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Cullen was drowning in ice. The world had become blue and sharp, shards that splintered and dug into his joints and burned in his gut like knives. He awoke with a strangled shriek, curling forward with a gasp as his muscles seized and clenched beneath sweat slick skin.
The solution was so easy. All the cold, all the nightmares, the pain that made his blood hum and boil.....it could all be gone. Sometimes Cullen thought he could hear the lyrium. From that padded hardwood box in his desk it sang a distorted call, and tonight it was so so loud.
The blankets were sweat soaked as Cullen pushed them aside. Just a half dose, enough to take the edge off so he could sleep....but before his feet could touch the floorboards there was someone in his lap, and a voice whispering 'no' into his ear.
Cullen should have panicked. Should have grabbed a blade and lashed out, or at the very least, pushed away. But there was a hazy edge of familiarity to the hands that stroked through his hair, and instead, Cullen found himself wrapping his arms around the visitor, buying his face in a rough-cloth covered shoulder that smelled faintly of sweat and dried blood.
“It would make you not you.” A breathy voice whispered, rough nails catching against the fine hairs on Cullen's nape. “Like the others. Hard, angry, hungry, they drown in the blue until they forget they ever had to breath. I want you to stay you...”
Cole. This should make it worse, Cullen thought. Cole was dangerous.... unpredictable, unclassifiable. Even the mages weren't sure what he was. He was also oddly gentle and occasionally stunningly naive. There were several of the Inquisitor's inner circle who would most likely revert to grievous bodily harm if they suspected anyone was taking advantage of him.
The nightmare was starting to fade from Cullen's mind, leaving only the numbing cold and a rising sense of guilt. He was naked, sweaty and half tangled in the rucked blankets, all to aware of the warmth of Cole's body against him. Aware of the way it was making his lower stomach tighten at the feel of Cole's thighs against his hips, of how nice the young man's fingers felt carding through his hair and scratching across his scalp.
“Cole, what are you doing here?”
Cole pulled back at Cullen's query, unblinking eyes wide and searching. “Helping,” he answered as he tilted Cullen's face up and kissed him.
It wasn't a genteel kiss, there was no finesse to it. It was rough and almost painfully honest. Cole kissed with his whole body, his whole being; as if kissing Cullen was the most important thing in the world. There was none of the reticence Cullen expected, Cole held nothing back.
Half of Cullen wanted to push Cole away, to save them both before this got any further. But the other half had already wrapped one arm around Cole, hand finding the warm skin under the frayed hem of his shirt, sweeping aside that ridiculous hat to tangle in ragged, slightly greasy hair.
“Maker....I Can't.” Cullen could feel his body reacting to Cole's touch. How long had it been since someone touched him like this, since warm hands drove the ache and the nightmares away?
Cole cocked his head, pale eyes looking almost through Cullen in that eerie way he had, hands light and oh so warm against Cullen's chest. “This helps.” Cole sounded so sure of himself. “ I can help. I always help......Heal the ache, make you not hear the song, make it dull until the blue doesn't cut anymore.”
That assurance, as confident as it was, didn't make it better, the thought that Cole somehow felt compelled to do this was even worse.
“When I help the others it helps the hurts.....you make knots. Tied and tangled until it all balls up inside. So many knots.” Cullen let Cole wrap his arms around him, cursing his own weakness as he returned the embrace, the young man sounded suddenly sad.
“You....help the others?” Cullen wondered just how many dirty secrets lurked in the dark corners and forgotten rooms of Skyhold. “Then you help Varric....”
“Yes!” Cole smiled suddenly, all gap teeth and guileless enthusiasm. “Sometimes he remembers a city that turned red and then I find the dusty bottles that make the red go away. But not the ones with the green words on them, those belong to The Iron Bull.”
“So....you don't help them...” Cullen gestured helplessly at himself, “like this?” Cullen wasn't sure why it was so important to him, it didn't change how wrong this felt; all it would mean was that someone else shared his guilt.
“No.” Cole nuzzled at Cullen's neck, teeth scraping along his collarbone. “Different hurts, some small....honey in Leliana's wine, crumbly blueberry pastry for Cassandra. Dorian likes the books with the strange words, I find them for him in the old places.”
