Chapter Text
Solas stands halfway up the marble steps leading to the summer bazaar, fixing his eyes on the banner over the entrance and trying very hard to appear absorbed in the image of a violin rendered in the cubist style.
In reality, his attention is mostly on the square before him and the crowd milling around the fountains. Tall columns protruding from the dais boast statues of Orlesian dignitaries in classical dress, and the air today has the pale clarity of early spring, as if it has forgotten how to properly hold on to the light. Cherry trees grow through the colonnade and their blossoms soften its marble austerity into something approaching beauty.
He sees Felassan as soon as he appears from behind one of the fountains. He's in a double-breasted overcoat, the same one he was wearing last week on the night Solas cannot bring himself to think about - the night when Felassan told him that they would always be friends, and they would never again be anything else.
Today the collar of the coat is turned up and his red scarf is coming loose so one end snaps in the wind behind him. His hands are thrust into his pockets and he walks quickly, his head down, strands of his dark hair falling across his face. Solas watches him and his breath comes too fast and he doesn't even know if it's from love or anxiety or some deeply stupid mixture of both.
When Felassan comes to a stop beneath the banner it does hurt, but not as much as Solas had expected. Primarily what he feels is relief. Felassan is here. He's here, he's even smiling - uncertain, a little uncharacteristically shy, but he's here and that means not everything is broken between them.
Solas will always want more, but as long as he doesn't lose Felassan entirely it's all right. It's survivable.
He smiles back, and the smile is wobbly but it holds.
'Solas.' Felassan doesn't sound the way he usually does. His voice is too quiet, pressed flat under the weight of everything they're not saying. 'I wasn't sure you'd come.'
'Of course I did,' Solas says; he is astonished that there could have been any doubt.
Felassan stands looking at him for a moment, shifting the strap of his bag on his shoulder. Then he says, 'Shall we go in?'
There's an immediate change of temperature as they step inside, the shimmery haze of the air outside sliced down to a precise archival chill. They go into the first room together and Solas stands in front of a very sapphire painting in a gilded golden frame and does not see it at all. He is fond of the cubists but he is simply not in a fit state to absorb anything right now.
Felassan looks sideways at him, his mouth twisting faintly, and then he says, 'The artists from the north of Orlais seem to prefer a different colour scheme.'
'Indeed,' Solas agrees. 'The blue is very characteristic of the Val Falaise school.'
'Is there a reason for that?'
Solas doubts that Felassan really cares about the history of avant-garde art in Orlais, but he is grateful for the gesture. He links his hands behind his back and clears his throat and launches into an explanation and Felassan, to his credit, listens closely the whole time without even the appearance of boredom.
It is easier after that. They move on to the next room, which exhibits work from the Val Montaigne school instead, and Solas attempts a droll comment about the difference in temperament evident in the two displays. Felassan laughs as if it is funny, which is truly generous of him. Solas feels his shoulders relax a little.
The museum is larger than he expected, and it is filled up with echos which shift and vibrate with a quiet, clinging static as if a faint invisible flood is washing through the marble halls. The lights carefully trained on the paintings are perhaps a little too precise - they make the placards exquisitely readable but somehow render the bright figurative colour of the paintings themselves into something approaching sepia. Solas knows the period well but all of a sudden the shapes and shades feel unfamiliar to him.
There is a cafe on the third floor, wooden chairs and tables interspersed with ferns in big ceramic pots so the space feels shadowed and forested. Felassan shades his eyes to look at the menu and then says, with a note of relief, 'Perfect. I need a coffee.'
Solas sits at a table in the corner while Felassan goes to the counter, and he lights a cigarette as he waits, watching the smoke curl itself sinuously between the cool green of the leaves and the stippled golden bars of sunlight penetrating through them. Felassan reappears with a tiny espresso cup for himself and a hot chocolate for Solas, without needing to ask; he has a slice of millefeuille too, densely layered with creamy fondant and vanilla bean custard, which he sets down between them together with two small forks.
Solas contemplates for a moment the wisdom of consuming so much sugar all at once, but when he takes a bite of the millefeuille his reservations vanish. The pastry shatters beneath his teeth and the cream oozes delightfully, soft and perfumed and just a little cold. He tells himself that he should exercise moderation and yet somehow his fork keeps making its way back.
When he scoops up the last piece Felassan's fork swoops in to waylay him and two seconds later the piece is in Felassan's mouth. Solas blinks. 'Excuse me!' he says.
Felassan gazes innocently back at him. 'You already ate more than half.'
'That does not mean you can steal cake off my fork, in violation of all established norms of civilization and rationality.'
'And yet clearly I can.'
