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“Looking rough today, Chief!” Krem grins from the other end of his maul. He has the company running basics with their weapons of choice, while Skinner stalks around and occasionally sticks a foot to trip some poor bastard with a weak stance. Honestly, the Bull’s been going soft, with Krem handling so much of his job. Sure, Chief, you go do the bookkeeping and run around killing bears, I’ll hold down the fort. Take the team down to Caer Oswin, Adamant? You got it. “So, what was it? Finally got that fancy altus to hike up his skirts?”
The Bull has been smiling all morning, and it only widens now. “I knew it’d pay off in the end. Now there’s a man who knows something about practice!”
Wait. What?
Dalish laughs with a note of hysteria, properly representing the whole company if the furtive glances between them mean anything. “You mean he actually put out?”
“Looks like you owe Grim some gold,” Stitches calls from the swordsman section. Quick on his feet, that Stitches. “Don’t worry. Always next time.”
The awkward moment passes, and the chief puts on a sigh. “You bet against me, Dalish? That hurts. That really hurts me.”
“So,” says Snofleur, taking one for the team, “how’d you do it?”
The Bull’s eyes gleam, and everyone else groans.
“It’d be fine,” Dalish says, sloshing her ale around in emphasis, “it’d be fine if he just, you know…”
“Put his dick in and then took it out,” Skinner supplies.
Rocky slams his empty tankard down on a nearby table. “Hear, hear!”
The problem is, that’s the chief’s modus operandi with sex. Shack up for the night – or the morning, or the afternoon, or some combination thereof – have a fun, loud time, and that’s all. Sometimes someone comes back for a repeat performance; usually, their curiosity gets sated and they move on. The kitchen staff come through a lot, but it’s nothing meaningful.
“But he keeps doing it!” Dalish takes a moment to chug down the rest of her drink.
Krem waves for another round, and then frowns. For that matter… “Far as I can tell, no one else’s been up there all week.”
Eight of them remain in the Rest, and all eight shut up and eye each other warily. The chief always says Qunari don’t do romance – not that this has to be romance – and he’s never done commitment, or even focusing on one person this long. The old guard all know it. Even the more recent additions have a good idea.
Grim gives a determined grunt, then picks up his own empty tankard and sets it back on the table, hard.
“Grim’s right,” Krem says, turning to meet everyone else’s eyes. “Something has to be done.”
Skinner creeps up around the corner from where the chief and the ‘Vint are talking. Flirting, actually. Just a few weeks ago the ‘Vint would have already begun yelling or something, but right now he’s just talking shit. Chief doesn’t go for that. Someone asks him or gets excited when he makes a move, that’s what he goes for. The ‘Vint just pushes him back.
Maybe that’s some kind of backwards ‘Vint seduction thing. Doesn’t explain why the chief’s all over him.
Neither of them even notice when Skinner rounds the corner, not until she runs forward and gets the chief in the lower back with a wooden practice shiv. “What the—” the chief starts, and the ‘Vint starts laughing. Right sense of humor doesn’t make up for the rest of him, though.
“Krem says you’re getting soft,” Skinner says, scornfully. “You didn’t even notice me.”
The chief sighs heavy. “Can’t a guy get a break? Got a full day of travel tomorrow.”
“When you get a real knife in the back you’ll be sorry.”
They get him for one-on-five drills the rest of the afternoon. Doesn’t stop the chief from looking back at the ‘Vint while Skinner drags him off with bad news all over his face.
(“I don’t think your Chargers care much for me,” Dorian says, chuckling into his Fereldan ale later that evening. “I’m sure I can’t imagine why.”
“You’re too loud, is why,” replies the Bull, and then laughs near hard enough to spill his own drink, the way Dorian’s face burns red.)
Krem corners Pavus outside the tavern. Credit where credit’s due: Pavus raises both eyebrows but neither resists nor allows himself to be intimidated.
“So,” Krem says, casual as you please, “Chief got to you, too?”
Not long ago, Pavus would’ve flustered and probably snapped at Krem to mind his own business before stomping off. Now he just sighs, lifts his gaze to the sky like some kind of solution exists up there. “I suppose it’s hardly a secret.” He looks back down and has the nerve to smile, rueful. “I hear he’s good at that.”
“I hear he’s good at something.” Krem snorts. “Most nights a week. Could stand to hear a bit less.”
“Ah,” says Pavus.
“Chief could probably use the rest.”
“I see.”
Krem shrugs. “I’m not his keeper. Big lug doesn’t know when to quit, though.”
For a moment Pavus considers him, and then returns the shrug. “I’ll be sure to bear that in mind.”
