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You don't enjoy watching the Vint crash and burn by inches, but it's not your business to intervene. You hold yourself to that, too, no matter how much it makes your horns itch to watch a personnel disaster like Dorian Pavus unfold in slow motion and not do anything about it.
But you’ve met plenty of humans - plenty of Tevinters - and they usually take it the wrong way. Sure, sometimes it can be a sex thing, if that's what someone needs, but it doesn't have to be. Usually isn't, actually. It's a different kind of intimacy, breaking yourself open and letting someone else put you back together, and mixing that intimacy together with the groinal sort ends… messily, more often than not. In a pair running off to be Tal-Vashoth, because they think they're in bas-style love. Worse, losing that trust completely, that deep connection falling apart.
Dorian would take it as a sex thing.
Anyway, it's not your place and not your business; Adaar has obviously fallen ass-over-horns for the guy, and no way you're going to muscle your way into that. Not without an invitation at least (although someone should teach Dorian how to do it right, the Boss is holding on by her fingernails and she needs someone who knows what they're doing -- but no, no, you always do this, always want to fix everyone, throw yourself at anyone who looks even a little miserable like some sort of 8-foot-tall conciliatory puppy.)
You're so determined not to meddle, in fact, that Adaar actually takes you by surprise when she asks for a private word.
“He won't talk to me, Bull,” she frets at you. “Not about what's upsetting him, he's trying so hard to- to- to impress me, or something, and I…” She shakes her head, her face a picture of hangdog misery.
“Have you-” you start to say, but she's already nodding.
“Yes, I mean, probably, whatever you were about to say. It’s just,” her expression falls into heartfelt and passionate concern. “Whatever he needs, it's not me he needs it from.”
“Boss,” you say, because you can see where this is heading and damn if she doesn't have it bad for the Vint if she's really about to do what you're pretty sure she's about to do. This is the kind of dumb, self-sacrificing sentiment that they’d put in the storybooks. Well, they would, if Qunari did that kind of thing. Well, Varric would, at least. You might be reading too many trashy Southern novels.
“Can you help him?” she asks and yeah, there it is, you are damn good at this. “It's… Well, it's probably only you or Cole who’d even know how and I don't think he's ready for Cole.” She's looking at you sideways and her ears are drooping like a sad elf’s. It's breaking her heart to give him up, to not be able to help him, and there's really only one way you can answer.
“Yeah, boss,” you tell her, resting a hand in her shoulder. “I can help.”
***
Humans don’t have a word for it, and as far as you know neither do elves, or dwarves. Taashathari. It’s not a thing, not an emotion, it’s something you do, something you are. It’s hard to explain exactly what it means if you don’t already know what it means, or don’t know how to think like a Qunari, although plenty of bas have tried. They try ‘love without desire,’ but that’s not right, there is desire there, for touch and trust and closeness if not for sex. ‘Familial’ isn’t right either, or ‘brotherhood’. It’s... being an anchor, a rock, a calm place. It’s bringing someone back from their own heads, giving them the control to keep going. It’s like being the Qun, but the whole thing wrapped up in a person.
You start watching Dorian. You already had been, of course, you watch everyone, but now you watch him with the intense scrutiny of a man who is going to take someone apart piece by piece, shake every problem out of the mess, and put them back together again. It’s something you’re good at, you’d done it on Seheron, and for Krem, and for Skinner, and were working on Grim. But where you hadn’t looked closely before - hadn’t allowed yourself to look, because if you did you’d have to fix it - you’re seeing now where you’re not going to have to take Dorian apart at all. The guy’s about to shatter on his own.
You’re going to have to approach this with delicacy to make sure the pieces are big enough to put back together.
Also, you’re pretty sure you’re going to have to make it a sex thing.
“That staff’s in pretty good shape, Dorian,” you say. “Spend a lot of time polishing it?”
The rude gesture he makes at you in response is, at least, heartfelt. There’s a certain flick of the wrist - which, yeah, hm, in light of previous remarks, maybe not. Heartfelt, though. That’s good, at least, that he’s not so sunk in his head that he can’t be pettily annoyed. He’s defensive, though, intensely so and more than before, the anger brittle and flaky around the edges. Desperate.
