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Bull didn’t grow up with romance, didn’t get it for a long time, but he’s done his research. Cassandra helped him find the right books. There’s a lot in them that’s not helpful, but there’s one thing they all agree on: location is extremely important.
Every time someone pours their heart out to their lover, every time they seriously talk about running away together, or when they fuck for the first time, the books make a few things very clear.
First of all, it goes best when they’re alone. If the heroes haven’t planned on a secret meeting place, someone’s likely to barge in with a plot twist.
Secondly, the meeting doesn’t have to be secret, but that definitely adds a sexy edge to it. As does moonlight, or nighttime in general, and the speech. There has to be a dramatic speech.
Bull’s been writing his speech for about a month now, and it’s just about ready. The timing isn’t perfect– they are on the way to an all-or-nothing battle with a guy who put evil magic stones in his head in a last-ditch effort to save the world from getting swallowed by fucking demons, but– well, maybe the timing’s just fine. He’s not sure how much longer they’ll even be around. The speech will just have to be good enough, because tonight might be his last chance.
They’re following an old road, maybe even older than the Imperium. The Vints were here, for sure, with their big square paving stones and boring spiky architecture, but there’s more curves in the road than they usually went for, and there’s places were the ground rises up on either side of them, as if the path’s been beaten down into the earth itself.
He keeps an eye out for likely spots as they slow down for the day. It can’t be too close to camp, but he doesn’t walk to hike twenty miles after dark, either. He wants a hill, probably, somewhere they can see the stars, and a bit of crumbling ruins could set the mood nicely.
He sees it, just as he’s starting to give up on finding the perfect spot. Patting the Boss on her back, he slips away from their troupe to examine it. The setting sun gilds the dark stone of the old building, streaming in where one wall has fallen in. He climbs over the rubble there, and looks around the little room.
There’s something comforting about the place, though he can’t quite put his finger on it. Maybe it’s the grass that springs up between the chipped tiles on the floor, making the mosaic softer. Maybe it’s the birds’ nest clinging stubbornly to the last of the rafters. Maybe it’s the hole in the ceiling– Dorian will think that’s funny.
Bull takes the necklaces out of his pocket. They’re bulky, and he felt them clicking together with every step. He clasps the longer chain around his neck and lets it rest on his chest, heavy and warm. Tactically speaking, it’s not great. The chain might get caught on something, someone might grab it, it might swing and smack him in the face. But he looks down at its mate in his hand– his research prepared him for this too: his throat tightens, his chest clenches, his heartbeat rushes in his ears. It’s a good sign. He’s supposed to be nervous.
He thinks about Vasaad, suddenly. Vasaad was the one with the stories, back on Seheron. He was the one who could conjure dragons out of a few words and draw ancient battles in the dirt so they seemed to spring to life again in the telling. Vasaad, short-tempered and sharp, inquisitive and kind. Bull doesn’t miss that life, but he does miss him. Would he have liked Dorian?
He was the one who told Bull the first story about the dragon-hunters. It was never written down anywhere that Bull could find, so it’s possible he invented it wholesale, built it as they sat around the fire and laughed.
“When the Ataashi was finally dead,” Vasaad would say, “Ketojan and Kadan took her scales for their armor and her blood for their vitaar. They took her magic for their cookfire and her teeth as their trophy. Many became swords, wicked blades as long as your arm, and one small tooth, they split in two. It cracked down the center in a line as sharp as the path of the Qun, and they bound the pieces in leather, to soften the edge. They each wore half the tooth to show their victory. She had wreaked havoc, and now she lay dead. She had tried to consume them, but they had stayed strong. Over her defeat, they pledged to uphold the order they had brought, and to fight side-by-side to serve the Qun. With this tooth, split between them, they would be always two sides of the same sword, the fire and the shadow it casts, never alone, no matter how far apart.”
Bull had imagined fighting dragons with Vasaad.
This dragon, he had fought with Dorian. With Sera and the Boss as well, but mostly with Dorian. He’d pried this tooth from her jaw with the dagger Dorian had given him on the day that wasn’t really his nameday. It hadn’t been a whim, for all the basis for the story was fantastical.
Sometimes, he thinks his whole life, every fucked up, bloody turn of it, might have been leading him here.
“So this is where you got to.” Dorian is standing where a door might once have been, decades ago. He’s smiling, and the last edges of the sunset make him shine. “We’re setting up camp near a stream to the east.”
“Worried about me, Vint?” He’d wanted to clear some of the cobwebs away before Dorian got here. One settles on his hair as he steps into the crumbling cottage.
