Lavellan’s first instinct when he heard Dorian arrive was to pretend he was still sleeping, which was … rather not good. And definitely indicative of a larger issue, loathe as he was to admit it. The elf sighed, tugging the nearest blanket around him until it enveloped all but his eyes. Much better. Not cagey or evasive in the slightest.
The crackling from the fire downstairs was a welcome change, though. He didn’t need the warmth, necessarily—elves were generally a hardy people, the Dalish most of all, and threw off heat like walking furnaces—but the sound of it reminded him of Skyhold. Lavellan had lingered at Varric’s little corner just beyond the front doors, whether shaking off the rain from his traveling cloak or stopping to hear news after the couriers delivered letters. It was the sound of protection, warmth, and comfort, all things he’d learned never to get used to. Things that would always be taken from him.
Here in this place, the little library they’d excavated and rearranged, he hadn’t allowed himself to feel like what they had could be a home. Home was a foreign concept, something abstract and lost to history. Lavellan had traveled all across the Free Marches, had visited incredible places throughout Ferelden and Orlais, and still he couldn’t imagine home as a physical settlement, something that was his. Maybe what he really feared was losing the home he truly wanted. The home that had a name.
"My name isn’t Lavellan." Okay, so maybe he shouldn’t have led with that. He had to start somewhere, though, and it was easier to blurt this out first once Dorian came into view. Lavellan could better gauge his reaction that way and know how to proceed from there.