open post pt. 2.

[nibbling]

the other one got too big.

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[qunlat]

Bull gives an unhappy hum, feeling the muscles tightening under his palms even before Astarion complains about it. A firm squeeze at the base of Astarion's neck, like he's scruffing a kitten trying to get him to lower his hackles some. "I'm the one who'd have to fight ten Templars," he points out; it stresses him out to think about, he hates killing people he knows personally. Doesn't love thinking about Astarion under attack, either. He was trained to handle Southern Thedas politics with kid gloves, but he can't convey everything Astarion needs to know in just a couple of days.

"You'll be fine if you're not stupid," he says firmly. He isn't so pressure point focused while he's still rubbing the warming ointment over Astarion's back, working his hands over sheets of muscle rather than chasing all those tender knots. Barely paying attention to the scars by now. "Don't get eccentric in front of a bunch of superstitious Fereldan yokels, that's all I'm saying." He drops his hands to the span of Astarion's waist, has a minor internal crisis over it, moves on to thumbing up his lats.

[nibbling]

It's quite a relief to have the scars ignored, honestly. Even aside from the shame, the scar tissue has damaged nerve endings, and the feeling of it being touched is strange and not wholly pleasant. It's much more satisfying to have Bull work his warm hands over the parts of him that got out unscathed. Astarion vastly prefers this more gentle touching to the firm knot-seeking, relaxing infinitely more under it, but he is absolutely not going to fucking say that, so—

"You'd fight ten Templars?" he asks, trying to sound scolding and not pleased. He still doesn't fully understand what a Templar is. Sort of like a cleric, or perhaps a paladin? One of those religious fruitcakes. "If you're going to get offended when I accuse you of heroism, you really shouldn't."

[qunlat]

For things that aren't getting said, he'd fight kind of a lot of Templars. Warm: "Hey, hey, heroic is kinda bad-ass. You should absolutely tell everyone I'm your heroic protector." Grinning to himself. Way better than nice, the underlying attitude of which rhymes with weak.

[nibbling]

Heroism is stupid and fake, as a rule. If it weren't, surely some hero would have come bursting in and whisked him away from that horrible place; he'd certainly fantasized about it enough, back in the earlier days when he hadn't been cynical enough to feel like an idiot for wanting that. Then again, he supposes Bull sort of did burst in and whisk him away, just like he'd always secretly wanted. It feels surprisingly good to feel like there's someone in the world who might actually give a shit if something bad happened to him, and his muscles slacken into a pleased putty at the thought.

Ugh. He hates this traitorous body. It's always doing things he doesn't want it to. Astarion scoffs, saying, "Perhaps if I didn't mind sounding like an adolescent."

[qunlat]

Bull chuckles. "I won't tell anyone," he promises. If Astarion wants to indulge his adolescent verbiage. "Brace yourself." Physically, he means, since he's about to use the kind of pressure that's gonna bend Astarion forward otherwise. He runs his hands from the top of Astarion's ass to his shoulders in one long ripple of heat, then does it again. Everything smells like IcyHot now. And because he has zero tact, and he's pleased with himself: "Look at you all relaxed."

[nibbling]

He is relaxed, surprisingly so. It turns out being touched soothingly is actually sort of nice. For some reason he can't quite name, it feels horrifically embarrassing and maybe even a little bit shameful to admit that he enjoyed it in any way that isn't purely practical, so he doesn't.

It's the second time now that this has happened, and it feels odd and somewhat uncomfortable for it not to be repaid. Astarion has no interest in fairness, but he does have an interest in not owing anyone anything, and the best way to ensure that is to make everything transactional. His typical form of repayment has already been rebuffed, and he's sure as the hells not going to put himself out there to have his overture rejected a second time in just a few days, so instead— "I'll do you now," he announces.

[qunlat]

"Me," Bull echoes skeptically, still thumbing a little circle in the small of Astarion's back. "Sure. You don't have to. But I'm not about to say no." Even if he thinks it's going to be tough to keep his cool about it. Looks down at the covers to find where his little pot of liniment got to, though he's used more than half. Picks it up. "Technically this is qunari horn balm. Used to sooth all the muscles that hold 'em up, polish the keratin." But it works fine on softening scars and easing sore knots, as Astarion's learned firsthand.

[nibbling]

"Well, it'll take more than a backrub to get me to fondle your horns," he says as he turns to snatch up the pot, feeling abruptly— intimidated. It isn't Bull, it's just that he can't even remember the last time he voluntarily touched a person. Ordering people around always helps him feel more confident, so he hikes his chin up and commands, "Go on. I don't have all day for you to get into position."

[qunlat]

"Two backrubs," Bull needles. Flops himself down on the bed and wiggles around, borrowing one of Astarion's excessive number of pillows to tuck under his chest, figuring that's probably the best position for whatever Astarion wants to do with him.

