#thanks for giving me an opportunity to test out the grumpy archer ♡

[austerulous]

◈   @vaqro said:   ❛ [ massage ] sender gives receiver a massage ( planned, spontaneous, full body, shoulder, etc ) [ for hanzo ] ❜  // nonverbal meme prompts.

In retrospect, he could not say what possessed him.  Perhaps it was simply curiosity.  Maybe it was the saké that warmed the hollow peach-pit of his stomach, or the ache that took root in his shoulders.  His body’s way of voicing complaint, showing its age in creaking joints and clenched muscles, pleading for the compassion that Hanzo vehemently denied himself – but not this time.

Consent had been granted in a solemn nod, and Cole had widened his seated stance, making room for Hanzo to sit on the floor before him.  Hanzo settled there cross-legged, statuesque beneath his sentinel, hands resting on the spread peaks of his knees.  Tight with visible tension, growing tighter still as thumbs rose and fell against the column of his neck, tracing the outline of his spine.  Cole’s cybernetic fingertips were smooth, warmer than he had expected, gentle as those built from blood and bone.

As he worked, Cole spoke about everything and nothing.  His voice was all cigar smoke and honeysuckle, rough and melodic in the same breath.  At last, a pin in the tensity.  It bled away by degrees, in a slow softening.  Lulled by that drawled cadence, Hanzo tipped his head forwards, wordlessly inviting thumbs to climb higher, to rise beyond the dark tideline of his hair and draw lazy circles at the base of his skull.

It was a sleepy and meditative feeling, focusing on those simple points of contact, on how the gunslinger moved his hands.  No longer consciously muzzling his responsiveness, Hanzo’s breathing levelled, his eyes growing heavy with the mounting desire to close – heavy with mounting desire.  Perhaps this encouraged Cole. His touch sank, beckoned beneath the collar of Hanzo’s shirt to soothe all he could reach of his shoulders, loosening knots with his diligent kneading.  Here lay the source of the archer’s strength, here lay the leaden heart of his strain.  

Lips parted in a soft, pleasure-pain hiss as fingers pressed into a particularly tender spot.  It was then that Cole bent his broad body, mantling the archer, bringing his mouth closer to the helix of Hanzo’s ear.  Liquor-stained breath beat hot and sweet as the cowboy’s shadow swallowed the archer whole: That doin’ it for you?

“It is… soothing.”

A retort as weak as water.  Hanzo could almost feel the smirk that pulled on Cole’s lips.

A rich chuckle rumbled out of the cowboy as he returned to his ministrations.  Gently, he untied the ribbon that held Hanzo’s hair in place.  It fell in a shining curtain, sleek as a raven’s wing.  Fingertips lost themselves in that dark tide in search of his scalp, gliding through the fuzz of his salt-and-pepper undercut to rub at his temples, then the joint of his jaw.  

Suddenly, the intimacy felt scorching.  In the black matter of his own mind, it seemed to Hanzo there was a shift in Cole’s touch, that something hungry lent its weight.  A taste, licked from the flat side of a knife, of what it would be like to fuck him – to be fucked by him.  All exquisite, exploratory touches and tenderness and care, a hand tightening into a fist in his hair.  As though he hoped to hide from the shame of such thoughts, Hanzo finally allowed his eyes to close.