Work Text:
It starts with, of all things, horns.
“Iron Bull,” says Adaar in that voice of hers when she wants to sound proper and scholarly in front of Mother Giselle, but never quite hits the mark, “have you ever considered shaving your horns?”
Dorian wonders if this is the type of conversation to be had three days into a miserable trip to the Storm Coast, but he is, admittedly, grateful for the distraction from his sopping wet robes and the mud that squelches with every step.
(And, though he would never admit it, he is a bit curious each and every time the two Qunari speak about things like this.)
“No. Why would I do that?” For some reason, Bull is grinning.
“No reason.” Adaar sounds oddly put-off. “Just, you know—oh! What about getting through doors? It must be difficult, no?”
“I turn my head and duck.”
“What about—well. Wouldn’t you like to wear a shirt?”
“Nah, I’m good. Besides, it’s not that I couldn’t find one or have one made. You use ones that button up.”
She pauses, looking down at her own robes and frowning. “I guess.”
They fall into silence, but Bull eventually speaks again. “Say, Boss. This wouldn’t have anything to do with that elven girl from Redcliffe, would it?”
Adaar—sweet, lovable Adaar with shockingly round eyes and a quick smile always tugging at her lips—scowls. Actually scowls! Dorian’s never thought such a thing possible.
“The one with red hair?” pipes up Varric. Dorian takes a moment to pity him, if only because the mud that reaches his ankles reaches Varric’s knees. “She was all over you, Tiny.”
“She was,” Bull says proudly, and Dorian briefly fantasizes about hitting him over the head with his staff for no particular reason.
Adaar scoffs so vehemently that even Cassandra would be proud, and Dorian can’t help himself from interrupting. “Is horn size a point of pride among Qunari?”
“No,” says Adaar at the same time Bull says, “Depends.”
He’s grinning again when he explains. “Back home, nah. But when you want pretty elven girls to share your bed, it certainly helps.”
“And why would Adaar care about that?” Dorian asks, baffled and annoyed that Bull seems to be using the opportunity to brag about his conquests for no apparent reason.
“Yeah, Boss.” Bull is practically leering. “Why would you care about that?”
“She saw me first!” snaps Adaar, though it has about as much bite as a toothless Mabari. “And she was—handsy.” Her scowl has faded into a pout.
“Good tits, too,” agrees Bull. Dorian wants to strangle him. Or perhaps himself. He still doesn’t quite make the connection until Adaar, with all serious, says—
“Great tits.”
It doesn’t stop there. Occasionally, when she’s accompanying them, Sera chimes in with her own evaluation, and Dorian is left wondering when the world turned on its head.
Bull and Sera, he expects this—this shamelessness from. Heathens. He hates how much he adores them.
But Adaar? She stands for the Inquisition, for the only force capable of saving the bloody world, and she pouts and laughs and reminisces over lost conquests—all women, he notes with increasing alarm—as if it’s natural.
He isn’t jealous, he tells himself, even if he nearly flinches when Bull talks about some handsome lad at camp with all the ease in the world, and Sera and Adaar both scrunch up their nose and scoff.
“So, Sera.”
Dorian is three pints in and feeling pleasantly warm, enough so that he doesn’t mind sitting closer to Bull than is strictly necessary.
“Adaar looked pretty damned pleased this morning.”
“She did.” Sera looks prouder than the moment she landed an arrow straight between a Venatori’s eyes.
“And you look pretty damned pleased yourself.”
“I don’t like that magic shite, but Maker, her hands?” She sounds wistful. “You probably know about that though, huh?”
Dorian doesn’t realize where it’s heading until it’s too late. Iron Bull does, but he can’t stop it. “Sera—“
“Come on! You’re telling me firecracker over here never did anything with a little, y’know, oomph to it when you were fuckin’ him?”
Dorian stands, even as the world sways around him and nausea crawls up his throat. The Tavern is crowded tonight. There are others within hearing distance. Some even glance at him as he stands, and his face burns dark with shame.