It isn't exactly what he's used to, baring his broad grey back all muscle-bunched and peppered with scars, but god forbid he do anything with less than total physical confidence. He bounces in place experimentally. "Hey, it's not that bad. The bed." He doesn't mind a soft mattress, it feels decadent, which he secretly likes.

[nibbling]

It's not actually that bad, but Astarion has committed to it, so he says dismissively, "Of course you would think so, but some of us have more discerning taste."

He sits criss-cross beside Bull, sort of uncertain how this whole thing is supposed to go. He'd been very decisive about doing it, but now that he's actually in it, he feels ungainly and out of his depth. Maybe he should have offered Bull a casual handjob; at least he knows how those work.

Experimentally, Astarion reaches out and just sort of touches Bull's shoulder, nothing massagelike about it. He's forgotten the liniment, and his hands are ice cold.

[qunlat]

Bull pulls in a sharp breath. "Shit, your hands are freezing," he explains, laughter low in his voice to try and ease the sting of the flinch, the tension in his shoulders. His own hands flex, that camphor warmth having worked right into the joints.

It occurs to him, way later than it should have given he's already prone with the whole room in his blindspot, that maybe Astarion was bluffing with that determined confidence, so he has about five seconds to do something before Bull's going to start trying to be nice again.

[nibbling]

"Save your feedback for the end," Astarion says, pinching Bull's shoulder. He does withdraw his hand after that, though, and Bull can probably hear him coating them in liniment, which feels sort of weird and slippery on his fingers, and aggressively rubbing his palms together to warm them to something resembling 'living person temperature'.

When he places his hand back on Bull's traps, it's still on the cold side, but significantly less shocking. He tries to remember the sort of things Bull did with his hands, although it's all kind of a blur of warm palms and minty-smelling ointment. Testing, he presses a thumb into a tighter area.

"Some people would pay good money for this, you know," he adds, like he isn't just winging every part of this. "I have very deft fingers."

[qunlat]

Bull makes a noise at the dig of the thumb that's hard to categorize. Pleasure? Pain? A secret third thing?

"You've got good hands," he agrees easily, at least, even if that is kind of perpendicular to what Astarion just said. It's definitely weird to be touched by them, cool and uncertain, instead of the other way around.

He allows experimentation for less than a minute, and then instructs: "Bit up and to the left. If you use your palms you can put some weight on it, really get in there. You won't break me." Unfortunately he's built like a slab of concrete covered by thick rhino hide, though the liniment softens him up some. Brings out the metallic sheen to his skin.

[nibbling]

"—You're rather bossy," says the pot to the kettle.

Maybe he was getting there!!! He wasn't, though. Astarion has to readjust his positioning, sitting up on his knees so that he can lean over and put his weight into his palms, both of them placed where Bull indicated. Although he'd been a little intimidated, this is actually quite a bit less fraught than having it done to him. He gets to choose where he's touching, how hard he presses. It's nice, even, having the freedom to touch somebody without being touched back.

He presses the heel of his hand into Bull's muscle, leaning down into it. "It's like massaging an armadillo," he notes with a scoff. "This counts for two." And therefore makes up for both times, and he owes nothing!

[qunlat]

In addition to bossy, Bull is embarrassingly and unabashedly loud, groaning all pleased when Astarion does as suggested and the result is good warm pressure on a muscle that's always a little tight.

"Mm. You're the one keeping score," he agrees. The only one. "Thanks though. You can keep pressing right up to the top of the shoulder." He'd compare it to kneading dough but he's not certain Astarion has any more experience with how bread is made than shoulder massage.

[nibbling]

Listening to Bull make those noises makes Astarion feel funny, impulsively pressing down again to see if he'll do it again. It's— vampiric predatory instinct, probably. Some inborn desire to have a helpless person groaning in pain under him. He's very, deeply uncomfortable with the thought that it could be anything else, so he refuses to even entertain that thought.

Instead, he follows the suggestion, pressing up Bull's shoulder muscles even as he says, "Obviously, I was planning on doing that anyway."

[qunlat]

Astarion gets the noise he wants, another one as he follows instructions. "Obviously," Bull echoes, ribbing him, but his voice has dropped all gravelly. He's spent months far from anyone he would have trusted near his neck and spine; he's not coping with two centuries of touch-starvation but it's attention he hasn't had in a while. That it's attention from someone he's kind of nursing a low simmer for isn't helping, and the weight and intention carry the rest. "Hrrmmm," he murmurs, low in his lungs. "You know, if we're really going tit for tat, shouldn't you be talking more?"

