An Adoribull Holiday Exchange

Thanks to Itachaaan for allowing us to use their wonderful Adoribull art! Reblog it here!

[anadoribullholiday]

And that’s a wrap!

If I forgot to post someone’s work, or you didn’t get tag for a gift (and completed your gift), let me know ASAP!

It’s been a fun, wild, chaotic but rewarding ride, and hopefully I’ll see you again next year ;)

[anadoribullholiday]

From @thekingofcarrotflower for http://foetal.tumblr.com/ Prompts used:  Spoiling each other (Dorian spoiling Bull, at least) & eating together

When the merchants filtered into Skyhold with their carts brimming with Josephine’s newest requisitions and whatever new items they had to sell to the denizens of Skyhold, Dorian had politely excused himself from watching the Chargers’ training. It wasn’t uncommon for Dorian to linger near the training grounds when the Chargers used it at what Dorian deemed to be a ‘reasonable hour’, but Bull had noticed the man watching the gates rather than watching Bull, sweaty and swinging a practice sword, like he usually did.

“Huh,” Krem said, digging the tip of his sword into the dirt and leaning heavily on it as they watched Dorian bound up the stairs to the main hall, “He waiting on a new shipment of those fancy soaps and shit of his? Heard him complaining he’d run out of something the other day.”

“I dunno,” Bull shrugged one shoulder, eye lingering on the large double doors. He wasn’t overly concerned - Dorian still valued his privacy, sometimes spend an evening in the library or his own quarters when he needed the space - but curiosity twinged inside of Bull.

“Guess you’ll find out sooner or later,” Krem grunted, lifting his sword again.

Bull grunted in agreement, lifting his own weapon. Krem needed practice blocking blows from his left side, anyways. Whatever Dorian was up to could wait.

---

“New stash?” Bull asked when he returned to his quarters hours later, after training and a long bath. His knee had been acting up since the weather was starting to grow colder, and a steaming bath seemed to do the trick. He’d taken some time to search for Dorian beforehand, to invite him along, but had little luck finding him. Varric had claimed to see him hours ago, conversing with Josephine and heading towards the ambassador’s study, but there seemed to be no sign of him since.

Dorian had been spending almost every night and most days in Bull’s room, taking claim of a set of drawers and somehow managing to find a decent-looking vanity to place in the corner. Currently, he was fiddling with his jars of beauty products, the specially warming salves he sometimes used on Bull’s aching joints that smelled of vanilla and sandalwood, the black lacquer he used on his nails and almost always kept unchipped and shiny as the day he put it on, and all the other perfumes and shampoos and lotions.

Maybe Krem was right about acquiring a new  set of ‘fancy soaps and shit’, but it didn’t exactly account for how quickly Dorian had slipped off early. Bull wasn’t concerned, was merely curious, normally able to tell when Dorian was up to something. The last time he’d been rather squirrelly had been just before Bull’s birthday, when he surprised the Bull with a new battleaxe of dragonbone and pearly pink dawnstone. While Bull knew Dorian had something big planned, he would have never bet on that, and he was left nearly speechless. Dorian tried to play it off like nothing, but his small, hesitant voice asking if Bull had truly liked it had made Bull’s heart ache.

“A few new items for my collection, yes,” Dorian glanced at Bull over his shoulder, “Do you know how much effort it is to acquire anything from up north?”

Bull chuckled as he began to put away his harness and boots, switching into a pair that were easier on his feet, easier to wear around his quarters and the tavern, “So you’ve said before. A few times.”

“It’s worth repeating,” Dorian sniffed. He drummed his fingers against the lid one of the many jars, before picking it up and turning slightly, “I may have got you a thing or two as well.”

“Yeah?” Bull arched a brow, smirking slightly.

“You’d be surprised how difficult this was to find. Luckily, I still have some connections in Tevinter that haven’t completely severed ties and know people with access to the black markets.”

Bull’s brow shot higher, a little unsure what exactly Dorian would be after in the seedy, underground markets that were abundant in Tevinter if you knew the right people. He was holding the jar between his hands just right to obscure whatever it was.

“I’ve been assured it’s top quality stuff,” Dorian stated, “That was from Maevaris, mind you, and while I trust her in most aspects of life, I’m doubt she knows much about horn care -”

“Woah, Dorian.” Bull cut him off, knowing Dorian’s tendency of rambling whenever his nerves got the best of him. He held out a hand, wriggling his fingers until Dorian set the container in his hand. He did so hurriedly, a little too forceful when he pressed the jar into Bull’s marred digits, and then backing away a half-step. Bull turned the jar over in his hand, examining it carefully. There was a shiny, gold label, boasting the name of some Antivan soap company, with the words ‘Quality Horn Balm’ handwritten in curling script. For a moment, Bull blinked at it, aware of Dorian watching his face intently. Quickly, he unscrewed the lid, taking in the tingling, almost medicinal smell of peppermints and menthols, reminding him of Par Vollen in the best of ways. He dipped his fingers in, studying the quality.

“It’s quite alright if it isn’t up to snuff,” Dorian said as the seconds ticked by, “I knew it was a bit of a gamble.”

“No, it’s great,” Bull looked up, grinning. He could see the tension ease off of Dorian, his expression quickly echoing Bull’s.

“Splendid! Mae had heard rumor of a band of Tal-Vashoth working out of Antiva, and it seems following up on that might have paid off,” Dorian held out his hand for the balm, and Bull willingly handed it over. Dorian had applied such creams to Bull’s horns before, thought they were generally of a lesser quality, or ones Bull had thrown together himself.

Jar in hand, Dorian shuffled around on the bed, kneeling behind Bull. He scooped out some balm, before carefully placing it beside Bull on the bed. His hands moved skillfully across Bull’s horns, the smell of mint quickly filling all of Bull’s senses. Dorian dug his thumbs into the base of Bull’s horns, the balm causing the sensitive flesh there to tingle pleasantly, making Bull groan blissfully. A soft chuckled escaped Dorian as he polished Bull’s horns to pristine condition, the gnarled, knotted set now smooth and almost shining.

“Good?” Dorian questioned, backing off slightly.

“The best,” Bull hummed happily, feeling sated.

Dorian moved across the room to was his hands clean in the basin of water. While the balm felt pleasant and tingly on the skin, it could do quite the number on any sensitive bits of skin. Bull arranged the pillows at his headboard, leaning heavily again them and watching Dorian move across the room.

“Don’t get too comfortable,” Dorian advised, making eye-contact in the mirror. Bull smiled crookedly, which still managed to make Dorian’s cheeks heat.

There was a knock on the door before Dorian made it back to bed. Bull groaned slightly in annoyance, having been anticipating Dorian joining him in bed promptly. The last time someone walked in them, it’d ended up as a whole ordeal with all three of the advisors. It hadn’t bothered Bull, but it had embarrassed Dorian for weeks, the man avoiding chess matches with Cullen as well as afternoon tea with Josephine, and dreading war table meetings.

“Shush,” Dorian chided, surprising Bull. He moved to the door, pulling it open with a smile. There was a brief conversation, before one of the kitchen hands exchanged a tray filled with foodstuff for a handful of coin. Dorian nudged the door shut before turning towards Bull.

“Shit, what’s the occasion?”

“No occasion. Just … felt like you deserved some pampering, for a change.”

“Aw, you do care.”

Almost inaudibly, Dorian muttered: “Of course I do.”

Carefully, Dorian set the tray into Bull’s lap. It was full of foods Bull hadn’t seen in ages - hot and sour soup, dum aloo with deep red curry, rice flour dumplings full of coconut and jaggery, pieces of barfi brimming with mango and cashews, kabobs of lamb smeared in a sweet-smelling sauce, samosa with potato and cheese and meat inside, a mint sauce to the side of it.  It was quite the feast, and would have taken a lot of planning and preparation to put together. Many of the ingredients weren’t common to the area, and Bull wasn’t sure the Fereldan cooks would know what to do with a coconut or a spoonful of cardamom.

“Dorian,” Bull breathed out, surprise evident in his tone, “How’d you manage to pull this off?”

Dorian shrugged slightly, “I made an arrangement with the kitchen. We’ve been waiting for the last few ingredients, and when they received word this morning that the merchants were at the last leg of their journey, we put the plan into action. Days when the caravans arrive are usual slower in the kitchen, everyone killing up on the chocolates and fancy wines they’ve ordered, so the kitchen didn’t have too much work on their hands today.”

“This really is some surprise,” Bull grinned, easing his fingers around Dorian’s wrist and tugging him closer while minding the food. Dorian leaned in for the kiss, which was slow and loving and filled them both with warmth.

“You’re joining me, yeah?”

“Of course. I wouldn’t miss curry for the world. We are lucky to have an Antivan in the kitchen. I wouldn’t trust the Fereldans with a spice more potent than black pepper.”

Bull snorted in agreement. Dorian maneuvered around the bed, settling in at Bull’s side. They shared the tray of food, hand-feeding each other, laughing as they kissed with lips and tongues tingling with spices. It was strange and still-new for the both of them, and they were more than happy to explore the uncharted territory together.

[anadoribullholiday]

For the prompt:  Bull/Dorian open relationship--who else they see, under what conditions, how each of them feels about it, how they communicate about it. From @saterema for @hobbitkaiju

- - -

When it began, Dorian was content to speak as little of the details of their liaisons as possible. That was familiar, natural even, and seemingly suited The Iron Bull as well. Yet the agreement did not feel the same as ones he had made before, with other men. It was not an unspoken agreement to secrecy so much as that words had not needed to be exchanged. Dorian had been under no illusion that their relationship was anything beyond physical, if he could even have called it a relationship then.

The illicit encounters of his past had always begun with the knowledge that romantic entanglement was forbidden, and often assumed unwanted. But Bull had been different, hadn't he? Too honest for a Ben-Hassrath, too easy to laugh for a Qunari, too giving for a man who would have only ever wanted sex. Yet the invitation for romantic involvement was as absent as any upfront denial of it; a small detail, but an important one.

That first night still seemed like a dream to him, even now, a night of bliss that stretched for hours into the dawn. He'd never had that luxury before, never had the time to be touched, to be explored, to be worshiped even. It was more than he would have dared expect, and yet Bull had given it to him willingly, happily. And so there was no sinking feeling in his stomach when he left before dawn, puzzling him as much as it excited him. And if a twinge affection rose in his chest the next evening when Bull greeted Dorian jovially at dinner, well... who could blame him?

It had been easy to tamp that affection down though, in the weeks after, when duty called the Altus to Crestwood with the Inquisitor, his knowledge of necromancy a key asset in their countless fights with the undead that haunted the lake. He'd stayed focused, for the most part, on his duty - on being of use. In fact, they'd made quick work of an otherwise abysmal mission.

When all was said and done, lake drained and mayor fled, Dorian had only the return trip to occupy his mind, and so his thoughts wandered. Near a week's trip on horseback left to sit and wonder if Bull was thinking about him. A week to wonder how many others had found their way into the bed he sought in the Fade as he slept. He dismissed it, as he dismissed most things he desired in earnest. He decided he was not jealous, because to be jealous, Bull would have had to have been his.

- - -

The Iron Bull knew long before they came riding through the main gates of Skyhold that the Inquisitor and her entourage had returned. His intel had had visual on them for two days. He'd missed Dorian. It was easy to admit, and he thought little of it; the mage had been a fantastic lay. He'd enjoyed teasing him, flirting with him in public, and fluffing the Altus's ego, and looked forward to much of the same.

So on the night before they returned it didn't surprise Bull that he'd passed over Flissa for the blonde-headed young recruit who Bull had caught staring at him on more than one occasion. It wasn't a substitute, no, not really. It was more a prelude, less serious and more frivolous, so he would not have to think on why he wanted that, before he saw Dorian again. And the boy was of the same mindset, seeking only pleasure and a new experience. The blonde had been all hands and eager grinding, mismatched thrusts and excited laughs between ruts.

It had been fun, but they had been novelties to each other. Bull had no problem playing the exotic Qunari lover, and the boy had clearly come for that, in more ways than one. But when the boy left an hour later, Bull remained strangely unsatisfied even as he laid sticky and spent in mussed sheets. He remembered how Dorian had lingered, how the mage had avoided eye contact for half the night, and how he had practically sang with pleasure when he finally gave in to it. Bull went to bed restless, finding that having a favorite was considerably more troublesome than he remembered.

- - -

They'd continued to see each other, in the months that stretched quickly into the uncertain future they both worked to preserve. Dorian found himself staying away purposefully some nights, certain that two nights in a row was out of the question, was too much to ask. Bull had never turned him away, often seeking him out in subtle ways, letting Dorian choose him. It made Dorian's heart flutter, and if he was a little smug at the crestfallen look a blonde-headed boy gave the two of them as they left one night, well... who could blame him?

And yet Dorian was not naive; he knew that disappointment in others simply meant they'd have to wait until tomorrow. If he noticed who else Bull took to bed it was only because Dorian himself seemed to frequent Bull's quarters more often than not. Eventually, Dorian knew, the issue would need addressing. In time he'd bring it up, but not tonight - never tonight.

- - -

A year had passed and it couldn't be avoided any longer. Dorian had been one of very few constants, other than the Chargers, that had kept him grounded while he had adjusted to becoming Tal-Vashoth. It had been worth it, he'd finally been able to admit, but that did not make it easy. The same could be said for the tenuous line he and the Altus rode between commitment and fear. It would be worth it, whatever the outcome. He had to believe that.

And so one night, a night shared after some time apart, the kind of night where they came at each other more hungry and raw than others, Bull finally spoke on the matter, as they laid entwined together, irrevocably.

“So, you and me.” He began with a far too casual drawl. He felt Dorian tense, and then continued. “We've never really had a proper conversation about it, huh?”

“Is one needed?” Dorian asked in a strained voice, fear building almost physically against Bull's side where they touched.

“I think so, yeah.”

“Are you done with this, with... us?” Dorian asked, mirroring the casual drawl as he gestured lazily to their bodies laid out before them. Bull smiled despite the thickness of the moment. He knew Dorian feared this, and that's what made the truth harder.

“No, not even a little bit.” Bull said with a sigh, waiting for Dorian's hopes to return, and fearing they might crash again.

Dorian turned to him then, his eyes wide and far too telling.

“So then...?” Dorian said carefully, ever afraid to admit weakness, to admit he cared deeply for Bull. In that at least, Bull could meet him halfway.

“So, I care about you, Dorian. We're good together, aren't we?”

“I... I suppose we are, yes.” Dorian replied, still wary, still waiting for the other foot to fall. A long moment stretched between them as Bull said nothing further, afraid himself of rejection, afraid Dorian would not understand. It was a risk he'd have to take, but honesty was his only option.

“So I think we should be together, like properly. I know you want that, have been waiting for it, but have been too afraid to bring it up.”

Dorian leaned up then, taking in Bull's features before taking Bull's chin in his hand and kissing him.

“I hadn't assumed that was an option with you. I, well yes, I... I want that... more than I even wish to admit myself. You... mean a great deal to me.” There was a lightness to Dorian's features and Bull could feel the mage's pulse racing. It hurt him to push him back, to seat him in front of him and keep his own expression neutral. The other foot had not yet fallen. Dorian caught on a moment before Bull could elaborate.

“What? What is it? Bull if this is some sort of joke-”

“Not at all. It's just - I know you. I know what you'll think when I say this but listen, all right?” Bull said evenly, trying for kind as he rifled through Dorian's hair affectionately. He could see Dorian's walls rebuilding, and if Bull was worried he wouldn't understand, well... who could blame him?

“I'm listening.”

“I want to be with you, and that means I'd be committed to you.” Bull paused when Dorian's lip twitched, and then continued, “I know that means a lot to you, I know being faithful is important to you, and I can give you that. That being said, we're gonna need to set some boundaries.”

Dorian seemed to ease at that, his fear allayed by the assumption that Bull was simply ill-versed in discussing romantic matters. In truth, he was as well. Dorian slumped forward, allowing Bull to draw him up close to him.

“Well that sounds perfectly reasonable.” Dorian replied. “What are your concerns?”

Dorian looked at him expectantly, as if believing the flaw was with him. As if there was a flaw at all. Bull sighed once more before finally pulling the trigger. He'd understand, or he wouldn't.

“I'm going to still want to sleep with other people, if we're together. But it won't be what you think.”

He saw Dorian's face go blank, not with anger nor sadness, but just well and truly blank. Bull continued, before the fires could be allowed to spread.

“I never want to lie to you, Dorian, you are far too important to me. But I know me, and if we're going to be together, it's going to have to be an open-relationship. It would go both ways, of course, if you wanted. We'd discuss everything, every one if need be, ahead of time.”

Dorian still said nothing when Bull paused. Usually, Bull could get a read on him, had known how his muscles wired down to his heart. But Bull sat waiting, finding only stone features, expressionless and unintelligible. Suddenly he felt very weak. He charged ahead anyway, as ever.

“If that isn't something you can agree to, I understand. I really do.”

Another pause.

“But I'm offering it to you anyway, because you're worth the effort. Because I can't imagine being without you anymore.”

Something about that stirred Dorian's features. He looked at Bull as if studying a relic, as if trying to understand an ancient dialect just barely beyond his modern understanding. And then slowly he sucked in his lips, and looked down to the side before finally inhaling deeply. His features smoothed out, and he spoke.

“It figures, you know,” he began with his usual sarcasm, “that the one man who cares for me genuinely, who actually graces me with respect and honesty of any amount would be an ex-Qunari spy.”

With a lilt tilt of his head and a smirk that was not quite a sneer, Dorian let out a single, quiet laugh.

“It's funny how every day of my life, I compare myself to my father, and his expectations. How the things we have no control over seem to matter so much to others. I won't be like him, you know.”

Bull listened with a pensive expression, and dared not speak – not until Dorian gave him an answer, or made for the door. They sat there together then, for another few moments as Dorian looked past him, in thought. Finally thick lashes blinked together, and Dorian turned towards Bull once again.

“Yes.”

The word hung between them like the Veil, keeping as much in as it did out, both sides needed to understand the whole. Their eyes met then, and something passed unsaid between them, as it often did. And as Bull's face broke into it's crooked smile, he felt the tension leave his chest - felt something heavy finally fall into place.

“I'll be fussy about it, you know.” Dorian said flippantly as he resettled himself in the crook of Bull's arm.

“When aren't you fussy?” Bull said with a chuckle, petting Dorian's hair with his free hand. It felt different to touch him now, absurd as it was, because he was his now. He felt the twitch of Dorian's mustache against his side, and knew he was smiling.

“I mean it. We'll talk about this all tomorrow, properly, but I'll have you know right now you'll not have anyone who looks like me.”

Bull laughed heartily at that, shaking his head fondly.

“Trust me Dorian, there's nobody who looks like you.”

“All the same.”

“Alright. I promise.”

They spent the better part of an hour like that, Dorian insisting they'd speak more later, only to bring up another question, as if delicately testing the new arrangement in half-steps.

“No one from the inner circle.”

“After being separated from a mission they'd spend the first two nights together, at least.”

“Any issues of jealously or displeasure in a secondary party would be discussed only between them, and never with the person in question.”

“Cullen was off-limits even in jest.”

On and on like that, they went, each topic giving way to more, until they were seemingly satisfied, for now. At some point though, Bull's hands wandered too low for talk, and they fell into each other. They fucked until morning, until the sun shown between their curtains, until they were so tired they could barely be bothered to wash up before slipping back in to bed together.

And yet they did, finding the strength to do things properly. Clean and satisfied they watched the sun rise, warm and kind on their skin. And if somehow Dorian thought he had managed to find one of the best men in Thedas to call his own, if he found himself bragging about their newfound arrangement later that night in the tavern, well, who could blame him?

[anadoribullholiday]

Thaw

Prompt would be “sharing body heat.” Warning for canon-typical violence. For @anidragon from @ofwolvesandshatteredshields

Dorian doesn’t think much of it when the arrow takes him in the arm. It’s most unpleasant, of course, but he has been wounded before, and anyway, there are much more pressing things on his mind. Such as the several dozen Venatori sprinting gleefully toward him over the ice, not to mention the several more dozen who have made the crossing already and are busy gaining a foothold on the snowy bank.

There is an Inquisition camp on this side of the river. The way things are going, that is soon to change.

Dorian puts distance between himself and the melee, moving away from the frozen bridge their mages have summoned towards where the water flows high and fast beside him. The river is as black as the night sky above, and glints in the light of the near-full moon. He reaches up and snaps off the arrow-shaft at his arm, gasping in pain—hasn’t any idea how some people can do that without even a flinch.

Speaking of which, Bull is standing at the place where the bridge meets land, bellowing out some barbaric battle cry or other in that resonant voice of his. He’s neck-deep in Venatori and doesn’t appear particularly bothered by it. The field of snow around him gleams blight with reflected moonlight, and his axe flashes as he swings it through the air. Dorian did try to avoid him for a time—he’s Qunari, after all—but has found himself less repulsed as of late. Qunari, yes, but also thoughtful and clever and, it must be said, considerate at times—if only he weren’t so crude—

With a start Dorian finds a brace of warriors dashing toward him, snow spraying up in their wake. Kaffas. He was almost asleep when they attacked and hasn’t quite woken up yet. He reaches for the Veil to slow the soldiers down—

—and doesn’t find it.

For a moment he’s stupefied—he’s a mage, of course he can feel the Veil. Only he can’t. He only just manages to raise his staff in time to defend himself. Why can’t he sense it? Where did it go? His blocks are weak and sloppy. He stumbles back, wavering in the shin-deep snow, struggling to keep his balance. What’s wrong with him? The two soldiers hack down at his staff, seemingly content just to push him back. So he retreats, and retreats. Each strike jars his wounded arm, the arrowhead still stuck inside it. Again he reaches for the Veil, straining his senses. It isn’t there. It isn’t—

His foot slips down a sharp incline. The bank.

Venhedis.

Dorian heaves his body forward as he slides down the steep slope in a desperate attempt not to fall. Then an armored heel smashes into his cheek, and his head whips to the side, his boots slipping in the snow. He wheels, his arms flailing.

The water slaps into his back and closes over him.

It’s not just the cold. The cold is awful, of course, a paradoxical burn that sears his skin through his heavy clothes, the shock of it knocking the breath from his lungs. But the water is alive—the current rushing fast and hard around him, sucking him down. He fights but doesn’t even know where the surface is. Can’t open his eyes—freezing, the water grabbing at him, at his cloak, his robes. The river hurls him into some hard object, sending pain shooting up his back and side. As he slips past it he realizes it might be a rock or a fallen tree, something to hold on to. He twists, groping, but all he gets is the current bending his fingers back.

Air. There’s no air. There’s no Veil. How is he supposed to make it past this? How is he supposed to survive? His body is tossed and battered—

—his face breaking the surface, and he heaves in a great gulping breath—

—frigid water slipping down his throat, and before he can cough he’s dragged down again.

His chest seizes with pain, and he flings a hand out, as if he could grasp the open air and haul himself back up. The current folds and rotates his body. He’s going to die. That’s all there is to it. The terror is overpowering.

But the next object he collides with strikes his head, and his mind goes as black as the seething water.

—— Cold.

Something is warm. Something against his mouth.

He rolls to the side and throws up water. His chest hurts. Hurts. A deep, resonant voice behind him. He throws up some more, hacking and coughing. A hand at his back. He blinks groggily and looks up. A blurry shape looming over him, haloed by the crystalline glow of the moon. He tries to say something and only comes up with more water. A dull ache throbs in his head. Did he hit it? He reaches out with one clumsy hand to touch the looming shape.

Something takes his hand. Something cold and wet.

His eyes drift shut. —— Jostling.

Pain lances up the back of his skull. He moans and presses a hand gingerly to the spot.

“Careful.” A low rumble. “You split your head open pretty good.”

Dorian squints.

Skeletal trees slip by against the night sky. And just above him, a scarred face lit by the reflected glow of the moon off the snow.

“Bull?” he mumbles.

“Yeah.”

Dorian frowns and tries to figure out what’s happened. He’s being carried, for one, which is rather embarrassing, and he tries to squirm out of Bull’s grasp. “Would you please put me down—“

“Whoa there, big guy.” Bull stops and sets him on his feet, but does not let go.

“Thank you,” Dorian says stiffly, and tries to take a step. It’s very hard. The snow is up to his knees, for one, and also the world seems to be off-balance somehow and spinning at a slow but steady pace—

Bull catches him as he begins to fall. “Like I said, you split your head open pretty good. You might be woozy for a while.”

Dorian shivers. “Bit brisk out here, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, and those wet clothes aren’t helping. You want to let me carry you? I was looking for shelter.”

Shelter. Dorian still isn’t quite sure what happened, but shelter sounds good. And the only price submitting himself to this small humiliation. “Fine. Yes.”

“All right.”

Bull scoops him up as if he were a sack of feathers rather than flesh-and-bone. Dorian thinks hard, but it only makes his head hurt again. “So…we were attacked. By Venatori.”

“Right. They’ll have overrun the camp by now.”

“And I…”

“Fell in the river.”

That’s right. He was being attacked by two soldiers—

“I saw you go in, so I broke from the field and ran after you. Shucked my armor as I went, and then I jumped in and grabbed you. You were passed out by then.”

Dorian shakes his head (and stops, because that hurts too). “Wait, you—but you were fighting. How did you see me fall in?”

“I had an eye on you.”

“You’ve only got one. What were you using to fight the Venatori?”

Bull chuckles. “Nice to see you still have your tongue even after you got your skull whacked.”

“And you just—abandoned the battle to go after me?”

“Ah, it was time to retreat anyway. We weren’t going to hold that camp, there were way too many of them.”

Dorian is only now discovering all of the various unpleasantries afflicting him at the moment—the headache, of course, but also his arm, wounded somewhere along the way, and pain in his back that he’s afraid might signify a broken rib. And his clothes, heavy and wet and freezing on his skin. He shivers violently against Bull’s chest.

“I dragged you up onto the bank and got you breathing again,” Bull continues. “And then I picked you up and started walking, because we need to get you warm fast.”

“That’s easy,” Dorian mumbles. He extends a hand and reaches for the Veil.

Which isn’t there. Again. Right. “Kaffas,” he whispers.

“Your magic’s gone, isn’t it?” Bull asks.

“Yes, it’s—why can’t I—“

“You were doing okay until you took that arrow. They probably got you with magebane.” An amused grunt. “At least it means they thought you were a real threat. That crap is expensive.”

“Well, that’s flattering, I suppose,” Dorian says distantly. Magebane. He’s heard of it, of course, but never been subjected to its effects.

“Should start to wear off in a few hours.” Bull tacks left.

Dorian peers ahead. A fall of rocks on a hillside, dusted with white. Bull finds a narrow gap and ducks inside. “All right. This’ll have to do.”

The space isn’t very large, and Dorian can hardly see, but he’s not in much of a position to protest. His body is wracked with another shiver, and his teeth chatter. Bull sets him down at the back of the cranny and begins brushing away the layer of snow on the ground—much thinner here under the cover of the rocks. “I’m gonna go look for firewood. You should keep moving. Especially your fingers and toes.” He heads for the entrance.

“Wait—“

Bull stops.

Dorian wraps his arms around himself. “You’re not—you won’t be long?”

“No. Five minutes, if that.”

Dorian gives him a jerky nod and tries to curl his fingers again.

Then Bull is gone, leaving Dorian alone.

He stands and paces as best he can in the small space. His back aches, and he winces—definitely a broken rib. Wonderful. The dizziness pulls at him, but he goes slowly and supports himself on the wall when he has to. His teeth chatter now so hard it almost hurts, and he’s afraid his wet clothes are going to freeze solid in the cold. Once more—although he knows it won’t work—he seeks the Veil, straining his senses as hard as he possibly can. Nothing, still. Nothing. And he lost his staff in the river.

Defenseless.

It’s an alien feeling. He’s never been without the Fade at his back from which to summon magic. It’s—horrible, really. Is this what life is like for everyone else all the time? He shivers again.

Movement, a shadow at the gap. Dorian stumbles back, flattening himself against the wall—but it’s only Bull, dragging a few long branches behind him. “Help me break these up,” he says.

So Dorian goes to work, snapping the dead wood into more manageable segments. The arrowhead shifts in his arm, and he grabs at it; but it didn’t go very deep, and it doesn’t hurt as much as he expected. Bull finishes sweeping away the snow and then piles the wood in the back of the cranny with a generous handful of kindling inside it. He pulls something from his belt—flint and steel, sparks flying bright as he strikes them together. When the kindling begins to catch, he leans down and blows lightly. A tiny flame pools there, flickering yellow-orange.

“Okay.” He sits back. “We’ll stay here for a few hours until the sun rises and we can travel without getting lost. And then we head west. Inquisition forces will have pulled back to Bowerbend.”

“A-all right.” Dorian draws in a shaking breath.

Bull nods at him. “Now you need to take your clothes off.”

Dorian stares. “I—I’m sorry?”

“Your clothes are soaked, they’re stealing heat from your body. You need to take them off. I’m sorry—”

“I’m not taking my clothes off in front of you!”

Bull pauses a moment, pressing his lips together. “I was going to say, I’m sorry again for all that ‘conquering’ crap I was talking earlier. I’ll leave that all behind, I promise. But you really shouldn’t be wearing wet clothes right now.”

“What, so instead I should—prance about naked in the depths of winter? I don’t think so!” Dorian hugs himself. “I’ll be perfectly fine with them on, thank you.”

Bull grimaces. “You’ve never seen anyone freeze to death, right? That doesn’t happen in Tevinter. Winters are too mild. I’ve seen it. Believe me, Dorian, I’m trying to help you.”

He shivers, waiting for his teeth to stop chattering before he speaks. “Surely there must be a way to help me that doesn’t involve me stripping naked.”

“There isn’t.”

Dorian folds his arms around himself and doesn’t reply.

