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Inquisitor Rasiha Adaar watched them from between the columns across the courtyard. Brown and blond, slim and stocky, sharp and blunt. Not blunt as in stupid, Maker no. Blunt as in forthright, forthcoming, but never stupid. The intense focus and occasional barbed comment belied Cullen’s mild demeanor and uncovered his honed cleverness and sophisticated implementation of tactics to sweep the board. Dorian, on the other hand, used his customary wit and cunning to stun his opponent and trick him into making the wrong move at precisely the wrong time, so he could knock Cullen’s pieces out from under him.
She was aware that as a six-foot tall Qunari with horns and a large shiny green anchor on her hand she was hardly inconspicuous, but the shadows of the courtyard columns provided a handy cover for her to conceal herself and watch the pair move their pieces and make their conversation. It was with a near-religious fervour that they played, so wrapped up in the manoeuvres and logic behind the game that the world seemed to disappear around them until all that remained was the board, the tactics and each other.
In their rapture, they didn’t notice a soul and therefore it wasn’t difficult for anyone to remark the way Dorian would lean over the table into Cullen’s space and smile at him with a genuine affection that eclipsed even the grins he would give Rasiha, who would happily argue that she was his best friend in the whole of Skyhold. Cullen would answer with a twinkle in his eyes, leaning back in his chair with a slight blush on his face. It was never explicit, but she wasn’t an idiot. She was many things: absolutely the Inquisitor, definitely a killer, probably a fool, possibly even a heretic. She wasn’t an idiot.
It might have been the way they played the game against each other, flirtingly, teasingly, brazenly. It was also in the way they moved around each other. Like two pawns circling around the board, daring each other to make the first move. Dorian and Cullen were more similar than they realised. She knew they would have talked to each other about their experiences, possibly even found kindred spirits in one another and the rejections they had faced from places they known so intimately.
Red lyrium and blood magic had a similar effect on the psyche; the introduction and continuation of a sickening feeling that no matter what you did, they would catch up to you some day. Dorian had not experienced the horrors of Kinloch and Kirkwall and the constant thumping and singing of the corrupted lyrium, but Cullen would never experience the fear of realising your own father and family would rather risk you becoming a drooling mess than a fulfilled human being, and were willing to go against their own morals to make it happen.
Rasiha had held Dorian as he sobbed, and she had dodged Cullen’s philter as he hurled it against the wall. She had supported these broken men as they began to pick up the pieces of their lives, and in turn they’d helped her put herself back together. Although they weren’t the only ones. She sought an ever-warmer comfort in the Iron Bull’s strong and unyielding arms to thaw her bone-chilling loneliness, and there had been many a time she had begged Cole to help soothe her aching mind. Varric and Cassandra remained dependable, snarky and comforting allies; Blackwall a pillar of unfailing loyalty; Vivienne a difficult reminder of mage brilliance and a caustic but enjoyable wit to boot; Solas soft-spoken and surprisingly happy to help; Sera smart and a sweet provider of baked goods. Leliana and Josephine gave her all the support and advice she might need, and a pair of enjoyable friendships hilariously grounded in gossip and tactical conundrums.
It was different with Dorian. In the weeks after Redcliffe, they had finally opened up and cemented their relationship, finding a mentor, a best friend, and a confidant in each other. Dorian had been the first to know about the extent of her debauched mercenary past and her debauched Inquisitorial present, and it hadn’t taken long for tales of Tevinter trouble to come spilling out of his lips, both with and without the help of wine. On the other hand, the wine was an ever-present reminder that the stitches holding Dorian together were slowly unravelling, and every snide mutter from a passing Southerner served as a needle to further unpick the hurried repair job he had attempted after fleeing the oppressive place he somehow still loved and cherished.
That was until Cullen had put his foot down. The discovery of one of his soldiers spreading rumours about the filthy, untrustworthy Vint, spitting all over our legacy and tarnishing our reputation led to that man spending a week in the stocks eating thin cabbage soup, and occasionally being on the receiving end of rocks that flew suspiciously from Sera’s window. Some people even said they could hear Bull’s distinctive laugh on occasion. No-one since then had dared breathe a word about Dorian within the Inner Circle’s earshot, and when he kept risking his life for Rasiha time and time again, the people in Skyhold slowly came to realise he bore no ill will towards them. At least, no physical ill will. It wasn’t hard to walk past Dorian’s library alcove and catch him cursing the poor book-keeping skills or boring culture of the land he found himself in.
