#roland and lacklon were pure gold

[jay-wasstuff]

Some homemade memes of Dragon Age Absolution

[timptoe]

Of Butterflies and Flying Dwarves

I have a problem. And that problem is I want to put all my favorite grumpy characters on hoverboards.

Remember that spell Hira used to fly on a disk of pure magic? Qwydion sure does, and she's determined to make it work—whether Lacklon likes it or not.

aka the Dragon Age: Absolution fic I worked on to help me delay finishing Mass Effect so fast. 

Read the whole thing on Ao3.

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“Oh shit oh shit oh shit look out!”

A scream, followed by the crash of broken branches, followed by a groan. A familiar pattern. The fourth time this has happened in the last hour.

Ugh.

“What in the name of the Ancestors is she doing over there?” Lacklon grumbles.

“Magic, I think,” Roland responds, his honey-coated accent positively dripping with mirth.

They’ve been traveling on the road for a little over a week now, tracking Hira through the wilds of Tevinter. Lacklon would be just fine leaving her to the wolves and moving on to another job, but no he apparently has friends now and they’ve all decided to do the noble thing and chase her down to get that sodding magic circle thing back. Buncha dumbasses.

Roland shifts where he’s sitting with Lacklon against a fallen log, idly brushing against Lacklon’s shoulder. Well, maybe there are a few perks to staying.

Qwydion pokes her head out of the bush she’d fallen into, wide perpetual grin stretched across her face. “Guys! Guys! Did you see that?”

“Yeah, I saw you fall face-first into a bush,” Lacklon calls over, “so if that’s what you were aiming for, you know, congratulations.”

Roland nudges him with his elbow. “It was a good attempt, Qwydion.” He leaves his elbow against Lacklon’s shoulder, and Lacklon doesn’t move away.

“What’re you trying to do, anyway?” Lacklon thinks he does a pretty good job keeping his voice steady despite the butterflies in his stomach. “Because we’re trying to keep a low profile here and all the, you know, noise over there ain’t what I’d call stealthy.”

“Ah, you worry too much,” the qunari mage says, brushing the leaves off of her sleeve and striding across the clearing to where the pair are sitting. “Miri already scouted around here and there’s nothing but birds and trees for miles. I’m fine!”

Lacklon stares at the footlong branch tangled up in her horns. “Right. Fine.”

Roland chuckles and leans a bit harder into Lacklon’s arm. The butterflies dance faster. “Still no luck in replicating Hira’s spell?” the Orlesian asks.

Qwydion harrumphs and drops down next to them, trying to detach the wayward branch from the gold loop on her right horn. “I’ve got the basic principle, I think, but force magic isn’t my speciality. Making things go—“ here, she makes a pa-chooo noise “—is. It’s a different kind of energy focus, creation instead of destruction, especially trying to create a circle of pure magic I can stand on.” She pouts. “It’s tough.”

Roland chuckles again. “Do not worry. I am sure you will get it right.”

She flops over backward and twists her head up at him, grinning again. “Thanks Roland.”

“I don’t get why this is such a big deal,” Lacklon grumps. “Hira’s terrible. Stands to reason any magic she can cast is terrible, too.”

Qwydion frowns from her upside-down position. “Magic isn’t terrible. Magic isn’t good or bad, it just is. It’s who and how you use it that gives it a moral, you know, whatever.” She pauses for a moment. “But I do agree with you that Hira is terrible.”

“Regardless,” Roland says gently, “it is fascinating to watch you work.”

“Fascinating, hilarious, same thing,” Lacklon mutters under his breath. 

Qwydion impishly sticks her tongue out at him.

“Perhaps we can help?” Roland casually twines his fingers with Lacklon’s, which has the effect of stopping Lacklon from continuing to poke fun at their companion. Mostly because those butterflies have decided to have the dance battle to end all dance battles in his stomach.

Damn, this guy is smooth.

“I may not know magic,” the warrior continues, as if he has no idea at all what he’s doing to Lacklon by oh-so-gently brushing the heel of Lacklon’s palm with his thumb, “but sometimes talking it out helps. And I do know something about tactics.” He lightly squeezes Lacklon’s hand once, never breaking eye contact with Qwydion.

Fucking smooth.

