Work Text:
I.
The one good thing about the Emprise is the rashvine nettle. Dorian’s no herbalist, but he found a note in one of his books that suggested it could improve his lyrium potions, and considering Cadash’s eerie ability to just walk into trouble, he needs every advantage he can get. They’ve fought two high dragons and their broods. Today.
So he’s convinced her to take a break and not immediately go after that group of red templars she noticed. Instead, she’s figuring out the best way to skin a dragonling while he figures out the best way to pick a plant that Sister Allison classified as a level-one skin irritant in her ever-useful Herbes and Plants of Orlais.
His gloves help, somewhat, but the nettles are vicious little things, and his hands start to itch after a few moments. He sits back on his heels and strips the gloves off, scrubbing snow on them in hope that the toxin won’t stick.
“Not interested in the dragons now that they’re dead?” he asks the Iron Bull, who’s watching him curiously.
“I think Boss can handle them without me at this point.” He bends down awkwardly to look at the plant. “What’s this?”
“Rashvine nettle. Not actually related to the vine, just named that as an extra level of warning.” He scrubs snow on his hands as well, wincing. “Useful in a distilled state for lyurim potions, very toxic before boiling. Don’t touch it barehanded, it causes terrible rashes.”
The Iron Bull snorts and clears the snow in a small circle around the base of the plant. He grips the very bottom of the stem with careful fingers. He pulls it from the ground, roots and all, and offers it to Dorian. “You got a bag for these things?” Dorian does.
“You don’t seem to have the same difficulties that I did.” Perhaps he sounds a little ungrateful.
“Thicker skin,” Bull chuckles. “And it’s these little hairs on the underside of the leaves that do the real biting.”
“Well.” Dorian copies his technique on a second plant. It works much better. “Perhaps you’re good for things besides swinging that ridiculous axe.”
“You’re welcome,” Bull says, and Dorian rolls his eyes, but smiles back.
II.
They’re following the Inquisitor over the Exalted plains, the fields a sea of flowers blooming despite the demons, and blood, and fire.
They haven’t met any dragons lately, but Bull and Varric are retelling their last encounter, with many more frills and close calls and battle cries than had actually been involved. Their laughter is loud and startles the snoufleurs down by the stream. Cadash tears off after the poor things, shouting a challenge to Varric, who unhooks Bianca from his shoulder. Their contest decimates the little herd in minutes, and Dorian knows they can use the leather, but he finds the bloody business distasteful. Perhaps it’s hypocritical of him, but the lumbering little beasts never did him any harm.
Bull comes up beside him while stares resolutely the other way, scanning the flowering hills for wolves or other uninvited guests. “Here.”
Dorian turns, confused, and Bull’s holding out a handful of wildflowers, a bashful look on his craggy face. Dorian takes them, examines the little blooms for whatever anomaly had caught Bull’s eye.
Bull grins down at him, clearly pleased with himself, but his smile falters when Dorian just raises a skeptical eyebrow. “Thank you?” They’re just flowers, not useful.
“I thought you’d like them.” He shrugs and turns away, like Dorian won’t catch the slightly crestfallen tone in his voice.
“Bull,” he says cautiously, “are these meant to be…”
“They’re flowers.” The Bull’s broad shoulders rise and fall again in another defensive movement, like rocks settling after a landslide. The ground under Dorian’s feet is no steadier. “They’re meant to be pretty.”
“They are, I suppose.” In a very “just picked out of the ground” sort of way. He brushes off some of the dirt they shed on his robes.
“You like them, then!”
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with them, but yes. I like them.”
He doesn’t even know what he wants to do with them. Keep them in a vase by his bedside until they fall entirely apart? Hurl them to the ground and set them on fire? Both seem like equally ludicrous reactions. What does one do with flowers from one’s…whatever Bull is.
Bull smiles at him, his craggy face lighting up, and Dorian smiles back-- and sneezes violently. He drops the flowers and rubs at his itching nose. That makes it worse, of course. He sneezes again.
Bull looks concerned, the lummox. It’s his fault. “You put stripweed in there, didn’t you!” Dorian scowls, and ruthlessly suppresses the need to sneeze a third time.
“I might have?” Bull crouches down to pick up the not-bouquet, now just a pile of plants on the ground. He picks out a couple yellow flowers and offers the rest to Dorian again, and an offensively large, offensively pink handkerchief. “My bad. Didn’t realize you were allergic.”
