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Exalted Plains
As they cross Orlais back toward the Frostbacks, a message arrives for the Inquisitor, diverting them to the Exalted Plains. The civil war between Gaspard and the Empress has seen the land war-torn again, ravaged by soldiers and by mages. Bull has been here before, and if he had a choice, he would not be here now.
But he doesn't. This is where the Inquisitor is and so this is where he will be. Their first order of business is to rid the ramparts of demons and spirits and to burn the dead.
Bull hates the close quarters of the ramparts. He can fight in them - he can fight almost anywhere - but he doesn't like it. It reminds him of battles and ambushes in city streets. Qunari didn't use ramparts like this no dug-in fortifications.
The smell of dead and decaying bodies and fresh blood, the sound of far-off skirmishing keep Bull hyper-vigilant and alert. As best he can, he keeps his state to himself. The Inquisitor doesn't need to be preoccupied with him, nor does the rest of the party.
After they set camp between the river and the ruins of Ville Montevelan, Bull sits apart, lost in the sound of the water and a battlefield far away.
But he doesn't. This is where the Inquisitor is and so this is where he will be. Their first order of business is to rid the ramparts of demons and spirits and to burn the dead.
Bull hates the close quarters of the ramparts. He can fight in them - he can fight almost anywhere - but he doesn't like it. It reminds him of battles and ambushes in city streets. Qunari didn't use ramparts like this no dug-in fortifications.
The smell of dead and decaying bodies and fresh blood, the sound of far-off skirmishing keep Bull hyper-vigilant and alert. As best he can, he keeps his state to himself. The Inquisitor doesn't need to be preoccupied with him, nor does the rest of the party.
After they set camp between the river and the ruins of Ville Montevelan, Bull sits apart, lost in the sound of the water and a battlefield far away.
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“Feint on the left and go low,” he murmurs. “I leave myself open.”
Dorian could kill him from a distance if Bull doesn’t see him first, but he gives the advice all the same. He leans down to kiss the top of Dorian’s head. He refuses to think of what else might put them at odds: an order from Par Vollen.
“I’d see a tamassran if I were home,” he admits. “Or— well. Definitely a tamassran.”
His doubt isn’t enough to send him back to the Ben-Hassrath re-educators yet. Yet.
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Though he is hardly a substitute for a tamassran--and indeed, still doesn't entirely understand their full purpose, with all the nuances Bull has described--he'd done well enough last night, hadn't he? Thoughts of the uniquely intense connection they'd shared, of the trust that the Bull had placed in him, make his pulse beat faster. Fondly, he reaches up for Bull's face with one hand, fingers tracing lightly along the familiar scars toward his lips. "Let's go to bed then, shall we?"
He kisses where he can easily reach just below Bull's collarbone, and smiles up at him. "I'll even pamper you again if you like."
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After the past two days, Bull doesn't have much fight left in him. He wants to set his burdens down; he wants to rest. That won't be possible for a while yet - none of them know how long Lavellen will conduct business here before they return to Skyhold. He will endure, as he always does.
Dorian's smile shifts something inside him and Bull leans in, hesitates just for a breath, then brushes a kiss to the corner of his mouth. "I'd like that," he concedes.
"Shok ebasit hissra," he says quietly, mostly to himself. He needs the Qun: Seheron proved that and despite living as the Iron Bull for a decade, he keeps his ties to his people as tight as he can. He can't lose himself like that again. He might not come back.
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He wishes, in what is truly a singular and strange moment in his life, that he knew more of the Qun. He thinks it would calm Bull to hear it, especially the poetic verses he had recited for him back in the Hissing Wastes. But as he doesn't, he settles for allowing Bull to murmur, and speaking encouragement and admiration in the common tongue instead.
Dorian doesn't remove any clothing just yet, having changed into something more comfortable earlier after returning to camp and washing up, but he encourages Bull to strip, both for better access to his leg and--as he puts it with a smirk--some incentive. He jokes, but it's at least partly true. The Bull is magnificent, and Dorian will never tire of looking at him, let alone touching him.
Then he lays him down and pampers him, just as he'd promised, and just as he had last night. A thorough massage for his left leg with the magical warmth of his hands, and then a slow rub down of his horns with his specially made balm. When he's finished with that, he leans down to kiss his brow, where the strap of the eye patch he'd already removed would normally fall.
"How are you feeling, Bull?" He speaks low and soft, so as not to disturb him too much if he's been dozing.
