A Miracle of the Everyday
Summary: In which Bull is human, and teaches science, and Dorian is Qunari (or Tal-Vashoth, if you care for distinctions) and teaches magical theory at a high school in Haven. Or, the story to really put the Alternate into AU.Tags: alternate universe - modern with magic, alternate universe- modern thedas, high school, teachers, human!Bull, qunari!Dorian, developing relationships, fantasy racism, bar fights, blood and violence, hurt/comfort.
for @hcvillicrd from @littlexabyss
“Kid,” he sighs, and scratches his head with the end of his ballpoint pen, “All the justification in the world isn’t going to stop me giving your ass detention. You know the rules. If you’re stupid enough to let me catch you doing it, maybe a detention is going to make you think twice about it in the future. Grow a brain, huh?” The young qunari mutters something and shuffles his feet. Bull’s pen stops on the pad, and he growls, “Didn’t catch that.”
“Nothing, sir.” But the inflection on the word is too glib, and Bull decides to serve a little education. He looks down slightly, into the skinny face. Though the boy cannot be more than fourteen or so, he is almost as tall as Bull, but with gangly limbs not yet at their full potential. His adult horns have not yet fully grown in either, and though he pulls himself up straighter and puffs out his chest, he is not yet any kind of match for Bull physically. And besides - Bull knows this kid. He’s a Vashoth, well known amongst the faculty for sarcastic comments and rolled eyes - clever, but a bit of a wiseass. As Bull continues to stare at him through his one narrowed eye, the young Vashoth swallows nervously and shuffles his feet again. Bull lets the silence stretch for a little longer, then murmurs softly, his voice full of latent threat, “Really? Didn’t sound like nothing. Sounded like don’t have to take orders from some viddathari scum. That sound like something that’d come out of your mouth?”
The boy’s nostrils flare as he looks up into Bull’s face. He shakes his head mutely, and Bull grins, asks, “Speak up, wouldja?”
“No, sir. Sorry, sir.” The kid’s voice has lost its flippance, and Bull leans back, finishes writing out the detention slip.
“Give this to your homeroom teacher, Adaar. I’ll see you in class later.”
“Yes, sir.” The boy takes the slip meekly enough, and Bull watches him scurry away.
He hates hall duty. He wishes he was back in the lab, trying to formulate experiments which are both exciting and curriculum-based. There is a woeful lack of teachers in Ferelden after the war, and the government had offered attractive packages to teachers from overseas to try and fill the vacancies. That’s how Bull ended up here - he supposes it’s pretty mercenary, but hell, the pay is good, and the work isn’t too taxing. But until all the vacancies are filled, there won’t be many opportunities for creating a junior science lesson plan with anything approaching the usual standard of both rigour and entertainment that Bull strives for. He sighs into the now abandoned hallway, and continues on his rounds.
Finally, it’s lunch. The day is turning lazily away from the noontime zenith, and Bull yawns over the pile of marking in front of him. Do your homework next time, he writes on the bottom of the paper in front of him, then sighs. He hates to see potential wasted, and the kid that wrote this paper has that in spades, but no head for application. Putting one hand against his stubbly cheek, he leans an elbow on the table, and raises his eyes to find his coffee cup.
And then, it happens.
There he is, over the other side of the room, brown bag clutched in one huge grey hand, a book under his arm. He’s tall, alright. And the horns. Bull snorts, because the qunari who’s the newest teacher to be employed at Haven High is just as good looking as the students he’d heard giggling about him in class had implied. His skin shines like moonlight through fog, silvery and bright, and his horns are backswept and capped with what looks like everite cloching. Then, he turns, and as intelligent grey eyes rest on Bull’s face, he sees the scars.
He knows that it’s what the Qun teaches. Magic is a curse to be suffered stoically, a weapon to be kept sheathed and wielded only as necessary. And, for the most part, Bull agrees - magic is a terrifying prospect. For anyone to be able to stretch out a hand and touch fire, to turn a person into ash in a fit of pique is not something which he thinks any society would welcome.
