“Plasticity”
GIFTEE: @dragonflies-and-katydids

PROMPTS
: “modern AU!”, “office holiday parties” (ish), “D/s, especially switch!Bull or sub!Bull”, “totally fine with smut”.
TAGS:
adoribull, adoribull holiday exchange, nsfw, modern AU, implicitly negotiated kink.
@mater–tua , Jan 8th.

The Qun never pegged him for much of an artist. Then again, they never thought he would have turned either. No, not bright-eyed, stout-hearted Ashkaari. Not the devout, unyielding pillar that was Hissrad. But it turned out that the Qun was fallible, and once you caught a glimpse the first crack in the lattice of precariously balanced truths, you began to see them all.
Why not an artist? The Iron Bull was damned good with his hands. It was as good as anything else, and frankly, there were worse ways to eke out a living in the hazy, snow-capped mountains in Ferelden. (Pensions were things that awaited retired servants of the Qun. The Qun took care of its own. Nothing was set aside for someone discharged from service as he was—tal-vashoth—except a one-way plane ticket out of Seheron and a half-hearted assassination attempt on the other side.) No, Bull had spent enough time taking (people) things apart with his hands. Making something with them was a good change of pace.

In the following years, Bull made a life for himself with the assortment of pieces that came out of the little abandoned-studio-turned-workshop he rented on the edge of Haven University campus. The Iron Bull experimented. Paintings with heavy-handed strokes in reds and blacks and oranges depicted the smoke and ripening carnage under the fiery swell of the Seheron sun at high hour. More whimsical watercolours captured dragons in flight and their long, undulating forms and the twilight catching the glint of scales. Sometimes, it wasn’t even a painting, but a careful floral arrangement, or painstakingly etched leather mask in Orlesian style.

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