So you push.
He doesn’t need too big of a nudge, it turns out, but it’s not actually you that gives it to him. Dorian and the Boss disappear to the Hinterlands for a week, and you’re only able to nose out a vague idea of why before Dorian reappears. In the tavern.
Dorian Pavus, you have learned, has a talent for getting very efficiently drunk. He doesn’t often drink like you drink or the boys drink, jovially running past tipsy and into roaring. He’s methodical, and measured, counting cheap red wine by the bottle to a point of drunkenness where things maybe stop mattering. He’s good at keeping himself there all night, to, on that edge between fuzzy numbness and oblivion.
So seeing him down Ferelden bog whiskey with the determined air of a man careening headlong towards blackout is a little concerning.
“Hey, big guy,” you say, leaning on the bar next to him. It’s a bit of a contortion, but you manage. “How’s it hanging?”
Dorian looks up at you with the slow deliberation of the very intoxicated. His elegant brow is furrowed, although you’re not certain if it’s in annoyance with you, annoyance with his life, or an effort to keep the room in focus.
“Dorian?” you prompt, after a while.
“Yes,” he says, in way that sounds like he’s only about three quarters sure of the answer.
“Yeah, I think you’ve had plenty,” you say. He scowls at his glass, which is mostly empty, and knocks back the dregs without ceremony. You are almost impressed that he doesn’t miss his mouth even a little bit.
“I,” says Dorian Pavus, in the precise and careful way of drunkards, “am perfectly fine, thank you.” He still has the sense - or the experience - to brace himself on the counter when he stands. He sways anyway.
“You wanna come upstairs with me?” you ask him, because he is far too shitfaced for anything in the same neighborhood as subtle.
He stares at you for a long second, hard and intent with something other than alcohol. “Yes,” he says, and he sounds surer of this than he does of his name. Oh boy. “Yes, that sounds. Yes.”
You throw an arm around him to steady him, because he does need it but also because it looks more comraderie-y than ‘walking the drunk back to his room’-y and his dignity could use as much cushion as you can give it, because you have a strong suspicion it’s not going to last out the night.
Dorian actually makes it to your room without either vomiting or falling up the stairs, which is laudable. He staggers over to your bed as you lock the door behind you. His arrangement on it is haphazard and sloppy, but, you gotta hand it to the guy, he does ‘debauched’ pretty well. If he weren’t so completely plastered, you’d actually find it appealing. As it is, you’re more concerned about his aim when he inevitably needs to piss.
He pushes himself up to his elbows and tosses his head to flick a lock of hair out of his face. You can tell when he realizes that was a bad choice (which is almost instantly) by the way his neck goes tense in an effort to keep his head from lolling. He’s frowning at you, kinda confused, kinda annoyed. “You don’t need a flight of stairs and a locked door to just admire my visage,” he says. “Are you going to do something with me or not?”
Do something with me. Not join me or touch me or even fuck me, but do something with me. It might be fine, that statement, but the cadence of it, like the way you’d tell the boys to “do something with that, would you?”... Another little tumbler of the mechanism that is Dorian Pavus clicks into place for you. You’ve almost got this one, but one push wrong could send springs and gears exploding into hidden corners.
“Depends,” you say, walking towards him. His liquor-loose body tenses up at your approach: anticipation, but the nervy kind. “You still sober enough to even get it up?”
“Doesn’t matter,” he says, collapsing back on the bed and tilting his head back, closing his eyes. The bastard is baring his throat to you, fuck, not that he knows what that means. Human, he’s human, you have to remind yourself, he doesn’t get it. But ooh, it’s tempting, the urge to put your teeth against that soft, vulnerable skin and not bite down, respecting that trust, giving it back, you’re right, you’re safe here, I won’t harm you, thank you, thank you. It wouldn’t, it wouldn’t mean that to him. You have to do it the hard way.
