love will tear us

“Into a flame, indeed.” He’s equally impressed and surprised that Dorian’s ‘fascination’ didn’t cost him life or limb. “I thought I’d perfected the art of tormenting Cullen, but you make my efforts look like amateurish dabbling. I suspect he’d have taken my head off if I ever accused him of thinking like a blood mage.” He smirks. “He’d have done it for far less, probably.”

Mages aren’t people like you and I. Maker, he’d nearly pulled a muscle from the effort of trying to keep a straight face when Cullen presented him with that little conversational gem. After he’d found himself saddled with the title of Champion, his apostasy no longer a secret, he had half a mind to ask Cullen whether he’d been expelled from the rarefied category of ‘person’ and left to languish in non-personhood with, presumably, every other mage to ever draw breath. In the end, though, he decided not to push his luck. He may have been relatively safe under the aegis of his title, but his friends weren’t so well-protected. His provocations could easily have put a target on their backs.

“You were not,” he agrees, “though I never got the impression that he enjoyed being the butt of my teasing. Not back in Kirkwall, at least.” He frowns, trying to think of a delicate way to explain the situation there. Failing, he settles for vagueness instead. “Things were different back then. Cullen was… troubled.” That’s certainly one way of putting it. ‘A hardened mage-hater’ is another, but he at least has the tact not to say that aloud.

Dorian’s breath tickles the shell of his ear. Is this a provocation, some contrived test of his mettle, or does the magister simply enjoy getting physical with strapping Fereldan men? Perhaps it’s a little bit of both. “Oh, do you?” He turns his head to look Dorian in the eye, their noses nearly close enough to touch. “And do you like what you see?”

"I went to Kirkwall once. Bit of a shithole." And yet, despite his brief stop in the city-state, Dorian understood why men like Cullen, Hawke and Varric fought for it. The weight of history, surely, centuries built brick by brick and wrought iron first by Tevinter, then Free Marchers themselves. "A cursed place, the historical accounts say in Tevinter. All that slavery and blood sacrifices, it binds misery and discontent to the land as well as a spirit possessing a corpse." One could not discount the lingering influence of Corypheus either. "The revolts against the Imperium do not help its reputation either. Still! I could see some beauty in it."

"I have eyes, don't I? A rather fetching pair, I'm told," Dorian does not break eye contact, loving these sorts of games. "Fine specimen that you are, I'd be mad not to. But," and there's always a 'but' these days, lucky him, "I am afraid we must keep our relationship strictly platonic. I don't want to hurt Cullen." Thus Dorian pulls away, a soft smile on his well-bred features. "Of course, that doesn't mean we have to dispense with the compliments."

Easy as it is to sit upon his high horse and judge the shortcomings of others, his conscience decides to ruin it by reminding him that he’s guilty of the exact same thing—he knew that Anders was in a bad way, but he sat on his arse and did nothing until it was too late. He sighs, the wind gone out of his sails.

"It's fine. I am no longer in the Magisterium, I must remember I don't need to drip poison with every word. It will be an adjustment, certainly, but there's no point in driving away people who have been nothing but kind, if a bit cheeky, to serve my stratagems."

Nice going, idiot.

No stranger to putting his foot in his mouth, he realizes that he ought to apologize—and he intends to, until Dorian drags Cullen into this. “How do you know about that?” It’s less a question than a demand, his tone glacial. “And what business is it of yours? If the two of you were as close as you say, you wouldn’t use his pain as fodder for your petty mockery."

"I do not mean to mock. Merely to warn. But given what came before, it came across as that. For that, I apologize. It was unworthy. But I am serious. It would do him a world of good to learn—at the hands of a skilled mage, one he trusts—that he has nothing to fear from mages anymore."

"To my regret, I cannot be that man. But you can. So don't hurt him. He's had a lifetime of that."

He then throws it back, in part to impress Dorian and in part to avoid having to taste what he assumes will be a cloyingly sweet concoction. It proves to be a little stronger than he’d bargained for, however, and it’s all he can do to stop himself from dissolving into a coughing fit. “Maker, that burns.”

He recovers quickly, his curiosity piqued by Dorian’s explanation. A portrait of the man begins to emerge: an iconoclast in a land where tradition rules all, a black sheep among countrymen and foreigners alike. 

Sound like somebody you know, Hawke?

“As much as i’d love to tell you that we southerners are any better, I can’t—because we aren’t. The powerful exploit the powerless; same old song and dance. The lyrics may be different, but the tune’s the same.” He brings a hand up to scratch absently at his beard. “We do tend to be a bit furrier than you ‘Vints, though.”

Despite being humbled by the universe on a near-daily basis, Hawke still retains enough pride to take umbrage to that eye roll. “It’s extremely hidden, thank you very much. Damn near invisible.” He’s too intrigued by the prospect of interrogating his new magistrate friend to stay surly for long, though. Before Dorian has the chance to retract that offer, he blurts out the question that he’s been wanting to ask since they met. “Very well. For starters, what’s the story with you and Cullen? Tevinter magisters and southern templars aren’t exactly known for their mutual goodwill.”

"I was under no delusions that the south would be a utopia. People, ends up, are people—confusing, beautiful—from Denerim to Seheron." But the south, at least, taught him one can pick what joys and miseries we are willing to tolerate. For that Dorian will always be thankful. "My mother hated it when I showed up with this beard to the family estate. I let it get too bushy. Not unkempt, mind you, but large. She chalked it up to bad southern influences. It intimidated everyone, terribly out of fashion as it is."

The champion's prickly pride isn't as interesting as what follows. Ah, the question of the night. Dorian presses the tip of his tongue to the corner of his lips, gauging Hawke's reaction—sincerity, too big for one's mouth, the kind that drives children to ask highly inappropriate questions without shame. Because they haven't learn it yet.

"And you would be right. I grated the man from the start. Back in Haven, when most thought the battle lost, he suggested we should turn the trebuchets upon our encampment, bury us and the enemy with one massive avalanche." Tactically, it made sense—why play at heroes, fight to the last man, when instead they could take the enemy by surprise, entomb as many of the enemy as possible in a frigid mass grave, buying time for whoever was next to fight the next battle? "But I thought the plan suicide, and accused our dear commander of thinking like a blood mage. Oh," Dorian sighs wistfully, amusement tugging at his crow's feet, "You should've seen his face. Like he wanted to smite me right there and then." And would've, if he'd been taking lyrium.

"A northern mage is a whole other pedigree. Our templars are neutered, for lack of a better term. We are not brought up with a cultural fear of the Order, they are subservient to us, rather. So, you must understand my fascination with their southern kind. A Knight-Commander no less."

"I, never a man to shy from sticking my hands into a flame, later asked Cullen atop the Skyhold ramparts if he'd found a better outlet for his temper than burying us all under a hundred thousand tons of snow." The memory wrings a snort out of Dorian, flint grey eyes dancing in delight. "Cullen did not toss me down the Frostbacks to my death. Instead, the man laughed, and I got the impression he could use a laugh more often. Thus it became my mission to distract him from his work as much as I could, needling him about anything and everything, particularly his views on mages. Despite warnings from my southern brethren, I willingly poked the Inquisition's lion, repeatedly. It was so easy. And it felt so right. I could tell, despite all of Cullen's protests to the contrary, that he enjoyed it."

"And I got the impression I was not the first to do this, that I walked on paths long worn into him. Kirkwall, I used to think," Dorian, steps measured, takes one forward, lips dangerously close to Hawke's earlobe, "I wasn't wrong, but I wasn't right either. I didn't have the whole picture then."

"But I do now."