“I need to go.”
(In his rush to leave, he doesn’t hear the hushed conversation.
“What’s his problem?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Ain’t that complicated! You dick him down, he dicks you up—“
“It’s complicated.”)
Adaar finds him a few days later, brushing her fingers along spines of books she has no intention of reading.
(She had admitted to him one night that literacy was never a priority as a child. Her parents had bigger things to worry about; she’s lucky she speaks Common as well as she does with their limited knowledge.)
“You wanted to speak with me?”
Dorian stares down at a treatise on the applications of black lotus to embalming practices and carefully closes the text. He finds that he can’t meet her gaze.
“Yes.” He clears his throat. She stands tall above him, especially from his seat, and the covers on her horn catch the light in a way that should be intimidating. She’s never been more unimposing. “I thought I would share some advice.”
Adaar cocks her head. “Okay.”
He steeples his fingers, searching for the best way to approach this delicately—and then throws caution to the wind. “I know you haven’t spent much time around humans before the sky broke open, so you may not understand—but your reputation is at stake.”
“What?”
“You speak openly of your—proclivities,” he says, trying to sound diplomatic, “and your preference for bedding—not men. As your friend, I thought it prudent to warn you that speaking openly about such topics will earn disapproval and scorn from those that may otherwise ally themselves with the Inquisition—“
Electricity cracks along the bookshelf. He’s grateful that he didn’t jump.
“Is that what you think?” Surprisingly, her voice is quiet, despite the fury smoldering in her eyes. He wonders why hers are purple, when Bull’s are the color of the sky just before it rains. He wonders why he knows that.
“What I think is irrelevant—“
“Are you embarrassed of me?”
Dorian stares. The answer, he finds sickeningly, is yes, and he hates himself just a bit more for it.
“Inquisitor—“
“Are you embarrassed of yourself?”
It stings more than it should. He swallows past an inconvenient lump in his throat, fingers clenching and grasping at nothing in particular. His voice is high-pitched when he laughs, stammers out, “Why would I—?”
“Listen to me.” He finds that he has no choice as she suddenly crowds him at the chair, hands gripping each arm. He resists the urge to squirm back. “I thought I was doing the right thing back when I met your father. When I let you speak with him. But I’m telling you now, if I could go back—if I ever see him again—I would, without any hesitation, break his nose with my forehead. You’ve seen me headbutt people. It would be like that, but as painful as I could make it. I would throw him off the cliffs and into the Waking Sea. I would learn fire magic just to watch him burn.”
He is, not for the first time, grateful that this ire has never been directed his way. He can’t possibly imagine the stupidity that drives individuals to oppose the Inquisitor when she’s like this.
“I hardly understand what my father has to do with—“
“He has everything to do with this!” She throws her hands up in the air and steps away, leans forward on the railing as she scratches at the base of her horns, like she does when despite their best efforts, the world still burns around them. “What he did, what he told you—what Tevinter told you—“
Her voice is soft as she returns before him, kneeling so she can better meet his gaze.
He is horrendously embarrassed to find that his eyes are wet.
“It’s wrong. You have to know that it’s wrong. Who you are, who you love, who you bed—these are not things to be ashamed of, Dorian. People will talk about us regardless. Are you ashamed of being from Tevinter?”
“No.”
“Then you shouldn’t be ashamed of being you, just like I’m not ashamed of being Vashoth, or the fact that I bed women.”
“Seems like it’s woman, singular, these days,” he says, a weak attempt at teasing. His voice sounds wretched. Thankfully, it brings a quiet, shy smile to her face.
“Woman, singular,” she agrees. “I don’t care about my reputation, Dorian, though I don’t think that’s why you brought this up to begin with.”
She’s smarter than she looks. Dorian sniffs. “Perhaps not.” He can’t tell if he feels miserable or not.
He must look it, because suddenly Adaar stands up and grabs an arm, tugging at him. “Come on. Stand up.”
