Listened To "so American" On Repeat, Have Toxic Solavellan Modern AU Thoughts. This Is What They Are

listened to "so american" on repeat, have toxic solavellan modern AU thoughts. this is what they are in canon. to me.

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Your hand brushes his on the gear shift, and he smiles, not looking at you because his eyes are always on the road when he drives. Everything he does, he undertakes with a grave kind of seriousness, with you dutifully posing as distraction.

“You’re pretty,” he says when he stops at a red light, steals a glance at you. He’s the first man that didn’t feel insecure that his clothes fit you perfectly—the first man to meet your eyes and didn’t insist he was taller than you, actually. Why would he be insecure about this when he gains so much height in any other aspect of your lives?

He lifts his hand from the gear shift to brush your hair out of your face, just for a tiny, self-indulgent second. His fingers are cold to the touch. They always are.

You watch his profile as he switches his attention back to driving. In the warm sunset light, he looks almost divine. He is easy to worship, even when he claims not to want it. Sometimes you think that he’s not real at all, he’s just a figment of your imagination. He’s too perfect. He’s something out of a poetry book, but you don’t write anymore.

Whenever you make a joke, he laughs like it’s the first time he’s ever heard that one. He will smile to himself, then, a private, self-indulgent sneer, not directed at you but at what you represent in his eyes. Not always. Only when he remembers it. Only when he remembers that you are not the same.

“I do forget that you’re Dalish,” he’ll tell you.

It’s not fair that your heart jumps when he says it. It’s a compliment out of his mouth, and an insult to everything you grew up with at the same time. He looks at you in spite of.

You would follow him anywhere, glued to his lips, hungrily taking in everything he has to teach you. You would swear any oath that can bind you two together, if only to keep listening to him.

It might as well be love.

You have nothing to offer to him, of course. He’s more knowledgeable than you, and he thinks your practices are crude. He takes up every conversation you have; his words become yours, his wisdom echoes in everything you say.

In bed, he touches you like you’re the only thing that can sate him. He’s been starved of affection and you have denied it yourself for so long. You melt against him, let him reshape you, drinking in his praise like plants take in the sun.

“I do forget that you are Dalish,” he’ll tell you.

And you forget it too, because he makes it all seem so insignificant, all so small and laughable and worthless.

You choose him so quickly, from the moment you first meet him, but he falls just as fast. It’s not something you discuss, not at first. He kisses you, almost unthinkingly—only almost, of course, because he weighs his every action against the weight in his chest—and when he tries to turn away, you guide him back to you.

It has to be love.

He looks at you in spite of.