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A damp tent in the cacophanous Frostback Basin night, rainwater dripping through the seams and puddling on the groundsheet, seeping into the bedrolls.
They are alone, Kay and Dorian, alone together again—at least as alone as two sheets of canvas and five feet of air between the tents allows them to be. (Everyone knows too much about everyone. It’s an inevitability of being frequent travelling companions.) The day has been a long one—tracking Fade-touched beasts and tearing down necromantic talismans and fighting hostile Avvar from dawn 'til dusk.
Kay is massaging salve into the red and purple bruises across Dorian’s ribs. They make an archipelago around his body, some larger than Kay’s two hands together. The scent of the salve—embrium and prophet’s laurel—fills the tent, peppery and clean. Now he has him here, basically at his mercy, Kay is reluctant to ask what he has been wanting to ask for half the day. He says: "Dorian."
Dorian opens his eyes and fixes them on Kay. "Now, that’s a serious tone. What have I done to deserve that, I wonder?"
Kay can’t suppress a quirk of his lips. "I just wanted to ask you something."
Dorian stretches his arms behind his head. "If you’re about to ask me to marry you, I’m leaving this tent—I don’t care how wet it is outside. I also think your Chantry may have something to say about it."
Sitting back on his heels, Kay shakes his head. "You’re safe. I’m not the marrying kind."
"Just as well."
Kay leans forward again, fingers slick with balm travelling gently across Dorian’s ribcage. Dorian’s eyes slide closed again, body arching slightly under Kay’s touch. Kay goes on: "I wanted to ask about Rilienus."
Underneath his hands, Dorian stops breathing. Kay looks up again to find Dorian’s eyes open, not looking at him but up at the sagging canvas above them.
When Dorian speaks, it’s as if they were making light conversation over dinner. "He was the first boy I ever loved. And how I loved him! Teenage passions, you know. His smile was brighter than the sun, and all that tosh."
Kay’s fingers have stilled on Dorian’s chest. "Cole said he would have said yes. What to?"
Something like a laugh shakes Dorian’s ribcage—then he winces. "We were friends, and that was all. I was only a boy, really. I never said a word to him about how I felt. Never asked him if he might feel the same."
"What happened?" Kay picks up a rag to wipe his hands. "Things cooled off?"
Dorian runs a hand through his hair, mussing it. "My father."
"Oh."
"He was always a perceptive sort. Not that he’d have needed to be, the way I was mooning around. A flex of his political muscles and my idol’s family was ruined. They emigrated out of Minrathous. I never saw or heard from them again." He shakes his head. "I think that was the first time he had realised I liked boys. He was probably hoping it was a one off."
"For my sake, I’m glad you disappointed him."
A smile crosses Dorian’s face. A genuine one, like a spot of sunlight on a stormy day. It passes, and he says, "All the years since then, whenever I thought of him, I wondered. That unanswered question I just couldn’t leave alone."
"And now?"
A moment of pause. "Now I know."
Kay had been sitting very still, afraid of disturbing the drift of Dorian’s thought. Now he shifts his weight forward, skimming his hand across Dorian’s collarbone, drawing his thumb along his jawline, fingers brushing his cheekbone. It has the desired effect—Dorian’s gaze returns from the middle distance, and he meets Kay’s eyes, and his lips curve upward in a slow smile. Kay says, "Ever since I heard his name, all I’ve wanted to do is grab you and kiss you—kiss you and kiss you and kiss you until the only person you can think about is me."
A hiss of breath escapes Dorian’s lips. He brings his hands up to curl around the nape of Kay’s neck, fingers sliding up into his pale hair. "Didn’t take you for the jealous kind, either," he murmurs. "Sure you don’t want to put a ring on my–"
Kay captures his lips in a kiss, deep and hard. When they part, they are both breathing faster. In one swift movement Kay swings his leg across Dorian’s waist so that he is straddling him. His hands entangle in Dorian’s hair, disarraying it further, and he bends for another kiss, more urgent than before. His lips trail down from the corner of Dorian’s lips to his jaw, to the hollow under it where his pulse beats fast, down to the well between his collarbone and his shoulder.
