Chapter Text
“Sir, master Lavellan is awake and asked for you.”
Dorian had but finished his letter to the Divine and began to plan how to start the one to Varric when Cordia knocked on the door-frame, for it had been unlocked and waiting for someone to alert him. Open because he had been waiting for word ever since he had stolen out of the master bedroom, hours ago. Varagan, who had still been asleep when Dorian had not been.
Too wound up with things that needed to be done to stay and flail around in bed. Why waste time when he could get an early start on the coming tide of work? There was so much to do.
Like writing these letters. What would have happened without all these endless friends and contacts and favors to call upon, all to chase down one elf and the animals that had taken him? Maevaris and Varric and a dozen more, all and each in their own way. Wide nets had been cast and only that had allowed them to find Varagan at all. It would have been so easy to loose him forever and the thought of that was an open wound, painful to touch and terrible to behold. Another time.
And before he had been able to wonder if he would get smacked on the fingers for cracking open the sherry so early in the morning, strictly to help with the writing process and grease the thinking a little, there were new things to do.
He thought over that for a moment and as he did, gradually and like sunrise, felt his lips pull into a smirk. “Master?” Dorian echoed and smiled wide at the thought of Varagan being addressed by the staff in what they had decided was the proper way. Trying to get them to stop would no doubt be the duty of whatever generation of Pavus came next, alongside the next generation of employees.
That had never stopped Varagan insisting otherwise, naturally, but a healthy sort of defiance was what kept the world turning. He had proven that much.
Cordia, unflappable, raised a single eyebrow and it was answer enough, “Many things. Many complaints and denials and demands to stop calling him that.” She remained silent for a moment, while Dorian busied himself with capping the inkwell. Then, prim and sniffy, “He ought to be forgiven for being... rustic, I suppose.” Which was a nice way to phrase what she wanted to say. Southern savages, well meaning but bumbling. Some such things. Alas.
But the Pavus household staff was nothing if not forgiving; A needed, often-used skill, lest they suffer collective heartburn at the madness so often displayed in, around or beyond the manse. Skills to be treasured, those.
“How kind of you,” Dorian told her and rose, far too eager now to care about so much as drying the quill so ink would not go splatter everywhere. He had magic for that! Instead it clattered to the desk and came to a rest wherever it wanted to. Dorian found it not within himself to care about it for once. As if he were twenty all over again and bursting with the energy of it.
Cordia remained standing next to the doorframe, stiff and straight and certainly not with that little smile in the corner of her mouth, of course not. “We try, sir,” she said as Dorian flittered down the hallway, simpering to himself like some love-struck juvenile and helpless with the fluttery joy of it.
Dorian found that he did not care. Did not care at all.
An elf sat in Dorian's favorite chair, dragged from its accustomed place and turned halfway around, so he could bask in the sunbeam which had already wheedled its way into the sitting room.
Today, Dorian decided, the world was good. Or at least this part of the world was. Watching his husband read through the neat sprawlings Dorian had left to ponder and pick over later. Resting his temple indolently on his curled fingers, almost as if it was Dorian himself.
Dorian did not make a happy little noise and he did not flutter about. Certainly not.
“Just going to stand there, all agape?” Varagan asked without turning. Paper fluttered as he turned to the next page and sunk beneath his concentration again, to make sense of the words before him. Not a mean feat, that.
“Merely enjoying the view,” Dorian told him, for it was the truth after all.
“Ah.”
Dorian sauntered --for at last the time where he worried and wandered stooped in his home was over-- towards the chair and its elven occupant. “You will be delighted to know that the physician is coming over later, to have another look at you.”
“Delighted is not the word I would use, no,” Varagan told him after a long moment. He turned the paper a little, tilted it, in a bit to make sense of some part of it.
“A shame. All the same, it is for the best,” Dorian leaned over the high back of the chair, to spy shamelessly at what Varagan engrossed himself in so. His own notes! How delicious. “How you worried us, dear amatus. And still do! You should hear what the kitchen staff planned for you once you are allowed anything but broth and porridge.”
That prompted the slightest of gazes, just so. Just a flicker away and then back to the papers. “I like porridge.”
“Which is quite fortunate for you; You will be having it for a while, I believe,” Dorian said. Then he walked around the chair until he stood in front of it and looked at the occupant who had his face still buried in Dorian's notes. “How are you feeling?”
“Not bad, all things considered.” And without changing his tone, “Tell your servants to stop calling me titles by the way. I feel weird.”
“They would ignore me as readily on that as they do you, love. In such matters, I am afraid, we can do nothing but take what they have planned for us.”
Varagan rolled his eyes and it made the haggardness and the sunken in eyes, rimmed dark --nearly meeting in the middle of his face like a raccoon's mask-- even more apparent that merely staring at them. This, too, was part of the work yet to come. A new prosthesis would need to be made, Dorian noted. Already he imagined elaborate, gold-leafed artifices, true to form and function but decorated and proud. Like all things ought to be, Dorian decided. But it could be postponed for now.
For now because there was no pressing need for additional arms.
