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Dorian waits.
Not that he's ever been especially good at waiting, but enough burned fingers and singed robes (not to mention exasperated rebukes from a variety of teachers) have all forced the knowledge upon him. Magic isn't a field of study for those who rush in thoughtlessly, not if they want to live past twenty. Dorian doesn't wait patiently, or graciously, but he does wait.
While he waits, he puts Cullen's office back to rights, cleaning the surface of the desk and spreading the papers back out across it. Bull is already gone and Dorian will take the basket with him when he goes, and that will remove the last sign they were here. As much as he hates hiding, even if it is for a different reason than it would be in Tevinter, he has no interest in pushing Cullen on this right now.
Again he hears Cullen chanting, "Not me, not me, not me," voice squeezed down to a whisper, a prayer, and what Dorian wants more than anything are a dozen bottles of wine and a quiet corner. He's definitely far too sober for this. The bottle of wine Cullen wouldn't let him drink last night is long gone now, but he needs far more than one bottle to quiet his thoughts.
The door opens on Cullen's clerk, and Dorian has rarely been so glad to see anyone. For her part, she looks only mildly surprised to see him, and he remembers the rumors that are probably all over Skyhold by now. He needn't have bothered cleaning the office, except that it saved him from the inevitable madness if he'd had to sit quietly for the past hour.
The clerk's name escapes him for a moment, though he usually has no trouble remembering people. An unintended benefit of growing up the only scion of a prestigious Altus house, where forgetting someone's name could have significantly worse consequences than a little embarrassment. His mother's wrath not the least among them.
Well, he also learned how to bluff, and it's not as if she'll mistake who he's speaking to. "The commander was sick last night," he tells her, before she can say anything. "He's sleeping now, but someone should stay with him." He fights the urge to rub his eyes, which are gritty and aching.
"Is he all right?" she asks in some alarm, taking a step toward the ladder.
"He...will be," Dorian temporizes. "But he would also prefer I was gone before too many people are around." That might not be true anymore, but Dorian can hardly ask in the present circumstances, and he's still stepping carefully around the damage he did two nights ago. At the time, he'd felt as if all the unspoken words were choking him, and for a few brief seconds, it had been a relief to spew them out. If he'd known what the consequences would be, he would have choked on all of it until it killed him.
With a shake of his head, Dorian pulls himself back to Cullen's office, and Cullen's clerk, who's frowning at him. "Try not to let him over-extend himself," he says.
She gives him an incredulous look. "If you find some way to do that short of hitting him over the head, I'll be happy to try."
Almost amused, Dorian grants her the point with a tilt of his head, and they share a moment of perfect understanding. By the expression on her face, it's not any more comfortable for her than it is for him.
"I'll be back tonight," he says, and she nods.
He doesn't want to leave, but if he stays, it will only confirm the rumors that might very well die on their own if starved for fodder. Always assuming he didn't give them more than enough fodder last night, running barefoot and shirtless to Bull's room to get him. In either case, Bull seems sure Cullen's safe enough during the day, and Dorian has never known Bull to be wrong in his assessment of someone's strengths and weaknesses. Certainly he'd had Dorian's measure too fast for comfort.
The sun isn't quite up, the courtyard still in deep shadows as Dorian hurries along the wall toward Bull's room. No noises come from inside, but there's the faintest hint of candlelight slipping around the door, and when Dorian opens it, Bull is there waiting for him.
Dorian wants to hold on to him and not let go, but he's also restless, so restless it hurts to stand still, and he can't stop himself from pacing. He needs a drink desperately, anything to calm the shaking that's spread to every finger and toe. There's no point asking Bull if he has anything, because Dorian knows he doesn't. Months ago--when Dorian would show up and fuck and then steal away in the darkness while they both pretended Bull was asleep--Bull would sometimes have a bottle of wine or brandy lying around. There's never anything stronger than water now.
Bull settles on the bed, content to wait out the pacing as he has so often in the past. Dorian wishes he had a way to transfer even a tenth of that patience to himself. There's no spell in the world that can do it, but as Bull waits, Dorian's circuits around the room grow smaller and smaller, until he's pacing along the side of the bed, just outside Bull's reach.
"Did you know about all that?" he asks Bull at last.
"I knew part of it," Bull says. "When the Ben-Hassrath still told me anything, I asked for information about all the Inquisitor's advisors and inner circle."
Dorian pauses with one hand on the post at the foot of the bed, his back to Bull. "And they told you what?"
"Just that he was at Kinloch Hold during the Fifth Blight. I didn't ask for more."