Rasiha suspected he missed Tevinter so much it was almost like someone had punched a gaping hole in his chest.
The best they can do is the Malefica Imperio? Trite propaganda. But if you want twenty volumes on whether Divine Galatea took a shit on Sunday, this is evidently the place to find it!
It wasn’t difficult to see what Dorian and Cullen evidently and irritatingly could probably see but didn’t act on. It was almost inevitable, nearly typical, like one of Varric’s terrible books. The prickly mage and the uptight Templar, falling for each other over a game of tactics that engaged them intellectually in a way moving figures around a map and blasting demons in the chest couldn’t.
And yet, Rasiha knew they were both more than the descriptors people clamped upon them. She might have been Dorian’s best friend, but apart from Cassandra she was the only one who knew Cullen’s true problems and had come to consider him a friend too. Maker above, she had watched him grind his hands into his face, punch his bookcase, and beg her with red eyes to take control of his life.
I will not give less to the Inquisition than I did to the Chantry. I should be taking it! I should be taking it.
How was she supposed to tell him that he was fifty times the man he thought he was? How could she possibly put into words the admiration and amazement she felt every time she looked at his tired face, at the scar on his lip, at the tension in his shoulders and knew he was bearing all this pain without even a hint of lyrium? How could she express her fear that if red lyrium infiltrated Skyhold and sang to him in its terrible piercing voice, she might have to kill him to stop the monster that would erupt?
Instead she gave to him what she knew a man of his calibre needed. A challenge; somebody to take charge and order him to step up. She accused him of trying to back down when it got tough, and he relented with a gratefulness so deep in his eyes that it almost brought her to her knees.
Cullen was no uptight Templar, not anymore. He was simply a man now, but a man with the weight of thousands of lives on his shoulders, much like Rasiha. Leliana had her agents that required constant pastoral care and were almost perpetually in danger, and if Josephine wasn’t careful her court contacts could end up with knives in their ribs and poison in their stomachs. But Cullen routinely sent his soldiers into the true heart of darkness, and was expected to be responsible for every single one vaporised by demons, eaten by bears, savaged by dragons. He knew every detail, every division, and all of his lieutenants’ names.
Andraste’s arse they were almost made for each other, with Cullen’s meticulousness and Dorian’s fastidiousness. Rasiha wanted to smash their heads together, as she peered through the columns and watched them make their moves, smile their smiles, play their games. She could still hear Dorian’s voice from earlier as it floated through the floorboards and permeated her conversation with Leliana, as he grumbled to an impassive Helisma about Cullen and his irritating habit of besting him before he could notice. Maker, the man didn’t even know he was in love. Sickening, really.
That was enough for Rasiha, frankly. She removed herself from the shadows, taking off her concealment, and drew closer to the games table, nodding to the occasional Chantry sister or medic who walked past her. She briefly conversed with a merchant looking to set up an herb stall, but never took her eyes off the two men, who were so absorbed in the game they didn’t even notice her approaching.
‘Gloat all you like,’ she could hear Cullen saying as she drew closer, ‘I have this one.’ Rasiha knew Cullen was a good-looking man, but she didn’t realise how well a smug expression rested on his face. Dorian would have noticed.
Dorian rolled his eyes, moving another piece on the board, before deigning to reply. ‘Are you…sassing me, Commander? I didn’t know you had it in you.’
How could they not see they were blatantly obsessed with each other? Was Dorian really that repulsed by a Fereldan? Was Cullen still deathly terrified of mages?
Cullen sighed and shook his head with just a hint of a lingering smirk on his face. ‘Why do I even –’ and then he abruptly half-arose and schooled his features into an impressively blank mask. She had been spotted. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes as Cullen invoked one of her official titles. Inquisitor. Such an odd thing to say when he was the one usually giving her advice.