Bull sighs. “Look, do you want me to dig out my extra eyepatch and put it over my other eye so I can’t see you? Because I’ll do it, if that’s what it takes. I am worried about you.”

“What about you?” Dorian mutters sullenly. “You went in the river too, are you also going to undress?”

“Yeah, well, I was going to warn you about that.”

“Andraste guide me.” Dorian presses a hand to his eyes. Seeing no other choice before him, he yields. “Fine, fine, yes, let’s all take our clothes off.”

The wet fabric sticks to him, but he manages to disrobe. The cold air on his skin is just as miserable as the clothing. Wonderful. He takes a deep, shuddering breath and turns.

Bull is also naked. Dorian does his very, very best to keep his eyes from straying downward, focusing instead on the growing flicker of light on Bull’s face, the smell of woodsmoke on the air. Bull begins to lay his clothes out in front of the fire, and Dorian joins him. “I assume my cloak was lost in the river?” he murmurs.

“Kinda. It was pulling you down, so I had to rip it off you. Sorry.”

“I’m alive, which I suppose is more important than that cloak.” He pulls the crumpled folds of his robe apart to spread it for better drying. “Did you really—“

When he breaks off, Bull prompts him. “What?”

Dorian shakes his head. “I was going to ask, ‘did you really leap into a freezing, fast-flowing river to save me,’ but plainly you did. So never mind.”

Bull grins. “Well, I figured it was either we both maybe die or you definitely die, and you know me, I like taking my chances. Anyway, I’m a good swimmer.”

“Well. You have my gratitude.”

“Yeah, no problem.” Then he gestures. “Let me take a look at that wound in your arm.”

Dorian inches closer to the fire and lifts the wound. It oozes sluggishly. Bull inspects it, then pulls a handkerchief—a handkerchief?—from a pouch at his discarded belt. “Okay. This is going to hurt.”

He grasps the stub of shaft still poking from Dorian’s arm and yanks.

It does hurt. Dorian gasps and splays his good hand on the dead leaves. “Oh,” he says weakly.

Bull ties his handkerchief tight around the bleeding hole. His frown deepens. “Those are some nasty bruises.”

Dorian touches his back. “Yes. Well. Not much to be done about that.”

“No, there’s not. At least not until we get to Bowerbend.” He rises. “Dorian?”

Dorian stays crouched where he is, hugging his knees. The fire is starting to catch, and it’s warm on his damp skin. “Yes?”

“You’re probably not going to like this next part.”

“What next part?”

“You need to share my body heat.”

Through the stupefaction, Dorian manages to lift one incredulous eyebrow.

“A fire won’t be enough. You were in the river for…I don’t know. Minutes. Your fingers and toes are going white. You don’t have anything dry to wear to keep your own body heat in.” He sighs. “I know it’s probably the last thing you want to do right now, but I’ll feel a lot better about you not getting hurt if you stay close to me.”

Dorian doesn’t really know what to say. He’s expecting the indignation to rise at any moment—I can’t believe you’d suggest such a thing, nothing could ever persuade me to do that, you great Qunari brute—but it doesn’t come.

“If it makes you feel any better, Krem and I have slept curled up together a few times.” Bull grins. “The enemy usually doesn’t expect you to be stupid enough to camp out in the wilderness on the coldest nights of the year. Then, of course, when they search the settlement, or the manor, or wherever you’re supposed to be staying, they come up empty.”

“No, it’s—it’s all right. I don’t mind.”

Bull pauses, taken aback. “Oh. Uh—okay.”

Dorian smiles a little. “Although perhaps we can save the curling up together until after my underclothes dry off a bit.”

Bull offers half a smile of his own. “Yeah, all right. You mind if I sit next to you?”

“Go ahead.”

So Bull comes over and sits, planting his hand on the leaves to Dorian’s other side. Dorian leans back against his arm, eager for warmth—winces at the pressure on his bruised ribs.

“How bad is it?” Bull asks.

“Not very. It hurts, that’s all.” The fire is crackling nicely now, and he thinks he can feel his toes again. His fingers are jammed under his arms.

“You ever lost your magic before?”

Dorian shakes his head.

“Sorry. I’m guessing it’s not a whole lot of fun.”

“Oh, you know. I’ve only been deprived of both my greatest weapon and my only defense. A trifle, really.”

“Hm.” Bull nods in thought. “I’m guessing it would be kind of like if I got shrunk down to your size all of a sudden.”

Dorian snorts. “Oh, thank you, that’s very flattering.”

“Hey, I’m used to being the biggest guy in the room.” He grins. “Can you even lift my axe?”

“Probably,” Dorian mutters. “If I tried very hard.”

“But I can’t create fire or ice out of thin air. Or suck people’s souls from their bodies.”

“Technically I don’t suck the soul out, I just sort of ask a wisp to displace it and then detach—“

“Look, no offense,” Bull interrupts. “But necromancy is still creepy as shit. So maybe we could not tell me all the details.”

“Right. Sorry.” Dorian tugs absently at the handkerchief wrapped around his arm. “Do we have to sleep at all? Wouldn’t it be smarter to stay awake until dawn? You know, keep our blood moving?”

“Bowerbend is ten miles due west of the camp,” Bull replies. “Your trip south down the river adds some distance, especially since we need to give the Venatori a wide margin. You want to make that in one go, you need some rest first.”

Dorian sighs. “Must you have an answer for everything? I’m feeling rather superfluous.”

“Hey, we ever get posted in Minrathous, I’ll be leaning on you to keep me alive.”

“A Qunari? In Minrathous? You’d be killed in the streets.”

“That’s why I’d be depending on you.”

“Mm. Right up until you were burned to a crisp in front of the Argent Spire.” That gets a chuckle from Bull. Dorian shrugs one shoulder. “No, I suppose mostly what I’m good for is sucking people’s souls from their bodies. And falling in rivers. Oh, and provoking nasty looks—you should see the glares that follow me around Skyhold—“

“I have.”

Dorian looks up.

Bull’s good humor has seeped away. “You don’t deserve that crap. You work as hard as anyone else here. Or harder.”

Dorian is for a moment lost for words. “I—oh. Well. Thank you.”

He grunts in response.

“Thank you,” Dorian says again. “For fishing me out.”

“You already said that.”

“I know, but I mean it. I didn’t think anyone would dive into a freezing river for me. Especially not—er.” Kaffas. Might have said a bit too much there.

“Especially not a Qunari.”

He winces. “It does seem rather…atypical. I’m Tevinter, yet you risked your life for me.”

Bull lets out a long breath. “Yeah, well, call it a lapse in judgement.”

Dorian stiffens a little. “Oh.”

“Crap. No, that’s not what I meant. Saving you was a good decision and I’d do it again.”

“Ah. That’s kind of you to say.” He relaxes against Bull’s arm. His back aches, but he wants the warmth. “Although let’s hope you don’t have to.”

A laugh. “Yeah, I’m freezing my ass off.”

Dorian’s underclothes are not especially substantial and, lying close to the fire, they dry quickly. Bull’s (he does in fact wear them) are much larger, but he deems them “good enough” and pulls them up, then stacks more wood on the fire. “Okay.” He rises. “That should burn for a while.”

Dorian has just discovered his underclothes are pleasantly warm, having been so close to the flames. “So, er…how shall we do this?”

Bull nods at the rear of the cranny. “Lie on your side.”

Dorian lies down, careful of his injuries, and edges closer to the fire. He had expected resignation but instead finds himself nervous for some reason. Bull disappears behind him.

And then a solid bulk at his back, an arm wrapping around his chest and pulling him closer. It’s very intimate. Dorian’s breath catches in his throat.

“Crap.”

“What? What’s wrong?”

“Horns. Hard to lie on my side.”

“Oh. Should I—“

“Wait, hang on, let me try—“

Bull’s body presses suddenly against Dorian, leaning over him and forcing him to hunch in on himself. The enormous arm caging him in braces against the leaves.

“That okay?” Bull’s lips are right at his ear. “You getting crushed or anything?”

Dorian certainly feels a bit squashed, although— “No,” he says. “It’s fine.”

“Okay. You should get your toes between my thighs.”

“I should what?”

“You wanna lose ‘em?”

Dorian exhales, folds his legs up, and sticks his toes between Bull’s thighs. Which are very firm—as one would expect, really. It’s much warmer than leaving himself exposed in the open air. “What about yours?”

“I’m Qunari. Our blood runs hot.”

“Oh, Maker,” Dorian mutters.

Bull chuckles. “Sorry, sorry. I really didn’t mean it like that. Try and get some sleep.”

Dorian shuts his eyes. The heat of the fire soaks into his face, and Bull’s scar-gouged body is close against his back. A bit squashed, yes. But he feels warm. And—despite where they are and what happened to him—safe.

He has one arm folded up under his head for a pillow. The other is pulled into his chest, and he shifts it a little until the back of his hand is resting on Bull’s thumb. One more point of contact.

He remembers how in the river he thought he was going to die. One of several things he’s gotten wrong today. Right now he’s almost completely sure he’s going to live, and he finds himself rather looking forward to what happens next. —— When Dorian wakes again the fire is nearly out.

The river. Yes. And that cranny in the rock. And—

—the Iron Bull.

Dorian lies just where he is. Bull breathes quiet and even against his hair. He’s surrounded still by Bull’s sheer bulk, the broad chest at his back, the thick arm wrapped around him—

Dorian starts a little.

Bull wakes immediately. “Hm? What? What is it?”

“Good morning.”

“Morning.”

“You appear to be holding my hand.”

“Oh. Yeah, I didn’t want your fingers to freeze.”

“Ah. I see.”

The warm breath disappears from his hair. “It’s starting to get light. You feel like heading out?”

Dorian would very much like to stay here instead, subsumed by Bull’s warm body. But he figures they’ll have to forge out into the frozen forest sooner or later. So he groans and starts struggling out of Bull’s grasp.

His robes are sort of dry, which is much better than how they were when he took them off. His boots are less dry. That doesn’t bode well for his toes, which are still attached, thanks to…Bull’s thighs. Right. But perhaps…

Dorian cups his hands and reaches for the Veil.

A glimmer of it, at the edge of his awareness. It used to flood his senses, the Fade rippling and seething against it. Now it’s little more than a muted ebb, hardly enough to draw on. He tries as best he can—and a tiny pool of flame spreads over his palm.

“Looks like you’re back,” Bull remarks, clothed again, although his armor is gone—discarded, he said, before the daring rescue.

Dorian grimaces. “Hardly.” He’s still weak, so very weak. With a great force of will he thins the Veil at his boots, just a little, summoning heat into the leather and damp padding.

Bull pokes his head outside the gap in the rock. “It’s snowing.”

Dorian moans. “I hate this accursed country.”

“You want me to carry you again?”

He looks up. Bull’s grinning. Dorian rubs his forehead. “No, thank you, I am quite capable of walking by myself.”

They wade out into the woods.

It is indeed snowing, albeit lightly, without any wind to blow it into Dorian’s face. It could be worse, he supposes. Tiny flakes gather on his sleeves and melt on his cheeks. He’s sure his hair will be topped by a fine coating of white before long.

Bull goes ahead, and he glances over his shoulder. “How are you doing?”

Dorian trudges forward through the half-dark. “Not dizzy anymore.”

“How about your back, and the arm?”

“Manageable, I think. Although I’m afraid your handkerchief will have to be discarded after this. It’s a bit bloodied.”

“Ah, don’t worry about it.”

“I didn’t think you were the handkerchief type, to be honest.”

Bull shrugs. “It’s not for me. I carry them in case someone else needs one. I’m pretty big, I have plenty of extra space at my belt.”

He is quite big. Without the armor his entire upper body is bared, and he’s easily twice as wide as Dorian, his arms rippling with muscle but a definite softness sitting around his hips, bunching gently above his waistband…

Dorian takes a deep breath and lets it out. Surely he wasn’t just ogling the Iron Bull. That would be impossible. Bull is, after all, Qunari.

Yet his body against Dorian’s back felt like that of any other man, albeit a very large man. And he did fling himself into a river in the depths of winter to save a Tevinter mage’s life. Maybe not so Qunari, then? Dorian rubs his eyes. Or maybe it doesn’t matter.

Bull goes forward, looking up now and then at the lightening sky to keep his bearings. Despite his half-nakedness, he seems very at ease in the wintry air, a glaze of snowflakes coating the tops of his horns. Dorian’s clothes are no longer soaking wet, but they still aren’t made for these conditions—that was why he had the cloak, now lost in the river. And even with the heat he’s generating from all this trudging, he still shivers. It’s all a bit unfair. “Didn’t you grow up in Par Vollen? And Seheron?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Those places don’t have winters. Yet here you are strolling blithely through the snow without any clothes on.”

He shrugs. “I mean, I feel the cold. I don’t like it. I just ignore it.”

“That easy for you, is it?”

“Just had a lot of practice.”

“Mm, of course. You must preserve your public face—Maker forbid the biggest, toughest Qunari south of Seheron be seen shivering—“

“No, it’s not that. I got a lot of guys under me. We go through some crap, a blizzard, a bad fight, anything like that, they’re gonna be having a tough time. So there’s gotta be someone who’s doing okay, and can take care of everyone else. Normally that’s me and Krem, and when Krem’s too tired for it it’s just me.” Bull ducks under a low-hanging branch. “That’s why I’m good at ignoring the cold.”

Dorian slips under the same branch without even having to bend his knees. “You—wait. So right now, you’re doing it because…”

“Because you fell in a river and almost drowned.”

The entire situation approaches impossibility. The great oxman brute, revealed in intimate moments to have a heart of gold—it sounds like some frightful romance serial written by Varric’s ilk—

Dorian shakes himself firmly. He is no starry-eyed waif, and will not be taken in so easily by a Qunari’s simpering words.

“Nice to be the toughest guy in the room, though.” Bull grins over his shoulder. “Can’t say I don’t enjoy the reputation.”

“As reputations go, it certainly isn’t a bad one,” Dorian mutters. Better than that Tevinter blood-mage snake.

The sky brightens as they forge ahead, the wool-grey clouds limned with struggling sunlight. Flakes descend still, gathering on Dorian’s sleeves and shoulders. The snow is drifted here, and will be ankle-deep in spots only to rise to his knees two steps later. His boots are soaked again, but at least his feet won’t freeze—he keeps pulling on that little thread from the Fade, that sputtering flicker of heat that warms his toes. Bull blazes a path as best he can, Dorian walking in his enormous footsteps.

He’s very lucky, he reflects. Not to still be alive—that wasn’t luck. The luck was in somehow having fallen under the wing of possibly the strangest Qunari Par Vollen has ever produced.

Bull leads him up a long, steep slope. Dorian is forced to grasp onto the springy saplings that flank him rather than keeping his hands jammed into his armpits, where they’d be much warmer. Still, cold hands are a small price to pay to avoid slipping and taking a long, inglorious tumble back down to the bottom of the hill. Bull, a couple of yards ahead, also climbs with care. A fact for which Dorian is quite grateful—if he slipped, the resulting journey down the slope would no doubt catch Dorian up and send them both snowballing away with only a few flimsy saplings to slow them. Fortunately for both of them, Bull makes the top of the rise without incident and stops there, scanning as he waits—

Dorian sees his body tense a second before the crack splits the air.

By the time the wave of force reaches him it is much weaker, and he only stumbles, steadying himself against a thin trunk. But Bull’s head snaps back, and he reels. A second crack that throws him to one side, and he thuds into a snowdrift on his shoulder.

Dorian stands frozen. Attacked. They’re being attacked. And he without magic, useless—

Bull pushes himself up, finds Dorian with his one remaining eye. “Hide,” he snarls.

Dorian plunges back down the stomped-down path to find a place to conceal himself.

He has to stay in Bull’s footsteps or he’ll leave a trail of his own. But there’s a hunk of rock just off to one side, and he ducks behind it. A third crack, deafening. He peers out and spots Bull crawling over the crest of the hill. Venhedis. Force magic. Detonations in the air—set off just next to Bull’s head, if the blood leaking from his ear is any indication. He shouldn’t even be conscious anymore—should be dead—but his skull is thicker than that mage bargained for, apparently.

Not that it matters. He’s dazed already, and the mage untouched. This battle will not last long. And Dorian without his damned magic—good for nothing besides provoking nasty looks, falling in rivers—

Another concussion and Bull falls limp, collapsing into the snow.

Dorian bursts from cover and starts climbing.

Bull saved his life at great personal risk. That isn’t a debt Dorian can just abandon. Well, I figured it was either we both maybe die or you definitely die. That was what he said. The situation here not all that dissimilar, although the “maybe” is a bit in question. Dorian clambers upward, grabbing nearby saplings and hauling himself up the slope.

He makes the crest. Bull twitches, his hand drifting aimlessly. Blood dots the snow under his head. Dorian spots the mage twenty yards away. She’s Venatori, her white robes nearly blending in to the landscape. Alone—perhaps gone for firewood or to scout the land. She’s trudging towards them through the snowdrifts, although she halts at Dorian’s appearance. Spells are stronger when cast closer to oneself. She advances to strike the final blow. Dorian could try to counter her, if his connection to the Fade were strong enough to summon anything more than a flicker of heat for his toes. But it isn’t.

The mage approaches. No weapon, no magic. All he has left is himself.

Dorian throws his body over Bull’s head.

He waits for the explosion, the force slamming into his back and crushing his organs to pulp. It might give Bull enough time to get to the mage and kill her and save himself. He wouldn’t even be here if Dorian hadn’t fallen in the damned river—

Shifting under him. A growled “Damn it, Dorian!”

Then he is being grabbed and heaved and wrapped up (much as he was last night, he thinks wildly, Bull’s enormous body at his back, powerful arms around him) and he only has time to take a surprised breath before there’s a thunderclap boom and he and Bull are lifted into the air.

They don’t go very far before crashing to ground. Bull’s arms have gone limp—he must have been knocked out—so Dorian holds on for dear life as they roll and slide down the slope, tumbling over rocks and fallen branches. At last, with a thump that knocks from him what little air is left in his lungs after that explosion, they come to a stop in a tall drift of snow.

Dorian’s head is spinning so he shuts his eyes as he tries to think. The mage is still coming for them. Bull is unconscious and wouldn’t be much help anyway. Meanwhile, his magic has not miraculously returned in the twenty seconds since he last checked. So he’s still useless. Good for provoking nasty looks, falling in rivers—

—sucking people’s souls out of their bodies.

Right. If he can’t defeat this mage, he’ll just have to ask someone else to do it.

Not much time. She’ll be coming down to check and make sure they’re both dead. He’s a little surprised he’s still in one piece; his sudden appearance must have startled her into casting early, before she was close enough for a killing blow. Dorian cracks his eyes open. He’s buried in the snow, invisible for the moment.

He plunges his hand deep into the drift.

The Veil is there, barely, barely, and he just snags it with the tips of his fingers, rakes it sideways, and pulls it thin—not very thin, but it’s enough to reach through. He searches, frantic, pleading for help, praying to the Maker that he attracts some flicker of curiosity—

A wisp approaches, drifting closer.

Communicating with it is impossible, like trying to speak through molasses. But Dorian forces the request out along the frayed lines of his Fade-sense, the sheer effort sending a lancing pain up the back of his skull, an ache that grows from the place where he split his head open in the river last night. Still he tries. Help me. Stop her. Save us.

In his blurred vision there’s a faint blue-purple glow against the snow. It rises and disappears.

A second later there’s a startled yell. Dorian erupts out of the Bull’s arms and grabs at the air.

Not the air, particularly, but the Veil—so insubstantial, it used to fold thickly between his fingers, now the merest brush of gossamer on his skin. But he has it, and the mage stands high on the slope, clutching at a sapling as the wisp wriggles its way into her body.

In his Fade-sense he feels her spirit coming loose, drifting from its moorings, displaced some by the wisp but not enough. The rest is up to him. The Veil coats his palm tenuously, and he guides it with utmost care, wrapping it around her spirit, digging at the tethers that still hold her to her body and eroding them to nothing. She slumps against the tree, still clinging to its thin trunk. Dorian keeps at his work, his Fade-sense taxed to its limit, his head throbbing with such pain he’s sure it’s about to blind him. But he cannot stop. Bull will die if he doesn’t finish this. They both will.

The wisp settles deeper into its new container. The straining threads that hold the woman to her body pull yet more taut. Dorian claws at them, willing them to dissolve. Almost there. Almost done.

The mage’s spirit breaks free. The gravity of the Fade is too much for it to overcome alone, and it seeps through the Veil, gone.

Dorian slumps, gasping, and clutches at his head. Maker, that hurts. His vision is filled with splotches in black and white. He swallows and waits for the pain to leave him, or at least to abate just a little. Just enough for him to stand up again.

The wisp wanders over. The Fade must be tugging at it too, and rare is the wisp that has the desire to resist that pull. But it visits him now, dipping into his chest. The throbbing in his head begins to diminish, dulling out to an unpleasant buzz rather than the crushing waves that afflicted him before. “I don’t suppose you can bring my magic back?” he asks weakly.

No response, nor any change in his Fade-sense. It was a long shot, he supposes. The attention to his headache was more than he expected. The blue-purple glow vanishes then, the wisp gone back across the Veil.

Bull.

Dorian turns and crawls back to where Bull’s enormous body lies limp and quiet in the snow. A trickle of red from his ear. Kaffas. Not over yet. Dorian once again reaches for the Veil, smoothing it over Bull’s shaved skull, searching for any bleeding inside his head.

No blood, only some bruising and a ruptured eardrum. His hearing may suffer, but his sharp wit should remain intact. More bruises at his back, but again no serious injuries; Qunari bones are stronger than human ones, and their muscles thicker. His vital organs were well protected from the blast. Dorian takes a long, slow breath. The headache is back. He tries to shake Bull’s shoulder, but his mountainous body does not move. Dorian applies a little more force the second time. “Bull? Can you hear me?”

A grunt. Bull’s eyes flicker open. “Ow.”

Dorian knew he would be all right, yet hearing his voice triggers a flood of relief. “Good afternoon.”

Bull sits straight up suddenly and struggles to his feet. “What happened to her? Did she—oh.”

Dorian gazes up at the corpse lying beneath a branch bowed low, laden with snow. “I dispatched her.”

“Yeah, right after you tried to get yourself killed.”

Dorian meets Bull’s disapproving glare with indignation. “I was not trying to get myself killed! I was protecting you!”

Bull slaps a hand onto his bare chest. “I can take hits. You can’t.”

“Listen, I was just—I don’t know, trying to help!” Dorian flings his arms up. “My magic still hasn’t returned, I only just managed to kill her—I thought shielding you was the best thing I could do! Then at least you might survive and finish her off yourself! Was it any more foolish than flinging oneself into a fast-flowing river in the depths of winter to save one soggy mage?”

Bull’s displeasure fades fast into chagrin. He’s quiet for a moment. “Kind of. But I get it. Thanks. Sorry for arguing.”

Dorian stares back, confused. He had been expecting a fight. “Oh. Er—you’re welcome.”

“Hey, how’d you kill her, anyway? You must have done it quick, you don’t look hurt.”

“Oh, you know.” Dorian shrugs nonchalantly. “Necromancy. You wouldn’t understand.”

Bull grins. “Damn right I wouldn’t.”

Dorian finds he’s smiling too, although there’s little reason to do so—they’re still stuck several miles from civilization in the middle of the woods with all this awful snow on the ground, and they’ve both just almost died. But he’s smiling.

“Hang on a minute.” Bull trudges up the slope to the mage’s corpse. Dorian follows, willing his head to stop hurting.

Bull holds up the mage’s cloak. “Look what I found!”

“Oh, thank the Maker,” Dorian moans. “I’ll take that.”

Bull raises an eyebrow. “You already got clothes. I’m walking around with my tits out here.”

Dorian wilts, grasping a tree for support. “Please. I can hardly abide these winters with appropriate seasonal attire, let alone in robes that are still rather damp—“

Bull laughs and holds out the cloak. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding. It’s all yours.”

Dorian snatches it away and wraps it around himself with haste.

The journey remains arduous, but now that the heat he’s working up by walking is captured by the cloak instead of being sucked away into the frigid air, Dorian finds himself almost happy. The sun has peaked in the sky, and as it descends he discovers that the Fade is trickling back into his senses, so he stokes the warmth in his boots, reaches out and lends some to Bull as well. Bull halts in his tracks. “Whoa. That you?”

“Nice, isn’t it?” Dorian says.

“Oh yeah.”

They go on, Bull still stomping a trail for Dorian. The snow falls in starts and stops and finally ceases altogether as the sunset wells before them in the west. Then Bull pauses at the top of a rise and calls over his shoulder, “Hey, Dorian. Get up here.”

So Dorian staggers up to join him on the crest of the hill. For a moment he only leans against a tree, panting; then he peers into the distance. There, past another half-mile of forest—open space. The snow-covered wheat fields outside Bowerbend.

Dorian grabs Bull’s arm. “We did it! We made it!”

“Not quite, big guy. I pulled us south after we ran into that mage, we gotta head back north for a while.”

“Please say it isn’t too far. I’m about to starve to death.”

“Might be another hour. Sorry.”

“Oh, you villain. You got me all excited.”

Bull’s lips curl in a half-grin. “I tend to have that effect on people.”

Dorian cocks an eyebrow. “What? Getting their hopes up, only to leave them terribly disappointed?”

Bull guffaws and rests a hand over his heart. “That hurts, Dorian.”

“Hm,” Dorian strides ahead. “Let’s move on. It’ll be dark soon.”

Dusk settles over the snowy landscape. They stay just inside the treeline, and before long Dorian spots the lights of Bowerbend glowing in the distance. The sight spurs him on, and he catches up with Bull, the two of them walking together to the north.

The town is indeed bustling with Inquisition activity. One soldier dashes past in front of them only to slide to a halt and stare. “You—you—“

“Yeah, we’re alive,” Bull affirms. “Is the Seeker around anywhere? I’m gonna need her to requisition me some food.” —— Dorian slouches in the chair, his feet propped up in front of the fire. “I’m going to sleep for a hundred years.”

Bull wipes his mouth with the doily from an empty bread basket. “I’d offer to wake you up but I might still be eating by then.”

Dorian probes the arrow-wound in his arm absently. It’s been itching since the healer left a few moments ago, and it’ll probably continue to do so, especially if—

“Don’t scratch it.” Bull motions over the table with the leg of mutton he’s holding. “Makes it itch more.”

Dorian makes a noise of frustration. “I know, I just—oh, never mind.” He snatches up one of the sweetrolls and jams it in his mouth.

For a few moments the only sounds are half-starved chewing and the crackle of flames, with an occasional shout from outside. Dorian is quiet, flexing his bare toes. Then: “Bull.”

“Hm?”

“I think I’ve been unfair to you.”

Bull pauses and sets down the leg of mutton.

“Before all this, I was perfectly happy to think you were…” Dorian waves a hand. “Large, and crude, and shallow of character. I never bothered to find out any more.”

“Ah, it’s kind of my own fault.” Bull rests his chin on his hand. “I know what people think when they see me. Mostly I just let them believe what they want to.”

Dorian nods. “When really you’re the sort of man who carries a handkerchief around in your pocket.”

“Two handkerchiefs,” Bull notes.

Dorian takes a sip of wine. “You should try showing yourself around a bit. There’s a remarkable person in there under that beast you pretend to be.”

Bull grins. “Aww, you do like me after all.”

Dorian raises an affronted eyebrow. “I—I beg your pardon? I will thank you not to mistake one compliment for an expression of fondness—“

“Yeah, yeah. Want to pass me one of those sweetrolls?”

Dorian pushes the plate across the table, praying to the Maker that heat in his cheeks is just the warmth of the fire and not a damned blush.

“Hey, I’m glad you’re okay.”

Dorian glances up. “Oh. Well, it’s all thanks to you, isn’t it?”

Bull shrugs. “Just didn’t look so good there for a while, is all. So I’m glad you made it.”

“Mm. Listen, heartwarming as this all is, let’s never do it again. I could have lost my toes. I need those.”

“Yeah. Less snow next time.”

Dorian likes the sound of less snow. And he likes the sound of next time too.

[anadoribullholiday]

from @ichigo-otaku (a wonderful, wonderful pinch-hitter) for @adaarkadan

"You cannot be serious?" Dorian asks. He is standing in the doorway of his and the Bull's small apartment (well, what feels small, given that the Bull is a broad monster of a man and can make any living space feel tiny), his arms crossed over his chest and one foot tapping on the floor in disappointment.

The Bull and Krem are standing in the doorway, both of them grinning and holding various objects in his direction. They're each wearing Christmas sweaters and Santa hats, the Bull even has one on the end of each horn. Krem's holding a hat out for in Dorian, while the Bull extends a matching sweater in Dorian's direction.

It's endearing, if only the Bull's sweater didn't read something so crude as "Personal ride of one Dorian Pavus," and it even has a cute little snowman underneath the caption with a mustache similar to Dorian's. The sweater in his hands says "Sorry, I only ride the Iron Bull" and is decorated by mini sets of the Bull's horns. Those, too, have little santa hats on the ends.

"Kadan," the Bull says, his voice in the tune he uses when he wants to get something out of Dorian. "I think you'd look rather handsome in it. Won't you put it on for the Christmas party at the tavern? The boys are already waiting for us, and they all pitched in to buy us the set."

Dorian isn't hesitant to send Krem a venomous glare, which has Krem responding with a smirk. At least he has the decency to wear a sweater that has some modesty to it, and he must have gotten it second hand from the Bull, as it's a little large on him and sports a set of reindeer in the midst of a celebratory Christmas romp. Dorian knows he's seen the Bull wearing something similar once before, in fact he wouldn't be surrpised if they also had a matching set.

"And if I refuse?" Dorian asks as he turns back to the Bull. Who is pushing the sweater closer, somehow, and nearly has it pressed against Dorian's chest. "I would much rather wear something more festive, perhaps that lovely pajama set you bought for me? I think that would be a far better choice than this."

