Chapter Text
Cullen Rutherford sat on the corner stool at his favorite food stall on level 22 of Kithoi Ward’s Edroki Plaza and watched the people pass by, absorbed in their own lives, their own small pleasures and agonies. He looked past them to linger his gaze on the windows and their view of the darkened ward’s distant expanse, flickering with neon, tinged in orange smog as it extended away from the bright, shining Presidium.
Perpetual twilight kept the Citadel’s five wards active at all hours. It had taken some getting used to, but now he thought he might prefer it. There was never any morning birdsong to shame him for his insomnia. He never got home from work after a long day at his C-Sec outpost and felt any dread at seeing the sun set on yet another day passing, locked in the unforgiving inertia of living. When he first arrived, it had been the best and worst form of jet lag he’d ever experienced. Freeing, for one, but also disorienting. Recruiting with C-Sec had given him a purpose, though. Instead of a standard “day” or “night” shift, he’d been given a number designation that slotted into a schedule plotted by a small army of virtual intelligences that coordinated over 200,000 active agents on the station. For the first year, he’d had to keep an intranet calendar running on his omni-tool with automated alarms just to know when to show up for duty. Sometimes he still needed it.
Technically, the Citadel operated on a 20-hour cycle, but it meant little to anyone outside of the Presidium. The wards had no real atmosphere and no artificial lighting, though residences had life support systems with variable settings for “natural” daylight, completely inauthentic of course. Cullen hardly bothered with it anymore. The only thing a false sunrise and sunset gave him were the vaguest semblance of the passage of time, and the bathroom mirror did a good enough job of that. Living in a blur, a light smear that bled across shifts, across weeks, made it easier to swallow how he seemed to be wasting all of it on his career.
He’d been on the station for about five years, and sometimes he forgot that he hadn’t always been there, that this was not truly home. It seemed a tribute to humanity's adaptability that life on an alien space station had become second nature, as easy as moving across town, or at worst, across the country.
If there were something reminiscent about Ferelden on the Citadel, it was the Presidium; man-made lakes, greenery, invasive pigeons, and placid blue skies. Sometimes he could go weeks without setting foot there at all. Crawling out of the wards and into the “sunlight” often left him reeling. Cullen wondered if he ever returned to Thedas, if it would feel the same, or worse. Living on the Citadel one could convince himself he was in between time and space itself.
On Thedas, he’d been ready to serve, to protect, to explore the galaxy. He graduated from naval academy with decent commendations, but just like many others, he found his hopes crushed when he failed to qualify for off-world assignment right away. Everyone wanted to see the galaxy, no one wanted to stay home and march around base or file the paperwork. He trained for months, sitting on a bench list, waiting to receive his orders for something bigger, something with purpose. But then the Batarians hit the Skyllian Verge.
Six months later, he finally saw zero gee. He stood next to his CO in the captain’s ready room of the SSV Tarawa and saw the subtle curvature of Torfan on the monitor. He’d been excited, then, to face his first real combat scenario outside of a few minor incursions en route to the relay. The memories came back with an increase in his pulse, and he breathed deeply, the way he’d been advised during exit therapy. He felt prickles of sweat on his brow and gulped down more of his beer.
The attack had been a travesty. He and the rest of his squad were ordered into a bunker where they were crushed into a narrow maze of hallways and stacked crates of munitions. They formed up into a perfect group for the shooting gallery of Batarians they were there to neutralize in retaliation for the Skyllian Blitz. The record would show that no Batarians made it out alive that day, but Cullen never got to see the celebrations. He’d been deep in an induced coma while medical staff on a remote space station put his left arm and leg back together. He accepted a medal from Admiral Hackett via FTL comm while propped up in his sickbed.
And then the ICT came calling. He and a number of other candidates all shipped out to earth, to Villa Militar, in Rio de Janeiro. His first time on earth had been surprisingly lackluster. The humidity and the heat reminded him of the south of Ferelden, and just about every landmass on the planet was developed into a metropolis barely capable of withstanding the booming population growth spurred by advances in technology. It was no surprise his forebears had left their home planet for some breathing room elsewhere. Though Thedas was little better these days.
The locals called the Villa “N-School.” Only a handful made it past the first week, including him. He left earth with an N1 designation and spent four years working his way up to N3, until his implants caught up with him, anyway. It had been an emergency evacuation maneuver that ended his career with the Systems Alliance Navy for good. He’d torn ligaments, broken his new arm trying to get a cadet into the escape pod before the ship depressurized.
