this is an elves only event

The truck, of which Julian has to wipe his fingers on his slacks so he doesn’t make the leather greasy, is almost comically large to account for his partner’s size. Julian stands at 193 centimeters yet the truck made him feel like he’s in a Barbie car.

“You know, man, the whole ‘cops love donuts’ thing isn’t helped when you pig out like that.”

Julian shoots him a glare before pointedly licking his fingers.

“Yet, here I am, loving Cole’s donuts. Besides, we’re detectives, not cops.”

Bull snorts something about a hole euphemism and drives to their next scene. Julian read about it briefly before they set out for the morning. A seemingly random man disappeared out of thin air, leaving a heavily pregnant wife behind him. Usually a case like this just means some scumbag guy couldn’t handle the pressure of settling down and skipped town, but the house had been trashed and looked like a bad robbery.

The house is deep into the suburbs, where all the houses look printed out and the lawns are all fake bright green grass. Personally, Julian hates going out here. The inner city of Denerim is real, hard, and fast. In the suburbs you saw the true dredges of society and Julian always left feeling more depressed than curious.

It took about 20 minutes to get to the home. It’s a sick yellow and has the same fake patch of grass front yard like every other house. If it wasn’t for the broken window and clear trail of blood leading from the door to the driveway, it would look like just another cog.

The inside of the house on the other hand is a trainwreck. Furniture is flipped, it smells so heavily of bleach it makes Julian’s eyes water, and pretty much every fragile object in sight is shattered to pieces. It looks damn more than a robbery, that’s for sure.

Bull ducks behind him to enter the house and sighs softly.

“That ain’t good.”

Julian shakes his head. No, it isn’t.

Snapping on gloves, Julian steps carefully around the home. Voices came from another room, presumably the dining room, and as Julian got closer he hears faint sobbing and the fake sweet voices of cops trying to console someone who is clearly hysterical.

Turning a corner, Julian is greeted by shattered dishes and several broken appliances. Sitting at the dining room table is a blonde woman with short hair sobbing into her arms. Cassandra and Blackwall stand on both sides of the woman, gently patting her and looking very awkward.

“We are very, very sorry for your loss Mrs. Cousland.”

“Fergus wouldn’t just leave! Someone to-o-ook him!” The woman, Mrs. Cousland? Punctuates most of her syllables with hearty sobs.

Blackwall is the first to see Julian and pleads with his eyes for the man to walk over and turn on the charm so they could walk away from the situation. Julian relents and puts on his most buttery voice. He needs information, and a sobbing victim made no use.

“Miss? My name is Julian Trevelyan,” he flashes a badge at her when she looks up with puffy eyes. It’s pretty obvious he is another worker bee around here, but flashing his badge always comforted scared civilians.

She sniffs loudly and nods curtly. “M-my name is Oriana, Oriana Cousland. Are you one of the, um, detectives they were talking about?”

Mrs. Cousland motions towards to the two officers behind her who are slowly drifting away from her and out the room.

“Yes, my partner, Bull, is looking around the house.”

Speak of the devil, Bull saunters in, ducking under undoubtedly one of many doorframes. Julian sits down while Bull stays standing. Chairs too small.

“Ma’am.” He tilts his head towards her and does his best to look as least-threatening as possible.

“We’d like to ask you a few questions, if that’s alright with you.” Julian pointedly ignores his partner’s arrival to keep her attention on him.

Mrs. Cousland sniffles and thinks, nodding after a moment.

“Yes, that’s fine.” she croaks, wiping her red nose on the sleeve of her dress.

Julian hears Bull pull out a notebook and click a pen.

“First of all, I’d like to know how you’re holding up, Mrs. Cousland.”

Mrs. Cousland waves her hand, “Please, call me Oriana. And terribly. Thank you for asking. It feels like everyone here doesn’t even see me. I’m just another person to interrogate, my husband, the father of my child is missing for Maker’s sake!”

Julian sighs. Knowing Cassandra and Blackwall, Oriana no doubt got the reaming of a lifetime.

“Okay, Oriana. I have no plans to interrogate you. I simply want to ask a few simple questions.”

The woman visibly relaxes. With a heavy sigh, she nods. Julian continues,

“So, to start off, I’d like to know about your morning. Tell me about your routine.”

