killedwithlove | PSL: For kremdelacreme

Entry tags:

PSL: For kremdelacreme

Following this.

Cole had things to do during the night. There were nightmares to be soothed and dark spots to be softly lit. He banked the fires that needed tending and borrowed a cloak from Blackwall to tuck in a cold halla in his stall.

He went back to Krem's room for a little while, watching him sleep before slipping off to beg some food from the kitchens. The bread was softest and warmest from the ovens and he managed to convince the cook to give him a couple of fresh rolls with some butter and fruit preserve with the freshly arrived milk.

A brief detour to Cullen's room to make sure there was poppy juice and fresh, cool water when he came to and he headed off again.

He brought it all back to Krem's room and sat down on the chest in there to wait for Krem to wake up. He wasn't in a rush, Krem was peaceful asleep, it was nice to enjoy some quiet and the soft sounds of the castle waking.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Cole wandered around a little and then finally started to strip. He was shameless about it, simply taking everything off where he was. He was still undressing when he heard Krem get into the water with a sigh and a soft thrum of aching pain unknotting in his bruises.

When he finished undressing, Cole padded over, crouching down and stick his hand in the water first. It was very warm. But nicer than the Wastelands. So he slid into the water, vanishing under entirely before surfacing with a small gasp.

Krem nearly rolled his eyes at Cole's unabashed nudity, but he had to remind himself that Cole inhabited his body in the same way that most people wore their clothes. He pulled a leg up onto the seat in front of him, reclining there sideways.

When Cole surfaced with his hair plastered to his face the heat of the water seemed to have brought up a more lively sort of flush in his skin. His hair was still plastered down over his forehead and neck, and Krem had to wonder if it had always grown that way, or was just shoved down by the hat so often it had just given up.

"Glad this is down here," he murmured, laying his chin on his arms and closing his eyes, just soaking in the heat.

Cole's body was a thing he lived in and sometimes remembered to sort of take care of, but usually when reminded by someone else.

He was surprisingly broad shouldered, though his chest was all ribs and his hipbones jutted too much despite the muscle of his legs. A lot of walking.

He wrinkled his nose and rubbed his hands over his face, scrubbing the water off it. "It's hot. All hot, all over."

"Must be strange, to someone not used to it," Krem mused, then pushed himself off from the edge and approached tentatively. He trusted that Cole wouldn't stare at the water trying to get a look at him, so it wasn't as hard for him to do as it might have been with the majority of Skyhold's population. He gestured for Cole to turn around, intending to look at the space behind his ears that he sincerely doubted the boy ever remembered to wash.

Cole had no interest in trying to look at Krem's body. His interest was in Krem's injuries and he knew how those were.

Shrugging a little, Cole turned around. It was possible he had never properly washed his hair, and while he did clean off any dirt, mud or blood that he saw, he simply didn't notice that much.

He could probably do with a good scrub all over.

"What?"

"Grimy," Krem replied, wrinkling his nose some. He glanced around, then went back to the edge of the pool and hauled himself back out to start searching in his clothes until he came up with a little bundle that had a solid little brick of soap in it with worn corners, smelling faintly of rosewater. There was also a little folded rag in the bundle, now crumpled in his fist. He came back with it and sank into the water again, more easily this time now that his body had acclimated to the heat.

Lathering the soap between his hands, Krem returned and without hesitation started to scrub at the top of Cole's head, a look of concentration on his face. This wasn't the first time he'd had to do this for someone, and there were flashes in his mind of his and one of the others holding down Rocky and scrubbing the layer of dirt and blackpowder off of him. It had been a mess and he'd walked away from it with a black eye, but it had been worth it to be able to walk through a cave filled with spiders without them noticing the stink of the powder. Didn't stop them getting attacked, but at least it wasn't because of their sapper.

Cole turned to watch Krem get out, curious about what he was doing and then sank under the water again, holding his breath while he just let the water carry his weight.

He surfaced when Krem got back in. He was going to ask something, but then he was assaulted with sudsy hands and rosewater smell and his hair was being pulled and massaged.

He made an undignified squawking sound. "What you doing?!"

"Making sure you don't smell like wet nug," Krem replied then caught his tongue between his teeth, scratching his blunt nails through Cole's hair to work the soap through it to the ends. He was being about as gentle about it as was to be expected of a mercenary with muscles like rock, but he was at least trying not to hurt Cole in the process.

When Cole's hair had been suitably harassed, Krem backed up to allow him to sink back into the water and rinse out the lather. He had the soap and washcloth back in hand, and was already rubbing the former into the latter.

Cole relented, submitting to the inevitability of having his hair washed. He grumbled softly under his breath, because Krem was rough, but he supposed that was what made the dirt come out.

When Krem backed off, Cole turned and looked at him expectantly. "I smell like soap and rose."

"The smell will fade after an hour or so. Rinse it out and then hold still so I can get your ears"

Krem was pretty decent at giving orders, a product of having been working with the Iron Bull as long as he had been. He waited for Cole to comply, but he figured he might have to do it himself, if Cole was really as bad at his own personal hygiene as he seemed.

