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Vivienne: Tell me, Iron Bull, is there anything I can do to assist you more effectively in combat? Iron Bull: Uh, no. No, I’m good. Vivienne: You do so much fighting at the front. I would help however I may. Vivienne: If my skills can weaken your opponents to make your fight easier, please let me know. Iron Bull: Well, nobody fights well when their clothes are on fire…but honestly, I do really like the ice. Iron Bull:Whatever works for you, though, ma’am. Vivienne: I am always happy to help.
I think the reason why I’m so in love with Bull is because I find him a fascinating study of dichotomy. He’s a spy for the qunari and he’s a loud, brash, unforgiving sort of gent. He’s strong and bold but also loves nugs and pink. He’s confident and secure in his sexuality and person, but his sexuality revolves around giving others pleasure - which gives him pleasure in return. He prefers the simple, direct approach but he’s also very smart and good at strategy (he beats Solas in mental chess.)
He’s so complex but it masquerades as simplicity, and my writer’s fingers just want to jump into his character and find his motivations because his entire nature is so full of chaos and contradictions - but it still works. There’s only one fault I’ve ever found with Bull and that was that one bit of dialogue between him and Cole but the rest of him is accepting, comfortable in his skin and his sexuality and genuinely fun, if a little crude. Underneath it all, though, is this other layer, this deeper layer where he is a spy and is spying on the Inq and also using the Chargers as a cover to make people in Thedas more willing to work with him so he can study their political workings.
And it’s that last bit that fascinates me, and it’s part that you only find out if you actually side with the qunari in Bull’s mission, because afterwards he tells the Inq that his relationship with the Chargers was effectively a lie. Now, I don’t think that’s as true as Bull wants it to be, but I think he definitely wants it to be the truth.
(More rambling under cut)
sadface
domestic bliss au where emeline gets pregnant and she and bull wouldn’t make the worst parents imaginable
The Lovers - a companion card for Emeline Trevelyan and the Iron Bull
mild battle damage bull
Emeline tries on Iron Bull’s chest harness thing once. For giggles. She’s a little drunk, very naked, and a lot seems funny when you’re both those things at once.
It’s definitely amusing. Unfortunately, it’s also unwieldy, far too big, and worst of all, completely covers her tits. Iron Bull Greatly Disapproves, etc.
It pinches, anyway ("You know, you’re not actually supposed to wear it naked." "Oh, really now, Mr. Nipples." "Fine, human mages with too soft skin aren’t supposed to wear it naked, how’s that?" "Terribly discriminatory of your bosom harness, I think." "…fucking Krem.") So she takes it off, not without some relief - funny, but it’s too heavy, makes her totter over, especially with the shoulder guard attached.
Which is when she notices the little painting on the guard, while she’s pulling it off with Bull’s help. A bright yellow flower, right there in the center. It’s…
"Bull. Is that a sunflower?"
Iron Bull makes it a game. The tents are good quality but sound carries through canvas as easily as air, and Emeline gets distracted at the thought of it. Her head’s never quite where it needs to be, even for the simplest romps in tousled blankets.
The Iron Bull drinks and boasts and fucks his way through half of the Frostbacks, but Hissrad watches and considers, and watches her most of all.
He calls her boss, or Emeline, or Em, because he knows by now she likes that. He never calls her Herald or Inquisitor. He thinks it’s funny that the others do, and that they don’t seem to understand why she might prefer spending her time in a tavern with the mercs and thieves and smart-ass elves with sticky fingers. It’s plain as day to him how her pretty little mouth tightens just so and the smooth skin of her brow creases at the titles. But then, the thing about being a liar is it makes you real good at spotting the little truths hiding in the cracks.
So he calls her by her name, or Boss, or sometimes when he’s been drinking, funny little references to the chatty Seheron songbirds she reminds him of and which she never understands, but seems to find nice enough all the same. Because he thinks she spends enough of her time with her shoulders bowed under the weight of saving the entire damn world and her mouth turned down - and sometimes he just likes to see her smile.
"Don’t squirm.”