[nibbling]

"Shouldn't you be talking less?" he asks, a little prickly because he's currently grappling with the confusion and shame of feeling some type of way (NOT saying which one) about this. What, he's supposed to have feelings and entertain Bull at the same time? Besides: "—I don't have any heroic tales of valor to share."

[qunlat]

"Doesn't have to be a story about you," Bull says, though it's not careful avoidance, he doesn't quite grasp the extent of how Astarion's captivity has infected his life. He just means: he'd take the Thedas equivalent of the phonebook. "Doesn't have to be anything. I just wanna listen to you." And he will actually shut up for it, too, if Astarion doesn't seem too lost about working him over.

[nibbling]

"Oh," Astarion says, the movement of his hands slowing as he briefly wonders if he's being mocked. Cazador had hated to listen to him talk. Or step too heavily. Or exist too loudly. He picks up again after a moment, moving his palms slightly downward so that he can flatten them against Bull's shoulder blades and press his thumbs into the grooves. Astarion's always got a lot of stress built up there, so he figures it can't hurt to see if Bull does, too.

"Well. I suppose I could tell you about this novel I pilfered from—" One of the people whom he seduced and led to their doom, naturally. "It doesn't matter where I got it from." The important thing to keep in mind is that he stole it, so it's not like it was his literary choice! The reason why this is important becomes clear quickly, as he begins to describe an incredibly low-quality bodice-ripper paperback, complete with quivering bosoms. Still, there is some semblance of a plot in between all of the throbbing manhoods, which finally starts to come together—

"Mm, and then I came here and left it behind, so I guess we'll never know if Isadora was the lost princess with amnesia. Pity."

[qunlat]

As promised, Bull is quiet bar the occasional arm-muffled noise as Astarion works the tension out of his shoulders — something Bull would say he gets way better at now that he's thinking about Isadora's breasting boobily down the stairs instead of what his hands are doing. Sometimes he clarifies a minor detail — "A what?" — or huffs out a laugh, but mostly he just lets Astarion walk him through it.

Until there's no more to walk through. "Edging me with a book that doesn't even exist here," he complains. Probably he could guess the end himself, trashy novels aren't exactly making unique narrative moves and he's read all of Varric's stuff, but it's the principle.

[nibbling]

"If I have to live the rest of my life never knowing whether Isadora chose the proper noble or the rakish criminal"—both of them equally gifted in the crotch area, one can only assume—"it's only fair that you do, too."

It does help to have something else to focus on besides the fact that he's voluntarily touching someone for the first time in ages and that it's making him feel kind of tingly. Sort of satisfying, actually, seeking out the tightness in Bull's muscles as he travels down the sides of his spine. Kind of like using his lockpick to seek out all the right pins to coax open a lock.

"If she has any sense, of course, she'll pick the wealthy one." Romance fades, but poisoning your husband and inheriting all of his assets is forever.

[qunlat]

Bull sighs, heavy enough Astarion can feel it under his hands. "I still don't see why she has to choose." Monogamy is such made-up human bullshit. "They meet different needs. Plus, didn't you say at the start, the kingdom's at war? If she is the princess then their first priority should be supporting her while she does her job."

But it's hard to get worked up about this point when Astarion does something that eases all his tumblers into place and he takes another deep breath just to feel how much easier it comes, lets it out on a groan. Rolls his hips into the mattress a little, subtly, or what he hopes is subtly. "Getting good at that."

[nibbling]

Oh. Astarion notices. The movement of his hands stops for a split-second, just long enough to be noticeable and just short enough to have plausible deniability that it was nothing at all. After that instant of hesitation, he presses both of his thumbs into the small of Bull's very not-small back. Bull's technique had felt firm but not overly forceful; meanwhile, Astarion has to lean his entire body weight into it to get through that thick qunari hide. Honestly, it's quite a lot of physical work. His wrists kind of ache.

He'd really like to say something to keep the mood casual and lighthearted, but he's now too distracted to think of a single thing to say besides an acknowledging mmm. He throws himself into the physicality of it instead, methodically working out the muscles of Bull's lower back until he reaches the base of his spine. Yeah, he's not going any lower than that.

With imperious dismissiveness: "If you turn over and ask very nicely, perhaps I might do those tree trunks you call legs as well."

[qunlat]

What Bull's gonna do is fall asleep in a bed he's too tall for; he's a puddle in the soft mattress, relaxed despite being turned on, struggling to keep his eye open.

"Thanks, but I'm good. Left tree trunk is too fucked for anything except self massage." The one he has braced, doesn't even like healers prodding at it because the wrong angle on his knee gets nerve pain so white hot it's past even his high threshold. So they're not gonna risk that, even if he appreciates that Astarion put his back into this. Adds with tired humour: "You're all paid up, Astarion. Think you can sleep now?"