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"Fuck," Dorian says. "Shitting fuck. Vishante kaffas."
His nails dig into the Bull's glove over the wrist. Always on the Bull's blind side, pretending it's chance.
He'll gouge the damn leather. He always does like to make a mark.
"Spending too much time with Sera," the Bull says.
"Hah."
Breathless. They stumble. Dorian's shoulder glances off the rough stone wall with a heavy noise, his breath hissing out through his teeth. Down the stairs, headlong, so that the torches flicker and sputter in their wake. The Bull's boot slips alarmingly on the foot-polished rounded edge of the third to last one, and for a dizzy moment he can see himself falling, feels it, the lurch of his gut—but there's Dorian, Dorian, a counterweight behind him although it must wrench his damn arm, and then they're down—clear? Big fortress, this place; not all that many Venatori camped out in it. Enough to fuck them over, apparently. Not too many to hide from while they get their shit together.
Remnants, hiding secrets. Dorian had it from Mae who had it from fuck knows where, and the whole thing made both of them angry, sharply worded letters across Thedas. Magic and fear. So here they are—
No footfalls on the steps behind them.
Alone.
Alone. The room they've stumbled in is silent and dusty, red hangings made dull by inattention, furniture matt and dry without servants to polish it. A part of a bedroom suite, maybe: a great chest for clothes or blankets, lid thrown back, empty, taking up half the back wall. Two storage cabinets, similarly massive.
"Where the crap did the others go?" the Bull asks, urgent, turning to Dorian—but it's Dorian whose balance goes now, a slow sagging, his face set into the expressionless mask of hidden pain.
The Bull who catches him.
He's looking kind of grey. Red on the forearm, a long slash torn right through the leather, the strapping hanging loose. Not deep. Not bleeding much.
A sick suspicion uncurls in the back of the Bull's mind.
"Forgive me for not taking the time to note everyone's exact position," Dorian says, words muttered against the Bull's chest so that the Bull feels the damp warmth of breath against his skin. The usual context's better. "I was busy trying not to die. I'm sorry if that's inconvenient."
He straightens, haughty.
His hand remains pressed to the Bull's chest. He leans slightly, still. You wouldn't know it to look at him.
Too much pride.
"You're poisoned," the Bull says. Hears the flatness of his voice, his own mask.
"I'm fine," Dorian says, where he's meant to say of course I'm not. "We'll find the others. I imagine we'll only have to kill our way through a third of the fortress to do it. They'll take the rest. Our beloved Inquisitor is so very good at murder."
"Yeah," the Bull says. "Don't think that's gonna happen."
"Don't try to tell me you can't kill people without your axe," Dorian says. "I've seen you kill a man with a small piece of wood. I've seen you kill a man with a rather unnervingly precise twist of the neck."
"You liked it," the Bull says.
"I found it useful."
The Bull exhales slowly. Hand over Dorian's on his chest. His heart lives outside his body, lately. He holds it to him. Wills it to become part of him.
Let him have my damn blood.
The 'vints used poison on Seheron. The Bull's body wouldn't falter at it. After the first few incidents, he made sure of that.
Stupid thought. Like Dorian would ever want to live by blood.
"It's not gonna happen," he says, leaning on each word, "because you're poisoned. You're going to stay still. Slow it down."
Dorian shudders.
"Well, I suppose if it means so very much to you that I die slowly—"
"Nobody's going to die," the Bull says, and feels his old name, bitter on the back of his tongue.
"Well, I rather hope some people will," Dorian says. "Although I admit that until recently I held some quaint notion that I might not be one of them."
Conversational, obviously.
"Look," the Bull says, fear-stung and tilting on the edge of misdirected anger, "you—"
Don't. Don't.
"Someone's coming," Dorian says. Closes his eyes for a heartbeat, too slow for blinking, hazy. "Go. I'll hide."
No, he wants to say. Fuck no, I'm not leaving you like this—
They need help. They need Vivienne with her certain, no-nonsense hands, her magic that deals in life more than death. They need Cadash's pouch of medicine. They need it now, now, now—
The chest has no compartments, and it's big enough that the Bull would fit in it with space over, but there's Tama's voice in his head: You keep the wound below the heart. You keep still. You call for help.