Dorian continued to eye his opponent with mirth on his face whilst raising a hand in greeting. ‘Leaving, are you? Does this mean I win?’ A lovely, juicy bit of bait dangling in front of Cullen’s face. Even Varric couldn’t have written this better.
‘Are you two playing nice?’ Rasiha intoned, raising her eyebrow slightly and putting her hands on her hips.
‘I’m always nice,’ Dorian replied smoothly, before turning back to his opponent, ‘you need to come to terms with my inevitable victory. You’ll feel much better.’ He moved another piece and it was like Rasiha had never turned up. She’d never felt invisible before, never really thought it could be possible with her stature and general demeanour, but Dorian’s all-encompassing obsession with Cullen had managed to render her more concealed than if she had invoked her stealth ability.
‘Really?’ Uh-oh, the death knell eyebrow. Rasiha almost felt bad for Dorian, as Cullen moved another piece and grinned in glee, ‘Because I just won, and I feel fine.’ He leant back, his whole body open and delighted, as if to say you can curl up in my lap now. I won, it’s over, give me a cuddle.
Dorian responded by folding one leg over the other and looking at him like the cat who got the cream. He had a nice view, Rasiha could agree, but Maker if he wasn’t unsubtle. ‘Don’t get smug,’ he said teasingly, ‘there will be no living with you.’
And before Rasiha could tell both of them to get a room before she knocked them out and tied them together, Dorian was up and away without so much as a goodbye. Cullen watched him go, still smiling slightly, before turning back to her.
‘I should return to my duties as well, unless you would care for a game.’
Rasiha looked down at the game, thought briefly about the myriad operations she had to approve at the war table, and shrugged her shoulders.
‘Prepare the board, Commander.’
They passed the next hour or so in a mixture of light discussion and companionable silence. Cullen told her about his family, and Rasiha told him about her mercenary band. He commented that it was the longest the pair had gone without discussing the Inquisition, and she found herself appreciating it and the lack of lines on his normally concerned face. The birds were chirping in the background and Skyhold continued to hustle and bustle around them as Cullen saw through Rasiha’s flimsy attempts to cheat and absolutely wiped the board with her.
‘This one is mine,’ Cullen finally said, flicking over one of Rasiha’s pieces. She conceded with a small smile. He seemed so much at ease; it was sad that in a minute they would have to go back to Inquisition business and remember all the lives that rested on their victory. If they made even one slip, it would be fatal.
‘Cullen,’ she began, before pressing her fingers to her lips, unsure how to proceed. He simply looked back at her, waiting for a continuation. When it became apparent this wasn’t coming without an internal struggle, he sighed.
‘If this is about the lyrium, I promise –’
Rasiha shook her head so fast it almost came off her neck. ‘No, no, it’s not about that,’ she frantically hissed, ‘I have no further comment on that. You know my views.’
‘Then what is it?’ Cullen asked, ‘is it about one of your inner circle? Is it about Bull? I know you’re close, but if you’re becoming uncomfortable with running missions with him and your concern for each other’s safety is overwhelming, I can make sure him and the Chargers are assigned slightly less dangerous missions running errands in the Hinterlands and on the Storm Coast. We have metals we need gathering, and they’ll relish the opportunity to smash up some red Templars.’
The table in front of Rasiha looked mightily attractive for flipping purposes, but she resisted the urge. ‘It’s not about Bull; he can hold his own and I know for a fact he trusts me in the field enough to not bother trying to be overprotective. He’s just reckless. Anyway,’ she ploughed ahead, ignoring Cullen’s apprehensive glance, ‘I might as well just say it. It’s about you.’
‘Me? I thought you said –’
‘Cullen, would you let me speak.’ Rasiha’s patience had run out. ‘I am naturally perceptive. And I couldn’t help but notice that these past months you and Dorian have developed a habit of flirting so incorrigibly with each other that it actually makes me a little sick, and frankly I’d like to know what in the name of the Maker’s perky arse you plan to do about it?’
Cullen shut his eyes. Was he…was he holding back laughter?
‘Cullen, this isn’t a joke!’
‘I know! I know!’ But still he laughed, and Rasiha was finding it very hard to not reach over and just throttle him. ‘But you, the Herald of Andraste, just said the Maker’s perky arse so please let me find that amusing before I return to the matter at hand.’ He did a fine impression of her – she would find it funny if she wasn’t trying so hard not to slap him.