"Well yeah, you'd look good in that too," the Bull says, and Dorian knows the Bull is already picturing him in said pajamas. It really was a lovely set, a pair of pants decorated with festive mustaches and a red shirt to match it. They were entirely too comfortable to be considered fashionable, but Dorian favors them for lounging around the house, and he loves the way the Bull stares at him while he's in them. "But I think you'd look even better with the sweater. It's pretty warm, you won't get too cold easily. And..." he leans in to whisper in Dorian's ear. Krem doesn't bother hiding an eye roll and a sigh. "If you want, I can give you something to remember it by when we get back tonight."

Dorian takes his offer into consideration. "You wouldn't be partial to any sort of suggestions?" he asks. "Because only one thing is going to get me in that sweater at the moment. But Cremisius is here, and we don't want to keep him waiting."

"If it has anything to do with you and your dicks, just get it over with. We've gotta be there by the end of the hour," Krem says. "Chief."

"Hey, not my suggestion," the Bull says with a grin, already pushing Dorian back into the apartment. "Be back in a couple minutes."

Krem rolls his eyes again and reminds them not to take too long before the door slams shut. He turns away from it as there's a bang on the other side, reaching up to rub his face when a not so quiet moan slips through.

-----

The Bull is careful as he carries two mugs into the living room. They're rather large, mugs that Dorian picked out at some point and demanded they use for the rough mornings. The Bull prefers to use them for nights like this, where he and Dorian are both there, no plans for the evening beyond relaxing on their couch. Both mugs are filled with hot chocolate; a subtle cinnamon for Dorian and sweet whipped cream for the Bull.

Dorian has his nose buried in a book, bundled in one of the blankets the Bull loves most. There's another one thrown over his shoulders, a temporary hood over his head as he continues to read. The Bull snorts as he sits next to him, careful while he puts his own mug on the nearby coffee table. "Got enough blankets there, kadan?" he asks.

"Quiet. If we had an actual fire place, I wouldn't need to bundle up this way," Dorian says, a pointed glare at the recorded fire they're playing on their television. "This does not have the same effect, Bull. No matter how much you insist, it will not produce heat."

"You know, we don't need a fire place if we cuddle up close," the Bull says. He wiggles his eyebrows and leans in to take Dorian's book from his hands. Dorian gives him a small glare and reminds the Bull to mark his page, but he doesn't resist as the Bull starts pulling away the blankets. "C'mere, Dorian. Sip on some hot chocolate with me?"

"Terribly domesticated, aren't we?" Dorian asks, but he scoots closer. The Bull is already wrapping one of the blankets around them, not minding as Dorian crawls into his lap. Dorian reaches for their mugs before settling, holding the Bull's while the blanket is tucked in all the right places. Dorian lets out a content sigh and leans into the Bull's chest. "Alright, I suppose this is a better alternative to a fire place."

"Good. You don't play with fire well," the Bull laughs. Dorian rolls his eyes and swallows his response with his drink. "And, hey, if you want, there's sugar cookies in the kitchen?"

"I know. I could smell them as you were baking. You're quite terrible at covering that up," Dorian says. "Shall we decorate them together once we've finished here?"

It's the Bull's turn to laugh. "And here I thought I was the only domestic one."

-----

No matter how many times they watch the snow fall, it was always something Dorian can consider magical. He finds the Bull's excitement for it rather endearing, something he thinks he will never tire of. The Bull has a habit of watching the weather forecasts a little harder when they're anticipating snow, or preemptively calling off work just to stay up and see the snow fall. Sometimes, Dorian joins him.

Most times, the best view of the snow comes in the morning, and Dorian isn't surprised when those mornings turn out to be the most abrupt awakenings. "Dorian, look at the snow!" the Bull's voice booms through their bedroom, louder than Dorian is really ready to handle at the hour.

"Mmn, amatus please," Dorian groans, pulling the blanket- or maybe two, the Bull was kind enough to let Dorian throw an extra on their bed- over his head. "It's still too early to be so enthusiastic about the weather."

"C'mon, kadan, we can build snowmen and have a snowball fight with the boys," the Bull says. His grin is evident in his voice, and Dorian knows there isn't anything that can talk the Bull down from getting outside right this second. In fact, the sound of the Bull's phone buzzing every few seconds on the night stand makes Dorian think that he's not alone in the enthusiasm; Sera is probably texting about the snow and asking if the Chargers have any plans, while Dalish is informing the Bull that they're already on their way over.

"Can't I at least get a few more minutes of sleep while we wait for the children to arrive?" Dorian asks. There's a dip in the bed next to him, only a second warning before the Bull's hands are sliding under the blankets. "I'm rather enjoying my cocoon of warmth."

"We gotta get a head start on them. If we build up a fortress, they'll never win the snowball fight." The Bull's hands are pressing in teasing places all over Dorian's skin, making him squirm under the blankets. "Come on, Dorian. Let's go out there!"

Dorian sighs and gives in without a second argument. He takes his time getting up and dressed, even though the Bull is quickly putting on warmer pants and boots. He opts out of a shirt due to excitement, and Dorian hardly has the time to throw a scarf around the Bull's shoulders before the Bull runs outside. By the time Dorian is able to make it outside- a cup of coffee in his gloved hands because he still needs something to help him wake up- the Bull is already in the process of building a stash of snowballs behind a half formed snow wall.

"Amatus, you'll catch cold if you stay out here without a shirt on!" Dorian says before he takes a sip of his drink.

The Bull doesn't seem to care, just makes a noise of acknowledgement over his shoulder. Dorian stands on the sideline with his coffee, smiling and offering warmth when the Bull complains his hands are too cold.

It isn't too long before the Bull's boys arrive, helping themselves in through the front door and out the back within a few seconds. Krem is already carrying a snowball and lobs it towards the Bull the moment he steps back outside. Dorian doesn't have time to react to the idea of a snowball in the apartment before a barrage of them come flying in his direction. Thankfully, he is able to dodge and use Skinner as a shield.

He still doesn't bother jumping in when the snowball fight turns into the Bull versus his boys, even though the Bull is calling out for his help despite not needing it. Dorian just continues to watch, and with a smile casually reminds the Bull to put on a shirt once more. Offers his own hands for warmth, which the Bull gladly accepts after losing a round.

And when they all crowd into the kitchen once more for hot chocolate and leftover cookies, Dorian insists the Bull puts on that wretched sweater to match the one hiding under his winter coat, and hold's the Bull's hand while they warm up.

[anadoribullholiday]

Through Their Friends’ Eyes

For: @alphabetiful Author: Melime Greenleaf @melimegreenleaf Beta: puddlescape Prompt: Outsider POV on relationship Words: 1212 Warnings: NoneSummary: The progression of Dorian and Bull's relationship, through their friends' eyes.

Felix

Felix checked Dorian’s letter one last time, to make sure he had covered everything in his response. The part about the Qunari agent made him smile, and he wondered if Dorian even noticed he had spent three pages ranting about the advances of a man he claimed not to care about. After a moment’s thought, he added a post scriptum. I know you too well for you to trick me, my friend. This Iron Bull character must be like a dream come true to you. He wondered if he would live enough to see Dorian find a chance at happiness.

Vivienne

Vivienne knew what he was planning since she first saw him that evening. She noticed the elegant but easily removable robes, the recently trimmed mustache, the scent of his perfume imported from Tevinter, the extra care dedicated to his makeup and hair. The following day, when he tried to hide behind alcohol, sell his actions as impulsive, she just smiled at him. She was gracious enough to allow him to pretend that was anything other than a deliberate choice, and she knew before he made up his mind that he would be returning to The Iron Bull’s quarters that night.

Cassandra

Cassandra claimed not to understand. She would question what they could have in common, The Bull’s continued flirtation with her, how The Bull could concile his fear of magic with that relationship, how could they disregard the war happening between their peoples. In private, she would think about how it something coming out of a romance novel, two people meeting under impossible circumstances and finding comfort in each other against all odds. Although she wouldn’t admit it even to herself, she hoped that when this was over they wouldn’t part ways; and that Varric would write that book about them.

Varric

Varric couldn’t have come up with a better idea if he had tried. He had never been shy of using his friends as inspiration for his books, and that was simply too good to pass: forbidden love, war, impossible quests. For all of his complaining, Varric wondered what Dorian really thought about being the hero of a romance novel such as this. The Bull had already asked to read it when it was ready, but Dorian claimed it would be a waste of time. However, Varric had his suspicions about who gave him the contact for that Tevinter publishing house.

Solas

Solas watched with interest The Bull’s development after being expelled from the Qun and turned into Tal-Vashoth. It was a wonderful thing, to see someone finally become truly free to think, to make decisions. He wondered about what effect Dorian’s influence would have. For all his defects, he was a man who turned his back at everything he ever knew to follow his own path. He was skeptical at first, but time seemed to prove they were good for each other. Despite his disagreements with both, he hoped they could help each other grow, and wished them only the best.

Sera

Dorian was Sera’s friend. That wasn’t to say that The Bull wasn’t, but Dorian was her best friend. She would put an arrow to the face of anyone who hurt him, and even offered to do that with his father; it was a shame he refused, she would have liked to attack a proper evil Magister. So when it became clear that whatever was happening between Dorian and The Bull was serious, she made sure to call The Bull aside, and let him know there was a jar of wasps with his name on it if he ever hurt Dorian.

Blackwall

Blackwall couldn’t understand, at first. Dorian was a peacock, too arrogant, too confident in his magic, doing things for show even if also efficiently. He didn’t believe Dorian could have genuine feelings, at least not for someone like The Bull. Then he saw The Bull fall in a battle, and how fierce and protective that made Dorian, vaporizing everyone in his path to get to The Bull, staying by his side for the remainder of the battle, making sure no further harm was done to him. That was when he realized, Dorian cared more than he would like to admit.

Cole

Cole wanted to help with the hurt, but he knew that wasn’t always possible. He still tried, but he feared that sometimes all he managed to do was to make the hurt worse. The Bull asked him to stop entering his mind, Dorian seemed to only get sadder whenever Cole said something about his past. He didn’t know how to help them, but he could see that they were helping each other. They didn’t talk about their worries, most of the time, but just being together had the power to help, made the pain duller, eventually made it go away.

Josephine

Josephine looked at The Bull’s requisition for another bed. She was sure, even without looking at the Inquisition’s records, that it was the third time he had made such request, and that every time, he asked for a finer mattress than the one he originally had. She also noticed that he had requested for his ceiling to be fixed, and for new curtains. If Dorian’s influence continued, the Inquisition coffers would suffer. At least they had moved much of Dorian’s furniture, instead of requisitioning more. She approved the request, adding the note, next one will be deducted from your fee.

Cullen

Cullen could see that Dorian was happier, and it wasn’t hard to figure out why. Piece by piece, he let go of the mask he wore as an armor and allowed himself to be truer around them. It was good to see he made other friends and their chess games were no longer the only event in his social calendar. He especially liked how Dorian no longer felt the need to hide his feelings for Bull. As unlikely as their relationship may seem, so was his friendship with Dorian. Dorian had a talent for making many different people like him.

Leliana

Leliana couldn’t help noticing that Bull was spending more time in the library, and his interest had nothing to do with books. Since whatever they had going on started, she hadn’t seen Dorian sleeping on his chair a single time, and he seemed to be skipping less meals, not sacrificing his health in the name of research as much as he used too. He still dedicated too much of his time to it, but at least now she didn’t have to worry he would fall ill because of it. Bull took too much care of him for this to happen.

Krem

Krem didn’t think it would work. He had seen their relationship survive much, but the trial of so much distance over so much time seemed like too big a challenge. They couldn’t get near the Tevinter border often, and even when they did, Dorian could never escape his duties for long. It was a less than ideal situation, and exposed all parties to great risk. But as the years passed, and his chief’s silly smile after his daily talk to Dorian never dimmed, he realized that, if the end of the world couldn’t get in their way, nothing else could.

[anadoribullholiday]

My recipient is @birdscameflying, and I chose the prompt "First kiss under the mistletoe." from @alphabetiful

[anadoribullholiday]

for @bluesoulspirit and the prompts filled were "May I...hold your hand?" and 'A loving gaze into their eyes' (but mostly the first one). from @themusicmaker69

“May I...hold your hand?”

Dorian stared in shock at the Bull. Was this happening? This was like a dream come true, but it was so unexpected, Dorian was wary to trust it. Was this an attempt to appease him or mock him? Had he fallen asleep and was speaking with a demon? Before he could stop himself, he blurted out the simplest thing that came to mind.

“Why on earth would you want to do that?”

He hadn’t meant it to sound scolding, but as he saw the Iron Bull’s face drop, he knew he had failed. As silly as he knew it was, Dorian did want to hold the Bull’s hand. He wanted to stay the night and wake up snuggled up to him the next morning. But he knew better. He knew better.

The Iron Bull muttered a quick apology before turning around to catch up with the rest of the party, leaving Dorian to his thoughts for the remainder of the trip back to Skyhold.

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Dorian scowled as the memory surfaced again. He hadn’t been able to feel completely calm around the Iron Bull since the incident and in the last couple of weeks, he’d even taken to avoiding him altogether. It was all temporary, of course, until Dorian could relax enough to rationalize what was happening between them. Realizing that the sun was almost setting behind the battlements and the library was nearly empty, Dorian lethargically began packing up his research for the evening.

He should be happy. The Inquisition had more support than ever, they had Corypheus and his forces on the run, and he was on the verge of a major breakthrough in his research. Things couldn’t be going much better.

‘But maybe they could,’ he thought. ‘Maybe the Iron Bull also…”

Dorian mentally kicked himself for even bringing this up again. This...whatever was going on between him and the Bull was going well and had been for months now, at least up until recently. The Bull had been acting very strange indeed since the incident and eventually, Dorian couldn’t help but start avoiding him. Now, he was almost scared to see the Bull again. Not scared of the Bull, but scared of what this could mean. Had the Bull grown tired of him? Had his charm finally worn off? The questions swirled around Dorian’s head like the bees Sera kept. He hoped they were alright. He needed them to be alright. There was no reason to go ruining a good thing with his feelings. But, deep down, Dorian knew better than to hope for more, especially with a qunari mercenary. There is no love under the Qun. The Iron Bull couldn’t love him.

But the Iron Bull had left the Qun. The Iron Bull had invited Dorian to his bed. The Iron Bull had asked to hold Dorian’s hand. Dorian wasn’t sure what this could mean other than he was sure to get a headache if he thought about it too much.

As he was reshelving a few volumes of a dreadful collection on early Imperial architecture, he glanced up just in time to see the Iron Bull himself passing through the library with Vivienne, clearly headed for dinner. Dorian tensed. Before he could avert his gaze, however, the Bull acknowledged him with a smile, bid Vivienne farewell, and began making his way over to Dorian’s alcove. Dorian could swear the temperature in the room began rising for every inch the Bull closed between them. When the Bull was right in front of him, Dorian could hardly breathe it was so warm.

“Hey, hot shot. Long time, no see. You comin’ down for drinks later? The Chargers want a chance to beat the evil magister in a game of cards.”

The Iron Bull flashed him a grin that almost had Dorian swooning. Dorian vowed to figure out a way to punish himself for that moment of weakness later. He refocused on the moment at hand.

“If your men want to lose the last of their coin, I’m happy to oblige,” he replied with no malice.

The Chargers had finally warmed up to Dorian enough that they were willing to invite him to their games. They didn’t necessarily like him (especially with the way Dorian utterly destroyed them in cards), but they tolerated him well enough. It was nice, not drinking alone. The Iron Bull chuckled before replying.

“You know, they don’t actually think you’re an evil magister anymore. Though, maybe they will once they realize you cheat.”

Dorian scoffed. “I do no such thing. I can’t believe that you would even suggest such nonsense. I don’t need to cheat, I was born to win.”

The Iron Bull laughed again. “Whatever you say, big guy.” He paused and started looking around. He seemed...nervous, Dorian decided. After a few seconds, the Bull continued. “So, will I see you later?”

Growing up in the upper echelons of the Imperium taught Dorian a few things like how to read between the lines; the Iron Bull was hinting at more than cards and drinks and Dorian knew it. Dorian had been avoiding the Iron Bull as much as possible. After their last encounter, Dorian wasn’t sure what he might say or do if given the space. He didn’t want to ruin this. However, he also didn’t want the Iron Bull to think he wasn’t interested anymore. Dorian decided on what he hoped was an alluring answer.

“If you play your cards right, you may see more of me than you anticipated”.

The Iron Bull simply grinned again before leaving Dorian’s alcove. Finally, Dorian felt like he could finally breathe again. As he watched the Bull retreat, he knew that he was in deep. He wanted more. He needed more.

He couldn’t believe this was happening. Again. Why him? Why now? Dorian had a way of ruining every good thing that ever came his way and now, here he was about to ruin this, too. Dorian finished packing up his research and began making his way back to his quarters to freshen up before dinner. As he walked, his thoughts drifted back to the last time they were together.

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“You’ve got a real talent there, big guy,” the Bull panted, wrapping his arm around Dorian who had tucked himself into the Bull’s side against the cool night air. The hole in the Bull’s ceiling was finally good for something.

“Of course I have. I am me, after all.”

The Iron Bull just chuckled as he began stroking Dorian’s hair lovingly with his spare hand. A few minutes of silence passed as the two men tried to catch their breath. Dorian almost allowed himself to fall asleep in the Bull’s embrace, but he knew better. With a small huff, Dorian pried himself away from the warmth of the Bull’s bed and began gathering his belongings. The Bull followed him with his eye.

“Off so soon?”

Dorian sighed, slipping on his trousers. He braced himself before turning around to face the Bull. Just for a second, he could have sworn that he saw a trace of...something on the qunari’s face. Before he had too much time to analyze it, he opened his mouth to speak.

“Unless you were looking for a second round, there’s no real reason for me to still be here, no?”

Again, Dorian could have sworn that the Bull’s face betrayed something, but as quickly as it came, it was gone again. Dorian felt increasingly uncomfortable under the Bull’s gaze and returned to dressing. Once he was finished, he made for the door. Just as he reached out for the handle, the Bull called his name. Dorian turned around once again to face him.

“Dorian, I-” the Bull paused and rubbed a hand over his face, sighing. When he looked up, Dorian was beyond surprised to see sadness in his eyes. “Sleep well, Dorian.”

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Dorian had reached his quarters. He let out a long sigh as he opened the door and stepped in.

“You’re over analyzing this,” Dorian muttered to himself. “He doesn’t care about you. Not like that.”

Dorian couldn’t help but think about that look the Bull had given him and the question he’d asked him. It was unnerving to see the Bull so open with him. Dorian was sure the Bull wasn’t open with anyone like that. So why him?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Despite being nervous about what the evening might hold, Dorian found himself feeling more at ease than he had in a long while. He had made quite a profit off of the Chargers before they became too intoxicated to continue and went about their own business (primarily finding a partner for the night). All around, the evening was going quite well, except that the Iron Bull had been strangely quiet all night.

As the Chargers’ numbers dwindled, Dorian became more and more aware of the Iron Bull’s presence. The Iron Bull now simply sat next to Dorian nursing a half-empty ale. He’d elected to watch rather than participate in any of the night’s activities and finally, Dorian couldn’t take it anymore.

“Bull, are you alright? You’re acting rather...odd.”

The Bull simply nodded and gave Dorian a gentle smile. He didn’t say anything for a few minutes. When he did, Dorian almost wished he hadn’t.

“I’ve been thinking about...us. If being with me is as troublesome as it seems, maybe it’s better for both of us if we call it off.”

The Bull finished his drink, closed his tab, and retreated to his room.

Dorian was stunned. How much had he had to drink? Surely, the Iron Bull hadn’t just broken up with him (not that they were in a relationship in the first place). This was the exact opposite of what he wanted. Being with the Bull was the best thing that had ever happened to him and he didn’t understand how Bull couldn’t see that-

Oh.

Suddenly, all the pieces fell into place. The sad looks, the desire for hand holding. He’d learned not to hope for more and in doing so failed to see that that’s exactly what the Bull wanted: more. He thought he was doing the right thing. He couldn’t have been more wrong.

Dorian downed the rest of his drink and raced up the stairs after the Bull.

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The sun was just peaking over the mountains and would soon warm the ground inside of Skyhold. The morning birds began their song just as the serving folk started preparing to feed the hungry masses of Skyhold.

Dorian snuggled closer into the Iron Bull’s chest trying to fall back asleep. They’d had an eventful night and he decided they deserved to sleep in. There had been tears, shouting, consoling, and love-making. Just as dramatic as one of Varric’s tales. It had worked out in the end.

The Iron Bull began fidgeting beneath Dorian, forcing him to roll off of the qunari’s chest. The Bull rolled onto his side to face Dorian. The Bull took Dorian’s face in his hand and lightly stroked his cheek with his thumb. Dorian met the Bull’s gaze and smiled before leaning in to place a gentle kiss on the Bull’s lips. Whatever the future held for them, he hoped there was more of this.

[anadoribullholiday]

the world is so inconceivable

For: @chaoslindsay By: @amurderof Tags: nsfw, no other warnings apply Prompt: - time travel threesome! Older!Dorian travels back to the present and blows Dorian/Bull's minds not only with being absolutely awesome at sex but also with the obvious depth of his affection for Bull, speaking to a long-lasting loving relationship that Dorian never thought possible for himself

"Are you really?" Sera asks, voice breathless and still too-loud in the revelation that's followed his — no, the stranger's, the impostor's — appearance. "All messed up with your own magic again?"

What do you mean "again"? Dorian's already halfway to asking, rolling his shoulders back and tipping his head up, opening his mouth — when the impostor laughs, laughs and smiles so easily that it makes something within Dorian's chest seize painfully. Delightful. His heart will simply give out. Unfortunately everything you've fought for in your entire life will be for naught when you decide at some point in the future to fuck it all up and send yourself back to terrify your younger self to death.

"I don't mess up, Sera," the impostor says, and his smile colors the words, and he doesn't at all posture when he says it, and Dorian knows that the man before him is utterly foreign. A stranger. This simply can't... And then the man turns to Dorian and his smile goes soft around the edges, indulgent and what Dorian wishes desperately were patronizing. "Oh, look at me. What year is it? I'd forgotten how young I looked."

“It's 9:42 Dragon," Adaar pipes up helpfully, because she's enraptured with this turn of events, it would appear. Dorian half-expects her to turn to him at any moment and harangue him for never telling her time magic could be applied so frivolously, for the delight of everyone in the room save Dorian himself. "Where — when are you from?"

"Oh, just ages past," the imposter replies, and he lifts a hand to his chin and scrutinizes Dorian. Dorian has to fight off the urge to step back, or turn and leave. What kind of friend would he be were he to leave Sera and Rae to this — well, to what is clearly a demon. Clearly. Obviously.

"I'm finding the Seeker. If no one else here sees the danger involved in standing about with our tongues lolling out of our mouths, then I will need to take the initiative to protect the future of the Inquisition."

And that gives him the excuse he needs to — not flee, blessed Andraste, he's not the kind of man who flees from any such thing. But to extricate himself from what will surely be an increasingly troublesome conversation.

Ha. Troublesome. Troublesome.

He finds Cassandra walloping one of the training dummies in the courtyard, and it's only as he arrives and she lowers her sword that he realizes he has to now explain why he requires her unique talents.

"Shit," he says with feeling, and she lifts one of her naturally perfect brows (oh, he despises her) and purses her lips.

==

"I wasn't sure I believed you," she tells him later, and he lowers his head to his hands.

"Yes, well," he replies articulately, and allows her to buy him a drink.

==

Sera explains to him the whole of it from outside the library window he sits near. He won't say that he's been avoiding her, or anyone in particular, but she's made it apparent she finds the impostor's presence an absolute joy, and Dorian's uninterested in partaking of that particular experience.

So she does that thing that she tends to do, and chucks a malformed biscuit through the window near where he sits in the library, and as he picks crumbs from his hair she provides him with information he isn’t in the least interested in hearing.

"So you're a bit of a bigwig, but not in a stuffed shirt sort of way. No more than you are already." She hooks her hands over the windowsill and leans back, chewing on her bottom lip. He beats down the bright impulse of concern that she'll tumble off and land sixty feet below. He's not her minder.

"Andraste's tits, that's confusing," she continues. "It's not hard when it's just you or it's just you, but I think about the two of you and smack, my headfloss starts pounding like I've drunk too much. That why you're avoiding you?"

"I'm not avoiding—" Though he barely gets that line out before she's blinking slowly at him, and he has to reassess his line of reasoning: "I've much to do with my time beyond hanging on the every word of a man who may or may not be myself from the future."

Sera rolls her eyes. "Well, then I s'pose you won't care where he headed after, huh."

"In that, you would be correct. I care not one whit."

"Right," Sera says, and nods. "Then I'm heading back, 'cuz I can't wait to see the look on Bull's face when he realizes there are two of you."

And damn her, she clambers down the roof and leaves him to reach all of the available horrifying conclusions on his own.

==

“There, at least someone’s considering this state of affairs logically.”

Dorian didn’t make it in time to see what occurred when the impostor — oh, that’s childish, he should call him… Pavus — when Pavus swanned into the Herald’s Rest and caught the assembled unaware. So he has to make do with sitting at Bull's side on one end of the table while Pavus regales the Chargers with stories from their apparent futures.

"Yeah, logically," Bull replies, and frowns before he takes another swig of his ale. His brow hasn't unfurrowed since Dorian joined him, and it's taking most of Dorian’s honed self-control not to smooth it out with his thumb. "The Seeker did her thing though?"

Dorian grimaces. "Both she and our dear Commander ran him through his paces. He veritably bleeds magic, but nothing untoward."

"Aside from time magic itself."

"Yes, aside from time magic itself. Which, I'll remind you, both the Inquisitor and I have fallen victim to in the past."

Bull lifts an eyebrow and Dorian lets out a sigh. "That was not intended to sound like any manner of acceptance of this situation. Or approval. Or belief that he is anything other than a demon plying its tricks on us."

Dalish lets out a peal of laughter that pulls both Dorian and Bull's attention to the group huddled opposite them. Krem and Dalish flank Pavus while he gestures overdramatically and seem to be humoring him if the size of their smiles are any indication, and Skinner doesn't look like she wants to shiv anyone. It's nearly sweet.

"I think they like him more than me," Dorian says, in what he trusts is an aloof, airy manner, and not at all bitterly.

"I think he likes them more than you do," Bull replies, and before Dorian can protest, loops an arm around Dorian's waist in a nigh successful attempt to distract him from the weight of that comment, most likely. Damnit.

Pavus glances up from his adoring fans and... smiles, genuine and plain, down at the both of them. Bull's hand at Dorian's waist tightens just enough to notice, and Dorian's tongue feels too large for his mouth.

Pavus excuses himself with a friendly clasp on Krem and Dalish's shoulders and maneuvers to Dorian and Bull's end of the table, where he looks them over with a too-long gaze. "It's... six months now, isn't it?"

"You've been here for a handful of hours," Dorian mutters under his breath, but Bull, as always, is unable to leave someone's inquiry unfulfilled.

"Give or take a couple days."

Bull's hand feels heavy at Dorian's waist.

"There's a tendency to romanticize the past," Pavus says, and he glances down at Bull's hold on Dorian, and it's unnerving, how Dorian doesn't feel the usual stifled shame he still actively combats. He does feel... seen, though, and for the first time since this ridiculousness was thrust upon him does he allow himself to contemplate that this man may be... is, sweet Maker, is himself, from some unknown future, and what that could possibly entail—

"Don't overthink it," Pavus says in a calming tone of voice that reminds Dorian damningly of Bull's. "I don't want to make your lives harder than I already have, by merely showing up here. But until I work with Dagna to diagnose what exactly has stopped working in my locket, we should try and coexist peaceably, shouldn't we?"

"Cullen and Cassandra checked him out?" Bull asks Dorian again, and Dorian nods.

"As far as anyone is able to surmise, he is indeed... me."

"Oh, don't scowl so," Pavus chides, a warm smile on his face. "Laughter lines are infinitely preferable to frown lines. Though Bull insists that I have only become more handsome in my old age, like unto a fine wine."

Dorian was unaware it was possible for one's stomach to drop into one's boots at the same time that one felt one's horizons suddenly stretch forward for miles unceasingly.

Pavus frowns down at them, and then closes his eyes as though pained. "Oh, shit."

==

“So I think we can both agree that was weird.”

“Weird,” Dorian says with what he feels is the appropriate amount of chagrin, and leans back into Bull’s wandering hands, which come to a stop at the small of Dorian’s back and the side of his neck. “Yes. Yes, that was weird. And it will apparently continue to be so until Dagna can sort things out with — him.”

Bull laughs behind him, and the strength of it shudders through Dorian’s body. “He’s not too bad, huh? Just a bit… older.”

Dorian huffs, and allows himself to close his eyes. Would but they cease talking about this, and go wherever Bull’s hands lead them.

“And more self-assured. Handsome, too.”

Dorian tenses, and Bull laughs again.

"Sorry, sorry." Bull drags his thumb in circles against the base of Dorian’s skull, just under his ear. "He really rubs you the wrong way, huh?"

Dorian sighs, and tightens his arms across his chest. "I don't trust him to be who he says he is, if that's what you mean."

"Nah," Bull replies easily, and Dorian feels the brush of Bull's lips against the crown of his head. Sweet. Always, enduringly sweet. As usual, Dorian considers protesting, and lets the objection sit behind his breastbone until it passes. "I think you know he's you, in ten? Twenty years? He's got crow's feet."

Dorian stops himself just in time from saying, And an ease about him I never expect to have. Says instead, "Even if we were to operate under the delusion that he were, in fact, me, then we would need to entertain the idea that everything he says is the truth, including that you and I…”

Bull's hands tense against Dorian's skin for just a moment, just long enough to notice, and Dorian bites his tongue against any number of excuses he could give for that clumsy display, for the desperate hope that bled into his tone.

