#they have a family and they're very happy kthnks

[blarrghe]

Time for the annual Twelve Nights update. I almost didn't write this but then I did. It's uh,, 1:00 am just after Christmas so close enough.

Twelve Nights is the gay holiday Hallmark fic that you deserve. This is a big ol' sappy satinalia sequel. Rated E for Extremely soft blowjobs. To all a good night! --

Snow was falling in large, fluffy flakes, adding to the white of Deshanna’s yard that glittered in the glow of dangling white holiday lights across the edge of the old house’s pointed roof. Smoke rose from the chimney, and even from halfway up the long driveway Taren could smell the familiar scent of woodsmoke on the crisp air. 

They pulled Bee up on a sled, alternating turns as she laughed and cheered and occasionally swept up a handful of snow that had to be (unsuccessfully) scolded away from her mouth. She was in charge of guarding the presents, and so far doing a very good job.

“Still have them all, da’len?” Taren slowed a few steps to walk beside the sled as Dorian pulled, looking down at the well insulated bundle of a five-year-old dwarf girl cradling several large, colourfully wrapped presents in her lap. 

“Thing’s heavy enough,” Dorian returned from in front, barely believably grumpy about it. 

“Yep!” cried Bracha, grinning. 

Taren felt himself grinning back, warmth spreading through his cheeks even in the cold. He leaned over to scoop his daughter up into his arms. 

“Light enough now?” 

Dorian harrumphed, still unconvincingly, and dragged the sled the rest of the way over to the porch steps. “Still don’t see why we couldn’t drive.” 

“It’s a lovely evening for a walk,” Taren bantered back, hopping up the steps, babe-in-arms, and adjusting his hold on the child to just one arm in order to knock. 

“It’s a bloody cold evening for a walk.” 

“It’s just up the road.” 

“Up the road — key word.” 

Dorian was still struggling to manoeuvre all the gifts from the sled and up the steps when the door opened, revealing a warm golden glow of light and the tall, grey-haired figure of Deshanna "Auntie Dee" Lavellan. She smiled warmly, a bright gleam still in her eye even as her mouth pulled back against the wrinkled skin and faded tattoos over her cheeks.

“Auntie!” Bracha squealed, wriggling in his arms before Taren let her down. Then she was jumping into the woman with a hug to her legs that stumbled her backwards with a laugh, and then she was hopping down the steps again to help her father unload the sled, shouting “lo Satinalia! We brought presents!” 

Auntie Dee embraced Taren in one of her very secure hugs and left a firm kiss on his cheek before ushering him inside. Then she did the same to Dorian, once he and their daughter had managed to bring the last of the gifts up. Taren hung his coat and knelt to help Bracha out of her snowpants and boots. Dorian rubbed his hands together and aggressively stomped the snow off his feet. He still played at grumpy complains, muttering and grumbling, his cheeks reddened with the cold. 

Within moments, however, they were all well and warm again, seated in Auntie Dee’s living room by a roaring fire and a tall pine tree hung with tinsel and lights and too many ornaments. Bracha tore into presents, Auntie Dee filled Dorian’s cup with mulled wine, and Taren relaxed into the couch beside him. 

The scent of food cooking in the kitchen filled the whole house. After his own mug of mulled wine had been drained, an oven timer began to beep, and Auntie Dee sprang up to attend to things. Taren followed, leaving Dorian to pull Bee into his lap, examining her new toys together with inquisitive eyes and fiddling fingers. He set plates at the table, got himself shooed away from tasting things, helped to fill serving dishes and carve meats and finally popped out again to beckon his husband and daughter over to the table. 

Bracha bounded over, hopping up to her own spot at the table and waiting eagerly for the rest of them. Auntie Dee set to serving her ahead, spoiling her with heaping portions and settling in across from her with a story at the ready. Dorian followed more slowly, not just an adult with an adult’s reasonable pace across a living room, but with distant eyes and a thoughtful smile as he took in the tree, the pictures on the wall, the beaded decorations in the windows, and finally, Taren. 

