it takes strength to live this way

[qunari]

WHO: Iron Bull and OPEN
WHAT: General summary of events during the end of the month. Drinking, fighting, more drinking, maybe a little flirting.
WHEN: Mid-to-late Wintermarch
WHERE: All over the damn place. Mostly the tavern and sparring ring, though.
NOTES: n/a

He was starting to feel a little restless. By now, the boss would have taken them all out on some exploit or another, and even if he was glad to be at Skyhold again? Sitting idle could grate on the nerves a bit.

The best way to counter that seemed to be throwing down in the training ring just outside the tavern, taking on all comers as well as training those that seemed of a mind to ask. Cullen had most of his people following their own regime, but if they wanted a swing at something else? He wouldn’t refuse them. Not everyone fought like a templar.

The rest of the time, Bull made himself easy to find. Easy to avoid, too, if that was the preference of some. And he knew it was, from the glimpsed he’d gotten of the Vashoth inside the keep. But it was no hardship holding court inside the comfort of the tavern, indulging heavily in drinks and working his way down the menu of available meals and snacks.

It was business as usual, for the most part. Even if he did feel a little more restless than usual. Had to find a way to get out, hit something that really had it coming.

Or find someone to pass the evening with. That might help.

Comments

[fleurdesel]

"Henri's, my youngest student. I am more of a cat person." She does not mind dogs but cats are self sufficient enough to mind themselves and demanding enough that she can't forget to mind them should she become engrossed in research.

Oil, though- she frowns for a moment before moving to a shelf, fingers trailing along vials and bottles and jars she uses most often for poultices or salves. Someone's been putting things up in the wrong place, she mutters under her breath in Orlesian before she tracks down the bottle in question. "Here, will this suffice?"

Right. Oil for the skin. She considers her options for a moment before setting aside her concerns and unlacing her kirtle. Any hesitance is more on trying to find somewhere to fold it for the moment than any real trepidation.

[qunari]

"Yeah, that'll do just fine."

He stays at arm's length while she peels herself out of her layers, gaze sweeping over the multitude of things just lying out and about. Magical crap, most of it. Not much use to anyone save a mage, though he's less wary of magic now than he had once been. At least in theory.

But he's not offering this to a mage. He's offering a little comfort to a hard-working woman sorely in need of it. His gaze drops to the bottle, turning it over in his hands before uncorking it.

[fleurdesel]

Kirtle over the back of the one chair, chemise right after, both shaken out and folded out of habit more than anything else. With her hair pinned up high and down to her smalls the shining, puckered scar along her back and shoulder where the abomination- Lauren- caught her while covering for Cullen is more than visible. The skin's still tight but it isn't the cause for her tension.

Not the only cause.

She stretches out on her stomach on the bed, head tucked to one side to watch him curiously. Potions, poultices, magical crap, the odd arcane tome, and a myriad of essays on the nature of magic.

[qunari]

The oil empties out into his palms before being carefully set aside amidst the jumble of things lying around, hands rubbing together to warm the stuff before he even thinks of reaching for her. Cold oil is no one's friend.

But warm? Yeah. That first press of warm palms to the middle of her back ought to ease some of that tension, before he starts working his way up. A lot of tension knots back here around her shoulders and just below. Seems a good place to start.

"Orlesian Circles come with massage therapy? I might have guessed you'd had this done before," he rumbles, faintly amused.

[fleurdesel]

"A hands on application to magic is unconventional." She says, having a hands on approach to her healing and magics in general. Staffs are an excellent extension of focus but she'd honestly rather handle the power herself. More control that way. Under his hands her back are knotted tight along the spine- just as he said.

Too many nights hunched over a desk.

"Anything that involved mages in various states of undress around one another was either strictly chaperoned by the templars- or not permitted. You can imagine how relaxing this might be with a templar hovering in the far corner, glaring, one hand on their sword all the while." Not terribly relaxing at all. Far from the moment now- there's a slight hiss as he digs into something giving under that first press before she sighs into her arms.

[qunari]

Oof. That's a sizable knot there. Bull frowns, turning the edge of his thumb into the spot and circling the hardened muscle. Back and forth, working slowly into surrendering.

"Wouldn't be off-putting for some. But you don't really strike me as an exhibitionist." Even if she is clearly comfortable in her own skin, or just comfortable with him. Some degree of one and the other combined, likely.

The heel of his palm turned to rub along either side of her spine, rolling along the curve of her back, as Adelaide starts to unwind a fraction at a time.

[fleurdesel]

"When it comes to magic and research? Perhaps. Anything more intimate? Not quite." Comfortable as she used to be- as she can be in her own skin that level of vulnerability and trust isn't something easily given over to just anyone- let alone a glowering templar. There is also that dull, quiet part of her that held whatever she could twist out of her partners selfishly but-

That hasn't been relevant for the better part of two years. Everyone too stressed, too afraid, too tense. Adelaide hisses softly under the press of Bull's hands, knots slowly winding down into nothing.

[qunari]

"Still don't get how they think locking up a bunch of healthy, attractive people in a tower isn't going to result in someone finding a way around that shit." Bull snorts, somewhat amused before shaking his head, fingers kneading a path back up her spine to the nape of her neck.