"Yeah. Yeah, that was pretty..." Bull chuckles. "That's a doozy."

"Yes, a doozy," Dorian says, and turns around to face Bull directly. The back of his neck feels abruptly cold, and the strange weight of this conversation settles leadenly in his stomach without Bull's steadying grip. "And his immediate fraternization with the Chargers. That doesn't strike you as unnatural? He's some sort of — some sort of desire demon, who's placed itself within an interesting predicament in order to insinuate its way into the Inquisition."

Bull frowns for only a moment, and then his expression clears into damnable neutrality. "Not an envy demon?"

"Fine, or an envy demon, yes, they can shapeshift—"

"You said a desire demon," Bull interrupts, and Dorian draws the inside of his lip between his teeth and bites down until it hurts.

He did, didn't he. Oh Maker fucking damnit.

"A desire demon, planted here to drum up strife and frustration within the ranks," Dorian says, but he can hear how forced the words seem even as they leave his mouth.

"Or he's you," Bull says, and he lifts a shoulder in a shrug. "Fifteen years out and—"

"And happy," Dorian says, because he refuses to hear the words from Bull's mouth. "Happy, and charmingly friendly, and beloved, apparently. Apparently." That last word comes out a bit brittle, and he bites down on his tongue to keep himself from making this any worse. He looks in the general vicinity of Bull's sternum, and the two of them are silent until Bull finally shifts in place, and raises a hand to cup Dorian's chin.

Do not reassure me, Dorian thinks viciously. But Bull only lifts his gaze until their eyes meet, and draws his thumb across Dorian's skin.

"Let's give him a break then, if he's you. Maybe you and him can work with Dagna together. Get him back home to his people as soon as possible."

And what should be patronizing warms Dorian to his bones.

==

Dorian… reconsiders Pavus. He must, after all: if Pavus is going to be at Skyhold, then it’s foolish for Dorian to treat him with such disdain.

Or pragmatic and intelligent, some part of him thinks irritably, and he breathes in slowly and — let’s himself treat it as Bull would. Feel it, and then let it go. It is simply nonsensical that every other denizen of Skyhold would be duped by Pavus, and Dorian alone would be the one who managed skepticism. And as Bull said…

He won’t seek out Pavus, as it were, but he no longer shies from his presence. They share the library, with Pavus remarking with fond nostalgia on the collection of books Dorian has been curating, and making suggestions with such an enraptured tone to his voice that Dorian doesn’t take offense at it.

They share time at the Herald’s Rest as well, Pavus sitting with the Chargers each evening with a quietly pleased look on his face that takes some time for Dorian to identify: his features relaxed, shoulders rounded, elbows on the table.

"You look... content," Dorian observes one such night, and Pavus smiles. It’s a bit odd, to watch oneself, or some version of oneself, smile. Odd, yet comforting.

Pavus doesn't look away from the Chargers and Bull. "It's been some time since I've since the Iron Bull in person."

The warmth seeping through every inch of Dorian's frame snaps back jarringly, and knots into a cold and heavy weight between his lungs. "Oh."

Pavus glances at him, and while there's humor in his voice his smile bends patient, his eyes softening. "You misunderstand me. He is in high spirits, and as fighting a form as a man his age is allowed to be. The two of us simply find ourselves on opposite ends of Thedas, much of the time."

"I wasn't." But Dorian lets the sentence fade there, because he isn't sure what the protest was intended to be. Because of course he was. For one unsettling moment Dorian thought that Bull was — dead, or gone, or any number of wretched things. And instead, they are simply parted.

"Not ideal still," Pavus continues, and he lifts a hand to press against the silk over his sternum, under which lies what must be some sort of amulet. A reminder, perhaps. A token.

The weight between Dorian's chest takes a terrible turn towards… yearning, and he forces himself to look out across the tavern and to breathe, slowly.

"But it’s a situation I'm willing to endure, given my firm knowledge as a younger man I would never have such an opportunity in the first place."

Dorian swallows, and reaches for his ale. He drinks, and for one brief moment, he wonders yet again if this is some sort of ploy. Some sort of cruel joke played upon him, to convince him that perhaps he’s allowed this.

Or instead — and this claws at his chest and fills the spaces left behind, a feeling he wishes would leave him immediately — it is true, and real, and he is allowed it. His own imperfect future, full of more than he’d ever expected once he was old enough to understand how the world worked.

"How expressly shitty," Dorian says, and Pavus barks out a laugh.

"Yes. Yes, I quite agree."

==

And so things settle, as it were, and Dorian joins Pavus in working with Dagna to restore Pavus’s locket. Dagna has accepted the situation as another facet of the fantastic mystery that is magic, and the three of them make some manner of progress — or at least Pavus seems to think so.

Pavus takes to carousing nightly in the tavern, sitting within distance of Bull’s booming laugh, save for those evenings Dorian passes him curled up in the chair Rae had brought up for him in the library. Dorian can only imagine that Pavus has read all of these books before, but perhaps he finds the familiarity comforting. Similar to the Bull, perhaps.

When the Chargers are sent out on an excursion to the Temple of Sacred Ashes, Pavus joins Dorian on the wall. Once the company has hiked into the col near the base of Skyhold’s resident peak, Pavus mumbles something about returning to the forge, and squeezes Dorian’s shoulder in passing. Dorian watches him go and wonders, with a painfully curious clarity, how many times Pavus has watched Bull disappear from view.

It doesn’t make the wait any less obnoxious, to know he’s not the only one impatiently awaiting Bull’s return.

When Dorian hears the ruckus heralding the Chargers’ return, raised voices and armor clanking up the mountain, he returns to the wall to find Pavus already there, face blank as he surveys the snowbanks.

The both of them are silent, until they lock onto Bull’s form in the distance.

“I will never tire of the sight,” Pavus says softly, the words nearly lost to the wind.

“How fortunate that his silhouette is so recognizable,” Dorian says, because he still isn’t sure what else to say, when faced with a man who seems just as affected by Bull’s absence and return.

When the Chargers crowd through the gates, Bull cuffs one of them — Bucket, if Dorian recalls, a squirrely elf if ever there were one — and searches the courtyard, and then lifts his gaze to the fortress walls.

Dorian hasn’t a chance to keep the smile from his face, when Bull catches sight of him and waves one of his massive hands in greeting.

Next to him, one of Pavus’s hands raises from the edge of the parapet and then drops back to the stone. “Are you going to keep him waiting?” he asks, and Dorian hears the performance to it — the practiced indifference, the implication that Pavus doesn’t care.

“His arm will fall off if I do,” Dorian replies, and waves his hand above his head because — well, someone should. He can hear Bull’s pleased shout from across the courtyard, and his warm laugh when Dorian sets off with some speed towards the stairwell.

==

Dorian won't believe that the idea occurs to him first, because Bull is clever, and thoughtful, and — unbelievably horny. Dorian wouldn't take a bet that Bull's never thought about Dorian somehow duplicating himself without time magic being involved. But with time magic? And a legitimate second version of himself?

"You keep glancing between me and him," Bull says, under his breath so no one at the table pays them any mind — it's the same manner in which Bull will list the things he plans to do to Dorian later once they're alone, and their colleagues are quite used to tuning it out.

"Yes, well," Dorian says uselessly, and then glances between the two of them again.

Pavus is listening rapturously as Sera and Adaar recount some absurd version of the events that befell them on their first dragon hunt, with Sera throwing out her arms and caterwauling while Adaar does a passable impression of Bull, exhilarated glee and all.

"He and I have talked at some length. I understand him, at least to the smallest of degrees."

"And I get looped into this how?" Bull lowers his head closer to the table so he can look up at Dorian from underneath his brow, and takes a swig of his ale.

Dorian could swear that Bull knows exactly what he's thinking.

"He and — you," Dorian hesitates, because it's been simple to divorce himself from Pavus, a clear delineation starting at their differences in hair and escalating to the relaxed roll of Pavus's shoulders as he sits at the table and laughs outright at Sera's ribaldry. But he hasn't spent the same effort in separating Bull, the Bull who now sits at his side and looks fairly smug at Dorian's verbal fumblings, and the Bull that Pavus must know — older, more scarred surely, with greying stubble and the confidence that must come from being Tal-Vashoth for so long and retaining one's faculties.

Dorian forces himself to plow ahead. "He spends his days in Tevinter, clearly. Look at his robes. That's not what one wears adventuring."

Bull looks considering. "So I..."

"So the Iron Bull of whatever-year Dragon is obviously not in Tevinter with him. It would be undeniably foolish for him to be, and I would not allow it." Bull is on the verge of opening his mouth to protest, Dorian can sense it, and so he presses on, "And I imagine he must miss him. You. I imagine he must miss you."

Bull rests his hand over the mouth of his tankard, curling his fingers until his nails tap against its sides. He looks at Dorian as though there’s no separation between Dorian’s thoughts and his own, as though he can see immediately through him.

It’s — intimate, that look.

It doesn’t make Dorian uncomfortable, which remains discomfiting in and of itself.

“Is this permission?” Bull asks, and Dorian swallows. Fists his hands on the table — and unclenches them when Bull's eyes are drawn away from his face and to them, instead.

"I've no expectation of," Dorian starts, and he swallows again, Bull's eyes trained back on his face. That gaze again.

Dorian trails a finger through a puddle of spilled beer on the table between them, and Bull lays one of his hands palm-up next to it. Within distance — an opportunity, but one intended not to crowd Dorian. Dorian's become used to such actions.

He turns his own hand and brushes his knuckles against the side of Bull's, and steels himself. "You can't say you aren't curious."

Bull lifts a brow and nudges his hand against Dorian's, and from the look on his face hears what Dorian leaves unsaid:

Because I am.

==

Pavus's laugh jars Dorian momentarily, a tone that matches his own perfectly.

"I'm not an unselfish man," Pavus says with a curl of his lips, and Dorian finds himself charmed, in spite of himself. Because of himself.

"No buggering shit," Dorian says, and Pavus laughs.

Sitting this close to him, willingly and without an ulterior motive to catch any hints of the demonic, Dorian can note the differences between them. Can appreciate them, as it were.

Pavus's hair is long and streaked with grey, tied loosely behind his head in a bun that Dorian has a strange urge to lop off. The style of a man who’s in no danger of a combatant getting a hold of it, and using it against him.

Pavus has reading spectacles that Dorian's seen, brought out from an inner pocket of his robes when Josephine requested that the man review several of her more active treatises for weaknesses to resolve and exploit.

And the robes — though Pavus hasn't said anything of the sort, Dorian suspects he's a magister now, Halward dead and the seat fallen to him. The robes are those of a Tevinter with money and power, and a taste for rebellion: white robes in the Magisterium must make him rather distinctive.

Pavus leans back in his chair and folds his hands in his lap. He'd insisted that Dorian accompany him to the lower library in Skyhold, something about how he missed the particular combination of ancient dust and cobwebs he had only ever experienced there. "This is odd, isn't it."

Dorian resettles against one of the shelves. "You're only now noticing."

"It's less odd to enjoy myself in the company of my friends, regardless of their age. I consider it an unfortunately-rare occurrence. But I'm sure you will appreciate the strangeness inherent in speaking directly with myself, about such a topic."

"Oh, yes," Dorian agrees dryly, and Pavus chuckles.

"I couldn't help but overhear your conversation with the Iron Bull the other evening," Pavus continues, and Dorian is glad for the weight behind him.

Of course it was only a matter of time before he himself breached the topic, but he hadn't expected it from the interloper.

"Perhaps you could fill me in on your conclusions. I'm not sure you discussed them in the tavern."

Dorian does not blush, in so many words, but he does take some time to clear his throat —

“D'you want to watch me fuck him?” Bull asks, breath hot against Dorian's ear, and Dorian digs his nails into the meat of Bull's shoulders.

— and manages, "Not the entirety of them, no," and when Pavus laughs, it doesn't feel mocking. It's... fond.

“He has such a creative mind, doesn’t he.” Pavus closes his eyes and his smile turns soft. Dear.

Dorian opens his mouth to say something light, and droll, and wittily scandalous, and what his traitorous mouth lets out is instead, "You've been together, the two of you. This whole time."

Pavus leans forward in his chair, crossing his legs at the ankle, and his voice is warm, his words slow. As though Dorian were a deer set to startle.

“I have been accordingly blessed,” he says, with a smile shaping his face that Dorian isn’t sure how to read. How to accept as a genuine foretelling of his future. “Obviously, we’ve had our share of troubles. But it is, ultimately, what I had hoped to have as a child.”

Dorian’s mouth is dry when he attempts to speak, to say anything, to question this — beautiful absurdity. The least likely aspect of an entirely illogical event. “Oh,” is what he finally says, like an utter arse, and Pavus laughs kindly at him, and invites him to accompany him to dinner.

==

Pavus settles himself next to Bull at the table, the closest he’s been to the man, Dorian thinks, since he arrived.

Pavus watches Dorian’s face for a long moment — Dorian has no idea of what he makes obvious to that frustratingly observant gaze — and then turns to Bull.

“It was an invitation, wasn’t it?”

Bull shifts beside Dorian, and looks to him.

Dorian drags his teeth over the inside of his bottom lip, and exhales.

==

In Bull’s room, Pavus rests his hand against his chin and furrows his brow in overly dramatic consideration. “I wonder,” he says, with rounded tones, “if when I return, Bull will recall this evening.” He drops his hand, and the smile that curves up his mouth is wicked. “Let's make it memorable."

Bull snorts a laugh next to Dorian, and Dorian nearly smacks his arm, to scold him for — encouraging Pavus. For encouraging this. Except Dorian's the one who proposed it in the first place, which is to say that obviously Pavus agreed. They were of one mind.

"Kaffas," Dorian mutters, and Pavus steps forward and reaches for Bull.

==

Dorian has found jealousy a strange bedfellow in the past. There was little point to it in Tevinter, when one's lover may be married, or one dalliance among many, or someone you paid for the evening. There was no illusion of belonging, and thus no real basis for such an emotion.

He's flirted with jealousy quite jarringly in the south, when one of Bull's flings would make themselves available to him, or — mortifyingly — when Bull would sink into an evening with the Chargers and not have the time for Dorian after it.

There is both the basis for jealousy here, now, and the immediate dissolution of it. Why be jealous of oneself, in the moment?

"Let me look at you," Pavus breathes out, lifting himself up onto his toes and running his hands over Bull's shoulders, his neck, up to his horns. "It's strange to think we were ever the both of us so young.”

Bull huffs a laugh, the roll of his shoulders unsettling Pavus's hands. "Think about how we feel," he says, and glances at Dorian — and then looks again, longer, until heat suffuses Dorian's chest. "Bit of a kick in the pants, you showing up here."

"Yes, yes, I shouldn't have said anything about your futures," Pavus agrees breezily, and he reaches up again and bends his fingers, dragging his nails across the base of one of Bull's horns.

Bull's eyes go wide and then drift closed, and Dorian watches him lean into the touch, the long bend of his back as he ducks low enough that Pavus can sink back onto the soles of his feet.

"Be a dear and divest the Iron Bull of his trousers, would you," Pavus says after several long moments in which Dorian finds himself enraptured with the rise and fall of Bull's curving shoulders.

"Fuck," Bull exhales, and Dorian swallows a laugh when he moves behind him, reaching around him to untie the rope that keeps his abysmal trousers up.

He’s no stranger to the wide stretch of Bull’s back, or even the freckled curve of his arse, but there’s something to be said for it filling the breadth of his vision, seeing the manner in which his shoulders rise and fall when he’s kissed.

He presses his palms to the dip of Bull’s back, warm against his fingers, and Bull hums low and leans back into the touch.

==

Pavus has a tender way about him.

Dorian has long-abandoned the hesitant lie that what he and Bull have is nothing but two men enjoying themselves and each other. But still, there’s an emotion in Pavus’s every movement, a caring to it that Dorian has heard Bull claim him to have, but — nothing like this.

Nothing like the slow caress of each hand across Bull’s chest, or the slow curve around Bull’s horn. Not the way that Pavus looks Bull in the eye, and maintains that contact when he leans in for another kiss. When he leads Bull by the hand to the bed.

“Dorian,” Bull says.

Dorian watches Pavus react to the name, on Bull’s lips, even while Bull looks across the room towards Dorian.

“This isn’t simply a show?” Dorian asks. Swallows when his voice creaks.

“C’mere, sweetheart,” Bull says, and Dorian tears his eyes away from Pavus to take in Bull’s low-lidded gaze, the stretch of his smile.

Tender.

==

“—astride his chest,” Pavus is saying, and Dorian does his best to ignore the warring emotions of embarrassment and anticipation while he does as directed.

Bull grins up at him, hooking both hands over Dorian’s thighs, and rubbing his thumbs into the leather of Dorian’s trousers. “Good view.”

Pavus laughs, and Dorian can hear him working with Bull’s boots and brace. “The view is all mine, as it were. Tell me, Dorian, you’ve never had a chance to watch his face, have you?”

“What?” Dorian frowns and glances over his shoulder. That he flushes at the sight before him — Bull’s bare, thick thighs, pink at the knee where the brace had rested; his full cock, curving up against his stomach already, precome beading at the tip; and Pavus, reaching for it, looping his fingers around the base — is coincidental. He’s only human, after all.

“Watch him,” Pavus prompts again, and Dorian tears himself away from the sight of Pavus’s mouth widening around the purpling head of Bull’s cock.

Dorian draws his bottom lip between his teeth, and Bull curses low, digging his fingertips into Dorian’s legs. Stares up at Dorian — oh, the weight of that gaze. Dorian can barely stand it. Has to lean forward to swallow down every moan that bleeds past Bull’s lips.

He hesitates when pulling away from the kiss, arms flat on either side of Bull’s head, and watches Bull’s expression twist. The way his mouth forms around soundless words, how his eye starts to drift closed when every muscle in him goes taut — but not entirely, staying open enough that he keeps looking up at Dorian. Keeps looking up at Dorian when he curses and reaches back with one of his hands, and Dorian hears Pavus’s muffled moan as Bull comes with a shout.

Bull shudders beneath him. Dorian watches emotions cascade across his face and leans forward again, pressing their foreheads together.

“Show me what you just did,” Dorian says breathlessly, his eyes crossing from the proximity, keeping Bull’s gaze; and while Pavus chuckles, Bull huffs out a low please, Dorian, fuck.

==

“Kiss him,” Dorian says, and Pavus lifts a brow. “Oh, you know why.” He’s nearly not flustered, sitting on the mattress next to Bull, his blood aflame with the touch of Bull’s hand at his hip.

Pavus chuckles, and settles on Bull’s other side, and kisses him. Lets Bull taste his own spend. A bit filthy, but Bull’s low moan is predictable, and the way his hold tightens on Dorian is welcome.

==

“Something he won’t tell you,” Pavus says airily, as though they’re discussing the weather, or Ferelden politics, “is how much he enjoys being told what to do.”

Bull snorts, and the vibration from it rolls down his arms, reverberates in the hand clenched around Dorian’s hip, in the fingers teasing him open. “Think I know that one.”

“Oh no,” Pavus replies, and if Dorian could lift his head from the pillow in front of him, he’d look back to take in the cause of Bull’s sudden, sharp breath. Why Bull goes so deliciously taut behind him. “I meant you, amatus.”

Fuck, Dorian thinks, and moans against the pillow, the endearment lodging itself in the back of his mind.

==

“Arch your back,” Pavus whispers into Dorian’s ear, and Dorian follows the command without putting thought into it, tipping his head back until he’s gazing up at the roof with half-lidded eyes.

“Your hand, Bull.”

And Bull’s hand curves around the front of his neck, digging his fingertips into Dorian’s skin.

“Kaffas,” Dorian chokes out, and Bull curses below him, and slides his hand around Dorian’s erection.

==

“Pretty sure I’m dreaming,” Bull mutters, and Dorian snorts into the meat of his shoulder.

Pavus hums, from Bull’s other side, held close to Bull’s chest. “Oh, needs more qunari.”

“Or you two making out,” Bull says, and when Dorian lifts his head to catch Pavus’s eye, Bull breathes in sharply:

“Oh, fuck. Fuck. Yeah.”

==

Dorian’s teetering on the edge between sleep and wakefulness when he feels the bed shudder, not enough to herald Bull’s departure, but noticeable. There are a handful of low murmured words, followed by the brush of a kiss.

Dorian shifts and blearily looks up at — himself, Pavus, who laughs soundlessly and leans over him, pressing a kiss to his forehead. “Sleep. It’s positively frigid, and none I’ve met are as warm as Bull.”

Dorian reaches up and grabs at Pavus’s — his upper arm, gets a handful of dark silk. “You’re…” Dorian tries to think through his words, but the bed is comfortable, and Bull is warm, and if Pavus is real, and honest, then. Well.

“You’re allowed this, Dorian,” Pavus says, the damnable fondness on his face again — and then he frowns. “Maker, that sounds bizarre.”

And Dorian has to muffle his laughter, a fucking jubilant feeling bubbling up from his chest, to let Bull sleep.

[anadoribullholiday]

Hi it’s @hubbabubbagumpop with my gift for @auditorycheesecakes.

[anadoribullholiday]

For Bingo Bramble. I hope you like it! Merry Christmas! From @disturbed-katten

[anadoribullholiday]

Cold Nights, Warm Hearts

Title: Cold Nights, Warm Hearts (subtitle: and other novels by Varric that Dorian refuses to admit he's read) For: @doozer-doodles From: @redeemer-headcanon / @coveredinfeels Beta: @chocobofangirl Warnings/etc: mild Trespasser spoilers/references. prompt: 'Snowed in'

Ferelden, late autumn, winter nipping at its heels.

There are times, in these years, when Dorian can spare time to come south, not merely over the border into Nevarra, but South, times when excuses of diplomacy give them weeks together at a time, Bull playing bodyguard and joking about what Varric's books would have to say about well-muscled bodyguards.

He enjoys these trips. He could have done without the snowstorm that appeared to have blown up overnight and sealed them in the little mountain hut they'd stopped at to rest themselves and their horses, but only because if he's going to be shut in somewhere with Dorian, he'd prefer that his Kadan was happy about it.

“I should have listened to my mother.” Dorian mutters, staring out the window-- or at least, attempting to. There wasn't much to stare at.

Bull has never met Lady Pavus, and doesn't particularly expect to any time soon, but from what Dorian has told him of her, directly and indirectly, that statement doesn't really fit the context. “Had a lot to say about coping with blizzards, did she?”

“Not as such, but she did always insist that one should never step foot inside any accommodation described to one as quaint.” Dorian says, giving the carved mabari bootscraper by the door a look of utter contempt. “At least there are no holes in the roof, I will give it that.”

“We've got firewood, food, and a fairly nice bed.” Bull points out. “You know what one of Varric's novels would have to say about the situation, right?”

Magister Pavus, highly respected luminary of the Tevinter Magisterium, turns on him and expresses his opinion on that in language that would make a Rivaini sailor blush, ending with “...and stop helping the dwarf!”

“So, we're not going to conserve body heat?” Bull asks, and laughs when Dorian's response is a rude gesture, wreathed in flame, before he stalks off to investigate their food-- and wine-- supplies for himself.

Dorian's concerns about missing the various important meetings his presence is probably required at aside, it doesn't look as if they're really in danger of much more than a slight delay. Once he's settled down, he uses the sending crystal to contact the Inquisitor, and Red's networks are more than able in the matter of getting word to whoever needs word got to.

Secretly, Bull's a little glad. It's not as bad as it once was, but he thinks Dorian still fears that if he takes his eyes off his homeland for a moment, it will slip back into the madness of the old days, the Tevinter of the Venatori and of Corypheus. That he, alone, is the sea wall holding back the flood, and shit, that sounds pretty damn poetic in Trade, but it's none less true for it.

So he thinks it does his Kadan good, this, to accept that there's little he can do about the situation except complain about the paltry amount and undistinguished quality of the wine he fishes out of their luggage, and then relenting when Bull offers to mull it for him.

“One of the few good things to come out of the South.” he says, smiling. It makes his scar curve in a way that reminds Bull of a Tallis he knew, in another life. He still wishes he'd been there to see it, Dorian striding into the Magisterium the day after with the wound still bright and fresh, breathing more fire and ice than all the dragons the Inquisitor had hunted down put together. But reminding Dorian of it makes him frown, still, makes him too self-conscious.

So, he holds his words. Says it without words, instead, when despite his earlier protestations against 'sharing body heat', Dorian curls his hands around his mug of mulled wine and his body against Bull's own. Tries to say: wouldn't have ever thought I'd be here. Not sure what 'here' means. For one: stuck in a mountain hut with a gorgeous, grumpy mage who against all odds appears to still be in love with me, certainly, beyond anything he'd ever been able to consider a possibility.

But also: wouldn't have thought I'd be in love. Wouldn't have thought I'd be Tal Vashoth, clear and free of mind and happy for it. Would probably have given even odds I'd even live this long. Some days, would have given even odds I'd live to see the sunrise.

“Amatus...” he hears, and looks down to see Dorian's fingers against a scar of Bull's own. No points for guessing which one he's fussing over.

You risked yourself, and the Chargers--

“Yeah.” he says. “Me too.”

It's actually, all things considered, a relaxing sort of break, rather than any sort of real hazard. At this time of year, these storms come and go, this one will go, soon enough. They're late in the season to be making this crossing, but not so deep into winter to make it dangerous. Their mounts, solid Ferelden beasts certainly more used to these winters than Dorian, have held up well in the little stable adjoining the hut, blinking mildly when Bull tunnels through to check on them as if wondering what all the fuss is about.

Dorian keeps the fire going, melts snow to keep them in water, and pretends he doesn't like the pickles as if Bull hasn't seen him eating the ones Cullen's sister used to send to Skyhold directly out of the jar on many occasions.

“This is entirely unbefitting of a Pavus.” he declares, piling more pickles on top of his cold meat and cheese, and smiles, as the weight falls off his shoulders. “Thank you, amatus.”

“You're welcome.”

Conserving body heat; a good enough excuse, it appears, for Dorian to stick close to him under the covers and not complain about being sticky.  “A decent bath.” he murmurs, a renewal of an old game. “You neglect yourself too much when I'm away, you ought to soak your joints more often.”

“I like how you pretend this would be for my benefit.” Bull replies. “The one at the villa count as 'decent'?”

“The one at the villa counts as 'marginally acceptable'.” Dorian says. He probably would turn up his nose if his face wasn't practically buried in Bull's chest. “We deserve better. Also, of course you bathing is for my benefit.”

He can imagine it. Dream of that slowly-drawing-closer future. “I'll learn to make those pickles you like. Have a smokehouse. Lay in lots of good stuff so when we're snowed in for the winter it won't be a problem.”

“We are not moving anywhere you have to plan for being snowed in for the winter.” Dorian responds, lifting his head enough to give Bull a look of horror. Then, slightly quieter, “And I don't like those pickles, they're just required to give southern food taste.”

He laughs. “Please, the only way you'd like them more was if I smeared pickle on--”

“Finish that sentence and I will set this bed on fire.”

IN THE FACE OF THE STORM'S WRATH, goes the tag-line of the latest Tethras novel in his ever-popular series about the forbidden love between a Tevinter mage and a Qunari mercenary, LOVE IS THEIR GREATEST WEAPON.

“It makes it sound as if we're fighting the weather.” Dorian says, with distaste. “Any resemblance to real persons and events is purely coincidental, my arse.”

“Your arse does feature quite a lot in this one.” Varric is pretty good about making sure Bull gets a copy to 'review', before it goes to publication. “It's a great arse, though. It deserves a starring role.” He considers giving said piece of anatomy a squeeze to demonstrate his approval, but something about the quirk of Dorian's lips right now says the response to that might be... shocking. Heh.

“The next time we have to be trapped in some Maker-forsaken mountain hut with no amenities to speak of, I expect it to be summer.” Dorian declares, and throws the book down with a bang, as punctuation.

“Noted.”

[anadoribullholiday]

A Simple Silver Band

From @dichotomous-dragon to @eugenideswalksintoabar Bull wants Dorian. Dorian wants Bull. It should be that simple, and predictably isn't. Tags: Mutual pining Misunderstandings Sera Krem The Bull's Chargers Happy ending (?).

It wasn’t the first thing he noticed.

The first thing Bull noticed: the man...no, the mage, was poetry in motion, staff cutting down demons in as martial a display as Bull himself had provided cutting down ‘Vints on the Storm Coast. Bull could smell the ozone in the air that meant ‘magic’ but the man in the Chantry wasn’t using it.  Either tapped out or holding it in reserve, didn’t seem to matter.  The bladed end of the staff tore into a demon as he spun, smashing an attacking shade with the focus stone at the apex of the same movement.

The second thing?  He was fucking gorgeous. Chiseled jaw, broad shoulders, well-muscled, if the chest peeking from below the white silk cloak was any clue. His skin was a rich golden shade even in the eerie green light of the rift, his hair somehow perfect despite the rigorous activity.  High maintenance and higher breeding stock, Bull snorted.  What was it about Redcliffe that seemed to be drawing Alti these days?

The third was the voice; pleasant in timbre, cultured in accent.  It resonated in the wrecked building, the tone easy, almost relaxed.  But there, underneath the eloquent mannerisms and obvious flirtation was a cadence of desperation, maybe of sadness and betrayal.  Bull wondered at the ease with which the mage swept from fighting to flirting; from one to the other in a blink. He was good, better than good, and knew it, every iota of his expression and movement calculated to produce the most stunning effect.

The ring was, in fact, the fourth thing Bull noticed. Thick silver and unadorned, noticeable on his left hand amidst the intricate gold on most of his other digits, it flickered in the sickly green glow. A wedding band. It was a shame Dorian of House Pavus was married, the Bull thought, as the five of them leapt into battle with the demons.  He might be a double-agent, one more back-stabbing ‘Vint in a damn sea of them, but something about the mage was alluring in a way that had nothing to do with how hot he was.