“It’s your turn to cook supper.” He moves closer to Bull. He looks so calm, so happy, when he leans up to press his lips to Bull’s cheek. It’s not heart palpitations and purple prose, it’s years of tension softened by months of care. It’s as close to quiet domesticity as two men like them can get, in the middle of a war for the fate of the world.
There’s no space for what they have, under the Qun. There was space for what he had with Vasaad, with Gatt, with Kos, the gardener who brought him persimmons in Par Vollen, but not this. There’s not even a word for what they are in Qunlat. Kadan is where the language fails him, and it’s only the beginning of all that this is.
“Are you well?” Dorian asks. “You seem miles away.”
“We’ve been through a lot, you and me.” That’s how he’d wanted to start his speech. “Each of us, but also together.”
For a moment, Dorian looks like he’s about to joke about the snow they’ve trekked through or the musty tents they’ve slept in. “Yes.”
“There’s a lot of stuff I didn’t know I wanted, before. Things I didn’t know I was missing. When I was younger, when I was Hissrad, I thought the bas– I thought love outside the Qun was a fantasy, an echo of what I felt. I was wrong. They’re nothing alike.”
Dorian doesn’t say anything. He just looks up at Bull with eyes that Cassandra’s novels would call silverite, or stormy. Soft.
“There’s nothing in my life that could have prepared me for this. For you.” There was more in the speech, but he’s forgotten it now. “You and your arguing, and your books, and your creepy magic, and waking up next to you– sometimes you seem right out of an imekari’s parable about the dangers of bas connections, but most of the time I don’t even care.”
The sun’s fully set now, and the world outside the mossy stone walls seems very distant. Dorian’s face is shadowed, and his eyes are like wells, wide and unblinking. His teeth are white, just visible as he licks his lips, smiling just a little.
“This might be a lot to– I don’t second-guess myself very often you know– I just. It was worth it. I don’t know if we’re going to survive finding this temple, or survive Corypheus, but all of it’s been worth it, because even when I thought I’d lost everything, I still had you.”
The words, as he says them, feel smaller than they look on the pages of the novels he read. His heart is racing, his palms are sweating. He’s painfully aware of the dragon’s tooth resting on his chest. Somehow, this is terrifying. Even though it’s just Dorian in front of him, it’s just words that he’s sort of said before, in a sideways sort of way.
He takes a deep breath. “There’s this old Qun tradition. Two warriors, when they fought a dragon, would split the tooth between them, like a trophy. They’d each wear half, and– they’d be linked, sort of. Together, no matter how far apart they might go.” He makes himself open his hand, his grip on the dragon’s tooth is so tight his fingers ache.
Dorian’s hand comes to rest lightly on top of his own. “Why are you telling me this now?” he asks, voice soft.
“Because now’s what we have, and you should know. You should know that I–”
“I do,” Dorian interrupts him. “I do know. But– people have been known to make foolhardy choices on the eve of battle, is all.”
Bull watches him.
“This is beautiful. And I– I love you.” Bull has to strain to hear him. He runs his fingers over the dragon’s tooth in Bull’s palm, eyes caught on its pair, hanging around Bull’s neck. “But if you’re doing this because you’re afraid of dying tomorrow, I don’t– If this is something you might take back, Bull–”
“I wouldn’t.”
“You know how I am when I want things. If we don’t die tomorrow, and you regret giving me this… if I take this now, it will break my heart to return it.”
Bull opens his mouth to object, and closes it again. “This is from the Frostback in the Hinterlands. Dagna and I started working on designs while you and the Boss went to Val Royeaux for Josie. This crystal in the setting, it can act as a focus, and the silverite is lined with inert lyrium, which Dagna said is helpful. I know it’s… big, and not really your usual style–”
“Oh hush, you meance.” Dorian grips the tooth as hard as Bull had, earlier. “It’s perfect and you know it.”
“I wanted it to be.” He looks around at the ruins. “Seems like this sort of thing is always perfect, in the books.”
Dorian chuckles. “In the books, of course. Will you help me with the clasp? It’s rather hard to see.”
“Then you do want it?”
“There are few things I’ve ever wanted more, if we’re being honest.” His hands rest on Bull’s forearms as he hooks the chain around Dorian’s neck. The metal shimmers in the low light. “I hope you know you’re not getting rid of me now.”
“That’s the point, Kadan.” He cups his hand around the back of Dorian’s head and kisses him. It’s soft, and perfect, and it’s nothing like Cassandra’s novels could ever hope to describe. He imagines this, stretching out in front of him. Years of killing dragons together, years of being heroes and drinking taverns dry together, years of nights and mornings and quiet corners, together.
“We should head back. By my count we have about five more minutes before they send out a search party,” Dorian murmurs.
Bull grins. “Let’s just wait for them to find us. There’s plenty we can get up to in five minutes.”