sakura_no_miko | Fic rec - A Fire and a Conflagration

Rating: NC-17

Pairing: Dorian/Iron Bull

Warnings: explicit sex (gay), BDSM

Other notes: poetry, love letters, pining

Length: 16k

Summary: At first, the Iron Bull is just writing poetry to Dorian because it's a fun way to tease him — he gets all huffy when he's pretending he doesn't think the lowbrow stuff is funny, and besides, he started it by making it a Vint-versus-Qunari thing. It's only fair for Bull to needle him a bit.

At first, Dorian is only writing back to Bull because he can't let him win. The pride of Tevinter's literary tradition (not to mention his own dignity) is at stake here, and he will not be beaten at metaphor by someone who thinks cattle-related puns are an appropriate way to seduce someone.

And that's all it is. At first.

My thoughts:

Welp, during the pillowfort downtime, triedunture put out a request for Dorian/Iron Bull fic and of course I had to dump my bookmarks out and re-read them all. Whoops.

But that works. I needed to take a break and spend some more time on my longer fic recs, so I was planning to throw up some shorter recs this week anyway. I mean, I was planning to come back here at some point, so why not now.

So, this fic — dirty poetry. I’m a writer, so any writing AUs are like candy to me. Actually, kind of like triedunture’s Letter for Letter and Jeeves and the Literary Gifts. (Sorry, this is getting very circular, isn’t it?)

So, yeah, haven’t played the games. I saw this gif set (please don’t ask how long I tried searching tumblr for the gif set I wanted before realizing, why don’t I just find the scene on youtube? Of course, I did also find this, which was hilarious.) At any rate, I saw a gif set of this scene on tumblr discussion how Iron Bull’s romance route includes safewords and I kinda dove into the fic because I like good BDSM fic and angsty boys. Actually the fic didn’t even prepare me for how forthright the game is, lol. Such a pity I’d have to give Bull up if I want him with Dorian.

(Ugh, I could give so, so many rants on romance routes in video games. Still eternally bitter I couldn’t romance Chrom in Fire Emblem with my male avatar. And dating Lucia was……so not an option. She would have been my daughter if you’d just let me romance Chrom, so, no, I’m not dating her.)

This fic is so much fun and yet so angsty. Dorian and Iron Bull teasing each other with their dirty poems just hits me in the heart, because, well, I do occasionally write. Trading writing and art with my friends has always been fun. I also write smut for my internet/fandom friends, because, well, that’s how you show affection in fandoms. You make smut for each other. There’s a particular joy in crafting something for someone because you know them, even if it’s just from reading their blog posts. Nerve-wracking, for sure, but when you make someone else squee, it’s just — a very specific sort of joy, yup. Like, you did good, but you did good for someone else, and that’s even better.

Also it gets me as an English major — debating the merits of particular poetic forms, jumping from witty bawdy rhymes to gentle pastoral metaphors and so on. I haven’t written poetry in ages, come to think of it. Or read it, really, excluding this fic. I should do that.

Like, this scene:

Bull had made him a classically romantic offering; it was practically pastoral. Dorian had never been able to look on the countryside with anything approaching the same fondness, but there were places that haunted his memories. Putting them down in poetry seemed—appropriately intimate as a response.
Writing out his own poem exorcised him of the need to fret at Bull’s, and he was able to go back to concentrating on his book—for given values of concentrating, at least, that had nothing to do with his lack of focus and everything to do with how atrociously poorly it was written. He persisted diligently until the library began to grow dark around him, then decided he was done for the day. He tucked the poem into his breast pocket and left the library.

I adore that bit — “writing out his own poem exorcised him of the need to fret.” Exorcise. Ah, that is such a good word for the feeling you get when an idea has been in your head all day and you finally have a chance to get it down on paper and out of your head. And even… oh, gosh, when I moved away for college, I moved from a somewhat hick-ish area up to a big suburban area and you know what drove me absolutely nuts? There was nothing green along the freeway. Like you couldn’t tell where one city ended and the next began. No greenery to mark the spaces between cities, no long stretches of farmland, no plant life, no cows. So that gets me too — I’m not a country girl by any means, I don’t look at the countryside with fondness — but there is some stupid sense of hiraeth.

