Work Text:
The thunder was loud, but Morrigan's voice was louder still, her flashing rage brighter than the lightning sheets that strobed the penthouse windows. She'd been on the phone for forty-three minutes and counting, animate with the special fury reserved for Flemeth's agent. Leliana smiled quietly into her hot chocolate, tucking her knees a little more snugly beneath her chin, the better to watch the show. The movement was minute, but Morrigan seemed to sense it; or at least, she picked that moment to shoot her lover a look which, to an inexperienced observer, might have seemed blackly withering. Leliana, however, was an adept in that particular language, and waved back in reciprocal fond acknowledgement: a genteel ripple of fingers half-raised from blue ceramic that said, Yes, darling. I see you dealing with idiots. Carry on.
'Let me put it this way,' Morrigan said, her interlocutor skewered on the pointed end of her patience. 'Either my mother kindly grants me permission to sing Wildling Child in a touching homage to her sainted career, or I tell a sold-out crowd exactly why I can't.'
The subsequent pause was punctured by a timely jag of lightning. Morrigan's lips curved upwards in a subtle, satisfied smirk. 'I thought so,' she said, and hung up with an audible snap of her flip-phone, an antiquated model she kept, Leliana suspected, for the sole satisfaction of shutting it in such moments.
'Crisis averted?' she asked, guilelessly.
'My mother's obstinacy,' said Morrigan, in the tone of voice that Rolling Stone had once described as acid, ice and honey , 'is not now, nor ever shall be, a crisis .'
'What is it, then?'
'A complication,' said Morrigan, flinging her phone dismissively into a nest of throw-pillows. She flexed her fingers – long, strong, pale – and inhaled deeply, silhouetted against the storm. And then she blinked, and then she smiled, a scything benediction. 'Poor thing,' she said, and sat down beside her, dropping a kiss on Leliana's forehead. The gentle brush of lips was almost at odds with the scorn which passed as Morrigan's sweetness; almost, but not quite. 'I've been neglecting you.'
'A performance doesn't neglect its audience,' said Leliana, draping an arm around Morrigan's shoulders, pulling her in. 'And your performances are always beautiful.'
'Yes, well,' said Morrigan, her rolled eyes failing to mitigate her blush. 'You're a folk singer, darling. You have terrible taste.'
'Clearly,' said Leliana, kissing her temple.
They sat in pleasant silence, Morrigan picking idly at a loose cream thread of Leliana's cable-knit dress. It was a familiar habit; Leliana had mentioned more than once that Morrigan, should she finally succeed in unravelling the thing, would be responsible for finding a replacement, and yet it was strangely soothing.
'Any whiskey in that?' Morrigan asked suddenly, chin tilting to indicate the mug's contents.
Grinning, Leliana proffered it. 'Drink some, and find out.'
'You know I despite non-alcoholic beverages,' Morrigan muttered, but took it anyway, because even if she'd never admit it aloud – second-generation punk-rock goddess that she was – they both understood her preference for certain soft, warm things. Leliana was arguably such a one herself; but if so, she was empress of Morrigan's comforts, just as Morrigan ruled her own sharp needs, the two of them made equal in the contrast.
'You're like a leopard,' Leliana mused, as Morrigan sipped her chocolate. 'Velvet over claws.'
Morrigan chuckled. 'With a jewelled collar, I suppose?'
'Perhaps,' teased Leliana. She reached to reclaim the drink, but Morrigan snatched it out of reach, the reflex betraying her feigned disdain. She startled slightly at the lapse, but when Leliana laughed out loud, she snorted in turn and downed the rest, cheeks rosy.
'Should I write you a leopard-song, then?' Leliana mused. 'It certainly seems you've a taste for milk.' And then, as Morrigan glared at her, 'Here, kitty kitty!'
'Oh, that's it !' growled Morrigan, and tackled her back against the pillows, kissing her deep and soundly, letting the empty mug fall to the hardwood floor.
It would be a terrible pun , Leliana thought, to say we make music together. And yet it was true, and her heart laughed with it.
Breathless and smiling, she buried her fingers in Morrigan's hair and kissed her through the storm.