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Mar. 20th, 2015 06:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sidewaysA great big dump of Lewen/Dorian nonsense! It was supposed to be just a quick thing but I ended up adding to it over the space of about a week and a half…turns out I will never actually stop trying to formalise my posts.
• Because Lewen is not a sixteen year old in a dystopian YA novel he spends his first adventure with Dorian rather more focussed on the freaky time magic and impending end of the world than how good-looking anyone is, but there is a brief moment where he watches the man sling a fireball down a corridor and goes oh. Hm. Biceps.
• They click quickly enough but there are only a few weeks between their meeting and the attack on Haven, so nothing beyond curiosity / general friendliness starts to develop until Skyhold – prior to that Lewen had been expecting to go back home after sealing the Breach, so he was hardly looking to form close ties with anyone. “Unusually progressive Tevinter with nice arms who saved my life like twice” is a pretty solid first impression to make, though. (Lewen’s more “unusually accommodating Dalish with nice eyes who handily beat the shit out of my mentor but refrained from murdering him”.)
• There’s wariness a-plenty, but also a shared inquisitiveness about their different backgrounds, and the sincere interest in sorting out fact from stereotype and rumour helps them navigate some of the touchier issues – plenty of debates and disagreements, a few more heated than others (oof, Dorian, you and slaves...). They bond a great deal over Lewen’s forays into rift magic, since the altus is experienced in the art of digging through crusty theoretical texts. Lewen rests his elbows on the table and leans a smile into the palm of his hand as Dorian leaps up to pull another tome down from the shelves without having to search to find it, Dorian allows Lewen to drag their paper circus outside under the sun for an hour or two with only minimal complaining, they compare magical techniques and segue into other topics and end up with hour-long chunks of time that they can’t begin to pretend had anything to do with their supposed task because they spent it complaining about Fereldens.
• Once it commences, Lewen and Dorian keep their relationship fairly private. News still gets around because news always manages to get around (“Corypheus hardly needs a spymaster when I can’t sneeze without someone composing a commemorative ballad” “Ah yes, The Thundering Trumpets of Andraste, soon to grace every tavern from here to Minrathous”) but nobody is likely to catch them smooching in dark corridors, let alone pantsless on the war table. Affectionate familiarity and the sheer amount of time they spend together tends to be what gives them away to regular observers; soft nicknames and small touches makes it clearer still to friends.
• They don’t formally cohabitate, but Lewen has never slept well when stranded alone in the huge, empty bedroom in the tower so it’s not long before he takes advantage of this sudden alternative and knocks on Dorian’s door late into the evening to tiredly ask to stay the night – no funny business, but he has to meet some noble tomorrow and he could use a proper rest, so would it be alright if he just…? Two weeks later they’re sharing a bed more often than not, in whichever room is convenient, with travelling absences or late night activities (a crisis, a fit of insomnia, a flash of inspiration that can’t wait) the most frequent reason for breaking the pattern.
• Dorian never stops being a great big baby about the wilderness, but he picks bits and pieces up because there is rather a lot of travelling that goes on and Lewen isn’t indulgent enough to let him slack off - everyone helps pitch camp, whether they were foolish enough to wear bright white cloth or not. The Inquisitor does still find it terribly endearing when Dorian shows the briefest glimmer of smug pride in himself for successfully tying the easiest knot in the universe, or when he stands down the bottom of a tree Lewen is scaling for scouting purposes, alternating between heavily masked concern and admiring the view.
• For all that Lewen certainly appears actively interested in their discussions, Dorian can’t seem to recommend a book to him that he’ll get more than a chapter or two into. It comes to a head when he catches the Inquisitor discussing Swords & Shields with Cassandra in a suspiciously knowledgeable way, at which point he is offended on behalf of decent literature – until Lewen confesses that he hasn’t read these either, but what started as teasing Cassandra via questions became her explaining the entire series to him because she was just so passionate in her narration (“she did the voices”) and he kind of got sucked into the drama. Dorian finally realises that the issue isn’t the material, it’s that Lewen of the oral storytelling culture engages much better with verbals than visuals, and after that it’s possible to find Dorian reading aloud to him in the library or the grounds, somehow managing to be both the narrator and the peanut gallery as he interrupts himself to critique a particular plot-twist or skewed translation.