"Why not?" Dorian asks, puzzled. He shifts his feet, his pacing almost worn out.
"The Ben-Hassrath have never given anything away for free, and I didn't want to waste what I had to trade. Besides, what other details mattered? I could put together the rest of it myself."
Dorian supposes he, too, could have worked it out for himself: he's had all the pieces for some time. News of Kinloch Hold made it to Tevinter as a cautionary tale of what could happen under the misguided southern Chantry, but it wasn't something that much impacted Dorian's life and the knowledge was buried in the intervening years. The collapse of a Ferelden Circle tower a decade ago wasn't something he thought about, and he hadn't even remembered which Circle it was until Cullen began to talk.
"I didn't mean to make it worse," Dorian says to the bedpost.
"Worse?"
"By asking him about it." Worn down, half asleep, more than half distracted by controlling the tendrils of his magic that were drawn to Cullen's terror, the words just slipped out.
"Why do you think you made it worse?" Even Bull's tone is patient: a slow, measured cadence that folds comfortingly around Dorian, finally quieting the last of his fidgeting.
"He didn't fall apart until I made him talk about it. I shouldn't have asked, but I didn't think." Dorian laughs humorlessly. "A common problem of mine, it seems."
Bull says nothing, and while part of Dorian was hoping for a comforting lie, he's also grateful that Bull doesn't treat him like a child, someone to be protected from the consequences of his mistakes. That gratitude keeps him from wailing, "Why didn't you stop me?" while he waits for Bull to say something.
"It might be for the best in the long run," Bull says at last, which is some comfort. Not much, but some. "The surgeon would cut open a wound that was festering, even if it hurt more at first."
"Might be for the best?" Dorian asks. "When have you ever known Cullen to take comfort in talking?"
"Mmmm," Bull says, neither agreement nor argument.
Dorian's never been able to leave anything alone, and the ache inside him now is no exception. "Did you know he was pretending it happened to someone else?"
"No, but I've seen others do the same."
Surprised, Dorian turns to look at him. "This is...common?"
"Not common, but I've seen it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't." He rubs his thumb across his eyebrow as if he has a headache. "Sometimes it works for years before it falls apart."
For the first time, Dorian notices that Bull is missing his eyepatch, and realizes he didn't have it on in Cullen's room, either. He must have forgotten to grab it when Dorian came to get him earlier. That more than anything else says how concerned Bull was; before tonight, Dorian's never seen him leave this room without it.
The short distance between them feels like miles instead of feet, but Dorian crosses it anyway so he can touch Bull's face. The scar is rough and smooth at the same time, the skin long since healed but still puckered. When he kisses it lightly, Bull sighs.
"Why do you put up with us?" he asks, resting his forehead against one of Bull's horns.
"I didn't walk into this blind," Bull says, which isn't exactly reassuring.
"Only half blind?" Dorian asks, trying to make a joke of it. He touches Bull's face again, tracing the scar across his eye down to the one across his lip. Those lips smile under his fingers and Dorian swallows hard.
He doesn't protest when Bull tugs him down, just tucks himself into Bull's lap. There's a deep comfort in being completely surrounded by someone who could break him in half but who he knows would never, ever hurt him. The first time Bull held him like this was the first time in his adult life that he felt truly safe. It doesn't matter that all such safety is an illusion with Corypheus still out there waiting to unleash whatever hell he has planned next. If Bull is also Hissrad, keeper of illusions, then Dorian feels he should get to keep this one, whether he calls it a lie or an illusion.
Not that he's ever told Bull any of this.
There are words he can't say, that he may never be able to say. Whenever he opens his mouth to let them out, the only thing he hears is his father's voice, cold and angry and final: "You are no son of mine." Those words are some inverted alchemical formula, turning gold into lead, and forever turning the words on Dorian's tongue into a joke, or a sarcastic jab, or a comment on some irrelevant part of his day. Never what he meant to say.
It's as if his father is still following him around, hearing what he's about to say before he says it. The weight of all that paternal disappointment is lighter for the miles between them, but still more than heavy enough to silence him. One of the books in the Inquisitor's library talked of an eidolon, a phantom image of another person, and Dorian thought of his father as soon as he read it. His father's eidolon is with him everywhere.
Bull starts to lean back, and Dorian reluctantly shifts away from him. Not far, just to the side of the bed, where he sits as Bull stretches himself out with one hand on Dorian's hip. Dorian stares down at his feet, knowing he should get undressed and crawl under the blankets, and unable to make his body move.
