bitchesofostwick:

so i have to cheat again…i’m making today’s prompt “portrait” because you know…these hoes don’t have instagram…HOWEVER, it does occur directly following this, so please enjoy more emistair post-awakening/pre-DAI fluff

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Emilia Cousland

“You’re getting a portrait, Warden-Commander,” Alistair had declared the morning after she’d returned from Amaranthine, adding, with a devilish smile, “if I had to sit through one, so do you.”

“Fine,” she’d answered; she’d sat through plenty of portraits in Highever, though the last was nearly three years ago now. But she was no stranger to them, to the long hours of sitting, holding a pose, setting her lips straight and her tongue silent as the grave.

“Fine,” Alistair had shot back in a girlishly high-pitched tone, eyes gleaming with laughter, mocking her.

She’d gasped, feigned insult, wrinkled her nose at him. “I will sit for my portrait, Your Highness, and I’m quite certain it will be done in far less time than yours had taken.”

He replies only with a fluffy pillow thrown in her face.

She’s in the throne room promptly the next morning, long before Alistair is even awake, dressed in deep blues and silvers–they are Fereldan royalty, but they were Wardens first, and the very clothing they choose never fails to reflect that–a gown the likes of which she hadn’t worn since their wedding, her brown hair (more auburn now; she’d gotten plenty of sun in Amaranthine) braided back neatly beneath her crown. 

“All day, my lady,” the painter confides in her when she asks how long Alistair’s portrait had taken. She smiles, smug, to herself, of course it did, and when the painter asks if she’s ready, she nods graciously, ever the lady, hands folded neatly in her lap, legs uncrossed, ankles to the side, begin, Ser.

It’s nearly noon when Alistair struts into the throne room.

“Cousland,” he drawls in a bored voice, as if they hadn’t been apart for over a year before yesterday, as if he hadn’t absolutely ravished her last night and the one before.

He’s up to something, she knows. “My liege?” she replies coolly, not moving an inch.

He yawns, stretches, raises his arms high enough above his head that his untucked tunic bares a glimpse of the tawny hair trailing below his navel.

Oh. She knows he’s toying with her, baiting her. She will not bite.

“How is your portrait going?”

The painter before them barely hides his snort of laughter, no doubt remembering the King’s own portrait, and Alistair sticks his tongue out at him.

“Better than yours,” she replies evenly, her tone absent of the teasing they both can read in each other. He grins, flashes her that crooked boyish smile, the one she can never help but beam back at, but she has to–has to–keep a straight face.

Good try, Theirin.

“You know, it’s occurred to me,” he continues, skipping up the dais like a child in a field of clover. Emilia catches the painter in an eye roll, but he doesn’t object–couldn’t if he wanted to, truly, but he remains silent. “You haven’t even properly greeted your mabari since you’re return.”

It takes everything in her to keep her jaw from dropping. “Alistair Theirin…” she warns, she can only imagine her massive dog hurdling through the throne room at a time like this, and he chuckles–chuckles!–and continues to smile at her, lounging on the throne beside her, swinging his legs over one arm of the chair and tilting his head back on the other closest to her.

“So I took the liberty of fetching him from the kennels,” he says pleasantly.

“You didn’t–” she says through gritted teeth.

“He missed you, Em!”

“He can see me later, Alistair!”

The painter has come to a full halt now anyway, but Emilia is dead set on continuing. 

“Later.”

“Now,” Alistair replies gleefully, bringing his fingers to his lips and giving a shrill whistle.

You could hear a pin drop in the throne room for about three seconds before it all comes to a stop–howling, barking, claws skidding on stone and the behemoth of a dog bounding through the room, “Fletcher, no!” cries Emilia, but it’s no use, in seconds he’s leapt upon her, fur and drool and all, licking her face and her neck and her dress and her hair and everywhere he can reach, and Alistair is doubled over in laughter and even Emilia is shaking in a fit of giggles, at last reunited with her faithful friend.

They don’t even notice that the painter has packed up for the day.

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prompts via @oc-growth-and-development​ // week 1 // day 8 day 9 day 10 day 11 day 12 day 13