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Dorian was never quite sure where things had gone wrong.
In general. In the immediately relevant specific sense he was very well aware of exactly what had gone wrong. Everything, that was what had gone wrong in this very moment.
But in general he wasn't sure when he and the Inquisitor had gone from polite acquaintances to being incapable of casual conversation that didn't immediately turn hostile. It had probably been something that Dorian said, but since the Inquisitor seemed perfectly happy to make nice with all the other people who put their foot in it he refused to fully take the blame.
Which was why, in this specific situation, things were a bit awkward.
Because they were sure to be stuck here for...awhile.
Dorian was currently weighing his chances of sneaking past the dragon outside, and he could clearly see that the Inquisitor was doing the same.
"If you had just kept up instead of deciding to wander off, we would be well clear of here," Lavellan complained, sounding incredibly frustrated as he peered around the edge of the entrance to the cave at the dragon.
He really needn't. Dorian could hear the dragon sniffing around, presumably thinking something indignant about the signs of someone having tromped all over its...napping spot? It wasn't a nest, just a big flat section of ice on a ledge of what may have been a mountain or may have been just a giant hill of ice and snow. Given the ice everywhere, it really was impossible to tell. "I didn't wander off, I was checking the caves to ensure we hadn't missed anything."
And also to stay in an area that was merely horrifically freezing, as opposed to several steps out of the cave which was filled with icy wind and the certainty that a very cold death was immediately imminent.
The dragon turned around again, Lavellan didn't stop peering out, and Dorian considered that at least if the dragon noticed them and breathed flame on them his last moments would be warm.
"If you're trying to attract the dragon, I do have to point out that while gusts of dragon fire will significantly improve the temperature they will also kill us rather quickly," Dorian said, unable to keep from snarking.
In his defense, there was no reason for the Inquisitor to be looking out like that when the general state of a dragon being directly outside clearly had not changed.
"It's a Kaltenzhan," Lavellan said with a sigh and a tone as though that was a rebuttal.
"Contrary to what you may assume, not everyone from Tevinter is obsessed with dragons. In fact I'd wager that most people only know the basics of giant firebreathing lizard and not much more."
Lavellan ignored him, still looking outside.
"Unless Kaltenzhan are blind to things in caves or otherwise unlikely to spot you and set us aflame, could you please step back?" Dorian said with a huff. This was becoming ridiculous.
"They don't breathe fire."
"The dragon we saw in the distance earlier most certainly did breath fire."
"That was a Ravager."
Dorian closed his eyes, counted to ten, decided that his capacity for dragon based small talk had been surpassed by the desire to avoid death by whatever not-fire element this particular dragon apparently breathed, and reached out to grab Lavellan by the back of his tunic and haul him back into the cramped but non-visible section of the ice cave.
The elf let out a startled sound as he stumbled back, and outside of the cave the dragon moved towards them very suddenly.
Dorian stood very still as the dragon moved close enough that they could very clearly hear its breathing, close enough that he could see the puffs of ice magic barely swirling into the cave, and gripped the back of Lavellan's tunic harder just in case the elf had other not-standing-still ideas.
He wanted to become a dragon created ice statue even less than he wanted to be incinerated.
Lavellan, thankfully, also held still.
It seemed like an eternity until the sound of the dragon's breathing moved away, and then there was a large thump as it hit the ground.
Presumably it had decided to take a nap, because Dorian doubted they would be so lucky as for it to have suddenly keeled over.
Lavellan shook him off, quietly steeping towards the entrance again. Dorian made another grab for him, but this time the elf was ready for him and fended him off with a burst of ice magic aimed at his hand.
Dorian yanked his hand back, his fingers cramping from the cold even though the spell had hit his glove. He cradled his hand against his chest and tried to massage some warmth back into it as he glared at Lavellan's back.
How had that been called for? Of all the elements to use, that was most certainly the most rude!
"Stop dangling yourself out as dragonbait!" he hissed.
