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WHO: Cyril and Taashath
WHAT: Taashath and Cyril both partake in some comfort.
WHEN: Post Crow Plot
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: None. This, shockingly, will likely not end in nsfw land.

Cyril knew that the rescue had been successful thanks to Korrin. Merrick had woken and was recovering. He should feel better. There is relief there, of course, but he still felt so tight and uncomfortable. It was as if his body hadn't quite caught up with the news.

He was pretty good at pretending everything was all right though, and someone who looked at him casually probably wouldn't see the exhaustion that was threatening to take over. It helped that he covered dark circles with expert skill.

He wanted to check on Taashath to make sure that he was all right but more than that he just wanted to be around a comforting presence. Taashath felt solid, like a foundation to relax against. Cyril wanted to make sure all of his friends pieces were intact after battle as well, but he still felt guilty for wanting something to rely on. Who knew what state Taas was in?

When he saw Taashath he slid into his line of sight and waved in a contained motion. It was a visual tentative hello.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Napping isn't what Cyril thinks of first, but he can see why someone might. The nights here feel so long, at times, and given what so many of the guards saw at Haven he can imagine the tension some of them feel.

He moves to lay out the blankets for them and then gestures for Taas to relax first. He does plan on laying on top of Taas as long as he can handle that.

The big qunari sinks down on the blanket and wads some cloth up under his head as support. Lying down like that, he could see the sky through a few cracks in the ceiling, and that was soothing. A piece of clear blue, unmarred by the Breach.

Taas breathes out a sigh and then smiles up at Cyril, reaching up a hand for the elf. "Sorry that I'm a mess. I'm not used to being the one fussed over."

Cyril smiles a bit and then easily takes that hand before moving closer to snuggle up against Taas. He's very careful about what he does with his hands, not wanting for things to get too sexual. It's meant for comfort more than anything else. "That just means you need to have it happen more," he points out. "You deserve a little fussing every now and then."

Cyril is an irresistible piece of ass and Taas would be all over that normally, but... not right now. He just... he can't. So a soothing touch and snuggle is unusual but comforting to a big man with too much in his head at the moment.

"Mm. I'm glad you're not running for the hills."

Honestly, Cyril is enjoying how calming this is too. It's nice to let some of the worry wired up inside of him relax a bit. "Why would I do that?" he asked. "You're still among my favorite people here, Taashath."

He turns a bit quiet at that, gently stroking Cyril's back before he starts talking with a soft tone in his voice, hiding the hurt inside. "...I'm not a good person, Cyril. I left the Qun because I didn't want to stop fighting, and as a Tal-Vashoth I kept putting my axe to anything that pissed me off for some time after that."

Taas sighs and shakes his head. "I was an animal out of control... and now I might be back to that."

Cyril raised his brow a bit but he doesn't seem scared so much as doubtful. "You don't seem out of control right now," he points out. He shifts his body a bit, pressing himself up to make sure that Taas has a clear view of his mouth.

"Have you met my brother yet?" he asks. Taas had asked about Merrick, but that didn't mean that they knew each other well. He wasn't sure how well he knew Merrick, or if he'd heard anything about his reputation.

"Nothing is making my adrenaline right now. Who knows if I can stop myself if it does... on the battlefield or in bed." He sighs the last part, because sex is kind of his thing. Their thing. Plus the affection that feels so right and so strange at the same time.

"...and yeah, I met him briefly during the First Day celebration. He beat me in arm-wrestling." Smart and cheating little elf.

Cyril makes a face, that's a mix of amusement and guilt. He knows how Merrick won those arm wrestling matches. He's used to having to smooth things over between his brother and others. He doesn't go into that right now though. That's not the point of why he brought Merrick up. Still, he shifts so he can take Taas's hand and rub his wrist lightly, almost as a ghost apology to whatever Merrick did to it to win.

"When we were younger, our Keeper considered banishing him from the Clan," he admits. A lot of this is Merrick's dirty laundry and he wouldn't be sharing it if he didn't have a point. "Because of his anger. He has problems controlling it. It has gotten the better of him more than once. I convinced her that it was important to allow him to stay. He can do wonderful things with that passion if it's focused correctly and he needs support and love to let him know that that fury doesn't ruin who he is."

A pause, as he thinks over how he wants to word this. "You might think that you lost control and that makes you broken, but..." Another pause as he wants to stress how much he means what he says next. "Taashath, when I look at you, I see a man who went into battle knowing the dangers because he wanted to save someone we both consider a friend, maybe even more than a friend. I see a man who is questioning his value because of what happened, who was worried enough about me to suggest I not spend time with him. If you were as mindless as you think, none of that would be true."

He moves his hand from Taas's wrist and rests it against his chest again. "I see someone worth keeping. Someone I want to keep. Even if sex is off the table right now."

He feels really exposed saying all of that, but it's easier to relate whatever he feels by comparing it to Merrick. It's still bordering on too much though, so he smiles a bit and then adds a joke, "Besides, you need to be around for when you're back at it. You'll have a lot of catching up to do."

He's quiet as Cyril speaks, covering that hand rubbing his wrist with his own to accept the apology. He had fun, there were no hard feelings. Merrick had seemed like a smart guy that he would like to know better. He was important to Cyril, too, and that... somehow made it important to him as well.

He's not sure why.

Reading those lips as they talk about anger problems and how things had been for Cyril's brother, he's not sure what to say. Even less so when the elf extends that acceptance to Taas himself and his faults.