Cullen hesitated, a moment of razor edge indecision decided as Cole slid lower, finding a cold-pebbled nipple with his tongue.
“Maker forgive me.” Cullen whispered as he pulled Cole up to kiss him again, reveling in the small needy noises he made as Cullen tugged the young man's tattered shirt up and over his head.
Cole wasn't as thin as Cullen expected, but even that revelation seemed strange...familiar.....as if he should have already known Cole would be lithe and muscled like a runner. It made sense though, he traveled often across the countryside with the inquisitor. There was a freshly healed scar along his ribs, purple and still swollen against Cole's pale skin. It made Cullen frown, because for some reason he could remember the same mark when it was raw and edged with black stitching; the image flickered through his mind like the afterimages of a lyrium dream and disappeared like smoke.
However awkward and naive Cullen thought Cole was, there was little remaining thought that the youth was innocent. Perhaps it was the fact that Cole spent half his strange existence in other people's heads with access to their more depraved thoughts of debauchery, but there was no hesitation or shyness in his movements. None of the innocence or confusion that Cullen would have expected. If anything, Cole seemed to know exactly how and where Cullen liked to be touched; pressing himself against Cullen's larger frame like he was trying to become a part of him.
Nails scraped against his thighs as Cole took him in his mouth. Cullen arched his back with a groan, pushing his hips forward in search of the warm wetness of Cole's mouth, and the dextrous talents of his tongue. Cole's technique was as unpredictable as he was, all teeth and wetness, one moment soft, the other pushing Cullen until it set off white hot sparks in his overstressed body.
Cullen could feel Cole's huffing breath against the sensitive skin of his inner thighs, his warm hands splayed across Cullen's stomach and the incredible heat of his mouth as it chased the cold away. Cole took him as deeply as he could, the smooth tissue of his throat fluttering around Cullen's cock in a way that made him shudder and buck his hips in helpless pleasure.
The endless lyrium ache bled away, and its absence made Cullen shudder with relief. Propping himself up on one elbow, Cullen stroked a hand through Cole's rucked up hair, nearly coming on the spot when Cole looked up and him and smiled, Cullen's cock resting against his swollen bottom lip. He was only dimly aware of tangling his fingers into that strangely familiar hair and guiding Cole's mouth back over him, shouting and moaning as his orgasm burned through him like dragon-fire.
Cullen lay back and gasped from the sheer intensity of it, vaguely aware of kissing Cole again and tasting himself on his tongue. Warmth was sweeping through him, relaxing muscles who's ache had become a terribly familiar weight. Stripping everything away except a growing lassitude. It was like sinking into calm water and letting the waves take the sharp edges of lyrium withdrawal and turn them into something worn down and soft.
Outside, thunder rumbled in the distance and rain pattered on the parapet stone, the last dim fury of spring. The fatigue of the last few days rolled over Cullen, dragging at him even as he felt Cole curl up next to him, hands soothing away the last twitches and aftershocks from his body.
It seemed wrong to simply sleep, but fatigue was clawing at him and all he could manage was to ruffle Cole's hair,smiling as the young man settled his cheek against Cullen's chest. There was something so familiar about the sight, as if Cullen was forgetting something, something important......but even as his mind strove toward it, everything slipped away as Cullen tumbled into an exhausted sleep.
Bright sunlight woke Cullen to the brilliance of an early summer dawn. The light through the leaves patterning everything in hazy green. Cole was curled up against him, and as he turned to look, Cullen felt guilt roil in his gut.
Cole looked utterly debauched. Somehow it had been easier to excuse in the darkness. Now, looking at Cole's slightly swollen lips, at the way his unlaced leathers left very little to the imagination, Cullen felt ill. Cole was supposed to help people....it made him what he was, and Cullen had taken advantage of that. A moment of weakness and he'd taken someone inherently good and tainted them with his own shameful needs.....