Solas wrinkles his nose fondly. Felassan's hand lies idle beside his coffee cup and Solas wants to reach out and hold it, but he can't. He can't ever do that again.
But if he's truly honest, he thinks, what really stings is that this restraint doesn't even require practice. They were so circumspect for all their years together. Solas was always hiding the way he felt - maybe most of all from Felassan himself. In some ways this won't be so different.
Felassan makes a little motion of his head, appearing to shake some thought away from him. He gives a smile that seems more effortful than usual. 'This is nice,' he says, his voice tilting up. 'It's nice, right? Don't you think so?'
Solas' heart hurts, but he manages a smile of his own. 'Yes, Fel,' he says quietly. 'I think so. It's nice.'
***
The main problem with the friendship concept is that Felassan is just so very beautiful and no matter what he does Solas simply cannot stop noticing it.
He tries, he really does. But every time Felassan walks into a room Solas finds recollection spinning to life within him: vivid, tactile, shatteringly present. His mouth recalls how Felassan tastes. His skin remembers the slide of his sweat, the gentle feathering of his hands.
More than two years have passed since the one and only time they slept together, beneath that splintered terracotta sunset in Serault, and yet when the sun falls over Felassan's face in just the right way memory conjures those moments with a clarity that feels sometimes generous and sometimes terribly cruel.
It is like being an adolescent again. Worse, in fact - when Solas was truly an adolescent he prided himself on the reasonableness of his rare infatuations, but now it is as if everything he missed out on then is hitting him with full force all at once, and he is astonished by how much effort it costs him to hide the way that Felassan affects him. He has a thousand other more significant concerns in his life and yet they all vanish instantaneously from his head whenever Felassan shows up: neither his mind nor his body is capable of focusing on any thing else.
He is, he tells himself, too busy and certainly too old for this. Quite apart from the network he is painstakingly building for his secret rebellion, he is also accruing a professional reputation for himself in the public sphere. After two successes - remarkable successes, he allows within the privacy of his own mind - the reports of his genius as a detective have spread rapidly, and these glowing testimonies are enough to overcome or at least mitigate the Orlesians' instinctive distaste for hiring elves. Of course the fact that he is a veteran who fought on the right side in the war certainly helps.
Felassan thinks Solas' new career is uproariously funny, but nonetheless he shows up at least twice a week to hear the latest news on the cases. Solas' apartment is almost directly on the route he walks daily between his home and the newspaper office, so he has taken to dropping by in the mornings or after work. He seldom bothers to announce his arrival in advance; he simply appears out of the blue, blithely confident of his welcome, dropping into an armchair and bombarding Solas with questions about recent developments in his investigations.
Solas, it must be admitted, is not at all opposed to having an audience to witness his brilliance, and certainly not when the audience is so pleasant to look at.
In return Felassan tells Solas about his own work - the leads that he's chasing, the bylines he's writing, the corruption he's determinedly uprooting. Solas is so proud of him he can hardly contain himself, a sentiment which he expresses by means of stilted commentary on Felassan's prose style and also secretly cutting out and retaining copies of all his most impressive scoops.
It is, he must acknowledge, a little embarrassing how much better the days are when Felassan visits - even when he can't stay, even when they manage barely ten minutes of conversation. It simply makes things more bearable to be able to look at him, to watch the way thought moves so quickly across the warm golden lines of his face, or to witness the effortless leonine grace of the way he drapes himself over the furniture.
Solas himself always feels self-conscious in Felassan's presence, but in a way that he enjoys - he likes being so aware of where his body is in space, the passage of the air over his skin, what the little motions of his hands must look like. He likes all of this very much even though he is always left uncomfortably restless after Felassan departs, full of energy that he can only dispel by pacing around the apartment as if the white walls are reflecting him back and forth, remembering and then trying not to remember, imagining and then trying not to imagine.
The best evenings, though, are the ones when Felassan shows up late and announces that he's hungry and then they go out to the bistro just around the corner from the apartment building. Solas always orders the same thing: steak frites and then tarte tatin, which comes out rich and lacquered in gold, the apples oozing warm sugar and the pastry sinking into caramelized oblivion beneath the sheer weight of aurified fruit. Felassan, meanwhile, likes to try the specials - escargot, andouilette, briney sea urchin - and he always has to sample the most unusual wine in the cellar in order to issue solemn pronouncements on it. He doesn't actually drink enough wine to have any real opinions on terroir but he is very good at bullshitting, and no matter how Solas tries to keep a straight face he always yields to a snort of laughter in the end.