If you were as mindless as you think, none of that would be true.

"Cyril, I..." Then the elf says it. Someone he wanted to keep. Someone like Taashath, who didn't understand this kindness and the close affection. It was all crossing the friend/lover area in a way that he's not sure how to handle.

The joke helps. It really does.

"Oh, yeah, we'll have a lot to catch up on."

The fact that Taas responds to the joke helps Cyril too and he grins a bit as he latches on to that. "So much catching up, you have no idea. I'm going to hold you too it too, so don't try to get out of it." Then he lightly pokes Taas, the motion of it more teasing and playful than anything.

"For now, though, we should probably talk about something else." Because he's going to pretend he didn't just say all of that and that they only need to change the subject to stop Taas's blood from overacting to the mental images that might come from those promises.

He chuckles again at those words and pulls the elf a little bit closer so he can hug him tightly. "A change up subject might be best. Having you close is already giving me bad ideas." How could he not? Cyril was nice and soft and smelled great, and Taas was a hot-blooded guy.

Remembering how easily he could hurt the elf was the main thing that killed the mood, however. He cannot lose control, not with Cyril. It would kill him inside if he hurt him.

Instead he sighs and looks up at the ceiling again. "...think we can beat that Corypheus guy?"

That topic sobers Cyril up pretty easily. "I don't think it's a matter of 'can we,' I think we must." He answered after a moment of giving it some thought. "Anyone who wants to become a god needs to be stopped."

"I agree... but we're facing something that Thedas has never seen before," he says with a little frown. "It's going to be a mess somewhere down the line."

Cyril nods at that. "When we take a stand we always risk losses, but the whole world with suffer if we don't." He sighs a bit and then adjusted his body again to be more comfortable against Taas. He isn't sure this is the best topic to talk about either.

It probably isn't, but it's on Taas' mind a lot. He wasn't a deep thinker, and wasn't sure what else to talk about that didn't upset either of them right now. There was just too much in his head, whirling around the anger.

"Tell me about your clan, Cyril?"

"You mean the half of it that's not here?" Cyril teases a bit, but he gets what Taas is asking for so he doesn't let it linger at the joke. "Eighteen years ago we had an illness that went through the clan. A lot of people died. Both me and Merrick lost our mothers. Ellana lost her parents too." Then, after a moment, "That's why I think of Merrick as my brother. We were raised together by the Clan. I'm sure lots of Dalish consider their clan their family, it would be impossible not too, but we really are very close. We had to be in order to survive that loss."

He chuckles softly at the first part, fondly thinking of all the Dalish here, where most were Asharas. Hell, he'd had sex with one-third of them. Good people, as far as he'd gathered so far.

He falls quiet as Cyril speaks, one arm settling around the elf as he speaks about the plague and how he and Merrick got to be as close as they were. The fact that they weren't blood couldn't mean less to a former member of the Qun, after all. Family is what you make for yourself.

"I'm sorry that your clan had to go through that. It must be difficult to be so isolated out there in the wilds when things like that happen," he says, looking a bit thoughtful. "...but I like the clan dynamic. Raised together like that."

Cyril considers Taas for a moment. "What about your life?" he asks. "I don't know much about the Qun, but I've heard you don't have families? Is that true?"

"Yeah, it's... similar. Just a little more extreme." Taas shifts a bit, smiling. If there was one thing good about the Qun, it was the child rearing - at least in his opinion.

"We don't know who our parents are. There's no marriage under the Qun and no personal choice in who you will create a child with. Our Tamassran - they're like priestesses - handle all the breeding. A father's duty ends at climax and a mother's at birth." He pauses a bit, checking to see if Cyril is getting it.

"Then the children are all put together in a group with other kids their age and raised by a Tamassran."

Cyril's brow raises a bit. It might sound sad to someone who had had a longer relationship with their parents. "So, you can probably get why I'm more attached to Merrick than to my mother?" he asked, because he wasn't sure if people always understood that to the fullest.

"Yeah, I do," he says softly, running his hand through Cyril's hair with a gentle touch. "I've always believed that the friends and family you are the people you choose, not the people you share blood with."

He briefly thinks of Ashaad, and he tries to not tighten his grip on the elf. No, back to the nice part. The feeling he had just a second ago.

"...I liked to protect the other kids. They called me 'Reth'."

Cyril notices the tightening and then pats Taas gently to help comfort him. "What does Reth mean?"

The qunari takes a breath and then tries to focus on the feeling of Cyril's heartbeat under his touch. Alive and warm; soothing.

"It literally means 'protect'," he says with a slight roll of his eyes at his own language's stupid rules. "Qunlat is very literal if you glance over it once, but underneath it are interwoven other meanings that can make a sentence mean a lot of things." Taas tries to think of a good example that would make sense to Cyril. "Like defransdim. It literally means intimate friends, but in Trade you call it balls." He'd get a kick out of that.

"It's why it's almost impossible for outsiders to master Qunlat, because you would have to have learned all those little nuances since you were a kid... and why it's hard for many Qunari to learn trade, because not being able to use the language the same way is shameful."

Cyril does chuckle a bit at the translation. He thinks about that for a moment. "I wonder if elves would have had the same problem," he says. "And now we've lost most of our language." He seems sad for a moment, but then recovers quickly because this isn't about him.

"Do you know any other languages?"