“Amatus,” he muttered softly, coming close and smiling into a kiss at Taren’s temple. 

Taren tucked an arm around his waist and pulled him along, returning a kiss to his cheek. He smelled of new aftershave and his skin was warm against Taren’s lips, his sweater soft under his hand. 

They ate, filling up on too many courses and too many rounds of stories and sweet mulled wine. Bracha bounced up from the table to play with new toys and returned again for more helpings of pie at least three times, then she nearly fell asleep face-first into one of them. Taren laughed, tipsy now on his wine, and Dorian rose from the table to scoop her out of her chair. Taren followed him down the hall, looking wistfully himself now at familiar walls covered in familiar pictures. 

They set her down in his old room. The walls were different, decorated now in new art instead of his old drawings and posters — though some of it was still his. The bed was different, set tidy for guests instead of strewn with his unmade sheets. The desk was new, the dresser filled with spare linens and summer clothes. But it was still his room, still the same place — sometimes the only place — that had felt safe and quiet when he’d been growing up. 

He hadn’t been much older than her, he thought, touching on bittersweet memory, when he’d first slept here. 

He watched from the doorway as Dorian toppled the little girl into the bed and tucked blankets around her. His heart melted in wine-drunk sentimentality, and just the very true joy of it, as he watched that tall, serious man bend a kiss to her sleeping brow. 

He took a breath and cleared his face as well as he could of his welling tears when Dorian turned to look up at him, and stepped into the room. 

“Goodnight, Bee,” he whispered, brushing back a thick fringe of tight brown curls to kiss the sleeping girl’s forehead himself, and ruffling it all a little extra as he left the bedside. 

Dorian’s hand rubbed a circle against his shoulder behind him, and then he caught him in a close hold as he rose up again. His hand came up to round over Taren’s cheek, then to pull his face close by the chin. They met in a long kiss, sweet wine and deep feeling between their lips. 

It was hours still before the fire in the living room burned down and the stories ran out. Auntie Dee told several embarrassing ones, while Taren shook his head with laughter and Dorian leaned in. She got them blankets from a cupboard as the clock passed midnight. Taren remembered how to roll the couch out into a bed, and he helped to set the living room while Dorian helped to tidy the kitchen. Then Auntie Dee took her yawning leave down the hall, and there they were, left alone with the glowing embers of the woodfire and the dim twinkling lights around the tree. 

Taren sat on the creaky old couch bed, taking it all in. Dorian came slowly to a creaking seat beside him, and for several quiet moments just held his hand. He turned a soft kiss into the side of Taren’s neck, now smelling of the aftershave and the wine on his lips, still soft and warm. The kisses trailed up until they nibbled at the lobe of his ear. Taren laughed, tickled, and turned into him. 

The whole house was so still and quiet. Soft snow continued to fall outside in the dark beyond the windows, while inside the warm air smelled of pine and cooked berries. Quiet and peaceful and perfect, though their every movement sent the bed into creaks and sharp whines.

Taren rose and slipped from his sweater, a heavy holiday knit that Dorian especially liked to poke fun at — and was already tugging playfully up from his waist. Dorian did the same, catching him skin-to-skin in another long kiss before he could slip out of anything else. 

“Vhenan,” he whispered, feeling the prickle of his moustache on his lips and then just his mouth again, digging in hard and full. He pushed his hands up against Dorian’s chest, feeling the warmth of his skin and rubbing down over the hair and muscle and belly of him, gripping fingers down around his sides and bringing him in again. 

He felt right, still. Always. Felt like strength and comfort and home, like a gentle tug of magic on all his too-sentimental heartstrings. Like love, always like love. 

“Amatus,” Dorian said, agreeing with his every sentiment. 

Dorian’s hands slid down, around his back with a playful grab to his ass and then to the waistband of his pants. He pulled them down and backed Taren up with an urgent knee between his legs and a press of his own hips. Taren backed up against the fold-out bed, and it creaked. 

