Closed

[cyclopticsadist]

Who: L, Niles, and likely Light at some point.
When: Early days of Aguril.
Where: L and Light's house.
What: Emergency tattoo touch up.
Warnings: R rated conversation.



[Normally he would have sent a courtesy text. Asked about logistics. Normally he wouldn't be absolutely bone dry on magic before he needed to set this up. Courtesy and coordination matter a lot less to him when he's partially unarmed. That naga they'd branded together lurks at the back of Niles' mind. From what he could tell he'd been gone two months. Plenty of time for things to have escalated or festered between him and L. If that's the case he doesn't want his anti hypnosis tattoo to be inert one second longer than it has to.

Arriving at L's house in the dead of night feels almost like a guilty pleasure. The windows are dark from the front, but Niles traces a familiar path around the perimeter that gives him a decent line of sight into a few windows without leaving the shadowed cover of the tall hedges dividing the property from its neighbors. Each room he gets a view into is empty and still. Some of the familiarity of his actions fades, but it's a relief. Enjoying the skulking and spying is one thing, seeing L's house in a state of alcoholic dissaray like it had been during the months Niles stalked him would be entirely different. He likes stretching his skulking and spying muscles, but the last thing he wants to do is actually return to needing to use them.

Finally Niles finds one window softly illuminated by a small lamp inside. It's L's study, and Niles is willing to bet his nose is buried in a book. He keeps out of sight anyway, just in case L isn't alone. He shifts into his feline form so he can stay below the level of the window as he approaches. When he gets a glimpse of L's hunched outline, and sees no second humanoid silhouette he relaxes and peers over the ledge, ears, eye, and horns all now lit up by the glow from inside. Now with a full clear look into the room he realizes that the dark shape he'd mistaken for new furniture is....some sort of great hulking animal. And floating? It looks aquatic, is it some strange warped mer form? Confused and curious as he is he doesn't stop to consider the fact that the thing itself has as clear a few of him as he does of it.]

Comments

[hearthebell]

[L makes a soft, derisive noise at Niles' observation about his spine... but again, the chimera isn't wrong. Years of poor posture and bad habits have rendered the very foundation of L's body slipshod and difficult.]

It's medicinal, right? No chastity required.

[He slips off his shirt without preamble or ceremony. He's painfully thin; a body like this has no secrets. Not quite a hunchback, his spine is still twisted in a way that makes it virtually impossible to stand upright without pain. Muscles have clustered and clumped around preferred postures, and anyone laying even therapeutic hands on L might be left with the unnerving notion that the slender bones under their hands might wetly snap under pressure.

He takes a seat first on the couch, seeming to resist the urge to curl into a ball, tilting and laying on his side with his hands clasping his knees loosely.]

[cyclopticsadist]

[Niles shakes his head and and puts one hand on L's shoulder, and the other on his leg, gently pushing L to stretch out.]

No. Lay flat, on your stomach. [He puts L how he needs him, then spends a few moments just running his hands slowly over the canvas of L's back and shoulders with light pressure. He's making a map of the damage, sorting the most stiff twisted areas by severity and making a plan of action. He doesn't know the names of the muscle groups, isn't trained in anatomy or physiology, but he's touched so many bodies and he knows how flesh and bone and skin are supposed to knit and work together. L's body seems determined to pull against itself, the tension inside warping the frame and weakening the whole structure as a result. Niles has his work cut out for him. His hands stop their roaming at L's hips to lay warm and heavy against his lower back.] Now, try to relax. Breathe deep and slow. [On L's fist exhale Niles drags his hands along his sides over his ribs and then up to his shoulders. On the inhale he traces the same path back down. He goes slowly, guiding L with his touch to breathe all the way in and then all the way out. Once L has a good rhythm going he brings his hands up to the base of L's skull. He uses his thumbs to press small circles there, gradually increasing the pressure as he does.]

Good, now to get the most out of this I'll need feedback from you. If something hurts, tell me. If it doesn't hurt enough, tell me that too. When you want it harder or faster, slower or lighter, you need to tell me. I know what I'm doing, but you know how you're feeling. Understood?

[hearthebell]

[For all of L's professed confidence that he can separate the contact and proximity from anything remotely suggestive, Niles' touch causes his body to tense. He's able to shift into the position he's being coaxed toward, overcompensating toward a rag doll state, but his muscles are stiff, limbs rigid and braced under Niles' roaming hands. He's practically holding his breath before Niles offers instructions to do otherwise, and the there's something almost comically deliberate about his attempts to relax and breathe. There are difficult things that L can make appear magically effortless; the opposite is true for things that most people find relatively easy, seemingly.

He glances back over his shoulder after Niles explains how to get the most out of the experience, the importance of providing feedback.]

I don't know how I'm feeling.

[Hardly ever, if ever.]

You said you know what you're doing. If it hurts, or doesn't, I assume that's how it's supposed to be.

[cyclopticsadist]

[Above him Niles frowns then lets out his own slow, calming breath. He's won't let L suffer this as an ordeal. He doesn't want him to endure it, he wants him to enjoy it. This has to be good, it has to be worth it, it has to work.

L wasn't numb from the neck down, he did know the information that Niles needed, he just had no context for what the difference between good hurt and bad hurt was here. Niles just needed to be more specific. He goes ahead and starts working on L's neck in earnest, keeping his touch gentle and the pressure carefully symmetrical.]

Alright, if it starts to hurt, it's supposed to be dull pain. Slow pain. If it's sharp or sudden I need to stop. Aching and stretching is good, stabbing and tearing is bad. Does that help?

[hearthebell]

Stabbing and tearing...

[His shoulders scrunch up in spite of Niles' care and gentleness. The chimera is doing everything right, but the detective almost needs a massage to get him relaxed enough for a massage.]

That sounds more to your speed than mine.

[But as out of touch as L is with his own body, he knows how stretching can feel after hours curled in the dark, how the ache can feel good and cathartic and even cleansing.

[cyclopticsadist]

Stabbing, maybe. [When L tenses, Niles' hands stop pushing and his fingers fan out flat. They just rest there, waiting for the inevitable if delayed release of some tension on L's next exhale.] But tearing, not even I'm a fan. [Puncture wounds healed up easy, damage from tearing is a lot harder to recover from, even magically.

As the air leaves L's lungs and his chest compresses, Niles rolls his thumbs from the base of his neck across the thickest muscles of his shoulders encouraging the muscle to lie smooth and soft and in line with the bones they're anchored to. He's going gingerly, carefully. He can feel that to provide any lasting relief he'll need to add a lot more pressure, dig in with knuckles and really release the tight coiled tension L is holding, but he'll need to work up to that. If L keeps going rigid under his hands Niles will only make things worse.]

Here, listen and follow my breathing. [He starts purring. It's a constant sound, but the timber of it changes during inhale and exhale, marking the inflection points. It's louder, a little harsher, less melodic, than the purring L has heard from him in the past during tattooing. That was reflexive purring, an automatic response to a strangely soothing sensation while this was choosing to make the noise.]

[hearthebell]

[The release is excruciatingly slow, and extremely delayed. One with less experience than Niles might believe it's not happening at all, but it is, of course. The bones and sinew below the chimera's hands are part of a human, after all, and there's only so much a human can resist his own body.

He's spent so much time hunching. The bones might have grown crooked. The knots tangled up by time and habit are no small or simple task to unravel.

He glances back (adding, briefly, more tension in his neck and shoulders), but seems, at least, amenable to attempting to follow Niles' breathing. His is shallower, never seeming to fill his lungs more than halfway. Half the problem might be that L rarely breathes deeply with those full, cleansing, meditative inhales.]