Lavellan ignored him, peering out of the entrance again, then suddenly stepped back and said some dalish curse under his breath. "She's decided to nap right outside of the cave," he complained quietly. "Why did you pull me back like that?"
"Because you were imminent dragon food? No need to thank me for pulling you back just in time."
The elf turned and glared at him. "The dragon came over here because you pulled me back."
"If that was true, it would surely hear us now. It's closer and we're making more noise."
"Sharp noises are going to get its attention much more easily than whispers." Lavellan ran a hand through his hair, making a frustrated sound. "How did you possibly manage to get all the way from Tevinter to Ferelden without learning even the basics of avoiding different predators? Are you going to start poking bears, next?"
"Roads. That's how. I kept to roads like a civilized traveller."
For some reason that seemed to be the wrong answer, if Lavellan's glare was anything to go by. It wasn't as though it was Dorian's fault that Lavellen liked taking off directly through the wilderness as his preferred travelling path!
"In that case you also never bothered to learn the dangers that are templars," Lavellan snapped. "Or did you deign to step off the roads when they passed?"
Dorian just shrugged. Technically he had fled the roads at a few points to avoid roving bands of templars. He had found himself in a few precarious situations due to that sort of thing. Nothing quite to the level of 'stuck in a cave slowly freezing because a dragon has decided to take a nap several feet away', but precarious nonetheless. He didn't particularly plan on bringing up those situations to undermine his stance even further.
Instead he decided to focus on the dragon shaped problem at hand. "Did you see any way past it? Or any way we could distract it."
"That was what I was looking for when you pulled it to us," Lavellan complained. "Right now the only paths out are likely to involve getting eaten by a dragon. We'll just need to hope nobody comes looking for us and distracts her, and wait it out."
Dorian made a disgruntled sound. "It is literally freezing."
"That is what usually happens in caves made of ice." Lavellan stepped closer to where Dorian was, and slid down the wall to sit on the icy floor. "As long as we're very very careful, we can use a bit of magic to keep warm enough to survive without attracting the Kaltenzhan's attention or collapsing the cave on us."
"Is collapse really a danger?" Dorian asked worriedly.
"Dorian, it's an ice cave. If you fill it with warmth it will absolutely start to melt."
"Aren't there...ways to make shelter that uses ice and fills them with heat?" Dorian asked. He was fairly sure there were. In fact he was fairly sure he'd caught Lavellan explaining that sort of thing to some of their scouts.
"Not with an entrance of this size, and those are known elements. We've no idea how stable this spot even is beyond the immediately visible ice."
Lovely. One more thing to worry about.
Dorian carefully sat down next to the Inquisitor. "How much heat are we allowed? A fire? Occasional warming spells?"
"Small warming charms. We should avoid using more than we can nap safely with." Lavellan signed, looking almost pained. "We should probably stay close."
"To share heat?" Dorian joked.
"Yes," the Inquisitor answered, not joking at all nor seeming to get the reference. It was probably understandable, the Dalish probably didn't have access to romance novels much less enough of them to be familiar with tropes.
This was, Dorian would admit, sort of the prime situation for them. Usually the books would go on about body heat rather than spells and he sincerely doubted that any sort of cuddling was on the table...but Dorian certainly wouldn't complain if it were.
Lavellan probably would, though, so Dorian kept that thought to himself. "Shouldn't we avoid napping with a dragon nearby."
"She's sleeping. If we're also sleeping then we won't be adjusting the energy of the area even with warming charms active. As long as we aren't immediately visible when she wakes up, that should help keep her from looking our way before she flies off to hunt."
That...sounded like a bunch of fiction to Dorian. Admittedly, someone's magical aura could be slightly different between sleeping and waking, and actively casting spells most certainly would change things, but since they'd have charms active as they slept he wasn't sure that would actually cause any appreciable difference.
He mostly approached magic from a more scientific background, however, and it wouldn't be the first time that the Inquisitor had pulled some bit of 'everything is interconnected' based nature magic out of his pocket only to be proven entirely right. The thing about magic, was that the rules weren't always rules. If they were, it wouldn't be magic.