“Careful,” he whispered, practically giggling, like he wasn’t an old man with a family but some teenager with a boy over, still living in Auntie Dee’s house. “Don’t make too much noise.” 

Dorian grinned and bit a feistier kiss into his lips. “You don’t make too much noise,” he challenged, as he pushed Taren down into a slow seat on the edge of the bed and pulled away his pants and the shorts beneath entirely. 

He slid to his knees next, quiet as promised, dragging kisses down Taren’s chest and then his thighs. He sucked spots against his hip bones and into the inner flesh of his thigh, hard enough to make Taren lean his head back and swallow a gasp. 

Taren dug fingers into his hair, pressing against the scalp and letting the soft black locks run through his fingers. Dorian left softer kisses, tempting and teasing closer as he handled Taren’s already rigid cock with teasing care. Taren pulled his face back, leaned forward despite the telltale creaking of the bed, and captured his lips in another long kiss. 

“I love you,” he whispered. 

Dorian’s eyes glinted in the ambient light, his smile creased up to their corners. “I know,” he murmured back, “my sweet amatus, I know.” 

It was everything Taren could do not to rock and pulse and grind his hips against Dorian’s mouth in a noisy frenzy of old bed springs and moaned appreciation. He pushed Dorian's head in with his hands and held onto his gasps, letting out light, quick breaths and tensing all over as Dorian’s mouth and hands found his cock.

He felt so godsdamned good. Always had, and only better all the time. His wet mouth and tight hands pulled everything out of him, brought him to the shuddering edge of tension and relief like it was a trick he’d been practicing for years — because he had. Taren stood to finally come, bending his knees and struggling to manage a thrust that didn’t knock his husband right over onto his ass, but managing it. His hand in his hair, another on his shoulder, and then pulling him straight up and into tight, breathless kisses of praise and thanks. 

Taren��s hands slid down, returning the favour of pushing off trousers and wasting no time in finding Dorian’s hard cock between his legs. He pulled at him gently, kissed him tightly, and finally pulled him back and close to him while he slowly made his way back to his careful seat on the bed.

He took less time in working up any teasing gentleness with his kisses or the strokes of his tongue, needed less time. Dorian pressed firm and full against him and did a considerably worse job of stifling his groan as Taren took him in his mouth. His hands gripped harder at his hair, and Taren returned the force of that grip with his own hands over Dorian’s firm ass. He didn’t play with him so much as he fucked him, and helped him fuck back, moving into his mouth with urgency as Taren still managed not to move so much as to set the bedsprings rhythmically creaking.

He loved the frantic need of it, the hard, heavy push of his length up into his mouth and at times all the way into the back of his throat. He moved his hands to help with friction and speed, let Dorian pull his hair back and his face up and grinned at him for a flash while Dorian looked down in blushing, slightly dishevelled wonder. Taren caught his orgasm over the flat of his tongue and wrapped his lips around him to slowly take it all in one last time, sucking and swallowing and coming away with half a stifled laugh and wipe of his lips. 

“Maker,” he heard Dorian breathe as he stepped back. 

They returned to undergarments, took hushed turns tiptoeing down the hall to the bathroom to wash, and finally rolled into the slightly lumpy bed together, arms clinging tight. 

Taren settled his head over Dorian’s chest, curled on his side, his arm wrapped over him while Dorian lay on his back with his own over Taren’s shoulder and back. He closed his eyes and kissed his chest, sleepy with wine and affection and all the warmth and quiet in the world. 

“Thank you,” Dorian whispered as his thumb stroked an idle line over his shoulderblade. 

“For?” 

“All of it.” 

“Hmm,” he hummed, agreeing with the sentiment. 

“I love you. I love our family and our life.” Dorian’s arm around him pulled tighter. 

“I know, ma vhenan,” Taren kissed his warm skin again, “I know.”