come on, get up, let me see your bruises

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

Fight club was good. Dorian hadn't come - work, maybe, or he just hadn't been feeling in the mood for it. Bull hadn't pressed and had promised he'd be home before it got too late.

Dorian had seen him through a few fight clubs now, but none of them had ever been like this one. At some point toward the end of the evening, Dorian had gotten a picture on his phone: a selfie of Bull and Krem with a giant carcass in the background. Bull's eyepatch was long gone and the pair of them had been a bloody mess.

Not terribly long after that, Bull arrived back to his apartment. Even if Dorian's was very nice, it was more practical for them to sleep in his: Bull's bed was bigger and more sturdy.

He looked like he'd come out of a fight in Thedas, scored with fresh lacerations and incisions, bruises blossoming across his gray skin. He'd cleaned off the worst of the blood - especially the wyvern blood - before leaving the fairgrounds. Thankfully there had been a working hose there.

Comments

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

"I'm going to lay here and be useless," Bull announced as the pair of Vints set to gathering things. He knew if he tried to navigate around either of them in the kitchen, someone was going to get knocked over. His eye was sharp on Krem for a moment, though, after that wobble.

With a quiet sigh he sank back, allowing his back to stretch out. Bull rubbed his hand over the stubble on his head. He needed to shave again soon, everything. He didn't move again until he heard footsteps coming back; with a grunt he sat up again, ready to either behave while he was being tended or drink. Both.

"If I behave, does that mean the pants will come off, too?" he asked Dorian when he appeared again, eyebrow lifting.

[propertool]

Dorian sighed. He wasn't rightly sure how to manage that comment. He put the steaming basin down on Bull's bedside table before reaching for his bag of things and dumping it unceremoniously. Gauze pads, tape, and a number of tins and vials scattered onto the corner of the bed.

"The shirt is off because it doesn't need blood or iodine or whatever else stains. Not for your personal pleasure. Not that I'm suddenly a blushing, virginal flower too shy to disrobe with company around, but I don't know how Cremisius would feel about it."

Dorian wrung his hands before throwing them in the air. He took one of the towels, dipped it into the water, and wrung it mostly out.

"Not that I suspect it would bother him."

[krempuff]

"It's a good view," Krem said nonchalantly, pacing a little now. He was full of nervous energy, left over from the fights, and he wanted to get most of that out of the way before Dorian was fussing over him instead of Bull. He'd never been very good at being tended.

He took a drink from the bottle he'd found, and tried to make himself still. It was, at least, interesting to watch how Dorian worked with minimal or no magic. The herbal arts were an entirely different sort of magic, but Dorian wielded them with the same proficiency.

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

Bull watched Krem as he moved, he listened to the water drip back into the basin as Dorian wrung out the cloth. He felt lulled in a way he hadn't in nearly a year. It was a relief to be able to get out... whatever it was he had inside him. The part that came out every time they were on a battlefield. The part that had come out, unrestrained, when he went mad.

"Slow breaths, Krem. Deep. You're not banged up too bad, it won't take long." Maybe the drink would help ease that lingering energy.

He shifted his attention to Dorian. "The wyvern cuts are the worst. And thank you, kadan."

[propertool]

"Yes, I see that," Dorian said, whose brow had wrinkled up in concentration, mixed with consternation. There was a particularly deep cut on the meaty part of Bull's bicep. He cleaned it out, to get a better look at it. It would have needed stitches, if Dorian weren't working with magic.

What Krem had said though, it was a relief, more than anything Dorian could have imagined.

"I haven't got any scars. Not a single one. It makes me self-conscious to be around ... a man like you. It doesn't help that, oneself notwithstanding, the alti are a prudish bunch. So, I apologize. I know my behavior must be odd, or frustrating, or--"

Dorian realized he was talking for talking's sake by now, and stopped. Instead, he opened a little tin of something that smelled both herbal and unctuous, and most strongly of elfroot.

He gathered a reasonable amount of the yellowish salve out of the container.

[krempuff]

Krem hummed a little, and nodded. Bull was riddled in scars, in stories. Krem had only in the last decade gotten any substantial ones, after leaving the army, and the mage healers there who had made sure the soldiers were well kept from their wounds in training and deployment.

He came back to bed and settled, still drinking, curled up like a lazy cat. It made watching Dorian work easier. It wasn't quite like watching Stitches, or Hild, but it had its own allure that was tied much more into Dorian's talents as a mage.

"Hardly odd," Krem said after a moment. "It's just how you are."

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

Bull knew that Dorian took care of himself, especially after fights. He'd watched him, with considerable dedication, as he made sure nothing would scar. He'd not thought much of it: Dorian had the ability and the desire to make it happen.

"You've had injuries that could have ended in scars," Bull said, watching Dorian work. Of course it was his left arm that had gotten the deepest cut. "I've seen some of them. That you don't have any is a testament to your talent and determination, Dorian Pavus."

His hand drifted and the backs of his fingers - two of them a knuckle too short - brushed Dorian's thigh. He was nervous and Bull wanted to calm him.

Krem had settled, at least.

"If you need to close it with magic, go ahead. I've got enough scars to cover both of you. Twice."

[propertool]

Dorian gave a hysterical little giggle at cover the both of you, twice, because it had struck him, unbidden, as ridiculous. He carefully pressed the elfroot salved along the edges of the wound, before, with Bull's permission, knitting it together just enough to heal properly with magic. The green glow of the magic threw Bull's face into an odd relief.

"Thank you, Cremisius, for reminding me that there are still some Tevinters who are fully capable of appreciating a man just how he is."

He wiped at his palms with a clean rag, before going back to Bull's various scratches, bruises and friction burns. Thankfully, nobody seemed to have broken any bones.

"One of these days I'm just going to have to strip naked and climb to the top of the fountain in the park. Get it all over with. I suggest you all start saving for my bail."

[krempuff]

Krem only rolled his eyes a little bit at Bull. It probably wasn't meant as a double entendre, but Krem was going to treat it like it might as well have been. Most things that Bull said could be easily taken that way, after all.

"Don't say that in front off Bull," Krem warned playfully. He sucked at the lip of the bottle for a moment, then hummed a laugh and sprawled back a little bit. The energy of magic, so near, sent a crackle against his skin. "He'll only encourage you to do it."

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

"Bull will absolutely encourage you to do it. And he'll make sure no one messes with you while you do. And enjoy the view." Bull grinned and nudged his leg against Dorian's.

He stayed still, patient while Dorian saw to the rest of his injuries. When Dorian seemed finished, Bull stole the bottle from Krem. "Your turn, Krem puff."

He rolled one shoulder and pushed himself up just enough to take a drink without getting it everywhere. "Is it that different than being half naked at the beach?" he sort of wondered out loud. It was getting to be warmer here, more humid. It was starting to remind him of Par Vollen. Dorian had said at least once that beach weather was coming, despite that they had been down to the shore a few times that spring.