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It’s a rare moment that Felix can escape his father’s watchful eyes these days, and he savours it, head tipped back in the Fereldan afternoon sunlight. He’s tucked himself into a little grove just off the garden by the Chantry, looking to escape, at least for a moment.
The village of Redcliffe is quaint by the standards he was raised with. He likes it, even if the villagers mostly eye him with mistrust. He doesn’t blame them, of course. Behind him, their southern Chantry sits empty, the sisters and mother driven out by his own father’s actions. With even the much loved Arl Teagan banished, all the beleaguered town has now is a cabal of rogue mages and their Tevinter masters. Yes, Felix knows how they look from the outside.
The view isn’t much better from the inside, either. Since Felix and his mother had been attacked by darkspawn, his father had become obsessed, seized with a sort of erratic zeal to ‘save’ Felix and abandoning everything he once cared for. It’s a hard thing to watch his father, once his greatest champion despite his disappointing lack of magic, become the sort of fanatic magister the south all feared.
Harder still when you’re grappling with your own mortality. Felix laughs to himself a little as he finds a rock to sit on, looking out over the waterfalls. He slides off his gloves and reaches down to pluck a flower, turning it between his fingers. He’s mostly come to terms with things, with his slow decay. Felix has always been a practical type. He could rage against it, if he wanted, throw himself into his father’s desperate research to save him, but it just seems a waste of time. You don’t come back from the Blight. He’d much rather take what moments he has left with the people he cares about.
Like Dorian. They’ve exchanged letters since Dorian and his father had their argument, and to Felix, they’re a lifeline. He’s never had many friends, even as a child, and Dorian’s unabashed affection has always been so vital to him. In Tevinter, where his own grandfather had sent assassins to rid his parents of the burden of a child with barely any magic, Dorian had always disregarded what people thought. Felix admired that about him.
Dorian was also the only other person bold enough to tell his father that after years of trying, he needed to cease dwelling on stopping Felix’s impending death. He was sorry that the two of them had argued, enough so that Dorian had been driven from their home, but he couldn’t say he disagreed with him. It’s hard enough to know you are going to die, and shortly, without living with your father’s fevered arguments to the contrary.
Still, he misses Dorian immensely. Letters are nice, but his world is much smaller without Dorian in it, and without the tentative thing that had been growing between them right before the attack. They’d agreed to keep it casual, a physical thing between friends, but Felix knows himself to be a liar. He could never be casual with Dorian. He’d known, from the first wine-stained kiss during one of his father’s parties, that he was wholly, entirely Dorian’s. He’d wind up hurt in the end, when Dorian met some strapping young man with no fear of Tevinter’s disdain, but for now, he can have this much. Felix has made a life out of understanding his own limitations and taking what he can get.
He spins the wildflower between his fingers, his heart aching more than his Blight-riddled lungs. “There you are!” His head jerks up, a smile already pulling at his lips as he stands, carefully. He’d know that voice anywhere. “Felix.”
He’d expected a warm greeting but not this, not the way Dorian scoops him up and kisses him soundly. A part of him panics for a moment before he remembers they’re hidden away from sight. For a heartbeat, Felix can pretend that there’s something else behind it, not just the years of friendship but something a little bit more - well, romantic. “Were you that lonely, in Fereldan?” he says breathlessly, as Dorian pulls away. Felix notes the wear in his robes, the creases and mud on his boots. It’s been a hard few months for Dorian, but Felix knows better than to tell him he’s worried. Dorian will simply skip around it, like he does all feelings.
“I’m always lonely without you, my dear man,” Dorian scoffs, and Felix’s heart lurches traitorously. He is, after all, Dorian’s: body, soul, and mutinous heart. He lets Dorian step back to look at him properly, one graceful hand turning Felix’s face this way and that. “I must say, you do look better than I’d feared.” He takes a seat on the rock Felix had previously been occupying, and pats the spot next to him. It’ll leave the two of them pressed up against each other. Felix uses Dorian’s shoulder to steady himself and sits. “You’re always so stoic in your letters, I half expected you wouldn’t tell me a thing and I’d find you a corpse, shambling about.” His tone is light, but he takes Felix’s hand, clasping it between his. Felix stares down at their fingers and tries not to think about how warm Dorian’s skin is.