Cole took a deep breath and ducked under the water, hands coming up to rub and wash away the suds, letting the water tug and pull at the loose strands.

He surfaced and while his hair was water dark, it was clear that it was cleaner. Paler than ever.

"Why are ears so important to be clean? They hear fine."

The fact that Cole's hair legitimately looked cleaner after that simple scrubbing was actually a little bit worrying. This was good though, progress.

The suds were drifting away and being filtered out of the water by the natural flow of it, and now their immediate vicinity smelled of rosewater on top of the already slightly ozone and mineral scent of the air. The rag that Krem folding over in one hand was dragged behind Cole's ear as soon as he was holding still again.

"If you'd ever run your fingers behind your ears and seen the grease and dandruff that gets stuck behind there, you'd know why ears need to be clean."

Cole didn't sweat, or have those other irritating problems, but he did get dirty. He whined at the hand on his ear, tugging and pulling and cleaning and trying to wriggle away, but in a completely human way.

"You're acting like Mam."

That caused a little bit of a pang deep in Krem's psyche, but he ignored it for the most part, using his superior strength to keep Cole from wriggling away at least until his ears had been scrubbed. He let him go and crossed his arms with pursed lips and arched brow, just daring Cole to huff at him some more.

"And you're acting like a child," he pointed out, honestly amused by the image of the sodden boy in front of him.

Cole slid away, sinking mostly under water so just his eyes were peering out at Krem from above the waterline.

He had to surface again to speak. "The last time someone dunked me in a bath and scrubbed me, I was a child."

"You'd better not be telling me that that was the last time you even had a proper bath," Krem snorted, rubbing the soap into the rag again then holding it out. "I'll give you the choice now, either you do it, or I will."

"No. Cole got very good at cleaning blood off of him." He took the rag and started rubbing it over his arms. He did clean, but it was like someone who had only watched others bathe, copying what he had seen.

Krem watched him going through the motions, letting him do it on his own for the moment, while internally shuddering. Damned blood mages...

"You know what, here," he finally sighed, taking the rag back, then taking hold of Cole's wrists and gently lifting his arms up over his head, before starting to actually scrub down their lengths and over Cole's ribs and chest, muttering about nobody having taught him these things yet.

"He wasn't a blood mage. Father used to beat him bloody."

Krem took the rag away and lifted his arms and Cole blinked at him, but left them there, folding them over his head to rest them.

Then he was being scrubbed. He didn't remember bathing being this aggressive when when anyone else did it. "You're a lot rougher than everyone else seems to be."

"Or you're just tender," Krem argued, though he did ease up some to keep from accidentally bruising Cole. He didn't want to think about the person Cole used to be being abused by his family. He'd seen too much of it before he'd left home.

Circling back around to scrub between Cole's shoulderblades, Krem frowned deeply. Nobody ever deserved that kind of treatment. It made him miss home, miss his family, especially his father. Father was kind, only ever put hands on him when he'd seriously done wrong, which was rare. Krem's hands slowed, falling away as he sank deeper into his own head, lulled somewhat by the steam and heat of this place.

"Sorry," he muttered, rinsing the rag out in the water, then drifting back some to start on his own bathing, leaving Cole to his own devices for the moment.

Cole hummed. Maybe he was tender. He wasn't used to being this sort of flushed warm and touched so much, with confidence and deliberate intent.

Having his back cleaned was nicer. He relaxed with a deep, throaty hum, curling forward and rocking with Krem's scrubbing of his back.

Krem stopped and it took Cole a moment to realise, because he was quiet and relaxed and finally starting to enjoy what was going on. "Why are you sorry?" He turned to look back over his shoulder briefly and then moved to find the soap again.

"It's just...weird. Knowing you're carrying around someone else's abuse." He didn't know how else to put it, the feeling was so complicated in his head. He wasn't good at words like Solas or Dorian or The Iron Bull.

"Besides," he rallied, his voice a little stronger as he focused on something else, "I'm not scrubbing your bits. That one's your responsibility."

"I have the memories, but it wasn't me. We both remembered it. I am Cole. But I'm not." It was complicated to explain, but felt simple to Cole.

Cole smiled at Krem's way of putting it. "It's all right. I know how to clean that."

"You're the Cole that exists now, but not the one that existed back then." That, at least, wasn't overly complicated. Krem took a moment to rub the soap into the washcloth again and handed it over again, then started to lather the soap again to be able to wash his hair, scrubbing at it in the same manner he'd attacked Cole's. He turned his back to let Cole scrub everywhere else that he hadn't already gotten, though part of him kind of wanted to go back to washing the other's back. He'd never expected to get those kinds of sounds out of Cole, and he wanted to try again.

Cole stood up from the water, back to Krem, to clean off his legs more thoroughly, foot on the edge of the pool as he cleaned between his toes and up his calves. Those areas tended to get visibly dirty, so they got washed better.

Then he sank back into the water, rinsing off again. "I liked when you cleaned my back. That was nice."

PSL: For kremdelacreme

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)