“Chief gets back today.”
They’re all eight congregated against the training ground fence, while the rest of the Chargers cool down and stretch. Krem lets his words hang, most definitely waiting on bated breath for Dalish to bestow upon him her mystical elvhen wisdom. Joke’s on him then. Nothing her hahren taught her had shit to do with protecting one’s captain from poor romantic decisions.
“Goodness, already?” Dalish widens her eyes and brings her fingers to cover her mouth, a picture of shock. Wasted entirely on Krem, who only frowns.
Skinner smiles. Like the rest of her it’s dangerous, but also really hot. “Then we start again tonight.”
That leaves a few hours still. Plenty of time to drag Skinner off and demonstrate exactly how alluring that smile was.
Unsurprisingly, the chief invites Dorian to join them. Surprisingly, Dorian accepts. He buys the first round, which is only bare decency. He stays pretty standoffish, which isn’t, but Stitches can understand that. Dorian’s a smart man. He knows he’s crossing a line in the sand here. He knows he’s being tested.
“So. Pavus.” Krem’s drawling, a code for 'about to be even more of a little shit' that even Dorian has to recognize. “Seeing as you’re always complaining about the south, what’s the best thing about up north?” He settles his arms, crossed, behind his head. “Lap of luxury? The fawning over your magic and name? Bet it gets pretty old, all those nasty looks you get for ’em now.”
Big nob like Dorian probably would miss those kinds of things, but even a blighted idiot would catch that it’d be the wrong answer. Though Stitches would respect the honestly at least. But Dorian snorts, and that smile isn’t much of a friendly one.
“It may be difficult to believe,” Dorian replies, arching his eyebrows, “but it was much the same back home, often enough. I know, how could it be? I’m such delightful company.”
“And modest,” says the Bull.
When Dorian laughs, it sounds a lot more genuine than his smile looked. Stitches looks across the group to Dalish, who’s chewing on her lip like she always does when she’s thinking hard. Likes to think it looks grand. It really doesn’t. She catches Stitches watching and twists up her face back at him, clearly trying to tell him something, but mostly resulting in making her look really, really stoned.
“No,” Dorian says, “what I miss most are the spices. Nothing here even pretends to burn the tongue and throat on the way down.”
Krem seems taken aback, but Stitches looks toward the chief, and the chief is smiling all soft, right at Dorian of House Pavus.
Well, shit.
“He’s in it,” says Stitches; beside him, Sov shakes her head in dismay. “He’s in it bad.”
Bit, most junior Charger on the “save the chief from his own feelings” crew, looks to Krem in confusion. “Does he actually do that?”
Stupid question, if you know Chief for long. “No,” says Krem amongst a wave of shaking heads. “That’s the problem.”
“Everyone who rides the Bull has to get off again,” Rocky adds, ducking Skinner’s fearsome right hook. “Bad for their health, otherwise.”
To the right, Stitches shakes his head. “Guess that ‘Vint doesn’t mind lasting injuries.” Grim snorts. “No accounting for taste,” Stitches agrees.
Rocky’s not exactly right, though. Chief’s tough. Chief’s so tough he worries about hurting anyone when he’s not in the battlefield, and that’s just his thing, nothing that feelings will change. Talks about it too sometimes, when it’s just Grim or Skinner too, since neither of them get bothered. People are dangerous. Chief at least looks like it, too.
Not the ‘Vint, though. He looks full of himself, he looks rich, he looks prissy. He’s dangerous, underneath, and for some reason he’s rubbing arms with the rest of them instead of putting his feet up back home, so he’s not just here because he feels like it. It’s no good, when people don’t make sense like that. Chief likes it, not Grim.
Dalish hasn’t said anything. This also doesn’t make sense. She talks like she’s making up for Grim staying quiet, getting lively with Skinner and bickering with Krem all the time. So Grim looks back at where she’s leaning against the tavern wall, just listening. He makes her a noise that she’ll recognize, and she looks up to meet his eyes. An eyebrow raise gets a sheepish grin. Everyone else shuts up, because they know that Grim doesn’t talk a lot and they know what he’s saying anyway. That’s what’s good about the Chargers. They all get it.
“I’ve been thinking,” Dalish says, and then Stitches laughs so she has to stop and give him the thumb-up-your-bum. “Thinking,” she keeps going, “that perhaps it’s not so bad, Chief shacking up with some ‘Vint. First one worked out decently, even if the stick in his ass is still attached to some poor tree in Nowhere, Tevinter.”
“Screw you too, Dalish.” Grim doesn’t look away from Dalish, but that’s Krem still trying too hard with that Marcher accent.
