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“I’m sorry?” Dorian pulls away, the feeling of Talen’s throat still lingering against his lips – just there, where his pulse thrums beneath the thin skin beneath his jaw.
“I said, I won’t break,” Talen murmurs, fingers digging Dorian’s arms. Chill, where they rest against his bare skin. “I’m small but rather resilient, vhenan.”
This late at night, the library is empty, lit only by the flickering candles placed at uneven intervals through the entire rotunda. And though Dorian knows they’re alone – except, perhaps, for those damnable ravens he's at least half-certain must report to Leliana – the suggestion prickles against his skin, like an ill-fitting and rough-cut robe.
It’s an unfair thought, and Dorian knows it the moment it flashes through his mind. Almost cruel, especially when Talen stares up at him, skin flushed by their illicit activities, his eyes bright with heat.
It’s not that Dorian isn’t interested in leaving a – lingering impression. Indeed, quite the opposite.
But pretending that the very notion isn’t inherently complex would be dishonest. Perhaps even worse, it would be short-sighted and woefully politically ignorant. The man who shapes nations, under the sway of the singularly wretched magister? An elf who’s finally accumulated a measure of political clout and prestige, only to be marked by a Tevinter?
A distasteful narrative, and for all that it’s inherently ludicrous, it’s also precisely how their… connection will be read.
It’s the thought he must hold on to, when his lover’s pliancy gets the better of him: no action they take – not even in the quiet library in the darkest hours of the night – is without consequence or without, in effect, an audience.
Dorian’s hands drop away from Talen’s torso. He clears his throat, tries for a smile in the unsteady candlelight. “You may not break, but you’ll certainly mark,” he says.
The not touching isn’t quite enough – not with Talen pressed up against the bookshelf, a figure spun from shadow and the dim, yellow light of the candles – and so Dorian crosses his arms firmly across his chest. He steps back, the air in the little alcove in which they’ve been secreted away suddenly stale and warm in a way wholly uncomfortable.
No, so very close to their appointment in Halamshiral, this evening’s dalliance has gone far enough. He won’t have the Inquisition’s efforts spoiled by his own selfishness. Or his lover’s apparent lack of political judgment.
Talen says nothing, though the skin between his eyebrows creases in – irritation or else disappointment or perhaps merely because he finds it difficult to see in the semi-dark of the library.
It’s a silence Dorian can certainly fill, particularly with his thoughts on the matter at hand: namely, good judgment and prudence. “And if you’re marked,” he continues, finding it significantly easier to discard of the proffered suggestion now that he’s standing over here while Talen’s over there, regardless of how alluring his lover looks draped across a shelf of books, “all of the Orlesian nobility will be scandalized beyond belief. Which I might normally enjoy were we not also charged with stopping an assassination and saving the world. Meager enough tasks for a man such as yourself, true, but made rather more difficult if we shock the nation’s elite.”
Talen’s stare flicks up to the ceiling, as though he’s offering a prayer to the Maker – or, more fittingly, his gods, though of course he keeps none. “We’ve arrived at the flattery. One of my favourite parts.”
“I should expect so,” Dorian says. “I’m very practiced. All of those years spent talking to my own reflection!”
That earns him a short laugh, a smirk curling Talen’s mouth – quick as flashfire. The expression is lined by the spartan moonlight working its way past the narrow window, light spare enough to do little more than gleam off the pane of glass and cast half of Talen’s face in silver.
“Perhaps,” Talen says finally, “I’d like to be marked.”
It’s said so quietly that Dorian thinks, for a moment, that he must have misheard. He blinks, head tilting to one side as his attention narrows to the man standing before him, his dark and level stare through the shadowed alcove. “What do you mean?”
Talen pushes himself from the bookcase with all the languid grace of a cat. “I spend a great deal of my time playing nice, Dorian,” he says, tone firmer. Almost – commanding.
A shiver chases its way up Dorian’s spine. “Do you?” he asks mildly, though his pulse jumps in his throat at the purpose with which Talen moves forward. The slow and certain movements of a predator. “How curious. I wouldn’t have classified summarily removing the heads of anyone who crosses the Inquisition as playing nice.”
Another short laugh as Talen prowls closer. “I mean that I do my very best to make myself palatable. I measure out precisely who I must become, and I fill that role. But – there are things I would have mark me.”
“Things,” repeats Dorian, feeling rather unsteady on his feet, although he stands upon familiar ground.
“I let them say I’m the Herald of Andraste,” continues Talen, moving forward still, “but I won’t remove my vallaslin, though surely it could be done.” Another step, and Dorian edges backward.
The corner of Talen’s mouth twitches, the ghost of a smile. “And I’ll dance,” he says, as Dorian takes another half-step backward as Talen pushes forward, “with whomever Josephine thinks I should, but I will have them know I’m yours, when the evening’s through.”
It’s precisely what Dorian had worried about, though even in thinking that, he feels –
Warmed. To be held aloft, rather than hidden away. To be boasted of for precisely all that his father had demanded he rid himself of. Dorian’s back bumps against the high shelves, the firelight catching on Talen’s glittering stare. The lines of his angular body.
“Although,” says Talen, with an affected, short sigh, his hands still hovering at his sides though he’s close enough now to touch, “if the scandal’s too much for you, I might remind you that our regalia is high collared indeed.”
It’s his turn to laugh, a heated sound. “That it is,” says Dorian, mouth curling into a sharp little smile despite himself.
“Well, then.” Talen’s hands flash out, catching the front of Dorian’s robes in his steady grip, sliding along the complex series of clasps and seams as though they remain a mystery, though he knows, by now, how to easily unfix the whole lot. “As I said, I won’t break. But a bruise, vhenan, would not go unappreciated.”
Dorian’s arms uncross, his stare sliding from Talen’s mouth to the long line of his throat – soft skin Dorian had been committing to memory against his mouth when Talen had first insisted he be firmer in his ministrations.
Perhaps, he thinks, they will avoid having an audience for this. After all, Talen does excel at finding shadows in which to hide.
And Dorian does hate to disappoint.