“Rather good penmanship for a corpse, don’t you think?” Felix says, and Dorian throws back his head and laughs. Felix closes his eyes and lets the affection of it sink through him. Maker, but he’s missed this.
“How is Alexius?” Dorian asks. He rubs Felix’s hand as he speaks, clearly noting the clammy cold of his skin. Felix is always cold these days, but for the moment, it’s not quite so bad. “Still raging at the sky?”
Felix sighs. “I don’t know how he’s managed it,” he admits, “but he’s even worse lately.” He stares out at the waterfall once more. “The castle is full of strangers. I don’t know a single one of these Tevinter nationalists he’s brought with us.” The southern mages, at least, were a little better. They were angry, and they were scared, but they weren’t secretive like his father’s new men, always carrying on conversations that came to an abrupt halt when he entered the room. “There’s something very wrong here, Dorian.”
“Oh, I agree,” Dorian says. He leans a little against Felix’s side, and Felix welcomes the weight of it. Dorian has never been one to shy away from Felix or his shortcomings. “There’s some sort of little group gathering at Haven, and I think we could talk them into lending a hand.”
Felix nods slowly. “I’ve heard of them,” he says, and he frowns, trying to dredge up the name. “The Inquisition?”
“That’s the one,” Dorian agrees. From this angle, he can just see the curve of Dorian’s smile. “The name’s a bit grim, if you ask me, but it seems as though they’re the only ones doing a thing about this madness.”
“Mmm.” Felix has heard whispers around the village of an enormous Qunari woman who called the rogue mages and templars to heel in the Hinterlands nearby. There’s even a safe passage down to the Farms, for the first time in months. It’s more than his father has done, despite his insistence that the occupation of Redcliffe Castle was for ‘the good of the people’.
“I’ve a contact that’s told me that they’re coming here, to speak to the southern mages. I intend to speak to this Inquisitor then. Turn on the charm, so to speak. We can’t do anything about this unsettling nonsense alone.”
“I can help,” Felix says. “She’d have to speak to father about the mages.” And Felix would be there, thanks to his father’s overbearing concern. Always at Felix’s side, these days, in case he might swoon like a damsel. “I could pass her a message then. Tell her to meet you.”
“Just like those bard novels you always favoured,” Dorian teases. “Shall we get you an Orlesian mask? Perhaps some code words? ‘The raven flies at dawn’, etcetera, etcetera.”
Felix nudges him with his shoulder, but he’s smiling. It’s been years since he’d had much time to read, but Dorian remembers. It sends a thrill through him. “You always have to sensationalize things.”
“Well, yes,” Dorian agrees. He stands, holding out his hand to help Felix up. “You always have to be terribly practical. One of us has to keep things interesting.” He doesn’t let Felix’s hand go. “How long until your father expects you back?”
Felix shakes his head. “An hour, perhaps? Why?”
“Speaking of interesting, my means may be much more limited, but I do know of a barn nearby. I have it under good authority that it only smells a little of horse and has such nice straw.” Felix flushes as Dorian leans in close, his lips ghosting over his ear. “And I would so love to show you just how much I missed you.”
“I suppose I could be convinced,” Felix says skeptically, and Dorian grins at him, that honest, warm smile that Felix sees so rarely (and fancies, when he’s feeling hopeful, is just for him). “Wait just a moment, though.” Dorian pauses, confused, but understanding dawns on his face as Felix takes the flower he’s still holding and winds the stem into the straps at his bare shoulder. Dorian holds very still as he does it. “There.”
“A corsage from my beau,” Dorian murmurs, and Felix colours again. “How very Orlesian.” He presses a kiss to the soft spot below Felix’s ear. “And sweet, too.”
“Alright,” Felix says. “Show me to this barn of yours.”