“Are you saying you approve?” That’s Stitches. He sounds so Fereldan you can smell the dog.
“No!” Dalish says this too loud, and everyone freezes and listens – but either in the tavern or up in his room, Chief’s distracted. Dalish stops holding her breath. “I’m hardly saying he’s ideal. It’s only that, well, he likes the Chief, and if nothing else he gets points for good taste.”
Dalish is wrong. Anyone who’d want to stick with Chief for more than a couple nights has got to be ram-skulled crazy. Worse than the Chargers, because the Chargers know better than to sleep in the same room as him.
The obvious place to corner Dorian Pavus would be the library of course. But the library is simply too obvious. The training yard would work, but not without interruption, and Dread Wolf’s scraggly tail forbid she be accused of betraying the cause. She’s not looking to help Dorian, not really, but there was something to him last night that kept itching in her head. He had a crack in the veneer. Dalish needs to know what she nearly saw underneath.
After morning training she stakes out the main hall, where the Inquisition higher-ups typically take their posh meals. Points in their favour, though, because the Ambassador waves her over to take a seat right across the table from her, and no one else seems at all concerned about the average pedigree dropping when Dalish drops onto the bench.
“Good morning,” says the Ambassador, smiling. Of course, being a diplomat makes that smile utterly untrustworthy, but the Ambassador never seems to play games with anyone who doesn’t have a fancy title. Dalish smiles warily back.
“It is a lovely one, isn’t it?” she replies, taking liberties with the sliced roast and chutney alongside. If she’s staking out the hall, it’s only right that she benefit from the fancy shit she can find there. “Not even a bit of wind. Almost makes archery practice too easy.”
The Ambassador nods, and takes a sip of – water, apparently. Maybe Ambassadory work needs to all be done sober. A pity that she should go so long without a drink. “It is always nice to have a reprieve. The Herald insists, but there is so much work…”
Ah, now that’s relatable. “Every time you think you can take a break, spend all your pay on new armor and rounds at the tavern, there’s always another job. It’s extremely rude, honestly.”
The small sound behind the Ambassador’s hand, suddenly over her mouth, might actually be a laugh. Dalish just made the Ambassador laugh. Rocky is going to be so impressed.
Dalish finishes her lunch, the Ambassador excuses herself, and the lunch guard changes. Apparently it’s not just the nobs who eat here; there’s that librarian who giggled when Skinner bit down hard on her tit, and across the room Harding sits with some other scouts, Evan and Lupe and a couple dwarves Dalish doesn’t no. But no sign of Dorian.
She asks the librarian – Alessa, probably – but the librarian rolls her eyes. Well, rolls her eyes and then bats her lashes. Round two it is, then. “He’s never remembered lunch since I met him, and I’d bet good money he never did before, either. One of us usually brings him something. It’s no good to let the man starve.”
Thwarted. Dalish bids farewell to her clever plan. “I’ll bring him something. You finish eating. Perhaps you’ll need the energy later.”
Most-likely-Alessa smiles coyly. “I certainly hope so.”
At any rate, Dorian is in the library, grumbling to himself in a fancy armchair and surrounded by books. Completely unsurprising. He doesn’t notice Dalish until she shoves aside a stack of books and sets down the plate she’d gathered.
He raises an eyebrow. “Come to interrogate me further, I suppose?” He’s pretending to be annoyed, maybe, but he looks like he’s trying not to laugh. This is… not the intended effect of the big scheme.
“Chief won’t like it if you don’t eat enough,” Dalish informs him. “He’s always bragging about you keeping up with him.”
This time she gets a laugh, or a snort at least. “At least that’s somewhat tame,” he says, totally deadpan. “Praise Andraste for small mercies.”
Dalish decides to spare him the other things the Chief brags about. Ignorance, as everyone knows, is bliss. “He likes you, you know,” she goes on. “I mean, the Chief is a friend to all and suchlike, but he likes you more than other people.”
Interesting, how Dorian’s cheekbones take on a dark red. Not that it shows in his voice. “I should hope so,” he says, ruffled. “I am so very likeable.”
Against all odds, he’s not completely wrong.
Krem sees what’s in front of him. The sword Lev is swinging at his head, parried instead of blocked. The ale he’d drink later and have to protect from both Sera and Skinner, on opposite sides. The fact that Pavus is stubborn enough to keep sleeping and spending time with Bull, no matter the hazing.
Still isn’t right, the Chief shacking up with some altus. Even less right that the Chief looks to be developing feelings for him.