It’s not endearing. It isn’t. “I’m not,” he insists, and brushes past Bull to follow Cadash. “I don’t want them now,” he mutters. “You could have put nettles in there too, for all I know. Poisoning me with flowers. How underhanded.”
Bull laughs and catches up with him in a few long strides. Dorian watches out of the corner of his eye as the flowers are tucked into a pocket of the voluminous pants. That evening, Dorian pilfers one back out, and he knows Bull isn’t asleep, but neither of them mention it the next day.
III.
He likes the gardens better than the rest of Hilamshiral, especially at night, when they’re cool and quiet. Not deserted, of course. There’s plenty of clandestine meetings occurring, in every conceivable private nook. He walks the torchlit paths, not interested in exploring the darker corners tonight.
It seems the fashion for poison gardens has migrated from Tevinter, as he rounds a curve in the hedge maze and find himself among beds of crow’s lilies and adder blossoms and other beautiful, deadly plants. He tucks his hands behind his back as he wanders, careful not to disturb a single leaf. It’s possible that the plants have been bred for appearance rather than potency, but better to be safe than to be sorry.
He hears the unmistakable shuffle-step of the Iron Bull moving with the intention of being heard, and smothers a smile. A wide, calloused hand wraps gently around his wrist, and it’s not meant to be a reminder or a promise but it feels like both. Dorian turns, one hand still held fast in Bull’s.
“You weren’t in your room,” Bull says by way of greeting, and Dorian wonders briefly if he was worried.
“The gardens here are famed for their beauty.” An evasive answer. “I’m taking advantage of a rare opportunity. Who knows if they’ll survive our Inquisitor unscathed.”
Bull glances around the carefully maintained corner they’re in. The sound of a lute drifts from a candlelit window somewhere to the east. Satina peeks from behind a smattering of clouds. “And you?” Worry it is then. “How are you holding up with all the Orlesian assholes around? Anyone giving you shit?”
“No more than I usually get. Orlesians are more apt to whisper than spit, so my boots have been staying cleaner than the Fereldans keep them.” He pats Bull on his meaty forearm. “Yourself?”
“The usual. Je suis une bête effrayante, you know.”
“Terrifying,” Dorian agrees, fingers smoothing Bull’s sleeve. It’s strange to see him wearing shirts, but Josephine had insisted. More importantly, so had Vivienne. They must represent the Inquisition well.
“Why this spot?” Bull asks after watching his hand a moment. “It’s pretty open.” He’s been on edge the entire time they’ve been here. Reasonable, of course.
“The flowers, naturally. Beauty of a different type than the rest of this place.”
Bull makes a considering sound in the back of his throat, and plucks a rose from the tall, twisting bush beside them.
At least four different types of horror wash over Dorian in the moment it takes him to burn it to a crisp. “Vishante kaffas, Bull! Those are called wyvern’s claw for a reason! You didn’t get a thorn in your hand, did you?”
Bull shakes the shock off quickly, but Dorian still wishes he hadn’t used magic without warning him. “No.”
Dorian grabs his hand to look it over anyways. “What sort of spy can’t recognize poisonous flowers?” he gripes.
“It’s dark,” Bull protests, petulant. “I was going to give it to you.”
Dorian snorts. “They’re the empress’s flowers anyways. You could be put to death for damaging her personal garden.”
“Shit, really?” Bull twists his hand to lace his fingers between Dorian’s, leads the way out of the poison garden.
“In Tevinter, an insult to the Archon’s property is an insult to the Imperium itself.” Dorian matches Bull’s pace, doesn’t pull his hand away. “I can’t imagine it’d be much different here.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
In the morning, there’s a perfectly ordinary, perfectly red rose on the little bedside table.
IV.
He’s in the library, as usual. He has a pile of books to sort through before he can even start taking notes, so he’s curled in his chair with a cup of dark tea steaming on the windowsill. The weak sunlight doesn’t do much to melt the frost on the glass, so he’s brought a quilt out from his bedroom. It’s very nearly cosy.
So he can be excused for dozing off, slightly. Or in any case being startled when Bull thumps a heavy wooden crate down on the table next to his books. He closes the volume he wasn’t really reading and waits for an explanation. Bull takes one of the small cloth bags out of the crate and drops it in Dorian’s lap. It’s heavy and mostly full of something that shifts like sand when he picks it up.