The qunari sees him looking, and returns his gaze, a slight challenge in his eyes. Bull’s nostrils flare, and he watches him walk over to the table at which Bull is seated. He is finely made, muscular, wiry with the potential energy, like a coiled spring. He puts his empty hand on the chair opposite Bull’s as he asks, “May I?”
Bull shrugs, dragging his eyes back to the pile of marking in front of him. Then he begins to shuffle some of the completed papers away from the other side of the table, back toward himself. The qunari pulls out the chair and sits, then smiles. He takes a deep breath in, and tells Bull, “I’m Dorian.”
Bull nods, takes the proffered hand. It almost completely engulfs his own, brown flesh subsumed in grey. Dorian’s grip is warm, smooth and soft, and Bull is aware suddenly of how rough his own hands must seem. He decides to play dumb, and raises an eyebrow slightly as he says, “Kind of a weird name for a Qunari, isn’t it?”
Dorian’s eyes narrow. “You know I’m not Qunari.”
“Vashoth, then.” But even as he says it, he is aware of an impatience from Dorian - he knows that the scars give him away as one of the True Grey. While the scars are clearly old, they look no less painful; silvery purple lines dragged wickedly through the skin of Dorian’s lips, the twisted skin a testament to how tightly the cords had been pulled.
Dorian seems to hear hope in Bull’s tone, and he shakes his head. He smiles strangely before telling Bull, “No. Sorry to disappoint. I’m Tal-Vashoth. A runaway.” He pauses, cocks his head, “Dorian is the name I chose. We don’t have names under the Qun. But you would know that.” He takes a breath, slowly filling his lungs with air. “I hear you’re Viddathari. A convert. I wanted to meet you properly, before we had a chance to fall back on any squabbling which might be implied by our rather unique positions on either side of this particular fence.” Dorian stops speaking, and eyes Bull cautiously. “I don’t make you nervous, do I?”
Bull smiles. “Not nervous, no.” He pauses, cocks his head, “You ran away from your Arvaraad?”
Dorian’s lips curl, broader than before, and with a mocking look. He arches an eyebrow. Bull cannot help but note how perfect the line of the brow is, how sensual his mouth is, in spite of the scars. Still smiling, Dorian says, “My, we have done our homework. Ashkaari Koslun would be proud.”
“Hey, look,” Bull smiles himself then, and it is not angry, but the potential is there. He pauses a moment, then continues, “I wasn’t born to the Qun. I chose it. Just because you didn’t, doesn’t mean you get to joke about it.” Even as he says the words, he baulks at them, astonished at how quickly his defenses have sprung up. This was why he found the Qun so attractive in the first place - it gave him a place to lay this anger, a system of reason with which to control it. But this… this creature… he has no right to mock the Koslun, not when he made the choice to reject the system first. He’s not a creature, Bull tells himself, His name is Dorian. He might be Tal Vashoth, and a mage, but he’s a person too. The look on Dorian’s face flashes resignation, and then he frowns. “I didn’t…”
Bull shrugs. “Yeah, I know. We can work together. I ain’t gonna make life harder for you than it needs to be. Just…” He pauses, the words on the tip of his tongue something like we can’t be friends. He swallows them back down; he knows what it is to have snap judgements made by people who have just met you, cannot bring himself to do it to another, and so he tells Dorian, “Good luck, okay?”
With that, he gathers the papers to himself, and begins to rise. Dorian remains seated, his head bowed slightly. As Bull taps the papers gently on the table to straighten the pile, Dorian mutters something. Bull almost lets it go, then his curiosity gets the better of him and he asks, “What?”
Dorian takes a deep breath and smiles winningly. There is something so hurt about that smile, so brittle that it gives Bull pause, and he asks, more gently this time, “What did you say?”
“Just that you never asked me what I was teaching. It seemed odd, that’s all.”
“Oh.” Bull is at a loss for a moment, waiting for Dorian to say, and then he shakes his head slightly and asks, “So? What are you teaching?”
And Dorian smiles, a true smile this time, it lights up that beautiful face, the grey skin, colour of silver, the grey eyes like mystery revealed. And he tells Bull, his tone of voice awed and reverent, “Magic.”