Not lying down, then. Better hope one of the cabinets doesn't have shelves.
"OK," the Bull says. "Right. Come on. In here."
They're favoured in this one damn thing: there are no shelves.
The Bull has to clamber up to get Dorian in, hunching, horns scraping against the top of the thing, shoulder awkwardly pressed to the backboard. Dorian sighs—such an annoyed little noise. A minor inconvenience, Bull.
Leans himself back against the side of the cabinet. The Bull doesn't take his hand from Dorian's hip.
"Go on, then," Dorian says; quirks his mouth in a smile. His eyes drift open, a quick glitter as they catch the torchlight. "Don't just stand there admiring the view."
Footsteps in the next room; a pause, voices murmuring quick words.
"You're gonna be fine," the Bull says. "Stay put."
He should just climb down and close the damn doors. Should get out of here, back up the stairs, away from the voices and back towards the last place they'd seen Cadash. Be quick. Make it clean, don't linger, don't make it harder to go.
He knows better than to waste time.
And he can't do it anyway.
If this is the last time he sees Dorian living—if Dorian's gonna die alone in the dark—
It's not going to be like that. It can't be.
He bows to Dorian, hand spread on the back of his neck.
A slow breath against Dorian's lips, their mouths barely moving. I'lll take a bit of you with me. I'll leave a bit of me with you—
"Rather sentimental for a casual fuck," Dorian says, barely a whisper. "Getting old, are you?"
The Bull's laugh is raw in his lungs, burns his throat. Comes out silent, because if it was voiced it'd be something awful.
"For a friend," he says. Liar, liar, liar.
Time to go.
But he's let himself get slow. Gotten too caught up. Cared to much, and now the unseen feet are on the move again, coming closer, if he climbs down will he even be able to get the door closed quick and quiet enough to avoid them going looking behind it?
He won't.
And maybe that's what he wanted. Some fucked up part of him, selfish and ruined, the hulking faceless spectre of the Tal-Vashoth—
Maybe he wanted to keep hold of Dorian, against both of their best interests.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
He grits his teeth, breathes through the nose to steady himself, wills the clumsiness from his hands.
Closes the door—slowly, slowly, slowly. Be silent. Nothing sudden.
The glitter of Dorian's eyes dies with the light.
"—be here," a woman's voice says, sounding way quieter than it should for the distance between them, the wooden door heavy and deadening. She's tired, anyway. Not young. The heavy emphasis of the North-Eastern Imperium, the melody tending towards the bombastic—the way Dorian put it, talking about his Dad's accent. Dorian's own accent is more ambiguous. "He couldn't have known unless someone let something slip."
"Hah," Dorian says, the barest movement of air in the dark. The hand of his good arm grasps cautiously at the Bull's shoulder; a slow shift, the most unspeakably cautious movements, until the Bull is leaning against him, their chests rising and falling against one another.
Dorian's hand fumbles to the Bull's lips. Could pretend it was a keep-quiet motion. Maybe it is. That'd be like Dorian, wouldn't it. Yeah.
They're clattering around out there. Leather armour being adjusted. A curse he's not heard before, the unknown word clear in its invective tone.
He'll ask Dorian later.
There'll be a later.
He's going to start carrying every antitoxin he can get his hands on. If he just had his damn contacts still. If he just—
"Notched my sword on the last one," a man says. "How many scouts did the pretender send, anyway?"
"Too many for looking over an empty fort," the woman says. "There's a traitor. I'm telling you."
Dorian levers himself forward, as carefully as he pulled the Bull to him. It costs him, his hand slipping on the Bull's skin. His breath is shallow. Lips to the Bull's ear. "Magic. Don't jump."
"Don't think—" the Bull breathes, but he can already feel the shift, the voices warping, fading, the pitch rising.
"We're moving slower than they are," Dorian says. Louder than before, only a step or two below a stage-whisper. "It always seems to do something odd to sound. Of course the tempo should change, but—"
But it's pretty hard to hear what's happening out there. Something is, the sounds as fucked up as some bullshit waking fade-dream. But it's distant.