‘I wish you would,’ Rasiha muttered, her annoyance slowly being displaced by fondness because Cullen looked ridiculously content and carefree like this. Maybe she should ask him about Dorian more often.
Cullen wiped a tear out of his eye, before sighing. ‘Dorian and I,’ he paused, looking out into the courtyard, up at a host of swooping sparrows, ‘Dorian and I have a lot in common. I know what there is between us, and I’m almost sure he feels it too. But we’re both men with larger problems in our lives and I’m not entirely convinced it’s the time to discuss anything like that.’
Rasiha rolled her eyes. ‘If there’s any time it’s now. I don’t mean to alarm you, Cullen, but the end of the world could be rapidly approaching. If we fail –’
‘Do not speak like that,’ Cullen interjected harshly, any remaining mirth swiftly replaced by a fiery and passionate blaze of determination. ‘The end of the world will come, be when it may, but it will not be at the hands of Corypheus, or red Templars, or the Venatori. We will not fail, Inquisitor. Some of us may die, but we will not fail.’
This was the reason he commanded their armies, and she knew it perfectly well. This was the reason lyrium had not conquered his mind. Because no matter how hard the journey became, how impassable the road ahead seemed, Cullen continued to march.
‘I admire you, Commander,’ Rasiha replied, ‘and I know you are a man of honour and principles. Therefore, surely Dorian deserves to know how you feel. No matter how optimistic you and I both are, who knows what could go wrong.’
‘You are an expert at steering the subject back to what you want to talk about,’ Cullen said with a tired smile, as the weight of the world settled back upon his and Rasiha’s shoulders. ‘I share your opinion. I’d love nothing more than to go to the library and tell him right now. But, it’s just…’
‘You’re nervous, aren’t you?’
Cullen eyed her. It wasn’t a secret that he was hardly the most experienced man out there, and any early prospects of love or relationships had been stamped out by abominations, mad Knight-Commanders, and nights upon nights of crippling nightmares. He was nervous. Rasiha could read him like a book, was it any wonder she knew exactly what was chaining him to his chair?
‘Just tell him,’ she said softly as she rose to leave, ‘he’ll reciprocate. And if he doesn’t,’ she smiled ruefully, ‘tomorrow is another day.’
Rasiha exited the garden, her mouth still upturned and an echo of her laugh carrying itself along the wind into the mountains. Only then did Cullen let himself press his fingertips to his eyebrows and sigh deeply. He felt like he was back at Kinloch, about to start stuttering his way through a conversation with a young woman fresh out of her Harrowing who would unknowingly become the most famous hero of their time. What was it with him and charismatic mages who made him perpetually nervous, no matter the circumstances? Was it any wonder he had fallen for Dorian? He almost wanted to go back in time and box his younger self’s ears for being so predictable.
But then he’d have to box his own ears in the present, and he didn’t need the people in this Chantry garden watching him smack himself around the head. There were already rumours he was overworked and slightly unstable. Contributing to them would do nothing but further fuel the rumour mill that had begun to sweep its way around the restless stronghold, and although Cullen was sure the whispers of the Inquisitor’s romantic conquests were hilarious from what Josephine had told him, he didn’t want to contribute to his own gossipy demise. So, steeling his conviction, he got up from his chair and made his way to the Main Hall.
Naturally that meant he got waylaid no less than six times by his soldiers, scouts, merchants and random Orlesian nobles who were just begging for a chance to shadow the Inquisition’s famous commander. By the time he made it up to the library, Dorian was nowhere to be found, and he cursed his own notoriety. How could he be the commander of a whole army if he couldn’t even keep track of one sodding mage? He felt like screaming. Instead, he picked a big heavy book with an unpronounceable name and pretended to flick through it, schooling his face into an approximation of concentration so no-one would disturb him while he waited like some lovesick teenager. It was barely after midday, Dorian couldn’t be far.
‘Commander. I had no idea you could speak Antivan, let alone read it.’