And Bull, almost in spite of himself, laughs.
-|||-
It goes on that way for several weeks. Bull grades papers, hauls two kids up for thieving from the stores, coaches his soccer teams, helps out with the charity drive. He sees Dorian in the corridors, smiles at him and says hi, but keeps his distance.
He cannot help but notice how drawn Dorian looks, how tired he seems, though he is still smiling whenever Bull sees him. And he always seems to be surrounded by students who clearly adore him - from what Bull understands, many of the parents had lobbied for Dorian’s removal, stating that his presence was ‘corrupting’ and ‘dangerous’, which is just flat out stupid. Anyone can see that Dorian is a fine teacher, though Bull chuckles when he sees that many of these students who form the core group of his admirers are young women. It wouldn’t be the first time that a new teacher has caused a bit of a flurry amongst the student body, but perhaps there’s something special about magical theory. The last teacher they’d had, an bald elven guy, Solas, had had the same effect on students. Bull smiles, and shrugs. You could write a paper on it, you got a theory for everything. Call it Theory of Student Attraction, he thinks to himself, and laughs again.
The year turns - the bare tree-limbs grow their greenery once again. Lessons come and go - the midyear exams have proven Bull’s point on the validity of a change to a more Constructionist pedagogical stance. He was almost alarmed when Dorian chimed into the debate he was having in the faculty lounge with Varric, who had questioned the lack of standards-based assessment under Bull’s programme, but in the end, was impressed with Dorian’s grasp of the ideas. The guy is smart, that’s for sure. And in Bull’s annual assessment, Ms Pentaghast, the principal, wonders aloud whether they’d consider writing for one of the professional practice journals, and he shrugs and tells her he’ll ask Dorian, that he’d consider it.
And he does, for about five minutes. But then, he has enough to do, no real life to speak of outside of school, and attending his team’s games, and playing in the five-aside league at the local rec club. The Chargers, they’ve called themselves, and they’re close to winning the mixed-league cup again this year, if Krem can keep his fucking eyes off the sideline. Bull snickers and elbows him, makes a joke about how Krem Brûlée is finally gettin’ that hardened caramel top all cracked up, and Krem laughs and colours a little around the ears. He’s adorable, and Bull tells him that. To which, of course, Krem rolls his eyes and Maryden yells from the sideline for Bull to get his own man.
It’s not that he’s lonely. He’s not - he gets plenty of attention, he’s not short on interest. It’s just… ah, hell, if he’s honest, it’s connection he’s missing. Someone who gets the jokes, someone who comes home and tells him about their day, that he can tell his little theories to, who will roll their eyes and grin at them. So of course when Josie suggests they go dancing, after the last performance of the school play, he agrees so quickly that she laughs.
“And they say scientists are socially inept,” she teases him, and his grin broadens.
“I’m not a scientist. I’m a science teacher.” She smiles at him, then drops onto the sofa next to him. It’s an elderly one, the brown and gold of the violently patterned fabric faded to nothingness, and it sends up a puff of dust as she sits. The dust motes shine and shift in the slanting sunlight, and Josie asks, without preamble, “So, science teacher. How are you getting along with your opposite number?”
“My what?”
Josie rolls her eyes, “You know! The new magical theory guy! Dorian!” She raises an eyebrow and puts one hand out flat, palm up, “Science,” the other hand goes out, in the same position, “Magic. Opposite sides of the same coin.” She looks at him and smiles slyly, “Both deal in everyday miracles, don’t they?”
Bull huffs, and grins. He’s not going to give her the satisfaction of knowing that he’s found himself wondering more than once what those scars might feel like under his own lips. He pushes the thought away, and asks, “Jo, are you trying to set us up? He’s a Tal-Vashoth, for fuck’s sakes. And a mage.” He pauses, narrowing his eye, then laughs. “You are, aren’t you? And you invited him to come out too.”
Josie at least has the grace to look chagrinned for a moment, before she flaps her hand at him. “Bull, come on.” She smiles, and tells him, “He’s cute. You can’t tell me that you do all that working out just so you can lift a test tube day in, day out?”