Dorian keeps his hand held tight as they step once more into the bustle of the village. “An hour isn’t long, but I’m dreadfully efficient. If you’re very lucky, I’ll make you forget everything but my name." Felix knows he could do that and more. Dorian could ask him for anything, and Felix would say yes.
“That’s quite the promise,” he says instead. His heart pounds, and he lets Dorian lead the way.
-
These are Felix’s favourite moments.
As charmingly rustic as the barn had been, he’d managed to talk Dorian into letting him pay for a few nights at the Gull and Lantern, and they at least have the luxury of a bed now. The room itself is tiny, and they can hear the muted music and commotion through the worn floorboards, but it’s privacy, and it’s a bed. “Ahhh,” Dorian exhales. He’s sprawled on his back, rubbing a palm across the curve of Felix’s freshly shorn scalp, looking down at him stretched across his chest. “Oh, my poor delicate back thanks you for this.”
Felix thinks of Dorian’s one satchel, stained and stuffed with the essentials, and his worn robes, and he throws caution to the wind. “It’s been a while since you had a proper bed, then?” he asks, and Dorian doesn’t reply. “I’m sorry. I never thought things would have ended up like they have.” It had been hard to read the letter Dorian had sent after his escape from the Pavus estate. By then, Dorian had long fled Minrathous, and his messages had gotten spotty, coming from all over the country. When Felix had read that letter, when he’d heard what Halward had tried to do - by that point, he was already nauseous all the time, but that turned his stomach all the same. Felix was glad Dorian had fought for him, but after his father had kicked Dorian out - he felt responsible for all that had happened. If he hadn’t gotten sick, if he’d been well enough to intervene - well. It didn’t matter now.
“Neither did I,” Dorian says quietly. His fingers are gentle against the thin skin of Felix’s head, and Felix lets his eyes slide shut. “I’m sorry.”
Felix pushes up to look at him. “You’re sorry? Whatever for?”
“For wasting the time we had left,” Dorian says, as though it were obvious. His palms smooth down Felix’s arms before he presses them to his wrists, steadying him. Or, Felix thinks, steadying himself. He can’t tell which. “For drowning myself in self-pity and sub-par wine when I could have been doing, well, this.” The smile that twists his lips seems reflexive. “Frankly, I was shocked that you even wanted to see me again. I’ve been a terribly poor friend.”
Friend, Felix thinks wryly, his hands spread over Dorian’s sweat-damp skin, Dorian’s spend between his thighs. “I know what Halward did,” Felix says, and he shrugs, settling himself back down. “You needed time. You can’t really think I would hold that against you.”
Dorian’s hand settles once more around the back of his skull, possessive, warm. “You’re far too good to me, and I really can’t imagine why.” Dorian sighs. “Other than my terribly dashing good looks, of course.”
“That must be it,” Felix says dryly. “It’s certainly not how you were the first person I ever met who didn’t care about what magic I had. Nor the late night meals after my father went to bed, or how you were the only one who gave me the time of day at the parties and balls I had to attend.”
A glance at Dorian reveals his expression to be strangely exposed, though he covers it with a quick smile when he catches Felix looking. “Oh, do go on,” Dorian teases. “I love it when a handsome man tells me nice things. Flattery will get you everywhere, you know.”
A handsome man. It’s not the first time that Dorian has said something similar, but it still fills Felix’s chest with affection. On a whim, he reaches for Dorian’s free hand and presses his lips to his knuckles. “Mmm, I think you’re doing just fine,” he says. Improbably, under his ear, Felix can hear Dorian’s heart speed up.
“Well, at any rate, I’m glad we’re together again, even if we must slum it like this.” There’s a raucous round of laughter drifting up through the floor. Dorian plucks at the thin blanket and makes a distressed noise. “Honestly, you’d think Fereldans have never heard of a fabric other than wool.”
Felix hums. His father is involved in something terrible, Dorian’s is worse, and in less than a week, he and Dorian will be risking everything to stop this madness. Still, Felix is happier now than he’s been in years, now that they’re together. He says as much aloud, and Dorian’s breath stutters.
