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Matthieu lets out a sigh as he fumbles with the door to his quarters, desperate to get some semblance of peace after his disaster of a two weeks. Whoever thought going to that Oasis in the middle of nowhere again was a good idea should be fired. There is sand places there should not be sand and Vivienne, Solas, and Sera were bickering the entire trip. Literally, every minute of it. He didn’t care about Maker-forsaken Circle training or spiders in peoples small clothes, he just wanted to put the blighted shards in the blighted Temple. But, no. He just had to suffer.
When he realized this was probably what it was like for everyone that dealt with him and Dorian for all those months, he now can empathize what an utter nightmare they must have been. Not that it’s all that much better now, but at least if they get into fights everyone knows to just avoid them alone in the evenings when they work things out. Admittedly, they verbally spar as much as they always have in their tent, but there is just surprisingly a lot more touching and a lot less clothing in the process.
After he locks the door to his quarters behind him and turns the corner into his bedchamber, Matthieu finds himself shoved up against a wall and ripped from his thoughts by a pair of familiar lips on his. Okay, maybe the Oasis was worth it, if this is what he gets to come home to. He relaxes into the kiss as he allows a hand to trail down and curl around the Altus’ waist, begging to bring the mage closer. As he kisses his partner deeper, Matthieu feels the hand clutching the lapels of his coat pull tighter and tighter as if to never let him go. He smiles into the desperation of this exchange before pulling back, only slightly out of breath.
“How long were you waiting to corner me like this, love?” Matthieu says with a light smirk as he caresses the Altus’ face with the hand nor currently occupied around the Tevinter’s waist. “It’s adorable, embarrassing, and so unlike you,” he says with a sly smile as he pokes his partner’s all-too-perfect nose.
Matthieu laughs at the glare Dorian gives him, before the Tevinter dramatically retorts, “If you would prefer to go back to fantasizing about me from afar with only your mind and hands to occupy you, by all means keep talking.”
“You couldn’t,” Matthieu smirks as he leans in to take Dorian’s lower lip into his, gently suckling at it and using his hand to play with the hairs on the back of the Altus’ neck. The moment he elicits a small stifled groan from the Tevinter, he whispers into his partner’s ear, “You would miss this too much.” Matthieu unhands him completely and crosses the bedroom to his desk.
The Tevinter simply crosses his arms at the Free Marcher and mockingly says, “Precisely why I tried to welcome you, which you apparently found unwelcome.” However, Matthieu seems more occupied with a paper on his desk than his partner’s theatrics and pores over every word. He picks it up and looks at Dorian with a kaffas- eating grin.
“‘ My Beloved, Matthieu ,’” Matthieu reads aloud.
“Matthieu Sebastian. Stop ,” Dorian warns as he matches up to his partner and tries to grab at the in-progress letter he had been holding.
“I thought I’m ‘Your Beloved, Matthieu,’” Matthieu remarks with amusement as he wards Dorian off with one arm. He continues reading, “‘ Missing you by my side and sleeping in a tent of all things is never something I dared imagine, but these days I wish I never knew the feeling at all. Yearning for you in wanton wanting is all the more unbearable now opposed to when I knew nothing of your touch. I only wish you were at my side again— ”
As Matthieu actually begins to process the words of the unsent letter aloud, he stops warding his partner off altogether. He doesn’t want this.
The moment the Free Marcher lets his guard down, the Altus snags the letter from his hand and sets it alight in his palm, so all that remains is its ashes.
Matthieu doesn’t seem to notice as he trudges over to his settee and sits down in confusion. He runs a hand through his hair and focuses on a spot on the ground to try and stabilize his sitting form, Under his breath, he murmurs, “I cannot believe you missed me.” He doesn’t want this.
Dorian looks at him in disbelief, wiping the leftover ashes off his hands with a handkerchief. He flippantly remarks, “I cannot believe you are making a fuss over this.”
The Inquisitor just shakes his head and lets out a bitter laugh, “You were going to send me a sickening letter and everything.” He doesn’t want this.
“Thank you so much for rubbing salt in the wound,” Dorian says in a huff as he crosses to the settee and sits down next to Matthieu, lightly shoving his shoulder, “Continue reminding me of my grave misstep, why don’t you?”
Things were not supposed to get this far. They never were. Dorian isn’t supposed to care about him. He can’t. He doesn’t want this.
He’s a ticking time bomb ready to explode at any and all given moments. Caring for Matthieu Sebastian Trevelyan is caring for an abomination or an unexplained suicide waiting to happen. There’s no cheerful ending to that story: no wedded bliss, no smiling children, no mutual domesticity. There’s only a straight road that leads to heartache and heartbreak, and Dorian doesn’t deserve that. He’s hurt Dorian so much. He hurts Dorian so much. And he will hurt Dorian so much.
When he and the Altus decided to try things out, he had expected things to go South in a matter of minutes. They were well suited as friends again, ridiculously well suited. Relationship wise? They are polar opposites. Dorian is this experienced, sensual enigma of a being who knows what he wants, when he wants it, and how to get it. He is a broken, terrified virginal mess of a man who cannot even appease his partner. He hates it so much. Dorian could be with anyone he wants and Matthieu is more than aware of how people stare.
But Dorian is with the worst man possible for him. A man who even after months cannot compel himself to be intimate. A man who is too scared to let them cohabitate because if they do it means this is serious, which is terrifying. A man who despite being in love for eighteen years cannot say the words ‘I love you.’ A man who ruins his sleep with terrors and the need to be talked down at odd hours of the evening almost every evening. A man who is likely to die whether be it because of Corypheus, the Anchor, or his own hand. Dorian deserves the absolute world, and while Matthieu is unwillingly saving it, he cannot give it to the Altus, not like he wants. He wants Dorian to be free.