That “doesn’t matter” bothers you, though, the careless way he said it. You’re not stupid, you know what that means and what he’s telling you that you can do. To him, not with him. And there are circumstances when you might, since it’s what he wants, or what he thinks he wants, but they aren’t this one. You’re not here to help him hurt himself.
He’s getting nervier by the minute as you don’t touch him, though, and that tension is going to snap in him soon. Inaction is as bad as rejection right now, you’re pretty sure. He’s asking to be used. It’s not what he wants, or what he needs, but it’s the best he thinks he’s going to get.
The surge of emotion hits you square in the solar plexus. It’s another one of those feelings you need to use Qunlat to describe, pity, maybe, or sympathy, but it’s wrapped up in this intense urge to protect. You want to wrap Dorian in cotton wool to keep him away from all of his own sharp edges before he cuts himself worse than he already has.
The bed creaks when you kneel on it, the only way you’ll both fit is if you straddle Dorian’s legs. If you’re lucky, though, that might even help. You brace your hands on either side of his shoulders, lean down over him. “Hey,” you say gently, and his eyelids drag open. “It definitely matters. Not really into nights where I’m the only one having a good time.”
There’s a brief flicker on his face, a tension around his eyes that almost looks like tears before his expression shutters again, going prickly and scowly-defensive. “There was no reason to bring me up here if you didn’t want me,” he says, and he’s already trying to sit up. “If you’re so reluctant I can find another bed to warm for the night.”
Fuck. If you let him bolt now, he’s never going to let you this close again. At the same time, you are not going to have sex with him while he’s this drunk and self-destructive, not going to let him punish himself with your body. “Wanting you isn’t the problem, believe me,” you say, then, “hey, Dorian, look at me.”
He does.
You lean down and kiss him.
He clearly wasn’t expecting it, and the fact that Dorian Pavus does not expect a lover to kiss him offends some deep-down part of you. He does know what he’s doing, though, even if he is too sloppy-drunk to take control of the kiss, deepen it the way he’s clearly trying to. Honestly, you’d be surprised if he can even feel his face at this point.
You keep it gentle and free of tongue, and he has no idea what to do with that, apparently, because he makes this little, broken, questioning noise against your mouth. Then you shift your weight and bring up one hand to cradle his jaw (which is tiny against your palm, and his pulse is pounding like a bird’s against your skin).
He does so quietly, and with very little ceremony, but with your lips on his and your hand on his face and the fact that you’re listening for it, you can tell exactly when he starts to cry.
You pull back, only a little and very slowly, because if you give him room he’s going to put his hands over his face and cut himself apart trying to pull all the jagged little fracturing pieces of himself back together. You kiss him again, his jaw, his cheek, the corner of his closed eye where the tears are leaking across the side of his face and into the pillow. He’s shaking underneath you, and you’re pretty sure it’s from the effort of holding back a sob. You feel his breath catching in his chest and more tears come, and you keep your face close to his, brushing your lips across his skin in gentle, careless affection.
He’s not a loud crier, no theatrical sobs, but you feel one wrench it’s way out, a heave of shoulders and a choked sigh that gives way to another, and another. You stop kissing him then, just bring your face closer to rest your forehead against his, a point of contact. You’re too big around the chest for him to hold onto, but his hands slide on your flanks, trying anyway, before tangling in your harness.
It’s a bit of a maneuver, flipping you both onto your sides without flinging the pillows away with your horns, but Dorian doesn’t need to be pinned, right now, he needs to be held. His body clearly agrees, even if his brain isn’t fully on board with the proceedings yet, because you wrap your arms around him and tuck him up under your chin and he curls into the contact, pulling himself closer. Skinner had been like this, so desperate for touch once she’d let you touch her at all. You know for a fact where she went in her head when she’d shake like this, gritting her teeth against a scream. You’ll find out where Dorian goes, too, and then you might have to go break something (you had for Skinner, and for Krem), and then you’d come back and you’d both figure out how to make the edges of that place hurt less because there were some things you couldn’t dig out but you could wear smooth.
That’s for later, though. For now, you hold him, and let him crumble against your body. You’re safe, you think, I’ve got you, I’ve got you, you’re safe.