“Oh, enough,” Dorian says, and his voice is...not as steady as Felix expected. It makes something too big and hopeful surge in his chest. “Don’t be ridiculous. I know you were just bored to death in your sickbed, with your father fussing over you.”
There’s a grain of truth in that, but Felix isn’t ready to let Dorian brush it all aside. “Believe what you like,” Felix tells him, “but when have you known me to say a thing just for your ego?”
He lets out a startled noise when Dorian hauls him up so he can be kissed soundly. “Never,” Dorian murmurs, and Felix lets himself be maneuvered between Dorian’s spread thighs, hip to hip. “You’ve never lied to me. You’re the best of us.”
He kisses Felix again, with a kind of desperation that tells Felix that he’s done talking. “So believe me?” Felix asks, and Dorian touches his cheek, gentle, unsure, and says nothing. Felix takes pity on him, and asks nothing more, leaning in to kiss Dorian back with all that he has.
-
To Felix, the confrontation feels rather anticlimactic.
He stands at his father’s side as the Inquisitor strides into the hall at Redcliffe, her companions with her. He can see his father shift nervously at the sight of the big Qunari, and he does his best not to look too hard for whatever tricks she has up her sleeves. It won’t do to alert anyone to the plan in motion.
Felix finds he likes the Inquisitor. While a part of him worries about his father, what he’ll do when he’s cornered, there’s a small part of him that admires the way she stares him down, smile on her lips. She’s walked right into the dragon’s den, and she thinks his father’s posturing is amusing. She’s got a spine of steel, that one.
But he tires of this back and forth, of the tension that winds into his Blight-ridden lungs and makes his heart pound. Felix breaks into the confrontation between them, coy, veiled words of two swordsmen, sizing each other up. “She knows everything, father,” Felix says, and the look his father levels at him fills him with guilt.
“Felix,” his father says, his voice low and dangerous. There is betrayal in his gaze, and it wounds Felix. “What have you done?”
Maker, Felix hopes this is the right choice. He wants his father back, not this fevered zealot. Still, between him, the Inquisitor, and even Dorian, none of them have the right words to shake his father free of this story he’s told himself. He hears his own horror reflected in Dorian’s voice, the way it shakes and softens, and even if this battle is hopeless, he is glad, at least, that he has help.
“Let’s go home,” he begs his father, but when Alexius rounds on him, all he can see is the same desperation that’s consumed the man since Felix’s attack and his mother’s death.
“No! It’s the only way, Felix.” Felix frowns, confused, and opens his mouth to reply, but his father cuts him off. “He can save you!”
This is worse. It’s so much worse. It was bad when he’d thought his father was doing this Elder One’s bidding for their homeland, for a bit of power, to get some revenge on the Inquisitor. But this? For him? It make him sick. “Save me?”
His father charges on, spouting nonsense about how the taint in him can be lifted, and when Felix glances out at the hall, Dorian isn’t watching the man speak. His eyes are fixed on Felix. “I’m going to die,” Felix says, and his father flinches. Dorian doesn’t. “You need to accept that.”
After that, it’s all a blur. The Inquisitor’s people melt out of the shadows, cutting throats with a brutal efficiency that Felix can’t find in him to mourn them. He doesn’t know any of these strange Venatori, men and women bound with the same endless fervor as his father. If this is what it takes --
His father raises his arm, holding something glowing in his palm. Felix recognizes it as an amulet, a project his father had been working on since Dorian was his protege, and his stomach drops. He barely pays attention to the way his father shouts, more concerned with how he’s aiming at the Inquisitor - and at Dorian, standing next to her.
He jolts into movement but he’s too slow, he’s always too slow now, and in a blinding flash, Dorian and the Inquisitor vanish. Felix thought he had known fear before this, and yet now he knows he was wrong. He freezes, his breath stuttering in his chest, looking at the spot where they’d once stood.