On those nights they sit together in their favorite red booth in the corner, and Felassan steals Solas' frites, and Solas pretends to swat at him while the candle burns low between them, spilling wax across its chipped saucer. Felassan is always laughing and Solas is always wishing with a painful, flickering intensity that he could keep the moment right there, hold back time itself, because he knows that all too soon the flame will gutter out and the plates will be cleared away and then, as always, he will have to go home alone to his silent, calcified apartment and his silent, cold bed.
***
'It is your birthday next Tuesday,' Solas observes one afternoon in February, turning a cigarette between his fingers and contemplating whether he really needs another.
Felassan is sitting across from him in a truly absurd posture with his bent leg tucked between his chest and the arm of the chair; it really should not look as elegant as it does. He gazes up at Solas with his wide eyes turning such a light violet they are almost pastel, which Solas knows very well is a colour they take on only when he is trying to appear innocent. 'Yes?' he says.
'You will be twenty-six,' Solas says.
'I know how old I am, Solas. You don't have to remind me that youth is rapidly fleeing from me.'
Solas himself is twenty-nine; he will be thirty very shortly. He wonders, briefly, what his life might have looked like at thirty if he had not been forced to take on the secret mantle of the Dread Wolf. But he doesn't wonder for too long, because he knows these might-have-beens will only perturb him to no good purpose.
'Twenty-six is nothing,' he says quietly, giving up and lighting the cigarette.
'Well of course it seems so to you, old man,' Felassan says, laughing.
But he's evasive today in a way that Solas can't quite make sense of. 'Are we - ' He clears his throat, draws in a lungful of smoke, amends. 'Are you celebrating?'
Felassan coughs and, somehow, folds his leg into what must surely be an even more uncomfortable position against his chest. 'Bowling,' he says quickly. 'We're going bowling.'
Solas looks at him silently. He is not going to ask where his invitation is.
Felassan averts his gaze and runs a hand restlessly through his hair, the way he always does when he is anxious. In the war the result was that it was constantly streaked with the dry dust of the trenches, as if he were going prematurely grey. He coughs again, a little mannered, and then he says, 'My girlfriend will be there.'
Solas stares at him. He didn't know that Felassan had a girlfriend. He didn't even know that Felassan was seeing anyone, though he recognises that he should not be surprised - they are, after all, only friends. In the pit of his chest he is conscious of a small, unworthy feeling of indignation that Felassan did not inform him, but he recognises that this is not fair. He has no special right to be kept up to date with this aspect of Felassan's life.
'I would like to meet her,' he says, and he is proud of how even his voice sounds, how reasonable. He puts the cigarette into his mouth because it will help him to regulate the expression on his face.
Felassan's chin tilts a little. 'I - ' he says, and then, 'It's not that - I wanted to invite you but I wasn't sure - I didn't know - '
The broken sentences are familiar: ordinarily Felassan is the most articulate person that Solas knows, but on this one subject neither of them has ever been able to find the words.
Solas takes time to carefully formulate a complete and coherent sentence of his own. 'It is of course entirely up to you,' he says, 'but I assure you, I am quite capable of being civil to - what is her name?'
Felassan hesitates a moment. 'Isabela' he says.
'I am sure that Isabela and I will get on very well,' Solas says confidently.
Felassan looks uncertainly at him, but then gives a little shrug. 'Well, if you're sure. And if you think your pride can stand losing to me at bowling.'
'I imagine it can,' Solas says, and then, even more confidently, 'But that does not matter. I will not lose.'
***
The bowling alley is inside an old warehouse, the shadowed roof above still criss-crossed with tarry beams, grime sunken so deep into the rough-hewn walls that no amount of renovation could hope to remove it. An abandoned metal hook hangs between the beams, casting an ominously curved shadow across the gleaming lanes below, where bowling shoes squeak over the polished timber floor.
There is music playing in the background, a facile tune chipped out by a mediocre pianist, but beneath the hum of people talking the melody is almost subliminal - Solas keeps missing the ends of the musical phrases and thus being forced to invent a completion in his own mind.
When he meets Isabela he discovers, to his secret distress, that he can find nothing whatsoever to criticize. It is not for him to comment on her attractiveness, though he certainly notices it, but more importantly she is intelligent, warm, kind, and clearly very fond of Felassan in a way that makes him well-disposed toward her despite himself.
'Fel's told me a lot about you,' she says to Solas, and then, 'You two went through a lot together.'
Solas purses his lips, and it occurs to him suddenly that he has not the faintest idea what Felassan has told Isabela about the nature of their relationship. He himself, of course, would certainly never have dreamed of disclosing to a new paramour that he and Felassan once had - well, whatever it was that they had. But Felassan is not so reticent in that regard, so it is possible to envision him cheerfully regaling Isabela with the whole story.
