Selene Lavellan

He mumbles it into the back of her neck, even as his arms tighten around her middle, his own conflicts coming to light as the sun drifts through their closed shutters.

Des isn’t really used to partners that he has an emotional connection with. He’s finally spent the night with Selene, who he’s shared a home with for years already but never been sexually intimate with in a non-teasing sort of way. It’s new, and it should be familiar ground, because hello it’s sex and that’s like his whole ‘thing’ but he’s nervous and clingy and scared in a way he hasn’t felt since he was younger than he should have been. And while maybe if he had woken up to an empty bed like he had expected, like he had assumed she would do because it’s Selene and she runs that’s what she does when she gets scared, he would have felt more in control of the situation. Because he expected her to be scared and ashamed and to avoid ever bringing it up again and sure it would hurt but all he really expected was the memory, and all he hoped for was to still have a friend in the morning.

Selene lets out a soft sigh, shifting until she is facing him. She places a light ‘boop’ on his nose in lieu of an actual response.

Des’s face scrunches up, his forehead gently bumping into hers. “M'just saying. Usually you’re making breakfast for my bedmates and finding them a bus route by now. You’re not like…” he makes a vague sort of grunting noise “You’re not obligated to stay. If you don’t want to.”

“What if I do want to?” She mumbles back. “Are you going to kick me out of bed?”

But then she stays, and she’s happy and she’s still there and she isn’t leaving him or avoiding him or ashamed of him and it’s giddy and he’s used to being happy in bed and laughing and smiling and having fun but this is morning after fun and that’s new and wonderful and unexpected, and it’s the first time he really sees how differently his life feels when they’re together. 

Des is used to sex, and Des is used to partners, and Des is used to Selene. But the combination is new.

Des has never been one to turn down anything new.

“Never.” Des grins.

“Good.” Selene grins back, twining her legs through his.

Selene is also more comfortable than she really expected to be. She had plenty of sex with Carina, but that had always been a little tense. Always felt like trying to keep up, like trying to impress her, like trying to get a good score on a test she’d never see the grade for. There’s no pretense with Des; he’s seen her at her best, and he’s seen her at her absolute worst and there’s no need to pretend to be something other than exactly who she is. She doesn’t have to be the best version of herself 100% of the time around him, and it’s just a relief, to be able to be a bit of a ‘bad’ person and not feel judged for it. 

It’s comfortable, then. The two of them, alone in their bed with only the sound of their breaths and the cars passing by outside. Des’s long fingers carefully stroke up and down Selenes back, soft and gentle over the scratch marks he left the night before. Too hurried, too concerned one of them might chicken out, might change their mind in the middle and everything would stop. And he would have stopped, of course, if she had asked him to. But she hadn’t, she’d been just as swept up in the moment as he had been; pressing each other into walls and furniture, clothing articles being torn and thrown without care, fighting until it wasn’t fighting anymore. War turned to love, old arguments washed away in moans and whispered apologies and oaths sworn into skin through gritted teeth and bites hard enough to leave a reminder in the morning light that it wasn’t just a dream.

Different, somehow, from his usual encounters.

I don’t have a lot of commentary for this bit, except to say that sometimes these two just need some rough loving and it’s good that they can turn to one another for it, y’know? I’m also a sucker for the whole arguing turning into declarations of bottled of emotions trope and that’s hard to pull off when both characters are non-confrontational and would rather just sulk in corners on opposite ends of a castle for a few thousand years than just say what’s on their minds... <___<

In a good way though. Old wounds healed by his healer; still her even when she’s trying so desperately not to be.

Again, Selene spends a lot of time and energy trying to be who she thinks the world wants her to be rather than true to herself. Des is good at seeing through her BS though, and better at seeing that if she just relaxed she’s already everything anyone could ask for. (at least in his eyes, but he is pretty love smitten in this piece so I’ll cut him a little slack about it)

“Where do we go from here?” He wonders aloud.

Will this become a regular part of their routine? Is he supposed to stop seeing other people? Will this change what they’ve had together for so long?

“Well,” Selene says, rolling away from him and stretching her arms up over her head. “Breakfast sounds like a good start to me. Or coffee. Or maybe clothes first, if you wanna go out to eat.”

Des: this was fantastic, but also is this like a Thing now? I have questions.Selene: Yes but I am emotionally and mentally unprepared for that discussion pls caffeine first.

Des snorts, pulling her back to him quickly enough that she lets out an undignified squeak.

