Truce?

Title: Truce?
Author: ElCapitan18
Game: Dragon Age
Characters/Pairing: F!Lavellan and Cullen
Disclaimer: All recognizable content belongs to Bioware

Cullen stepped up to the stables, his attention on the various mounts that Delani had accumulated throughout her adventures. And there were many; horses, harts, dracolisks, and other exotic creatures of varying levels of intimidation. As many as she purchased or were gifted to her, there was one mount that she chose without fail. The others were pretty things that she liked to ride on occasion, but there was a single beast that she trusted whole heartedly and considered a friend.

“Commander.” Horse Master Dennet stepped out from an empty stall and clapped his hands together in an attempt to get all of the saw dust off of them. Brows furrowed in question, the older man asked, “Going for a ride, Commander? Did you need me to prepare Delilah for you?”

With a shake of his head, Cullen palmed the pommel of the sword at his belt and admitted, “That will not be necessary, Dennet. Thank you.” When the Horse Master gave him a strange look, wordlessly asking what Cullen’s purpose was if not Delilah, he explained, “I’m actually here for Cornelius.”

Dennet’s brows rose with surprise. For a second the men stood in the stables in silent uncertainty as the Horse Master gauged Cullen’s seriousness on the subject. When the moment had passed the older man let out a slow, “Alright,” before asking, “did you want me to saddle him for you?”

He shook his head with a touch of horrified urgency. Cullen had not seen a single person, aside from Delani, dare to sit astride that beast’s back and attempt to ride him. He was in no hurry to be trampled to death by the irritable hart. 

“I was just…” heat started to pool in his features as the words stumbled past his lips. Rubbing the back of his neck, Cullen cringed and finished his admission. “I just wanted to talk to him.” It sounded utterly insane to his ears. Who in their right mind ‘talked’ to a hart? What was he going to discuss with the beast? Troop formations? Trebuchet calibrations? Maker, this was embarrassing. 

Surprisingly enough, Dennet didn’t so much as blink at Cullen’s confession. If anything the Horse Master appeared entirely unfazed by it, as though it were the most normal thing he had ever heard. The older man nodded curtly and started for the end of the stables. He gathered a wooden bucket from the ground and headed back over to where Cullen was standing, awkwardly awaiting direction. 

“I fed him not half an hour ago, so he should be amicable enough.” The Horse Master shoved the bucket into Cullen’s hands. When Cullen glanced down it was to notice that the pail was full of apples. Dennet explained their purpose. “He’s not above bribery and flattery will get you everywhere.” 

As Cullen started to nod that he understood, the older man warned, “He starts shuffling his hooves and you make sure that there’s a solid wall between the both of you. That beast has yet to gorge anyone but it’s not from lack of trying. And you best be quick on your feet, Commander, because when he lowers his head, odds are he’s about to charge.”

Cullen swallowed hard. Suddenly this did not feel like the best idea. Glancing down the long hall where Cornelius’ stable was tucked away, he sucked in a deep breath and steeled his resolve. He was just a hart. Cullen faced more terrible horrors in his dreams. He could handle this… Maker preserve him.

Letting out a wavering breath, Cullen rolled his shoulders and straightened his spine before making his way toward the hart’s stall. His steps were slow as he approached the stable. Inside, Cornelius stood with his nose buried in his feeder, munching away at the grain. He lifted his enormous head at the sight of Cullen, his nostrils flaring as he continued to chew on his food.

“Uh…” feeling suddenly out of his depth, Cullen looked around the stables to find that he and the hart had some privacy. No one was snooping about to witness Cullen completely and utterly out of his element. Satisfied that they were alone, he retrieved an apple from the bucket in his hand and offered it up to the hart. “Hello, Cornelius.”

The hart discarded his feeder and stepped up to the stable’s gate. He sniffed the apple in Cullen’s open palm, testing its scent before taking it between his teeth. With the apple held carefully in his mouth, the mount brought his face toward Cullen’s and huffed in his face. Satisfied that Cullen was covered in nasal mucus, Cornelius ate the apple.

Grimacing in disgust, Cullen wiped a hand down his face and flicked the slime from his hand. Lovely, he thought before picking out another apple. They were not off to a great start. At least the hart had not tried to charge him down just yet. Sighing, Cullen remembered Dennet’s advice about flattery. 