“Watch yourself. The pretty ones are always the worst.”  Bull growled it out loud, as much a warning to the others as to himself. He had an unhelpful weakness for ‘pretty’ and it wouldn’t do to forget it.

Even if Dorian was on their side, he was clearly off-limits.

- - -

Dorian and Bull weren’t friends.

Well. It was a stretch to say anyone in the Inquisition was much more than a stranger at that point, but the situation with the Iron Bull was easily the worst of the lot.  He’d been quick to snipe insults even as Dorian held the Chantry, waiting for the Herald and keeping the demons from spewing out into the village proper. Even after Dorian proved his prowess alongside their group, the brute’s comments remained slanderous ones.

Nevermind that the oaf was just north of massive, chest and hands and everything big enough to make Dorian swallow with a bit of difficulty when he’d gotten his first proper look. Yes, Dorian had a type, though not one he’d ever indulged in. He was typically the larger partner during his trysts, between his height and the solid nature of his build, so he could hardly be blamed for appreciating that the man standing before him had the ability to make even him feel small.  At another time, he might have appreciated the comparison, but currently, he was neither foolish nor desperate enough to even entertain the possibility. Not here, nor now, nor with a Qunari of all things.

The two of them were barely civil; they sniped at one another at every turn. The ride back to Redcliffe to meet Alexius had been exhausting, even with Trevelyan there to mediate. Bull had spared no effort making sure Dorian knew he was being watched. Bull hadn’t said so, not in so many words, but his jabs at Tevinter had left little doubt how he’d felt about Dorian’s presence at their side.

Which was why it made no sense that now, soaked from the waist down and fighting the song of red lyrium hammering against his senses, in whatever version of the world Alexius had seen fit to fling them into, this Bull did not taunt Dorian with inane comments. They’d freed him already tainted, veins of red running like fault lines between the expansive muscles of his chest. That he was sick was part of it, of course, but Dorian could not help but notice that Bull was watching him, weight in that crimson-tinged solitary gaze of his. Even as they freed the others, stumbled through ruined corridor after ruined corridor, and slew every single enemy they came across, Dorian felt the Qunari’s eye on him like a physical touch. Personal.

“What is it?!” Dorian finally hissed, stalking over to Bull when they’d stopped for a breather. The Inquisitor was busy shuffling through diary pages looking for clues. Leliana and Varric were watching for Venatori in the hall and Dorian, stretched rather thin and very valiantly hiding it, had had quite enough. “I am trying to protect her and undo this, this insanity...Do you doubt my motives even now?”

“You aren’t what I thought you were,” Bull replied.  His face revealed nothing, sunken in sickness and shadowed as it was. The lyrium had carved his rugged features into deep pits and furrows that were nowhere near as vibrant (and handsome, damn him) as he’d been before. The change churned something in Dorian’s gut that he quickly quashed with bravado.

“What is that supposed to mean, pray tell?” Dorian demanded.  Bull’s gaze softened somehow and the look he gave trapped Dorian’s breath in his chest, all the fiery tone dying in a blink. The Qunari seemed bent on denying Dorian the comfort of understanding, however. He shook his head and hefted his enormous ax, moving away without further comment.

It was for the best, really.

They were out of time.

Months of research swirled in his mind; power lit every synapse in Dorian’s brain on fire. The heat of the moment fanned into frenzy with his urgency, struggling to work Alexius’s casting in reverse from memory and the ambient feel of the pendant in his hands.  Nigh impossible, frankly, but the alternative...Dorian shook his head, all options but success shoved away, and worked.

Through the fight and after, Bull caught Dorian’s eye a final time. He hefted his weapon, a small, private smile transforming his features into something resembling the man Dorian knew from their proper timeline. There was, however, something gentle and telling and altogether foreign in the look the Bull gave Dorian as he swept into battle with a roar. Again Dorian was struck with that telling tightness in his chest, temptation and something dangerously close to need trying to take root.

“You go, we’ll buy you time,” Bull had said to Trevelyan, but he’d been looking at Dorian as he said.  “Be a shame to waste it.”

Dorian forced the spell into shape, conducting the magic through his entire body as the rift roared wider. Even with all his attention on his task, he had to spare the precious seconds needed to restrain the Herald as Varric’s body hit the stone entryway.  The power he forced through the amulet coalesced, mana rippling everywhere around him, heavy on his tongue, burning sigils into the space behind Dorian’s eyelids as he worked.

...Be a shame to waste it.

That voice rumbled through him, a bass counterbalance to the shrieking of his nerves from the magic. Dorian turned just long enough to see Bull’s corpse land beside them, and, swallowing around a lump in his throat, thought rather the same.

Seizing Trevelyan with a hand that shook, Dorian gathered the magic around them both and pushed. - - -

The snow was everywhere, stinging Bull’s face and eye, sliding into the gaps between his leather armor. Bull’s protective clothing didn’t cover much, true, but the fluffy white crap getting it in his harness (where it melted and dripped down his chest) while they slogged through feet of the stuff? That was bullshit.

It was also easier to focus on the snow than it was to think on the dozens of people they’d left cooling in Haven behind them.  He split rounds with the Chargers, venturing off in sets of three to search for the Herald, and help whoever needed them. Between the wounded and the wagons getting stuck, they were plenty busy.

His eye kept wandering back to Dorian, though, despite the fatigue pulling at every muscle. He was trudging through the snow, his arms half bare. He hugged them to himself and shook so fiercely that Bull was certain he could hear it from thirty paces.

It struck home, then, how utterly alone Dorian was. Even compared to the rest of them he was segregated.  Bull watched from the corner of his eye as Dorian spoke with Mother Giselle, obviously volunteering to help with something, only to be turned away. Not gently, either.  From the way the mage’s hands were shaking just keeping himself going was proving to be quite the effort, but here he was still trying to help others.  Interesting.

“You doing alright, ‘Vint?”

“Why would it concern you if I wasn’t?” Dorian snapped back. The chattering of his teeth leeched some of the bite from his tone, however.

“Because you did a damn good job back at Haven,” Bull replied honestly. Dorian stopped walking in surprise at the compliment; Bull drew closer, unable to resist the urge and dropping his hands to Dorian’s shoulders. As he'd expected Dorian was shivering badly, the skin under Bull’s fingers frigid to the touch. “Someone who fights like that? Be dumb to lose him to freezing because his fancy robes show too much skin.” For one long second, the lingering shock in Dorian’s gaze held Bull suspended. Had the mage ever looked at him like that, all open and needy? What the hell did it say that so small an honest compliment gave him such pause?

“It’s her!” Cullen’s voice cut through the whipping wind, clear as a bell and twice again as jarring.

Dorian’s face was a beautiful thing in that moment, open and honest, wide with hope followed immediately by a surge of relief. He sagged under the force of it, heavy against Bull’s grip on his shoulders. It was everything Bull could do not to crush their bodies together in a physical rendition of the flood of want when Dorian looked up at him, smile radiant over the good news.

Shit, he’s gorgeous.

Dorian got a grip on himself and pulled out of Bull’s grip, rushing to the Herald’s side as fast as his legs would take him. He didn't look back.

- - -

“Nothing out here to entertain you, Dorian? That why you’re moping? Or do you just really like taking your cold footsies out on the rest of us?”  

“Leave me be, you oaf.”

“Aww c’mon ‘Vint, liven up. You’ll give yourself wrinkles if you keep scowling like that. That’d be  a shame.”

“My face is none of your concern.”

“Isn’t it? I meant what I said that day, you know.”

- - -

The Emprise was a desolate wasteland of frigid cold and the endless throbbing hum of red lyrium so yes, Dorian supposed he’d been rather insufferable for the duration of the trip thus far.  He had a right, though! The wind was relentless, tearing at his robes as it chapped his skin. Not even the cold held a candle to how much he loathed the lyrium, however.  It was loud, pervasive and sickening, twisting at Dorian’s inside like a demon’s claws. Digging, dragging, picking away as it called out, urging him ever closer. The path near the last camp had twined so close to the stuff he’d nearly lost his sense to it, crackling lightning and raw power and the metallic tang of blood on his tongue all at once.

Dorian didn’t need to ask Bull what he meant. He turned his face away from the brute and lifted his chin, hearing the words playing back through his head.

The pretty ones are always the worst.

Even as he remembered, though, a different memory flared.

...Be a shame to waste it.

You aren’t what I thought you were.

...Did a good job today.

Meant what I said.

Echoes from a Bull he knew and from a Bull he’d never had a chance to.  It would be so easy to be the terrible thing this Bull expected him to be, Dorian supposed, the selfish, spoiled ‘Vint. The easy tryst they would both regret.

He did not look back at the Bull as he forced his aching body on through the snow. He didn’t need to.  Dorian found the landscape of those handsome features all too easy to recall of late, slipping into his thoughts unbidden. It wasn’t just his size, nor his incredible strength. No…

There was something about the gentleness in Bull’s eye when he knew his men weren’t looking, a sort of quiet fondness and pride.  That care slipped out in the little gestures, the way Bull handled each of his people, the way he spoke with each one of his friends.  The Ben-Hassrath had certainly refined Bull’s talents for observation, pairing his wickedly sharp mind with the skills they’d driven into him, but there was more to it than that. The big man was a people person in every sense of the word. Bull said so himself, but Dorian doubted even he knew how apt the statement truly was.

When one married Bull’s stunning depth of care with his physique (and, never forget, the Maker’s-damn rumors of the Qunari’s prowess in the bedroom), Dorian found himself ever more smitten with the notion of...things.  Sex, certainly.  Bull was most definitely his ideal, strong enough to manhandle Dorian, who was no slouch himself.  There was more to it than that, though, and none of it boded well.

The Bull was a terrible temptation but also an alluring opportunity.

Well, then, Dorian thought, and finally, finally made up his mind.  

It would be a shame to waste it, even if he could only have it but once.

- - -

Of course his Father would pick the moment he’d finally decided to reach out and grab something he wanted to storm back into Dorian’s life.  Because Halward Pavus had never been anything if not exceedingly good at reminding Dorian why grabbing for the proverbial gold ring was never a good thing...this whole Maker forsaken meeting was proof of that.  Proof that one more time his father would lie and scheme to get his own way and then mask it behind a facade of concern and love.  Kaffas, when would he ever learn?

Storming out of the bar, Dorian barely spared a glance at Bull before dismissing him as just another bad decision waiting to be made.  Because really, what did he and Bull have in common besides some lusty glances and extremely awkward flirting?  They’d fuck and then Bull would be on to his next conquest and Dorian would be left behind, again, wondering why he was so damn easy to forget.  

Making his way through the crowds of people Dorian only stopped when the land gave way to the wet depths of Lake Calenhad.  Idly twisting the silver ring on his finger over and over again, Dorian watched the sun turn the lake into a sea of gold as he tried to decide why he’d ever thought giving in to the temptation of The Iron Bull was a good idea.

Bull was a Ben-Hassrath, through and through. He’d been trained to observe, formulate, and then act.  So when he saw Dorian a couple of hours after he’d left the Gull and Lantern, masks and flourishes so resolutely in place it was as though it were their first meeting in Redcliffe all over again, he got that now familiar ache back with a vengeance. Dorian was distant and aloof, rampantly trying to hide his emotions behind bravado so polished it felt like they were at court.  He was clearly hurting, lines of tension setting veridium in his spine even as it rounded his shoulders down and in.

Bull took stock, riding a few horse lengths back. Dorian was handsome and powerful and talented. He was also, at that moment, more than a little bit broken. Bull wanted him, had wanted him for months, wanted to touch and taste and take the mage apart piece by piece, just to reassemble him afterwards. He had no doubt he could make Dorian feel good, banish whatever Tevinter bullshit was eating at him so he could enjoy himself in the moment.

...but Dorian was also not on the market, not for what Bull found himself wanting. Not for the kind of comfort Bull wanted to give him. So Bull did what came natural to him and fell back on his training, quashing what he wanted and focusing instead on what Dorian would need: consistency from those around him.

So he sniped, and he teased, and he prodded, and Dorian responded in kind, albeit with less vitriol than usual.  Going around and around provided exactly the distraction Dorian needed to get out of his head. It just didn’t do a damn thing to banish thoughts of the pretty mage from Bull’s.

- - -

“Right. So. When you gonna stop acting the tit and go jump the big guy’s bones?”  Sera asked at the worst possible moment: Dorian choked on his ale, face going red from more than just the lack of oxygen.  Blackwall thumped his back until he stopped sputtering long enough to glare daggers at the elf, wheezing air back into his lungs.

“I beg your pardon but that is none of your business,” he hissed.

“So you admit to thinking on it.”  Dorian turned his glare to the Warden beside him but Blackwall just shrugged his broad shoulders, taking a deep pull from his tankard as he did.  “No one’s judging you, lad.” His voice lowered seriously.  “We’d rather see you happy.”

“Damn straight,” Sera agreed, leaning conspiratorially across the table, “Or at least get you laid, right? Plenty of us who chase our own bits around here, so whatcha worried about?”

It said something that Dorian barely spared a glance for who might hear them talking about a topic that had no business being voiced. The very line of thought deflated him. His shoulders slumped, both hands clutched around his tankard.

“I should think it obvious by now that The Iron Bull wants nothing to do with me.”

“Why do you say that?” - It had happened like this.

Dorian had been on the front line and gotten himself knocked out cold, a shield bash catching him in the scant moments between barriers. He’d collapsed to the snow, arm and side a white wall of pain, conscious long enough to see a huge armored brute raise his sword overhead to strike the final blow.

Much to his surprise Dorian had woken blearily not long after, enveloped in a pair of muscular arms.  Bull had stroked his cheek lightly with one thumb, gentle motions just to soothe until Dorian’s eyelids fluttered open. It had been nearly as painful as the blow that had nearly killed him, seeing the wash of relief across those features. Dorian found himself wanting to see Bull’s softer gazes on him more often, a desire that rekindled in his chest almost desperately.

Dorian had leaned up, acting before his nerves and his good sense could betray him, Bull’s scarred lips right there-- -

“And he pulled back from me as though I were a plague beast,” Dorian finished quietly. He cleared his throat.  “He said, ‘You got too close to the front again, ‘Vint. Keep your pretty ass in the back ranks before someone messes it up for you.’”  A smile he didn’t mean forced itself onto Dorian’s face. “Given that, I will thank you to keep your ill-informed meddling to yourselves.”  

He set his shoulders, finished his ale, and stood to leave, emanating more resolve than he actually possessed.  Sera and Blackwall both looked at him with odd expressions. Dorian didn’t wait to contemplate why, fleeing back to his quarters and several bottles of terrible wine.

- - -

“Chief, you know I hate Tevinter, right?”

“Not exactly news, Krem.”

“Right, well. I thought I'd mention, I won't think less of you for liking things from there. Plenty of other stuff to point out--your bosoms, for one.”

“...right. You feeling okay? Or did Skinner blindside you in practice again?”

“I'm just saying, not everything from Tevinter is utter shite.”

“Well yeah, there's you, and that Sun Vint-1 isn't too shabby either.”

“You're being deliberately obtuse, you big ass.”

“And you need to stop hanging out with the boss. You're starting to sound like a prissy noble.”

“Yeah, well, maybe if you'd bang one, I wouldn't have to hang out with them getting cultured. Besides, you know you want to.”

“What, get cultured? Nah.”

“I meant bang the prissy nobles. One in particular.”

“...not gonna happen, Krem.”

“And why not?”

“He’s not available.”

“Neither were that dowager’s three daughters, or that exporter in Denerim, but it didn’t stop you then. Or any of three dozen times since.”

“...it’s different.”

“It’s really not.” - - -

“He watches you too, you know.”

Dorian startled at the words drawled far too close to his ear.  His fingers clenched at the stone window casing as if he could somehow sink right into the walls of the keep. As though his grip on the masonry made up for the grip he’d lost on himself; as if he could resolve fact that the second-to-last man he wanted to see in all of Skyhold had just caught him staring at the last man he wanted to see.  Or rather, the last man he wished he didn’t want to see. Unfortunately, his heart seemed unwilling to agree with his mind on that one.

Only when he was certain that any trace of red had faded from his cheeks did Dorian turn, managing to achieve the perfect blend of ice and dismissal in his tone when he muttered, “What can I do for you, Cremisius?”

“Not so much what you can do for me,” the warrior replied easily. “It’s more ‘what you can do for the Chief.’”
 Lovely.  So now Bull had his second running his errands for him.  A chill went through Dorian at the thought of Bull sending Krem to request that he quit mooning over him...not that he was mooning of course, the Scion of House Pavus would never resort to something so common as mooning.  Still, he could think of nothing else The Iron Bull could possibly want of him and rather than voice his concerns he just arched one brow at his fellow ‘Vint.

Krem rolled his eyes in response, shifting his weight a couple of times before sighing deeply.  “Look, the Chief will kill me if he finds out I’m here, but...the big lug likes you. Like...really likes you. I’ve seen you staring at him despite that ring you wear and since you never talk about your wife I’m assuming it’s just one of those fucked up “marriage in name only” things you fucking Alti are so damned proud of.  So if…”

“Excuse me?” Dorian managed to stutter out, his tone neither as icy or as dismissive as before.

“Listen, I’m just saying if you want the Chief and the Chief wants you, you should both do something about it and put the rest of us out of our misery.”

Bull wanted him?  Bull wanted him.  And Bull thought he was married for Andraste’s sake.  Staring down at his own hands, Dorian’s eyes zero’d in on his ring finger.  Kaffas.  Suddenly that day when Bull had pulled away from him made sense...which of course made no sense because really?  They had been fighting together for months and Dorian had never mentioned a wife, estranged or otherwise, so Bull had just assumed…

Growling deep in his throat, Dorian swept past Cremisius without giving the man another thought, his mind focused on finding The Iron Bull and making sure the man knew just what a fucking idiot he was.

“Good.  Again,” Bull encouraged, planting his feet and raising his shield up to defend against Dalish’s staff.  His ‘not mage’ had developed a bit of envy over Dorian’s prowess at actually utilizing his staff as more than a conduit for his magic and Bull was only too willing to help her sharpen her skills.  The fact that spending time in the training ring allowed him to glance up at the window that looked into Dorian’s nook in the library had absolutely nothing to do with it.

“You Maker-forsaken moron,” Dorian’s growled words had Dalish’s eyes widening in surprise even as Bull spun around to face the mage who was currently stalking towards him.  Dorian’s usual look of bored indulgence had morphed into indignant anger as he stormed right up to Bull and poked him in the chest.   “You see a ring and just assume that I am married?  Married, for Andraste’s sake.  What would that say about me?  As if any hypothetical wife I might have, Maker help her, wouldn’t even rate a mention? Not one word during the last five months I’ve spent fighting at your side?”

Taking advantage of Dorian’s brief pause to draw air into his heaving lungs, Bull muttered, “You wear a ring.”

“I wear a half dozen of them,” Dorian snarled, wiggling his fingers in Bull’s face.

“So this means you’re not married?”

Dorian’s eyes widened before narrowing to slits, then before Bull could do something stupid like mention out loud just how sexy he found the low growl Dorian was currently making, Dorian stretched up to grasp one of his horns and tugged Bull’s head down sharply.  Before Bull could voice a complaint, Dorian’s lips were on his and then it was Bull’s turn to growl, his hand wrapping around Dorian’s waist and pulling the mage impossibly closer as he took control of the kiss.  

Dorian’s taste sweeter than Bull had imagined he would, all those sinewy muscles going pliant in his arms as Dorian’s hold on his horn changed from punishing to soft stroking, Bull’s teeth nipping at the mage’s plump lower lip until Dorian gasped softly, allowing Bull’s tongue to sweep in and taste deeper.  A second growl was pulled from somewhere deep in Bull’s chest and vibrated through to Dorian who wrapped his other arm around the back of Bull’s neck, fingers playing with the tip of Bull’s ear in a way that drove the warrior crazy.

“Uhm...Chief…”

Krem’s hesitantly spoken words had Dorian pulling back as though he’d been burnt, the mage’s cheeks almost as red as his kiss swollen lips.  “Kaffas, I can’t believe you mauled me in public in the middle of the day.”

“Uh, hate to break it to you ‘Vint, but you kissed me first,” Bull chuckled, liking the way Dorian looked all mussed, even if he was hissing like an annoyed cat.

Dorian’s eyes narrowed. “As though it could be my fault that you jumped to ridiculous conclusions and I was forced to correct you.”

Bull shrugged.  “If you always correct me like that I may be forced to jump to conclusions more often.”

“You are...impossible,” Dorian snapped, his attempt to stomp away thwarted when Bull grabbed his hand and held tight.

“But I’m your bit of impossible,” Bull clarified with a disarming little grin, breathing a soft sigh of relief as Dorian deflated right in front of him.  Daring to tug the mage closer again, Bull laid his hand on Dorian’s cheek.  “And for the record I’m sorry for not asking you sooner, I just really didn’t think I wanted to hear the answer.”

Dorian scoffed and shook his head, opting to explain before he could convince himself not to.  “I bought the ring myself, the same day I left my Father’s house for the last time.  It was...and is…a reminder of what he tried to do to me. ...Not that I’m likely to forget, mind you.”  

“You father’s a fool,” Bull grumbled, his thumb brushing over the silver band.  “And apparently so am I.”

“Yes, well,” Dorian replied, something that sounded suspiciously like fondness in his voice, “I suppose there is hope of redemption...for you at least.” Bull chuckled softly.

“That so?”

The challenge had Dorian huffing “We shall see,” before looking around at the rapidly growing crowd. He cleared his throat and straightened, adding: “-though perhaps somewhere less crowded, next time.”

[anadoribullholiday]

Fic | My Heart is Breathing

A very merry Adoribull exchange to @dichotomous-dragon ! You suggested (among others) hurt/comfort, or someone taking a blow for someone else, and I decided to smush the two together as best I could. :) 

1.9k! T-rated, I suppose, for brief mentions of Bloody Stuff. This is set after their individual character quests, but before the end of the game.

From @labarkour

*

My Heart is Breathing

*

The Bull shouldered his way into the tent. The rain pattered noisily against the canvas.

Dorian, back bent and given up to the healer, looked over his arm. He’d filth caked in his mustache, the hairs plastered.

“I hope you brought wine,” said Dorian. The Bull spread his hands. Dorian made a show of sighing.

“Close it,” said the healer. “And you. Stop moving.” The needle flashed. She tugged the thread. The stitch settled beneath Dorian’s shoulder.

The Bull stooped beneath the first support. The canvas flap dropped into place again. He lingered there in the entrance, on the mud cloth.

“What thanks,” Dorian said. “I risk my life, and you come empty-handed to watch this barbarian sew me up like a soldier playing at housewife.”

“All right,” said the healer. She sat back with the needle still in hand. “How about you finish up?”

“Fetch me a mirror and I’ll do it.”

“You know,” said the Bull, “I heard the Avaar pour piss on their wounds. Keeps ‘em from going bad.”

Dorian made a tremendous face. The healer laughed and leaned in again.

“Perhaps I spoke in haste.”

“Did that, did you,” said the healer.

“I should hate to use barbarian so freely no word remains for that.”

The healer worked another minute till she’d finished laying the stitches. The gash that had split Dorian’s back along the left side looked a slender thing, so closed. It did not seem at all threatening. She gave Dorian her advice, wiped his back clean of the last fresh stains, bound a poultice with white cloth over the wound, and went to see to the next bloodied soul.

“You’re remarkably quiet,” said Dorian, quite lightly. He fussed with the remains of his shirt, stripped of him by the healers. “Do you mean to just stand there looking at me all night? I could hardly blame you. Even in extremis I cut a mean figure.” He folded the cloth over and tossed it to the foot of the cot.

The Bull flexed his hands. His gaze went to the cloth, unneatly bundled. Blood marked the linen. He breathed in through his nose and let it out his mouth.

“Well,” said Dorian.

He passed a hand over his mussed mustache. The light from the glowstones, hung at even intervals from the central beam above, made bruises beneath his eyes. The rain fell like small stones.

The healer’s tent was a large space, and empty but for a woman soldier asleep on another cot, and the man the healer now tended. The skirmish in the mire with the Red Templars had come easily won and with little blood.

“Not that it isn’t a pleasure to be glowered at from afar,” Dorian went on. “But the healer’s orders are orders. I must get my beauty sleep.”

The Bull left clods of mud and earth in his wake. The ends of his horns brushed against the canvas; then the ceiling sloped higher and he walked without slowing. He stood before Dorian. Dorian lifted his head.

“What the hell were you doing?”

He cupped Dorian’s face in his hands. Dorian’s eyes, so pale beneath the sunlight, were made dark by the Bull’s shadow, by the weird light of the glowstones.

“I should have thought it obvious.”

Dorian’s hand rose. He hesitated. Then his jaw set, and he gripped the Bull’s wrist. His fingers were long and rough and chilled, like a man who had bled into the rain.

“Sure,” the Bull agreed, “obvious. Taking an axe blow to the back, who wouldn’t think of that?”

“An axe meant for your throat, if you’d cared to pay attention.”

“Didn’t ask you to tag in for me.”

The Bull stroked Dorian’s cheekbone with a thumb. Dorian’s fingers tightened about his wrist.

“And I didn’t ask you to march in here and interrogate me for watching your back in a fight,” Dorian snapped. “Is this what soldiers do? Let their fellows die stupidly?”

“That why you didn’t listen to me?” the Bull demanded. “I told you to stay back–”

Dorian barked a 'ha!’ “As if I needed coddling.”

“I could’ve taken the hit.”

“Well, clearly so could I,” said Dorian. He was mulish now, glaring at the Bull beneath his mud-streaked brow. “A thank you is customary when someone saves your life, but I suppose that’s too much to expect. I don’t know why you’re so angry–”

“Really,” said the Bull through his teeth. “Can’t put it together, can you.”

“And let go of my face!”

The Bull lowered his hands. Dorian’s fingertips had settled over his pulse. He held on to the Bull’s wrist. The Bull thought of mentioning it.

A glowstone swung. The light moved in strange circuits across Dorian’s dark face. The Bull had struck the edge of the stone with his horn in leaning back.

Finally the Bull spoke again. “You put yourself at risk.”

“Am I one of your 'guys’ now?” asked Dorian sneeringly. “Will this go on my performance review? Should I start calling you 'chief,’ or only–” The rest of it came out, in a breathy jumble. “–in bed?”

“Stop,” said the Bull.

Dorian’s eyes dropped. He’d blood dried along the right temple. It mingled cozy with the grime.

“I need to rest,” said Dorian.

The Bull turned his wrist till it clicked. Dorian let go his arm. He rubbed the hand against his clothed thigh.

“Don’t get yourself killed,” said the Bull, “looking after me.”

A muscle in Dorian’s jaw tightened, and he said, “It isn’t as if I did it out of love for you,” without kindness.

The Bull breathed. The tang of blood had stuck in his nose. He could not shake it. It lingered like so after every battle, as sweet and as bitter as the humming beneath his skin. Out of sacrifice, strength.

Dorian reached for his mustache. He scratched at the worst of the caking. Gritted crumbs tumbled.

“I wish you would stop standing there,” he said snappishly, but the line of his shoulders was made a slope, even with the tension of pain. “Lecture given, I grasp your point, next time I’ll let them take your head as that’s clearly what you most want. Now go away. Grant me a little dignity.”

The Bull did stand there, even as Dorian turned from him and made as if to lie down, fussing a time with the one thin pillow allotted the cot. He beat his fist against it. The Bull looked at Dorian’s stitched back, that puckered, black-laced line that ran from next to his spine nearly to his ribs.

The Bull ran his tongue along the roof of his mouth. His teeth hurt. The rain ached in his knee.

“Thought you were dead.” He said it roughly. Very low.

He’d heard Dorian’s shout. A cry of “idiot.” The Bull began to turn. Rain, in his eye. A weight, striking his side. The blow had glanced off Dorian, knocking him into the Bull, but the Bull had smelt the blood and heard the grunt in Dorian’s throat and felt his hands touching the Bull’s breast then sliding away; and he had thought it.

Dorian did not lift his face. The muscles low in his back trembled. He smoothed a palm across the battered pillow.

“Well, as you can see,” said Dorian, “I am still here. Somewhat worse for the wear, but my face untouched.”

The Bull brushed the ruined shirt off the foot of the bed, to sit there beside Dorian. Dorian again looked over his arm at the Bull. This time when he did it the Bull set his hand low on Dorian’s back. The little spasms moved beneath his fingers.

The Bull leaned forward. Dorian’s eyes closed. The dirt from his mustache marked his lips.

The kiss ended. The Bull said to Dorian’s lips, “What I want, is for you to keep breathing.”

Dorian’s lashes were black on his skin. His jaw worked. Soft sound, a squeak: he ground his teeth. The Bull brushed his hand across the small of Dorian’s back and kissed him gently again. The gentleness stung the Bull. All of it stung.

“Then–” But Dorian’s honed tongue failed. He swallowed. His lashes rose. He looked at the Bull. He tried it anyway: “Then stop putting yourself at risk.”

“I can’t do that,” said the Bull.

“You can’t expect me to twiddle my thumbs,” said Dorian, “when anyone is in danger. To sit–high and dry over the scrum–”

“You’re right,” the Bull said. He lifted his hand to touch Dorian’s jaw, to hold it between finger and thumb. “I don’t. But…”

Dorian looked at him. His breath was warm on the Bull’s cheek. The glowstone’s light left coppered markings along the side of his face, off the sweat that remained on his skin.

The Bull, uncomfortable, unable to say it as it might be said, shrugged. The corner of Dorian’s mouth flicked.

“I might understand,” Dorian said.

He laid his hand on the Bull’s knee.

“It’ll take much more than some fanatic with a rock on a stick to lay me flat,” Dorian told him. “It would hardly befit my pedigree.”