“I choose.” Cole sat up, trusting eyes wide with hurt and what almost looked like defiance “You think I don't know, but I do. I choose. Me”
Cullen stared back hopelessly. How was he going to deal with this....how could he simply pull on his armor and go to work as if nothing had happened. How could he look Varric in the eyes.....When Leliana found out, and Maker, Cullen knew she would, there wouldn't be anyone in Skyhold who would trust him then. He should have taken the lyrium. It was only his foolish pride that had made him think he could go without it, and now Cole had paid the price for his stupidity.
“I can help.” Cole looked away, hands twisting in the tangled bedding. He looked defeated, shoulders hunched and eyes downcast. “ I can make you forget. Again.”
The idea had merit. Cullen had to admit that he would like to forget, even if he squirmed in shame at the hangdog expression on Cole's face. He looked lost and sad, shoulders hunched like he was waiting for a death sentence.
“Please,” Cullen said, looking anywhere but at Cole. Did it make him a coward to want to walk freely into battle without wondering which of his allies was going to put a well deserved blade (or crossbow bolt) in his back. “Cole, I'm sorry....I know you wanted to help, but this is wrong.” And then Cullen's mind caught up with what Cole had actually said. “Wait......again?”
Cole looked aside, chewing at his bottom lip, obviously unsure if he should speak or not. Instead he retrieved his threadbare, much patched shirt and tugged it on. The light catching across the scar on his ribs, healed to a faint trace of pink and silver.
It made sense, Cullen realized numbly. The familiarity, the strange flashes of lost time, the fact that having Cole in his arms had just felt.....right. If the lyrium withdrawal had been what called Cole in the first place then this had gone on for weeks, possibly months.
“Oh, Maker.” Cullen sat down heavily. Beside him, Cole had retrieved his hat and was hugging it to his chest.
“Turning, twisting inside. You think it makes you a monster.” Cole wrung his hands anxiously. “So I make you forget. Help the hurt, heal the ache to make you better. That way you stay you, and you can be the you that everyone needs.”
“But you....you came back.” That was what Cullen couldn't get over. The fact that Cole had come to him night after night, then allowed himself to simply be forgotten every morning. “Maker, Cole, why did you come to me when you knew....”
“Because I needed you to stay you.” Cole's voice had taken on the breathy pitch it got when he was genuinely distressed about having to explain something he couldn't quite put into words. “I knew a templar who was kind, she was different. Evangeline......and all the other templars were old and angry, filled up with the red that ate them away. You were different, kind. I wanted to help.”
“Oh, Cole.” There was a world of guilt and regret in those words, and Cullen could see Cole wince from it.
“Do you want to forget now?” Cole asked in a small voice.
It would be so easy, Cullen thought. And it had been, so many times before. But wasn't that why he had left the Templars to join the Inquisition, to be better than he had been? “No.” Cullen said strongly, surprised by just how much he meant it. “No, this time I want to remember.”
Cole still looked disbelieving until Cullen gathered him in his arms, then he buried his face in Cullen's shoulder and sobbed. When Cullen had tried to apologize, Cole had shook his head and tightened his grip. So instead, Cullen helplessly rubbed his hand along Cole's back and pressed a very chaste kiss in his tousled hair.
“Evangeline did that.” Cole said, voice raspy with tears.”She kissed me on the head too. Is it something they teach Templars?”
“No, it's not something they teach Templars.” Cullen couldn't help but chuckle at the question.
“I like this better.” Cole muttered and kissed Cullen in a way that was decidedly not chaste. His mouth tasted like tears, but the way he smiled against Cullen's mouth, fingers twining in the once neat curly hair, dispelled Cullen's last doubts that he was somehow coercing Cole.
_________________________________________________________
For the first time in his life, Cullen was late for a war meeting. It hadn't been an intentional occurrence, he simply hadn't paid attention to the passage of time until the sun was high enough to shine through the leaves above the bed.
Cole had spent the early morning vacillating between ecstatic relief, and wistful resignation that Cullen was eventually going to change his mind and ask for the guilt-free option of forgetting. Cullen, feeling wretchedly responsible, had consoled and reassured Cole as best he could; first with words, and then proving with gentle thoroughness exactly what it was he wanted to remember.