He laughs, “Anyone would think you wanted to ride the Bull…”
“Oh, Maker! You’re not still using that awful pick up line, are you?” Josie cackles, whacks him on the arm. His grin broadens, and he nudges her and lowers his voice to say suggestively, “Well, if it works…”
She chuckles and hushes him. “You can’t blame a girl for being curious.”
“And I never would.” He smiles, and they fall to silence for a moment. The staff lounge is virtually empty, and he examines her out of the corner of his eye. This time of year is usually hell on drama teachers - not only do they have the usual rounds of assessments, but also the end of year play is reaching its final stages of preparation, and this year Josephine had chosen a real doozy. Can-Can, by Cole Porter, in all its Orlesian pomp and glory. Bull had been helping Thom out with the scenery a little, and had smiled when he had observed Josie and Leliana, the music teacher, giggling together over student audition stories. It’s nice, that kind of thing, nice that it brings both faculty and students together in a shared cause. Haven High can seem pretty big at times. Kind of lonely.
But Josie seems fine, or at least until she looks worriedly at him and says, very quietly, “You’d really never consider it?”
“Consider what, hon?”
“Dorian.” She says his name simply, tilting her head to one side, and smiles a little ruefully.
Bull huffs a quick breath through his nose and shakes his head. “He seems okay. But aside from the personal thing, I…” What? Don’t know the guy? You’ve barely spoken three words to him all year. You must look like a prize asshole. “…work with him. It wouldn’t be professional.”
Josephine’s eyes widen, and she whacks him again with the back of her hand, harder this time. It doesn’t hurt, but the sentiment is clear. “We’ve had sex!” she hisses, and then looks around to see if anyone might have overheard, “And you have the nerve to worry about professionalism!” She frowns at him, and sighs in irritation. “Bull, you really earn your name some days. So stubborn!”
He chuckles, and his shoulders slump a little. “Okay. Okay. But I don’t know him, and I’m not gonna start on the basis of trying to jump into bed…”
She sighs and shakes her head, then looks at him hopefully, “You’ll still come out with us, on Friday? It’ll be good - just the people who’ve helped with the play.” She looks at her watch and hisses, “Shit! I’ve got to get to class!” She rises, picks up her coat and notes, then looks over her shoulder, smiling, “You’ll come, right? It’s just down at the Singing Maiden, it won’t be anything fancy.”
“‘Course, Josie.” Bull wonders for a moment what Dorian had done to warrant an invitation, then shrugs, “Of course I’ll be there.”
And he is. He’s showered and changed, having had the last soccer practice of the season straight after school. The second eleven have come a long way this year, and he tells them they can be proud of their results. “Couldn’t have done it without you, Coach,” their captain tells him, and the rest nod and grin.
He snorts, pleased, and shakes his head. “Go on. Go have a shower and get out of here.” But despite the directive, many of them linger, to shake his hand then amble awkwardly away, to shuffle their feet and ask him if maybe, maybe does he think they should try out for first string next year? Eventually though, they’re all gone, and so Bull had collected the gear and taken it back to the gym. He’d caught Cullen coming out of the gym, ended up in a discussion about maybe co-teaching some anatomy and sports science blocks next year, and ended up running a little later than he’d expected to. But he is still at the Singing Maiden before anyone else, so he sidles up to the bar and orders a beer.
He hears the words, the anonymous snarl, “Fucking ox-men,” before he sees Dorian. He turns from where he stands at the bar, glancing over his shoulder. Fucking hell, he looks gorgeous, and Bull swallows, then lowers his head. He exhales, then looks up and smiles at Dorian, waving a little to catch his eye.
Dorian smiles broadly back, and walks quickly across the small room toward him, oblivious to the stares. For a moment, as Bull watches Dorian stride purposefully toward him, his long legs in the black jeans, the playful yet elegant open throated shirt in green and white check moving across his smooth grey skin, Bull feels ashamed of himself. How much had Dorian already endured, how much had he sacrificed to get himself here, to safety? And how much must he still endure, because he looks the way he does? It’s not that Bull is a stranger to the sufferance of the judgement of strangers, but at least, as a human, it’s not until people hear of his chosen religion that they make a decision about him as a person. All Dorian has to do is walk into a room.
