Chapter Text
There was a thud from the rafters.
Dorian, the Iron Bull, and Krem looked up from their cards. The stairwell in the Herald's Rest was alarmingly good at conducting sound, such that events upstairs often sounded as though they were right next to you. Sera and Adaar had discovered this in an indecorous fashion, which bothered Sera not in the least but led the more bashful Adaar to confine their escapades to her own room from then on.
“Alright, whose fault do you want to bet that one was?” asked Krem. “Sera or Cole?”
“Are you kidding me?” Dorian asked, leaning back in his chair. “I think we can make a pretty safe bet that any and all destruction in this tavern is Sera's and Sera's fault alone.”
“Bet taken. Five silvers.” Bull reached into his pocket and set the coins on the table. Dorian arched an eyebrow. “Hey, you said it was a safe bet. You're a man of your word, aren't you?” Bull tapped on the coins impatiently. Dorian sighed, rolled his eyes, and fished out five silvers of his own.
Krem smirked. “You two are too cute. And too distractable.” He placed his card on the pile and raised his hand to slap it – but Bull reacted almost as quickly, pinning Krem's hand under his own with a slam. Krem hissed and delicately withdrew his hand. “Andraste's tits, Bull, it's just Par Vollen Nugscrew. You'd think I was trying to assassinate you.” He shook out his injured wrist.
“Hey, I play to win, in life and in cards,” Bull grunted. “Anyway, you won the hand. Quit complaining.”
“Fine, fine.” Krem shot Dorian a jokingly exasperated look, and Dorian shook his head in commiseration as he put his next card down.
“No!!” That anguished shout had come from upstairs, and was most definitely Cole, not Sera.
Bull cocked his head and grinned at Dorian. “Looks like you'll need to pay up.” He slid the coins on the table towards himself.
“What?” Dorian protested. “No. That doesn't prove anything. For all we know, Sera is tormenting him again. She's been trying to get a hold of his hat for weeks now-”
“Someone's a sore loser,” Krem taunted.
“I am not! I'm just saying, the bet isn't settled yet. Not until we actually know what happened.” Dorian pushed his chair out from the table and stood. “I'll go check and come back down, and then if Sera really wasn't involved I'll be a good sport and pay my debts.” Bull smirked coyly at him, and Dorian glared back in response. Krem chuckled and made a little heart with his hands, and Bull raised his eyebrow and mimed a much more obscene action in response. Dorian flipped both of them off and went upstairs.
Truth be told, he wasn't just going upstairs to win the bet. Dorian was actually mildly concerned. Cole wasn't prone to accidentally breaking things, or to outbursts apropos of nothing. He had been acting funny since that outing with Solas, Varric, and Adaar to the Hinterlands, though. Varric swore it was something about Cole becoming “more human,” but Dorian was suspicious. One couldn't change the fundamental nature of oneself just by making a decision not to forgive someone you had already failed to forgive long ago. There was a slim chance it might work that way for spirits, but if there was anything Dorian had learned from years of studying magic, it was that tidy explanations never held true under further scrutiny. There had to be something else at work, and it could be potentially dangerous. Or at the very least, traumatic for Cole himself. Outside of professional interest, Dorian did have a certain fondness for the good-natured spirit. There were so few genuinely selfless people in the world, and so few who were full of such endless curiosity – even if the individual in question was perhaps not a person, per se.
Dorian found Cole on the third floor as usual, hat still on, crouched over something. (Damn, so Bull really did win the bet.) Cole lifted his head, though not enough to actually look Dorian in the eye, and Dorian realized that he had been crying. “Cole? Are you alright?” Cole didn't respond, instead staring again at the object on the floor. Dorian squinted at whatever the crumpled thing was – it was hard to make out in the dim lighting, and it was roughly the same shade as the floor. Only the wind ruffling a tuft of down allowed Dorian to realize that it was a dead sparrow. “Cole, are you... crying about a dead bird?” Cole solemnly nodded.
Well, this was stupid. Dorian tried not to think too hard about how embarrassed he was for Cole, though he seemed too engrossed in his miniature funeral to bother reading his mind. If Cole had been a small child, maybe Dorian would have sympathized, but he was a grown man who slit throats for a living. Watching someone casually knife an unsuspecting woman between the shoulder blades and stare as she bled out could really change your view of a person. “Okay then.” Dorian turned to leave.