“Are you going to throw me over the balcony? I’d rather a much more distinguished death, if you will—“
“No,” she says exasperatedly, “I’m going to hug you.”
His voice sounds terribly small when he replies, “Oh.”
But stand he does, and true to her word, Adaar wraps her long arms around him and squeezes so tightly he briefly struggles to breathe. She lessens her grip when he frantically pats her side, but she still doesn’t let go entirely—and he gradually wraps his hands around her in turn, wondering if this is how dwarves feel daily as she practically smothers him with no effort at all.
He doesn’t know how long they stand there, but when he pulls back, his face feels wet. He coughs and smoothes his mustache, but he suspects from Adaar’s look it’s a lost cause.
“Your makeup is all runny.” She gently rubs at his cheek, and then frowns. “Um. I think I made it worse.”
He can’t help but laugh. “Well, if I’m going to look like a wretch, I suppose I must go all the way.” She looks concerned until he pats her arm and clears his throat. "I'm being melodramatic again. No need to worry about me."
"I always worry about you," she confesses, and he would feel a bit insulted if he hadn't just cried into her shoulder. "I don't understand what it's like, growing up like you did, but it's different here. Even if it wasn't—"
"Weren't," he corrects, lips twitching when she rolls her eyes.
"Even if it wasn't, then who cares? Pricks will always find a reason to judge others. It doesn't make them right."
She's right—that she doesn't understand what it's like, that she could never possibly understand the way he flinches when Bull reaches for him in public, even in the same way he does anyone else in their group, or how he spends a few minutes waiting to see if the coast is clear before fleeing Bull's room in the morning—but surprisingly, he finds that it doesn't matter. He can't quite say thank you, not right now, but he hopes she understands his gratitude in the way he squeezes her hand and offers her a brief, watery smile.
Months later, it happens.
They're camped out for the night in the Hissing Wastes, with sands in crevices Dorian didn't realize he had, but despite the terrible landscape, he finds that he's oddly happy. They've accomplished much today, enough so that the good mood has spread contagiously throughout the camp. Even the soldiers seem a little relieved tonight as they toast to good health and Andraste's toes or something like that.
Sera's whooping as Adaar and Bull butt heads, both of them looking fiercely determined until their horns lock and Adaar giggles as she finds herself unable to pull away. It takes some impressive maneuvering that eventually requires Adaar to practically climb atop Bull in order to free herself. By the time she's through, she's covered in a fine sheen of sweat, and Sera looks downright predatory.
Despite Sera's adamant demands, she refuses to retire to their tent for the night, and laughs as Sera launches herself into her lap and kisses her neck, and then paws her away as she murmurs, quite loudly, "Later."
He shouldn't be so surprised when the topic later turns to sex.
"—tingly thing, and it's amazing. If all mages learned that, everyone would be a lot less jumpy around them."
Adaar looks adorably proud. "That would require teaching them. I think I'll keep that secret to myself."
"It's hardly a secret, dear. Any mage can do it. I assure you, my talents are more than appreciated in bed."
Everyone falls quiet until Dorian scoffs and rolls his eyes, just before elbowing Bull in the side. "I'll remember your silence the next time I try that."
Bull breaks out into the widest, most ridiculous grin he's ever seen, and Dorian finds himself pulled into his side in a massive, one-armed hug. "It's a good tingly thing," he agrees, ignoring the way Dorian swats at him as he pulls back to smooth down his hair. "But you know what's really impressive? When you set those curtains—"
It's a story he's told multiple times at this point, but for once, Dorian doesn't find himself blanching or flinching or scoffing. Instead, he merely rolls his eyes and sips his watery wine, and says, with the utmost snobbery he can manage, "Once I've burned down the room, then you'll have something to be proud of."
He doesn't miss the way Adaar is smiling at him, and he feels warm in a way that has nothing to do with the hot sand beneath him.
"So, Dorian," Sera says, waggling her eyebrows in a way that shouldn't be physically possible, "what's it like to ride the Bull?"
She shrieks with laughter when he throws his wine at her.