Bull makes a disgruntled noise. "Asshole," he mutters, aware he's just lost ground on that being believable ever again. He drops back onto his back (horns too ridiculous to lie on his side properly) and considers the walls of the tent. "Getting light out. You really meditate?"
Astarion shifts onto his back, too, less inclined to turn away from Bull now. He's struck by a sudden realization: he's not sure he's ever lied next to someone without having sex with them. It feels odd, foreign. Not bad, though.
"Would I lie?" he asks, before immediately thinking better of it. "Well, I'm not lying about this. It's a... restful trance. Preferable to that awful dreaming by far." He can't stand the idea of being completely helpless and out of control in his own mind. How others do it every night, he can't possibly fathom. "I'm marginally aware of the things around me during, so—"
"Yeah, fuck dreaming," Bull mutters in quiet agreement in the middle of that. Qunari don't dream by choice, however that works, for a variety of complicated and highly superstitious reasons that don't matter.
Anyway, at being told not to snore, his mouth quirks. "Got it," he says solemnly. "Quiet as a chantry mouse." He's pretty sure he's not going to sleep, wants to keep an ear on the outside world and the horses. A doze, maybe, at most. He'll close his eyes though. Wait a little while, quiet breathing. Then give a long, low, exaggerated snore.
Astarion, fingers curled in meditation, reaches out a foot and kicks Bull in the shin.
It's still a little light outside when he wakes—earlier than a normal sleeper would, owing both to the efficiency of elven trancing and, well. "Hells," Astarion moans, his whole body having grown achy somewhere during the course of his meditation. If Bull had managed to fall asleep at any point, the whining will surely wake him. "I feel as if I've been kicked by a horse."
Bull wakes from quiet sleep at Astarion's first word, remembers he's sharing a tent by the second and relaxes. While he'd pitched close enough to the tree for some shade it's still only early Fall, and it's getting a little humid in the canvas confines, enough that he kinda wants to sleep a little more.
He scratches his belly a moment, deliberating. "You want a massage?"
He wants Bull to open up his veins so he can really feel better, but he couldn't possibly ask for that. "Wouldn't you like that!" he crows, although he sort of doubts it's actually a come-on. That would be a little ridiculous, after Bull spent last night (morning?) laying out how they absolutely were not going to be fondling each other's private parts.
A shift onto his side is accompanied by a low noise that sounds eerily similar to an angry cat. Stupid horse! He's mad at her all over again. "Why? Are you any good at it?"
"Yup," Bull says, easy confidence. It's the perfectionist's ego: he doesn't tend to offer or attempt to do anything he's less than great at.
"Merc work is a team effort like that. You rub your archer's strained shoulder so he can shoot the next guy who comes at you with a knife." Like locker room physiotherapy. Totally normal and platonic. Doesn't have to be weird. Except also, idly: "Plus a lot of people overdo it riding the Bull, so I've gotten pretty good at the hips." A sleepy smile in his voice.
The flat look on his face says that he thinks riding the Bull is the lamest thing he's ever heard. He doubts anyone named their baby The Iron Bull, so he wonders if the ridiculous little entendre was a factor in taking the name or if it was just a happy coincidence. Either way, it's eyeroll-worthy.
He doesn't dignify that with a response, just rolls onto his back again with an unhappy oof and lies there for a protracted moment, contemplative. Finally, with an imperious tone, he says, "I would allow that."
Coming properly awake now, Bull sits up, careful with his horns and the tent, his body in the space. Sits back on his feet somewhere around Astarion's knees, considers him a moment.
"You say stop, I'll stop," he says, then just goes for it, slips a hand under Astarion's calf and lifts it up, knee towards his chest. "Relax, I'll hold it," he says, because he doesn't want the muscle held taut, just stretched. Other hand presses into the back of Astarion's thigh over his pants, sweeping warmth along his hamstrings, just getting bloodflow back in there and feeling out where the tightness is. He's firm, a little too used to doing his own leg when his fucked up knee locks all his muscles up wrong, but impersonal. Astarion was right on the money that he likes this, but he's put that somewhere else in his head.
Gods, just rip off the bandage, why doesn't he. Astarion of course tenses up all over at being touched like this, body relying on sense-memories of times someone's hands in these places led to hands in other places.
