howtoactfereldan | (no subject)

He tucks his face back against Cullen's hair. Tightens his embrace, a little.

"As long as you'll have me," he says, muffled, "I'm yours as well."

"Always." He clings more tightly, as if Alistair will disappear if Cullen isn't careful.

A small, waterlogged laugh. "Glad that's settled then."

He runs his hand along Cullen's back, slow and comforting.

Cullen nods again. He hasn't yet relaxed; he'll need a moment.

"I'm sorry. I didn't -- I never want to upset you."

"You haven't." Soft. "It's good crying, I promise."

Beat.

"...Not that I'm crying." He makes a show of clearing his throat. "Far too manly for that."

Cullen huffs. "I'm not."

That garners another tiny snort of laughter, wry and sympathetic. Alistair keeps moving his hand over Cullen's back.

"Thank you for telling me all that," he murmurs, eventually.

"When I can come up with the words -- I have to take advantage." Still tense. "You need to know how much I love you. And why."

Alistair nods.

"I know it isn't easy for you." Still quiet. "And I appreciate it, very much."

That -- might have been a sniffle.

"If things had been different -- and, and they were still here... I'd want to show you everything. So you know you belong."

And just when Alistair's eyes had stopped stinging.

He shuts them, quickly, as his hand curls in the back of Cullen's shirt.

Cullen's still got Alistair's in his fist, so. They have that in common.

He takes in and releases a shaky breath.

"I'm still glad to see this much."

A bare whisper. Any louder, and he's not sure the words will get out through the tightness in his throat.

"Just to -- know a little of what it was like for you. Before we met."

"Admit it, though," Cullen manages. "You'd have been hunting me down along with Branson. Noise and all."

Silence, for a beat.

Then, sheepishly: "Much as I'd like to deny it..."

Cullen squeezes Alistair, with something that sounds much more like a laugh than anything else.

"Why... do you want to know?" Tentative. "What it was like."

Alistair hitches up one shoulder, just enough to convey a shrug without disturbing Cullen. "Part of that business where I want you to be happy, I suspect," he says. "I like knowing you had something pleasant, like this."

A beat goes by; the tail end of it shifts toward awkwardness.

"And -- I guess I'm curious what it's like to..."

In Alistair's mind, about six different ways to end that sentence crash into one another, ending in a self-pitying mishmash he's too embarrassed to say aloud. So he doesn't.

Cullen can fill it in, anyhow.

"Loud, for the most part."

(Finally, he's relaxed.)

"Full. Too many people in too small a space. There was some -- because there were four of us, and we were close in age, people in the village had a tendency to treat us like a unit. Like we weren't... different. Just those Rutherfords, farming outside town. And I was the stuffy one, obviously. Spending so much time around the Chantry didn't help. I wanted -- more responsibility, always. Made me an outlier among the rest of the children in the village."

He tapped Alistair's chest. "But I never snitched. And once I beat up a boy who made fun of Mia. If anyone had anything to say after that, they kept it to themselves."

"Good man," says Alistair, appreciatively. "Or, er -- good lad, I suppose."

He's smiling again, wistful now.

"It doesn't sound too terrible."

"It wasn't," he says softly. "Most of it feels as though it happened to someone else. I suppose it did. No one's left here. No graves to visit."

Alistair breathes out; tightens his hold on Cullen, briefly.

He will always think Cullen's lucky to have a family who loves him. To get a childhood where he was at peace, secure in the knowledge he was wanted. Sometimes Alistair wonders, though, whether growing up at Redcliffe might have had some advantages.

You can't lose what you never had, after all.

"It's just as well." Is Alistair upset? "If they'd known more, any of them, when I asked to join... I wouldn't want them to know the truth of it. I can spare them that much."

Alistair -- noticing the use of present tense -- doesn't say anything right away.

(He won't argue. And it's not like Cullen's wrong, really; he's trying to protect the family he has left, just like he tries to protect everyone else.

It's just. They're his family.)

"I'm sorry," he whispers at last.

"It's all right," he says, a little surprised. "Truly. They either -- can't know, or are safer not knowing."

Alistair breathes out.

(He won't argue.)

"I'd rather not talk about this now." Very quiet. "But -- later, maybe? If you're amenable?"