Honorable discharge. “Condition not a disability,” they called it. Still fit for service, just not with the Alliance. He was too much of a risk for them to maintain, not like other servicemen who weren’t knitted together with expensive implants.
He heaved a sigh and peered down the neck of his bottle. Maybe that was everybody’s story these days. Life in the Milky Way was hard for humans, even spacers, from what he’d heard. Just about every Alliance soldier he’d talked to during his service and since had a sob story to tell. The First Contact War had ended a long time ago but its wounds were still deep and still healing, and humanity’s attempt to colonize in the wrong neighborhood had taken a large toll on the lives of many, from Commander Shepard all the way down.
The grim-looking asari who ran the food stall ambled out from the back room. She gathered her dirty apron in her blue hands and wiped them, not bothering to spare Cullen a glance. His stare was a mile long, taking in the crowds moving by in small agglomerations like passing clouds. He was keeping an eye out for someone.
Her voice was terse, as usual. “You’ve been sitting there long enough. You want anything else or not?”
Cullen ran his fingers through his blond hair, scratched the back of his head. Leliana had asked him to meet up, but she’d messaged to inform him she’d be late. She did it because she was usually very punctual and she knew Cullen well. If she’d been any later than this without word, he’d be tempted to go and look for her. She worked in the financial district for a volus firm that brokered in the business of loopholes. Officially, they handled money. Unofficially, they traded information. It was sunny in the Presidium, but much of the business in the financial district was...rather shady.
He tilted the bottle and frowned. “I never really wanted this to begin with. It’s awful.”
“I guarantee the more you drink, the better it will taste.”
“Just a water.” Just in case.
The asari snorted lightly and ducked into the back again. Cullen propped his elbow on the counter and fit his chin into his hand. From the communicator earpiece resting on his shoulder he could hear the faint radio chatter of C-Sec dispatch and enforcement officers going about their duties. It was no matter that his shift had ended two hours ago. The communicator stayed on. If anybody asked why he continued to listen in, he’d tell them it was for the entertainment. It was only a half lie. He was partly listening in out of habit, because he wanted to know what was going on, but there was always weird shit going down, and banter between officers never failed to amuse. He'd never admit that sometimes he’d rather keep working than find himself alone in his thoughts, unable to relax.
<<Report of smoke coming from dumpster behind jewelry store, Level 3, Besura Complex, Presidium,>> the voice of a salarian helming one of the dispatch desks was clear, staccato, and succinct, <<available units please respond. Owner of shop indignant of disturbance to business.>>
There was music playing from a nearby kiosk, but the volume provided a nice buffer for the low hum of the very station itself, just audible over the chatter of the crowds and the clinking of silverware on plates at the other food stalls around him. A keeper ambled out of a small passageway, bumping into unwitting passers-by who then stepped aside to let it pass undisturbed. As Cullen scanned the storefronts and the multitudes of faces, flickering advertisements, and general restrained chaos of the merchant district, the asari came back with a bottle of water.
Cullen muttered a quick thanks and saw a flash of movement, a crop of red hair at the corner of his eye. He looked up to see Leliana sitting down next to him. He relaxed, satisfied that she was safe.
“Busy day?” he asked.
“Sorry I’m late,” she said. When she had a moment to appraise him, she squinted at his uniform “Are you on call?”
He made an equivocal reply, sort of half shrugging. He was always on call, in his opinion.
“I can only stay for a drink, at any rate,” she said, catching the asari’s eye. “A martini, please.”
She wore her work clothes, a slim pair of trousers and a patterned blouse with dangerously pointy high heels. She'd departed right away from her office. How she managed to walk in those things he’d never understand. Combat boots were enough of a chore for him.
“So...”
She smiled and turned her stool so that she faced him, “I’m going back to Orlais!”
“Really?” He amended his blank look with a feigned look of interest. “What’s the occasion?”
“There’s so much going on back home, Cullen, you should really be paying attention,” she groused. When Andra dropped off the martini, Leliana handed over her credit chit immediately. “Haven’t you heard of the Inquisition?”