"People need contact. Affection. Doesn't have to be sex, necessarily, but it's not something people live without. Not without going a little screwy. You ever meet a sane hermit before?"

[fleurdesel]

"Some, the younger ones, would look the other way. They had their own trysts, same as the rest of us, but the older, the more pious? Would guard our virtue as though we were their own daughters." A great deal of her tension is settled right there, the space between her shoulders, the tendons at the base of her skull.

"Affection was permitted- if not something of a requirement with how close our quarters were as apprentices. We would use the excuse of 'it's cold' to huddle in the same bed when it was never a question of temperature."

[qunari]

Bull chuckles quietly at that. He can picture it well enough in his head, though it's a little harder to imagine her as some spritely young apprentice wriggling under someone else's sheets. Not to say she hasn't. Just harder to imagine.

One joint in her neck after another, he works his way up and down again. The movement is always measured, careful, considering the strength in those hands.

"It's a hard life. Anyone who manages to live it well has my respect."

[fleurdesel]

"Not as hard as all that. We are protected and others are protected from our mistakes- or at least we were until suddenly we weren't." It had been quite sudden to her but...the fear and disquiet thinking of that is difficult to reach when his hand is untangling every knotted fiber of her.

Little by little, she melts, voice drifting deeper, warmer. Losing the clipped edges. "You are one of the few that see it thus. Most prefer we remain there."

[qunari]

"And what is it you want?"

He knows what comes when mages are free to do as they like. It's all well and good until someone decides blood magic or demon-binding is the way to go, and then it's chaos for everyone. He's seen mages rule, knows what comes of it.

But she deserves her dreams. Here, this is a chance for her to unwind. Unburden. And he's yet to turn down an opportunity to know someone's opinions, as he ekes out those most stubborn of knots still holding fast.

[fleurdesel]

She stills for a moment despite the slow press of his hands, the easy warmth of his voice. Frowns, faintly, against her arms as she tilts her head for something only she could hear. No discordance. Nothing other than the familiar wash of Compassion idling in the background. To be safe she visibly pinches her own wrist. It hurts but that means little even in the fade- but she is awake.

This is Bull...even if it would be a very different tack than what most demons take with her.

"The impossible, honestly. People to stop killing one another over differences of opinion. Failing that? Somewhere we might learn safely without fear of death or possession or tranquility being forced upon us for failure. A means to prevent possession, a way to, perhaps, even remove someone's magic without removing their soul if they so wished." To be brought into this as a child and have to face such a thing- were there an option when she was young to not, to give it away and live normally? She would have taken it. "While I am wishing for the impossible a few hours more in the day so I might complete my work would be wonderful."

[qunari]

"You work yourself into a rut in the ground with those extra hours, not sure how much good you're gonna do anyone."

Bull grunts, before patting her arm gently, gesturing quietly for her to stretch it outward before he continued. The strain would travel downward, affect the flow of blood her hands. Not the thing you need cramping up when you worked with herbs or staves.

"Someone works that hard, they're usually trying to keep their focus sharp. Avoid letting their mind drift. You been sleeping alright?"

hover for translation

[fleurdesel]

"Ma bougie brûle aux deux extrémités; Il ne va pas durer la nuit; Mais ah, mes ennemis, et oh, mon amis- Il donne une belle lumière." Adelaide murmurs with a half smile, a familiar poem known among the Enchanters of the White Spire.

She moves her arm as bid, blinking a bit at the pressure- and the question. "As well as I ever do. You are aware of the difficulty most mages have with demons, yes? For one with my specialty it is doubly difficult."

[qunari]

"Why is that?"

He doesn't understand much of magic, no more than he needs to. But the prospect of demons gives him the willies, there's no doubt about that. Something that can't be overpowered once it gets inside your head...and to think, there are mages that willingly partner with them.

Nope. Bad idea all around. Going to keep kneading away, working out the joints of her fingers, one by one.

[fleurdesel]

This subject is familiar enough that she can answer without thought, blinking at the curl of his hand around hers, the difference in texture, in size, in color. It's fascinating.

"Imagine a house with no windows with one thickly bolted door. For the average person that is not a mage- thus is their presence in the fade as they dream. Demons are aware but cannot enter easily." A familiar enough lecture, and her voice does slip into a cadence implying it is a lecture. An educator at work using allegory to explain something thoroughly abstract.

It is not the neatest metaphor nor the most precise, but it works well enough for breaking it down to layman's terms. "Mages have windows- some mages have smaller ones, some mages have larger ones- and is it not all the more tempting to break into a house and take what is inside if you can see what it is you will be taking? The door is still bolted- perhaps even all the more so than someone else- but they can see inside, they can plan how they will attempt to charm their way in. Or they can break a window."

She blinks, fingers curling against his. "Spirit healers live in glass houses with glass doors. We call Spirits to work with us, invite them to the porch but not inside. The glass is thicker, stronger than the average mage for our training but...demons see. They wander, wonder. They come up for a chat much like a neighbor. One can add windows or walls of glass if they so choose this path of study, but you cannot ever go back to a wooden house with the one window ever again."