Cullen looked up from where he was steadfastly not paying attention to the book to meet Solas’ steady gaze, his serene eyes holding a bare hint of amusement. Cullen knew immediately that he’d been rumbled. He sighed, checked the text to verify it was indeed written in indecipherable Antivan, and put the book back on the table where he’d found it.
‘Solas, I’d appreciate if you kept it quiet that you just found me looking at a book written in a language I don’t know,’ he said quietly, trying to remain unheard by Grand Enchanter Fiona who was most certainly attempting to avoid eye contact, ‘we don’t need the Skyhold rumour mill turning that into a full-blown tale about how the Commander can’t read at all.’
Solas smiled a little. Cullen didn’t know he could even express emotions, so a smile was a pleasant surprise. From what he knew of Solas, this show of mirth was his equivalent of a rumbling belly laugh.
‘Don’t worry Commander, your secret is safe with me,’ he replied, brushing past Cullen to select a book from the shelf, ‘as for Dorian, he is upstairs conversing with Leliana. Something about lack of Venatori advancement in the west, after our last excursion to the Hissing Wastes. He won’t be long.’
Solas swept back downstairs, leaving Cullen to gape uselessly. Did the half of the fortress really know about that? He might as well have grabbed a pot of Josephine’s ink, written DORIAN PAVUS ACOLYTE on his face and paraded himself around the courtyard. Naked. Blackwall could carve that one into wood.
Maker, he hated himself. But he was up here now, and slinking out past a smirking Solas in shame was no longer an option. So instead, he chose a more appropriate – and far less bulky – title from the shelves (Mabari and Me) that was actually written in a language he could understand. It turned out to be a sweet missive about how to look after mabaris when one was a warrior or a traveller, and Cullen found himself missing the dog he’d had as a boy. Embrium, he’d called her, mostly because she had loved to play in the patch of embrium near their homestead. Cullen never claimed to be a precocious child.
‘Intellectually challenging read you have there, Commander.’
Cullen looked up sharply to see Dorian leaning against a bookshelf, eyeing him with a twinkle of amusement in his eye. He held his hand out inquiringly and Cullen passed the book, before watching in slight embarrassment as Dorian flicked through the pages, smiling at the vivid illustrations of mabaris barking, mabaris playing in the grass, mabaris fighting at their masters’ sides.
‘I promise I read other things. But I had a mabari as a child,’ Cullen said awkwardly, grasping for anything to fill the silence as Dorian carefully placed the book back in that reverential way of his, ‘her name was Embrium. She, um, she really liked embrium.’ He scratched the back of his neck. This was going horrifically, as usual.
Dorian raised an eyebrow, but followed it with a warm smile that almost sent a flush up Cullen’s neck. ‘Funnily enough, they are the only animals in this country that I don’t despise,’ he replied, ‘there’s a sweet one running around near where the merchants and Blackwall are. I think it recognises a kindred spirit in Blackwall to be honest, the way they both make dumb puppy eyes at the Inquisitor.’
‘Blackwall likes the Inquisitor?’ Cullen said incredulously, all earlier ridiculousness forgotten. He heard so little of Skyhold’s rumour mill despite knowing very well that it existed, so any scrap of gossip he could scrounge was another chance to get to know who the Inquisitor was running around in the wilds with. Whenever he spent time with the Inner Circle, whether in the inn or at Varric and Josephine’s games of Wicked Grace, they mostly discussed things other than themselves and the Inquisition, to create some semblance of ‘time off’. It made for excellent gossip sessions about other people, but never devolved into soul-baring. Sometimes Cullen wished it did.
‘Likes?’ Dorian snorted, ‘he’s devoted to her. One time when we were out in the Emerald Graves, she went off to talk to the leader of some feckless refugee group and left me standing there completely po-faced as Blackwall interrogated Bull about his intentions towards her. This was a couple of months ago, just after they started seeing each other. Obviously, Bull being Bull, he didn’t take it seriously at all. Blackwall almost punched him, he was so angry.’ Dorian put a serious face on and attempted a horrifically bad impression of Blackwall.
‘If you treat the Inquisitor badly, I will see to it that you wake up one morning with nothing but the clothes on your back, tossed out into the Frostback Mountains.’ Breaking character, Dorian sniggered, ‘can you believe? Bull almost burst a vein trying to hold in his mirth as he promised to not break the Inquisitor’s heart. Blackwall refused to believe him, of course, and Bull’s decidedly unwise offer of a threesome did nothing to clear the air. I had to stay between them for the whole excursion, and Rasiha barely noticed a thing.’