The Inquisitor’s companions are as wide-eyed and shocked as Felix himself. The two of them are a study in contrast: the skinny elf raises her bow and bares her teeth at his father; the big Qunari does not move, though he gives the impression of a storm brewing, his single, calculating eye sweeping the room.
“It worked,” Felix’s father murmurs, triumphant, and Felix is seized with dread. He knows so little about his father’s work - his own inadequacy locked him out of the world his father lived in - and he hasn’t the slightest idea of what his father has done. Thrown them back in time? Frozen them, so far away that they can’t return to foil his plans? There are plenty of options, and any of them, all of them are terrible.
I should have told him, he thinks wretchedly, I should have told him. There is a yawning void opening inside him, and for once, Felix is almost grateful that his days are numbered.
He looks at the exultant look on his father’s face. “Father…” he says, and then abruptly, from behind him, there’s another flash. He whirls to see a battered Dorian and his Inquisitor friend tumble from a portal once more. He stumbles backwards, catching a hand on the throne to steady himself, blinking in disbelief. How - ?
Something has happened, he knows that much. Wherever his father had sent them must have been terrible. Dorian looks too haunted, too drawn, and he keeps glancing at Felix, as though to assure himself that he’s here. What did he see? “You’ll have to do better than that,” Dorian says to Felix’s father, and Felix is shocked to watch his father drop to his knees.
“Is that the best you’ve got?” the Inquisitor asks. She too bears the effects of whatever trip they took, her robes streaked with ash and grime, the tightness of her mouth a stark contrast to the lightness of her voice.
“You’ve won,” Felix’s father says bitterly, and Felix drops to a squat next to him. “Felix,” his father says. He’s always seen his father as such a large figure, renowned for his skill and his knowledge in magic academia. It’s such a startling change once more, from cackling zealot to a man so small and bereft, left on the cold stone floor.
“It’s going to be alright, father,” Felix says, more out of hope than any certainty. He places a hand on his father’s shoulder
“But you’ll die.”
Felix sighs. “Everyone dies, father,” he says. He helps him to his feet, and watches the Inquisition’s men sweep his father away.
He’s always admired his father, and outside of his schooling in Orlais, he’s spent most of his life at his side. He’ll never be the mage his parents were, but his father is the one who taught him to love learning, to do what he loved and not what the world around him expected. It’s a hard thing to see this side of his father: despair run to madness, then run all the way out. He hopes, well, that this isn’t the last time he sees him. He’d like his last memory of his father to be something a bit better than the tired, desolate slope of his shoulders as he walks away.
It would be far too easy if that was the end of things, however. The Inquisition soldiers march his father out, and then the Fereldan army marches in, and things get tense once more.
It’s not Felix’s place to say anything, so he steps back, watching the King and the Inquisitor argue over the southern mages. If he’s lucky, his cooperation with the Inquisition will give him the space to escape home. “Wait,” Dorian says, catching his arm. He draws him away from the crowd, back towards the throne.
“I’ve never seen you such a mess,” Felix teases, because it’s easier to say than what he’d like, what he needs to. He brushes a hand down Dorian’s front, gesturing at the dampened, water-stained hem of Dorian’s robes. “You must’ve had a time of it -”
Dorian seizes his hand, pressing it down against his own chest. “Marry me,” he says, all in a rush.
“What?”
“Marry me,” Dorian says again. Felix can feel Dorian’s heart racing beneath his palm. “What I saw - I don’t -” Something dark flashed across his face. “I don’t want to wait. I want this, I want you, for whatever time we have left.”
He’s serious, Felix thinks, astounded. Dorian’s eyebrows are tipped up with nerves, his grey eyes fixed upon him. “Dorian,” he begins, though he doesn’t even know how to finish that thought. Half of him surges with joy, but the other half of him worries. Despite all of his father’s best efforts, Felix knows he’s got less than a year left. He spends half his days sleeping, even just standing here burns energy he cannot replenish. “You can’t want that,” Felix sighs. He curls his other hand into the stained robes at Dorian’s waist. “There’s no way I could keep up with you like this - ”
“I don’t care about that,” Dorian scoffs. Carefully, so carefully, he cups Felix’s face in his hand. “You foolish man. Don’t you see?” He shakes his head and laughs, a quiet, dry thing. “It’s only you, for me.”