"Something about being out of step," Dorian says. Keeping quiet, but voiced words, distinct. "I always theorized that the—oh, bugger it—"
The clench of his teeth is audible, the creak of it loud in their disconnected near-silence.
Slow poison, not vicious enough to drop an enemy in a quick battle. Nothing but spite, seeping through Dorian. Faster with his magic, maybe, but if they're moving slower than the world around them then—the Bull doesn't know enough of the variables to balance it.
"Should've gone quicker," the Bull says, matching Dorian's volume. "Crap. I'm sorry."
"Who can blame you for lingering in my enchanting presence?"
Dorian's hand is trembling again. Nails digging into the Bull's skin like they dug into his glove earlier, when the Bull was running high on the red-hot rush of the fight, when he was only worried about strategy.
"You should," the Bull says.
"Very well. I detest you."
How many words he's spoken into the Bull's skin this afternoon, and these are the softest so far. They slur a bit.
He's warm and shivering.
The Bull pulls him close, hunching down over him. Arms around his shoulders, Dorian's injured arm hanging loose, his good one still pressed between them.
"Ah," Dorian mumbles, "well, I suppose—smothering will be quicker."
He's starting to lose the thread, maybe. It's not the words, they're Dorian all over. But there's the wandering tone. The uneven pauses between words.
Something that wants to grow into hysteria.
"I'm going to die in a cupboard," Dorian says. "I'm going to die in a cupboard. Be sure to tell my father. I died in a cupboard, under a huge muscular Qunari. Leave out the poison. Sex sounds better. It's the way he would have wanted to go, Magister Pavus." He laughs, a thin breathy sound. Pained.
Fear settles its burrs into the Bull's throat, the curled shape of a single burning word, a conclusion, as far as it goes, enough. An end—
He lives in Common but he thinks in Qunlat. Learnt Common late, a tool for an assignment. Did it well, because he had to. But its words aren't his.
This is. Let other people take that word in particular as foreign or as arbitrary.
Katoh, katoh, katoh. Katoh. Don't talk about it. Don't make it a joke. Dorian, please—
But say it, and then—what?
Dorian burns against him. His brow furrows against the Bull's shoulder. He murmurs a sound that doesn't become a word. Grasps and fumbles and fails to grip. Shifts like he's going to try with his injured arm and hisses sharply when the Bull grabs it to keep it still.
Half-here.
What if he doesn't understand?
"Stay with me, big guy," the Bull says instead.
"Yes," Dorian says. "Stay—stay. I don't want you to go. Oh, arse, I don't mean—I mean—"
"You're gonna be alright," the Bull says, for himself. "Hey, Dorian, you can't die, think of all the people you haven't pissed off yet. You wanted to get back at that chevalier, right? The one who thought he had a better nose than you?"
"He didn't." Dorian stumbles through another painful laugh. "Nobody does."
"That's right," the Bull says. "Yeah, Kadan, that's right."
"Keep talking," Dorian says. "It makes it harder to hear them."
Cold as sudden as one of Vivienne's blizzards. "The guys out there?"
It's not a real question.
"I'm hardly going to listen, but please—"
The Bull breathes deeply through his nose. Center yourself. Sink your weight down. Be calm, child. Be calm, wise one. I know you don't like to be still. But you're doing so well.
How many battles can Dorian fight at once?
What he wouldn’t give for Tama now. For Vivienne, smiling knowingly as she bends her head with her self-made horns to inspect his wounds.
She's out there somewhere.
"Bull," Dorian says. "For the love of Andraste's holy bosom—of all the wretched men I could have loved—"
The Bull's heart—the Bull's heart—
He thought he didn't need that word from Dorian.
His eye stings, and its phantom companion stings with it. Aches.
His arm tightens around Dorian, without his permission. "I ever tell you about the pyramids in Par Vollen?"
"Is this going to be some sort of breast joke? Are we on the level of the bananas again?"
"Boob jokes are what you make of them," the Bull says solemnly.
"Arse," Dorian says. Weak. The Bull wants to see him, can't even guess his form, much less his expression—not a bit of light from outside, though the room's well-lit. Solid craftsmanship.