Once Andra was done with the transaction she made her way out of the stall to pop around back for a smoke break. Relieved to be left alone to chat with Leliana, Cullen nursed the rest of his beer while she briskly explained it, a joint venture between the Chantry and the Alliance, funneling resources and intelligence into a project they were calling “The Crucible.” She couldn’t say much, only that she’d been given a hefty offer to contribute her services, and that she was leaving very soon. He hoped his face didn’t betray his happiness for her. He hated Orlais and their stuffy politics, their national pastime of organized treachery. But he knew she had worked hard to build a reputation, and being hand-picked to represent the interests of Val Royeaux in such a large investment must have meant a lot to her. He was genuinely glad that she was finally reaping the benefits of her crusade to learn everything the volus had to offer, to say nothing of how she’d established herself in the Shadow Broker’s network.
“It’s good to hear you’ll be able to help with the war somehow,” he said, and he was careful not to show his own self-doubt in how he was huddled up in the Citadel instead of out there volunteering or banging down the door at the Alliance recruiting office.
“Thank you,” she said. “It’s good to be going home.”
Home. Where was home, exactly? His mind wandered to the places he’d once felt might have warranted such a classification. Solona came to mind.
“I got a message from her the other day.”
Leliana sipped at her martini and swallowed before speaking. “I’m sorry?”
Of course she had no idea what he was talking about. “Oh. Um, Solona.”
She openly groaned and covered her mouth with a napkin. Beneath the bar she uncrossed and then recrossed her legs in the opposite direction. His stomach twisted at the sound of her disappointment. The conversation had changed gears, and he hadn’t meant for it to. Leliana wasn’t so happy any longer, and her soft Orlesian accent made the amount of frustration less cutting, but he could tell she’d long since lost her patience for listening to his moaning.
“Cullen...”
When he’d been in recovery, discharged from the Alliance with nowhere else to go, determined not to retreat back to Ferelden with his tail between his legs, Solona reached out to him with Leliana’s contact information and a prepaid one-way pass to the Citadel. She was the reason the two of them even knew each other.
“I thought we agreed you wouldn’t do this to yourself.” She chased the olive around in her glass and Cullen rested on his arms, not sure if he was nauseous due to hunger or stress. “You just end up hurting over the past.”
She was right, of course, but Cullen shook his head, idly spun his rapidly-condensing beer bottle on the bartop.
He shook his head, instantly regretting the whole thing. “I don’t know why I brought it up. She seemed happy, is all I was going to say. Married, now. To a spacer.”
“I know.” She popped the olive into her mouth.
He gaped at her. She didn’t look at him at all. Guilty conscience.
“You knew and never told me.” He refocused on his drink when it was too embarrassing to look anywhere else. Quietly, with a hint of insolence, “Am I that insufferable?”
“It was a while back,” she said, shrugging but in the most kind manner she could muster. She touched his arm for a second, gave him a reassuring point of contact. “I didn’t know if she’d contacted you. It wasn’t my place to do it.”
That stung. Quite a bit. While he wanted to think that Leliana was loyal to him, she was Solona’s friend first. He might have asked if Solona was back living in Ferelden or not, if Leliana planned to visit her, but it seemed petty, on top of how he was already acting.
“It’s fine.”
“You’re not insufferable. You’re a kind, sweet man. Solona loved you but...you both wanted different things.”
“Conflict of interest,” he interjected.
Solona had been a promising biotic, training at the Circle, the Thedosian contribution to the Alliance’s BAaT program. She’d been in his cohort at Rio de Janeiro, friendly first because they were both from Ferelden.
They’d been teammates, partners. More than that, starting with a few drinks at a bar after landing in São Paulo, and ending abruptly after commencement. It hadn’t been right to let it continue when they got their assignments. It hadn’t really been right for it to start at all. She wanted to promote up and take a desk job somewhere, have a bunch of kids and settle down once she found the right man. There had never been any doubts that Cullen hadn’t been the one she meant. He wanted to be out there, fighting. They’d broken things off before he left but it never felt official. Not until later.
Leliana sipped her martini and then almost dribbled it out again, hurrying to remind him, “Hm! Then you spent months pining after that woman, what was her name- Marian. She spent most of her time unattainable one way or another. Very convenient for you.”
“You can stop now, Leliana.”
He rubbed his eyes and scrubbed down the side of his face, rasping his stubble against his knuckles. A couple years ago, Marian had stormed into his life, a refugee from Horizon. She spent a lot of time down at the docks, helping other refugees, and he’d been doing a lot of volunteer work back then, too, found a lot of excuses to go and check in on things. She’d always been seeing someone else, and when she was actually single for a brief stint, he never committed to asking her out.