“I'm sorry,” Cole said quietly. “I know it's silly. I didn't mean to bother you.” Great, so Cole had read him after all. Dorian felt a rising shame at having thought so uncharitably about him, though he knew the spirit probably heard far worse on a regular basis, and it's not as though the rules of etiquette applied to mind reading anyway. Cole looked up at him again. “It's just- I saw the bird hit the rafter, flying, then falling, not understanding, and I couldn't do anything to stop it but I thought maybe I could help, so I went to pick it up but I held too hard, crushing, and it stopped moving and stopped breathing and its heart stopped beating and I think it's dead forever now.” Cole's voice broke on the last few words, and he covered his mouth in embarrassment as tears started streaming down his face, clearly not having intended to blurt out so much.
Okay, now Dorian felt horrible. He didn't know much about Cole's past, but he did know that for whatever reason, accidental death horrified him like nothing else. Dorian knew Cole had been going through a difficult time, and he had reacted by barging in on a private emotional moment that no one else had been meant to see. And now he had reduced Cole to sobbing and hiccuping in front of him, and he couldn't help but feel like it was his fault. “No, I- I'm sorry. It's not silly. You're allowed to cry about the bird,” Dorian apologized lamely. For some reason this just made Cole cry harder. The fact that it wasn't much of an apology probably didn't help. Dorian sighed and went to sit down next to Cole. “Hey. It's going to be all right, alright? Shh.” He put an arm around Cole, and Cole rested his head on Dorian's bare shoulder.
They sat there for a second, Cole continuing to cry unabated. Absentmindedly, Dorian started to stroke Cole's hair, then stopped. That was weird. He wasn't sure why he had instinctively done that. Now that he was thinking about it, though, his mind started to race. This whole situation seemed too intimate, somehow. Dorian knew he was just trying to comfort his friend, but he felt warm, slightly electrified. Being cried on felt unreasonably good. Was Dorian so damn thirsty for affection that he couldn't hug another man without turning it into a sex thing? A month ago he wouldn't have put it past himself, but he would have thought Bull had fucked the desperation out of him by now. At the very least, he didn't need to stoop to lusting after bizarre and completely unattractive spirits. “Though he's not all that bad. He has a sweet face, in a wet dog sort of way, I'll grant him that. And I've always had a thing for blonds-”
Dorian stopped mid-thought when he came to the horrifying realization that his thoughts were being echoed in a low whisper. He shoved Cole away, forcefully. “Stop doing that!”
“I- I'm sorry!” Cole raised his hands frantically, face bright red with embarrassment. “When you're right there, I can't not read you!”
Dorian stood up hurriedly, brushing attic dust off his pants. “Okay, just – forget that ever happened, okay? That never happened.”
“I don't think I can do that anymore-”
“Well, try.”
“But... did you want something from me?” Cole looked up at him. Dorian noticed, unwillingly, that he had blue-grey eyes.
“No. No, I don't want anything from you.”
“You're sure?”
“Absolutely sure.” Dorian hurried downstairs, not looking back, trying his hardest not to think about anything at all, especially the fact that he was not sure in the slightest.
Bull and Krem were both staring at Dorian when he arrived. “What took you so long?” Krem asked.
“Yeah, we were starting to wonder if the kid finally snapped and knifed you.”
“Nope. That didn't happen. Nothing happened,” Dorian said, a little too fast.
Krem's eyes narrowed. “A little quick with the denials, aren't we?”
“There was a dead bird involved. It was weird. You don't want to know.” Dorian threw up his hands in what he hoped was an exaggerated enough gesture to ward off inquiry. “Anyway, Bull wins the bet.”
Bull chuckled. “Nice!” He slid the coins into his hand. “Anyway, we still haven't finished our game. Your move, mage boy.”
“Right.” Dorian put down a card.
After a moment's pause, Krem slapped it. “How did you not see that one, man? You're really out of it.”
“Head in the game, pal,” said Bull, tapping Dorian on the forehead. Dorian playfully swatted his hand away and scoffed. As Bull played the next card, Dorian stared at him, trying to wash away any residual intrusive thoughts with the handsome picture before him. Bull was properly handsome indeed, Dorian thought as he ran his gaze along Bull's firm jawline and muscular neck. Even if he was a bit grey. And had horns. And was over seven feet tall. “Hey, Dorian. It's your turn. I know I'm gorgeous, but you really have to snap out of it.” Bull ruffled Dorian's hair.
“Right, right.” Dorian put his card down, and managed to notice the match right before Bull and Krem did, his hand just barely landing first on the pile. Demons are just the natural next step, you incorrigible pervert, a nasty voice hissed in the back of Dorian's head. He tried his best to ignore it. Maker knew he was going to need some practice ignoring himself.