"Hey, ass jokes work too."
"Hm," Dorian says. He sounds way too distracted.
"Tama loved them," the Bull says. "The pyramids. I guess maybe asses too, but I wouldn't know about that. She took us all to see them. Think about a row of Imekari—kids—all stubby little horns and shit. Bet I had mud on my face. A row of kids trailing after this great big woman. Like Vivienne but twice as wide. Almost my height."
"This sounds like a story for Sera," Dorian says. Still mumbling, slurring.
How long have their unwanted companions been out there, in regular time? Ages. Must be camping out. The tide rises, the tide falls, struggle is meaningless, and Dorian is dying in his arms.
Fuck the Qun, anyway. If it's done with him, maybe he should be done with it.
Sounds simple, put like that.
The voices outside are getting clearer and weaker and clearer again, speeding and slowing, the flow of Dorian's magic growing terrifyingly irregular.
The Bull drops his voice, speaks into Dorian's hair.
"You climb up through the canopy, all those twisting vines and shit, the birds—don't know what to call them in Common. Probably no name. Colourful. Noisy. Up and up and the pyramid doesn't stop. Just goes right up into the sun, steps and carvings all the way to the top. Old, real old. Older than us, than the Qun. Got people like us on them, horns—I don't know. Priesthoods been arguing about them for as long as there's been a Priesthood, pretty sure."
Why this memory? There are plenty of others. But this one's warm and bright. The sun getting clearer and sharper as they climbed, dappling through the leaves in greater and greater splashes until it burst across their faces.
"You know what the sun's like up North," the Bull says. "Think about that. The heat of it sinking right into you. Warm stone. It's yellow-red up there. You stand on top of one of the pyramids and you can see all the others, all stretching up—never seen anything like it. Guess I stopped thinking about it when I was older, but that first time—"
"It's cold here," Dorian says. Sighs. "Rather disgusting—"
They snap back into time.
For a frantic twisting moment the Bull is certain, certain—
But his heart's heart is still beating, the pulse weak but regular.
Someone paces, outside. Someone shifts their weight irritably. Nobody speaks.
"Hold on," the Bull breathes. Calculate. They wouldn't be expecting him, but they're armed and he's not. At least three of them, probably four. One isn't a mage, but two probably are—no real basis but a paranoid guess, but better to overestimate than underestimate.
If he really thought he could take them he'd have done it already.
Light flickers.
He doesn't understand it at first, can't figure it out, but it's—
It's Dorian.
Imagining the sun.
His hand glows gently, the light of it spiralling up his arm, spilling over their skin, showing them for grey and brown, for healthy and for—
In Rivain they make wax casts of the faces of the honoured dead before they burn them; lay masks of paper-thin beaten gold modeled after that cast in the ground above the ashes. A person lived here.
There's always that contradictory slack stiffness to the images, the unnatural expression that belongs to a particular stage of death.
The Bull tries to unsee the image. To remove the mask from Dorian's face. Hunts frantically for the vibrant force of Dorian's life.
And it's there, it's there—in the tiniest shift of the corner of his mouth, small and distinctive, a light little thing to weigh against the heaviness of his worn face, against the eyes he can't seem to open. Or doesn't want to open, maybe. Taking himself somewhere else, even as he lingers here. He does, at least, linger.
For how much longer?
"Don't go," the Bull says—barely more than mouthed words.
"I don't want to," Dorian says, shocks a breath into the Bull's lungs—Dorian can still hear him, figure out what's happening, in moments—hold that.
"Good," the Bull whispers. "Guess we can agree on something sometimes, huh?"
"We agree on all sorts of things," Dorian says. Funny, that the Bull understands Dorian's words so well in this messed up situation because of the times that he's fucked Dorian senseless.
There should be a sarcastic little list there. Oral sex, chocolate, the fact that Leliana is probably going to kill everyone in their beds one day for the good of Thedas.
It doesn't come. Dorian just seems to trail off instead. His light flickers and flares and gutters like the torches outside. The short breaths of a man sinking under pain.
