All For a Kiss

A Word: Drabble for a kiss meme this one for the Upsidedown Kiss slot.

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Cullen's stumbling back to the barracks from the privy -still mostly asleep- when he hears a voice coming from the horse stables. Late night trysts in the hayloft are common. Common enough the senior knight instructors make regular checkups on it that don't actually deter the meetings. Cullen thinks it's an awful place for anything vaguely romantic and that the vegetable gardens the Sisters and Brothers tend is both better and more practical but not many of his peers ask for his opinion when it comes to things like this. Cullen usually ignores it as best he can. It's the frantic note to the muttering that convinces Cullen not to walk right on by and pretend he heard nothing this time though.

There's only one voice when Cullen eases through the cracked door, and a lamp gutters on a stool in the middle of it. Casting light on the still forms of the horses and a sight that is both bizarre and utterly expected. Anyone else, anyone at all, and Cullen would be surprised to come upon them dangling upside down in the stables at the middle of the night.

"Alistair," Cullen sighs the young man's name wearily. Unconsciously copying the tone of so many of their instructors. "What have you done now?"

"It wasn't my fault!" The denial is quick and automatic, and has half a chance of being true. He whirls his arms in the air and the momentum is enough to send him spinning. The ropes Cullen can now see tangled tight around his legs creak until he's mostly facing Cullen. His face is red. Either from embarrassment or from being upside down. His eyes are wide and pleading in a way no man his age should be able to pull off. "Help me?"

Cullen rubs his eyes hard before looking around. He drags a barrel over and finds a reasonably sharp blade that's normally used to pry rocks from the horses hooves. There's already hay on the ground and Cullen abruptly remembers that Alistair had been given mucking duties for punishment. "Have you been like this all night?"

"No," the ropes are truly tangled when Cullen examines them. Alistair grabs onto him by his trousers as he starts to spin again from Cullen's testing pulls. "Can't say how long I've been like this though. Kind of lost track with all the screaming for help that only scared off the stupid cat responsible for this."

"you're blaming this on a cat?" Cullen asks and lets himself smile only because Alistair likely won't be able to see it and thus won't be encouraged. Theoretically. He doesn't truly need encouragement to keep going where wiser men would pause.

"Yes! Evil, beady-eyed thing. I think it's been bunking down for free out here for a while now."

That would explain the lower number of pests lately. Cullen doesn't press for more though because he's fairly sure he doesn't want to know. There's no undoing the rope by hand -as he'd suspected- so Cullen carefully slides the knife under a strand and starts to saw away at it. Alistair's grip goes tight as he starts to spin again, almost throwing Cullen's balance off before he corrects it. He works as fast as he can but the blade is dull and the rope grows tighter the more he cuts off. Alistair's weight pulling the whole mess into a different configuration with each strand gone.

"maker, did you roll in every rope coil we have?" Cullen shifts lower to ease the strain on his shoulder a bit. A pile of the cut rope builds up on the ground but he still can't find the load bearing one to free Alistair easily.

"Hurry. Please," something bumps into his stomach and he feels it move as Alistair groans. "I'm going to be sick!"

"Not on me!" Cullen pulls harder even as he resigns himself to being vomited on. Alistair's holding him far too tightly for an easy escape should it come to that.

Distracted, Cullen misses the way the rope starts to fray and split easier than it has been until the section he's holding slides out of his hand suddenly. It hisses softly as it moves and Alistair drops. The man's arms spasm and Cullen grits his teeth as it all seems to happen slow enough for him to know what's going to happen.

Alistair's weight goes one way and the barrel under Cullen's feet goes the other. He's weightless for a brief moment, and aware enough of it to throw the dagger far away, before the ground meets them with unforgiving force for something that was only a few feet away. Cullen rolls on instinct but Alistair doesn't and he ends up painfully twisted. Half over and half under Alistair's heavier frame.

"Crap," Alistair manages to choke out after a moment of pain filled silence. He drags the word out excessively long and twists enough to dig his elbow or knee into Cullen's side. Cullen grunts and pushes out with all the force he can manage to roll tha man off him, or at least away from his more vulnerable areas. "Thanks, Cullen."

"Yeah," Cullen brings his knees up and focuses on breathing for a bit. It feels like Alistair landed on his gut with all the weight the man has, and he needs just a moment to recover from that. Possibly several.

They're moment that Alistair obvious does not need. The man sits up and looms over him looking concerned. "Are you alright?"

"I am fine," or will be soon enough that it doesn't matter. There's no use being annoyed over it. The emotion isn't worth the minor inconvenience. Which is usually true for most things when Alistair is involved. Who is now hovering over Cullen with an even more worried look. Face slowly returning to normal with no obvious signs of ill effect. Cullen asks to be sure though, "And you?"

"Fine! Perfectly fine, maybe even fine-er? I can't say I'm fine-est, but I never really am that, so I guess I'm just fine," Alistair speaks quickly. The words rolling off his tongue faster than his mind can react. As good a sign as anything of his state of being. Just like the mischievous grin that replaces the concerned look as he kneels over Cullen's head. The alarming sight odd when viewed upside down. Cullen still tenses automatically at the sight of it.

"Alistair..." Cullen says in a warning he doesn't complete.

"Oh! Ser Cullen, my savior!" Alistair clasps his hands under his chin as he flutters his eyes and coos in an obnoxiously high falsetto. "However can I repay you?"

"Don't," Cullen groans because the ass is still going on about the incident from last week. The one Cullen's done his level best to forget despite the constant reminders from all sides about it.

One of the Sisters has an Orlisian brother, or cousin. Maybe son, no one was too sure of the details when he's swept into the Chantry for some reason that was also vague. A distraction and potential threat, but not one that mattered to the recruits who were told to steer clear. An order which should have concluded the matter except for one thing. The man had brought his two daughters with him. Barely old enough to be called women they'd turned more heads than they should have with their cooing and fluttering. An annoyance easily ignored until they saw something that made that impossible. Both had taken a liking to Cullen when they found out how much their fluttering about truly bothered him. The tormenting had been relentless and amused everyone much to Cullen's great dismay. Ended only when one took the flirtations inappropriately far by engineering a fall and rescue. Tripping Cullen up with her layer skirts and landing on his chest was bad enough, but the kiss she'd forced on him before he could extract himself nearly got him hung.

"Oh, Ser Cullen!" Alistair's high voice cracks and breaks with laughter as he leans down with pucker up lips and kisses him. More the press of his nose to Cullen's chin and the warm puffs of breath as the man laughs too hard to even try. Unasked for and made to poke fun of him just like the other kiss. Though he's not paralyzed by surprise for this one.

It's part spite, and part something else that Cullen doesn't want to examine too closely that has him grabbing the back of Alistair's head to pull him down. He stops the laughter with a firmer kiss that makes his lips tingle. His nose rests uncomfortably on Alistair's chin, and the man's lips are too slack from surprise to keep the kiss firm. Cullen dares to part his mouth and slowly lick across the opening he's being given once before pulling away completely.

Alistair gapes down at him. His face is red again though for an entirely different reason this time. Cullen smirks up at him, feeling smug and satisfied as he rolls up to his feet. "You are most welcome."

Cullen leaves then without trying to find any other words to say. Quickly because the secret to dealing with Alistair is to leave him when he's speechless, or run the risk of having the man keep trying for the last word. It also allows Cullen the dignity of running away before he has to explain why he's slowly blushing darker than he had last week with the flirty woman whose name he's already forgotten was perched right in his lap. He'll truly never hear the end of it if Alistair sees that.

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