The enthusiastic response Cullen's attentions had received resulted in a missed meeting, and Cullen feeling both red-faced and pleased as he tugged his armor on. Unfortunately he was still flushed when he descended into his tower office to find Inquisitor Adaar pacing the small space worriedly.
“Are you alright, Cullen?” Adaar's voice had that low growly undertone that suggested that if Cullen was alright, then he better have a damn good excuse for being absent. “Leliana was all for sending her agents up here to root you out.”
“I'm fine, Inquisitor.” Cullen could feel his flush starting to encroach on his ears. Thank the maker Leliana hadn't done just that, the thought of them showing up a half hour earlier..... “I simply overslept.”
“You. You overslept?” The teasing disbelief in Adaar's voice trailed off into complete confusion as she noticed Cole sitting on the edge of the overhead sleeping platform, watching the conversation with passive curiosity. “Cole?!”
“Yes.” Cole confirmed blandly. He'd managed to put his patched shirt back on, and Cullen silently hoped he'd refastened the lacing on his leathers before the inquisitor got an unasked for eyeful. Maker only knew where his shoes were, and a love bite that Cullen had left under his jaw was embarrassingly obvious against his pale skin. Naturally he'd found his hat.
“What are you doing here?”
“Helping.” Cole picked absently at the stringy end of one shirtsleeve.”Cullen has bottles in his head, I make them dull. Stay, touch flesh against flesh until the calling song goes away.....then he forgets. Today he wanted to remember.”
The last was said with such endearing pride that Cullen had to swallow a lump in his throat. Somehow it eased the shame as Inquisitor Adaar looked at him as she would a piece of offal she had scraped from her boot.
“Cole....this kind of 'helping'..” Adaar looked grim. “Its not...”
“It's not that.” Cole hopped down off the ledge, landing in a crouch that made Cullen's knees ache in sympathy. “It's not wrong. I know the difference. Hold still damn you, keep your mouth shut or I'll say you used blood magic! Cullen is different. I'm different now too.”
Inquisitor Adaar was clearly at a loss. “I get that Cullen's different, but if he's making you do anything...”
“He makes everything soft.” Cole misconstrued what the Inquisitor meant. “Like falling into blankets that cover, cocoon, comfort until the old wounds don't catch.”
As if somehow afraid that the Inquisitor was going to take Cullen away, Cole latched onto Cullen's tunic, hands balling in the material until his knuckles went white. Somehow it seemed the most natural thing in the world for Cullen to rest a comforting hand on the back of Cole's neck, a gesture that seemed to reassure the Inquisitor more than any words could.
“I told you about Rhys, my friend.” Cole wasn't looking at anyone, and Cullen wondered if the words were meant for him or the Inquisitor. “”I tried to help him, but I didn't know what I was so I hurt him instead.”
“You've told me this.” Adaar looked bemused, obviously familiar with the story. “I'm not sure what it has to do with this...”
“Evangeline made him better. She saw him, saw who he was inside. She helped him become...more. Better.” Cole seemed oblivious to the interruption. “Cullen makes me more. Makes me better. Solas says I'm a spirit, Varric says I'm a person, he calls me 'kid'. Dorian thinks I'm a wooden duck. Cullen knows what I am, knows I'm Cole. He sees me.
Adaar worked through that flood of information with the expression of someone forced to suck on a lemon slice. “Be that as it may, Cole,” the Inquisitor sounded slightly stern. “I will be discussing this situation with the Commander.”
“You should. Talking is good.”
It was Cole's utter lack of concern that convinced Cullen that the inquisitor really did mean 'talk' and not 'beat with a blunt object.' Hopefully, were Adaar planning on dropping him off the battlements, Cole would have let him know. Or, knowing Cole, he would have said something so bafflingly cryptic that nobody would have known what he was talking about until well after the fact.
“Yes. Well......alright then.” Adaar marched for the door , looking as grim as if she expected to find venatori on the other side. “If you would join me please, Commander.”
“I'll be there in a moment.” Cullen felt like a chastened child, Adaar generally only referred to her advisers by title when she was deeply displeased with them.
“She's not angry.” Cole relaxed his grip on Cullen's tunic once the door had closed. “ She worries. So many people, so much weight. She thinks I can't choose.”