The thought trails a brief, evanescent prickle of anger across the back of Solas' neck, as if their history is not Felassan's to tell, though he acknowledges reluctantly that this is not at all fair or rational. The story belongs to Felassan just as much as himself and he has every right to disclose it to someone of such importance in his life.
'Felassan has told me a great deal about you as well,' he says smoothly, though this is not true at all, since in fact the words my girlfriend are the sum total of what Felassan has said on the matter.
Isabela looks at him for a moment longer and he tries to read her expression, but the little sardonic tilt of her smile could mean anything and if he is honest with himself perhaps he does not particularly wish to contemplate the alternatives too deeply.
Fortunately at that moment the bowling begins and he makes his excuses, for he means to acquit himself creditably. He has never been any good at sports that involve hitting or catching things but he is very good at bowling, which is, in his opinion, everything that a leisure activity ought to be: civilized, measured, rewarding meticulousness. The slow pace of the game allows him to remain in the state of focus that he prefers, and it helps that the principal requirements for success are a steady hand and good aim, both of which he has perfected under significantly more adverse circumstances.
And on this occasion his talents do not let him down. He scores strike after strike, basking complacently in the compliments coming in from Felassan's friends. Most of the friends are louder and funnier and prettier than Solas himself, he cannot help but notice, but with regard to the bowling at least he is not giving Felassan anything to be ashamed of.
Felassan could surely be good at bowling too, if he tried, but he isn't really trying. Instead he is flitting around the crowd and flirting with everyone except Solas, doing so in a slightly anxious way which makes Solas feel a little guilty because he cannot help but think that Felassan would not be so anxious if he himself were not present.
He doesn't mind that Felassan is not flirting with him. As a matter of fact in a strange way it makes him feel special: he understands that Felassan is leaving him out because with him it would mean something. Besides which every time Felassan turns in Solas' direction all the artifice drops away from his face and for a moment there is just this quiet, simple look of warmth that makes Solas' stomach turn over in a way that no amount of coquettishness could possibly have achieved.
Once Solas has achieved several comprehensive victories the bowling comes to an end, and he graciously accepts congratulations until Felassan appears. For some reason the sight of Felassan coming toward him makes him blush in a way that strikes him as embarrassingly adolescent - it is a great relief that the light is low enough to largely obscure the effects.
He cannot help hoping that Felassan has come to praise him too, but instead Felassan lays his hand on his arm and says in a low voice, 'Are you all right?'
It's so gentle, and somehow the kindness moves Solas in a way that feels quite disproportionate to the circumstances. 'Of course I am,' he says roughly.
'I don't want to - I don't want you to - '
'Fel,' Solas says. 'I am really all right.'
Felassan gazes steadily at him: despite all the deceptions lingering between them, at moments like this he is capable of a fearful clear-sightedness. 'I worry that you wouldn't tell me if I was hurting you,' he says.
Naturally Solas would not, so he sidesteps the question entirely. 'I am very glad you invited me,' he says instead. 'And I am very glad that we are friends.'
Felassan's eyes crinkle and he squeezes Solas' arm, the touch coming so naturally that it seems almost involuntary. 'Yes,' he says, a little hoarse, 'I am too.'
'Besides,' Solas notes, 'I won the bowling quite conclusively, just as I told you I would, so I am having a very good evening indeed.'
Felassan's nose wrinkles. 'You are insufferable,' he informs Solas, and then at that moment someone at the back of the bowling alley changes the record and turns up the music. Felassan looks at Solas for a moment longer, then he ducks his head and turns away, and as Solas watches he goes over and takes Isabela's hand and they begin to dance.
Other people soon join in, but for himself Solas prefers to simply sit and watch. Felassan is in high-waisted trousers and a loose herringbone sweater vest and his long hair moves around him as his body shifts with the driving rhythm of the music. The dance is highly energetic and Solas recognises it vaguely as the Charleston, though admittedly no one is executing the steps with any particular fidelity - Solas can make out only a great confusing mass of bodies gyrating, arms flying, feet moving almost too quickly to follow.
It is evident to him that Felassan does not really know what he is doing but his natural grace is almost enough to make up for the ignorance: he bends, pliant and limber, swings his hips around, turns his head so his hair falls in a shimmering cascade across his face. More and more people join him and by now he's no longer really dancing with Isabela but simply with himself, with everyone, with the world itself.
For a moment Solas is almost tempted to get up and take part, but no one invites him and in any case he has not danced for years and does not have confidence in his body's ability to recall the motions. He is content enough sitting in the quiet shadows beside the wall, watching everyone laughing and touching freely and skidding happily over the polished floor. It's good to see Felassan like this: joyful and beloved. At peace.