"Ah," Dorian says. "You're here, are you? I thought I dreamt—"
But something is happening. Footsteps, footsteps, an alarmed shout—the woman who knew there was a traitor, clattering to her feet—
"No," somebody else says, very calmly, completely certain—and cold sweeps through the room in a deadening wave.
Vivienne.
He can't do anything else, so he holds crap, kneeling right there in the room where they hid, now the most makeshift kind of healer's quarters. Cadash is off with the bulk of the scouts, being useful in her own way. Rooting through papers, turning out drawers. This was Dorian's mission. She'll see it done.
"No, darling," Vivienne says, waving away the neat little packet of herbs he offers, "the smaller one. Yes, there, thank you."
One of Red's scouts is a surgeon. Some kind of surgeon. The Bull doesn't know her name, but he's gonna learn it, whenever his shoulders will stop shaking.
She's doing the heavy-handed bits. Shoved leather unceremoniously between Dorian's teeth, checked his pulse and made a quick displeased face, the furrows of it turned towards the Bull and away as fast. She holds Dorian still, now, having cleaned the wound. Vivienne's hands barely touch, thread silver along the hidden roads of the body by thought—not thought alone, that makes it sound like nothing. By force of will. One hand for Dorian's shoulder as he twists beneath her, and one to flick the herbs free. Embrium and elfroot into the fire they're keeping stoked for the tools, and the part of the Bull's mind that won't shut up says: that's not for him—that's for me.
It's for both.
Dorian's conscious but delirious, reacting without knowing to what.
"A spirit healer would do this more gently," Vivienne says, "but I'm not aware of any who I would trust to dab alcohol onto a scratch. There, thank you, I think that's all of it."
The surgeon nods. "Needle," she says to the Bull. "Third thread from the right. No, your right. Hold the cotton wadding. Be ready to apply pressure to the wound."
Vivienne reaches out her free hand and does something inexplicable and magic-y to the damn cotton that the Bull's holding, and then to the rest of it, catching as it passes between the Bull and the surgeon. Cleaning, probably. The surgeon rolls her eyes, and heats the fine hook of the needle with exact movements anyway, which is what the Bull would have done.
It makes him feel a bit more at ease. Or that might just be the effect of the smoke from the fire.
His shoulders are starting to settle. They shouldn't have been shaking to begin with. He's not some untrained kid. Vivienne took one look at him when they got out the damn cabinet and didn't say anything, so he must have looked—like a guy who felt the way he actually felt.
"This part will be messy," Vivienne says—that very particular emphasis on the word messy that fools people into thinking she's afraid to get her hands dirty. "I'm sure you're aware of the principles of the separation of substances."
"Uh," the Bull says.
"Quite," Vivienne says. But she looks at him—kindly. "It won't be as bad as it looks."
"That's not it won't be bad, Ma'am," the Bull says.
"That's because it will be bad," Vivienne says, because she's not a kind liar. "He's going to live." Because she's not that kind of cruel either.
Showing her steel in the force of it.
She knows. She knows—about loss. About failure to protect.
Of course she fucking does.
She doesn't even like Dorian, not really, not intimately, as a friend. They find each other amusing. Kind of a fond game and kind of barbed for real.
But he's going to live.
"Now," Vivienne says sharply, and the surgeon leans in ready, and the world—shifts.
In this part of the fortress, the air doesn't taste of dust. The windows have stood open, the sheets have been stripped and the gear from their packs spread on the beds, blankets and linens for the mild weather. Cadash is looking over what she and Vivienne seem to think are the most important papers—the weirdest ones, the experimental ones, the ones that match Gereon Alexius' handwriting or reproduce his sketches.
Nobody had tried to seem surprised at the idea that the Venatori would have kept hold of material—notes, any objects he'd been tinkering with. Kept kicking it all to see if anything other than demons fell out.
But hey—nice that they didn't come here for nothing.
The Bull left them to it. He'd give a lot for honest work, something to haul or something to hit, for the kind of calculation that's his area. But there's nothing for him in the room where they're arguing together, and nothing for him among the scouts, settling in for a night of shifts and watches that they've already arranged by some complicated scheme he's not allowed to disrupt.
The surgeon is called Mara, he learnt when he was bothering the scouts in their own little camp, and she told him without any kind of resentment but also without compromise to kindly fuck off.
