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All things end. The bad and the good come and ago, the only constant being the shifting. Tides come and go but the sea doesn’t change, and all that. The world gets saved and then it needs rebuilding. The things that keep you going through catastrophe don’t always fit right when it’s over. That’s just how it goes.
The Bull just – hadn’t remembered to prepare himself for this one.
What makes it worse is the utter defeat on Dorian’s face and in his posture. Here is a man who came looking for a fight, and that might have been kinder, but the Bull can’t bring himself to cauterize that wound. One more gentle gesture. Not what Dorian needs, but what the Bull wants. If he can’t have Dorian after tonight in the warm glow of the fire in the room they know so well, he’ll let himself be selfish while it lasts. He’ll smooth those fists into grasping hands. He’ll send Dorian off with love, not anger.
“I hadn’t–” Dorian stops, breathes out harsh and heavy. His hands keep coming back to twist together, no matter how many time he pulls them apart to rest at his side. “I didn’t plan this.”
“Me neither,” says the Bull, in reply to either of Dorian’s meanings.
Dorian scrubs at his face; he’d washed the kohl off already. Under all the vanity lies a sensible man, after all. “It was. It was simple. Run after Alexius, do something useful for a change. Join the Inquisition, be part of something big, meaningful. Greater than myself. And then, if I happened to survive…”
He doesn’t need to end that sentence. They both know the shape of it.
It’s not just Dorian. The Inquisition has a standing army, more often than not rebuilding rather than defending, and Skyhold’s become home, but… the Chargers are mercenaries. If there’s no use for them in one place, they move on to another. Nothing’s gonna compare to their work with the Inquisition, but the Breach got sealed, Corypheus torn apart in one last rift, and that Inquisition ended with them. Varric’s gone home to Kirkwall, Cassandra’s on the Sunburst Throne, Vivienne building from the ground up the new Circles. Blackwall’s a Grey Warden now. Cole and Sera have decided to stay, and no one knows where Solas went. There’s a new place for everyone, now.
In the same way that that the Bull’s Chargers need a new purpose, so does Dorian. He could stay with the Inquisition as an archivist and researcher, or join the southern Circles to help instruct young mages, even accompany the Chargers if the Bull asked him, but he knows – like the Bull has always known – that he was made for greater things than that.
He hasn’t asked the Bull to come with him. Dorian, too, knows better than that.
“You could write,” the Bull says. “If you wanted to. I’d write back.”
Dorian’s mouth twists but fails to resolve into any kind of emotion the Bull can pinpoint. Maybe it’s just too many all at once. “I. I’d like that.” But then he looks away. “What would I say to you? I can’t – I don’t know how to just be your friend anymore.”
Shit, the Bull hadn’t even thought of that. Love, Bull wouldn’t help either of them. He could go back to having his Chargers, his family, around to love, and friends and strangers to fuck, and he wouldn’t need another romance. Dorian would. Of all the needs that the Bull has fulfilled for him, that was always the greatest. And neither of them can get what they need while holding onto scraps and what-ifs.
“Write it like a mission report,” the Bull suggests, because in this he is a weak man, and he knows he’ll hurt Dorian this way, knows he’ll hurt himself, but. Fuck, let him have this one thing. Not a second chance, not a false hope. Just a small comfort, knowing Dorian’s still alive. Knowing he’s still fighting.
He takes his own breath, steadying himself just in time for Dorian to meet his eye again. Dorian opens his mouth, presses it closed, inhales. Opens it again. “I’ll try.” Another shaky breath. “Maker, I’ll try.”
His hands return to their twisting for a moment before he raises one to tangle in his hair, the other one curling around his mouth like he doesn’t trust himself to say the right words. But if the Bull can’t help himself, there’s no way that Dorian can do much better. It’d be so easy to reach out and ease the hand away, let him say openly what he feels and what he wants the way the Bull’s only just helped him learn. The wound’s already bleeding. What’s a little more blood?
“Dorian.” His voice comes out too full of his own feelings – Dorian’s eyes widen, fingers flattening over his mouth. Right on schedule, the prick of tears begin their assault on the Bull’s remaining eye. He doesn’t really cry that often, but when he does he cries easily. Sometimes there’s a ghosting pain in the place where his other eye used to be, like the muscle memory of the tear ducts still hasn’t faded. He wishes Dorian would press a hand to it, like after one of the Bull’s sleeping flashbacks when they’d hold each other, the Bull clutching, Dorian soothing.
The Bull doesn’t need romance, but apparently he does need Dorian.
Vashedan.
“If I,” says Dorian, and the way he cuts himself off shows itself in the momentary tightening of his shoulders and the way his throat works. “Oh, let’s not talk anymore.”
When they kiss they meet each other desperate in the middle. It's all hands on necks in hair around horns and mouths they can't manage to separate, sloppy and imperfect. When they fuck it doesn’t last long enough. Slowing down, neither of them can do, and it doesn't take anything more than rolling and grinding against each other. They recuperate and try again. They stay up all night, but the sun rises in the morning anyway.