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On how many occasions have they parted? So many unrelenting mornings to traverse on the way from we to I. There has never been a way to soften it; no slow unravelling, for all that one must always pack and prepare and say the same words over and over again—how I'll miss you—remember to listen when Stitches says rest—come here, kiss me once more. You have to go, obviously.
For all this: they are together, and then they are not.
On every parting, one finds oneself a little older. If one is lucky, only that.
This is what Dorian considers, awake too early on one such parting morning, sun striping the room without lending it warmth.
In some few hours, he will leap. Kiss the Bull once more. Say: I wish I might stay.
Be told: You have to go.
He will not know until he's done it if this is the time the landing will break him.
Beside him, the Bull stirs; draws Dorian down to him with sleepy, warm hands.
They are together. They are. In this moment, although they will part—
Fuck, Dorian thinks.
"I don't want to," he says against the Bull's shoulder, rote words but no less desperate for that—because he can't do it, he can't do it—leave without being told to go. Selfish.
And this is it, then: on an early summer morning, harsh sun offers no mercy. Nor, then, ought one to expect mercy from the Bull. Oh, he is kind.
But that's another thing entirely.
And even so, Dorian is taken unawares.
"Don't go, then," the Bull says. He isn't sleepy now. His arm, tense, stays laid around Dorian's waist.
He always did wake too fast.
The room is steady. It is itself. Motionless thin curtains half-covering the window. The blue dresser, corner dented, scraped free of paint—a memorable evening, certainly, but far away now. In any case:
It is inside Dorian only that everything is shaken.
"Bull," he says, hoarse.
"Tevinter's going to kill you," the Bull says.
Dorian chokes on laughter. An ugly sort of laugh, in any case. Tevinter is in his blood. Like love, like disease. These things do tend to be fatal. "It was always going to, I imagine."
"Don't," the Bull says. "Dorian, please."
"Fuck," Dorian says. "I can't go if you don't tell me that it's alright. Don't simply say that! You—"
"Nothing simple about it," the Bull says. "You do what you have to. I'm alright with that. I get it. I've done my time, waiting to die doing shit I hoped would mean something. Don't ask me to keep pretending I don't want you safe on top of asking me to accept the rest of it." A breath. A heaviness to the Bull's expression. An overwhelming unhappiness. "I couldn't change Seheron."
And the room is not still now. It takes a moment to understand it, the pieces of information that add up to something strange almost beyond understanding: the Bull is shaking. Awful, unstoppable tremors. Shaking as though he isn't even aware of it, the whole business bypassing all of his careful control.
How deeply lined his face is now.
"Fuck," Dorian says again. Drags a hand across his face. Forehead to the Bull's broad chest. There might be a band around his ribs, a band around his head. How crushing, to be thrown so abruptly into a world where there are no maps.
It has always been a talent of the Bull's.
"How can I leave Mae to fight alone?" Dorian asks. His fingers clutch at the Bull's shoulder, bone and muscle. Blood here too, beneath. Always, in the end, there is blood. "And at the same time, how can I leave you to wait for the news that—"
Clicks his teeth shut, the words themselves too much. The Bull's unsteady hand draws along the line of his spine.
"I know," Dorian says. "I know I must—decide. I only—I wish—"
"Ssh," the Bull says. Tries laughter. Spiteless, although it falls flat. "Hey. I'm not telling you to pick. Me against a country? Even I don't like those odds. But let me hate it a bit."
Oh, how good it would be to believe. He does believe, in one sense—that the Bull means what he says, or thinks he does.
But in truth, there is a decision to be made. He has avoided it for the space of fifteen years; does not know, will not be able to know until he makes the cast, how it will fall. Love against love and duty against duty.
If the Bull had not said it—if they had only pretended for a little longer—
One may wish. If anyone is listening, they tend on the whole not to care for such pieces of sentiment.
It is said.
The morning goes on, of course. Clothes packed down into bags, rooms closed up. Frantic sex against the wall in the kitchen, one more slower round on the bed before they strip the sheets. The Bull's hand in his hair. The Bull's cries aching in every part of Dorian.
They touch and touch and touch.
Dorian thinks, I cannot—wonders what he means by it, beyond all knowledge of his own mind.
And finally, of course, they stand on the broad porch of the empty house, some road or roads before them, the sun growing warmer by the moment.
Well then.
"Kiss me," the Bull says. "Here. Come on."
Deep and desperate.
A breath between them, another.
Dorian can hardly watch the Bull, can hardly look away from him.
Between impossibilities, what is it to be?
A hand on the Bull's arm, the taste of the Bull on his tongue. Love, here, precious. But love, too, far away. Unreal, to imagine falling at all; balancing has become who he is.
He closes his eyes, face turned to the sun, its heat on his face and the Bull's heat on his back.
Makes the cast, and waits to see how it finally chooses to land.