playfully to collapse again against the cushions.
Solas shifts backward, wiggling to drop the dress. He has to nearly stand, the slick fabric caught at his knees, as he pulls it down, over his hips, kicking the bunched bundle when it tries to snag his ankles, too. Ian watches, settling back against the arm of the couch, teeth driving into his lower lip as he considers the trail of lipstick that still marks his leg, the miles and miles of skin that Solas exposes where he might leave his own marks.
The dress is discarded, slipping to the floor without so much as a second look, as Solas returns. He leans into Ian, and Ian folds around him, hands clasped behind his neck and legs falling open, feet hooking into the bend of Solas’s knees.
“Hello,” he murmurs.
“Hello,” Solas laughs.
“You–” Ian unlaces his fingers to trail down warm skin, hooking his thumbs in the waistband of Solas’s briefs, “You forgot something.”
“So I did.” Solas rolls his hips against Ian’s pelvis, the rough texture reigniting the sensitive embers where desire had begun to rest. Ian wimpers, still reeling despite his best efforts to reclaim his sense. “So I did,” he repeats, smug again, fully aware of what he’s doing.
“Solas…”
“You said you needed a minute,”
And he did, and he does, but Solas’s mouth is hot against his neck, and his fingers work the straps of Ian’s top until they slide past his shoulders. Ian is not going to achieve the same manner of undress that Solas has. He lies with his skirt hitched up and his top tugged down, nothing but a mess beneath his lover. Solas drags the rough of his tongue down from the hollow of his collarbone and across his breast. Teeth, again, gentle in how they tug, against one nipple. Ian cries out all the same, still barely present, still electric and tender and oh, oh, oh.
Solas’s thumb works its opposite, little circles around it until it pebbles, and Ian can already feel lightning trailing up his spine. His thighs ache, but he feels the strain like wanting, and he barely represses the need to cant his hips again, because oh, oh, oh.
“I’m–I’m going to come again without you,” he warns, as if that’s any deterrent. As if Solas would mind.
And, as if to prove him right, Solas laughs.
“Tell me what you desire,” he invites, rolling their hips together again until Ian keens. He doesn’t know if he wants to shout or beg or laugh.
“I want–” panting, unashamed in his need, Ian's nearly ready to beg. “I want you.”
“Ma nuvenin.”
Their lips meet again, Solas working as if trying to swallow each little sigh. He presses another trail of kisses down Ian’s neck before he slips from his briefs, one foot at a time, mindful of his balance and the way Ian clings to him.
Magic makes his entrance smooth, but Ian still chokes. He’s full, so full, and it’s different than how Solas had stretched him, how his fingers had pushed and flexed and, oh. Inside him, Solas’s cock twitches, and Ian shouts again. He trembles, hands curling into fists behind Solas’s neck.
“Ian…” Solas nuzzles against his cheek. “How does that feel?”
“Beautiful,” he gasps, and hears Solas’s smile in his answer.
“Yes,” he agrees, “you are.”
And then he moves, drawing back and then forward, rolling when their hips meet until Ian moans. Sometimes when they fuck, the pace is slow, languid, a teasing build to a harder rhythm. This time Solas begins carefully enough, testing Ian’s preparation and comfort before he quickens his pace. It’s the first indication that he’s given of how needy he is, too. His patience frays with Ian’s encouragement, with the way Ian pleads and bucks beneath him, and Ian, tightening his own hold, arches his back to deepen the impact of each thrust.
A hand reaches to tangle in Ian’s curls, cupping the back of his head. When he pulls, it’s gentle. Ian feels his ribbon slip free, his barely contained hair tumbling past the arm of the couch. Solas runs fingers through it, stroking softly before finding a hold in the spiralling curls, and tugs. Just enough to sting, to force Ian’s head back, to bare his throat until his eyes close and the room spins and the vibration of his moan is muffled by the lips pressed against his neck.
“Like–like that,” he begs, “Just like that, please, please, please…” and Solas obliges, driving into him until everything is the heat rising between them and the steadily mounting pressure at his core. Each time their hips meet, the spark at Ian’s center flares, brighter and brighter and brighter and ready to burst.
“Ian…” His name is a gasp, a groan, a prayer, pressed into his skin as Solas shudders, and this was never going to last long, but it didn’t need to, because they’re both alight, both burning and trembling and made of sparks that flare and catch and build into a blaze.
“Yes,” he promises, then asks, “Please, Solas. Please.”
And oh, the hand in his hair tightens. And oh, he’s so full, and Solas moves, striking again and again at that spark, and everything in him is building and building and building and burning. And oh, his name. His name, his name, his name, hot against his ear as he cries out, turning his face to kiss Solas’s cheek.
He thinks he comes first, but he isn’t certain, because his world is spinning, because they’re both shaking in the fire they have built, and time stops in the same moment that it suddenly spins into eternity, and their hearts crash into each other where Solas settles, still trembling, to rest atop his chest.
Ian sighs, too content to open his eyes, as he runs his fingers along Solas’s spine, untangling his legs to stretch the length of the couch. Gentle fingers tease his hair from his face, though he isn’t sure how it got there, again, again, always. For many long seconds, they rest, and they breathe, and they bask in the way their skin keeps each other warm even as the heat of their lovemaking begins to wane.
“Vhenan…”
“Mmm?”
Solas’s amusement tickles against his skin, a snort blowing quick and hot against his shoulder.
“Don’t fall asleep.”
Ian ignores him, or tries to, because it’s a silly request and he’s very, very sleepy.
“Ian.”
When Ian doesn’t respond, Solas sighs, though the sound is full of fondness. Lips press against his chin, and then the weight against his chest is suddenly absent, inviting a chill that has him shivering–a different, far less pleasant tremble than what had carried him earlier.
“Solas–” he whines, petulant.
“Don’t fall asleep,” Solas says again, leaning down to whisper the words against his lips . “Come here.”
Ian forces heavy lids open, expression accusatory, but Solas is smirking as he steps back, hand extended. “Come here,” he beckons. “You are a mess. Let me clean you up, and let us sleep on the bed.”
He wants to argue, if only for the sake of it, if only because he wants to be a mess, and he is so comfortable and content and warm and moving now puts too many extra steps between him and the sleep that’s trying to curtain his thoughts. He wants to argue, but instead he props himself up on his elbows. He looks at Solas, tilting his head in consideration. The laughter that bursts from his chest has him shaking, has him ducking his head as if he could hide it, has hair spilling past his shoulders until he has to reach to hold it back.
“What?”
A fair question, but he struggles to answer it. He has to stem his laughter, first, pushing at his hair and trying to settle the giggles that stall his speech.
“You have–you have lipstick on your ear,” he says. When he manages an unsteady breath, he looks up again, grinning irrepressibly at the way Solas stands, naked and splotched with lipstick, eyes sparkling in fairy lights while the soft notes of a fiddle settle about them like snow. He shifts his fingers, pushing both hands into his hair to pin it back out of his vision. “I don’t–I don’t know how I–when I put it there.”
“You have lipstick everywhere,” Solas reminds him, taking him by the hand to pull him from the couch, and he gives up on his hair as it tumbles free and Solas lifts him to his feet.
“So I do,” he grins, and pushes his lips against Solas’s chest. Disappointed, a little, when he draws back and comes away from a clean canvas. “Come on, let’s…let’s see what we can do about it. I–I’m–” he yawns, tilting his head back down to rest against the same spot he had kissed, “I’m sleepy.”