“Bull!” Dorian smiles, and claps him on the shoulder, “I feel almost as if we are veritable strangers in the mist, despite having worked at the same place for… what? Six months? Does that sound right to you?”
“Yeah, shit. It must have been that long.” He knows, and it’s been longer than that. The feeling of shame at his treatment of Dorian intensifies. Bull rubs his stubbled jaw and asks, “What are you drinking?”
Dorian shakes his head, and smiles. “Uh… I have to confess, I never really got the head for alcohol. It wasn’t something that I ever got exposed to very much. And… I haven’t really wanted to deal with the idea that I might like it, rather too much.” He snickers, arches an eyebrow and tells Bull, “Drunkenness isn’t useful, you see.”
Bull blanches, and Dorian’s eyes widen. “Oh! No! I’m not…” He flaps a hand at Bull’s beer and shrugs, “Goodness, I wasn’t trying to comment on that.” He seems awkward, flustered almost, and Bull, despite his embarrassment, finds it rather endearing. “I only meant that you don’t drink, as a saarebas.” As he says the word, Dorian’s smile falters slightly, and Bull sees his throat work as he swallows. Then he laughs and looks at Bull steadily for a moment, then tells him, “But you know? I’m not one of those any more. I believe, good sir,” and here he turns slightly, puts both hands on the bar, and leans against it, hollering down to the bartender at the other end, “Good sir! I’ll have a wine!”
Bull laughs, shakes his head. “Dorian,” he says when he has recovered himself, “Dude, it doesn’t work that way.”
“How does it work then?”
“Well, what kind of wine do you want?”
Dorian frowns, “What do you mean? The kind that comes in a glass?”
“No, I mean… white? Red? Pinot gris, chardonnay, merlot, uh… beaujolais?”
“You’re just making up words now…”
Bull laughs again, “No, I’m really not. Those are kinds of wine.”
“Really..?” Dorian looks off into the distance, and considers. “And the colours? You said white or red. Do they do…pink?”
“Actually, yeah. There’s a pink kind.” Bull frowns, looks over at the bartender, who is studiously ignoring them. He is still down the other end of the bar, despite Dorian’s shout, working furiously hard at cutting lemons, when the catering container in front of him is already stuffed to the brim. “Just… stay here a second, okay?”
He turns and rises off his stool, then walks down the length of the bar. He hears Dorian calling Josephine’s name, then her musical tones, and Thom’s low laughter. They must have just arrived. “Hey,” he says, standing directly in front of the bartender, “Didn’t you see us? Can I get a glass of rosé, please?”
The bartender says nothing, still concentrating on his lemons. Bull sighs, a blown out breath, and asks again, slower and slightly louder, “Can I get a glass of rosé?”
The bartender looks up sharply. “No,” he says, through gritted teeth. “I’m not gonna serve his kind.”
Bull draws in breath. He’s suddenly oblivious to everything else but the hard glint in this stranger’s eye - not the people beside him, one of whom nods her approval at the bartender’s stance, not the fact that the bartender is still holding the knife he’s been cutting lemons with. Very, very quietly, Bull says, “Get me a glass of rosé.”
“Did you not hear me, pal? We’re not serving his kind in here. Not today, not ever. So no, I’m not gonna get you…”
But the rest of the sentence is lost as the red mist descends over Bull. He leans over the bar, grabbing hold of the bartender, hauling him bodily over the scarred wood so that his legs dangle uselessly, off the floor. “Get me the fuckin’ wine!” Bull snarls, and the bartender’s fist comes up, the knife still clutched in it, eyes full of panic, and he stabs Bull in the bicep.
Bull roars in pain and pulls the bartender off the top of the bar. He feels another puncture, this time just grazing off the wing of his hipbone. He knows he is shouting but he has no idea what, even if he is making sense. He senses movement, noise all around him, and as the bartender brings the knife up to strike again, he slams the other man backward, hard, into the bar.
