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Cremisius Aclassi and Dorian Pavus are not friends.
There’s plenty of reasons for that. One, Dorian is in effect fucking Cremisius’s boss, and that does not a good working relationship start. For another, though both are of Tevinter one was born into privilege and wealth and the other had a father who sold himself into slavery.
They have similarities, too, in the shadows that hang beneath the dappled sun of their outer lives. Sometimes they try to reach one another through them. Often they don’t succeed. Krem is too sharp and Dorian too flowing, one used to facing challenges head on and the other used to dancing around them. One answers questions with questions. The other doesn’t ask questions at all.
Cremisius Aclassi and Dorian Pavus are not friends.
Still, this is what happens when the shipment comes:
Dorian Pavus opens the box right then and there, in front of Lady Montilyet and the supply caravan.
He looks up and gives her one of his rare true smiles, like a shard of pure sunlight breaking through the clouds of Skyhold.
Then he tucks the whole thing under his arm and marches off with not a single bit of swagger or sway to his hips. He has no time for such things. He is On A Mission.
He finds the Chargers sparring (aren’t they always?) and he waits patiently by the denoted edge of the field. It’s Rocky who notes him, and it’s Dalish who tells him that the Iron Bull is not with them.
They all know that’s obvious- the chief isn’t hard to miss- but it’s an easy out. Dorian doesn’t take it.
“I’m here for Cremisius.” he says.
The Bull’s Chargers part like the sea for Andraste.
Krem sees the box.
He sees Dorian’s face.
He drops his sword and shield and runs.
They don’t touch one another but their heads are bowed close and there’s rapidfire tevene being spoken, too fast for any of the other Chargers to understand. From the box a packet is removed and two tiny peppers are produced.
They are dried, like shrivelled fingers, and fiercely red.
Krem looks at Dorian.
Dorian looks at Krem.
There’s a moment. They are not friends. This is not something you do with a person who is not your friend.
Still, here in the lonely mountains between Orlais and Ferelden no one but they really know the gulf between a soporati and an altus. Two strangers in a distant land who by their place of birth are bound tight in a way they can’t quite understand yet.
The two men link their right elbows, lean back a little for room, and using their left hands each feeds the other a red pepper.
Krem bursts into hysterical laughter, breaking their link while coughing and crying. Stitches almost moves to intervene but he’s never seen that look on Krem’s face. It’s something between pain and joy.
Dorian tilts his perfect golden neck back and blows a long stream of fire.
He’s swallowing smoke when Krem says, grinning, “showoff.”
“But of course,” Dorian says because he does have a part to play here, because something that was almost too much just happened and they need their solid ground again, “what would I be if I did not exhibit my winning qualities to all who wished to view them?”
The Chargers finally gather around. The box contains more than the peppers. There are spices in jars, labelled in elegant hands. There are dried leaves and fine curling sticks, pastes carefully preserved. Sticky dates in a ball, olives that Dorian declares ‘passable, for being plucked so long ago.’
There’s a tea that they will find brews a bright sunset orange. Krem mixes it with milk. Dorian adds brandy.
No one asks Dorian how much it must have cost in coin or favor to get these items from the North. No one asks Krem if he'd been informed, if this had been some kind of joint effort made when the only two Vints in the whole of Skyhold finally got fed up with druffalo jerky. They figure they're better off not knowing. There's no way to tell if either Dorian or Krem would answer their questions, anyway.
Cremisius Aclassi and Dorian Pavus are not friends.
But over a thick curried stew that drives off even the Iron Bull with its heat, paired with flat breads hand formed and baked, eaten quietly together in the main hall, well.
Perhaps they could be.