Cullen had to laugh at that. The thought of the Inquisitor sandwiched between Bull and Blackwall, sexually or not, was so comical he thought his sides might split. Compared to the two Qunaris, Blackwall was a tiny gnat, and Cullen secretly thought that both with the way the pair went on at least once a day, and the harried look of the carpenter every time he had to fix the Inquisitor’s bed, it was probably best Blackwall stayed out of it.
‘Now then, it’s sweet he’s so committed to her and the cause,’ Cullen said, steadfastly ignoring the small fond smile Dorian had adopted when Cullen had started laughing in order to not go weak at the knees like he was in his twenties again, ‘although he’d do well not to antagonise Bull. It’d be disastrous to have Blackwall lost to some drinking game with that barbaric substance Bull masquerades as alcohol.’
‘Or Qunari sex ritual!’ Dorian replied, before readjusting his straps and smiling again, ‘however, before we get onto the sordid tale of a leather-wrapped rod on a harness, a little birdy sang that you came to see me. What can I do for you? Do you need some underhand magical advice? Some sort of Tevinter bedtime story?’ His eyes twinkled, ‘I’m very good at terrifying bedtime stories. How about I tell you the story of how Tevinter started the Blight?’ He raised his voice at the end and shot a dark look towards Fiona, who was still steadfastly staring into nothing and pretending the men weren’t there.
Cullen narrowed his eyes. ‘Has she been harassing you?’ he said quietly, making to take Dorian’s elbow, ‘I can send up a couple of men to ask her to stop. Or, I could do it myself,’ he made to move towards Fiona, but Dorian hissed and grabbed the hand on his elbow, tugging Cullen back towards him.
‘Don’t you dare,’ Dorian replied, ‘I won’t have you making a scene in my library over some misplaced desire to defend my honour.’ He looked up at Cullen with a steely glint in his golden eyes, who had just registered how close Dorian had tugged him. But instead of doing something stupid like kissing him when Leliana was upstairs and would rib him forever, Cullen settled with sighing a little, before raising an eyebrow in surprise.
‘Your library, Dorian?’ he inquired teasingly, ‘I believe this is the Inquisition’s library.’
Dorian rolled his eyes, let his eyes very obviously flicker down to Cullen’s mouth, and deigned to reply, ‘well then, if you’re going to cause a scene by attempting to duel someone in the Inquisition’s library, we best move somewhere else before my precious bookshelves are broken. Your office?’
And before Cullen could answer, Dorian was tugging on his armour and leading him downstairs, past (the indeed smirking) Solas who was due a friendly and not all aggressive punch, onto the battlements and straight into Cullen’s own office. In all truth, due to the forceful manner in which he’d been lead there it felt more like Dorian’s space than his own.
Dorian kissed him as soon as the door shut, and Cullen savoured every moment of it, tangling his hand in Dorian’s hair and wrapping an arm around his waist. Dorian sighed happily into his mouth, before pulling back and regarding him with a heavy-lidded, satisfied smile.
‘What did precious Rasiha want with you earlier?’ he asked innocently, removing Cullen’s heavy fur collar and peppering his neck with kisses.
‘Funnily enough, she urged me to make a move on you,’ Cullen smirked, before seeing the way Dorian’s face fell, ‘oh, Maker’s breath Dorian, I –’
‘No, no,’ Dorian waved a hand dismissively, ‘it’s nothing. Please continue! I’m sure she was very firm in her ministrations, and told you it was now or never because the world might end. She’s being saying exactly the same thing to me for weeks now. About as long as we have been covertly seeing each other.’
Cullen placed a hand on Dorian’s cheek and gave it a soft stroke with his thumb. He knew how Dorian felt about keeping their relationship secret. He wanted to be open and free about who he was, after keeping his true self locked up and stowed away. But Cullen was worried, worried about morale, worried about his ability to do his job, worried about people assuming his concern for Dorian’s safety would cloud his judgement. He had enough going on with the lyrium withdrawal, he didn’t need the rumour mill to turn nasty.