"Do you know how to make warmth charms?" Lavellan asked.
"I know how to cast fire and fire runes," Dorian answered, knowing full well that wasn't the answer that Lavellan wanted.
If Dorian didn't expect the elf to know the ins and outs of thaumaturgy, then Lavellan could afford him the same dignity for not knowing dalish survival charms.
Lavellan did not do that. Instead Lavellan gave him a look like he had very much been expecting a different answer, before scooting closer to Dorian and reaching out with a bit of magic swirling around his fingers--not fire, but something that felt similar--and tracing a quick sign directly below Dorian's ear. "Turn your head so I can reach the other side"
Dorian obediently turned his head, trying to eye what Lavellan was doing. Apparently the elf had never heard that saying about fish and fishing. Or maybe he had been hoping that Dorian would know a Tevinter version of the charm (if such a thing even existed, he was fairly sure most people would simply use runes for something like this) so that Lavellan could avoid showing Dorian the Dalish charm.
He did, remarkably, feel much warmer once the charms were done. Still freezing, but back to the normal level of freezing that he had been lamenting since they had first neared the Emprise du Lion. He would have preferred the level of freezing they had experienced in the Emerald Graves, if not actual warmth, but it was better than nothing.
Lavellan traced the same signs below his own ears. Presumably. His hair was maddeningly in the way and prevented Dorian from actually seeing the charm even when it wasn't being drawn onto his person.
"How long will these last?" he asked, pushing away his annoyance.
"A few hours." Lavellan settled back down, then traced another warming charm in the air between them.
Dorian was caught slightly off guard by that. He'd assumed Lavellan had been deliberately hiding the charm under his hair, and then--well clearly he hadn't been.
Not that it would help Dorian much without knowing exactly the magic used to trace the charm, but he memorized the quick swoops regardless.
"And now we just...take a nap and hope the dragon wanders off before it notices us?"
"As long as we stay quiet and out of sight, we'll be fine," Lavellan reassured, arranging himself so that he was leaning back against the icy wall of the cave.
"Might I point out that the entrance to the cave is mere feet away?"
"We can't fix that. Shut up and take a nap," Lavellan said. "I sleep pretty lightly. If she moves, I should hear and be able to wake us up before she has the chance to see us, even if we do somehow end up in her sightline."
Then Lavellan just...closed his eyes, relaxing almost instantly as though he was taking a nap just like that.
Dorian resisted the urge to poke at him like a petulant child and instead closed his own eyes, attempting to at least doze.
It was far harder than the elf had implied. Dorian couldn't just start napping with a dragon so close (or, if he was being truthful with himself, with the Inquisitor sleeping mere inches away).
He did try though. He tried quite hard. And he failed equally badly, so he very quickly fell to fretting and second guessing every movement he heard from outside the cave.
Dorian jumped as he heard the sound of movement, turned his head expecting to see Lavellan also struggling to sleep...and instead saw just in time that the elf was slipping towards him, clearly asleep.
Dorian caught him, privately called bullshit on that 'light sleeping' comment, and then spent several moments trying to figure out what to do since he most certainly couldn't just sit here holding a half fallen Inquisitor for several hours. He also couldn't just let the Inquisitor continue falling into his lap. That would be--he was certain that would be a horrific idea. Or, well, horrific was the wrong word for having a cute elf in his lap, but it would certainly be unwise considering the likely consequences.
Luckily, or perhaps unluckily, Lavellan made a small sound mere moments later and blinked himself away.
Dorian tried to come up with a good explanation that didn't sound guilty as the elf pulled himself back upright and gave him a disgruntled look. It was hardly Dorian's fault that the elf had fallen onto him!
"This is stupid," Lavellan said, rather than make any accusations. "Let's just lay down."
"What?"
"Trying to nap sitting up isn't going to work out, not in this small of an area. I fell over and you clearly weren't able to fall asleep at all. So we should just lay down. Lay against the wall."