This, Solas reminds himself, is why he hasn't told Felassan the truth about Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain, about the rebellion, about the Dread Wolf. Because Felassan doesn't know he can still have this - straightforward friendships, simple pleasures. He can live free for what remains of his youth.
Solas is happy. Truly he is - this is not even one of the lies he tells himself. It makes him happy to see Felassan so happy.
And yet deep down, of course, there is still something else. Felassan is golden and ephemeral and lovely in a way that will never stop hurting and Solas is happy but he aches and aches and aches. He wants to dance, but only with Felassan. He wants them to touch as they used to; he wants the hushed intimacy they once shared to descend over them again and give them back all that they have lost and are always losing.
***
Solas and Felassan are both, in their own way, ludicrously stubborn, and whatever this might mean for their relationship it at least has the consequence that both of their careers are advancing apace. Occasionally their pursuits intersect - Felassan has access to some information that Solas needs, or Solas gives Felassan a tip-off for a story that other reporters have not yet come across. Every few months Felassan is assigned to write an article covering one of Solas' cases, and he drafts something with great solemnity and then reads it aloud to Solas in between gales of laughter.
Solas accepts the teasing as his due, because of course he would never admit to a soul how much pleasure it gives him to see the paragraphs that Felassan has written about his work printed in the real newspaper for everyone to see. Felassan is always very professional, but Solas fancies that he detects a touch of warmth in the tone. Approval. Those articles in particular he makes sure to cut out and keep.
Although they are both extremely busy they nonetheless speak on the phone almost every day. Felassan calls to ask Solas for advice on a problem he's encountered in his work, or to deliver an outraged spiel about something he's seen in the news, or simply to recount a funny story that demands to be shared immediately. And if Felassan doesn't call then Solas makes up an excuse to call him instead - he can always pretend that he needs to talk over some point of one of his cases or that he is greatly indignant over some misconstrual of elvhen history that he has come across in the papers he still occasionally finds time to read. He suspects that Felassan recognises the excuses for what they are, but in any case he never makes any objection.
One day Felassan calls while Solas is sitting at his desk wrapped in every woollen garment that he owns and making his way grudgingly through a mug of hot water with lemon, which is the closest he is willing to come to tea even in concession to his unfortunate physical state. When the phone rings he takes a moment to breathe in the warm citrus steam, hoping that it will clear his sinuses enough to make his voice sound normal, and then he picks up the phone. 'Hello. How may I help you?'
He does not get away with it for even a moment. 'You sound strange,' Felassan says immediately, his voice rendered a little too angular by the underlying buzz of the phone line. 'Are you sick?'
'Just a cold.'
He can almost hear Felassan's eyes narrowing over the airwaves. 'Solas. Go to bed.'
'It is not - '
'Go to bed.' Felassan's tone brooks no objection. 'I'm coming over and if I find you up and about I will be forced to take drastic measures. Do you hear me?'
The truth is that Solas feels utterly terrible: his head is stuffy and his throat raw, the words on the page before him swimming as he tries to read them, clammy sweat beading at his temples. If he's honest the idea of lying down is really quite appealing, so he puts on his pajamas and gets virtuously into bed - admittedly he does take a pile of papers with him in order to carry on working, but he feels that he has adequately complied with Felassan's directive.
Once he's in the bed, however, it turns out to be softer and warmer than he had anticipated, and his vision is strange and woozy. In fact it takes only a few minutes for him to fall asleep, with the result that the papers he had been holding in his lap end up scattered all over the floor. Felassan steps on them when he comes into the room, and he casts his gaze down at the documents crunching beneath his feet and then rolls his eyes. 'You are an idiot.'
'I went to bed!' Solas protests. 'I slept!'
'Not voluntarily, clearly,' Felassan says. He sits down at the edge of the bed and begins taking things out of his bag.
Solas gazes balefully at the tall silver thermos that emerges first. 'What is that?'
'Chicken soup,' Felassan says. 'That's what you're supposed to bring an invalid.'
Solas wrinkles his nose. 'I am not an invalid, and I do not require chicken soup.'
'It would do you good to eat something other than tinned sardines on toast.'
'I do not eat only tinned sardines on toast,' Solas says. 'I also have tinned mackerel, tinned salmon, tinned oysters - '
'You would be dead of malnutrition if I did not feed you a square meal every once in a while.'
Solas subsides. Felassan is, admittedly, a good cook and he cannot deny that whenever he is invited over to sample the latest culinary experiment he always feels better the next day.
