heartslogos:

Lavellan wakes up to sunlight through pale pink curtains and groans, rolling over, groaning louder when it pulls at the bruises on her right hip and upper right leg.

Bull grunts when she rolls into him, shoving her face into his chest and willing sunlight and pink curtains to go away.

“They’re all we have left,” Bull reminds her, not even needing to be fully conscious to know why she’s so miserable at whatever time it is in the morning. “And they’re only pink because you were too lazy to do two loads of laundry.”

“You can’t possibly be blaming them pink curtains on me,” Ellana says, through it sounds garbled when spoken into his skin she trusts him to know exactly what she means.

Bull reaches over her and presses the heel of his palm against the largest bruise spreading out over the back of her right thigh and Ellana rolls further into him, wedging herself into the dip made by his body and the mattress.

“Should’ve taken care of that last night,” Bull says.

“I was busy trying to solve the problem of our terrible curtains last night,” She says.

“Kadan, I appreciate your dedication to trying to make our living situation seem any sort of normal and average to the regular passerby – I do – but I’d rather you took care of yourself.”

“By trying to keep our domestic life under control via home decorating and tidying I help keep my own emotions and mental stress levels under check, it’s an outlet for me to exert control onto this one part of my life that I am able to do so without repercussions,” Ellana says.

Bull laughs, a sleepy low sound that shakes the bed. Ellana takes this opportunity to further shove herself underneath him to escape the pink light that she can feel on the back of her head. Pink. The worst shade of pink. An accidental pink.

“You rehearse that one in front of Leliana?” Bull asks, “Alright, fair. I prefer you’d take care of yourself physically at the moment.”

“Pot, kettle,” Ellana says, hitting his leg with her foot when he pokes at another bruise, “Good news is that they’re not as bad as the other stuff.”

“The other stuff, meaning the stuff that’s healing?”

“Yeah, that stuff.”

“I’d hope so, the other stuff was pretty bad.”

“Bad news,” Ellana says, “We’re broke and I refuse to dip into our savings anymore than we already have.”

“We have savings?”

“I refuse to dip into the savings you think I don’t know about, and the savings you don’t know about – I can’t believe you don’t know about them.” Ellana sits up slowly, squinting down at him as he tries to turn away from her, slowly raising his good arm over his head to lay across his eyes. His other arm is awkwardly stretched out over the bed and in a purple cast. “No, you wake up for this, international spy. What do you mean we have savings? You’re wanted by the Qun, you should’ve found out about the savings by now.”

“Maybe I juts didn’t look into it because I trust you, wife,” Bull says.

“Gross and lazy,” Ellana says, sitting up on her knees and then slowly moving so she’s sitting down with her legs outstretched. She throws the covers back and glares at the bandage around her ankle. And the ankle monitor. “I feel gross and lazy. How long are we supposed to be under house arrest for?”

“Until Evelyn’s blood pressure is somewhere near plausible deniability for Kaaras to clear her for field duty,” Bull says, “So. Forever.”

“Gross and unnecessary,” Ellana says. “Get up.”

“What for?” Bull asks as Ellana presses her hand to his stomach and pushes at him.

Ellana turns to the bedside table and picks up her tablet.

“We’re buying new curtains.”

“The accidental pink ones aren’t that bad.”

“With this decor? With this duvet cover? With our white finish? Bull. Please. Bull. Please. Behave like the man I married and love, don’t sink to this level of banal disregard,” Ellana says, “Come on. Show me some support.”

–

“You know, when you think about it, the universe could not have matched the Iron Bull with anyone better in a thousand years and infinite more possibilities,” Dorian says as soon as Evelyn’s caught him up on the recent series of unfolding events surrounding Ellana and Bull’s house being under constant attack and ambush.

“How so?” Evelyn asks, slowly releasing her grip on her stress ball. If she holds it too long at a certain pressure it will break and she’s gotten so many judgmental looks from everyone whenever they see her with a new stress ball, gadget, and or – whatever to suffer her rapidly increasing grip strength.

“Well, the Iron Bull is a former Qunari elite spy,” Dorian says, “He’s pansexual, has scores of lovers all over Thedas, loves interior decorating, and has hidden depths that have hidden depths.”

“Okay.”

“And we all wondered how the hell he decided Ellana Lavellan, public school teacher and volunteer librarian, would be the best person to get married to given the fact that she’s, one, asexual, two, a public servant who – by all rights – should not be someone he’d ever meet in a million years. To this day I still don’t understand how they met long enough for either of them to decide they’d make good friends. Don’t get mer wrong. I love that woman. That woman is a fantastic riot on legs. She is a natural disaster, a sublime – if you will -, made flesh. I like to set her on people I don’t like. The amount of bafflement that she can pull out of one situation is astounding. Breath taking. Magical. Confounding in its own special way.”

“Get on with it,” Evelyn says, because Dorian could expound on this for days if she lets him get too into it.

“But now it makes sense,” Dorian says, “She’s got hidden depths to her hidden depths, too.”

“She’s a formal international crime lord, is what you mean.”

“Harsh words, she was mentored by an international crime lord. She never stepped into it officially from what you’ve all dug up,” Dorian says, “And then she used her crime lord knowledge for good to turn herself into a public servant. Regardless of those semantics – no wonder the two are so perfect for each other. They aren’t normal and domestic. They’re a literal action film in between takes. In the middle of script edits. I’m surprised Varric hasn’t sent this off for copy yet.”

“I think he’s trying to, honestly,” Evelyn says, carefully squeezing her fist around the green stress ball in her hand.

“International spy meet international crime lord,” Dorian claps his hands together gleefully, “Maker, it’s perfect. They’re perfect. Aside from all the other reasons why they’re perfect together, this is the one that takes it.”

“Do you often spend time contemplating how the Iron Bull and Ellana are perfect for each other?”

“Vivienne, Josephine, and I spend copious amounts of time wondering at how everyone in our lives have fallen into such neat and cliche pairs and groups,” Dorian answers, “It should be mathematically improbable and yet we’ve managed to roll the perfect dice to get everyone with who they should be. We like to calculate how it could all go wrong. But Ellana being an international crime lord protege never once factored into it. I’m embarrassed for us. You’d think an Orlesian headmistress, an Antivan ambassador, and a Tevinter revolutionary would be more creative.”

Hearts snark.

There is nothing like it.