"It'sfine," he blurts out before Bull can make it weird, because the last thing he wants is some awkward pity. He forces himself to relax, increment by increment, taking in and breathing out unnecessary breaths. It helps, at least, that it feels almost clinical. Like Bull had described, just working out a buddy-ol'-pal's sore muscles.
"It just hurt, that's all." It really did, but then again, everything hurts right now. "I'm very delicate, you know. You have to be careful with those big, brutish hands of yours."
Bull is on high alert for every little tension and flinch, Astarion's breathing — but he's letting Astarion dictate where his limits are for now, while the stakes are relatively low and everyone's wearing clothes, and doesn't stop what he's doing.
His brow does twitch up. "Yeah, yeah, handling priceless treasure here, I get it." Shifts Astarion's knee slightly, in rather than out. "Okay, this is gonna be bad for a moment," he warns, and his grip tightens to keep Astarion from kicking him while he presses his thumb hard into the corner of muscle at his hip, searing white heat to the bone for three, four, five long seconds before he releases the pressure and the knot unlocks for him. Bull presses out the relieved muscle like he's kneading dough until he gets to the next spot. "How's that? Still with me? You good for again?"
It's a good thing Bull preempts the kicking, because he does try, instinctively and involuntarily. He has to grip the bedroll so as not to punch Bull for it. "Motherfucker," he hisses, eyebrows raised. It hurts so bad that he forgets to be nervous about being touched at all, which is... something? Getting his sore muscles pressed on is probably not a long-term solution to the touch problem, but at least in the short-term, it gives him something else to focus on.
He hates that it feels better afterward. "I take back everything I said about your niceness." Sadist. "Just do it quickly," he demands with that same imperious tone, verbally wrestling for control of the situation even now.
"It takes how long it takes," Bull says, which is very qunari for a guy who's left the qun, but this has him in that headspace. "But I think you can handle it."
Hopefully that's true, because now he's just gonna keep doing it, working his way up the pressure points from hip to calf, with a pause to go a second time on the evil one alongside the kneecap. It's the same each time though, rhythmic: Bull murmurs a word of warning, there's five seconds of shrieking pressure, and then a warm wash of massage as a reward for taking it without uh, killing him.
"Doing good," he says, abandoning that leg to climb over Astarion and sit on his other side, taking the opportunity to check in again.
"I hate you." It takes how long it takes. Dick. But it really does help the soreness, and it's so methodical and predictable that the anxiety of having someone's hands on him has reduced to a low thrum, so he doesn't tap out. Besides, it's sort of novel to have someone touch him in a way that feels like it's for his benefit; his own experience of it has historically been largely unimportant up until now.
It does, of course, still feel a little uncomfortably intimate. Bull's summary rejection of his advances—while offensive, at the time—soothes most of the worry on that front, though. If he'd intended on doing untoward things to Astarion while he was stuck in this tent, he had his opportunity.
"You could at least try to distract me," is a genuine complaint. Again, he's endured centuries of torture, but his mild discomfort tolerance is not great. "Don't you have any ridiculous tavern stories to tell?"
All that flaying when Cazador could have just been putting little stones in his shoe or making him ride a horse.
Anyway, Bull grins, pleased to actually be asked to talk. "So many," he promises, and it's a good request, shifts his mindset away from processing all this intense service-sadism as something it isn't. "You wanna hear about taking down a dragon? Or how I lost my eye and met my right hand man? Shit, actually, we're going through Haven tomorrow. I should tell you about the fucking breaches."
Physically, he's just mirroring what he did to the first leg, but now, while he's not careless, there's less intense hypervigilance over Astarion's well-being, Bull relaxing somewhat as he sketches in broad strokes the Inquisitor closing the breach, and Coryphius' army attacking Haven, forcing them to flee up the mountain to Skyhold.
Having something to listen to does distract him from the pain, although it's slowly becoming— not good-hurt, but tolerable-hurt, at least. It's unsurprising and always the same: a few seconds of intense pressure, then relief. For someone whose life has been ruled by someone else's unpredictability, it's actually sort of nice to have something he can foresee.
"Ah," he still whines, because he's a whiner. "What an... exciting life you've led."
Actually, it sounds like this Inquisition business is all very complicated in a way he's not a fan of, but surely he can just keep his head down and ignore all of that.