Varagan grumbled something, shifted at the paper and tilted his head to make sense of the flourishes.“Compound spell matrices, several, arranged laterally,” Varagan mused wonderingly down at the paper Dorian had scratched out a few hours ago and then, at last, he looked up at said magister who had not moved but smugly grinned, “Lattice-shaped... really?”
“Mhm.” Because a mage could not truly split their focus into two, not when one wanted to truly engage with several weaving. The last time had been fortunate, his spirit high, his anger higher. And of course his opponents had been idiots, that had helped tremendously.
But what Dorian could do now was to work to a close approximation . It would not hurt to breach any gaps that wishing could not fill.
“That takes so much focus, you would need to prepare so much in advance. But you are proposing it as a field-spell; Out in the open and all. Why? What is the possible application for that?”
“None yet,” Dorian admitted. “Only a most preliminary sketch. I was thinking about polycasts and the teeth-pulling obstinacy of it.” But already he smiled and knew it to be that roguish, rakish way that used and continued to break hearts. Now, with that silver streak and long hair, nothing about that had changed. “I believe it could be tweaked a tad, broken down a little, here and there and everywhere you might say, to take out the need for much preparation.”
Paper whispered as Varagan leafed through them again. “But that would still not be a two-minded polycast. Just pretension at it. It remains as a whim.”
“How harsh a judgment, dear,” Dorian laughed but it was not wrong. Instead he leaned over the back of the chair, to read over Varagan's shoulder and guess at the thoughts his husband had about Dorian's writing.
Varagan hummed, which was neither denial nor confirmation. “What will your fellow magister during their fancy poisoned wine-tasting say when you propose that one to the colleges?” he asked Dorian and there was the glint of sly mirth in his eyes, where it belonged. They had not been able to snuff it out. Dorian's heart sang and he would have denied admitting that unto death. “They will not be kind, Dorian, even I know that by now. Little more than shreds will be left.” But on the tail of such stern warnings, ”I do like the application for multi-casting.”
“Well, is it really a party if no one storms out offended?” Closer, against the long ear, “And when did I ever like it gentle, my dear?”
That worked. Varagan snorted, “My bad. Come here? Talk me through your process and maybe I'll be able to follow along. I don't see how it makes any sense yet, past the obvious.” A pause. “You did plan something past the unmistakable?”
“When did I ever content myself with the axiomatic, the plainly obvious? No, no, though I might have gotten a few paces ahead of myself,” Dorian admitted, playful like a cat with string. He slipped into the chair, for elves took up so little space when they did not starfish in bed and snored at the ceiling. A bit of rearranging happened, ended when Dorian had wrestled over the seat and pulled Varagan onto his lap, victorious. “I simply remembered about a thought I had while I was busy broiling the two cretins in their little lair.”
“A thought other than how bare and boorish everything looked? I thought I would at least get a lecture on that while you saved me; Looked forward to it and everything,” Varagan said.
“The only idle thought that could distract me from said lack of interior design” Dorian agreed and artfully they danced around the months of fear that had both befallen them. This was not yet the time to sit and weep over it. It would come, as surely as the seasons. But not yet.
In victory, gloating, or however the trite little creed went. Now was the time for play, the everlasting toil would return soon enough.
Important matters now included nipping sharply at that fluted ear in front of him, just so, until the owner of said ear squealed and pulled at his mustache. Not even that lightly. But Dorian was not opposed to a bit of sting and pain and the prickle of teeth or fingernails. All within sensible measure, naturally. But not entirely opposed.
“You are playing with fire, magister,” Varagan told him, with one curl of Dorian's perfectly coiffed mustache between his fingers, tugging at the waxed hairs like someone might try to wheedle worms from soil which was a terrible mental image. “Keep that up and I just might pull this off and keep it as a warning as to what happens when one snacks on elven ears, shemlen.” There were a whole lot of teeth on display when elves said that word. This one came with mirth-curled lips and nearly, very nearly, laughing. But not quite.
“It would be the most singular item in your collection, I can't blame you for wanting it,” Dorian said. It was playing with fire, this. But Dorian was a mage and playing with fire was what he did best.
“What? Half a mustache?”
“Half of my mustache,” Dorian said and then he closed his hand over Varagan's fingers, feeling the fabric roughness of bandages where there should have been bare skin, and, mercifully, Varagan was in no mood to go and be difficult. “It is, as you can plainly see, a paragon of its kind.”
“Well,” Varagan said. Then he leaned, curled, a little into himself, to rest his head on Dorian's shoulder and wedge the crown of his head just shy of square beneath Dorian's chin. He smelled, reeked, of medicated salves and the remaining whiff that careful sponge baths had not been able not leech away. Dorian curled his nose but persisted. Better this way than not at all. “I do still want an explanation for this,” Varagan said and the hum of his words tickled at Dorian's jaw, the warmth of Varagan's breath on his collarbone.
“Perhaps you will let me surprise you. I agree it looks a bit, ah, rough here and there.” Squished together like that, it was far easier to whisper conspiratorial, “Not doubting the underlying formulae, but I was busy with breakfast.”
“Show-off.” Varagan told him and smiled as he did.
That, Dorian decided, was a start if nothing else.