The bartender cries out with the force of it, the way the back of his head strikes the wood, and then Bull raises his fist, to hit him once, twice in the face. There are people all around them, and Bull hears his name, dimly, as he slams his fist once again into the bartender’s nose, and feeling satisfied at the crunch of bone and spray of blood. Satisfied, ha, that’s not it; he loves it, the look of panic and fear in the bartender’s eyes, the dull shine of the blood, the way, shit, the way it smells, the way he feels as if he holds this stranger’s life in his hands. The noise of the bar fades away, and there is only Bull and this other man, this nothing, this sack of meat. The raised purpling bruises on the nothing’s face, the slackening feel of his hands on Bull’s forearms, the way he does not feel any pain, only glorious, brutal energy coursing through every inch of his body.
Then there are hands on his arms, dragging him off, and Bull looks to one side, then the other, surprised to see Thom and Dorian, both with matching expressions of grim shock. “Holy Maker, Dorian, just get him down the road,” Thom mutters, looking appalled, and Bull feels Dorian’s grip tighten slightly on his arm. The atmosphere has turned ugly, and Bull knows it is time for them to go. He feels a sudden swell of shame within his chest - the savage joy he’d taken at the way the bartender’s blood had burst from his face now causes the bile to rise in Bull’s throat. That could be someone’s dad, someone loves that guy, he thinks, and the sick feeling, the guilt grows. He wants to tell Josephine that he’s sorry for ruining the night, but his side hurts, and it’s getting hard to breathe. The room begins to spin, and then it goes black.
He doesn’t come back to the world until they are half a block away. The night air is cool, and redolent with the smell of early embrium. The streetlights shift and leer overhead, and Bull realises he’s being carried. He struggles, and Dorian tells him to hush. “I’m taking you to the hospital. I would have got a cab, but…” he shrugs and looks down at Bull to give him a half-smile. “I don’t know if it’s my horns or your blood, but something about this picture is not making any cabs want to stop for us. Funny that. Luckily it’s not too far away.”
“No, no hospital,” Bull mutters and Dorian frowns.
“What? Are you… you do realise that you were stabbed, multiple times? I mean, I’ve done a little bit, helped to slow the bleeding down, but you need proper healing.”
“No,” Bull says again, “Asit tal-eb.” He looks at Dorian again, and leaves unsaid, and they’ll think you were the one that stabbed me.
Dorian’s mouth drops open. “You have got to be fucking kidding me. I’m not going to stand here and wait for you to bleed out on the pavement because of some shitty bar fight that never would have happened if it wasn’t for me. I heard you, you know, we all did. Bull,” Dorian smiles, though it is a strange, taut thing, “I never knew you cared.”
Bull opens his mouth to ask what it was that he said - truly, he has no recollection at all of it. But as he draws breath to begin speaking, the world begins to grey out a little, and Dorian hushes him again. “Don’t try to talk. Just… trust me on this, alright? You can argue with me afterwards.”
“Please, Dorian.” Bull’s breath hitches, and he tries to make one hand go to Dorian’s chest, “Please.”
“It’s too late. We’re almost there.” Dorian looks down at Bull again, and tells him rather grimly, “I saved you, and now I’m responsible for you. So shut up.”
Bull doesn’t have much choice. He is far too weak now for any arguments, and Dorian is right. But he doesn’t know what this is, what it might be, and the thought of an afterwards is frightening. What would it mean for his faith, if he was friends (more, more than, his mind insists, and he pushes the thought away in sudden panic) with a Tal-Vashoth? That he appears to have more in common with Dorian than he ever could have believed is… disturbing, unsettling. And if he does, if this is friendship [more than that] and it means that he has to step away from the Qun to grasp it, would he do it? What then? What is there to stand on, if there is not the Qun?
He must black out again, because he awakens in a hospital bed. There are thick-wadded bandages on his arm and his ribs. He feels them stretch and pull as he breathes. There is no-one else in the room with him, and so he shifts tentatively in the bed. Feeling no pain, he moves quickly, swinging his legs out of bed, pulling at the monitoring patches on his chest.