The Bull laid his own free hand on top of Dorian’s. Dorian turned another measure to him. How to say it? To explain it? The Bull had known for a very long time how his death would go. It would be as it was meant to be. Perhaps he was no longer of the Qun; what he was had not changed. He understood that now. In the end he would die in the thick of battle, and that would be good. That death could not be for Dorian. He found he did not like to think of Dorian dying at all. The Bull stroked Dorian’s jaw. His wrist, too.

“Yeah,” he said. “You’d better not. I’m not watching you shit your guts out in a field.”

“I don’t want to clean your death shits either,” said Dorian, and he turned his hand over so that he might hold the Bull’s in his own.

The Bull lowered his head, to press his brow to Dorian’s brow. His horns cast long silhouettes upon the canvas drop cloth. They rose from Dorian’s own shadow.

“You’re not fucking dying on my watch,” the Bull said to him. “You got that?”

Dorian’s eyes were pale like the rain. The hurting of his wound lined his brow; the soft folds at the corners of his eyes deepened. Dorian lifted his other hand. He brushed his fingers down the Bull’s cheek, the blind, scarred side of his face.

“All right,” said Dorian. He stroked the Bull’s cheek again. Again. “All right.”

The Bull closed his eye. The calluses on Dorian’s fingers rasped upon the Bull’s skin. He smelled the rain, and the sweat dried to Dorian’s skin, and the mud beneath the drop cloth, and the astringencies of the poultice Dorian wore on his back.

Dorian ducked. He pressed his face to the Bull’s neck. The Bull tipped his head, to rest his cheek on Dorian’s muddied crown.

“But I won’t let you die,” said Dorian. “Not for me.”

It would be a good death, thought the Bull. He would not mind it. And he found, then, that his anger was gone, the fear too. That was when he knew it, the word that would say what was to say. He was not frightened of it then.

“So,” said the Bull, “we just gotta keep not dying out there.”

Dorian sniffed. He was remaking his armors.

“It seems simple enough for me.”

The Bull said, “Can do,” and he slid his hand high upon Dorian’s arm to hold him, and he thought, kadan, and he meant, my heart; and in his arms Dorian was beating. 

[anadoribullholiday]

FIC: In Good Keeping

GIFTEE: @maliwanhellfires from @hobbitkaiju

PROMPT: Arranged Marriage AU!

RATING: Adult, contains some semi-explicit sex

LENGTH: This is Chapter 1 of 2, and is 17 pages (rest will be posted/linked on AO3)

CONTENT WARNINGS: Halward appears in the beginning of this fic, being his awful self. Heads-up about that. Also, this particular scenario implies that Sebastian Vael died in the Chantry explosion in Kirkwall, so I suppose this needs a warning for background character death. It’s only mentioned in passing, and never in any detail. And finally, this fic makes use of the idea that all Qunari are essentially one sex and are thus all capable of several means of reproduction. Thus, male pregnancy is alluded to as a possibility though never portrayed. Credit for this idea goes to @twelve-colors (twelvicity on AO3)

**

By the time Halward discovered Dorian’s location, Dorian had been in Quarinus more than a month, and he and Maevaris had his exit plan underway.

It wasn’t an ideal plan, and Dorian lost sleep wondering if this could truly be his best option. But the only other escape route he could see would be to both leave Tevinter and venture into the South friendless and alone. At least this way he’d have connections and a home of some sort waiting for him when he departed. Better any plan, even this one, than Halward’s.

So when Magister Pavus arrived at Mae’s estate, Mae had a lovely tea all laid out and Dorian only flinched a little when Halward entered the sitting room.

“Father,” Dorian bowed.

“Dorian! You obstreperous boy, why have you answered none of my letters? And to come all the way to Quarinus, with no explanation! You missed your mother’s midsummer festival, and–”

Maevaris rose from her seat like a serpent from water, the thin fabric of her outer robes swirling around her thighs. Halward fell silent at once, remembering his surroundings enough to realize how rude it was to berate his son before even greeting their hostess.

Normally Halward barely deigned to acknowledge Mae’s existence even when their duties in the Magisterium forced them to interact. So the prospect of having whatever conversation he and Dorian were about to have even though she was watching would gall Halward terribly. And the fact that he’d been caught out being overtly boorish to her would irritate him even more. Dorian awarded himself a point.

Mind you, Dorian thought to himself, this conversation is only happening because he resorted to the ultimate way to cheat victory out of me for the rest of my natural life, so. Not much of a win, this.

“I am to be married soon, Father,” Dorian stated as soon as the formal greetings were done. He made sure to pitch his voice loud, stronger than he felt.

Halward faltered in the middle of seating himself to stare at Dorian. For half a second the older man hovered halfway between sitting and standing before he lowered himself cautiously onto the couch, his eyes narrowing as his gaze turned on Mae.

“To you, I presume,” Halward hissed at Maevaris. “You must know that I would never allow–”

“No, my dear, not to me,” Mae interrupted, before Halward could say anything too heinous. “I am nothing Dorian wants. No, Dorian is making a very advantageous match. To a king, in fact! You’ve heard of the Free Marches island nation of Starkhaven?”

Halward’s dark eyes widened, and Dorian held in a crow of victory as the man visibly swallowed.

“But the Vael prince is dead, killed in that Chantry explosion in Kirkwall. That is exactly why it–”

Dorian laughed, and it only came out a little choked.

“No no, none of the Vael line would have anything to do with Tevinter, I didn’t realize your knowledge of Free Marches politics was so out of date! I will marry the new king. Surely you’ve at least heard of him? The massive Qunari mercenary who took over the palace by accident last year and was then elected as king! I believe he is affectionately known in the Marches as the Iron Bull. I am contracted to him!”

For a moment Halward seemed frozen by this statement, stunned into silence. But then his face clouded, brows drawing together over his nose to make a most unattractive set of wrinkles.

“This is nonsense, Dorian, as I’m sure you know. You are saying this merely to exasperate me, and you have succeeded, so this charade is over. You must produce heirs! Someone who will carry on the Pavus legacy and take our seat in the Magisterium!”

Dorian rolled his eyes as though Halward was the one who had said something foolish, though his eyes prickled as though he might cry and under his robes Dorian was sweating terribly. He forced a cocky grin, and knew he’d pulled it off when Halward’s scowl deepened.

“The Bull has already agreed to allow me to sire children on him!” Dorian smirked, holding his arms out. “One for the Magisterium and one for Starkhaven, provided the Bull doesn’t name someone else his heir there before that happens. With him being one of the Grey People, begetting heirs with him shall not be a problem even despite his gender. It will be a wonderful cultural exchange, don’t you think? And it will mean that a half-Qunari will take our seat in the Magisterium someday. About time the Imperium got some new blood in it.”

If looks could kill, Dorian would be very dead by now. Halward’s glare was so cold that it very nearly qualified as a form of elemental magic. But Dorian was nothing if not good at smiling at those who hated him. The fact that his father was among those people–and apparently had been for some time, given the meticulousness of his notes on blood magic–didn’t lessen the display of Dorian’s perfect teeth.

“Technically the Bull is no longer a Qunari,” Maevaris added delicately, as though correcting a very minor factual inaccuracy. “He became a Tal-Vashoth several years ago, hence why he is allowed to marry at all. I’ve heard that before that, he was one of the Ben-Hassrath.”

“An oxman and a Qunari spy!” Halward rose, his lip curling. “This farce is over, Dorian! You will come home with me, quietly, and if I hear any more of these slanderous falsehoods from you I will be forced to take extreme measures against you. And as for you, Maevaris–I would have thought this sort of childish behavior was beneath even you!”

Maevaris only blinked prettily at him, unaffected by Halward’s insult. By sheer force of will, Dorian made himself remain seated too. He would not lose himself now. He refused to cry, or shout, or do any of the things he wished to do.

“I would say you have already planned to take extreme measures for me,” Dorian stated, in a slow, measured tone. “Why do you think I came here so suddenly? I read the notes in your study, Father, and I have no intention of going anywhere with you, so that you to use blood magic to break my mind.”

“What a preposterous notion,” Halward spat, lying easily. But his eyes darted to Maevaris, who pinned him with the cold blue gaze she had inherited from her ancestors in the Anderfels. “I don’t know who has dared to slander me by saying I would use blood magic, but–”

“No,” Dorian interrupted, and then forced himself to exhale slowly. For those several seconds, the silence in the room stretched out around him like a long shadow. “I know exactly which of our slaves–whom you have always prided yourself on treating well!–you planned to kill to do it. I know that you planned to use a Desire demon, if possible, since I so naturally attract them, and that you were going to allow the demon to leave in the elf’s body as payment for changing me. I had to break into your magically sealed cabinets to find the notes, yes, but I have read them all and I have them with me. If I need proof of your misdeeds in order to defend myself, I have it. So do me the courtesy of not lying anymore. You’re only embarrassing us both by doing so.”

For a moment, Halward seemed genuinely unmanned, opening his mouth before shutting it again. But then he stood to his full height, lip curling to reveal his teeth.

“Such recourse would never have even occurred to me if you had not forced my hand! You flout your disgusting proclivities for all to see! Do you have any idea how hard I’ve been forced to work to undo the stains you’ve already put upon the Pavus name? You will throw our entire house and your mother’s into disrepute! Anything I may have planned is your fault, Dorian, you–”

Maevaris stood suddenly. Both men were so focused upon each other that they might have ignored her, until a crackle of electricity cut through Halward’s rising voice. When they turned to her, both her arms were sheathed in a dramatic display of purple lightning that squirmed and twisted around her like snakes.

“I will thank you not to speak to my guest in such an unseemly way within my house, Magister Halward,” she snapped. “If you cannot conduct yourself with the dignity befitting one who serves in the Magisterium, then I will take any measure I deem necessary to protect those who are more welcome in my house.”

Silently Dorian thanked her. For a moment he couldn’t even force words out of his mouth, too paralyzed with horror at the depth of his father’s hatred for him.

“My future husband,” Dorian barked after only a brief pause, “is already on his way to the Tevinter border. I will be married as soon as I arrive at Maevaris’ summer villa there. I leave tomorrow to meet him. You cannot and will not stop me, Father, and the fact that I asked the Bull about producing heirs is the greatest and only compromise on this matter that you will ever get from me. You will either accept the heirs I produce with him, or you will die heirless and be forced to pass your seat on to someone of so-called lesser blood. Either way, I will be leaving Tevinter and taking myself out of your reach.”

Halward hissed at him, a sharp expulsion of air through his teeth.

“You are no son of mine,” he growled, and stalked out of the room.

  **

A week and a half after that–eleven days spent traveling during the day and having nightmares about Halward every night–Dorian arrived with Maevaris at the villa. When they reached the stables, it became obvious that they were not the first of the wedding party to arrive. The stalls were packed with beasts of burden of every size and shape.

Among them hulked a massive nuggalope. By the Bull’s own description, even his own people reckoned him large, being outsized only by their gigantic mages. So when the bizarre beast confronted Dorian, he had to assume it belonged to the Bull. It would take a very sturdy mount indeed to support someone of the Bull’s reputed size, and a nuggalope–a species Dorian had previously only heard of in jest–would certainly qualify.

But the nuggalope was a lovely milky lavender that shaded to a royal purple in places, and it had pink spots. Pink. Its horns were decorated with little dawnstone bells, too, so that it jingled when it moved. It was perhaps the most ridiculous and undignified beast Dorian had ever seen.

When he asked the stablemaster about it, Dorian’s suspicion proved to be correct. It was indeed the Bull’s personal mount.

For a while Dorian considered the creature, which knuckled around its stall, using its flexible upper lip to snuffle out bits of vegetables and fruits from the straw that served as its bedding–as well as a few bugs, licking them up as Dorian watched. What sort of a man rode on a purple and pink nuggalope with bells on its horns? Was he a ridiculous man, a jester who’d found himself king yet still thought nothing of making himself a spectacle? Would he humiliate or embarrass Dorian? Or was he a fop, an effete man who loved all things soft and feminine?

An effeminate husband, at least, would not be a problem so long as the man remained grounded in sense and was not of the sort to spend all his coin upon makeup and lace. Such potentialities made no sense, though. Maevaris would have told Dorian in either case, because he had pestered her for every detail she could recall about the Iron Bull, his looks, mannerisms, and style. But nothing in her stories or descriptions had prepared Dorian for a man who’d ride around on a purple and pink nug with little bells on.

Mae had described the Bull as huge and quite masculine, unbeautiful yet attractive nonetheless, with enough chest for even a man of Dorian’s size to comfortably spread out upon. Quick to laugh but equally quick to spot weaknesses and exploitable advantages.

Dorian didn’t have much to go on. A few letters, a description from a friend, and a promise made out of desperation. And yet he’d pledged himself to this unknown, promised to share his body and home and name with a complete stranger. Promised to make children with both a man and species unfamiliar to Dorian.

The nuggalope told Dorian something important about his intended, he knew, but he just wasn’t sure what.

So when Mae’s servants ushered Dorian into a sitting room, the figure that rose from a creaky couch to greet Dorian still took him off guard.

“You must be my groom! Dorian Pavus, right? I’m the Iron Bull.” And with a heavily-callused, scarred-up hand, the Bull grasped one of Dorian’s and bowed, kissing Dorian’s knuckles as though Dorian were a blushing maiden. The Bull’s dark stubble prickled against Dorian’s skin, but the lips were both soft and very warm.

Dorian’s breath caught. He had expected–well, he had expected someone with both of their eyes, for starters, and someone wearing a shirt, but the Bull was neither of those things. His chest and shoulders rippled with muscle, liberally striped with scars that were on clear display given his half-dressed state. The Bull’s horns spread nearly as wide as his shoulders, and were tipped with pale pink dawnstone caps. The Bull wore only a sort of leather girdle of a deep midnight purple, and below that, loose trousers of pink plaidweave.

The clothing, while both ghastly in style and much scarcer than Dorian had anticipated, didn’t stop Dorian’s face from heating up. Maker help me, he thought. I’m supposed to beget a child on this?

For the first time in his life, the prospect of procreation didn’t seem completely abhorrent. Though, now he saw his intended, Dorian realized that mounting the Bull would be like one of those Orlesian specialty nugs bred for their tiny size trying to mate with a nuggalope. Dorian was himself quite tall as men went, and his endowment had never gotten complaints, but he wasn’t a Qunari. How could he hope to compare?

The Bull straightened to stand at his full height–which was far above even Dorian’s–and grinned as though he knew exactly what Dorian was thinking.

“Look at you,” the Bull crooned. “You’re every bit as pretty as you boasted! Didn’t expect that, honestly.”

“I believe ‘devastatingly handsome’ is the phrase you’re looking for,” Dorian quipped, doing his best to conceal the rapid staccato of his heart. The Bull still had not let go of his hand, and he now used it to pull Dorian closer and turn him so that the Bull could see all of him, front and back. Dorian allowed himself to be turned, feeling a prickle of erotic tension lift the hairs at the back of his neck. “But thank you for the compliment. I am glad that you at least find me–” and then he found he lacked the right words. Was one allowed to say, At least you find me attractive, since you are marrying me on little notice and probably as a favor to Maevaris? If the Bull had been a high-bred lady of Tevinter, Dorian would have known exactly how to comport himself in an arranged match such as theirs would be. But taking a Tal-Vashoth king of a Free Marches nation as his bride stumped Dorian’s etiquette lessons.

“Glad that fucking you regularly won’t be a chore?” the Bull finished for him after only a brief pause, apparently constrained by no such worries about propriety.

Thankfully Dorian’s skin was just a few shades too dark to show a blush. He felt the heat of one anyway, spreading up his neck and over his forehead.

The room was quiet around them except for the crackle of a large fireplace on the wall behind Dorian, but the Bull leaned in closer anyway, his face taking on a conspiratorial look. “Mae tells me you couldn’t stomach the idea of a wife but found yourself in sudden need of a spouse. Good thing my advisors were telling me that getting married will do a lot for my credibility as a ruler, right?”

“Right,” Dorian agreed, trying to surreptitiously take deeper breaths without seeming like he was feeling faint. “A fine happenstance, and much to my benefit. I admit, I was a bit surprised that you’d even entertain the notion. I had been given to understand that Qunari don’t marry, and indeed find the concept something akin to sacrilege.”

For just a moment the Bull’s face tightened, his smile faltering. But the grin slid neatly back into full brightness after only the slightest twitch, leaving Dorian uncertain the shift had even happened at all.

“Good thing I’m no longer a Qunari, then. I was made Tal-Vashoth a few years back, when me and my boys were doing a Dreadnaught run. Went tits-up and they chucked me out of the Qun. That’s all right, though, because I wouldn’t really want the Qun to have this much of a foothold in the Free Marches anyway.” When Dorian raised his eyebrow, the Bull rolled his eye and shook his head. “I didn’t mean to become a king, but the people elected me without my say-so. I was just hired to kill off the demon-possessed family who were ruling here before. Stupid me, I stayed in the castle for a few months after even though it wasn’t part of my job, just making sure no more demons would turn up. Apparently the people here took that as volunteering.”

“Is that what happened?” Dorian murmured, withdrawing his hand when the Bull finally released it. Standing this close, Dorian could feel the bigger man’s body heat, and indeed smell him. It was a faint smell, but pungent, and somehow spicy. It made Dorian’s mouth water. “I had heard that another noble family had taken over the rulership of Starkhaven in the Vael prince’s absence, but not what had happened to them that left you in a position to rule.”

“Possessed, every single one of them,” the Bull spat, expression twisting into clear disgust. When his lip curled up, the canine it revealed was sharp and long, not like human teeth. “Fuckin’ demons, getting into people’s heads! You wouldn’t believe the shit I found those nobs doing. One of them had developed a habit of making people into statues by mummifying them in liquid gold.”

“Goodness, that’s quite the hobby,” Dorian exclaimed, briefly forgetting who he was talking to in the shock of the news. “I don’t suppose there are crafting clubs for that the same way there are for knitting? Well good riddance, then, I’m glad you sorted that out. And I shall make sure not to summon any demons in our living room, yes?”

“Mae tells me you’re quite decent, for an Altus,” the Bull joked, nudging Dorian with one muscular elbow. “Barely any demonic rituals at all.”

“None ever, thank you very much,” Dorian primly replied, neatly pulling his train of thought away from memories of his father. “I don’t know how much Mae told you, but let’s just say that I have had more than my fill of blood magic as a solution for one’s problems.”

The Bull sobered at once, his humorous flirtation vanishing as if it had never happened.

“Mae didn’t give me specifics, just said that you were at risk. I’m glad you got out. I needed a spouse anyway, and finding a potential who needed saving from blood magic just sealed the deal, for me.”

“Thank you,” Dorian replied, surprised by the Bull’s gravity and vehement protectiveness. “Highly though Mae has praised you to me as a mercenary captain and ally, I still did not expect concern on my behalf. It is….much appreciated.”

The look the Bull gave him at this was pure filth, gaze dragging over Dorian from head to toes like sweaty hands. It entirely derailed the seriousness of the moment, and brought a fresh heat to Dorian’s face.

“My pleasure,” the Bull purred, and then Mae entered the room to distract them with other things.

**

The rest of the evening was taken up with preparations for the wedding, which they had planned to undertake the very next day. The wedding would not be a grand affair, as the matrimony of an altus-expectant should have been. But while the Villa was no grand cathedral, it still needed last-minute decorations, and the menu had to be planned.

Dorian tried not to think about the fact that he was getting married and not a single member of his family would be in attendance.

He would at least have Maevaris, his one and only friend, to stand as his Maid of Honor. With her would also be Mae’s cousin-in-law and close friend, a dwarf named Varric Tethras, who was from the Free Marches as well and had been visiting the Bull when the arrangement had been struck. Varric had, in fact, been the reason Mae had known that the Bull had been considering taking spouse in the first place.

Varric Tethras, Dorian supposed, was as close as he would ever get to having distant relations at his wedding. Not a single family member on either side would be present for the event. A single, solitary friend of a friend: that was apparently all Dorian deserved by way of kinship.

Dorian swallowed carefully around the tears this thought threatened to evoke, not wishing to cry in front of the cooks and servants who were listening to their instructions for the morrow.

And it wasn’t as if the Bull was any better off in the family department. Having been born and raised under the Qun, he of course had no relations. Instead, several key members of the Bull’s old mercenary company would be where his family ought to have been. Another man from Tevinter, in fact, a Soporato named Cremisius, would be the Bull’s Best Man.

Travel accommodations for the ensuing journey to the Free Marches also had to be planned out before the event. The Bull was used to camping and rough travel, but Dorian outright refused to spend the weeks after his wedding sleeping on the ground.

“Fair enough, we’re gonna want a bed anyway. Doing it in tents is difficult when you’re my size,” the Bull grinned, cheerfully accepting Dorian’s needs as though they wouldn’t double or treble the cost of the trip and put them at much greater inconvenience. “I’m probably only gonna get married once, so I suppose I should get a proper honeymoon.”

When they parted ways soon after that discussion, having finally completed the planning, Dorian thought he would not see his intended again until the ceremony. But a few hours later that night, a knock came at the door of Dorian’s chambers. When he opened it, he found the Bull standing there, hands clasped modestly over his belly with a gentle expression on his face.

“Hey, came to talk to you. Can I come in?”

Not knowing what to expect, Dorian stood back from the threshold to allow the larger man entry.

Cautiously, listening for any sounds of wood on the verge of breaking, the Bull seated himself in one of the plush chairs positioned in front of the fireplace. Then he looked up at Dorian with a serious eye, gesturing him to seat himself in the other chair.

“To what do I owe this pleasure?” Dorian asked, remembering his manners. Most of his finesse seemed to go out the window whenever the Bull entered the room–the man defied manners, that much was already clear–but Dorian was determined to keep trying.

“How’re you really feeling about this wedding?” the Bull asked, with every appearance of earnest curiosity. “It’s not too late to back out, and I won’t be offended or angry if you get cold feet.”

Dorian stared. Whatever he had expected the Tal-Vashoth to say, it wasn’t this. His thoughts whirled; was this the Bull’s way of implying that he didn’t want Dorian for a spouse after all? The very idea had Dorian’s pulse rate jumping and his palms clammy.

“Is there some reason you inquire?” Dorian replied with careful neutrality. “Has anything in my behavior displeased you, or implied that I am unwilling?”

The Bull shook his head, but his gaze remained fixed. Dorian kept his back straight, his legs positioned loosely in front of him. Poised, well-bred, yet relaxed.

“This is a damn marriage,“ the Bull said simply, undeterred. "And you’ve been rushed into it out of fear. I know you wouldn’t have chosen this–or me–if you had better options. I’m willing to make a political decision like this to protect people and secure my social standing–thus helping other people–but it’s different for you. I’m coming to this from a place of power. I could wait, find someone else if I really searched. But you’re backed into a corner. Yeah, circumstances have forced your hand and you need a safe way out of the country, but that doesn’t mean I want to push you into something you can’t actually stomach. If escaping Tevinter is all you really need, I know all sorts of people who could get you out and stationed somewhere comfortable without having to resort to marriage.”

For a moment Dorian’s facade cracked and he stared at the Bull in open shock. It had been years since anyone but Mae had expressed genuine concern for Dorian, or offered anything to him that wasn’t in some way motivated by political gain.

Helpless, Dorian’s gaze dropped. He hadn’t been this at a loss for words in front of a potential suitor since his teens.

“I….thank you,” he muttered. “I didn’t expect you to care.”

“That’s precisely why it’s necessary that I do,” the Bull replied, immediate and intense. Dorian could feel the other man’s gaze like he could feel the heat from the fire. “I don’t fuck the unwilling, Master Pavus. And though I’ve never been in a position to think about it before, I don’t want to marry the unwilling either. So I’ll say again: if this isn’t what you want, if I’m not what you want, then I won’t be offended or upset. I can act as your escort out of Tevinter instead, and even offer you shelter in Starkhaven for a while. You don’t have to marry me to get that.”

Dorian closed his eyes. All at once, the weight of the last month fell upon him–the sleepless nights, Mae’s frantic efforts to save Dorian from his own father’s brutal machinations, the endless spinning recall of his father’s notes and face and cold blaming of Dorian, the hard travel, and the knowledge that whatever he did, Dorian would have to leave behind his homeland and probably never return. He’d lost weight, he knew he had, and his eyes felt gritty all the time. He concealed the weariness with magic and makeup and charm, of course, but he felt the pain just the same.

“I don’t know how to answer you,” Dorian forced out at last, when the silence had stretched on far, far too long and revealed too much. When he opened his eyes, though, the look on the Tal-Vashoth’s face was nothing but kind, the green eye soft and concerned.

“I know what I don’t want,” Dorian stated at last, looking away from the scarred-up face that seemed to care about him. “I don’t want to be turned into a chess piece for my father’s personal and political plans. I don’t want to be married to someone I will despise, who hates me and everything I represent and desire and feel and think. I don’t want sex to become a chore I must dispense with in order to beget offspring whose sole reason for existing is to serve me. I don’t want to raise children who will have to watch their parents sink deeper and deeper into self-hatred and bitterness.”

Dorian stopped, the words choking him and his eyes burning with unshed tears as well as the now-normal soreness of exhaustion. A fine first impression he was making upon his soon-to-be husband; Dorian now looked like an over-emotional weakling who couldn’t deal with simple political realities. Wonderful.

“That all seems pretty reasonable,” the Bull remarked after a moment, getting a snort from Dorian. The words were in too great a contradiction with his thoughts, and thus couldn’t be honest. “Really, Dorian. May I call you Dorian? Look, I agreed to this arrangement because I trust Mae. She hired me and my men to help her deal with some really nasty people, once upon a time. Normally I didn’t take work from ‘Vints, but this was back when I was a Qunari spy, so my handlers jumped at the opportunity to get more information on the Tevinter Magister who wanted reform for her country.”

Surreptitiously wiping his eyes, Dorian adjusted his posture and crossed his legs, doing his best to look more like he was listening. He was, it was just difficult to hold himself together enough to look it.

“I spent a lot of time with Mae on that mission,” the Bull continued. “She came with me herself, because what she wanted was fairly personal. More than a month we spent together in constant proximity, and she was never impolite to my men or needlessly cruel even to our opponents. So when she wrote to me to say she had a friend in desperate need of a husband, I would have taken you on with her recommendation alone.” Here the Bull chuckled. “It’s nice, though, to find that you’re easy on the eyes, honest when it counts, and sweet under all the glitz and sparkle. Good marriages have been based on far less.”

Dorian didn’t quite jump when a big dry hand took his much-sweatier one in its grip, but he did turn his gaze abruptly from the glowing logs in the grate to the lined face beside him.

“I’m pretty sure you do know what you want, Dorian. But I’ll help you out with some basics, so we can both go into this with our eyes open. How about monogamy? I can’t promise you I’ll never sleep with anyone else, but I can promise you it won’t be serious if I do, and I won’t share any details about it with you if you don’t want to hear. I can also promise you I’ll never make kids with anyone but you. I’m always very careful about that. And I’m fine with you sleeping with other people too, so long as you don’t get any kids elsewhere either.”

At this Dorian laughed, squeezing around the long fingers that held his. “That won’t be an issue. I only like men.”

“Some men can get pregnant,” Bull replied, all calm factuality. “Case in point: me. But my point is that I want children to be a carefully-made decision, not an undesired consequence. That okay by you?”

“Yes,” Dorian agreed, noting the way his heartbeat raced down his arms and pounded in his fingertips where he touched the Bull. “Yes, that–yes. Children should be neither an obligation nor an accident. Which I guess is….is something else I want. I want to wait to have children, if we ever decide to do it. I’d like to actually know who you are, first.”

“Fine by me,” the Bull agreed, one corner of his mouth curling up in an easy smile. “So you’re okay with me sleeping with other people?”

“It’s what men do,” Dorian replied. It had been a fact of life in Tevinter. It was accepted that married people would take lovers, especially the men, though it was expected that a certain level of discretion be maintained. Dorian knew that in the South some people had very different beliefs about fidelity and sex and marriage, but neither Dorian nor the Bull were Southerners, not really, so surely none of that applied to them. “I can’t change the way people are just because we’re getting married,” Dorian finished.

“No,” the Bull contradicted, “sleeping around is what some men choose to do. I don’t want to resent you, and I think I would if I could never fuck anyone else ever again. This will be the first serious relationship I have ever entered, so I am not used to restricting myself when fun opportunities come my way. But if it is truly important to you, I am willing to try to keep my focus on just you and see how it goes. So, try again: is monogamy important to you?”

The Bull stroked Dorian’s knuckles, a slow caress that was at odds with the bluntness of his words. Something in it prompted Dorian to force himself to consider the question. But he had never before had a serious relationship either, and had never allowed himself to even consider the prospect of an exclusive one, so how was he to know what he liked?

“No,” he concluded at last. “If you can restrict your activities to places I will not see them and which will not publicly humiliate me, and if you agree to see a healer every few months to make sure we are both protected from disease, I see no reason to curtail your fun. Especially if doing so will only breed resentment. And as you said, I assume this arrangement means I too will be allowed to continue my ‘disgusting sluttish behavior,’ as my father called it?”

Rather than the glare Dorian of disapproval expected this to get, the Bull laughed, a loud shout of amusement. “Hah! Call it whatever you want, it doesn’t bother me. Marriage shouldn’t be a death sentence. And hey, maybe there’ll be some people we both like. The more the merrier in a bedroom!”

Dorian’s mind boggled, but he allowed himself a shy smile. At this, though, the Bull’s expression shifted again.

“Which brings me to another point. Do you even wish to have sex with me at all? If you don’t, I’ll still marry you, but it would become even more important that I get my needs met elsewhere.”

“I–ah,” Dorian choked. His face was outright sizzling now, from the combined heat of the hearth and his blush. This couldn’t be happening, surely? He could not be discussing possible abstinence with the man who’d soon be his husband. Dorian had barely known what to do with men who wanted to fuck him for a month straight. Commitment between two men was impossible enough in Tevinter, but commitment without any expectation of sex? Unthinkable.