“I worry about that a little, myself.”
“You shouldn't”
As much as Cullen would have liked to stay, he didn't want to test the inquisitors already strained patience. Cole watched him walk to the door with a slightly lost expression.
“You stay in the tavern don't you, Cole?” Cullen had a vague recollection of the young man skulking around the upper levels. Sometimes crouching wide-eyed at the top of the stairs, watching the drunken revelry below with bemused confusion.
“Yes. I like it there.” Cole picked up a piece of armor off Cullen's desk and examined it. “It's loud, but blurred and far away.”
“I suspect that would be the drink.” Cullen smiled to think what reading the thoughts of the very drunk must be like.”If you ever want, you are welcome here, even if I am elsewhere.”
“I am?” Cole looked around Cullen's office, entranced. “Thank you!”
As Cullen set his hand on the door, Cole interrupted the stolid dignity of his exit with a cheerful lack of decorum.
“Yes, I would like to do that.” Cole chewed his bottom lip in thought,”and yes, I would wear that if you wanted.”
Cullen closed his eyes. Maker take Cole's habit of reading a vocalizing unfortunate stray thoughts.
“The Iron Bull said if there is ever anything I don't like, I should say 'stop.'” Cole misinterpreted Cullen's expression of stricken horror as dismay. “The Iron Bull said Dorian never says it.”
“Maker, Cole....you told Iron Bull?” Cullen had images of joints being ripped from sockets. Disembowlings. Decapitations.
“Yes, many people want The Iron Bull to take their clothes off. I asked him questions.” Cole looked up at the ceiling with bland interest, as if this revelation wasn't the least bit abnormal. “I asked Dorian as well. He said strange words that sounded slipped and slithered like snakes........then he drank wine until he fell down.”
The chill wind on the battlements chased some of the flush from Cullen's face, and, beyond a raised eyebrow, Inquisitor Adaar had the decency not to comment.
____________________________________________________________
In the end, Cullen suspected he survived simply because Cole didn't change.
There had been warnings of course, some more thinly veiled than others. Varric sought Cullen out on the battlements to show him a new upgrade to Bianca that could, as the dwarf pointedly explained:'put a bolt right through good armor-even Templar steel-like cheap cheese.' Solas had cornered him lately for a truly baffling and esoteric speech about the fade, spirits and demons that Cullen understood less than half of.
Iron Bull had been customarily blunt. After cheerfully recounting some qunari punishments that caused pertinent parts of Cullen's anatomy to shrivel, Bull had clouted him on the back with a massive hand and bought him a round of something that tasted like rancid horse-piss and burned like acid.
Cole was just Cole. Unless someone was concerned enough that Cole could perceive it as hurt, he was utterly unfazed by the interest; receiving any and all suggestions and comments with trademark candid enthusiasm. And if the responses were sometimes completely nonsensical, they went a long way to convincing people that Cullen hadn't somehow coerced or forced him into anything. Although anyone who came anywhere near Cullen's tower late at night would have come to the same conclusion: Cole could be shockingly blunt and exceptionally loud.
Cole added a measure of unpredictability to Cullen's life that Leliana slyly suggested was an improvement. One day Cullen had returned to his office to find Cole waiting for him wearing one of Cassandra's old Seeker tabards and not a stitch else. The next day Cole was nowhere to be found, and Cullen's office was awash in chickens. Any possibility of predictable routine disappeared along with any semblance of order that Cullen's office had previously displayed. He found that he didn't really miss it.
There really was only one constant. Anytime the nightmares came, the old terrors that gripped Cullen and shook him like a wolf shakes its prey, Cole was there. His familiar hands, warm and calloused from his dagger grips, knew exactly how to gentle the tremors that wracked Cullen. Driving the fear, the shame and the weakness away with gentle patience, and the compassion that he embodied.
When the lyrium hum became a roar, lithe arms would keep Cullen close and a breathy voice would remind him:'no, you must stay you.' Dawn would bring soft light to reveal tangled bedding and Cole curled up beside him, all tousled hair , too-pale skin, and eyes that saw too much. And Cullen would chose to remember.