Then Felassan takes a box out of his bag labelled La Patisserie des Reves. This is the bakery which sells Solas' favorite frilly cakes - fat profiteroles filled with pistachio cream and dipped in a rich crackling layer of caramelized sugar. His eyes widen and he puts out a hand, but Felassan holds the box out of his reach. 'First chicken soup,' he proclaims. 'Then cake.'
'You are a very strict nurse,' Solas grumbles.
'And you have to promise that you won't do any more work until tomorrow.'
'But I have - ' Solas begins, and then falls silent when Felassan glares at him.
He supervises while Solas obediently consumes the soup, and then hands over the cake. Once nothing but sticky brown crumbs remains in the box, he tells Solas to move over and then he climbs onto the bed and sits there beside him, stretching his legs out over the covers. He gives a little sigh, allowing his head to lean against Solas' shoulder.
Usually they do not permit themselves this much physical contact, but apparently Felassan has decided the usual rules do not apply while Solas is sick, and Solas certainly is not going to object. He feels absolutely miserable, physically speaking, and yet simultaneously he is also very happy. He regrets that his nose is so congested that he cannot verify whether Felassan still smells the way he always used to.
'You will catch my cold,' he says.
'I'll risk it,' Felassan says.
Solas wants to stay awake in case Felassan never allows this again, but his body betrays him and within minutes he is asleep. When he wakes the warmth beside him is gone and he thinks Felassan has left him alone, and for a moment he is, humiliatingly, almost ready to cry over it, but then he hears someone moving in the dark and Felassan's hand reaches down to brush his shoulder. 'Go back to sleep. You'll feel better tomorrow,' Felassan says, and then after that he dozes fitfully in the chair across from Solas' bed, watching over him all night long until the fever breaks.
***
It is the warmest week of the summer and Felassan, dressed in light cotton slacks and a linen shirt with most of the buttons undone, is lying on Solas' settee and soliloquizing at great length about a human colleague whose behaviour he finds despicable and whose comeuppance he intends to exact in short order. Then, just as he is about to lay out the details of his intended revenge, the phone rings.
Solas, who is dressed in his usual three-piece suit despite the heat, gets to his feet and crosses the room in two strides and picks up the receiver. 'Hello. How may I help you?'
He listens, clicking his tongue, and then he nods shortly. 'Very well,' he says. 'Half an hour.'
Felassan gazes up at him as he replaces the phone in the cradle; the aggravating colleague has apparently been forgotten. 'Half an hour what?'
'The Renauld case,' Solas says, carefully averting his gaze from the place where Felassan's shirt falls open. 'Monsieur Conneau has agreed to speak with me, but he insists it must be now, and he wants to meet on the golf course outside of Val Chemin.'
Felassan frowns. 'But you believe that Monsieur Conneau is the killer.'
'I know that he is the killer. That is precisely why I wish to speak with him.'
Felassan glances out the window as if to confirm something, though he must already know that night has fallen. There is no moon and the stars are obscured by the heavy cloud of an impending thunderstorm; the darkness is coming down like a deluge, and yet the warmth of the evening makes the shadows feel not entirely real. 'You're not going alone?' he says. 'To meet a murderer at night, in a secluded place? Solas - '
He gives a little shrug. 'The matter is time sensitive.'
Felassan's lips tighten. 'You're not supposed to - I thought you just handled the thinking part and let the police do the confrontations.'
'That is my usual preference,' Solas concedes. 'But at present I do not have adequate evidence to make an accusation. If I speak with Monsieur Conneau I am sure he will slip up and give me what I need.'
Felassan gets to his feet and plucks his peaked cap from the hat-stand, placing it carelessly on his head at an angle which unfortunately only accentuates the rakish charm of his ensemble. 'I'll come with you,' he says.
'That is not necessary,' says Solas, his eyes fixed determinedly on the window because right now it seems safest not to look at Felassan at all.
'I know it isn't.'
'Fel,' Solas says. 'I can handle it. Really.'
'I know you can. I just want to see you in action. It's exciting.'
Solas frowns, uncertain. As a matter of fact he quite regularly finds himself in much greater peril than this: his work as the Dread Wolf often requires him to venture onto Val Royeaux's seedier side for purposes of recruitment or fundraising. He has learned over the years to deal smartly with all sorts of unsavory characters, so a single inexperienced murderer is hardly going to pose much of a threat to him.
But he can't tell Felassan that. 'Well,' he relents. 'If you insist.'