“Breakfast sounds great,” he sighs, face nuzzling into the sensitive dip in her hip he discovered the night before, enjoying the way she melts now as surely as she had the night before. “But…could we stay here a little longer first?”

Selene agrees, fingers threading through his hair in a pleasantly reassuring manner as she settles back into their bed.

Maybe, just maybe, he thinks, I won’t screw this up too.

“Oh,” he breathes, and she nearly shrinks back from the shock of it. Breath. What a strange, alien behavior after...

After so many years of her duties.

Perhaps this was a poor idea, debt of bet hanging around her or not.

'Befriend a member of the world of sky, rediscover what it is like to be near someone with a heart that beats, with life still echoing in their bones, with light in their eyes and red in their lips-'

Lips that finally close as he manages a quiet “Thank you,” with fingers twisting in feathers from his own back.

She swallows around a throat that hasn't needed it in decades, and nods politely back. The curls of her hair itch against the back of her neck with the movement, arms pulling her shawl tighter around her shoulders.

“Do you come to these often?” He asks.

The question catches her so off guard she nearly laughs.

“I-uh-I'm sorry, what?”

“The parties,” The man explains, gesturing towards the stone door leading back to the ballroom and festivities still in full swing inside. “My family attends most regularly, though this is the first I've attended in...some time.  I am afraid there is little I am familiar with when it comes to the expectations of these evenings.”

Selene blinks, mind racing with stories Des has brought back from his past excursions; feasts of food and flesh and beasts and whatever extravagances the gods see fit to fill themselves with in the moment and thinks-no, no.

“This is my first in millenia,” She admits with a shrug and a half-honest smile. “If there are rules to these events I might have known once, the memory is long buried and lost to me. I uh,” She chuckles. “I don't get out, much. My responsibilities keep me far from here, and it's only the result of a particularly wily string of fate falling into the lap of a mischievous and trouble-loving imp that's allowed me to be present here tonight.”

“My gratitudes to the imp in question, then.” The man says with a quirk of his lip, and while, no, being a God of Death doesn't exactly leave Selene with much of a heartbeat, it feels as though hers has flipped right into her throat all the same.

“Do you dance?” She asks before she can think better of it. Think of what her touch brings and the cold and the rivers of her home and the loneliness waiting for her by moonset.

“I...suppose I have never tried,” He says, moving towards her all the same.

She takes a step towards him, undeterred by the pollen and petals and the sprouts in his footsteps.

“I'm told I make a wonderful teacher,” She offers, sliding one hand into his and the other around his waist. Not waiting for an answer, she should, she should but damn her nerves and the voice in her head. Death is not meant to dance with Life, with Spring which he so clearly is, she would be a fool not to notice. Not to see how this could only end in tragedy, how it should never even start, how it could only be terrible for them if they could be bothered to see sense.

But the orchestra is leaking through the walls, spilling into the gardens and guiding them through a dance it feels like they have done a hundred times. They must have done, steps easy and effortless and comfortable.

Gods, how long has it been since she was comfortable?

Long enough that she had forgotten the word, the concept, the relief.

Long enough that she is loath to lose it again.

“What is your name?” She asks, though it seems superfluous, nearly, now. What weight does a name carry, in the end. She has been called a great many names, and very few connect in record despite how many of them truly are hers.

Still.

If she is planning to keep him near...

“Dirthamen,” He answers, wings billowing behind him.

“Dirthamen,” She repeats, spinning him into her as surely as she spins magic into her words.

It is a terrible idea.

“I have a proposition for you, dear Dirthamen,”

A terrible, tragic, idea.

“I have a kingdom of my own, that requires my presence and much of my time,”

Would he even be happy there, in the dark with the dead and her home?

“I would very much like to show it to you,”

She could make him happy.

“If you are amenable to the trip.”

She would make him happy.

She has summoned her chariot before she can change her mind, before he can do anything but nod and follow her into it. She cracks the reigns over her spiritual beasts, keeping her prize beside her. Safe, as they travel into the dark of the night. 

Down 

Down 

Down, past the horizon and into the place where the world of sky ends.

Down 

Down 

Down, over the waterfalls of the world, across the seven rivers, and around the confused gaze of her ferryman whose eyes are still heavy with sleep.

Through the crowded alleys of the underworld, still empty in the early morning tides before she pulls into her stables.

Selene exits first, hand outstretched behind her for her newest, and only, visitor.

He might hate her for this, she knows. Could resent her and regret his choice, here in the dark of her home. Could find her to be as empty and depthless as the river Styx itself.

But she would do her best, to make him happy here.

With her.