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"Tired," he admits. The kind of bone-deep tired that won't fade easily, but Bull can live with it. A good night's sleep will help, he just hopes he can manage one. His hand slides back to touch whatever part of Dorian he can reach.
"What about you?" he asks after a moment. As quick as Dorian is, Bull still swung an ax at him today. His body might be in one piece but Bull can't imagine that dealing with that - or the fallout after - is easy. The last thing he wants is for Dorian to hit some wall of compassion fatigue from taking care of him.
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For his part, Dorian has been largely avoiding thinking about that moment. It's come back to him again anyway occasionally throughout the day, a surge of shock fear. But he isn't afraid of the Bull. Truly, he isn't; hasn't been for a long time now. He knows he could take care of himself if it ever came to a direct fight. He knows that Bull was not himself in that moment, and he wants to do whatever he can to ensure that doesn't happen again.
This is part of it. He's found that he enjoys this, making Bull feel good and relaxed. It's something the Bull does for him so often.
"Let me up, and we'll lie down," he bids. After last night, he can't help but wonder what it is Bull will need from him tonight, but he's confident that he'll be able to figure it out.
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He isn't entirely sure what he needs or how to articulate it, but he will take what Dorian offers him and he will do it gratefully.
"It was the civilians," he says after a long moment. Seeing soldiers dead on battlefields is one thing - it bothers Bull but in a different way. Seeing the people that had been left behind to die made something snap inside him. "The room they barricaded themselves into-- it was full of soldiers. How could they just leave him."
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"I know," Dorian murmurs as he rubs a soothing hand slowly across the expanse of the Bull's chest. It had bothered him too--quite a bit, actually. Though he doesn't have the Bull's years of experiences with such atrocities, doesn't have his memories. "It wasn't right. I don't know how people justify these things to themselves, but...no matter how terrified I might be, I wouldn't leave innocent people to die like that."
Dorian hates to think of himself as an idealist, given how easily those types are crushed by the wheel of Tevinter, but at heart he truly is. Which is perhaps why he believes so strongly that he can still help Bull, even being a poor substitute for the tamassran he truly needs.
He lets his mouth wander slowly up the thick column of the Bull's throat with soothing, affectionate kisses. "Do you want to talk about it more?" He asks. He'll give Bull his ear for as long as he needs it, if he does--or he'll give him another way to work through his disquieting frustration, a simpler outlet for his distress.
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He sighs and pushes it out of his head.
"I don't know," he admits softly. He doesn't really talk about Seheron. He's spoken about it with the Inquisitor but only because Lavellen asked, and even then he'd hedged his answers somewhat. A quiet part of his mind whispers that he could teach Dorian how to make the concoctions the Ben-Hassrath use to facilitate re-education, to make the mind more malleable. But it takes more than that, and he knows Dorian wouldn't want to do it. Perhaps he wouldn't be capable.
He closes his eye and breathes deep, comforted by the scent of the balm Dorian had rubbed over his horns.
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"You don't have to," Dorian assures him. "We'll take this one step at a time, yes? And you can talk as much or as little as you like." He doesn't know either, but he's determined to figure it out. Will what had worked last night work again? Does Bull need something else? "For now, why don't you kiss me?" he suggests, sliding one thigh over Bull's to press flush against him. He guides Bull's hand from his hip to his thigh, encouraging him to hold there.
He's instructive, but gently so, leaving room for Bull to take this in whatever direction he pleases.
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He wants to distance his mind from everything that happened today.
"Talk to me about-- something," he says uselessly. Bull nuzzles Dorian's cheek. "Anything. What did you think when you saw me in Redcliffe?"
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He really wouldn't if he admitted aloud how his eye had been drawn immediately to the Bull's form; the way his impressive body moved in battle, and the sheer expanse of him up close, the reality of his size.
But there had also been that...wariness. That instinct that told him that Bull was dangerous, not to be trusted; decades of Imperium propaganda manifested in front of him. Of course, that only served to make him more attractive, damn Dorian's tastes, but somehow he doesn't think that telling the Bull here and now I thought you'd kill me at a moment's notice would be reassuring.
"Maker guide me," he sighs, resigned. Because if there is anything that's certain to suitably distract the Iron Bull, it's Dorian admitting to some of his early confused attraction. "Fine. I'll confess that there was an initial...fascination. An allure, perhaps. Something about the bare chest and bulging muscles and horns--I'd never seen a Qunari quite so close before, and you were the very picture of the savage brute I'd always been warned about. There was only so long that I could convince myself that you were only interesting to me because it was all so obscene."