It is as he is pulling on his jeans that the door to the room opens and a nurse asks, “And what do you think you’re doing?”
He smiles grimly and tells her he is discharging himself. “That’s really not a good idea,” she says, frowning, “With the knife wounds that you’ve sustained…”
“Hey,” he begins, cutting her off, “Where’s my friend? The guy that bought me here?”
She looks puzzled, and tells him, “I… I don’t know.” Then her eyes go round and she asks, sounding shocked, “The ox… the qunari? He’s your… he’s your friend?”
Bull’s nostrils flare, and he nods slowly. “Yeah. He brought me here after I got stabbed. It was some bar fight, nothing to do with him.” He almost asks her why she might have wondered otherwise, and then restrains himself at the last moment. Instead he takes a deep, steadying breath and says, “Do you know where he is?”
“In… in the lobby, I think. But you really should talk to a doctor first…”
“Nah. I’ll be fine.” He is starting to feel a little woozy, but damned if he’s gonna stick around here if he doesn’t have to. He’d be better off at home. And he really needs… and there it is, that instinct to check to see if others are okay first. Krem always gives him shit about that, but Bull can’t help it.
He needs to know that Dorian is okay. He needs it.
So he brushes past the nurse after pulling on his bloodstained t-shirt, trying not to think too hard about how she isn’t stopping him, how she isn’t trying harder to make him stay. He lurches a little, coming down the corridor, feeling the lightheadedness that forcing one foot in front of the other brings with it. He goes right, left, left again, but everything looks the same, all bleached whiteness. Grimly, he looks for a sign, something to tell him where the lobby is, and he spots an overhead sign with multiple directions on it. Slowly, he stares at it, but it is incomprehensible to him, so he resolves to continue onward. Left, straight, back out of obstetrics, retracing his footsteps. Eventually an elven orderly stops him and asks with a grin if he knows where he’s headed, then patiently explains the way to him, looking a little worried at the state of the t-shirt he wears and his wan complexion.
Finally, Bull reaches the lobby. And there he is, sitting right underneath the bright green exit sign, smiling softly to himself, looking at something on his phone. Bull stops, blinks twice. The green light from overhead, the dim fluorescents, make Dorian seem all the more unreal - an illusion born of twilight, ethereal almost, in spite of his solidity.
Then Dorian looks up, sees him, and the expression of a moment prior is lost. Now, instead of smiling, he looks concerned, and he rises, putting his phone in the back pocket of his jeans, and striding toward Bull. Bull tries to smile at him, noting the smear of blood down Dorian’s chest, and takes a deep breath. “Hey,” he says as Dorian approaches, “hey, can we get out of here?”
“Bull, you shouldn’t be out of bed, you look like shit…”
“I’m okay. I just… I don’t want to be here.” I don’t want you to be here either, he almost says, feels the words weighted on his tongue like stones, and looks away. He hears Dorian sigh, sharply, and then Dorian touches him on the arm. “Bull,” he asks, gently, “can we compromise?”
Bull smiles, slowly, feeling exhausted. “‘Pends,” he slurs, “Whassa com’mise?”
Dorian snorts, takes him by the elbow. “The compromise is this. I’ll take you home, but I need to know - do you live with someone else? Is there anyone who can take care of you?”
Mutely, Bull shakes his head. “Nah,” he mutters, “Jus’ me.”
Dorian is silent for a moment, and Bull sees his jaw is clenched. Then Dorian says, “Tell me your address. I’ll get you there, if that’s where you need to be.”
And he does. Bull remembers things in sensation for a while - a cool hand on his wounds, one after the other. A murmured voice. The smooth feel of cotton sheets, his own bed. He drifts in and out of sleep for a long time, eventually awakening when he hears a heavy tread in the hallway outside his bedroom door. The door opens, and Bull smiles weakly.
“Hello, you.” Dorian smiles, standing in the doorway. “Just checking on my patient; don’t want you to croak on me, you know. Terrible blow to the ego, that. How are you feeling?”