He stretches his leg back out when all is said and done, crossed daintily at the ankle. "Am I supposed to return the favor?"
"Nope," says Bull immediately, with a little huff of a laugh to himself like the offer amuses him. "I can do your back if you don't mind taking your shirt off." He shrugs, sitting back and idly rubbing his own hands, stretching out his fingers. "Or I can go find some more elfroot." The light's changed enough he can probably open the tent without burning Astarion to a crisp with a stray shaft of sunlight. It's an easy out.
Ugh. Elfroot. He makes a face, the bitter taste of it still on his tongue. The alternative, though— he sits up, frowning. "Can't you do it through the shirt?" Already demanding, because the massage didn't suck, actually, but he really doesn't want Bull to see his back and... what? Be repulsed? Feel sorry for him? All of the possibilities seem equally horrible.
He scratches at his cheek. "I know it's difficult to believe when I seem so without blemish, but I have some... unsightly scarring you'd rather not see." Even just admitting that feels embarrassing, although perhaps it shouldn't, considering Bull is hardly without scar himself. "The product of a terribly exciting life."
"You've seen my knee," Bull says; the starburst disfiguration of a bad, bad old wound when he'd been stripped off at the tailors. It's his second-worst injury. "Scars won't bother me. Actually, it's probably good for 'em to have some bloodflow." But he also understands, because he doesn't ever take his eyepatch off while other people are in the room. Some stuff is about more than how it looks.
It's different from Bull's knee. That's an exciting, adventurous story, and Astarion's is just proof of disgusting, repulsive helplessness. Physical proof of subjugation. He wants to throw up just thinking about it.
But he also is in a lot of pain; his back is already incredibly tense at all times, and the untalented horse-riding has just made it worse. He's visibly thoughtful for a few moments, worrying a lip with a fang. "Close your eyes."
Tough ask. It takes a beat, turning over if he wants to say fuck it and just promise Astarion a hot bath and a potion in his future. "Okay," Bull decides, and does close his eye, looking weirdly meditative even if his shoulders have gone tight. "But try not to fuck around, my startle response is not pretty."
Astarion looks at Bull for a moment, head tilted. Honestly, he'd never once considered that Bull—or anyone else, really, because he doesn't think much about other people at all—might have hang-ups. But trust goes both ways, or at least that's what people say. He wouldn't know, since he's never trusted anybody before.
Before right now, anyway. He's not sure he's a fan of the feeling, but— "Do I seem like the type to fuck around?" Don't answer that. He removes his shirt carefully, holding it to his chest afterward. He's not sure if he's supposed to be sitting up for this, or laying down, or...? Too prideful to ask, he just says, "All right."
Maybe he'll find this funny later; right now the moment feels too tense for that. Bull lifts a hand, reaches out to about where he thinks Astarion is, until he encounters — skin. A bicep. Skims the touch up to the point of his shoulder and that's enough for him to sketch it out in his mind's eye, Astarion's torso in space.
He shifts a little, even slower and more careful than he has been in the tent so far, and then, gruffly, "C'mere," as he touches his other hand with unerring precision to the dip in Astarion's waist. "Lean forward a little." Trying to guide without pushing, just a little shift and then he breathes, "Okay, good," and puts his hands on Astarion's back.
Here's the proof he hasn't been cheating: all his spy training in self-mastery can't prevent the light hiss through his teeth when he runs heavy hands either side the length of Astarion's spine to start warming the muscle there and feels all that texturing under his fingers. Stops well below the circle, at the top of his ass, and just thumbs there, testing the muscle for flinch. It's tight to a degree that's honestly sadder to him than the scars.
"You wanna talk about it?" he offers, wandering his fingers up to the bottom of Astarion's lats, which are just as bad.
Yes, so badly. Two hundred years and he's never once had someone who cared even a little bit about his thoughts and feelings. There's so much that's been kept bottled up inside of him that he feels like he could burst sometimes. On the other hand, there's never been someone who cared about his thoughts and feelings in two hundred years, so it's hard to feel like it'll go well if he says anything now. He might be met with indifference or scorn or, worst of all, pity.
"There's nothing to talk about," he says, gritting his teeth as Bull's thumbs press into muscles that haven't been relaxed in centuries. It feels much more vulnerable with Bull's fingers on his bare skin, and he glances behind himself to make sure that his good eye remains closed; it's a teeny, tiny bit of control that he can cling to as comfort. "You saw that place."