He buries his face against the side of the Bull's neck and groans. "Ugh. And next I suppose you're going to tell me you knew all of that already, and just wanted to hear me say it out loud."
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"It was the way you beat the crap out of a demon with your staff," he says, sounding downright fond. "That's the first thing I noticed. You didn't try to gain distance to keep working spells, you just whacked it. Then it was the elegant curve of your neck, your high-born, well-educated accent. And the way your lip curled when you set eyes on me."
Bull strokes his fingers along Dorian's thigh.
"After dealing with Alexius, I didn't trust you. But damn, you were pretty."
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"I'm always pretty," Dorian preens, and hums contentedly as he kisses beneath Bull's jaw, a scratch of stubble against his lips. "But how kind of you to notice, even when I was still little more than a suspiciously talkative Vint."
He knows very well how it must have looked, especially to a Ben-Hassrath eye. He wouldn't have trusted himself either.
"Has it really been only two months since we began sleeping together?" He asks incredulously. Two and half, at most. Oddly, it feels like much longer.
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"I watched you at Haven. And I watched the way others were watching you."
Dorian faced as much suspicion when he signed on as Bull did; more, in fact, since most of the Inquisition thought he was a Tal-Vashoth mercenary and nothing more. The Inquisitor and the advisors knew, members of the inner circle that Bull would interact with directly with a frequency, but that was it. He'd seen Leliana's people slipping around. Bull knew his things were safe, for the most part. He writes in Qunlat and he writes in code, and one of those alone is difficult to decode, never mind both. Leliana hates it.
"And I watched you and Solas staring at each other like alley cats. Not sure who thought it was a good idea to let you two have lodging near each other."
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"I was even less well-received at Haven than I am now," he mutters. "Which is a truly remarkable feat." He heaves a sigh, allowing Bull--and only Bull--to see just how exhausted he is by all of it. "And I haven't escaped Solas, either. He's still just downstairs, always within earshot. I was perfectly willing to get along, but--" A half shrug, just a slight movement of his shoulder. He can't exactly blame Solas for the vitriol; his country has been enslaving elves for literal Ages. "Honestly, he's more tolerable at times than Vivienne and all her blathering about the necessity of southern Circles, pretending that the greatest fallacy of Tevinter is teaching our mages without also caging them."
He hardly even thinks anymore about exactly who he's talking to, and if Bull might have a different opinion. A far cry from hopefully before you sewed my mouth shut.
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Well, living over the tavern serves several practical purposes, but it also keeps him out of the main tower. He doesn't need to see Solas or Leliana with any kind of regularity just going about his business. Bull doesn't blame anyone for their vitriol toward the Qunari, but he also doesn't need to hear about it. He doesn't need someone jabbing at the core of who he is while he's trying to do his job.
Bull can empathize with the scrutiny Dorian faces. There are eyes on him as Tal-Vasoth, there are knowing eyes on him as Qunari.
He strokes his fingers down the back of Dorian's neck and brushes his lips against his forehead.
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Bull more than anyone understands how out of place he feels here--how he's regarded with suspicion simply because of his status as a mage from dread Tevinter. He doesn't know when he'd started to feel that he has more in common with the Bull than anyone else, but he certainly feels that way now. None of these southerners quite get it.
"Now, can we be done talking about Solas and return to complimenting me?" He suggests, feigning impatience as he smiles into Bull's shoulder.
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Bull nuzzles Dorian's dark hair. If he's honest, morning Dorian is one of his favorites. Followed closely by the way Dorian looks when he's absorbed in a book in his library nook, or how gleeful he can get in the heat of battle. He murmurs all of this against Dorian's temple.
It lifts the weight from his shoulders. Bull feels tired, but not the bone-deep, existential exhaustion he felt when they got back to camp.
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This is not what he'd expected when he finally took Bull up on his standing offer. He'd expected spectacular sex; a night to remember, where they would both sate themselves and perhaps be done with it. What he'd gotten was two months of shared beds, learning about the Bull, being held in his huge, gently arms while remarkably observant compliments are whispered into his hair, the Bull relying on him to help keep his head, an intense feeling of affection, of protectiveness--
He hadn't signed up for this. This is not his world. Yet this is precisely where he wants to be.