“Well, Fergus wakes up before I do. He was gone before I woke, but, but that’s normal.” Her eyes gloss over and stare out a window as she speaks, “I get out of bed, take a shower, and have breakfast. An omelette. Then, hm, I watched television for a couple hours, then went to have brunch with my mother-in-law.”

Oriana’s nose begins to scrunch with unshed tears as she recalls the day’s events. Julian puts a sympathetic hand against her shoulder which seems to comfort her just slightly.

“And when you got home, you saw the house as it is?”

She nods, hot tears rolling down her blotchy cheeks.

“Yes, I came home to— to— to this.” she motions her hands wildly around them before she begins sobbing again.

“Right, I’m sorry. When you came home, what exactly did you see?”

“My home a mess! Everything absolutely disarray. I called Fergus, but he didn’t answer. I called his work, and they said he never showed.”

Bull can be heard scribbling on his tattered notebook. Julian simply raises his eyebrows.

“Hm. He left before you woke, but seemed to have stopped home while you were away and then..?”

“He disappeared! Fergus wouldn’t just up and leave, he wouldn’t.”

The edge of her voice causes Julian to backtrack. He honestly wasn’t trying to imply anything. Taking a breath, Julian collects his wandering thoughts and zones into Oriana.

“I believe you.” He lies, “I just want to get all the facts straight.”

“Right, right, I apologize.” Oriana dabs daintily at her nose, suddenly remembering she’s in front of people. “Yesterday, did everything seem normal? Fergus didn’t act out of the ordinary?”

“Oh, well…”

Julian looks back at Bull who’s giving him a hard look that says, ‘oh, here we go.’

Oriana frowns and looks down between her shoes. “We had a fight.” she says very quietly, as if she was a child caught in the candy.

“A fight? What kind of fight?” Unless this woman is a makeup wizard, there doesn’t seem to be any obvious signs of a physical fight.

“Over the baby. He… he wants us to move into his family’s estate. So he’ll have more room to learn and play.” She lovingly pats her swollen belly, continuing, “I didn’t want to. I like this area. It’s quiet, and saf-” she stops on the word safe. Obviously, it isn’t as safe as she thought. Julian is still having a hard time at the thought of a grown man getting kidnapped. Probably killed and dragged off to be dumped somewhere.

“Is there anything stolen from your home?”

“That’s the thing!” Oriana jumps at the subject switch. “Nothing was taken! Not one thing. I checked, the police checked, everything is here.”

Bull grunts behind him and the scribbling stops at the sound of the pen clicking.

“Interesting.” is all Julian can say without furthering the woman’s worry. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to take a look around.”

Oriana nods softly and turns away from them, lost in thought.

Once out of the room Julian finds himself back in the living room. Large smears of blood stain an off-white wall leading into the house’s hallway. Fingernails seem to have dragged across the floor in an effort to hold onto something as to not get dragged away. Huh. Julian figures it must be more than one person who dragged away Fergus Cousland. The force’s photographer, Dagna, bounded into the room with her large, expensive camera. She stops at the fingernail marks, steadies the camera, and Julian hears a stream of shutters.

“Hey, Jules.” Dagna doesn’t look away from her camera, adjusting and fidgeting with whatever is going on in there.

“Hey, D. Anything particularly gruesome you want me to take a special look at?”

Dagna chortles to herself but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

“Yeah, did you check the bedroom?”

Julian walks past her and pushes open the creaky door. He certainly wasn’t expecting what he saw.

The bed is absolutely covered in blood and gore. It’s clearly a king size and every inch is drenched in some sort of human. Oddly enough, the rest of the room is spotless. Julian takes a sample of whatever… parts were on the bed and goes to patrol the rest of the house.

The bathroom, second bedroom, and backyard are all clean. In fact, the they’re the only spots on the land that weren’t tainted in some way. It didn’t take long for Bull to finish up his business and Julian is back in the truck on their way to their headquarters.

Another thirty minutes and Julian manages to submit the evidence he collected and sits down at his desk. Bull skulks off to the break room of the office before Julian can discuss what they found. Bull was never a quiet man, but after every introduction to a case he goes to compartmentalize whatever it is he just absorbed. Julian, on the other hand, hates that, and is buzzing to bounce ideas off the first person who will listen to him.