Dorian makes a noise low in his throat, fingers knotting in Kay’s hair. His body arches into Kay’s mouth as it travels further, and he shudders, briefly checked by the pain, but doesn’t subside.
After they are done, Kay crawls back up to bury his face in the curve of Dorian’s neck and shoulder, curling an arm around his waist. The rain has subsided—only the odd fat drop from the huge, ancient trees above disturbs the post-storm quiet, and the rush of the river, and the first strains of birdsong. The air is clearer too.
Fingers against his cheek wake Kay from the beginnings of sleep. He opens his eyes. Dorian’s face is turned toward his, his breath blooming against Kay’s lips. Mindful of the quiet too, Dorian says under his breath, "This dragon of yours."
"Mine?" Kay smiles half into the pillow. "The Hakkonites’, you mean."
"Whatever you like. This great beast in which lives a spirit powerful enough to be called a god."
"What of it?"
Something more bitter than a grin twists Dorian’s mouth. "'What of it?' he asks. We’re only going to thaw an ancient war god trapped in the body of a dragon in the morning, nothing much. Oh, to have your insouciance! Or your gaping lack of imagination. Take your pick."
Awake again now, Kay lifts his head to prop it on his fist. It takes him a moment to consider the best tack to take before he replies. "Telana. She disquieted you."
Dorian rolls away from Kay, to lie flat on his back again and stare at the roof of the tent. "Spirits tend to do that to people. Present travelling companions excepted." He pauses. "Actually, no, I take that back. Cole is frequently the most disquieting person I’ve ever met." He glances at Kay, and lets the irony drop. "That beast you want to release killed Inquisitor Ameridan. Your predecessor, and a famed dragon hunter."
He reaches a hand to touch Kay’s cheek again. "Amatus, I adore you, and I thoroughly subscribe to the popular notion that the sun shines out of your exquisite arse, but listen. I don’t care a fig if you defeat a thousand angry Avvar single-handed and lock that creature away for another eight hundred years—not any of it is worth you." His voice breaks on the last word and to cover it up Dorian rolls back and drags Kay in for another kiss, deep and searching. As they part, he groans, and puts a hand to his battered ribs.
Kay shifts forward to press his forehead against Dorian’s. "The Hakkonites will release it," he says. "And then they’ll rain down chaos on all of Thedas. Everything we fought and killed and sacrificed for."
Dorian’s face closes up. "I fought for you, you idiot. I still do."
"That’s not true." Kay puts his fingers on Dorian’s lips to quell him. "Not entirely true, then. You may play it cool, but you can’t stand by while people are suffering, dying. Any more than I can." Kay closes his eyes against the confession. "The people at Haven—I still hear them sometimes in my sleep. I can’t fail anyone else. I couldn’t live with any more dead on my back."
Dorian sighs. "I know," he says, and there’s a world of resignation in it, along with unspoken agreement.
The quiet takes them again. Then:
"Dorian."
"What?"
"Promise me that you won’t wait for me, like Telana did for Ameridan."
"Vishante kaffas!" Dorian spits.
"I mean it." Kay pulls back to look Dorian in the eye again. "If I die, I need you to live. Go and reform Tevinter. Shake them to their foundations. Don’t let me cramp your style."
"We are not talking about this," Dorian says, "now, or ever." The hard edge to his voice tells Kay it would be useless to push it. Instead, when Dorian seizes him by the shoulders, rolling on top of him and tearing a kiss forcefully from his mouth, Kay lets him, winding his own hands around the wiry muscle of Dorian’s upper arms.
They make love again, then, and the insistence of Dorian’s passion—his fingers, his mouth, his tongue—strips Kay of all thought, makes every muscle tremble and he has to bite his lip to keep from making too much sound. He still cries out as he finishes, and after they’re done this time he falls into a deep and empty sleep tangled with his lover.