And so they ride the metro together out toward the far side of the city. They have the carriage to themselves, but the train is too noisy to allow conversation and so they sit side by side in silence, attempting to endure the heat with some dignity. Once they emerge back up to the street it is only a few minutes' walk to the golf course; in the darkness the undulations of its grassy knolls appear as if there is an immense frozen ocean spread beyond the rise, and despite the warmth still pressing down upon them Solas has the fleeting impression that he can smell ice.
The chill that rolls down his back clashes oddly with the sweat gathering at his temples and he is, despite himself, glad that Felassan is at his side. He raises a hand to touch the revolver strapped to his chest beneath his jacket and reminds himself firmly that he has killed men significantly more terrifying than Monsieur Conneau.
They stand waiting beneath a pair of generous walnut trees, leaves ruffling above with a sibilant, atonal harmony. Felassan bounces on the balls of his feet and shades his eyes to look out over the golf course. 'What should I do when he comes?' he says. 'Should I try to look threatening?'
'Please do not,' Solas says fervently.
'Then what should I do?'
'You need only appear calm and competent.'
'Like this?'
Solas examines the attempt; it certainly does not communicate anything close to competence. Also, Felassan's collar is askew, so he reaches out and fixes it. 'No,' he says, and then, 'Simply do not smile.'
They are interrupted by the sound of footsteps emerging through that warm, clouded darkness, and Solas shakes his head firmly to dissuade further conversation. Felassan looks uncertain for a moment but then his foot stops tapping and he stands up straight, linking his hands behind his back as if imitating Solas' own preferred stance, and his face goes still and silent in a way that is in fact quite plausibly intimidating.
Monsieur Conneau appears quite suddenly out of the shadows, and his appearance is blatantly, excruciatingly Orlesian, though Solas could not have pinned down exactly why: neither the ruddy fleshiness of his face nor the blustery ostentation of his navy overcoat are necessarily unique to this country. Perhaps it's the hair, which is carefully combed and slicked back in a way that most likely covers a bald patch. Naturally Solas himself, with his own austere approach to coiffure, has little patience for such dishonesties.
'Monsieur,' he says, with an incline of the head so infinitesimal it could not be anything but an insult.
The nobleman's eyes' narrow. 'I said just you.'
'My colleague wished to accompany me,' Solas says. 'I assure you, he is quite trustworthy. You may speak freely.'
Felassan stands silently by his side, glaring just past Monsieur Conneau's shoulder, and somehow, although he is neither tall nor unusually bulky, he manages to give quite a convincing imitation of hired muscle. Solas, meanwhile, is in his element - he directs the dialogue briskly, laying conversational traps and then detonating them so skillfully that Monsieur Conneau notices his stumbles only several sentences too late. The nobleman's face grows steadily paler as he perceives what is happening, but his pride prevents him from taking his leave too soon and that, Solas thinks with satisfaction, will be his downfall.
By the time the Orlesian noble does make his departure, untouched in body but significantly bruised in ego, Solas knows exactly where to find the evidence he needs. He smiles smugly and meanwhile Felassan starts laughing, breathless and gleeful. 'Well that was the most fun I've had in a long time. You were - quite something.'
Solas feels the praise land squarely within him, with the same comforting weight as a cat sleeping on his chest. 'Ah, you thought so?' he says.
Felassan elbows him. 'Stop fishing for compliments. You know how impressive you are.'
'I will keep fishing if it keeps working.'
Felassan laughs, his eyes crinkling, and then he puts an arm around Solas' waist and it is the closest touch they have shared since that disastrous night in Felassan's apartment and for a moment Solas is not able to breathe.
But Felassan doesn't move any closer. He simply nudges his shoulder against Solas' and laughs again and says, 'You know lethallin, you really do have your moments,' and Solas closes his eyes and pretends they are not stinging and his chest is not flooded with this aching, agonizing longing for things he knows very well he cannot have.
***
Felassan calls the next week to say that he is learning to make gnocchi and he needs a a guinea pig. Solas, of course, shows up obligingly.
Felassan's apartment is soft-toned and for Solas' own tastes perhaps a little overdecorated, though he's come to be fond of the porcelain owls on the shelves and the little wooden flute on the mantelpiece. The wallpaper is printed with muted magnolias and Felassan keeps the vase on his dining table always filled with flowers - today a tumble of starry white jasmine, giving off a creamy, bruised perfume. All through the apartment the light from the kerosene lamps is very warm.
Felassan himself has flour in his hair and streaked halfway down his sleeve, and the gnocchi leave something to be desired in terms of the regularity of their appearance, but they are, Solas must concede, delicious - fat green bundles stuffed with spinach and drizzled generously with butter and sage and parmesan. He eats far too much and yet there's still a great deal left, since Felassan's quantity estimates typically err on the side of enthusiasm rather than mathematical rigour.