“Based solely on your physical attributes, I don’t think I’ll mind fulfilling my marital duties with you,” Dorian offered. He hoped the Bull would not push. If the Bull said again that he’d marry Dorian even without sex, Dorian thought he might fall in love on the spot. And he was already overwhelmed enough without silly fantasies of this becoming a love-match.

“No?” the Bull teased, his tone all amusement now. “You wouldn’t mind being ravished on your wedding night by a big, burly ox?”

Dorian, who had been busy contemplating a future with a man who was caring and thoughtful enough to marry a desperate refugee and not even expect sex in return, grew keenly aware of the skin contact between their hands. His clothes seemed suddenly too hot.

“If it’s anything like I’m picturing, it won’t be a chore,” he gritted out, trying for seductive and failing. “But I had thought that….well, given that you agreed to think of bearing children for me someday, that the intimacy between us might happen the other way around?”

“That was before I met you,” the Bull chuckled. “Now I’ve seen you, it’s obvious that’s not what you’d want from me. No, you’d want me to take control, be the one doing the ravishing.”

“How could you possibly–” Dorian began to ask, but he didn’t pull his hand away. And when the Bull leaned forward in his chair, propping his other elbow on his knee, Dorian didn’t lean away.

“The way you look at my chest,” the Bull interrupted, and Dorian found he didn’t mind it. “You grip your hands a bit every time you do it, like you’re imagining holding on to something while I take you. And you keep standing just a little too close, as if by accident, and then staring up at me. It emphasizes the height difference between us, so I gotta figure you like that. And when you talk to me, you tuck your chin just a little and look up at me through your lashes. You never do that with Maevaris or any of the servants, just with me. Now that might be because you’re scared of me, or of what I represent, and you’re trying to appease me. It’s a submissive posture. But I don’t think it’s because you’re scared of me, I think it’s because you’re thinking about what it would be liking having me above you. Am I right?”

Blood flooded through Dorian’s entire body as the Bull talked, picking apart the minutia of Dorian’s body language and desires and being correct upon every count. Dorian was used to being scrutinized; he was used to preening and checking himself to make sure every hint of his body and posture were always at their best so that he could visually spit in the faces of his detractors. But he was not used to being visually consumed in such a way, details taken in and savored as though he were a treat that melted upon the tongue.

“Yes,” Dorian whispered. “Yes, that’s…..you are correct.”

“Good,” the Bull murmured, his deep voice husky and amused. “If we can get some fun sex and a solid friendship out of this, I’ll call myself a very lucky man indeed.” A big, rough thumb swept over the veins on the back of Dorian’s hands. “I would like to actually sleep beside you, too,” the Bull added, as though such a sentimental declaration were perfectly fitting after such a filthy discussion. “I’ve traveled with my boys for years, I don’t sleep very well when I’m alone. I like having someone breathing beside me. Have you ever slept beside someone before?”

“No,” Dorian admitted, feeling obscurely shamed by the declaration, though he couldn’t think why that should be. “Never. It’s….it’s not done, among the Alti.”

The look this got from the Bull was unspeakably tender, as though Dorian had just admitted something very sensitive. Dorian squirmed internally, though he managed to keep his limbs still.

“I won’t pressure you for this, either,” the Bull said. “But if you’re willing to try, it’s something I’d like.”

“I’m willing.”

They smiled at each other, and Dorian’s skin tingled.

At some point in the conversation, some sort of energy had built between them. Dorian wasn’t sure he’d ever felt this before, and he didn’t know how to label or respond to it. He’d felt something similar with Rilienus, a desire that was sexual but went beyond just that, too. Dorian had caught himself picturing a future together with the man in a hundred small but impossible ways: what a bedroom might look like with both of their belongings in it. How their sheets might smell from a combination of their hair oils and lotions and bodies in it. How both their research papers might have benefitted from skilled, consistent peer insight.

It had all been impossible, of course. Rilienus had been promised to another talented young Laetan like himself. They had married six months prior. Dorian had barely seen him since.

But this, here and now with the Bull, felt almost similar. Not quite the same, of course, the situations were different. Dorian had met Rilienus because their lines of magical inquiry had been so similar, and they had worked together near-constantly for months before the man’s wedding. By the end of those months, they had known each other well.

Dorian had never even slept with the man, never even daring to ask lest doing so break the sweet, lovely spell between them. It hadn’t been the impending nuptials that had stopped Dorian. He had slept with plenty of married men before. It had been that, for the first time, that he didn’t wish to lose a friendship to sex. He wished now that he had asked; he’d lost the friendship anyway.

The Bull wasn’t a friend, but now Dorian wondered if the Bull was right, that friendship might be a possibility. Could people even be friends and be married at the same time? Gereon had described his married to his wife that way. And Dorian had read about other such relationships in books….

But one solid example and a lot of hearsay did not a repeatable phenomenon make. As any good researcher knew, one couldn’t trust information conveyed by others. It was inevitably colored by the teller’s limitations and idiosyncrasies.

“I should let you sleep,” the Bull purred. The words were perfectly innocuous, but the tone suggested I should fuck you instead. He was still holding Dorian’s hand.

The Bull stood anyway, releasing Dorian’s fingers with a lingering slide that left behind little swirls of sensation. Dorian saw him to the door on slightly weak legs.

“You change your mind anytime between now and the wedding, I won’t hold it against you,” the Bull repeated, standing at the threshold. “Hell, you change your mind after the wedding, I’ll still let you go. Only do this if it’s what you want, okay?”

Dorian very nearly leaned up to kiss the man then and there. Under his clothes his prick stirred, and Dorian’s whole body leaned toward the Bull, just a little. But the thought occurred to Dorian that it would be–well, it would be terribly romantic if their first kiss were at their wedding. So Dorian held himself back, giving only a small smile.

“I doubt I’ll change my mind,” he murmured. “Unless you change dramatically between then and now. So do try not to get possessed in the meantime, yes?”

The Bull snorted as he turned to go.

**

  The next day passed fast and slow, fast and slow. One moment Dorian would be standing agonizing over every aspect of his makeup and hair–was that too much kohl, or not enough? Did he look like he was trying too hard, or just hard enough?–and the next moment it was an hour later and he’d choked down breakfast without noticing.

Then he was at the altar, only barely aware of how he’d gotten there. He tried not to think of how small the chapel was, intended not for a wedding but for the private worship of the Tilani family. Yet \ the chapel’s tiny size didn’t matter to anyone but Dorian, since there were only eight people in attendance.

Dorian’s hands sweated, his armpits sweated, he was a swamp inside his robes. He wished he could somehow slow down his racing heartbeat so it didn’t throb at his throat and batter at the inside of his ribs. But he repeated his vows when prompted, took the hastily-acquired ring on his finger, and slipped another ring onto the stumpy remains of the Bull’s ring finger when the moment arrived.

A little thrill went through Dorian at that: where before the Bull had only worn the scars of battle, now he’d wear Dorian’s ring. It was a foolish thought, a romantic thought. Dorian hardly knew his groom. But it was good nonetheless to think of romance at least a little bit at a wedding.

A tiny wedding, at which he had no family.

Then the Bull pulled him tight against his much bigger body, curled a hand behind Dorian’s neck, and kissed him.

Somehow, the world receded away. There was nothing but the Bull, the warm skin of his bare chest dry and soft under Dorian’s grip. The Bull’s smell, potent yet somehow sweet, curled around Dorian like a down blanket. His high pulse throbbed inside the gold ring, the Bull’s tongue slid against the seal of Dorian’s lips, and Dorian could feel the luxurious press of the Bull’s soft sex against his own.

He’s mine? Dorian thought, baffled by the fact as their mouths parted in a slow, sticky movement that left Dorian shaky. I’m married. This is my husband now.

It made no sense. None of it made any sense. The fact of their marriage didn’t make any further sense when the Reverend Mother brought out the relevant legal paperwork, stepping neatly from her spiritual station to her job as a notary and legal clerk. Dorian signed the parchments in the relevant locations, and was surprised too by the beautiful calligraphy with which the Bull wrote his own name. Looking at the flowing letters, it occurred yet again to Dorian that he knew next to nothing about this man, and yet they had sworn before both the government and the Maker that they would join their separate lives into one.

Dorian got through the rest of the packing for their departure, the celebratory afternoon meal, and the last-minute changes to their travel plans. Dorian got through the revelation that the lavender nuggalope in the stables was named Crystal, that it had been a gift from one of the Bull’s past lovers, and that Dorian would be riding with the Bull on it through Nevarra to the Nevarran port where they’d catch a ship to Starkhaven.

“Means we’ll have plenty of time to talk, get to know each other,” the Bull murmured, and Dorian unaccountably flushed. The Bull’s words hadn’t been an innuendo, as it was already clear that when the Bull wanted to refer to sex, there was nothing oblique about the way he did it. So the Bull had truly meant that he and Dorian would have time to talk on this trip. And yet, Dorian was blushing.

If this had been a real wedding, Dorian caught himself thinking, and couldn’t stop the line of thought once it had started, then we’d stay for several nights in a family estate, feasting with all our relations, both mine and his. If this was a real wedding, we’d have our honeymoon in the Capitol and we’d deck each other in gold and velvet. If this were a real wedding, when we left for the Capitol, we’d need a caravan of horses and carriages and servants to contain all the gifts.

But it had been a real wedding even despite lacking all that. Very real, from the Bull’s warm palm at the base of Dorian’s spine to the heavy rings their fingers. Even if they’d be departing from this by riding double on a ridiculous oversized nug and taking only one extra horse for baggage, and their retinue would include only Aclassi and Tethras, it had still been real.

He will keep me safe from my father, Dorian told himself as he pushed away the disappointment and grief. Mae has vouched for his character, and it means I will have a place to go outside Tevinter. It is enough, it will have to be.

Somehow, Dorian made it through the day until the sun finally set, late because of how close they were to summer. Tasks complete, Dorian left behind the din in the great hall and the Bull came with him, still fixed to Dorian’s side as though they were truly some sort of romantic item.

Dorian allowed the Bull to lead them to their private quarters, despite the way that the hall spun around Dorian from the wine and his anxiety. His stomach had knotted itself into an agonizing twist that pulled at his spine that sent a throb of pain through him when the Bull closed their bedroom door.

“We don’t have to do anything tonight, you know,” the Bull said quietly, his voice obscenely gentle. Obscene was exactly the right word for it, Dorian thought, the gentleness in the Bull’s eye and tone somehow more explicit and intimate than most of the sex Dorian had engaged in before now.

“Don’t we? I was under the impression consummation was a bit of a social obligation, if not a legal one,” Dorian gritted out, barely managing not to choke on the words. “Sealing the deal, as it were. I’m yours, now.”

The Bull scoffed, his lip curling underneath one of his scars. “You don’t belong to anyone. And nobody’s gonna sit behind a screen and listen to make sure we fuck, so don’t worry about it.”

“Bored of me already, I see,” Dorian prodded, exploring the Bull’s kind manner like the edge of a wound. It couldn’t be real, surely. “Didn’t take long for this marriage to grow cold.”

This got a huff of laughter from the bigger man, but nothing more. Instead, he seated himself at the edge of the large bed. In comparison to the Bull, however, it was only adequately sized, and it groaned under him as it took his full weight.

The Bull meekly removed his boots and socks, waggling his grey toes in the open air with a look of relief.

“I’m not bored of you, Dorian. If you were comfortable, I’d have you right here, like this,” the Bull stated, curling his hands above his lap as though cradling an invisible person’s hips. His eyes lifted to Dorian’s face but Dorian hastily looked away, unable to handle the fact that his husband was looking at and talking about him like this. “I’d take my time figuring out how you like to be fucked. When you’re my size you have to go slow with humans, so I’ve learned to put that time to good use. I can’t wait to learn you, feel you inside and out and memorize every part of you like a cipher.”

“Ah,” Dorian choked, his skin searing under his clothes with the heat of blood flow close to his skin. His husband, his husband was sharing lurid fantasies about him. Dorian had no idea what to feel about it. “I, uh. That’s very generous of you. But that’s….not on offer for tonight?”

“Nope,” the Bull replied, popping the consonant. “Because you’re all tense and shaky and only half here. Can’t be half here for good sex, you’d wind up with a pulled muscle and bad memories. So how about,” the Bull rumbled, grinning with such earnest pleasure that Dorian thought he might die of it, “you come over here and kiss me instead. Just kiss me. Start with that, okay?”

“Okay,” Dorian repeated, an unnamable emotion curling in his chest. He didn’t want to call it hope, because that would imply he was looking forward to something more than a business arrangement with this man, and that would be terribly foolish. He’d been foolish enough in trusting his own father, apparently, so it would be ridiculous to hope for affection from a mercenary who’d deserted his own people. “Okay.”

The kiss started soft and slow with Dorian standing between the Bull’s knees. Softer and slower than their kiss at the altar, in fact, with no tongue at all. Then the Bull stroked one big thumb along the crest of Dorian’s hipbone, sensitive even through his clothes, and Dorian couldn’t help but open up his mouth.

The Bull came inside, accepting the silent invitation, and moved with careful interest. A stroke of his tongue against Dorian’s hard palate, another at the corners of his lips, and then across Dorian’s own tongue. The Bull obviously wanted to know how Dorian would react to each.

When the Bull had mapped out Dorian’s mouth, he moved on to the rest of Dorian’s face, then his ears, neck, shoulders, and collarbones. The Bull let out warm hums of approval whenever Dorian gasped out a “yes” to something, and an unperturbed noise of understanding when Dorian flinched away or shook his head.

Eventually, however, the Bull coaxed Dorian down onto the bed with him, and Dorian took that to mean that sex would be happening after all. At first Dorian shivered with tension, which the Bull did not mention. Dorian tried to suppress it, mortified to be caught shaking in bed as though he were some sort of virgin. He wasn’t, he hadn’t been shaky even when he had been new at this. It was just that he’d never had a husband be the one touching him before. (Husband, husband, husband, Dorian’s mind chanted. You have a husband, when will this go wrong–)

But the Bull merely stroked his big hands over Dorian’s arms and flanks and belly and continued his exploration unperturbed. When the shivering subsided and Dorian grew hard instead, squirming into the touches with little whimpers and gasps, the Bull didn’t mention that either. He didn’t change his behavior in any way despite the fact that, pressed together as they now were, there was no way Bull could miss the stiff line of Dorian’s arousal.

And when that arousal subsided and Dorian accepted that the Bull had actually meant it when he’d said they would only kiss, Bull didn’t fuss then either.

Finally, when Dorian’s mouth was swollen and half-numb from kissing and his whole body was limp and soft against the covers, the Bull pulled back.

“C’mon. Let’s get undressed and catch some shut-eye before we set off tomorrow.”

Dorian obeyed, loving the warmth and bulk of his bedmate as they settled together. Sharing a bed was a new and delightful possibility.

But Dorian soon found that every little noise or movement from the Bull yanked Dorian straight from dozing to wakefulness. Every deep breath, every sigh, every snore, every creaking of the bed-frame, every shift of the mattress. After the first two hours, it became its own specialized form of torture.

When Dorian pushed himself into a sitting position, Dorian could just make out the face of the clock on the far wall by the failing light of the bedside candle. The timepiece told him it was after two now. They would be leaving at eight.

“Can’t sleep?” the Bull asked, and Dorian damn near rocketed out of the bed. With supreme self-control he managed to keep himself under the covers, but had to drag in a long breath to steady himself. The Bull didn’t apologize.

“No, I can’t sleep. It’s….well, as I said, I’ve never actually slept beside anyone before. I’m not accustomed to this.”

“C’mere,” the Bull said with a gesture, and with a raised eyebrow and a great many misgivings, Dorian went. He scooted over to the big warm side, then let out a squeak of surprise when the scarred-up hands pulled him onto the Bull’s expanse of bare stomach and chest.

“Getting off makes me get sleepy. It do that for you?”

“Yes,” Dorian admitted, though he wasn’t feeling much in the mood right now. But without further preamble, the Bull grabbed a handful of Dorian’s hair, bit into the spot on his neck that the Bull had earlier discovered made Dorian squirm, and rolled his hips up into Dorian’s.

Within five minutes, Dorian discovered that the Bull hadn’t just been exploring him earlier, he truly had been cataloguing and memorizing him as promised. He had Dorian hard, squirming, and letting out undignified whimpers in record time. All the wiggling was apparently doing something for the Bull, too, if the frankly intimidating shaft digging into Dorian’s thigh was anything to go by.

“You want me to come too, or not?”

“Please,” Dorian begged. The thought of making the massive man under him shake apart made Dorian’s cock twitch, and that in turn got a chuckle from the Bull.

They rolled over so Dorian lay on his back, which made Dorian sure he was about to get fucked. When the Bull reached over to the bedside table and pulled out a small jar of something greasy, Dorian got even surer. Fear sparked up when the Bull immediately knelt back onto the bed and greased himself rather than his fingers, though–Dorian knew he could not take something that large without preparation. He’d tear!

But the Bull just pressed Dorian’s legs together, moved them to the side, and then slid up between them.

Dorian bit his lip in mixed relief and delight. The Bull’s cock was so big it pushed all the way through and out from between Dorian’s thighs, nudging up past his balls to the base of Dorian’s own member. He swore as the Bull braced over him on the bed, wanting to see everything that was happening. But when he summoned a little wisp for light, the Bull stared at it, then laughed.

“Never been with a mage before, if you can believe it. That’s a handy trick.”

“No?” Dorian couldn’t find it in himself to offer either an eloquent or sarcastic reply, too busy being mesmerized by the sight of the dark purple-grey corona appearing and disappearing from between his legs. It made him throb, his arousal fogging up his brain. “Then lucky me, I get to be your first at something,” Dorian pulled himself together enough to say. “Just like you’re my first Tal-Vashoth.”

“My first husband, too,” the Bull purred, and Dorian whimpered, much louder than he’d wanted. He slapped a hand over his mouth, biting at his palm.

“You like that, huh?” The Bull grinned. “Like that we’re rubbing off together in our marriage bed, as legally married spouses?” Dorian screwed his eyes shut, shivering, already almost on the edge. He knew that if he looked at the man above him, he’d come at once, shamefully fast.

The Bull had taken his eye patch off to sleep, leaving the empty socket and scars fully exposed in the green light of the wisp. Under other circumstances the deep, craggy shadows on the left side of the Bull’s face might have been alarming. But now they just seemed intimate and vulnerable instead.

“Yes,” Dorian choked out, running his hands up the Bull’s fantastic arms. “Yes! I–I like it, I’m sorry, I never thought I’d get to have–” he cut himself off before he blurted anything mortifying. He always got chatty in bed, and it had always been a problem. “I’m trying to imagine what you’re going to feel like inside me,” he admitted instead. It was a perfectly honest answer.

“It’s going to be great,” the Bull laughed, without a trace more modesty than Dorian himself usually displayed. “I promise.”

He was right.

[anadoribullholiday]

The Redeemer

Chapters: 7/7 + Epilogue Written for: @falsechaos and @ichigo-otaku for pinch-hitting By: Nessa_T

Prompt: Spy AU, canon setting. Dorian is an agent of the Venatori, determined to bring them down from within and joins the Inquisition as a double agent. Bonus points for covert shenanigans with Bull. Warnings: Death, Blood, War, Reference to Torture / Mutilation, Abuse, Death by Blight Notes: Inquisitor Adaar sided with the Templar and did not meet Dorian at the chantry when Felix gave him the note. He feared ambush from Tevinter, specially when the Redcliffe village was crawling with them and mages allied with them.

Read on AO3: http://archiveofourown.org/works/5672797/chapters/13068511

The Redeemer

Chapter 1

The dreams returned as always and it was no different tonight.

His hand was pressed against his face, left cheek stinging and lip bleeding where his father had struck him with an open palm. “Get out,” his father had said. “You are no son of mine.”

“Father,” the boy began to say, voice shaking, and tasting copper in his mouth.

Magister Halward turned his face away. Eyes hard and lips pressed together in a grim line. The boy left his father’s study and a part of him died every night since then.

***

Bull had expected the first ball of fire that was flung in his direction. He did not, however, expect it to hurt as much as it did when it singed the top of his shoulder. The inky blackness of the night was momentarily illuminated by the fiery display as the mage, Dorian, dodged and sidestepped away from the Qunari’s grasp.

“Stop it,” the Bull snapped, his voice low and annoyed, one of his hands hovering above the hilt of his axe. If the mage were to charge in his direction, he would be ready to defend himself. His experienced eye narrowed upon the man before him.

“Stay away from me, Bull,” Dorian retorted. His voice was even, yet there was a feverish look in the mage’s eyes that Bull did not like. Eyes wild, breath heavy and hand gripped tightly around his staff – Dorian had the look of a man who was driven to act by keen sense desperation. Desperate men were dangerous men.

“You’re stealing supplies from the Inquisition’s cache,” Bull continued, attempting reason. “We’ve just arrived in Skyhold, and I don’t think Adaar would take lightly to someone stealing from him when there are so many who are in need of them.”

The mage had, upon his person, precious medicine, food and water when Bull caught him sneaking out of the castle hours ago in the middle of the night. Equipped with nothing but a pack containing rations and his staff, Bull had watched with interest from the dark corner of the tavern as the mage cloaked himself with magic and snuck past unsuspecting guards.

Considering that the Inquisitor had left at first light earlier in the day to search for Hawke’s mysterious Grey Warden friend at Crestwood, Bull had figured whatever it was that Dorian had intended to pursue, the mage had taken advantage of Adaar’s absence to do so.

Dorian stood before Bull, back straight and proud while the crystal on his staff glowed ominously in warning.

“It is none of your concern,” Dorian said, his eyes locked onto the Qunari’s, body tense and ready for flight. They stood like that for a few long seconds, eyes to eye, before Bull snarled, ducked his head and charged forward to take him down. “Kaffas!” the mage cried, eyes wide and arm rising to conjure another fiery ball from air.

Yet he was no match against sheer brute force. There was a fierce scuffle and a few balls of fire blazing in the night before Bull finally outmaneuvered the smaller man, pinning him to the ground. Face pressed against the dirt, and arms pinned behind his back, Dorian cursed and swore as he struggled before Bull wrapped an arm around his neck.

Bull squeezed, slowly cutting off the mage’s air supply while Dorian clawed at him, gasping for air and nails raking red grooves upon the Qunari’s arm, face and neck. One minute passed and Dorian slumped unconscious in Bull’s arms.

“Sorry, big guy,” Bull muttered, setting him gently down on the earth before rummaging around in his pack for ropes.

Chapter 2

The dream changed, like a picture of winter transitioning into spring. The boy, now in his teens, was in the brothel in the slums of Minrathous. Head heavy with brandy, body hard and flushed with desire, he stood naked by the bed, watching two elves pleasuring each other.

The door to his room came open with a crash. It was Alexius. The boy raised an eyebrow at the look of disapproval presented before him.

“Ah, lads. We have company. Such a distinguished one too,” he said, giggling as the elves regarded them with some alarm. Then, simpering, he staggered towards the newcomer, wrapping his slender arms around Alexius’s neck.

“You can watch if you like,” he slurred into the older man’s ear, “Or join us. There’s always room for one more.”

Alexius stepped back, sighed and shook his head, tugging at the boy’s earlobe. Not enough to hurt, but enough to chastise. The boy yelped in protest.

“You’re coming home with me, Dorian. Right now.”

***

Bull knew he was in for a hard time when Dorian came awake, and he was not wrong. Once Bull had safely hidden them both in an abandoned smuggler’s cave, it was almost dawn when the mage began to regain consciousness before succumbing to fiery fits of temper.

Eyes flashing and teeth bared, Dorian had made his protests loudly known, going so far as to draw blood when his shiny, Tevinter-made boot connected with Bull’s jaw with a resounding crack.

Still, Bull was patient, sitting cross-legged across the bound mage. He repeated his terms, expertly dodging further assault from the mage’s flailing feet.

“Nope. You’re telling me where you’re heading off to, or I’m going to have to turn you over to Red,” he explained, running a finger across his lip where a buckle from Dorian’s boot had caught and tore his skin. Bull winced at the bloodstain on his fingertip before turning back to tend to his fire.

Dorian was livid. Bull had secured his hands behind his back with bits of rope – making sure his fingers were curled into fists so he could not even wriggle them to cast any spells.  For such a brute of a man, Bull was surprisingly clever.

“Nug?” Bull politely asked, offering Dorian a piece of the creature that had been slowly cooking over fire.

“Release me!”

Bull shook his head, biting noisily into what looked like charred remains of nug feet.

Bloody savage.

Dorian wanted to hit him in his smug face.

“No can do, big guy. Not until you tell me who these supplies are for.”

Dorian glanced at the phials of elfroot potion and small bundles of herbs that were laid out neatly before him. The damned beast must have removed all the content of Dorian’s pack, meticulously keeping count of the items Dorian had pilfered from Skyhold.

“Some food. A little water. A bit of gold. Health potions to last a week, and medicinal herbs to make some more. Someone somewhere is injured. Who is it?”

The mage remained steadfastly silent.

“If you had intended to go back to Redcliffe, you should know the place has been emptied of Vints weeks ago,” Bull continued, now thoughtfully sucking off the last bits of cooked flesh from bones.

“What makes you think I’m going to Redcliffe anyway?” Dorian snapped, struggling to sit up straight.

Bull shrugged, tossing bones picked clean into the corner of their cave.

“We’re in the Hinterlands. There is absolutely no reason for a Vint like you to be here unless you have some business at Redcliffe. Nothing around for miles otherwise.”

Dorian sniffed derisively.

“And,” Bull continued, his gaze growing hard while he pointed an accusatory finger in Dorian’s direction, “if it is Redcliffe you’re heading to, then we’re going to have problems, you and I. Big problems.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

Bull threw his hands up in exasperation.

“Dorian, you warned us of the dangers in Redcliffe. You told us the Venatori were trying to kill the Herald. And now you’re carrying all these stolen potions to go back, possibly to find any Vint stragglers who didn’t disappear with the Elder One… and what? Heal them? Tell me again how that is not treason?”

Dorian’s eyes slid away, suddenly uncomfortable.

“Felix is not Venatori.”

Short silence.

“Felix? Wasn’t he Alexius’s son? The one we met at the tavern? Why him?”

“He is a friend, and he’s not well. I haven’t heard anything from him. Not since we arrived in Skyhold.”

Bull stared at him.

“If you knew him, you must know his father.”

Dorian stared back.

“His father was my mentor.”

Bull sighed, and run large, calloused hand over his face wearily.

“Dorian, are you trying to tell me you’re working with Alexius as a spy for the Venatori?”

Another silence.

“If you’re a spy, you’re a shitty one. Just saying.”

Bull muttered under his breath, making a show out of unpacking and re-packing his provisions.

Shit.

“Why look for Felix and not Alexius?” Bull asked, shooting Dorian a sideways glance. Dorian looked pained.

“Because I know Alexius is dead.”

A pause.

“How can you be so sure?”

Dorian laughed quietly, without real feelings. For a moment, he looked sad.

“I just am.”

Chapter 3

He was dreaming again. The boy now stood outside the assembly room, nervously pacing back and forth.

“How do I look?” he asked, adjusting his collar and picking at non-existent lint from his robes.

Alexius shook his head and smiled. His son, Felix, hovering by Alexius’s elbow, looked up at him adoringly.

“Very good, naturally,” Felix said, before attempting to lift the hem of the new Enchanter’s robe to look at his underthings. “Have you gotten your lucky underpants on today?“

The boy gave a squawk of surprise.

“Why you… I’ll get you!”

Felix was giggling, running circles around Alexius. Ducking and twisting away, even attempting to hide under his father’s robes before his mother led him away, sniffling, by his ear.

“My dear boy,” Alexius began, his eyes suspiciously bright as he cupped the boy’s face before kissing him on his forehead. "I’m so very proud of you.”

It was then he knew he would do anything for this man. Anything.

***

Bull watched the mage as he slept. He was obviously exhausted after spending most of the night awake. Bull had kept Dorian up with an endless barrage of questions after his initial confession, but the mage had been less than cooperative. Stubbornly silent, Dorian refused to shed any more light to his questions and had fallen into a disturbed sleep, still seated and chin drooping to his chest, just as dawn was breaking.

Bull frowned. All he got from the interrogation was this: Dorian was Venatori, whose mentor may have died, and he was looking for a friend named Felix. There wasn’t a lot to work on but Dorian offered no answers as to why he came to the Inquisition the way he did. If he was the spy he claimed to be, he was certainly not able to take any actions since they fled Haven. Leliana had taken it upon herself to review every single piece of document received and sent in Skyhold before it reached the intended recipient.

Security and the position of the Inquisition had grown stronger now that they were garrisoned in the fortress that was Skyhold. In turn, Corypheus and his mages had all but disappeared without a trace.

Had Corypheus left Dorian behind to his fate? What was Felix’s role in all this mess and how could Dorian know Alexius was dead? Something did not add up, and Bull could not shake off the feeling that Dorian was caught in the middle of something he had no desire to be a part of in the first place.

“Things haven’t gone your way since Skyhold, have they?” Bull said to no one in particular. As if on cue, Dorian stirred, his brows furrowing a little as he wriggled against his bindings in his sleep. He did not look comfortable.

“That’s going to hurt when you wake up,” Bull muttered, gently examining Dorian’s hands. They were turning into a deep shade of purple.

Bull sighed, and got back to scribbling some notes to be sent to Skyhold once he got hold of an Inquisition runner at the nearby camp.

Chapter 4

The boy gave a sharp start as Alexius slammed his hand against the table, cursing his frustrations. He took a long draw from his brandy decanter, eyes red with sleepless nights and tears.

“Alexius,” the boy began to say.

“No! This is not good enough!”

He was silent as he watched the man slowly crumble before his eyes.

“We need more time,” came the feverish whisper. “Just a little more.”

“You need sleep,” the boy said.