“I only mean you seem to prefer women who are not available, and if they are, you find a reason to drive them off.”
Cullen drowned his dissent in his beer, and then chased it with a big gulp of water.
Leliana ducked her head to whisper, “I hate to break it to you, but maybe women just aren’t right for you. Weren’t you...I know it’s been years but I could have sworn you were—”
“Bicurious?”
“You know how I hate that word.” She frowned and cast a sideways glance at him and accepted his unspoken apology. “You never dated a man but I know you were interested. You told me once, you were terribly drunk at the time so I know it’s true."
“I told you that in confidence.”
“And it is still in confidence. But maybe it’s time for a change. Why not give it a go?”
“I don’t know.” He dropped his head and picked at the label on his bottle, at the edges where the condensing water droplets at dampened the paper. He used it to keep his nervous hands busy, ripping little pieces. “I don’t know how far that attraction goes. I don’t know if I could take it any farther than just a...a bit of necking. It wouldn’t be fair.”
“Fair,” she repeated, laughing. “Do you put so much thought into pursuing women, I wonder.”
“What does it matter,” he said, attempting to lighten things up, “I’m already married to my job, right?”
Leliana finished her drink and let him sit without being prodded any further.
He returned to scanning the walkways, trying not to fret over his failed loves, over the strange feeling of loss that came with the knowledge that Leliana was moving on without him.
From the din of foot traffic on the thoroughfare, a strikingly attractive human man emerged and walked past him only to sidle into a stool a comfortable distance down, on the other side of Leliana. With her recent suggestion, it was hard not to turn his head and try to steal a few more glimpses. His nerves were still a little jangled from revisiting his past, and so he gave himself a pass for biting his lip and taking a few deep breaths to calm himself down. If he were to say anything to him at all, he’d do it without Leliana there to embarrass him.
So he tried to ignore him, and the curious feeling of interest pooling in his lower belly, by looking down the dark corridor, watching an elcor and a young quarian emerge from a shop. The quarian laughed and reached out to touch the elcor in a casual gesture that seemed overtly intimate for this part of the ward. Cullen watched her for a while as she and the elcor lingered at the storefront. She seemed cute, her fitted suit allowed him the notion that she was trim, perhaps athletic, and was generous with her laughter in lieu of a visible smile. He wondered if the elcor was attracted to her, and she attracted to him...or her? He couldn’t be certain.
He thought about Solona and Marian and between the two of them there was little similarity other than the fact that they were both biotics. Troublesome, that. Didn’t want to think of himself as some kind of fetishist. Men and women drew his eye, aesthetically, but he’d only ever pursued a physical relationship with women, and only a handful of times at that. He tried to think of preferences, things that he liked about a person that made them interesting to him. It was taking too long to narrow anything down, and when he realized he was letting his mind wander off without him, he’d peeled the entire label unwittingly off his beer.
“You know what they say about that,” said Leliana, pointing at the damp paper label he rolled between his fingers.
“I don’t want to know,” he said. He tipped back the last of his lukewarm beer and finished it off.
“Just consider it. Keep your options open." She got up and gave him an extremely genuine smile, a kiss in the Orlesian fashion, pressing her cheek into his and making a blatantly dramatic kissing sound in his ear. “Mwah! I’m still setting up plans for my departure. I’ll be in touch, I might need your help moving some furniture.”
“Of course,” he said, and waved her goodbye.
She passed by the newcomer sitting at the bar, and Cullen caught his eye as he watched her go. Andra returned, tossing her cigarette butt in the bin and washing her hands on the way back inside the stall. She barked a greeting at the new customer.
“Hey stranger.” She approached, her voice gruff but not too displeased. “Haven’t seen you in a while. When did you get back?”
“Just this morning, in fact.”
He spoke in a cordial tone, the lilting sound of his voice rich with a sound Cullen hadn’t heard in ages: a high-class Tevene accent. Oh, if Leliana only knew. It wasn’t really rare to meet another Thedosian on the Citadel—they were often coming and going, as were all species and races—but it was rare to meet someone from the former Imperium. Perhaps on the Presidium, in the embassies, but especially not in this ward. They were widely known to be extremely xenophobic, a culture not well known for departing their own country, much less the planet.