“Better,” Bull says, his voice raspy with sleep, “Hungry.”
Dorian grins, “Excellent! Hungry is good, apparently. Incidentally, do you have any food in your house which doesn’t come out of a can?”
Bull chuckles, then winces, and his hand goes instinctively to his ribs. Dorian frowns, then steps into the room. “Alright if I take a look?”
Bull shrugs, and Dorian lifts the sheet. The bandages are clear of blood, and Bull watches as Dorian sighs slightly, almost with relief. Then he looks at Bull, the grey eyes clear and bright, and he holds his hand over the bandaged area. “Do you mind?”
Bull shrugs again, though he feels a little tense. Dorian’s hand hovers over the bandages, a mere breath between his skin and the surface of the dressing. A faint white light pulses once, weakly from his hand, and Bull watches as Dorian’s expression changes to something which looks like frustration. The light flickers again, and Dorian sighs. “I’m sorry. I never was much good at healing magic.”
A strange itch begins within Bull’s skin, and he makes a face. Dorian looks at him for a second, then asks, sounding somewhat shocked, “Does it itch?”
“Yeah. Like a bastard, actually.”
Dorian grins, “Ha! Brilliant! Well, of course, I knew it couldn’t be that hard…” He stops crowing and looks at Bull, rather chagrinned. “Sorry. I’ve not had much success at that before.”
Bull snorts laughter, and says, “Happy to be your guinea pig, Dorian.”
Dorian smiles wryly, and says, “Well, we have been doing the module in class. Perhaps I am learning something from my students.”
“How do you even teach that? Magic, I mean?”
“It’s… well, partly experimental, isn’t it? Some students show a clear aptitude for a particular branch of magic, like entropy, or elemental, or spirit healing. And part of it is philosophical - why we do what we do with magic, what you don’t use magic for, the various registrations and that sort of thing that different specialisations require…”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
Dorian frowns, puzzled, “You know, the registration… if you specialise in a type of magic like… say… elemental, you must register and carry your licence with you. I mean, it’s not like an elemental mage will have much cause to practice their particular branch of magic in anything except a work setting, but still, it’s important to have that sort of thing.” He shrugs and says, “I suppose it also helps the government to keep tabs on us, but that’s rather a small price to pay.”
“Really?” Bull tries to sit up a little bit, winces and lays back on the pillows before continuing, “You really feel that way after…” but he cannot bring himself to say more, suddenly aware that he has probably just brought one of Dorian’s worst experiences screaming into the forefront of his mind.
Dorian smiles, a little lopsidedly, and gestures at his own mouth. “You mean, after having my lips stitched together, and being collared?” His nostrils flare, and he looks down at the bedclothes. “It could have been worse, I suppose. They could have taken my tongue as well. But… I would pay any price for anyone not to have to go through that. I think I understand the reasoning that makes people afraid of mages. We wield great power. And the Qun… well, you know. It’s not… it’s not that it’s anti-magic.” He laughs, “That seems ironic, doesn’t it? But a sarebaas is considered highly honoured; they are given the greatest burden to bear for the good of the Whole, used for its protection. But Bull…” and here Dorian pauses, runs a hand over his lips and then says softly, “I am not a weapon. I am not a tool. I am a being with thoughts, and feelings. I was respected, under the Qun. Respected, but never loved.”
There is a kind of silence in the room, heavy and oppressive. Bull bites his bottom lip, frowning slightly as he stares at his own hand, laying on the top of the coverlet. The skin on his knuckles is beginning to scab over. Only a few inches away lies Dorian’s hand. Grey skin, the fingers delicate and tapered, almost… elegant. Bull swallows, feels the tyranny of the tiny distance between them exert itself for a moment, and then he takes his heart in his hands, and reaches out. And as elements of an opposing but equal charge are drawn together, so he feels drawn to Dorian, pulled inexorably toward him.
His hand hovers for a moment, and then he takes Dorian’s hand, holding it gently, reverently. Dorian stiffens for a moment, then his grip strengthens on Bull’s hand. They sit that way for what seems an age, or maybe it is just a heartbeat.