• Awkward moments with past exploits: Lewen had an on-again off-again relationship with one of his closest friends for years; it was firmly off when he left for the Conclave and had been for months before, but it was a serious relationship when it was on and to some degree they were dogged by the expectation they’d end up together for good that sometimes grows between two people who always seem to keep coming back to each other. Dorian, on the other hand, grew up steeling himself to accept that flings were the most he was allowed to hope for and has canonically thrown himself headfirst into brothels. They’re able to delicately agree that at least they’re not short of experience.
• Children only come up because Dorian is aware of Lewen’s deep affection for all things young (“and slimy” “Dorian”) and is idly curious as to whether they ever factored into his visions of the future, but the conversation takes an uncomfortable turn when Lewen explains that well, actually, there was a reasonable chance his offspring would be mages and his clan already had a surplus, so he wouldn’t have been encouraged to have children any time soon and his homosexuality was even considered somewhat fortuitous in that regard… Dorian’s laughter is harsh and ugly.
• They have a hushed camp-side argument about Dorian telling Cole to direct his query about slaves to the Dalish elf, with the counter being that well it’s hardly a less sensitive topic for the Tevinter mage to broach is it, and it ends up sounding a lot like parents squabbling about who gets to draw the short straw on handling their child’s difficult question. Everyone notices.
• It’s difficult to say how things go post-game. Lewen can hardly discourage Dorian’s desire to return to Tevinter, not when it would mean speaking out against one of the things he loves most about the man, and not when it would be hypocritical of him to do so (drinking from the Well of Sorrows was not an act that put their relationship first, after all - and they both knew the relationship was never going to come first overall). Dorian’s gentle point that Lewen would find it impossible not to stick his nose into the revolutionising business is also very fair. Can they make something long-distance work? Can Lewen use his new-found Well-granted knowledge to start re-establishing the Eluvian network and casually pop out of a mirror to say hi to his boyfriend? We just don’t know.
• Because Lewen is not a sixteen year old in a dystopian YA novel he spends his first adventure with Dorian rather more focussed on the freaky time magic and impending end of the world than how good-looking anyone is, but there is a brief moment where he watches the man sling a fireball down a corridor and goes oh. Hm. Biceps.
• They click quickly enough but there are only a few weeks between their meeting and the attack on Haven, so nothing beyond curiosity / general friendliness starts to develop until Skyhold – prior to that Lewen had been expecting to go back home after sealing the Breach, so he was hardly looking to form close ties with anyone. “Unusually progressive Tevinter with nice arms who saved my life like twice” is a pretty solid first impression to make, though. (Lewen’s more “unusually accommodating Dalish with nice eyes who handily beat the shit out of my mentor but refrained from murdering him”.)
• There’s wariness a-plenty, but also a shared inquisitiveness about their different backgrounds, and the sincere interest in sorting out fact from stereotype and rumour helps them navigate some of the touchier issues – plenty of debates and disagreements, a few more heated than others (oof, Dorian, you and slaves...). They bond a great deal over Lewen’s forays into rift magic, since the altus is experienced in the art of digging through crusty theoretical texts. Lewen rests his elbows on the table and leans a smile into the palm of his hand as Dorian leaps up to pull another tome down from the shelves without having to search to find it, Dorian allows Lewen to drag their paper circus outside under the sun for an hour or two with only minimal complaining, they compare magical techniques and segue into other topics and end up with hour-long chunks of time that they can’t begin to pretend had anything to do with their supposed task because they spent it complaining about Fereldens.
• Once it commences, Lewen and Dorian keep their relationship fairly private. News still gets around because news always manages to get around (“Corypheus hardly needs a spymaster when I can’t sneeze without someone composing a commemorative ballad” “Ah yes, The Thundering Trumpets of Andraste, soon to grace every tavern from here to Minrathous”) but nobody is likely to catch them smooching in dark corridors, let alone pantsless on the war table. Affectionate familiarity and the sheer amount of time they spend together tends to be what gives them away to regular observers; soft nicknames and small touches makes it clearer still to friends.