His cheeks and ears were on fire before a single word had even made it out of his mouth. “So you, uh… you look handsome today, Cornelius.” The hart huffed again, this time he was courteous enough to not do it in Cullen’s face, before taking the newly proffered apple from him. 

As the hart munched away, Cullen watched and considered his next move. He had witnessed on multiple occasions how Delani interacted with the beast. She would talk to him as though he understood every words she said, touching his nose and his neck affectionately as she told him about her day or whatever else she’d felt like discussing with the hart. Looking into Cornelius’s eyes, Cullen could see that he was an intelligent enough creature, but he seriously doubted that he was capable of the level of understanding that Delani offered him. On a scale from cow to cat, Cornelius was at least intelligent enough to know who was in charge; Delani. And so Cullen would try it her way.

“Look, Cornelius,” he started, gathering another apple from the barrel and holding it out for the hart to take. “I know that we did not start on the best foot, but I would like to change that.”

The way that the beast slowly took the apple from Cullen’s hand gave him the distinct impression that the hart had said something along the lines of ‘I’m listening.’ As absurd as it sounded, Cullen was glad that he had Cornelius’s attention at the very least. 

Cornelius’s brown gaze remained on Cullen as he chewed on his apple, jaw working in circles until it was properly mashed up. Clearing his throat, Cullen continued with his thought and readied yet another apple for the beast. “You see, I happen to care very deeply about your mistress, and she cares very deeply about you.” He held out the apple in his hand, a blatant bribe and they both knew it. “If you and I can’t be friends, I was hopping that we would at least be able to come to some sort of understanding.”

The hart’s ears flapped for a moment, waving left and right, front and back, as he visibly considered Cullen’s offer. Cullen blinked. Surely the mount did not truly understand what he was saying. He had to be imagining the way Cornelius tapped his hoof against the stable’s floors, as though he were thinking heavily on the subject. 

After a minute or so, Cornelius inched toward Cullen again. This time when he went for the apple it was with visible reluctance. Nose tapping the apple, Cornelius looked at Cullen with expressive brown eyes. “What kind of understanding?” those brown eyes asked. So this was why Delani spoke to Cornelius the way that she did. It legitimately felt as though the beast were communicating back, like he was an active part of the conversation even if he could not speak. 

“If you’ll give me the chance, I will do everything within my power to make Delani happy.” He stretched his hand toward Cornelius, placing the apple right in front of the hart’s mouth. “Her happiness does matter to you, doesn’t it?”

Cornelius snatched the apple from Cullen and crushed it between his teeth, his gaze remained locked on Cullen the whole time. Without reaching for another bribe, Cullen stared Cornelius in the eye. He wanted to have a straight forward talk with the beast, man to hart. If they could agree on one thing it had to be Delani, and if that was to be their only common ground then so bet it. 

“We both make her happy, and she makes us both happy,” Cullen reasoned. “I see no reason for us to not at least be civil.”

When the hart closed the distance between himself and the gate to his stall, he pressed his chest to the wooden door and stared down at Cullen. Raising his hand up a bit, Cullen swallowed down the nerves amassing in his throat and asked, “What do you say, Cornelius? Do we have a truce?”

The hart reached down with his muzzle and bit down on the collar of Cullen’s cloak. With a forceful tug, he pulled Cullen two steps forward until he was standing directly in front of the stable’s gate. With a long tongue covered in slimy saliva, Cornelius licked Cullen from jaw to brow before stealing another apple from the bucket in his hand. 

Head still bowed over the edge of the gate, Cullen took it as an invitation to stroke the hart’s thick coat. Placing his hand on the soft fur between Cornelius’s antlers, he grinned widely as he stroked Delani’s favorite mount. To think that he had thought that the hart was incapable of diplomacy. 

Cornelius lifted his head back up and huffed again in Cullen’s face before nudging him back a step. Perhaps diplomacy had been the wrong word. Cornelius was not entirely unreasonable, and Cullen supposed that would be enough. It would be nice to not be at odds with the hart if he didn’t have to be.

Hooking the bucket’s handle on the corner of the gate’s door, Cullen stated, “I’m glad that we were able to come to an understanding.” Turning to leave, he said, “I hope you’ll accept those as a token of my appreciation,” over his shoulder and left the stables. 

Cullen had found himself doing some strange things for the sake of courting Delani, but that had been by far the strangest thing yet. If it meant that the opposition against them was fewer now, then Cullen would have spoken to and bribed a dozen more harts if need be. Luckily, he’d only needed to convince the one.