Exhaustion hits him like a mind blast, leaving him stunned and helpless. It's the kind of exhaustion that goes beyond the physical: he feels drained down to his soul. Selfish as it is, he wants an hour, or at least a few minutes, of what passes for normal life in a world where Corypheus is still a threat. He doesn't want to worry that the next words out of his mouth will be the ones to push Cullen over the edge, or that someone else will deliver that fatal remark when he or Bull isn't around to control the damage.
He doesn't want to worry that Bull will grow tired of the way Dorian and Cullen both lean on him, that he'll decide neither of them is worth the considerable effort involved in maintaining this relationship. Dorian has no idea why he hasn't already walked away on any of a hundred different occasions over the last months.
Every muscle in his body is trembling, and he hasn't wanted a drink this badly since the night they fell through Morrigan's eluvian and found themselves once more in Skyhold, with no idea how the army was faring. He's cold, too, like the chill of the stones is seeping into him, the way it's been seeping into him since he came to this blighted castle in these blighted mountains in this blighted part of Thedas that doesn't even want his help.
He wants...needs...to think of anything except all the ways he could fail: fail Cullen, fail Bull, fail the Inquisition and all those people who don't want his help. Fail himself, and the promise he made when he left Tevinter in the first place.
His father's eidolon sneers at him, mocking his selfishness.
"Tell me about this axe," Dorian says, because the ridiculously over-sized weapon is the first thing he sees when he looks up from unbuckling his first boot.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" Bull says, with the kind of affection Dorian's heard others direct at horses or hunting hounds. "The Inquisitor found it, said it seemed perfect for me."
"Possibly because you're the only one who could pick it up without hurting themselves?"
Bull laughs, and Dorian's hands shake as he reaches for the buckles on his other boot. "Probably," Bull agrees, sounding pleased. "No one else here is man enough for it."
"Do let me listen in when you say that to Cassandra," Dorian says, and Bull laughs again.
"Wouldn't let you miss it, kasaanda."
As he toes off his remaining boot, Dorian frowns. It's Qunlat, and the literal translation (he thinks) is sundew, but that doesn't make much sense. "What?" he asks, trying to decide if he's prepared to brave the cold to take off the rest of his clothes.
"Kasaanda. It's a carnivorous plant." Dorian can hear the smile in Bull's voice. "Now that you know what kadan means, I've got to find something else to call you. Venak hol?" Wearying one.
Dorian snorts. "If you must, though I could call you the same."
Bull's eyebrow goes up. "Been learning Qunlat?"
"It took me a while to find 'kadan.' I learned a few other words along the way." More than a few, actually, though the construction of a complete sentence is still mostly beyond him. He's always loved languages, and Qunlat was a challenge at precisely the time he needed something else to occupy his mind.
"Huh," Bull says. Then, "Asaaranda?" Thunderstorm.
"Not bad," Dorian says thoughtfully, "but rather long."
"Ashkaari?" One who seeks. Bull's smirking up at him now, deliberately baiting him.
Dorian's lip curls in an equally deliberate sneer. "Isn't that usually Koslun's title? Possibly too arrogant even for me."
"I didn't know there was such a thing," Bull says, and Dorian tries to pinch him, only to be grabbed and pulled down onto the bed.
Since that's where he really wanted to be anyway, Dorian curls up against him with one arm flung over his chest. Or as much of his chest as he can reach, given its breadth. Now he regrets not taking off more than his boots, cold or no cold. Skin to skin with Bull sounds like a good place to be, if only he wouldn't have to stand up first.
"Asala," Bull murmurs, and Dorian stiffens. Soul.
The silence that follows is awkward. At least, it is for Dorian. For all he knows, Bull's silently laughing at him and his consternation.
As soon as he's thought it, Dorian takes it back. Not once has he ever been teased or berated for his inability to return all the little gestures Bull makes without a second thought, all the small gifts, freely given, that Dorian never knows how to repay.
"I could give you an annoying pet name," Dorian says lightly. Amatus is on his tongue, but Halward Pavus's eidolon knows Tevene and frowns in disapproval. Dorian burrows deeper into Bull's side, turning his head so he can hear the slow, steady beat of Bull's heart. "Beres-taari, perhaps?" he says instead.
Bull is difficult to read at the best of times, and without seeing his face, Dorian normally wouldn't know anything except what Bull wants him to know. The heart under his cheek speeds up, though, even as the rest of Bull's body remains relaxed.
"Interesting choice," Bull says, giving no indication that his heart is beating too fast in Dorian's ear.
"Beres-taari," Dorian says again, firmly. My shield.
His father never did speak a word of Qunlat.