item post [continued]

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

It took a while.

It had been a long time since Bull had any reason or occasion to put on something like this. He worked carefully, taking all due care. It wasn't impossible to do on his own, at least. Once or twice he'd been tempted to call Dorian up for help, but he felt like the final reveal had more impact if he did it alone.

When he finished, Bull re-emerged, joining Dorian in the living room again wearing something that might constitute armor, at least as far as some Qunari were concerned. More than that it was-- it was a statement of sorts. Bull had forgotten what it felt like to wear this, to feel the ropes against his skin, secure and comforting, as if they were holding him together. Controlled.

He watched Dorian's face as he approached, stopping a few feet on front of where the mage had made himself comfortable.

Comments

[propertool]

"Please. Even as a corpse, I'll have more manual dexterity than anyone else you've ever met."

Dorian's eyes, still dark from pleasure, narrowed in amusement as he sat up a little straighter to help Bull remove the Qunari armor. It was artful; it was art. Dorian knew he had to respect it, and he did, but he still also loved the look of the red silk braids criss-crossing over Bull's huge biceps.

He started with the knots at the sides and began to reverently slide the ropes loose, pulling them apart where they crossed and sliding them out of their stays.

"I'm grateful, Bull. That you let me see this. I really am."

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

Bull chuckled and he stayed still as Dorian worked. Now and then he would give gentle instruction on the order of unknotting, but for the most part it seemed that Dorian had a handle on it.

He leaned forward and kissed Dorian's cheek, his neck, trying not to interrupt his line of sight too much while he worked. That was probably impossible, given how close they were.

"It seemed important," he confessed. "It is... part of me you might never have seen otherwise." Bull had no cause to wear it in Thedas, and if he had, they were all screwed.

[propertool]

Dorian's mouth quirked as he finished with the last of the lacing on Bull's armor. He didn't understand fully what the clothing meant to him, but he could respect what he could understand. Perhaps he even had an obligation to, outside of their personal relationship. He understood so little, truthfully, about the Qun, and yet he'd been raised to hate it.

"Can't say that I have anything I could add to my wardrobe that would be equivalent. Unless you count a proper set of robes with my family crest emblazoned hugely on the front. And a very stupid hat."

He slid reluctantly off of Bull's lap and went to rustle up a hot, damp towel.

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

"Can't be worse than the ones in Orlais," Bull insisted as Dorian went to clean himself up. He sank back onto their bed, stretching his back out. He knew he should make some attempt to clean up as well, but the bed was comfortable, and Dorian would eventually come back and make it more so.

"They're meant to symbolize our service to the Qun," he said, loud enough that Dorian would hear him. He knew Dorian was curious - knew that he would have read all about it if there were books to be had. But Bull wasn't sure that there were, anywhere. "We're all bound together beneath it, no single part more important than the others. Only together does it all make sense. It also symbolizes the control that the Qun gives us over ourselves."

[propertool]

On his way back, Dorian paused in the doorframe, staring at Bull curiously. He wasn't always certain of what to do with new information about the Qun, because Dorian wasn't always certain that he wanted the Qun to, well, so humanized. It was difficult. He'd been raised to have a sort of arrogant fear about it all.

That Qunari were waiting to kidnap him from bed as a child and eat him up.

As it turned out, that had happened after all. But not in the way Dorian had suspected it might as a child.

He crossed the room to the bed and began to clean off Bull's abdomen with slow strokes of the hot, damp towel he'd brought with him. He worked quickly, before the towel grew cold. And he smiled, gently.

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

Bull knew it threw most people to hear the Qun talked about that way. But it was the life he knew, and if someone was in the middle of Par Vollen, it wouldn't seem that different than any human settlement. People doing their jobs, living their lives.

He stayed still while Dorian cleaned him off, and as soon as the mage was done, Bull caught hold of him and rolled over, dragging Dorian back into bed. He kissed Dorian, downright sweet and gentle in the way he held him.

"I also wouldn't mind peeling you out of all those fancy robes," he said, trying to bring back more levity." He thought of the dream Dorian had given him, the one in the middle of Minrathous.

[propertool]

"I'm not sure that peeling is the appropriate verb for robes," Dorian laughed.

He settled in next to Bull, trying to shrug off the affection, but only very poorly trying. Eventually, he stopped pressing at the other man's immovable heft and chose instead to sigh and tangle their legs together.

"The house is quiet out here," he said, observing just that. The only noise were the garden grackles, in their usual spot in the tree beside the house. Their jabber was soft through the closed windows.

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

"I kind of like it," Bull admitted. He'd adapted to being in all kinds of places, but he kind of liked the quiet around heir new home. He nosed against Dorian's hair, breathed his scent deep.

"Makes sleeping in easier."

In he center of Darrow, once the city was awake and bustling, Bull tended to just be up, regardless of how late he might have worked the night before. If he was tired enough, he'd go back to sleep, but, especially on trash collecting day, he tended to just give up.