Bull grunted. “I’m not squirming. And you’re pulling the bandage too tight.”
Emeline glanced up from under her lashes, rolling her eyes. “You almost get your arm chopped off, barely flinch in the process, and now I’m pulling the bandage too tight? I’ll remember that when you’re happily picking at the scabbing later tonight.”
It’s a fever that gets her, in the end. Almost funny, in a way - he’d thought, shit, he didn’t know. Maybe a dragon and a failed barrier. Or maybe one of those assassins that popped up every now and then would finally get lucky. She’d never talked about it much, but he knew she worried it was going to be the Mark, unnatural thing that is was, slowly eating away at her insides until one day there was nothing left. But ten, twenty, thirty years out and it hadn’t done a thing but glow and ache when it rained.
So in the end, it was just a hard winter, a simple fever and a body that was always a little too soft.
The village healer had done all he could, but the sickness took no prisoners. She’d slipped away from him quick and painless just as the dawn broke and that was that. She’d squeezed his hand as best she could and told him not to cry, called him softie, told him to take care of Marigold and “that awful cat” and she was gone. He could hear a meadowlark singing in the distance and her death rattles under his hands.
Iron Bull could count on one hand the number of times he’d cried since he was a child, and he could count on the hand missing three fingers how many times he’d cried since he’d met Emeline. When he bent his head and gathered her in his arms, he didn’t hold her long - it’s not like the novels, bodies stiffen and stink and it’s all too clear it’s not your love, your child, your friend, not really. But he held her long enough to cry for the first time in thirty years without her to wipe his tears and rest her warm cheek against his shoulder. He wished, for the first time, that maybe he’d been a little freer with them, been the sort to mope and weep instead of fight and fuck. Maybe his memories of her soft hands rubbing his arm to soothe, her lips pressed against his damp cheek - maybe they would have been just a little bit stronger.
So Iron Bull gets a little…bigger, with age, softer. A little broader, a little more crooked, belly round and hard as a cannonball. Still able to lift twice his weight though, and land a solid punch that’ll knock even the cockiest young buck on their ass. He’ll prove it, too, and laugh while he takes their coin - “I’ve still got it.” You don’t bet against the Bull, grey hair or not.
Emeline swears he’s still just as handsome as the day they met - though he’s pretty sure that’s not too high a bar to meet in the first place, but he doesn’t mention it. She seems to think it’s true enough, anyway. He’s grown his hair out, now that he doesn’t have to worry about some little punk grabbing it in a fight or it getting caught on his axe - those days are long past, so he indulges himself a little. It’s streaked with grey, and Em combs it out and braids it into a long plait every day, rubbing his neck a little, scolding him about fussing over snarls. “Sure, Tama,” he’ll say, and she’ll give his shoulder a little slap and he’ll laugh.
Hair - that was the real battle, Emeline thought, picking her fingers through the sticky waves and curls. The blood from their recent scuffle with yet more bandits and Templars was glistening dirty red and matting black and brown in the tangled strands. She dipped her head down and watched as it bloomed into a cloud of crimson against blue in the lake water. That the sight no longer made her nauseous hardly registered anymore.
She knew it was impractical - there was just so damned much of it, years of growth perpetually escaping the confines of the braids and buns she hopefully pinned up every morning. Hoping, of course, that it would stay in place, that it wouldn’t get singed by dragonling fire, that it wouldn’t, for once, end up coated in some poor inept bandit’s viscera and stinking of smoke and the damp. Her hope was rarely rewarded. Cassandra, Sera - they had the right of it, she knew. Short and practical and hardly a bother at all. And that wasn’t even taking into consideration the sheer heft of the stuff. Even now, when the weight of it was relieved by the murky water it was floating in light as seagrass, she could feel the pull of it on her sore neck when she turned her head this way and that, swishing the rest of the dirt out.
Long hair＾＾
"Don’t use that!”
Iron Bull, damp and fresh from his bath, jumped like a startled deer, the little pot of balm in his hand falling to the floor. Emeline, for her part, looked like she’d just caught him attempting to eat glass.