So without work, this is where he has to be, unable to be restless anywhere else: in the best of the bedrooms, weirdly furnished with everything pushed back against the walls, where Dorian lies curled on his side under a thin cover, bathed in clean sunlight. He turned himself like that when they lay him there, body leaning towards the way it would usually rest until it came up against the sharp line of pain; settling itself carefully at the boundary.
He hasn't moved since. Rises and falls with the flow of his breath, hair trying to shift back across his face in the breeze from the window. It spilled there earlier, and he wrinkled his nose in irritation until the Bull tugged the curls of it back and out the way, drew his thumb slowly over the ticklish place where they lay. And then he slept deeply again, carefully drugged just the right amount.
“You don't have to tell me he's going to be a bad patient,” Mara said earlier, when the bloody business of healing was done, hands deft in the work of digging the flask out of her bag. "I know the type. He'll rest first whether he likes it or not."
He half thought she was going to order him to drink the shit too.
They made him carry Dorian instead.
Kinda nice of Cadash to make it an order so he didn't have to tangle himself up in the idea. Just got to hold Dorian to his chest, feel the slow steadying of his life. Got to take charge of washing him, big enough and strong enough to shift him around more easily than two other people together. With better reason to think Dorian wouldn't mind. A careful exercise in respect—or, no, not just that. Respect's a part of it, but call the whole thing by its true damn name:
Reverence.
The kind of mess of wonder and need that religion is made of, but intimate, contained, folded into the depths of his heart, who breathed under his hands. It's not the idea that Dorian is perfect, fuck that. Too many rows between them to claim that; too much of the respect part to think calling Dorian perfect would be doing him justice. It's just that he's so perfectly himself, that he held himself through the whole thing with every tool he had, held his magic in check, held his body together. His mind wandered but it was his own.
He's fucking amazing and a complete asshole.
But there's the other part, too—the sober part, the fear, the bit that drove him from the room once Dorian was settled in search of work, drove him restlessly back when he didn't find it. If Dorian hadn't lived, it would have been—well, it wouldn't have been Dorian's failure.
Dorian, though, is shifting on the bed; groans, the ghost of a yawn to it.
The Bull goes to him. Settles on the edge of the bed just as Dorian's eyes drift half-way open for the first time, though they slide shut again quick enough. Never a morning person, Dorian, and slow to surface even from naps. A night creature, rolling restlessly out of the Bull's bed a half-bell after fucking not to creep away but to find a paper he just remembered.
These days he tends to come back with whatever it is he's after. Use the Bull's stomach as a pillow and read by conjured light. Mutter snide little comments or try to smother his laughter.
It's—nice.
Crap, nice is a stupid word for something like that. Small and half-hearted, if you're not yelling it at a dragon. A word for Dorian to use in a contrary mood, or as a sly little joke.
It's something.
"I assume," Dorian mumbles, "that I feel as though someone has scraped the insides of my veins raw with scouring rush because that's what happened."
"Pretty much," the Bull says, and jerks his mind sharply away from the memory of how it looked. "Hey."
"Hello," Dorian says.
His eyes gleam through his lashes, still half-lidded.
The Bull, helpless, strokes his thumb over the line of Dorian's cheekbone, hand curled gently around the side of Dorian's head.
"Good grief," Dorian says. "You'd think I almost died."
Bandages stark on his arm where it lies over the covers. The dark lines around his eyes that give him a bruised kind of look.
"What, you?" The Bull grins down at him, best he can. "Not a chance."
Dorian yawns; winces. "You're not doing the thing very well, you know," he says. "Whatever happened to years of Ben-Hassrath training, you great sap?"
Of all the men I could have loved, his heart said—
"Yeah, well," the Bull says. "Maybe I'm not that good after all."
"No, you definitely are. Usually, I mean. Rather alarming, sometimes."
That's been an argument, too.
The Bull draws a deep breath through his nose. Sighs it out.
Dorian's hand finds his knee where the Bull's drawn it up onto the bed to turn himself towards Dorian better. Pats it, settles on it, warm and lax.