‘How would you want to tell them?’ he asked softly, and Dorian’s brow creased.
‘I don’t know. Manipulate the rift to make a sign? Commission Varric to write a tome massively exaggerating our love story so I become a nefarious Tevinter magister who stole the heart of a tortured Southern ex-Templar and ran around with it willy-nilly? Oh, how about a massive parade through Val Royeaux? Vivienne would love that. She’d put up the bunting herself.’
Cullen guffawed. ‘I’m being serious, Dorian.’ Climbing up his ladder, he collapsed onto the bed and Dorian swiftly followed, curling up in his lap like an overgrown cat and playing with Cullen’s curls as he thought about it.
After a while, Dorian finally replied. ‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘I’d like to tell them by just holding hands with the man I adore and walking on the battlements of this bloody brute of a place, looking out into the Frostback Mountains and talking about nothing.’ He paused and looked ruefully up at the hole in Cullen’s ceiling, before continuing.
‘I’d like to go to the inn and get a drink with him, and make mushy lovey-dovey eyes as he winces every time he takes a sip. I’d like to go to every major city in Thedas and hang all over him and his every word as we walked around because I know he likes public displays of affection, judging by the huge grin he has whenever he and I spy Bull walking from the inn to the Inquisitor’s quarters with her slung over his shoulder. Might I mention this is normally after we’ve just made love in the middle of the night under the pretence of discussing tactics.’ He took one of Cullen’s hands and surveyed it, before planting a sloppy wet kiss on the back of it and threading their fingers together.
He continued, a little more quietly and sombrely, and Cullen’s heart continued to grow with every word.
‘I’d like to help him with the pain he feels every time he sees a Templar administering their philter. I want to be able to hold him as he is wracked with nightmares, instead of sneaking out before they start. I want to be able to shout from the rooftops that he’s the man I used to wish for, and the man I want to spend my life with.’ Dorian looked Cullen straight in the eye and finished with a final sentence that sent warm rivulets of tenderness running throughout Cullen’s body.
‘I want people to know that when I go back to Tevinter, I will carry his memory everywhere with me, and will know in my heart that I have a beautiful, strong and intelligent Southern man waiting to join me.’
‘You’ll have me in Tevinter?’ Cullen whispered, and Dorian’s eyes crinkled.
‘Amatus. Of course, I’ll have you in Tevinter. When it is the right time.’
That was almost too much for Cullen, but instead of sliding onto the ground and professing his undying love he settled for pushing a strand of Dorian’s hair behind his ear. ‘I’d wish I was holding your hand while we walked the streets of Minrathous,’ he whispered, trying not to cry and failing miserably as Dorian’s eyes glistened just the same, ‘and I’d make polite conversation with your parents. I’d try and understand your friends’ jokes and I might fail, but they’d hopefully find me endearing because I adore you just as much as they do.’
And then they were crying, the pair of them, entangled in each other’s arms and shaking with sobs. It was almost cathartic, as ridiculous as this might be, Cullen thought in inappropriate amusement, holding this man in my arms as we cry because we know how hard the road ahead is, and how difficult the journeys we’ve left behind were.
The door to his office swung open with a bang, and Cullen jumped so high he displaced Dorian from his lap, who yelped loudly in surprise. Cullen jumped off the bed and peeked his head out over the edge of the platform, only to see Rasiha fold her arms and stare back up at him stonily.
‘Who have you got up there?’ she said, and Cullen swallowed. He looked back to see Dorian sprawled across the bed, like he hadn’t just had the fright of his life, with an eyebrow raised questioningly. Won’t you tell her, his eyes seemed to say, don’t be a coward all your life, Rutherford. Have a day off.
‘It’s, uh,’ Cullen carded a hand through his hair, ‘it’s Dorian. Dorian Pavus. From Tevinter. That Dorian. My lover, Dorian.’ He shook his head and started again, ‘it’s-’
‘What.’
‘Maker’s flaming knickers,’ Dorian cursed, slinking to Cullen’s side and peering down at the Inquisitor, who now had a look of near comic incredulity plastered onto her handsome face, ‘it’s me, my dear, as Cullen so eloquently put it. The nervous idiot. Cullen and I are together. We’ve been together ever since the day you told me to just go for it.’