Explanation enough. The details are irrelevant.
Flippant: "Unfortunately, scarred and rugged isn't really the aesthetic I'm going for."
Bull's brow is furrowed in concentration, but the eye is closed. It's easier on direct skin to feel the layers of muscle and where they're pulled tight, the places there's old inflammation that springs hot at even gentle pressure.
"Can't tell you you're still pretty if you won't let me see it," he points out, reasonably. "Take a deep breath in for me. And brace yourself." He needs the ribcage expanded so he can get in and put pressure somewhere bruisingly painful again. Shorter presses this time, but more of them.
"Interesting," he says, a distraction, "That I know I am not gonna hear the end of how that horse ride fucked you up. But whatever scarred you up like that? Mm, nothing to talk about."
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"Would I lie?" he asks, before immediately thinking better of it. "Well, I'm not lying about this. It's a... restful trance. Preferable to that awful dreaming by far." He can't stand the idea of being completely helpless and out of control in his own mind. How others do it every night, he can't possibly fathom. "I'm marginally aware of the things around me during, so—"
An accusatory look. "Don't snore."
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Anyway, at being told not to snore, his mouth quirks. "Got it," he says solemnly. "Quiet as a chantry mouse." He's pretty sure he's not going to sleep, wants to keep an ear on the outside world and the horses. A doze, maybe, at most. He'll close his eyes though. Wait a little while, quiet breathing. Then give a long, low, exaggerated snore.
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It's still a little light outside when he wakes—earlier than a normal sleeper would, owing both to the efficiency of elven trancing and, well. "Hells," Astarion moans, his whole body having grown achy somewhere during the course of his meditation. If Bull had managed to fall asleep at any point, the whining will surely wake him. "I feel as if I've been kicked by a horse."
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He scratches his belly a moment, deliberating. "You want a massage?"
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A shift onto his side is accompanied by a low noise that sounds eerily similar to an angry cat. Stupid horse! He's mad at her all over again. "Why? Are you any good at it?"
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"Merc work is a team effort like that. You rub your archer's strained shoulder so he can shoot the next guy who comes at you with a knife." Like locker room physiotherapy. Totally normal and platonic. Doesn't have to be weird. Except also, idly: "Plus a lot of people overdo it riding the Bull, so I've gotten pretty good at the hips." A sleepy smile in his voice.
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He doesn't dignify that with a response, just rolls onto his back again with an unhappy oof and lies there for a protracted moment, contemplative. Finally, with an imperious tone, he says, "I would allow that."
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"You say stop, I'll stop," he says, then just goes for it, slips a hand under Astarion's calf and lifts it up, knee towards his chest. "Relax, I'll hold it," he says, because he doesn't want the muscle held taut, just stretched. Other hand presses into the back of Astarion's thigh over his pants, sweeping warmth along his hamstrings, just getting bloodflow back in there and feeling out where the tightness is. He's firm, a little too used to doing his own leg when his fucked up knee locks all his muscles up wrong, but impersonal. Astarion was right on the money that he likes this, but he's put that somewhere else in his head.
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"It'sfine," he blurts out before Bull can make it weird, because the last thing he wants is some awkward pity. He forces himself to relax, increment by increment, taking in and breathing out unnecessary breaths. It helps, at least, that it feels almost clinical. Like Bull had described, just working out a buddy-ol'-pal's sore muscles.
"It just hurt, that's all." It really did, but then again, everything hurts right now. "I'm very delicate, you know. You have to be careful with those big, brutish hands of yours."
He's joking. It helps to run his mouth, too.
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His brow does twitch up. "Yeah, yeah, handling priceless treasure here, I get it." Shifts Astarion's knee slightly, in rather than out. "Okay, this is gonna be bad for a moment," he warns, and his grip tightens to keep Astarion from kicking him while he presses his thumb hard into the corner of muscle at his hip, searing white heat to the bone for three, four, five long seconds before he releases the pressure and the knot unlocks for him. Bull presses out the relieved muscle like he's kneading dough until he gets to the next spot. "How's that? Still with me? You good for again?"
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He hates that it feels better afterward. "I take back everything I said about your niceness." Sadist. "Just do it quickly," he demands with that same imperious tone, verbally wrestling for control of the situation even now.