He’s about to go search for the new temp, Krem, that Commander De Fer hired when a bustling at the front of the station draws Julian’s attention.

Loud voices and a haughty laugh follow. If Julian strains, he hears Cullen’s sputtering at some joke and Sera’s shrill laugh.

Suddenly, the group appears into the main office.

A finely dressed man swaggers into the room absolutely glowing. He has a nicely trimmed mustache that matched the perfectly swooped hair atop his head. He wore an immaculately fitted black suit and is followed by an equally perfectly groomed tall blonde woman. The pair didn’t fit into the office’s environment at all.

Sera, permanently stained by mystery substances is absolutely enraptured by whatever the blonde woman is telling her, while Cullen, stubbly and tired looking still seems to try to keep up with the beautiful strangers.

Cullen and Julian catch eyes and before he can stop himself, Julian is standing in front of the group.

“Julsie!” Sera bounds over to him and pulls his tie so he slouches closer to her level. He feels slightly guilty for being over a foot taller than her. “You’re gonna love these guys! They’re from Tevinter. And dirty.” She giggles that evil laugh she does and Julian’s drawn back to the strangers.

The first stranger holds out his hand to shake and smiles— well, no, smile would be the wrong word. It’s more of a shit-eating grin, even though Julian can’t tell what the man has done to earn that smile.

“Dorian Pavus, charmed, I’m sure.”

Julian isn’t charmed, but the man, Dorian, has a fantastically confident attitude that Julian loves to feed off in a group setting. He takes his hand and shakes once. Firm grip. Nice.

“Julian Trevelyan. But my friends call me Jules.”

Dorian grins genuinely this time, quirking his brow and snorting.

“Your name is Jules?”

“Yeah, something wrong?”

“Oh, no, it’s just such a frilly name and,” Dorian stops himself before he puts his foot in his mouth further. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that, you’re just rather striking to have such a name, is all.”

Julian can’t help but bark a laugh. He already likes this guy.

“Is that a roundabout way of calling me handsome?”

“I don’t know, is it?”

“I don’t know, am I?”

They share a look before Cullen coughs and rolls his eyes.

“Oh, Maker. Don’t tell me you’re like Julian.”

Julian feigns a hurt expression and clutches his imaginary pearls.

“Whatever do you mean, dear Cullen?”

Cullen turns to leave muttering something about serial flirting under breath.

“What a chipper young man.” Dorian comments.

“What!? He can be a right twat!” Sera bounces around them and it takes Julian all he can to keep from snickering. He loved Cullen, he did, but he needed a break. Badly.

Behind them, the blonde woman makes herself known by clearing her throat.

“If you two are quite finished, my name is Maevaris Tilani.”

“Julian Trevelyan. Pleasure to meet you both.”

Julian shook her hand, too. He noted how dainty and pale her hands were. They reminded him very much of Cole.

“These two are lawyer leeches.” Sera made sure to really punch out the word leeches, causing Maevaris to roll her eyes and Dorian to act offended.

“I’d think you were nicer to fellow crime fighters?”

“Ha! Since when were lawyers righteous? Shove that up your arse.”

Dorian looked at Julian for some defense which Julian has a hard time coming up with.

“Well… I guess it depends on what kind of lawyer.”

“Maevaris is the defense attorney, not me.”

Maevaris glares at Dorian and pinches his earlobe. He yelps and clutches it tenderly.

“Still, I’m happy you two are around. Was wondering when we’d get some new blood around here.”

“Vaguely suspicious. What happened to the last ‘new blood’ that wandered around here?”

Julian smiled mischievously before looking out to the backlot of the office.

“Ran far, far away. Only the real ones stick around.”

Dorian immediately bristles at the challenge.

“Ha, I suppose I now have to stay for as long as I can out of spite.”

“Meh, probably wouldn’t be a bad thing. We need eye candy that isn’t Vivienne around here.”

“My my, you’re brave.”

Sera makes a gagging sound. “Can you two stop being gross n’ shite? You met 2 minutes ago. Don’t starting rutting, nasties.”

Maevaris tugs at Dorian’s arm to pull away at the conversation that apparently she’s also done with.