"Maybe I don't know how to be that guy," the Bull says. "With you."
"Would you rather be?"
Something a little bit prickly in there, Dorian beginning to curl in on himself.
"Messed shit up pretty well today," he says. "Nah, don't look at me like that. It's true."
Dorian shifts, tenses, relaxes. A little sequence of emotions that don't make it to his face. "I didn't want to die alone."
"You needed help."
"And I got it," Dorian says. "I seem to remember somebody talking to me all the way through the attempts of several demons to offer me their particular brands of help."
He knew it, he knew it, but it's still a like a stone in the stomach, heavy and sick, hearing it named outright.
He learned, once, Dorian's greatest fear. Felt a little shock, when he saw it carved into crumbling stone, at how close it lay to his own. A finely nuanced distinction.
"You do remember that, huh?"
"Yes," Dorian says. "I don't remember everything, I suppose. But—enough."
He sounds so tired, like thinking about it drains what energy he's got. Well, figures.
"You said some things," the Bull tries, feeling out the words, testing them. "Uh—about me."
"That I detest you, I think," Dorian says. "That you're a wretched arse of a man, quite probably. I'm very charming, I don't know if you've noticed."
"Yeah, you've said so."
Dorian's laugh is a quietly exhaled thing. Mostly the thing that makes the Bull's stomach flip is the smile, though. That tiny little play at the corners which isn't a static thing—a whole series of small shifts. The crinkling of corners of the eyes, too, deepening his crow's feet.
"Of course. I couldn't let you forget."
"Asshole," the Bull says, with a quick grin. Sighs. "Hey, look. I'm serious."
"Ah," Dorian says.
"You love me?"
"Not in the slightest," Dorian says, softly. "No, sorry, it's not the moment for that. I—yes. I do, in fact. I didn't mean to."
He's got his eyes closed again.
The rules of engagement set long ago now. It's only sex, Dorian said. I don't see what's so complicated about that. A nice little diversion. I'll show you just how distracting I can be, and it'll be a bit of fun for everyone. How does that sound? I know you're fond of a good casual fuck.
More of an ass then that now, Dorian. Tangled in suspicion and assumption, in those days before they were really friends, just acquaintances who had admittedly pretty fantastic sex.
Maybe his willingness to learn is part of what got the Bull.
Maybe it's impossible to quantify the damn thing like that.
"OK," the Bull says. "OK. Good."
"Good?" Indignant. Dorian's half-open eyes are turned up towards the Bull's face finally, suspicious.
"Makes it a bit less awkward that I'm in love with you too, I figure."
"Ah," Dorian says again. A dragging pause in which his face goes weirdly blank. "Do you mean to say you want a, a—relationship?"
"I don't know," the Bull says. "Kind of figured we already had one. Some kind. Not like I've got much first hand experience."
Silence again. Dorian turning over the facts of their Something, shifting them around, trying to make them fit.
"Well," Dorian says. "Likewise, clearly. I suppose we must have slept through the notice."
"Yeah. Distracted by sex."
"Mm," Dorian agrees. "Maker, what I wouldn't give to be in any sort of state to be distracted by sex right now. This is—a little beyond my comprehension, I admit. Apparently I don't know everything after all. Please don't tell the Magisterium."
And what is it about that which hooks itself under the Bull's sternum—that makes him so acutely aware of how little time has passed since Dorian shivered in his arms, balancing on the edge of something unknowable? It gets him, anyway—yeah, right there, barbs dug in deep.
Last night they screwed around in bed for hours, and he didn't know. Dorian made a game of sucking the Bull's dick as artistically as possible, laughed himself to breathless tears against the soft skin of the Bull's inner thigh when the Bull started giving points, and he didn't know.
Death is always close, and he tries to be cool with that. But it's always been the bit he couldn't get the hang of. Could've been his last time bending himself down over Dorian, fucking him good and slow until coming overwhelmed him. Could've been his last time pulling Dorian into his arms after—Damn you, I can't breathe, as he burrowed deeper. And all the other things, the intimate details of life in close quarters, the bits that aren't anything, really—shit he'd do with friends, transmuted by whatever secret power Dorian holds.
He didn't know.