He feels his hands start to tremble and the urge to bite back the tears he feels welling up in his eyes. The only word that falls from his lips is a “Why?”
Dorian asks, slightly taken aback by the question, “Excuse me?”
“You missed me,” Matthieu blankly states as he looks at the Altus.
“We’ve made that clear several times,” The Tevinter says shaking his head as he pushes back loose strands of the Free Marcher’s hair.
“ Why? ” He pleads insistently, swatting away his partner’s hands and curling into himself.
“Look, If this is your way of orchestrating getting a confession out of me, it’s not working,” Dorian says, relaxing into his place on the settee and crossing his arms dramatically. Of course, he isn’t understanding the gravity of this.
“ Kaffas, no. I just—” Matthieu starts. He takes in a breath and tells Dorian, “You shouldn’t. Miss me, that is,” with resolve. He shouldn’t and it’s time he said it.
“I’m afraid there is no stopping me there, Amatus,” he says flippantly as he tries to wave off Matthieu’s fears with a bejeweled hand.
“You’re not supposed to,” the blonde despondently mutters, wincing as the words cross his lips. Dorian isn’t supposed to, even if that would end him entirely.
“And I will regardless,” Dorian retorts immediately before adding an insistent, “Now, drop it.”
He’s not going to. He needs to say these mantras he repeats in his head day in and out to the man who is supposed to hear them. He continues, “You shouldn’t care for me.”
“I don’t want me to any more than you want me to,” Dorian says through a bitter laugh as he runs a frustrated hand through his hair and avoiding eye contact like the blight.
“Then why do you?” Matthieu presses further, voice cracking. He’s hoping to get something, anything, out of the Altus. He needs to.
“ Fasta Vass. I don’t need a reason, Matt. And frankly if I gave them to you, we would be here all night,” he says frustratedly. Matthieu catches his partner seize up for a moment and mutter a Tevene curse under his breath. He knows this look all too well, it’s when Dorian has said too much.
When Matthieu goes to try and place a hand on his shoulder, the Tevinter flinches a bit, prompting him to back off, allowing the man his space. Dorian takes in a deep breath before letting out a sigh,“Look, would you mind terribly if we just try to enjoy the evening?”
Catching the uncertainty in his lover’s blue eyes, Dorian takes Matthieu’s face into his hand so they can make eye contact. All at once, Matthieu can see the fear, the resilience, the love as Dorian almost begs, “ Please. ”
“Okay,” he says with a fragile yet resolute nod. He can be strong this evening, if not for himself for Dorian. His partner deserves that much tonight and he’s put him through enough turmoil to last an age.
“Okay,” Dorian says with a soft smile as he uses the hand holding Matthieu’s chin up to caress the Free Marcher’s face. He trails across and gently removes his hand leaving the ghost of a touch on his visage.
Matthieu goes to pull the Altus to him, but hesitates and stops himself. He flexes his fingers nervously and places his hand underneath him in shame. Dorian probably doesn’t want anything to do with him right now after his little breakdown, let alone any sort of physical affection. Besides, with every moment he allows himself to become closer with the Altus the harder he falls, if that is at all possible.
It’s funny, everyone spreads rumors about Dorian having the Inquisitor in the palm of his hand which the Ambassador has worked tirelessly to prove untrue. But they aren’t. He’s wrapped around the Altus’s finger and each touch, each kiss, each word tightens that noose. He has always been beyond saving, but in this regard has outshined all others. He prays to prophets he doesn’t even believe in that they’ll both be alive to see the day when they both give into it. There’s still so many walls to tear down and so many experiences to be had. He’s never wanted anyone else, he doubts he ever will.
Lost in his thoughts, he feels his partner’s gaze linger, waiting for him to sort through things. Patience was never a word he thought he’d associate with Dorian, but there were a lot of things he never thought he would associate with the Tevinter. When the Inquisitor looks back at the man and the concern and dare he say love written there he finds it in himself to ask, “Am I— Am I allowed to kiss you?”
When the Altus lets out a light laugh, he worries that the answer will be the negative which he’s been anticipating. However, Dorian simply nods his head and says “ My beloved Matthieu ,” in a tone mocking his own writings yet laced with tenderness. Matthieu rolls his eyes at the comment which only makes Dorian grin at him. The Altus takes Matthieu’s uncertain hands into his, pressing a kiss to his knuckles and smiles at him with a ridiculous smirk on his face, “You can do whatever your insufferable little heart desires to me.”
Surprised but not unsatisfied, Matthieu smirks back and allows himself to fall back into the settee. He pulls the partner still holding his hand down on top of him and into a kiss. Detangling their hands from one another, they quickly find more suitable places to wander about and pull them closer together. For but a moment, Matthieu feels his fears scatter as all he can focus on is the sensation of the Altus: hands at his hips, lips at his neck.
Where he would usually grasp at sanity, he grasps at belt buckles and exposed skin. Where he breathes out to calm himself, he instead breathes in the scent of sandalwood and old vellum to do so. Where he shuts his eyes to avoid what nightmares may come, he allows him to flutter close as the friction of their lower bodies produces unfamiliar yet not unwelcome sensations. Whereas he always has something to say, he finds himself breathless outside of elicited moans and diminutives. Where he closes himself to shield from others’ touch, he surrenders himself completely to his lover’s insistent hands that trail the marks of desire across his body. Where Dorian reaches out Matthieu meets him halfway and the world falls away.