Cullen glanced sideways at him, allowed himself to spare a moment to study his appearance, and old C-Sec habit now. Mustache, twirled ends. Six foot, maybe less. Lean build. Styled hair, dark, shorn on the sides. Gold earrings. Civilian clothes, but neatly tailored, and a very expensive omni-tool on his wrist. Bio-amp implants. He always tried to remember notable features on everyone he met, just in case. Always, just in case. He pushed his receiver into his ear to listen more closely to the radio, which had been oddly quiet for a while. It served as a nice feint to make sure the Tevinter didn’t think he was trying to listen in...though he was, absolutely.
Andra ignored Cullen entirely, still smirking at the newcomer. “What can I get you? Don’t say ‘the usual’ because it doesn't exist anymore,” she warned.
Many restaurants were suffering smaller menus thanks to the rations put in effect at the start of the Reaper War. Most of the Presidium and the nicer wards and the Presidium hadn’t even known there’d been a war until recently. Some still didn’t believe, even with the ANN blaring at all hours about Commander Shepard’s recent endeavors on behalf of the Alliance and the Council. The sheer bulk of doom and gloom and brimstone broadcasting on every monitor had become a dull roar of white noise, easily hidden by advertisements for the latest Blasto flick, for the newest expansion of Galaxy of Fantasy.
“Surprise me,” he said, shrugging and sounding pleased with himself, and Cullen couldn’t be sure why.
She kneeled down to rummage in a low pantry before setting to work cooking on the levo-amino side of the kitchen. The man shook his head and looked over at Cullen but didn’t say anything, gazed at him for a moment only and returned his attention to the asari promptly thereafter. Cullen rather pointedly went back to pretending to mind his own business, half-listening to them, people-watching, and half-eavesdropping on the C-Sec central dispatch to keep his mind off of what Leliana had told him.
Andra pulled a bunch of hardy-looking roughage out of the chiller. The leaves were bumpy, nearly black instead of green. “Where the hell were you, anyway?”
“Noveria,” he said. “It was a last minute thing that turned into a one year kind of thing.”
“You’re not going back, are you?”
He folded his hands one on top of the other, the rings on his hands rasping over the countertop quietly. “I haven’t decided,” he said.
“Right. Corporate slavery on an icy wasteland, I’ll bet you can’t wait to go back.” She opened a bag to retrieve a bumpy green and yellow squash, sniffed it, and put it on the chopping block to slice next to the sinister looking cabbage.
“We’ll see. For now, mandatory cooldown.”
There was a domestic dispute call under way on another ward, along with petty theft, in two separate districts. There was a shuttle crash near the university in Bachjret Ward—no casualties—and a young krogan outside of Dark Star in Zakera Ward guilty of egregious public nuisance, public intoxication, and indecent exposure. Nothing out of the ordinary.
A turian dispatcher came up from a previous call for help on the Silversun Strip, <<I think this volus is just looking for a free ride home.>>
The responding officer came up with a stern tone, <<Well, he can get a ride from us, but he’s not goin’ home. >>
Andra grew quiet as she worked on the other man’s order, leaving the two customers across from one another in resolute silence. Cullen finally turned his attention from the crowd to the asari as she peeled and sliced strange vegetables that had somehow become commonplace human food out in the wards. Cullen quirked a brow at the gelatinous, seeded innards that spilled out of the tough, green flesh of the squash-like vegetables. She removed the seeds and chopped up the rest, threw them in a wok over a ring of small blue flames with a splash of oil. The man to his right glanced over again and this time Cullen brazenly met his eyes, startlingly grey. He had a very handsome face. Coming so quickly on the heels of his discussion with Leliana, he felt a little unnerved.
The man blinked slowly, his smile placid and the curled ends of his mustache tucked neatly against the sides of his mouth.
He held onto his gaze for a few beats, blinked back at him, knowing he was being sized up. He was used to this unassuming stare. He got it daily from his turian coworkers. They didn’t have eyebrows or cheeks to speak of, and expressions for them were nothing like what Cullen knew to recognize from fellow humans. They had blank, unreadable features, initially quite unnerving. Once he learned to look a little closer, at the dilation of the pupils, the placement and movement of the mandibles, the subtle shift in their sub-vocals, he got better at interpreting their moods, especially when it came to lying and intimidation. This knowledge paired with natural patience left him practically immune to even the thorniest of krogan staredowns.
But this was different, this was the look of nobility, of real human nobility. The families in Tevinter were said to trace their lineage back to powerful mages who courted with the gods themselves. Cullen tried to return a blank look that betrayed nothing about himself for the other man to read.