Felix exhales, a single shuddering breath. “They say I’ve only got months,” he reminds Dorian.
“And they say I’m a deviant inebriate who’s embarrassed his family,” Dorian scoffs. “None of that means anything to me. Felix, you are the very best man I know. I’ve been in head over heels love with you for years. Even if you only had days, I’d still ask you this,” Dorian says, but he’s already starting to pull back, his hand dropping from Felix’s face. He always did get skittish with feelings. When Felix doesn’t reply immediately, Dorian’s eyes dart away. “Ah. Well. Never mind all that, then. Dreadfully sorry, don’t know what I was thinking. I’ll...well, I don’t know what I’ll do. But I am sorry.”
“Stop it,” Felix says, and he reels Dorian back in. “You’ve nothing to be sorry for. You mean it?”
“With every fibre of my being,” Dorian admits, “which means I feel terribly vulnerable right now, so if you could give an answer, that would be ever so helpful.”
“Yes.” The word slips out before Felix can even think about it. It hangs in the air between them for a single moment, and then Dorian lights up like the sun, catching Felix’s face in his hands once more and showering kisses all over him. “Dorian!” They’re still in plain sight, and Felix is still Tevinter-born, he still feels the shame of what they’re doing. If he were a good Tevinter, he’d stop this, but if he were a good Tevinter, he’d say no, too.
Between Dorian’s flurry of affection, he can catch sight of the Inquisitor throwing them a wink and then herding as many people out of the room as she can. “Call me ‘husband’,” Dorian purrs, and Felix laughs, burying his face in Dorian’s throat. He’s getting tired, his chest aching with joy and each breath in, and Dorian holds him close, holds him steady.
“Not yet,” Felix tells him, and Dorian clicks his tongue. “You’ll have to work for it.”
“I will,” Dorian says, and Felix tips his head back to look at him. He’s seen the way that Dorian looks at him, laden with affection, but this is something new. It’s not muted anymore. He could bask in this. “Just you wait.”
At the broad doors to the hall, the Inquisitor stands waiting, and reluctantly, Felix pulls away. “I’ll hold you to that,” he tells Dorian.
“Good,” Dorian says. His nerves are gone now, and this is one of Felix’s favourite sides of Dorian, when he’s as smug and self-satisfied as a cat. Across the hall, the Inquisitor clears her throat and Dorian only releases Felix so he can hold out one finger to her. Felix’s laugh is cut off when Dorian catches his mouth in a deep, searing kiss. Even if Felix’s lungs worked properly, it would steal his breath away, and when Dorian ends it, his head is ringing and his heart is pounding. “Alright. Now we can go,” Dorian says, and he throws a wink to Felix.
“Ah yes,” Felix says, and he takes the elbow Dorian offers him. He needs the steadying. “That was certainly vital.”
“I told you,” Dorian says. He leads them back to his Inquisitor friend, and then they head out of the castle, back towards the village.
-
Everything aches. That’s not new, of course, though now it’s the ache of healing, new growth. Felix shifts, wrinkling his nose at the bright afternoon light slanting across his face, and the pain that starts up behind his eyes. “Ah, good afternoon,” Solas says from the doorway. “You look better today.”
Felix hums, his throat sore. “How long did I sleep this time?”
“Most of the day.” Solas inclines his head. “It certainly seems as though you’re improving.”
It feels like it, too. When Solas had suggested the treatment, he’d agreed to it, with a bit of hesitation. It seemed as though he were just prolonging the inevitable once more. Still, Solas had been certain, and Dorian had asked him to consider it, and so he had.