And, oh, I do always love it when you see the characters falling in love but they don’t know they’re falling in love. Literally every other character in this fic is calling them out on their “love letters” from the first scene.

And Iron Bull — oh, I have a very particular spot for characters who have to leave their religion, or their duty, or their life’s works, and find themselves cast adrift. Ach, I have another fic in my queue—Where You Go I Will Go from Vikings, because I adore Athelstan and he finds himself living alone in a foreign country, away from his life in the monastery. Possibly because I grew up religious, and I’m not religious at all now. Not gonna lie — there’s a real sense of safety when you grow up in a close-knit group, when everyone follows a set of rules and it seems like everything is laid out for you. And for Iron Bull, there’s also this sense of fear that’s so driven into him — this fear of himself, that he has something dark inside of him just waiting to be unleashed if he’s weak for even a moment.

I can’t really recommend the works of H. P. Lovecraft because of his atrocious racism, but he had that kind of theme in his writing. His parents both ended up in mental institutions, and he was terrified to also succumbing to mental illness. That part — that terror of something inside of you that you got just from being born — that’s something I’ve struggled with, because I’ve also got a good amount of mental illness and alcoholism in my family. But Lovecraft unfortunately also equivocated that fear to fear of racial impurity and, yikes. (That’s also really awkward for me to read, being mixed race myself. Like, man, I agree with you on the mental illness, but I really don’t need to hear about ‘tainted blood’ in that particular way, urk.)

At least now I can just point at Iron Bull and Dorian and go — that. That’s what I mean when I’m talking about having a deep-set sense of wrongness you can’t escape. When Iron Bull leaves the Qun, and his first thought is to say, I cannot be trusted anymore, like it’s an indisputable fact, because he’s been taught that it is an indisputable fact, and Dorian just can’t comprehend —

Oh, man, be still my heart. Lot of fics deal with this, and I love reading it every time. I think it speaks to a very deep sense of intimacy — when Iron Bull admits he’s scared of himself and he needs someone to take him out of his own head, or when Dorian finally admits he’s in love. Showing that amount of trust and weakness, oh, dear god, makes me all shaky and emotional. So good, so so good.

Bull was still looking at him with that unbearable gentleness, like if he could just explain it to Dorian he’d come around. “You don’t understand, Dorian,” he said. “I fought Tal-Vashoth in Seheron. I hunted them. I saw them do horrific things, things they never would have done—”
“Things you still will not do,” Dorian said firmly. “Lest you forget, you are also the man who turned himself in, voluntarily, to be reeducated, because you were afraid you were a danger to your people. You were willing to give up your individuality, your very mind if it came to that, to keep from hurting anyone.” He lifted a hand, letting it rest delicately against Bull’s chest, feeling his pulse beating strong and steady against his fingertips. “That’s part of you. It’s not going to simply disappear.”
Seemingly without his awareness, Bull’s hand had lifted to cover Dorian’s. His eye had that dreadful lost look again, and Dorian couldn’t stop himself from stepping closer, offering up the comfort of touch in the only way he knew how. “Bull, please,” he said. “Let me stay. Let me help.”

I dunno. I just love it when someone is so…so in despair, so convinced no one will be able to help them but their loved one just jumps right in and grabs them right up. Like there’s some deep, dark terrible ache you can’t touch, but someone else can reach out and soothe it, so easily. Like everything is tied up in unbreakable knots and someone else goes all Alexander and cleaves right through it like the Gordian knot.

(Ah, I used that simile for someone once before. I’m aware it’s quite cheesy, but I defend it.)

But, um, yeah, I legit rec everything on this list here. I get a bit of guilt from not rec’cing everything immediately right now because they are all amazing, but I gotta pace myself.

(Looking for more fic recs?)
Originall posted on tumblr and pillowfort on 11/27/18