"..." Dorian glanced at the amount of hidden space, tried to calculate how much of that was actually safe from accidental dragon-spotting, and raised an eyebrow. "We'll need to essentially be right up against each other to stay safely out of sight."
"We need to be close anyways to share the warmth of the charm," Lavellan pointed out, apparently immune to the implications of this whole mess. The elf scooted a bit away from the wall. "It's not like anyone else has to actually know that we took a nap this close, and it's for a completely logical reason."
"If it's completely logical, then someone knowing wouldn't be an issue." Dorian pointed out wryly, stubbornly not acknowledging the pang that came with Lavellan outright stating that he wouldn't want anyone to know he had done something so scandalous as sleep fully clothed within inches of Dorian. It was...it was a reasonable thing to want to avoid as common knowledge.
"How many people do we have that go off of logic?" Lavellan asked with a sigh. "Just lay down."
After several moments of hesitation, Dorian did as he was told. He had enough time to wonder if maybe he should have laid down facing the wall, so that they could sleep back to back, before Lavellan was laying down next to him.
Facing towards him.
They weren't face to face, Lavellan was significantly shorter and also curled up a bit more than Dorian was, but the elf's face was mere inches away from Dorian's sternum.
It was incredibly distracting. Dorian was certain that he'd have even less luck sleeping like this, even though Lavellan's breathing evened out almost immediately and he clearly wasn't having the same issues.
On the bright side, he had learned today that the Inquisitor did trust him enough to easily fall asleep near him. That was...something. They still didn't get along at all, but there were more important things than getting along.
Dorian wasn't certain when or how he had fallen asleep, but eventually he was waking up again.
It took him several moments to remember where he was, why, and then several more to realize that they were not in the same position that they had fallen asleep in.
Or rather, they were, just significantly closer.
The inquisitor's head was most certainly pressed against his chest, and one of his legs had ended up between Dorians, and--Dorian had no idea what to do with this other than freeze in place.
He was most reasonably certain that cuddling with the Inquisitor was not on the approved list of things to find himself doing!
He didn't have time to reason out how to extricate himself from the situation, however, because not long after Dorian had even perceived the state they were in, Lavellan was waking him.
The elf made a soft sound and cuddled closer, pressing his face against Dorian's chest and muttering something about the cold that was half elven words.
Then all of sudden Lavellan must have realized where they were and who he was against, because he was pulling back quite sharply, his face going entirely red. "Sorry!"
Dorian pushed himself upright, trying to avoid appearing flustered even though he knew some red must have found its way to his own face. Perhaps he could blame it on the warming charm. "It's fine," he answered, struggling to find something, anything, else to focus on. Then he remembered the whole reason they had been stuck here. "Is the dragon gone?"
Lavellan pushed to his feet, still looking flustered and unsteady, and took a step back before turning and peering around the edge of the cave entrance. "Yes? When did she leave, I should have heard her leaving." Lavellan muttered something disgruntled under his breath. "Come on, let's go."
"It's the middle of the night and terribly windy." Dorian pointed out.
"Do you want to sleep in the cave?" Lavellan demanded, face seeming to go red again in the reflected light from the ice walls.
Dorian nearly said yes...but that was probably very the wrong answer considering the only pleasant part of sleeping in a barely sheltered cave made of ice which could be host to a draconic napping session at any moment. "I don't want to freeze to death either," he said instead.
Lavellan snorted, waving him up. "If we stay, the dragon might reappear. We're leaving." The elf hesitated, almost seeming to second guess what he was about to say next. "If we find somewhere else safe to duck into, we can sleep there instead of hiking all the way back."
Dorian raised an eyebrow, only to get a glare in return, and then pushed himself to his feet. "That sounds like a reasonable compromise!" he said, probably sounding a little too chipper.
Should he feel guilty, about wanting to have a reason to sleep so closely to the Inquisitor.
He decided that he shouldn't, seeing as it was consistently the Inquisitor's idea.
They could never tell Varric. Lavellan might not recognize the trope, but the dwarf surely would and they'd never hear the end of it.