As is to be expected at nearly every hour of the day, Dorian’s sequestered himself into his long since chosen and claimed alcove, tucked away among his books and papers and otherwise research. Today he finds himself mired in the restoration of a particularly fascinating tome that had fallen into his hands ( a long lost and recently found recounting on the studies of the blight, far beyond repair for all that he had taken to it with a zeal that felt far too similar to guilt / a haunting thing ) for the sake of distraction from a particularly frustrating bit of research that he has found himself stuck on for, oh, what feels like years. Hasn’t been, certainly, but it is a good distraction, methodical in how his fingers trace the page, ink dotting up to his forearms. Magic hums in the air, temperature kept comfortably warm as he flips through the pages, trying to identify what has been torn and what has fallen and what can be scavenged.
He’s aware of another in his space for all that he doesn’t bother looking up, far too absorbed in the task at hand, attention narrowed and sharp. It’s been known to happen, from time to him, this total absorption of his attention such that nothing and no one could drag him from his task ——— well. Nearly nothing and nearly no one.
His concentration shatters when Bull speaks / something to be blamed on the utter amount of surprise that he feels all at once by hearing his voice alone. Dorian feels dumbfounded for a moment, leaned over the book placed squarely in a weak beam of sunlight, ink stains on his fingers, staring now unseeing at the pages laid out before him. It’s as though his mind has reached an impasse and he breathes for a moment / before looking up, eyebrow arched at the oddity which awaits him. In his mind he has compartmentalized the Qunari as a Ben—Hassrath spy, a warrior : someone to be vaguely trusted on the battlefield inasmuch as he would kill their mutual enemies quickly enough. But to see him here, in Dorian’s space that he’s carved out for himself, holding a book and looking for all the world as if this were a NORMAL OCCURRENCE.
Odd doesn’t begin to cover it.
❝ The Iron Bull, ❞ his tone is mild and wondering, head tilting has he gestures lazily and the table that he had pulled before his usual chair skidding to the side, placing itself beneath the window neatly. Dorian sits back in his chair, legs crossing. ❝ Quite the unexpected surprise, ❞ that may be the understatement of the year. ❝ If the question is whether or not you can borrow that book, I only ask that you record the title in full and your signature in the log book, ❞ he points to the aforementioned logbook leaned against the window frame innocuously. ❝ If not… well, I’m all ears. ❞
here’s the catch, the iron bull thinks, which isn’t so much as a catch as it is a footnote. he’s killed for dorian. that might seem unremarkable, given that he’s a mercenary. it’s his job, more or fucking less, to end things. he’s saved sera a few times, varric, too, and shit, he’s even pulled cassandra’s ass out of the fire at least once, with no acknowledgement of it on either side. it’s the way of things. but if he and dorian had shared the room... what? ten, fifteen years ago? well, he’s not quite so sure things would have been the same. he’s killed for dorian, because the boss thinks him valuable, but it’s the knowledge that he wouldn’t have in the past that makes this whole thing really fucking weird.
you sign on to a united front and all of a sudden everyone drops the pretenses? fucking right.
he puts mortalitasi back on the shelf, and there it sits, presumably to go untouched until dorian finds he thinks he needs information on a nevarran social hierarchy resolving around necromancy. bull pauses. well, that wouldn’t exactly surprise him, would it? it’d made sense, for him, with his arms covered in ink and his full weight leaning over a book. he looks up at bull and bull looks at him and for a second, there, all he can do is stare, expression blank, patiently waiting. dorian says something about the book. he can’t help it; he chuckles. it’s not about the book. he thumbs a page or two, from time to time, but reading tends to be an affair filled with headaches when you only have one eye. or, at least, it has in bull’s experience.
“when you left tevinter,” he starts, because he’s pretty fucking sure dorian did leave, “what did you feel?” he’s not expecting any sort of revelation, but by default, this is bull’s best way of learning about himself. the way in which others see him has always been illuminating. he can look in the mirror a thousand times and see the same two faces. other people? it’s not quite so simple. the bull thumbs, idly, at another spine on the shelf, a religious tome, something about the chantry.
he could, in theory, feign interest more in the books than in the man before him, but that wouldn’t even be a good lie, and so he gives up the ghost, looks at dorian with a scrutinizing but not unkind gaze. “or maybe i should be asking what it took to leave.”