He canted his head to the side, eyes and teeth glinting. “Excuse me for staring. I’m quite the sucker for a pretty face.”
Cullen looked away because he felt a blush rising on his cheeks. It wasn’t the challenge he’d been expecting.
“You work for C-Sec?” he asked, rather plaintively.
He nodded, as if the uniform weren’t enough proof. “That’s right.” Cullen refocused on his water, hoping the Tevinter would take the hint and not attempt any further painfully obvious chit-chat. He drank instead of talking.
It was possibly one of the worst scenarios to be faced with, meeting someone from “back home” who might want to talk about things as if they shared anything whatsoever in common with one another. It was one of those painful elevator conversations, awkward silences uncomfortably filled with chatter, searching for things to talk about until it was polite to leave. Being flirted with made it even more painful.
Andra dropped a handful of meat into the pan, sizzling and snapping. A sweet, smoky aroma soon filled the food stall. Though he had no idea what kind of meat it was or what planet it hailed from, it smelled delicious. The asari, no doubt listening in, peered over at Cullen with a tight smirk and a squint. She scooped up a handful of the leafy vegetable and added it to the wok.
“I see you still have a taste for authority figures,” said Andra, muttering distastefully.
Keeping the wok moving with one hand, she dipped a long-handled ladle into a tall container of dark brown sauce and drizzled it over the vegetables and meat, gave them a few tosses and a stir with a long pair of metal chopsticks. Cullen rolled his eyes to the side. Being come-onto by a Tevinter wouldn’t be the strangest thing that had happened to him on the Citadel by far.
“I only work in administration,” he said.
“You got those scars from the office supplies, then?” the man asked, his tone softer, playful.
Cullen smirked at that.
“Hey,” Andra barked over at him, piercing him with a glare, “don’t get cute. It’s bad enough I have a cop hanging around my place all the time, don’t encourage him to stay any longer.”
The man held up his hands in a ceasefire gesture. “Was I being cute?”
“Shut up.”
Andra poured the vegetables and meat onto a plate and scooped out rice from a cooker on the back counter. She stepped over and set the plate of down in front of the man, who exaggeratedly rubbed his hands together. Cullen snuck a quick look at his meal, something like a stir fry, everything she’d cooked slathered in a tangy sauce. The small heap of short grain rice steamed gently. It wasn’t on the menu. Stomach grumbling, he had a mind to ask for the same thing.
<<Sigma forty-eight in progress, Tayseri Ward, level 31, all available officers please respond.>>
Cullen stood abruptly, bumping his sidearm on the counter as he increased the volume on the comm. speaker in his ear. Andra and the Tevinter looked at him in surprise and a bit of alarm. He glanced at his empty beer bottle and thought carefully before reaching for the throat-mic pickups at the base of his uniform collar. He wasn’t drunk, not by a long shot thanks to the weak ale Andra served him, but he knew to avoid the appearance of misconduct. He’d just...check in.
He stepped aside from the food stall and shouldered away from Andra and the Tevinter, activating his mic. “Dispatch, this is LT Rutherford. What's the sitrep on Tayseri?”
<<LT, we have a hostage crisis in an ERC distribution warehouse, unknown perpetrators, heavily armed. Currently requesting all spec-res officers in the vicinity to report to Captain Vallen on level 30.>>
“Copy that.”
They’d be getting a spur of the moment command center established. If he could stay out of the captain’s sight he might be able to lend some assistance. He thought of the nearest shops that might have coffee and food ready for about fifty irritable C-Sec agents. He started off, omni-tool casting an eerie orange glow into the dark corridor as he pressed through a small throng of people loitering near the stairs.
Andra called after him as he jogged for the nearest mass transit hub, “Dammit, Rutherford!”
The lieutenant was already out of earshot.
The asari grunted and grabbed Cullen’s unfinished beer. “Lousy jerk.” At the other man’s clipped chuckle, she turned her hard gaze on him. “Don’t laugh, asshole. You wanna pay for this?”
“He’s not good for it?”
She shrugged. “He’s always good for it, just takes him a day or two to drag his sorry ass back here for another lonely dinner by himself.” She snorted and poured out the beer in the sink. “Confirmed bachelor.”
She said it like an insult but Dorian finished chewing with his brows raised, clearly intrigued. “Is that so?” He looked in the direction Cullen had gone, though he’d long since disappeared into the mass of bodies swarming the marketplace.