“Sure! Couldn’t hurt, right?” Qwydion springs up and crouches in the dirt in front of them, completely oblivious to Lacklon’s currently tenuous grip on reality. She rapidly marks out a series of glyphs and runes in the dirt as she talks. “Okay, so take elemental magic. When I pull raw magic out of the Fade, I can just tell what it wants to be, you know? Like, say, if I want to throw a lightning bolt, I find the energy that’s most, you know, lightning-ish and I pull on it and then it’s there. If I want to make a wall of fire, I focus on the area where I want that wall the happen and then pull some fire-y energy out and it becomes fire, you know? I mean, it’s a little more complicated than that, especially when you get into the more destructive stuff, but that’s essentially what it feels like.”

Roland blinks. “Have you ever—“

“I’ve never been to school for this, no, self-taught Tal Vashoth over here!” Qwydion laughs nervously. “Anywho force magic is different. You pull the threads of raw magic and then shape the energy in a specific way. Like with Hira’s spell: the raw energy is shaped into a disc and then told, you know, stay. Except,” she leans forward conspiratorially, “magic doesn’t like being told what to do like that. Especially when you’re making something semi-permanent like that disc. The energy is always trying to separate and go back to the Fade. Keeping it present is the part I keep messing up.”

She cocks her head at them, hope shining in her eyes. “So…that’s where I am. Thoughts?”

Lacklon looks at Roland, who has the dazed expression of someone who just got brained by the short end of a long sword. How is it possible he even looks cute when he’s confused?

The Orlesian shakes it off after a moment. “Haha, yes,” he laughs faintly, “that does sound like a problem.”

“You have no idea what I just said, do you,” Qwydion says flatly.

“Not a clue,” he admits.

“Uuugh, why am I so bad at this?” she groans in frustration. “Is it because I’m self-taught? Other mages don’t seem to have a problem getting their point across but whenever I try it everything comes out—“

“What if you put it in something?” Lacklon muses.

Qwydion stops and stares at him, mouth open in mid-sentence. He doesn’t look but he can feel Roland staring, too. He ducks his head, heat flooding his cheeks, and mutters, “What? Nevermind.”

“No no, say that again,” the mage says, suddenly very interested.

“I just—“ he starts, then stops abruptly. This is stupid, those runes in the dirt might as well be pictures of animals for all he can tell, magic isn’t his bag and the last thing he wants is to look stupid in front of Roland.

And that’s the stupidest thing of all.

Ugh, they’ve only been whatever-this-is for a few days and already he’s acting like he’s lost his sodding mind. Get it together, Lacklon.

But when he (finally) looks over at Roland, all he sees is an encouraging smile. The most beautiful smile he’s ever oh fine what the hell.

“You said the magical energy or whatever doesn’t want to stay together, right?” he says gruffly, getting the words out as quickly as he can. “So contain it. Put it in something. ‘S what I do with my grenades.”

The glade is silent for a moment, long enough for the heat on his cheeks to spread to the tips of his ears. Stupid. Shoulda kept my—

Qwydion sweeps him off the ground, spinning him around in a hug as she cackles with glee. “Lacklon! That’s perfect! What an incredible idea, giving the energy a physical barrier might help it keep its shape, I can’t believe I— oh, I could kiss you right now!” She stops suddenly, holding him directly out in front of her with her freakish qunari strength. “Well, guess that one’s not my job,” she adds with a wicked gleam in her eye.

He has never wished he were a mage with the ability to shoot fire straight out of his eyes more than in this moment.

She laughs and puts him down on the ground, then skips back across the clearing without another word.

Lacklon mutters a string of curses under his breath involving the Ancestors, her ancestors, and the unnaturalness of magic, then turns to go practice his axe work on a stump or seven. And stops right in front of Roland.

Who says, “No, that one is my job,” and leans down to kiss him gently on the forehead.

Lacklon feels all the anger rush out of him as the butterflies return, dancing pinwheels around Roland’s fingers as they caress his cheek. “You are truly breathtaking, you know that?”

The dwarf huffs, heat at the tips of his ears for a different reason now. “Why don’t, uh…why don’t you come with me over here and tell me more about that?”

Roland grins brightly enough to outshine the sun. 

Read the rest on Ao3!