“What can we really do at this point?” Stitches asks during a water break. “We’re not gonna forbid it. We ain’t the Chief’s parents.”
“Pretty sure he’s ours,” Skinner mutters. Dalish makes a pfft sound, and doesn’t even look a little bit sorry when Krem glares at her.
“Point is,” says Stitches, as if nothing had happened, “we can keep an eye on the man, we can crack our knuckles all we want, but if the Chief wants to go around making mistakes there’s nothing we can do until Dorian fucks up.”
They mull this over for a moment. Eventually Sov lays off rubbing the bridge of her notably pointy nose. “We oughta make it clear what goes down when he does. Just to make sure he knows.”
“After we finish up here, then,” Krem says, and lets himself scowl. “We’ll make it crystal clear for him.”
They head to the tavern. No one would let Skinner distract the Chief, but Dalish is apparently fine for the job, so at least she’ll have her knife hand free. And her other knife hand free. The Chargers are the best people in the world, but they go too soft on shems, and that ’Vint is the biggest shem of all the shems Skinner knows.
But then she hears the voice around the corner of the Rest. She grabs Dalish’s arm and pulls her against the wall, and the other six follow because they know better than to ignore when Skinner stops and holds still.
“—been thinking lately. Yes, I know, I know, and the sky has a massive hole in it and Leliana is absolutely terrifying.”
“You said it,” the Chief replies.
The ’Vint pauses, so he is probably making one of his faces. He does that a lot, around the Chief. “I am… not the most forthcoming man in Thedas.”
“That sure sounded like a challenge to me.”
“Ugh,” says Krem.
“Ugh,” says the ’Vint. The other ’Vint.
“Just saying.”
Bit leans forward over Skinner’s shoulder, which can be allowed this time for the need to stay absolutely silent. Still, Skinner pokes her neck and glares, to make she knows she’s fucked up. Vengeance isn’t just for no-good ’Vint shems.
The ’Vint sighs, same way Stitches sighs every time the Chief drinks the poultices instead of putting them on his cuts and scrapes. ’Vint isn’t the Chief’s medic, though. “If you will let me finish.”
No one speaks, though. Dalish has a hangman’s grip on Skinner’s, and that Skinner only allows because Dalish is going to eat her out later. She gets cut some slack for that.
There is a softer sigh eventually, maybe too soft for any of the humans or dwarves to hear. Had to be the ’Vint, but when is he ever soft?
“I’m here,” he says, “because I want to be, and I’m with you because I want you, even if your trousers are appalling and you don’t bathe after training and you keep trying to smother me when I’m trying to catch my breath. I could be persuaded to allow the smothering. Perhaps even all night. But only because it’s you.”
Krem makes almost a sound, cutting himself off at the last minute. When Skinner looks back he has this weird face, like a nug that had dropped out of a tree and not died. It is a good thing Dalish is too busy grinning like an idiot, because she would start laughing and never stop if she saw.
“Dorian,” says the Chief.
“Please refrain from saying anything emba—”
Skinner knows that sound all too well.
She yanks Dalish back up, clocking Bit under the jaw with her shoulder, and pulls them both into the tavern so the others will follow again. Krem has wide eyes like he has seen a ghost, and Sov is too busy patting his shoulder, so Rocky goes to get the first round. Rocky is good people.
“So,” says Stitches, after a moment. “That’s different.”
Grim snorts.
“We’re never getting rid of him,” Krem says in a very hollow voice.
Dalish finally loses it and starts giggling and pounding her fist against the table, so that’s her gone for the next half hour. “I cannot believe,” she gasps, before she goes back to laughing too hard to talk.
Rocky gets back with the drinks, passing the ales around, and also a weird-shaped tankard for Krem. The carving on it also looks like a nug. “Well,” he says, “at least now we know Pavus actually gives a shit about the Chief.”
Next to him, Bit is smirking. “Maybe even several shits.”
“I am surrounded,” Krem says, holding onto whatever drink Rocky thought he needs like late pay for a bad job, “by several shits.”
(They are both leaned against the western wall outside the Bull’s room. They are also both incredibly sweaty. The Bull can’t stop smiling, and Dorian won’t stop rolling his eyes, but his face doesn’t go any less red.
“So, that was amazing,” the Bull says, when he’s caught his breath again, “but what brought it on?”
Dorian snorts. “A little bird suggested you might appreciate knowing.”
“A little bird?”
Before them, the sun has pulled the sky to dusk. The noise of the courtyard and tavern drifts up that high, but it grows faint and far away. Dorian lets his head fall against the Bull’s shoulder.
“Well,” he amended, “perhaps more than one.”)