Rasiha gaped. ‘That was five weeks ago! What do you mean you’re together? Cullen, I spoke to you today and you made no mention of this! I wouldn’t have known you two were ever here if I hadn’t asked Solas where you were after he mentioned he’d seen you and Dorian. I interrupted a very interesting story about a goat and a pride demon for this!’
‘Is that the one where the pride demon wouldn’t leave the goat alone and it turned out it thought it was its pet after a spirit tried to give it a stroke and got a lightning whip to the face?’ Dorian asked in amusement as Cullen rolled his eyes. Dorian had laughed so hard he’d cried when he’d told Cullen about Solas’ tale. Cullen had found it bizarre. How anyone could find a pride demon torturing a spirit of wisdom funny, he had no idea.
Rasiha folded her arms, any humour left behind in Solas’ painted room. ‘I can’t believe you kept this from me. How did this even start?’
Cullen sighed. ‘Looks like we better come down and explain.’
‘What a shame,’ Dorian said, ‘everyone might have to know now. I hate that.’
‘And I hate you,’ Cullen said, but he couldn’t keep the grin off his face as he descended the ladder straight into the waiting judgement of a very unamused Inquisitor. He made a mental note to be very nice to Rasiha for the rest of his life because he never wanted to incur this wrath again, as unsolicited and unwarranted as it was.
‘Commander,’ Rasiha said, her eye practically twitching, ‘what’s the meaning of this?’
Cullen wanted nothing more than to hurl himself off the battlements, but he forced himself to look Rasiha in the eye and not start laughing like a particularly mirth-filled drain. Keeping his sentences short and to the point, he quickly told the story (peppered with helpful comments from Dorian) of Dorian kicking his door in after his emotional trip to Redcliffe and propositioning him without a hint of embarrassment or shame. Asserting himself to his father about who he was (and also listening to Rasiha for once in his life) had emboldened Dorian to take control of his fate. Luckily for him, Cullen felt the same way.
‘Maker’s balls,’ Rasiha replied, ‘well, you two are nothing if not very good at subterfuge. Remind me why you’re not my spymaster again?’ she asked Cullen. Dorian, who had since descended the ladder and was now standing with his arm wrapped around Cullen’s waist, guffawed.
‘Because he can’t spot a nug at three paces and spends most of his time falling over trying to get into his armour?’ he replied fondly, and Cullen rolled his eyes, shoving Dorian a little.
‘Haven’t you got some books to be terrorising?’ he replied, trying and failing to be icy, and Dorian stuck his tongue out, before kissing him on the cheek and sweeping out of the room. He left behind a scent of musk and a peal of distant laughter, and Cullen loved him so much in that moment that he thought his heart might explode.
Rasiha watched him leave as well, before turning back and shaking her head. ‘What am I going to do with you, Commander?’
‘Not sure,’ Cullen replied ruefully, ‘but you should probably leave it until after we defeat Corypheus.’
‘Now that’s what I like to hear,’ Rasiha smiled, ‘now, about the upcoming moves we need to make. I’m going to call a War Table and…’
Soon after, Rasiha moved into the Temple of Mythal with Bull, Dorian, Cassandra and Morrigan at her side, as Cullen co-ordinated his forces and hoped to any deity that was listening that they all got out safely. From then on it was a blur of events, until Corypheus fell and Dorian stumbled from the wreckage of the Conclave straight into Cullen’s arms and told him without a hint of uncertainty that he had to go back to Tevinter and assist in the social overhaul that was sorely needed.
When Cullen loaded Dorian onto the carriage bound for his beloved homeland, the urge to get on it with him was almost overwhelming. Instead, he stood his ground and gratefully accepted the small crystal Dorian handed him.
‘Promise me you’ll use yours to speak to me every day,’ Cullen said softly, and Dorian cupped his cheek.
‘Of course, amatus. I love you.’ And with that, he shut the door to the carriage, and it set off over Skyhold’s bridge, taking Cullen’s heart and soul away with it.
Cullen went to see Leliana that evening. What Dorian didn’t know, wouldn’t hurt him.