• They don’t formally cohabitate, but Lewen has never slept well when stranded alone in the huge, empty bedroom in the tower so it’s not long before he takes advantage of this sudden alternative and knocks on Dorian’s door late into the evening to tiredly ask to stay the night – no funny business, but he has to meet some noble tomorrow and he could use a proper rest, so would it be alright if he just…? Two weeks later they’re sharing a bed more often than not, in whichever room is convenient, with travelling absences or late night activities (a crisis, a fit of insomnia, a flash of inspiration that can’t wait) the most frequent reason for breaking the pattern.
• Dorian never stops being a great big baby about the wilderness, but he picks bits and pieces up because there is rather a lot of travelling that goes on and Lewen isn’t indulgent enough to let him slack off - everyone helps pitch camp, whether they were foolish enough to wear bright white cloth or not. The Inquisitor does still find it terribly endearing when Dorian shows the briefest glimmer of smug pride in himself for successfully tying the easiest knot in the universe, or when he stands down the bottom of a tree Lewen is scaling for scouting purposes, alternating between heavily masked concern and admiring the view.
• For all that Lewen certainly appears actively interested in their discussions, Dorian can’t seem to recommend a book to him that he’ll get more than a chapter or two into. It comes to a head when he catches the Inquisitor discussing Swords & Shields with Cassandra in a suspiciously knowledgeable way, at which point he is offended on behalf of decent literature – until Lewen confesses that he hasn’t read these either, but what started as teasing Cassandra via questions became her explaining the entire series to him because she was just so passionate in her narration (“she did the voices”) and he kind of got sucked into the drama. Dorian finally realises that the issue isn’t the material, it’s that Lewen of the oral storytelling culture engages much better with verbals than visuals, and after that it’s possible to find Dorian reading aloud to him in the library or the grounds, somehow managing to be both the narrator and the peanut gallery as he interrupts himself to critique a particular plot-twist or skewed translation.
• Awkward moments with past exploits: Lewen had an on-again off-again relationship with one of his closest friends for years; it was firmly off when he left for the Conclave and had been for months before, but it was a serious relationship when it was on and to some degree they were dogged by the expectation they’d end up together for good that sometimes grows between two people who always seem to keep coming back to each other. Dorian, on the other hand, grew up steeling himself to accept that flings were the most he was allowed to hope for and has canonically thrown himself headfirst into brothels. They’re able to delicately agree that at least they’re not short of experience.
• Children only come up because Dorian is aware of Lewen’s deep affection for all things young (“and slimy” “Dorian”) and is idly curious as to whether they ever factored into his visions of the future, but the conversation takes an uncomfortable turn when Lewen explains that well, actually, there was a reasonable chance his offspring would be mages and his clan already had a surplus, so he wouldn’t have been encouraged to have children any time soon and his homosexuality was even considered somewhat fortuitous in that regard… Dorian’s laughter is harsh and ugly.
• They have a hushed camp-side argument about Dorian telling Cole to direct his query about slaves to the Dalish elf, with the counter being that well it’s hardly a less sensitive topic for the Tevinter mage to broach is it, and it ends up sounding a lot like parents squabbling about who gets to draw the short straw on handling their child’s difficult question. Everyone notices.
• It’s difficult to say how things go post-game. Lewen can hardly discourage Dorian’s desire to return to Tevinter, not when it would mean speaking out against one of the things he loves most about the man, and not when it would be hypocritical of him to do so (drinking from the Well of Sorrows was not an act that put their relationship first, after all - and they both knew the relationship was never going to come first overall). Dorian’s gentle point that Lewen would find it impossible not to stick his nose into the revolutionising business is also very fair. Can they make something long-distance work? Can Lewen use his new-found Well-granted knowledge to start re-establishing the Eluvian network and casually pop out of a mirror to say hi to his boyfriend? We just don’t know.
