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bedroom; heartroom

I really love the whole ‘person A brings up wanting to have kids and person B had never really considered it but now can’t stop thinking about it’ trope

***

He wakes to the feel of her weight moving against him, to the warmth tucked under the curve of his arm pressing back with surprising insistence, and with his initial disorientation it takes him a moment to realise that he’s being skilfully, if a bit forcefully, nudged off the side of the bed.

Blinking away sleep, Solas takes stock of the situation – the whole, honest size of her stretched out across the bed. She tends to move around in her sleep, he’s learned; she’ll curl in on herself, a cat’s contentment in languid, too-large movements, and wiggle until she’s comfortable. Meaning, when she’s all but pushed him off the mattress.

“Ellana.”

“Mm?”

Her shirt has climbed halfway up her chest, and she’s tangled her bare feet in the wool blankets, an endearing chaos in her heavy slumber that it takes him a moment to tear his eyes away from. But, “I conceded the blanket,” Solas tells her, kissing the words into the dip of her throat. “That you yield enough space for me to sleep is not much to ask in return.”

Ellana grunts – there’s really no kinder way of describing the guttural noise that pulls from deep in her chest. “…could get your own blanket.”

“I did. You have commandeered both.”

She’s quiet at that, and for a moment he wonders if she’s fallen back asleep – if she’d awoken at all – when she suddenly sighs and, rolling over towards him, it’s to bury her face in the crook of his neck. “One day, we’re getting a bigger bed,” she murmurs, and whatever thought had been at the forefront of his mind flees on swift feet.

“A cottage somewhere,” she continues, when he’s failed to provide a response. “When this is all over. Small cottage. Big bed.” She giggles. “Lots of room for…activities.”

She’s not usually subtle – it’s one of her more charming qualities, but at least awake her propositions are shy and fumbling things, blurted rather than offered coyly, and with none of the suggestiveness he finds in her tone now. But when he thinks she’s about to continue down the path she’s started on–

“Hmm. Cottage’s got to be big enough for kids, though,” Ellana declares, and Solas’ heart goes still in his chest.

It’s not a good idea to pursue that comment – for his own sake more than anyone else’s, but, “I did not know you’d thought of children,” he says quietly, before he can stop himself. His hand hesitates by her ear, fingers shaking slightly, but when she hums in affirmation he buries them in her hair.

“Two,” she says, the word little more than a breath, but it’s loud in the quiet of her chambers – loud in his ears, filling his entire head, until it’s all he can think about, two sets of small hands and delicate, pointed ears; the first large and curved like hers, and the second–

“Mmmaybe three,” Ellana continues, and he knows she’s asleep – is certain she wouldn’t divulge this information so casually if she weren’t, and he should rouse her, Solas knows, but – “I’d like at least one of each,” she adds, as though to herself. “Hmm, a girl would be nice. You’d be so good with a girl.”

It’s suddenly hard to breathe, and he really shouldn’t think about it, but the wistful joy in her sleep-roughed voice drives every shred of common sense from his mind, and what’s left is a fledgling image taking shape too fast for him to banish it. And it’s impossible not to wonder – to imagine the fall of her hair, sleek and brown or a mop of wild, russet curls; a full lip tucked between uneven teeth, and a pale brow furrowed in fierce concentration. A dimple, perfectly placed at the centre of her chin, or one in each cheek–

“What about you?” Ellana asks then, the question half-mumbled, the syllables thick with sleep, and curled around a yawn.

It’s a challenge just finding his voice, and he knows that if he were to remain silent, it’s likely she wouldn’t even notice – like she probably won’t remember speaking of this come morning, even as Solas knows that every word is etched into his own memory to stay. But he could say nothing – should say nothing, and pretend she never asked.

“I should like a girl,” he tells her instead, with an honesty that burns on his tongue, his voice little more than a murmur, and the pang of regret that follows is so fierce it’s hard to swallow past it.

Ellana sighs, seemingly content with the answer, and oblivious to the shaking fingers curled to a fist against her back, pressed between her shoulder blades, and he feels the beat of her heart – feels her easy contentment in the sprawl of her against him; the sleepy smile tucked against his throat, and each and every one of her heavy, even breaths.

“Shouldn’t make the bear juggle,” she mumbles then, brow furrowing with the words. “Solas – Solas, you need to tell Varric it’s a bad idea.”

He smiles quite despite himself, some of the tension bleeding out of his muscles until his palm lies flat against her back, but it doesn’t shake the tremble from his fingers, brushing against the ends of her hair where it lies in a tumble across the pillow. And – hers, definitely, he thinks, imagining how he might mix the right colour, brown and red, and if it would curl, or lie flat.

“I will tell him, vhenan.”

She murmurs something that sounds like agreement before she falls silent once more, but even as sleep pulls her back down in earnest, Solas remains awake, suddenly reluctant to welcome the Fade’s embrace. Because there’s a trickle of worry now at the back of his mind, of what he’ll find if he does – the sound of running feet and an elated voice calling out, young and bright. A bed that’s bigger but still too small, with her stomach round under his palm, and the mattress dipping under another shape who, like her mother, is not the least bit afraid to make room for herself.

But what worries him most is not the dream itself, but the very real longing that accompanies the idea now that it’s stubbornly taken root.