'My verdict is that the dish did not require so much butter,' he says, chasing the last morsels around the golden residue left on his plate. 'I feel like I should have rolled up my sleeves before beginning.'
'Well, perhaps that was my plan all along,' Felassan says, leaning back in his chair in such a precarious way that the front legs leave the ground.
'If you would like to look at my forearms you need only make your wishes known,' Solas says, finishing the glass of crisp white that Felassan provided along with the gnocchi. 'There is no call for these elaborate concealments.'
'I'm just worried that they're not getting enough sun. No doubt you're all pasty and pale under there.'
'I am always pasty and pale. It is congenital, I fear.'
'How can you know if you never allow any part of your body besides your face to see the sun?'
'Oh?' Solas says. 'And which part of my body do you think I should be revealing to the light of day?'
Felassan grins. 'Well - maybe I'll draw up a list.'
Solas snorts, and scoops up the last piece of gnocchi. He considers asking for a third serving, but prudence prevails. 'You should have invited Isabela too,' he says instead. 'I'm sure she would have been willing to help.'
'Oh,' Felassan says, and then, 'Actually we - we parted ways.'
Solas feels an assortment of very complicated things that he is not particularly inclined to disentangle, and in any case he is too comfortably full and contented to feel any of them with great urgency right now. 'Why?' he says, and then realises too late that perhaps he has no right to probe into this matter.
But Felassan simply shrugs. 'I missed her naval commissioning ceremony. She had something to say about my priorities.'
Solas' eyebrows rise. 'You - what? Fel, why would you do that?'
Felassan's eyes skitter away. 'Something came up.'
Suddenly Solas has a low foreboding feeling. 'Was it last Wednesday?' he says, recalling their evening journey to the golf course.
Felassan doesn't look at him. 'Yeah,' he says, and then, quickly, as if to forestall recriminations, 'It's fine, it's fine. It wasn't really working anyway.'
Solas swallows. 'I did not - I would not ask, I would never - '
Felassan looks away. 'No, really, it wasn't - I just forgot about it. That's on me. Scatterbrain.'
Solas is not sure he believes that. 'Felassan - '
'We don't need to talk about this any more,' Felassan says firmly.
Solas looks down, because some traitorous part of him is delighted to hear that they are no longer together, but he knows that this is unwise and unkind and distinctly unworthy of him.
Felassan casts a quick glance across the table, angled and diagonal, and then he gets to his feet. 'I've got almond biscuits. I know you like them. Just a minute.'
Solas watches him go out of the room and grasps in vain for his previous feeling of contentment, but it's gone now and there is nothing left in its place but guilt and guilt and guilt - and then, beneath it, a jittering, shameful hope that he does his very best to crush into submission.
***
That night Solas allows himself to think of Felassan in the quiet moments before sleep, when the mulberry twilight loosens his shoulders and renders him briefly into a person different from his ordinary self. He does not permit this practice often, because it presumably only serves to encourage the ill-advised yearning, but every now and then he succumbs.
On the nights he thinks of Felassan he curls up small and he is gentle with himself, conjuring Felassan's face with a careful, tender clarity. Felassan surely cannot truly be as beautiful as Solas thinks he is, because if that were so then every single person in Val Royeaux would be in love with him - some of the beauty is born of history and infatuation, but it has all become inextricable and in this, at least, Solas is quite willing to allow his own cognitive distortions.
He closes his eyes and thinks of Serault. It is complicated because the act itself, he sees now, was strangely fractured by his own fear and habitual dissociation, which he could not understand with any lucidity until the passage of the years taught him to know himself better. So it is the moments before which live most clearly in his mind - how Felassan took care of him, whispered to him, soothed him through the shame that he was not able to articulate. Of all their shared memories those are the ones which ache within him with the deepest longing and affection and gratefulness.
Afterwards he stares silently at the darkness gathering in the corners of the room, conscious of a small, quiet guilt. Felassan does not want him any longer, and he surely would not like Solas thinking of him in such a way. Solas should find the strength of will to put this facet of their attachment out of his mind.
But it is not, he must acknowledge, going away. If anything the years of friendship have only deepened his feelings, grounding them in a calm, mature certainty. Even putting aside the physical attraction their relationship is precious to him in a way that speaks most of all to the quality of Felassan's character: despite everything that Solas has done he still remains steadfast and loyal and inexhaustibly kind.
Unfortunately Solas is beginning to reach the conclusion that the only possible way for him to stop being in love with Felassan would be to simply end the friendship and never see him again. But he can't do that. He truly cannot imagine going on without him.
Well - it hurts, but not unbearably so. He can live with it. He will simply endure.