#[ cracked myself up writing solas's long conspiracy for what happened to his cloak ]

[theharellan]

He bundles the gift carefully, wrapping it within its own folds to disguise the efforts of his own labor. Samite is easier to find than silk, and though less pleasing to the fingers, lends itself to a more agreeable bow. It holds its shape as he tweaks the loops into place, meticulous in the presentation.

He leaves the offering in their shared room, balanced atop Solas's pillow to await his return. When the bow is unlaced to free the fabric it restrains, Solas will discover one of his cloaks--long assumed lost to the washing vats--restored and returned. Ian's intricate stitch work now adorns the entire piece, trailing vines and flowers traveling along the lower hem and rising to burst into bloom where the clasp--the old brass hitch replaced with a more intricate, golden plated hook and eye--will meet at his throat. The vines rise still, though the flowers fade, green ivies will lift to frame his face when he wears the hood.

Thora had been helpful, when he'd approached. Which cloak should he steal? What color would look most fetching against its background? Which blue most resembled Solas's eyes, so that the petals might catch the sunlight the same way the clouds do when the rain breaks?

He's eager, waiting for Solas to discover it. Anxious, too, but in a way that thrills. He's almost certain it will be well-received.

For months, he was certain who had lost it.

Millicent, the laundress who had turned one of his favourite sweaters pink (not an unbecoming colour, but not the colour he had intended when he picked it from the market). He was sure she had spoiled his cloak somehow, and had simply not wanted to face the shame a second time.

Ian had brushed aside his suspicions when he'd voiced them, although it had done nothing to allay them. Life makes a liar of all apostates, but Ian has always been singularly terrible at telling them.

He had assumed, but not said, that he was protecting Millicent. From his disapproval, if nothing else.

Now he sees the truth at the heart of the matter literally unfold before his eyes.

The pattern flows beautifully, drawing the eye up the length of the cloak and towards the hood, which without a shape to hold it folds over. He billows it out, then draws it close, latching the clasp together at his neck as the door cracks open. Solas is still fitting the hood over his head as Ian closes it behind him. Where his ears poke through the holes in the fabric, he feels the shape of vines outlining the slit, as though his ears were but another pair of leaves in the painting.

"I see you- you've found that cloak you were missing," Ian says by way of apology, a smile tweaking one corner of his lips. He pinches off his shoes with the backs of his heels, leaving them at the door by the wash basin. Finding his way to Solas's side and his lips to his cheek, he adds, "It looks- do you... do you like it?"

"I do." He sweeps his arm out, admiring the fall of the fabric in the negative space between his arm and torso, peering back to see how the flowers climb him like a trellis. "Though I am not accustomed to owning fine things." Anymore, he adds silently. "I will have to think of places to wear it."

"Perhaps the gardens, for a start," Ian suggests. "Or to the markets at the lower levels. I hear that- I understand there are- Josephine told me there's Antivans there." Which means there will be coffee, is what Solas fills in for Ian.

With Ian standing in the outline of his cloak, Solas cannot help noting that he had picked one with a wingspan large enough to accommodate them both. And the evening air does carry a chill, even nestled in the valley.

"A fine beginning," he says, nestling his nose into Ian's curls and breathing in. The cloak falls around them both, shrugging over Ian's shoulders as he turns his lips to one side, to add with smiling lips: "And thank you, for returning my cloak."