Didn't know Dorian loved him, either.
Didn't let Dorian know—well, Dorian's not gonna be able to die without knowing he's been loved now. So that's something.
The Bull still kind of needs someone to hit him with a stick.
"Bull," Dorian says. "You've gone quiet. Where are we?"
Be a smartass. That Venetori fortress. Should've got Vivienne to check your memory, huh?
"Dunno," the Bull says. Hunts for breath. For words. "I—uh—I'd be good with trying to figure it out."
That silence again.
"Yes," Dorian says. "That's—that's good."
The Bull searches his soul a little, whatever dusty shit the Qun thinks is left in there, and figures he could maybe stand to need something—just some small thing.
"You think you could move over?" the Bull asks. "Kinda hard to give you a hug when you're lying right in the middle of the damn bed."
"Hardly my fault," Dorian says, but inches slowly back until he's pressed to the wall, space enough for the Bull to crawl in beside him.
Clean skin and the smell of elfroot. Dorian is warm against the Bull's side, and his pulse is strong and even where the Bull's hand rests against his neck.
"Call me dull," Dorian says, "but today has been rather more than enough."
"Didn't even get to kill a giant," the Bull says. "You think they finally figured out giants are a shit idea? I miss the giants."
Dorian sighs, a reasonable approximation of mental suffering. "Don't worry. I'm sure Cadash will find something unnecessarily large and violent to inflict on us soon."
"Not too soon," the Bull says. Drags his hand up into Dorian's hair, soft and clean against his fingers. Shifts the pillows so he can turn his head, buries his nose in it too. A deep breath. A kiss to the temple, feeling ridiculous and also compelled.
Dorian laughs.
"No?"
"Can't have you miss it. Dragons, Kadan! You missed the last one. It was magnificent. These blue streaks to the scales—shit."
"Ah," Dorian says, giving the question of dragons the degree of consideration he seems to think it deserves, which is none, because he doesn't appreciate some of the best things life has to offer. "The names again."
"My heart," the Bull says.
"You make it sound easy," Dorian says. A catch to the last word. Moves his injured arm very carefully until he can touch the Bull's chest, fingertips light on the skin. "After all this complaining about clouded judgement, you just—give me a part of yourself? Ludicrous."
I gave it you a long time ago.
The Bull shrugs, the movement deliberately restrained.
Dorian's not wrong, is the thing. It doesn't make sense. It just is, and the fact of its existence is obvious enough.
"Oh well," Dorian says. "Never mind. I'm sure we'll manage to destroy this soon."
Smiling.
"Real clever," the Bull says.
Dorian closes his eyes, leans himself heavily forward onto the Bull. A sigh becomes a yawn. "Obviously," he says. "Thank you for noticing. I'm going back to sleep until my head doesn't feel stuffed with wool. You're cordially invited to attend this nap."
"Can't say no to that, can I," the Bull says.
"No, in fact," Dorian says. "You're the pillow of honour."
And then, in a ridiculously short time, he's asleep.
The Bull lies there awake, staring up at the painted plaster of the ceiling, mentally arranging the sections into patterns, rearranging them. He's kind of shit at meditation in the old close your eyes and clear the mind way the Tamassrans always wanted him to get better at, honestly. He does better with inventory, but that's a tangle right now, and he can't sort it out with Dorian so close and alive beside him. So he's left with pattern recognition. Repetition. The pattern of beads around Tama's neck. The shapes of the fruit on the vines.
On the ceiling, the gold becomes leaves if you take it as the motif, but shift the perspective and it's blue flowers on a gold ground.
In training, they worked on breaking him, and he counted the bricks of the chamber floor, and then the uneven lines of wear, and finally the lumps of grit baked into the clay of the bricks between his knees, and he held his tongue, and they were pleased with him.
And here he is now.
He's still staring at the ceiling when Vivienne opens the door to look in at them, an expression on her face which suggests she's ready to chew them out for unsanctioned activity. The way it softens for a second is a hell of a thing.
"Ma'am," he says quietly.
She shakes her head, and closes the door so gently as she goes that she must approve of them after all.
Maybe it's alright, then.
She'd never just let him unravel.