“I brought you flours,” Bull says, and looks immensely proud of himself. Dorian can’t help but laugh.
“Your puns are a menace.” He drops the little sack of flour back into Bull’s crate. “What am I supposed to do with these?”
“Whatever you want.” Bull leans casually against the bookshelf opposite Dorian. “I didn’t think that far ahead.”
“Did you steal flour from the kitchen just for this joke?”
“I didn’t steal it. And I got you something else, too.” The casual lean is actually a little tense, when Dorian examines it. Bull retrieves something from a pocket. “There’s this old legend, in the Qun, you see, a sort of tradition…” He holds out his hand and Dorian takes the dragon’s tooth, examines the chain it hangs on, the finely wrought setting. It matches the new pendant that Bull’s been wearing for a few days, he realizes. Half of the same tooth.
Heat spreads from Dorian’s heart to his cheeks, the power of it rather alarming.
“If you want it,” Bull says, missing nonchalant by a league.
Dorian looks from him to the necklace. The metal is all gold. It will match the rest of his jewelry, is his first coherent thought. “If I want it,” he scoffs, and clasps the chain around his neck.
V.
It’s not that Dorian’s forgotten when his birthday is. It just that he’s used to a different movement of the seasons, a different leadup to Summerday to remind him that he will soon be another year older. So it takes him a moment to understand exactly what the Iron Bull holds in his hands.
A potted plant, an orchid, rather, tall and slim with three perfect orange blossoms. The pot is wrapped in a trailing silk ribbon, tied in an elaborate bow. He screws the lid back on his kohl jar as Bull sets it carefully on the desk beside him.
“What’s this?” It looks like a gift, but he can’t imagine where it’s come from. Skyhold is chill even in the summer and has no greenhouse.
“Ma’am and Josie helped me get it.”
Dorian touches a bright petal carefully with the tip of his finger. “It looks like an epidendrum, but I’ve never seen one this saturated.”
“They grow this color in Par Vollen.” Bull leans on the desk, catches Dorian’s hand in his own and brings his fingers to his scarred lips. Dorian’s cheeks heat, and he brushes them over Bull’s cheek before plucking the little tag out of the pot.
He’s been learning to read the Qunlat alphabet, though the characters are difficult to parse in Bull’s close, spiky handwriting. The short sentiment is repeated below it in Tevene, in any case. For my Kadan, the second-prettiest hothouse flower south of the Waking Sea.
“You terrible sap,” is the only response he can manage. That and tugging Bull down into a kiss so that he doesn’t have to speak around the knot in his throat.
VI.
This is the impossible and inevitable conclusion, he thinks. A cottage, rather than a mansion. A tall bush of pink roses by the gate, a table only big enough for two, and the knowledge that the world passes on by outside of them.
It’s rare that he wakes up before Bull these days, but he always takes advantage of it. He slips out of bed and pulls on only the most cursory of clothing, leaving even his shoes by the door as he leaves the house. He leaves the door open behind him.
Two roses from the sunny side of the garden, a peony from the low bush below the kitchen window, a twig from the apple tree, overflowing with pink stars, and a sprig from each of the intertwined lilacs, both the one that turned white and the one that stayed purple. He arranges the flowers in one of their chipped little vases, the pink one with the narrow base, and sets the vase on a tray. Next to it goes a large plate of very simple breakfast-- the only kind Dorian’s actually good at, even after years of practice. Fruits, toasted bread, milk from their neighbor’s cow.
He arranges it carefully, and moves slowly about the kitchen, humming a little to himself. He can hear Bull waking up and moving about briefly. He’s back in bed when Dorian brings the tray in though, propped against a massive pile of pillows and reading Varric’s latest advance manuscript, dawnstone-rimmed monocle in his eye. Their old, shaggy cat is curled in his lap, purring loudly.
He sets the papers aside and takes the tray so that Dorian can climb into the nest of pillows and blankets as well.
“Good morning, amatus.” Dorian pulls the softest quilt over his shoulder and leans against Bull.
“What’s the occasion?” Bull disregards the utensils Dorian had made sure to include and picks up a berry with his fingers. “Am I forgetting an anniversary?”
“No occasion.” Dorian’s eyes slip closed and Bull’s arm winds its way around his shoulders. He’s never felt more at home. “Simply happiness.”