“You’ve done your best,” Cullen interrupted absently, and Dorian’s eyebrows arched in surprise. Cullen stared back evenly, hiding his own instinctive amusement. Mother Giselle glanced at them both, then shuffled away, back to the wounded, leaving them alone at the fire. Finally, however, to Cullen’s surprise, Dorian’s wry, faint smile curled into something warmer. “I’m never going to get used to that.” “To what?” “Being interrupted,” Dorian said dryly. “Here in the South.” “Because you’re a mage, and I’m an omega?” Cullen asked, a little testily.

He keeps the aqun-asala powder in a jar on his dressing table. Every three months he spoons some of it into a mug and mixes it into the water with his finger. It's supposed to be tasteless, but when he swallows it down it lingers on his tongue, affects the taste of anything else he eats for the next couple days, mutes everything. He gets a kick outta eating spicy shit all lackadaisically and offering it to people, and acting surprised when it burns their mouths. (When he explains it to Sera, after she's stopped crying and threatening to stab him with one of his own horns, she thinks it's hilarious — tries to talk him into letting her have enough to prank people, actually. He knows exactly how much is left in the jar though, and he's not sure he's ever gonna get more... so she has to make do with sitting next to him and watching.) "So it keeps you from losing it, huh?" she asks, glaring down into her empty flagon like she doesn't know where the beer got off to. "No squishy pffff—" she puffs up her cheeks and sets the flagon down, curving her hands into a circle and then moving them apart, "—for the qunari pokers?"