“We can sleep when we’re dead! Again!”

There was the deathly silence as both returned to their research while Felix battled the blight in the adjoining room.

***

Dorian was in agony when Bull returned at mid-day. The mage had, of course, attempted to scurry away when his captor was absent, only to succeed in tripping over himself repeatedly, scrapping his cheek against the rocky ground and chaffing his hands against the rope till they blistered.

He gave a start as Bull approached the cave, blocking out the sun has he stood, gravely observing the mage from the entrance.

Dorian panted, winced, but did not ask to be freed. Exhaustion left dark smudges under his eyes. He was on edge.

Bull set down his water skin and the nugs he caught before withdrawing a blade from its sheathe at his waist. He gazed impassively as the mage stiffened and attempted to scamper away.

“I don’t want to hurt you, Dorian. But I can’t let you go unless I know for sure that you’re not a danger to me or to yourself.”

“I’m in no condition to run, if that’s what you mean.”

Grey eyes glanced at the steel in Bull’s hand, and then back at his face.

“Right,” Bull said, slowly kneeling to bring his face close to Dorian’s. “I’ll cut your bonds if you help me make sense of all of this.”

Dorian paused, and then slowly nodded, a look of resignation playing upon his face.

“What was your mission at Skyhold?”

Dorian closed his eyes, sighed and leaned back to rest his head against the cave’s wall.

“I was not supposed to be at Skyhold. That wasn’t part of the plan. Remember the note you received in Redcliffe’s tavern?”

Bull nodded his head.

“Well, Alexius had me plan an ambush at the Chantry. If the Herald had taken the bait, no less than twenty Venatori would have blasted you and your companions off the face of this Earth. But of course that didn’t work. The Herald chose to steal the templars from Corypheus instead.”

Then it was like a floodgate had opened, as Dorian grew more animated as each second went by.

“And of course the Elder One wasn’t pleased. Oh no. Took Felix hostage and demanded that Alexius perfected his time magic within the week or face execution.”

“Wait, what? Time magic?”

“Yes! The fucking magic that was supposed to turn back time so we could magically transport ourselves to that moment before the Herald stole his precious anchor! Well, now,” he spat, “it didn’t fucking work did it? It couldn’t! The breach weakened the veil, but we were not able to reset time anywhere before the breach occurred. It’s just not fucking possible.”

The mage tugged at his bonds impatiently as he struggled to sit up straighter. His wrists were starting to bleed.

“We needed time. A distraction, if you will. If I could have brought the Herald to Corypheus, on Alexius behalf, it might… just might have given them the time they needed to finish their work. Those bastards had Alexius and Felix locked in a room for days on end to work on his research.”

Dorian sighed, squeezing his eyes shut as he licked his lips.

“So I ran towards Haven. No one knew what the Herald looked like, but when I first laid eyes on him, I knew. I just knew. And it worked didn’t it?”

He turned face towards Bull and gave a dry chuckle.

“I was the one who drew the Herald out of Haven. I was the one who told him that Corypheus was after him. I knew he would offer himself as sacrifice. And it worked. If it wasn’t for me, Corypheus would not have known how he even looked like.”

Dorian was delirious, alternating between laughter and tears.

“But he just won’t die, will he? Oh no, not the Chosen One. He wasn’t supposed to survive Haven, yet here we are at Skyhold, and me caught in the middle, having to play the role of both spy and companion to the Inquisition.”

Dorian went silent, then sneered.

“Do as you will, Bull. I’m a dead man walking wherever I go. The Venatori will have me killed along with Alexius for failing our research, and the Inquisition will have me hung as a traitor. Still, all I ask is to see if Felix survived. I… I need to know for sure.”

“Where is he now?” Bull asked.

“There’s a cave near Dwarfson’s Pass. That’s where we said we would meet once Corypheus decided to march out of Redcliffe. Felix has taken ill to his bed, but Alexius will not travel without him. We wanted to make sure Felix could be hidden away somewhere safely until all the madness died down. At least until our allies could come to take him back to Tevinter.”

Bull was silent for a moment, watching Dorian watch him.

“Does anyone else know you are working for the Venatori?”

Dorian shrugged.

“Just Alexius and his band of Venatori. He… tried to keep me away from Corypheus and Calpernia for most parts. Plus, he was careful never to let Felix know I was involved in all this mess. It would have crushed the poor boy. He was very fond of me, you see. Alexius and I… didn’t want to hurt him.”

Bull nodded slowly, shifting to move behind the mage and gently began working on the ropes around Dorian’s wrists.

 “I believe you.”

The ropes broke lose, and a wave of pain rushed through Dorian’s arms. He winced, grimacing as he gingerly stretched his fingers, examining the cuts and bruises on his wrists.

“Hold up. I’m putting some elfroot on these,” Bull murmured as he slathered some poultice on the mage’s wounds.

“These look fresh,” Dorian remarked, sniffing at the scent of newly crushed herbs permeating the enclosed space of the cave.

“Yeah, just made some while you were knocked out. Stitches does better work with them, usually. Could have told me they weren’t potions though. I’ve been chugging these for a few months at least”

Bull had started to wrap Dorian’s wrist with some clean cloth he had torn from his bedroll, creating a makeshift bandage.

“The good thing about all that though?” Bull continued, gently tying a knot, “Tastes like shit, but I’ve had perfect bowel movements for several weeks. At least.”

“Charming,” Dorian said with a scowl while Bull sat back on his haunches to admire his handiwork.

The mage rubbed his wrists again. Most of the sting from his wounds had faded away. Bull’s poultice had certainly done a good job at mending the broken skin. The two remained silent for a while, each wrapped in their own private thoughts until Dorian could not stand the silence any longer.

“So, now what?”

Bull busied himself with the mundane task of preparing the nug he caught, while he considered his options.

“I could let you go on your merry way, I suppose,” he said slowly, his blade making quick work of the carcass. “But you’re going to need my help anyways. So, I suppose I’ll be tagging along until you find Felix.”

“Just like that?” Dorian said, incredulous. “No Qunari would stand for it. When should I expect a knife in the back?”

Bull snorted as he stabbed the nug with his blade, worked what smelled like spices into the meat and started roasting it over fire.

“If I had wanted to gut you, I’d have done so already. Anyway, I left a note with Red before I followed you out of Skyhold. Told her I was helping you sniff out the Vints right here in the Hinterlands.”

Dorian frowned, fixing Bull with a perplexed look. “So… what. You told her you were on a mission to help me?”

Bull gave an impatient wave of his hand in response.

“Look, I’m a Ben-Hassrath reporting to a Tal-Vashoth Inquisitor. He has little reason to trust me, as it is. And you’re a Vint. Things are not looking so hot for you either, what with this… Corypheus being an ancient magister and all. Now, a Ben-Hassrath and a Vint suddenly disappearing into the night while he’s away? That’s going to ring some alarm bells.”

Dorian opened his mouth to snap back a retort.

“But,” Bull interrupted, shooting Dorian with a warning look, “a Ben-Hassrath working together with a Vint for the benefit of the Inquisition? And leaving a paper trail to prove it? That’s going to earn me and you a couple of points with the boss.”

Bull stared into the fire in silent contemplation for a few minute before continuing, his voice quiet.

“So,” he said, purposefully counting off the points with his fingers, “The Boss gets to be happy, I get to write lovely things back to Par Vollen, my superiors back home get to be happy and you get to live another day. Everyone wins.”

Bull finally lifted the nug away from the fire, poked at its flesh with a finger before deciding that it is suitable for consumption. Dorian’s stomach churned at the smell of freshly cooked meat. He had not eaten anything since the night before.

“We leave at dusk,” Bull said. There was a sense of finality in his voice that boded no arguments as he offered Dorian a portion of his meal.

“Nug?”

Chapter 5

Bull was as good as his word. He had diligently nursed Dorian to some semblance of health, making sure the mage drank his water, ate his food and then insisted on changing his bandages as the sun slowly set in the horizon.

“Stop fussing,” Dorian snapped, anxious to be on his way. He pulled away from Bull’s hands, hurriedly packing his belongings; counting and recounting the little bottles he had brought with him from Skyhold.

“Fine, fine. You’re no good to us if you’re walking around injured though,” Bull responded, pretending to look hurt while he hauled his huge axe over his shoulder.

“Right, no thanks to you,” Dorian muttered, securing his precious cargo on his back before reaching for his staff. He rolled his shoulders, wincing at the little aches in his muscles. A quick glance at his arms told him that the bruised from Bull’s ropes had faded during the day. Save for a dull ache, he was none the worse for wear.

They set off at a brisk pace, the setting sun casting long shadows on the rocky ground. Dorian led the way, sure-footed as daylight slipped away, pausing every now and again to gain his bearings before trudging on towards the East.

The wind had picked up and the clouds hung low in the darkening sky. Dorian felt the cold air to the core of his bones, drawing his cloak closer to his body. If The Bull had noticed the slight shiver that ran through the mage’s spine, he said nothing.

Bloody savage. Walking around like that with no shirt on.

“You’ve giving me the evil eye again, Dorian,” Bull said, ambling after him as easily as anything. The brace around his ankle clanked with every step he took. How Bull passed off as a spy defied reason, or so Dorian thought. Stealth could not have been one of his strong traits with his bulk, those massive horns, his booming voice, and his ostentatious pants.

Oh Maker, those pants.

“How can you stand there with no shirt on? It’s freezing.” Dorian asked, his tone surly as a fresh gust of wind hit his face like death’s caress.

“We Qunari folks are made of hardier mettle compared to you delicate Vints, I suppose. We’re less likely to complain about the elements too.”

Again the urge to hit Bull in his face washed over him. Dorian gripped his staff.

“Oh, I don’t know. We Vints weren’t raised to roll around the dirt like animals either. I suppose I should be thankful you have some semblance of clothing on. What do you call that monstrosity? Pants?”

 “Hmmm, I’d call these my small clothes, actually. Pieces of fabric to cover my monstrous bits.”

Dorian gave a shout of laughter.

“OK, that was actually a good one,” he conceded, as his teeth rattled in his head.

Bull laughed easily, his steps confident in the dark. There was a rare moment of companionable silence between the two men as they picked their way carefully across the moonlit terrain towards their destination.

***

He was striding determinedly through Redcliffe castle, ignoring the sharp exclamations and barked orders from the armed soldiers to stay put. Brandishing a note in hand, he had demanded to gain audience with the magister. There was some commotion in the hall before Alexius appeared, calling these… “Venatori” to stand down and leave the room.

“It’s not safe for you to be here, Dorian,” the Magister said, casting a disapproving eye on the young man.

“Felix sent me a note,” the young man snarled, his eyes flashing with anger. “You’re not actually serious, are you? You can’t really want to join this… this Elder One?”

Alexius stood before him, defiant.

“Calm yourself, boy!” he hissed, casting glances around the room in fear of being heard, “You do not know the power He wields.”

“Turning back time to change the course of history just to avert an incident at the Conclave? Ripping holes in the very fabric of time itself? This magic cannot be trifled with! It is dangerous!”

“Dorian, hush!”

Alexius grabbed him by his shoulders, fingers digging through cloth and into flesh till it hurt.

“He is the only hope I have for Felix. You’ve given up months ago, but not I. I have to continue this fight. Alone, if I have to!”

The man felt guilt tearing inside, but refused to be baited.

“Maker’s breath, Alexius! You know that’s not fair! I’ve sat with you, night after night for months, trying to find a cure while Felix wasted away! Every day he exists is just another reminder of the inevitable end!”

The words hit its mark, but Alexius had gone too far to return. No amount of reason and pleading could have brought him back and both fell in to disturbed silence.

“The Elder One. He wants the Herald. I would deliver him if I could. Then, perhaps even if I fail… he might show Felix some mercy,” Alexius murmured under his breath. He was slumped in his chair, faced lined with age and sleepless nights.

“Who is he?”

Alexius frowned.

“No one knows, although I suspect he will be heading to Redcliffe soon with his… Inquisition. Fiona had managed to have a word with him in Val Royeux before I… I…”

He trailed off, too exhausted to continue and buried his face in his hands.

“I will bring the Herald to him. That will buy you some time. I hope.”

Alexius looked up, hope glinting in his eyes like a spark while the younger man looked him in the eye.

“I owe you that much. And Felix too,” he continued, his face wiped clean of emotions.

Alexius reached out to embrace him, but he stepped away, making a hasty exit.

He paused at the door when Alexius called out to him, but steadfastly refused to turn.

“Dorian.”

Silence.

“Don’t tell Felix.”

Dorian nodded his head before stepping out into the cold Ferelden air, knowing in his heart of hearts that it was to be the last time he saw Alexius alive.

Chapter 6

The battle raged on at the foot of the cliff at Dwarfson’s Pass like a tempest. Facing an ambush by a small band of red templars, Venatori mages and their Shade Demons, Bull and Dorian unleashed their wrath with a potent mix of metal and magic. The mage sent waves and waves of flames through the panicking mass while Bull carved through flesh and bones.

The rocky terrain was stained with splatters of blood and the valley echoed with the howl of battle for what seemed like hours before it all went silent save for the slight crackling from the heat of Dorian’s magic. The mage stood in the midst of the dead, breathing heavily while he clutched at his left arm. A blade had found its mark, and his wound stained his arm red. Still, his eyes searched frantically for any other signs of danger.

“You’re hurt,” Bull grunted, and made a move towards the mage. Dorian brushed him away and pointed a shaking finger towards the entrance of a cave cleverly concealed by a barrier.

“There!” Dorian exclaimed, his expression looking increasingly strained and anxious.

He sprinted towards his mark; chest heaving while blood trickled in rivulets down his arm. Bull followed, close at his heels, nose flaring with every labored breath he took. The fight had taken a lot out of them. Bull did not know if they would be able to fend off another attack.

“Dorian, wait!” he hissed. The mage ignored him, his boots thundering over the ground like one who was chased by very armies of the blight itself.

“We’re almost there!” Dorian cried, “The barrier’s up! Someone’s inside!”

Felix. Oh Maker, please.

Dorian skidded to a halt, rocks flying at his feet as his wild eyes considered the shimmery obstacle before him. He placed a finger gingerly on the invisible wall, crying out in pain when he felt the sting of frost.

“Ice,” he murmured, eyes fixated on something Bull could not see. Dorian retreated a little, took a deep breath before conjuring a barrage of fiery mana towards the entrance. Bull looked in surprise as the very air quivered like the ripples of water struck by stone, and burst into shards of ice.

Dorian took a tentative step into the darkness, ears listening intently for sounds.

“Careful,” Bull cautioned, as they were greeted by a strange blast of warm air and the stench of rotting flesh.

“Red lyrium. It’s warm to the touch. There’s a thin vein here that was mined to sustain a few templar guards,” Dorian explained, half-speaking to himself as he waited for his eyes to adjust to the gloom of the cave.

“What is this place?” Bull whispered, feeling nauseated by the smell of death and the sickly glow the lyrium emitted.

“Alexius told me this was where he had intended to hide Felix when we got wind of Corypheus’s intent to invade Haven. If we fail… if he couldn’t get his magic to work… if I couldn’t lure the Herald out of Haven for the Elder One, he would have our Venatori henchman spirit Felix away and leave him here to wait for aid from our neutral contacts back home in Tevinter,” Dorian whispered, eyes narrowed as he made his way slowly into the dark. The interior of the cave was large, and littered with human remains.

“Miners,” said Dorian, conjuring a ball of flame in his palm as a light source. They proceed further into the cave. It looked to be abandoned.

“You knew he’d fail?”

“Naturally. We created this magic, Alexius and I. But what Alexius has long suspected but will not admit, I have accepted as truth. The breach has certainly weakened the Veil, but it can only manipulate events that occur after the sky is torn. Not before. We would never have been able to do as the Elder One asked. Alexius had undertaken a task he had no hope of succeeding. He may have wanted to save Felix from his illness, but has only set the wheels in motion for his own death instead.”

A pause.

“And mine, I suppose.”

Bull looked flabbergasted.

“You got yourself involved with the Venatori even when you knew you would be killed either way? Are you mad?”

Dorian gave a wistful smile, shooting Bull a glance from the corner of his eye.

“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for him and Felix. I owe them a debt that is worth far more than my life.”

Their voices reverberated in the enclosed space before a faint cry in the distance drew their attention.

“Felix?” Dorian called out. Another cry.

Kaffas.

They raced towards the sounds of a man weeping only to stop dead in their tracks when they met with several bodies hanging from ropes by the doorway to a makeshift room. They swung like pendulums where Bull had accidently bumped into them, the crudely-made wooden rafters creaking as swayed from side to side.

Right to left. Left to right.

“That’s messed up,” Bull muttered, watching the mutilated bodies and their twisted faces above him. They had been dead for days.

Dorian raised his ball of light to get a better look. His face crumpled as he burst into silent, angry tears.

“It’s Alexius,” he said in a strangled voice, his whole body shaking as he reached out to study one of the corpse’s hands. “This is his ring.”

Then they moved into the dark, flames trembling on Dorian’s outstretched palm as they proceeded to face the mage’s nightmare in the flesh.

Chapter 7

Bull had seen many deaths in Seheron. Too many, in fact. Lost close friends, allies and commanders who either died in defense of the Qun or were killed when they grew disillusioned and turned rogue. Yet those deaths had been quick. A blade to the heart always had that desired outcome. No prolonged suffering. Efficient. Merciful, almost.

This was not the case when they found Felix.

The Venatori had murdered everyone they found everyone in the cave. Brutally. Possibly torturing Alexius and his Tevinter allies for days before executing each and every one of them. With their blood, the Venatori had traced out a name on the cave wall.

Pavus.

The bloody print served both a warning and a promise of Dorian’s fate should they cross path in future.

Felix, however, they had left for dead. With no provisions or medicinal powders, the blight slowly and surely ate away at his flesh, turning him blind in the process.

At the sound of Dorian’s voice, the boy, who was bound to a single wooden chair, had eagerly turned his face towards them, his irises covered with milky white film, face gaunt, body festering with sores that had been left untreated.

Dorian had gently cut Felix away from his bonds and laid him on the ground, cradling Felix’s head in his lap as the boy muttered incoherently under his breath. Felix refused any potions or water that were brought to his lips.

“They made me watch, Dorian. They made me watch,” he chanted as Dorian tried to wipe Felix’s face with a damp cloth, making soft soothing sounds to calm the boy and stroking what was left of his hair. Bull turned away.

“I’m going to save you,” he heard Dorian whisper. Felix gurgled.

They stayed like that for a while, whispering back and forth in Tevene, before Bull heard the sharp hiss of a blade leaving its sheath. There were more hushed whispers, soft sounds of weeping, the hint of a lullaby, the sick ripping sound of a blade dragging across flesh, and a final gurgle before it went quiet.

Felix Alexius was no more.

Dorian stood, his face studiously turned away from Bull.

“Let’s go,” he whispered. “There’s nothing left here for me.”

***

They made camp hours later in yet another cave on their way back to Skyhold, just when their feet could carry them no further. Snow had begun to fall over the Ferelden landscape, but Dorian had yet to complain of the cold.

The mage had attempted to wash away the blood and muck from his clothes by standing in the middle of a freezing river, furiously scrubbing away at his hands for almost half an hour before Bull approached him, gently but firmly guiding the protesting mage towards the warmth of their fire.

Bull had proceeded to remove Dorian’s drenched clothes as the mage shivered violently, teeth clattering as he finally stood naked by the fire, staring blankly into the flames. He did not say a word when Bull wrapped a blanket around his shoulders and refused offers of food.

They sat in silence for several hours.

“Thank you for bringing me out here,” Dorian suddenly said, finally looking up at Bull. “It seems the Venatori henchmen Alexius and I had hired to keep Felix safe had betrayed us. They must have been waiting for me to turn up before they decided I was taking too long and killed Alexius and our allies.”

Bull gave an awkward shrug, and frowned at the dancing flames in front of him.

“You know who they are, Dorian?”

“Even better. I know where they will be.”

There was a short silence.

“What will you report back to Leliana and the Inquisitor? When we get back to Skyhold, I mean.”

Bull considered his answer.

“The truth,” Bull replied.

Dorian nodded his head, before quickly looking away into the fire.

“That we were ambushed by the Venatori, we killed them, and now we know the identity of the Vints who had tortured and murdered potential allies and informant to the Inquisition.”

Dorian gave a start, and stared hard at the Bull.

“You alright with this story?” Bull asked, casting Dorian a long sideward glance.

“You’d lie? For me?”

“You want the Venatori dead as much as I do. Would be a waste to execute or imprison a mage of your talent. No one needs to know you worked for Alexius.”

Dorian paused, considering his options.

“Best to write an official request to the Inquisition once we step into Skyhold,” Bull suggested.

For the first time since the events at Drawfson’s Pass, Dorian smiled.

“I can live with that,” he whispered, scooting closer to Bull and leaning his head against a sturdy shoulder, falling fast into dreamless sleep as Bull wrapped an arm around him.

Epilogue

Dorian’s Request

Now that you’re in charge, there’s something I thought I’d bring up. There are Venatori mages out there, lurking in the wilderness. This comes as no surprise to you, since you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting one of Corypheus’s minions, but… these particular Venatori have additional significance to myself.

For one, I know them personally. I would call them ‘friends,’ except that would imply I didn’t want them dead. Which I do. Since I have an idea of where they might be, thanks to an investigation I began before coming south, I thought we could put our heads together and track them down.

At which point they would sneer something at you in Tevinter, and you would be forced to kill them. Which makes everyone happy—you for eliminating a potential threat, me for eliminating men and women too stupid and shortsighted to be permitted continued breath. They would be less happy, but who cares about them? Up to you, my lord Inquisitor.

Dorian

[anadoribullholiday]

Saarefluff

Rated: PG Wordcount: 1704 For: @chicaaago from @fwolfling

Prompt: -A litter of kittens lost their mother to the cold, and are rescued just in time by whomever. They can hardly take of them all, and enlist Skyhold for help, including Bull. He is quite fond of his kitten, Dorian not so much. He grows to love the little thing, but he denies it at every turn, even when Bull catches him cooing at it.

The first time Dorian laid eyes on the cat, she was a tiny ball of black fluff curled in the Bull's large hand,  even he had to admit she held a certain cuteness. Mostly though he was amused at the baffled look on Bull's face when Cole had placed her there. Baffled and confused was not an expression that Bull wore very often after all.

"She likes your horns, The Iron Bull," Cole told him and Dorian watched Bull's expression go from baffled to bemused to an openly affectionate smile in just as many heartbeats.

"Does she now? She's got good taste, " Bull said, raising the hand the kitten was sitting in up to his face. The tiny creature met his gaze solemnly for a long moment then her tiny mouth opened in a yawn. "Aw." Bull grinned, enchanted. "Look at all those sharp teeth. You're going to be dangerous when you grow up aren't you?"

Dorian couldn't hold back a snort of disbelief. "Dangerous? That thing is literally a ball of fluff with eyes."

"Yeah, but she's going to be a dangerous ball of fluff," Bull argued, still grinning at the thing. Carefully he stroked her fur with a single finger and was rewarded with a rumbling purr that was entirely too loud to come from something so small.

Bull's eyes went all soft and affectionate at that. Looking back, Dorian would pinpoint that as the exact moment it became inevitable that the kitten would become a permanent part of their lives.

*****

Bull named the kitten Saarefluff.

Dorian gave him a look of disbelief complete with a disdainfully arched eyebrow when he announced that. "Really?"

"Hey, I just call them as I see them," Bull replied with an easy shrug. "Besides, you're the one who pointed out the fluff part so you're at least half to blame."

Dorian had been unable to refrain from rolling his eyes with a little huff of a sigh, even though he knew that such a reaction would only act as encouragement.

Which he wasn't trying to do.

At all.

*******

"Little bird told me you skipped lunch again," Bull's voice broke into Dorian's thoughts.

"Not intentionally, I assure you," Dorian replied, carefully marking his place before closing the book and looking up. "Sometimes time just gets awa-" He broke off blinking. "Am I hallucinating or are you wearing that cat as a hat?"

Bull grinned. "Nah. Saarefluff just really likes the horns."

Dorian stared at where the kitten was stretched out along Bull's horns, lounging with her eyes barely open and the smug air of someone who has successfully climbed a mountain. "Yes, I dare say that is quite apparent. Are you just going to let her stay up there?"

"Considering all the effort she made in climbing up, it would be mean to make her get down before she's ready," Bull said. "She's not hurting anything."

"You may change your tune if she loses her balance," Dorian predicted, but let the matter drop. Walking around with a cat on his head <em>was</em> ridiculous, but one only had to take a look at Bull's wardrobe to realize that looking ridiculous was not high on the list of things Bull cared about.

******

Soon enough the sight of the large qunari walking around Skyhold with a kitten sprawled over his horns was so familiar that hardly anyone even gave it a second look anymore. Privately Dorian still thought he looked ridiculous, but Bull took such an obvious delight in his feline passenger that he wasn't about to say anything.

However, that didn't mean that there weren't some things on which he would put his foot down.

******

"No! Absolutely not!" Dorian crossed his arms over his chest and glared.

Bull raised his eyebrows in surprise. "Really? You're saying no just because-"

"I'm saying no because the last time I didn't say no, that... <em>cat</em> jumped up on the bed and started trying to <em>groom me</em>!" He could almost feel himself bristling with outrage at the memory.

"Aw, that's just because she likes you," Bull told him with that stupidly fond smile he always got when talking about his cat. The cat in question, who was lounging on the bed, gave a small 'mrp' as if she knew she was being talked about.

"I don't care if she had decided I was her new god, I do not need any help with my grooming!" Dorian shot back testily. "Particularly from an overly enthusiastic ball of fluff, especially when I'm tied up, naked and being fucked to within an inch of my life!"

Bull frowned a little at that. "You didn't ask me to stop."

Dorian felt the telltale heat of an embarrassed flush spread across his face. "Yes, well, I was rather past the point of no return. I'm not sure I would have asked you to stop if the room had caught on fire." Pause. "Again."

"Really?" Bull grinned at him in a way that usually made Dorian a little weak in the knees, not that he would every admit it. "Hot."

Dorian groaned in frustration and just barely refrained from stamping his foot like a child. "We're getting away from the point," he said testily.

"What point is that?" Bull asked with a leer, taking a step towards him, which had Dorian quickly taking a step back.

"The point is that I have no desire to end up in an unintentional threesome with your cat so if you want me to have sex with you, you will find somewhere else for her to go for the evening," Dorian told him, crossing his arms over his chest again.

Bull's gaze bounced back and forth between Dorian and the cat for long enough that Dorian began to worry he would be the one asked to leave instead of the cat, but then Bull gave an easy nod. "That's fair," he said, leaning over to scoop up the small cat from the bed. "I'll see if she wants to stay with Cole for the night."

Dorian very much did not feel guilty, not even at the betrayed look the cat shot him as Bull carried her out of the room. He had nothing to feel guilty for.

After all, he had been here first.

*****

Things went on like that for a while. Bull continued to be very obviously smitten with the cat and Dorian tolerated the animal and all the inconveniences her presence brought along with it. He put up with his robes suddenly seeming to grow a layer of cat fur and stubbing his toe on cat toys when he got out of Bull's bed in the gloom of the impending dawn. Bull kept insisting that the cat liked him, but Dorian was fairly certain she merely tolerated his presence because of Bull's obvious attachment to him, which coincidentally was the same reason why he tolerated her as well.

If he happened to drop more bits of food on the floor when the cat was around, it was probably because she was so distracting with her mewing and wide eyes. It most certainly wasn't on purpose.

And if he let her curl up on his lap while he read, well the south was very cold and the library very drafty, Bull's room even more so. And with all that fluff, the cat was very warm.

There was nothing more to it than that.

If she sought him out on her own sometimes, well he supposed by now he probably perpetually carried a faint odour of Bull and so would be seen as an acceptable substitute when Bull wasn't available.

She certainly wasn't any fonder of him than he was of her.

******

"So Dorian," Bull said as he leaned against the wall near the entrance to the library alcove that Dorian had claimed as his own. "It seems Saarefluff has got herself a secret admirer." He seemed positively gleeful.

"What do you mean?" Dorian asked, glancing up from the book he was perusing. "Has another cat been sending her the feline equivalent of secret love tokens?"

"Nah, pretty sure we're talking about a person here. Someone's been leaving toy mice filled with catmint for her."

"Perhaps someone is trying to win her affections away from you," Dorian suggested as casually as he could manage. "Or... have you considered it might be Cole? He's always leaving little trinkets he thinks people want. I can see him doing the same for your cat."

"Yeah, I thought it might be him," Bull said, and Dorian relaxed slightly. "But then the latest gift showed up. Toy mice I can see the kid leaving for her. A fancy collar studded with dawnstone with her name stitched on it is something else entirely." Dorian could feel Bull watching him expectantly though he was very carefully not looking up from his book.

Dorian deliberately turned a page before responding. "Yes, that does sound a bit too... extravagant for Cole," he said. He paused. "Do you have any idea of who it might be then?"

"One or two," Bull said, sounding amused. "But I'm not going to make him admit it if he doesn't want to. Still, it's really nice the things he's been doing, and Saarefluff and I are thankful for it."

"I'm sure that sentiment will get back to whoever it is," Dorian told him.

"Yeah, me too," Bull agreed. "Anyway, I can see you're busy, I'll leave you to it. You coming by tonight?"

"If I get this done, yes." Dorian dared a glance up. "Perhaps dinner in the tavern first?"

Bull grinned at him. "Sounds good. See you then." He sauntered off and Dorian got back to his research.

A few minutes later, Saarefluff jumped onto his lap with one of her small mrp's and butted her head against Dorian's hand until he started petting her.

He complied, smiling as he looked her over. The collar looked every bit as good on her as he had imagined it would when he asked Dagna to make it.

"You're welcome," he told her and was rewarded with a rumbling purr that was still entirely too loud to come from something so small.