It had been miserable. Felix remembers very little, besides the agony of it, but he’s been told he spent days in bed, screaming and vomiting up everything he’d even thought about consuming in the past year. When he’d finally awoken for good, throat ragged with overuse and his every muscle ragged from tensing them, it had felt like a cloud had finally been lifted. The taint that had grown within him through the years, wormed its way into every part of him, was gone.
He still feels awful, but now, there’s a chance it’ll get better, rather than worse.
Before he can reply, the door opens once more. “There he is,” Dorian declares, and Felix smiles as Solas’ expression shifts from quietly pleased to long-suffering. Dorian’s arms are full with an absolutely enormous bouquet of flowers. It’s terribly tacky. Felix loves it. “You’re awake! Finally. Thought I might waste away waiting for you.”
“Perish the thought,” Felix says. He raises a weak hand to stroke his thumb across the flowers. “Are these for me?”
“Oh, yes.” Dorian sets the bouquet down, not next to Felix, but across the room. He can see them better from there. Dorian fusses with the flowers until he’s satisfied. “I spent a fortune getting them shipped up here. Aren’t they hideous? Nothing but the best for you.”
Skyhold is filled to the brim with people now, but Felix has a room all to himself. It’s small, but well-appointed. While his bed takes up most of the space, there’s a plush chair in one corner, and a couple of tables, covered in potions and books brought by well-wishers. Dorian has plenty of places he could rest himself, but instead, he climbs into bed with Felix. Carefully, of course, tucking himself around Felix’s aching body, and making a small happy noise.
Solas sighs. “Felix is still healing,” he admonishes.
“Yes, and?” Dorian raises his head. “You wouldn’t tell a man he couldn’t sit at his own husband’s bed, would you?” He arches one well-groomed eyebrow and Felix rolls his eyes. As ever, Dorian’s presence just makes him feel better. “No wonder you’ve so few friends. Your bedside manner is atrocious.”
“I’ll keep that in mind for the next time I save his life,” Solas says, eyes narrowed, and he sweeps from the room.
“I could say something about pots and kettles right now,” Felix muses, and Dorian scoffs.
“You won’t, though,” he says. He rubs a hand over Felix’s tender scalp, soft with new growth. His hair, growing back, for the first time in half a decade. “Because you love me, and we’re married.” Dorian’s eyes are soft, and every time he says that, Felix shivers. They’re married now. Months on, and it still feels unreal.
“I do,” he says. He smiles against Dorian’s chest. “But if you think that could ever stop me from telling you the truth, you don’t know me at all.”
“Well, it was worth a try,” Dorian sighs, and he presses a kiss to Felix’s temple. “I suppose I must content myself with being dreadfully, incandescently happy instead.” He heaves another dramatic sigh, and his hand curls into Felix’s, rubs across the warm metal of his ring. Felix hasn’t taken it off once since Dorian put it on.
“Such hardship you bear,” Felix agrees. Happiness suits Dorian. Felix has known him for years, known the way he carried the weight of his family’s expectations and disapproval around on his back, and even with the threat of the rifts and Corypheus, Dorian is lighter now. It gives Felix a small sense of satisfaction, to have given him that much.
They lapse into silence, and Felix listens to the even, calming beat of Dorian’s heart. It’s already lulling him back to sleep. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs. “I’m terrible company.”
Dorian snorts. “I’m just glad you’re around to be any sort of company at all,” he points out. “Besides, if I let you get up and injure yourself, I’m certain Solas would simply make you a widower in a very dramatic fashion.” He leans back so he can smile at Felix. “And we are far, far too pretty to die this young.”
“As you say,” Felix agrees. He yawns, tucking his head neatly under Dorian’s chin. “I suppose the wait will make it that much sweeter.”
Dorian pulls the blankets up to cover them both, his cheek pressed to Felix’s head. “I would wait forever for you, I’m afraid,” he says. “And it’s always been sweet.”
“You’re terrible,” Felix mumbles. His eyes are growing heavy. “And you’re mine.”
“Isn’t it wonderful?” Dorian agrees, and he pulls Felix tighter to him. The warmth of his body and steady beat of his heart lulls Felix back to sleep