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Hopefully that's true, because now he's just gonna keep doing it, working his way up the pressure points from hip to calf, with a pause to go a second time on the evil one alongside the kneecap. It's the same each time though, rhythmic: Bull murmurs a word of warning, there's five seconds of shrieking pressure, and then a warm wash of massage as a reward for taking it without uh, killing him.
"Doing good," he says, abandoning that leg to climb over Astarion and sit on his other side, taking the opportunity to check in again.
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It does, of course, still feel a little uncomfortably intimate. Bull's summary rejection of his advances—while offensive, at the time—soothes most of the worry on that front, though. If he'd intended on doing untoward things to Astarion while he was stuck in this tent, he had his opportunity.
"You could at least try to distract me," is a genuine complaint. Again, he's endured centuries of torture, but his mild discomfort tolerance is not great. "Don't you have any ridiculous tavern stories to tell?"
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Anyway, Bull grins, pleased to actually be asked to talk. "So many," he promises, and it's a good request, shifts his mindset away from processing all this intense service-sadism as something it isn't. "You wanna hear about taking down a dragon? Or how I lost my eye and met my right hand man? Shit, actually, we're going through Haven tomorrow. I should tell you about the fucking breaches."
Physically, he's just mirroring what he did to the first leg, but now, while he's not careless, there's less intense hypervigilance over Astarion's well-being, Bull relaxing somewhat as he sketches in broad strokes the Inquisitor closing the breach, and Coryphius' army attacking Haven, forcing them to flee up the mountain to Skyhold.
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"Ah," he still whines, because he's a whiner. "What an... exciting life you've led."
Actually, it sounds like this Inquisition business is all very complicated in a way he's not a fan of, but surely he can just keep his head down and ignore all of that.
He stretches his leg back out when all is said and done, crossed daintily at the ankle. "Am I supposed to return the favor?"
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He scratches at his cheek. "I know it's difficult to believe when I seem so without blemish, but I have some... unsightly scarring you'd rather not see." Even just admitting that feels embarrassing, although perhaps it shouldn't, considering Bull is hardly without scar himself. "The product of a terribly exciting life."
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But he also is in a lot of pain; his back is already incredibly tense at all times, and the untalented horse-riding has just made it worse. He's visibly thoughtful for a few moments, worrying a lip with a fang. "Close your eyes."
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Before right now, anyway. He's not sure he's a fan of the feeling, but— "Do I seem like the type to fuck around?" Don't answer that. He removes his shirt carefully, holding it to his chest afterward. He's not sure if he's supposed to be sitting up for this, or laying down, or...? Too prideful to ask, he just says, "All right."
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He shifts a little, even slower and more careful than he has been in the tent so far, and then, gruffly, "C'mere," as he touches his other hand with unerring precision to the dip in Astarion's waist. "Lean forward a little." Trying to guide without pushing, just a little shift and then he breathes, "Okay, good," and puts his hands on Astarion's back.
Here's the proof he hasn't been cheating: all his spy training in self-mastery can't prevent the light hiss through his teeth when he runs heavy hands either side the length of Astarion's spine to start warming the muscle there and feels all that texturing under his fingers. Stops well below the circle, at the top of his ass, and just thumbs there, testing the muscle for flinch. It's tight to a degree that's honestly sadder to him than the scars.
"You wanna talk about it?" he offers, wandering his fingers up to the bottom of Astarion's lats, which are just as bad.
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"There's nothing to talk about," he says, gritting his teeth as Bull's thumbs press into muscles that haven't been relaxed in centuries. It feels much more vulnerable with Bull's fingers on his bare skin, and he glances behind himself to make sure that his good eye remains closed; it's a teeny, tiny bit of control that he can cling to as comfort. "You saw that place."
Explanation enough. The details are irrelevant.
Flippant: "Unfortunately, scarred and rugged isn't really the aesthetic I'm going for."
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"Can't tell you you're still pretty if you won't let me see it," he points out, reasonably. "Take a deep breath in for me. And brace yourself." He needs the ribcage expanded so he can get in and put pressure somewhere bruisingly painful again. Shorter presses this time, but more of them.
"Interesting," he says, a distraction, "That I know I am not gonna hear the end of how that horse ride fucked you up. But whatever scarred you up like that? Mm, nothing to talk about."
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