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“All pain triggers a reminder, deeper than thought, buzzing through blood and bone, that we are fragile and finite.” ― K.J. Ramsey
The Bull sleeps light, a habit unbroken since it caught him out in his first month on Seheron. Five dead, dagger to his back, the first time he snapped a neck with his bare hands. It’s never been a problem; it's still sleep, some kind of restfulness that stops him from being fully alert, tempering his reactions. His body knows, on some base instinct level, to pull him out of his meditative dream-skirting and into the waking world.
So getting kicked in the ribs? Instinct.
Knew the Qun would send assassins, didn't think they'd have them ready at the storm coast as soon as the deed was done.
His eye is still closed when he grabs his attacker's leg and unbalances them, bringing them toppling to the floor, winding them, using the great bulk of his body to pin them to the tent floor. His eye is open, but the tent is dark as he presses his forearm to their neck, hard enough to immobilise but not kill outright, other hand placed for a wrench and quick snap as soon as his body can confirm it will be a good kill.
Awareness comes quickly. Dorian has never looked scared of him before.
The rain pattering on the tent feels over-loud in his ears as Dorian struggles to catch his breath, eyes wide and terrified, lips moving wordlessly. The Bull withdraws quickly, awkwardly tipping back and landing on his ass to get himself away from Dorian as fast as possible. The panic comes on so quick that he doesn't anticipate Dorian scrambling after him like something feral, clambering onto the Bull in a reverse of their positions, pressing his arm hard against the Bull's neck, his other hand raised with a caster's finger position, Eastern Tevinter circle style, the distant snap of the Fade as lightning crackles over his knuckles, his teeth bared, his eyes steel. Bas-Saarebas; dangerous thing.
The Iron Bull doesn't resist.
He could, though. Dorian is strong for a mage but the Bull could finish what he started so easily, could reach up and snap Dorian's neck one handed from this position, even as Dorian cuts off his air. Bigger lungs. More time than Dorian would have had to fight back. Breaking his neck was the way he imagined killing him, the first time he met him. Thinks that about everyone he meets. Wishes he could carve it out of himself.
The lightning dies at Dorian's fingers as he lets pressure off the Bull's neck without fully removing it. He puts his other hand over the Bull's thundering heart, firm and sure against the meat of his breast, pressing the weight of his body there instead of at his neck.
"Bull," he says, voice too soft. He can't bear it. The air still stinks of gaatlok proper, and the smell of cloying jungle, only in his mind.
"Hissrad," he corrects. A brief shining hope he might not always be a weapon, stood on that hill by the sea. Keeper of illusion. You will always be safe, the first night Dorian came to his room. Liar.
"You're not. You're the Iron Bull."
He feels like the Iron Bull was truly made blowing the horn overlooking the coast, real and true for a few hours; unmade in the span of a moment as he put hands built for violence on Dorian. Tal-Vashoth, madness almost immediately.
"You should kill me."
Dorian keeps his arm against his neck, hand flexing against his shoulder. The one over his heart doesn't move. He still looks scared, eyes shimmering in the night, his mouth a tight line. He looks like he’s considering it; he commits the way Dorian looks to memory. It’s still a good one, it’s still Dorian, a good last thought.
"Please don't leave me, Bull," Dorian says, voice breaking. "I only know a fragment of who you are, don't deny me learning all the rest. You madden me, you make me laugh. Every time I learn something new about you I feel... I want to know everything. I want to know this Hissrad, even if you're not him any more."
He's still a weapon, even beyond his body. It’s all he can do now to use it. So he says it to wound, brutality in honesty, knowing Dorian enough to know it's worse to him than nearly breaking his neck.
"He can't love you," he says thickly, not quite able to pull the feeling from his voice like he means to. "He couldn't have."
He feels Dorian’s hot tears splash against his chest where they drip off his cheeks, feels Dorian’s hand flex against his shoulder again, this thumb stroking along the edge of a scar there. He draws in a shuddering breath, lets it out. Inhales again, steadier.
"But could the Iron Bull? Can he?"
Another weapon in his silence at that. He’s been in the south long enough to know that people hurt the ones they love all the time, he never wanted to have to use that as part of his cover, to bring that away from the battlefield. He never wanted that to become a part of his arsenal.
“I was going to kill you.”
He doesn’t ask why Dorian kicked him, because the question feels like saying it’s somehow Dorian’s fault. He’s only wearing leggings – he’d gotten up and half-dressed. Maybe went out to piss, stumbled in the dark taking his boots back off when he came back. He didn’t hear him leave, he didn’t notice Dorian slipping out of his arms. That feels like a kind of madness, too.
“You were going to kill somebody, then you saw it was me, and you didn’t.”
“I could have.”
“I’m still here, a man who could explode into demons in the night. Can the Iron Bull love that?”
He’s not Hissrad. He’s not a liar. He hasn’t been for a long time, maybe not since he made the first real choice he ever made, to call himself the Iron Bull. He wants to be the Iron Bull. It still feels like a weapon, somehow, a slow poison; he’ll hurt Dorian eventually.
“Yes,” says the Bull. “I do.”
Dorian smiles above him, though there’s still tears shimmering on his face. He takes his arm off the Bull's neck, and cradle’s the Bull’s face. He feels sick that he could temper Dorian with just words, that if he wanted to, he’d be so easy to destroy. He hates that he could make love into a weapon.
“So you can love a dangerous mage courted by demons in dreams, and I can love an ex-spy haunted by war.”
It’s the boldest Dorian has ever been about what they are, naming them both dangerous, wounded things. There’s a sudden relief that washes through him, calming and sure like the tide. Dorian knows he’s dangerous, and he’s still here, even on the edge of that danger aimed at him. The Bull knows Dorian is dangerous, and the Bull has stayed too; he has a scar in the shape of Dorian’s hand on his ribs, from something more dangerous than a curtain fire.
“Asala-taar.”
“What’s that?”
“What I am,” the Bull says softly. “Soul-sick.”
Dorian tips forward to kiss him so gently; not because it’s hesitance or fear, he senses none of that, but maybe because he wants to give him gentleness. When the Bull moves too it is fearful, his hands unsure as he puts them on Dorian’s thighs, breath coming out with a shudder against Dorian’s mouth when he thinks about how big his hands are, how breakable Dorian is under them.
“I’m not afraid of what you are, amatus.”
He speaks Tevene. Dorian knows it, knows what he’s making known by saying it, he so rarely lets himself be that honest, even when nobody else is listening. The Bull closes his eye against the vision of Dorian under him, choking for his breath, eyes gone wide with fear.
“You were.”
“Yes,” Dorian says simply, instead of posturing about it. “Now I’m only sad.”
Dorian leverages himself on the Bull’s chest to sit back, and the Bull follows, pushing himself up, putting his hands around Dorian’s back as he rearranges himself slightly in his lap. Dorian hooks his arms around the Bull’s neck and presses his forehead to the Bull’s for a long moment. His eyelashes are wet with tears still when he leans back to face the Bull.
“I made you sad,” the Bull says, and finally he feels it sting at his eye, tighten at his throat.
“You make me happy, too. You make me feel a great many things. Please stay with me. Stay with me tonight, come back to bed with me. Tomorrow, stay with me still. Don’t walk into the sea to join that dreadnaught.”
It’s not instinct; he’s still fighting that, like he did on Seheron when he wanted to die on the end of a blade or drown in the sea rather than have his soul continue to sicken until he gave over to madness.
It’s a choice he wants to make.
“I’ll stay, kadan.”
“I am drowning: what use would be looking back to the shore from which I fell?” ― Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o