'I can't do this,' Cullen said. There, it was out in the open now. He could blame Bull's flogger. He could blame the exposed position. He could blame everything else but ultimately, he couldn't keep his hands flat. A simple thing designed for his benefit. All that supposed, vaunted self-control, and where was it?
'You can,' Bull said. 'There's no shame if you need to stop. Need a break. But you've done great so far, really great. Unclench your fist.'
Cullen did, almost without thinking. He turned his head towards Bull's voice, wanting to be closer to it, the inside of his knees gripping the chair he straddled.
'You believe I can do this?' Cullen said.
'Yeah,' Bull said, voice warm and sounding like it had a smile in it. 'I really do. You need a break?'
'The pain's different,' Cullen said, like that explained everything. To him, it did.
'Yeah,' Bull agreed, letting go of his wrist. 'Harder to take, right?'
Cullen went back to staring ahead because he felt chastened somehow. As though Bull was pointing something out to him. As though he was saying, 'see, you can't do this the way you think you can.' Perhaps he was trying to prove that Cullen didn't really have a high pain threshold. Perhaps he-
'Hey,' Bull said, 'talk to me. You need a break?'
'I need something,' Cullen spat in frustration, and then lifted his hands clear off the table when his fingers curled into fists. Did he really do it that often? His arms were still shaking, so he lowered them back to the table again.
Bull shifted to Cullen's other side. A scrape of the other chair on the ground that was abrasive and just one more irritating thing. Then, a hand that fell broad and flat on his shoulder and Cullen hissed and went still. But it commanded his attention, he turned his head towards Bull. After a beat, Bull's hand moved to the back of Cullen's unmarked neck and teased gently at his hairline.
'You were really close,' Bull said. 'I could hear it in your breathing. This particular flogger though. It's a mean one. I didn't realise when I got it at the time. I was new to buying floggers and didn't really know what to look for. I thought if it had knots tied in the end, it was hardcore. And that if it was huge and black and terrifying looking, it was hardcore. And there was this red thing with thin leather straps and I was like, 'oh, that looks perfect.' Turns out I was wrong!'
He sounded cheerful, and Cullen clung to every word in the story. It was hard to imagine Bull ever needing to start out in this particular...enthusiasm of his. Easier to think that he'd just automatically known, from the very beginning.
'It doesn't break the skin really,' Bull said. A few seconds later the tails were draped lightly over Cullen's back. Gently. Bull had leaned in towards him. 'Not unless I put my back into it. Doesn't even bruise that well.'
Then why in the name of the Maker are you using it?
'Cullen, do you want to take the blindfold off?'
Cullen shook his head. Frowned. Shook his head again. Bull had nicknames for everyone. Yet he used Cullen's name so specifically. It was like hearing a bell being rung. He couldn't help but focus when he heard it.
A broad thumb was rubbing up and down the back of his neck. It was steadying. Cullen's eyes had closed again, he wanted to sag down and press his forehead to the back of the chair. Truthfully, all he really wanted to do – even more than stand and face that wall with the right flogger – was please Bull. It was a wash of bile-flavoured hatred inside of him, and it was only directed at himself. But he still wanted it. Bull said he thought Cullen could do it, maybe all Cullen had to do was be patient; as asked.
But what if he couldn't?
Too many bad weeks. That was the problem. Too many bad weeks in a row. He swallowed and pushed back into Bull's touch without really examining the urge too closely. Bull's sound of approval made Cullen aware that his legs were still spread, made his face feel warm.
'I like it,' Bull said, his voice lower than before. 'Seeing you hold up to that kind of pain, keeping your hands flat in longer stretches. Putting all that fight into something focused. It sure is something.'
Is it? Cullen thought. His lips thinned. Was it just what Bull thought he wanted to hear? If it was, he'd done a good job. Already, something felt like it was unwinding in Cullen's chest.
'My hands were fine,' Cullen said, his voice strained. 'Last time, they were-'
'That's shit and I want to say you know it's shit too. But I'm not sure you do. So, I'm here to tell you – it's shit.'
'I think I get the picture,' Cullen said, feeling weary. The pain was thrumming through him. He realised there was an odd sleepiness in the back of his mind, as though the very edge of that calming sea was there waiting for him. Maybe Bull had been right. Maybe he was closer to it than he thought.
'I want to try again,' Cullen said. 'Like this.'
Cullen wanted to ask what happened if it didn't work, if trying again failed – then realised how greedy it was. One session of finding that empty guilt-free space with Bull, and now he was acting like he was entitled to it? It wasn't like he often felt anywhere near so calm with Searidge. No. He wanted the flogging so he'd have the physical pain in the days to come. And it was obvious that even if this didn't give him the thick black bruises he wanted, it would still give him a tool to use against the inexorable march of days facing him.
When Bull stood behind him again – the hand still on his neck and gentle for a long time, like Cullen was someone to be careful with – Cullen shifted his posture so that it was correct. After years of being shown how to stand, how to turn his feet out or in, how to hold weapons or shields or axes or whatever they wanted him to use – Bull only needed to show him how to sit once before Cullen knew exactly how to fall back into place.
He heard Bull shifting his own stance, and Cullen closed his eyes and thought not of that sea he yearned for, but of something different.
His feet were made of stone. Encased in the stuff.
His hands too. They were soldered to the table. It wasn't that he shouldn't move them, it was that he couldn't move them. So that even if he wanted to walk down the stairs to trick someone out of their lyrium kit, he couldn't. He was fixed in place. It wasn't about slowing down his breathing. It wasn't about concentrating on not moving. He just couldn't. He was stone.
The flogger fell and Cullen made a sound, because normally he'd tense or curl his fingers or toes, but as he bent his mind towards what he was imagining, he didn't have the faculties left to remind himself not to make noises.
Again and again the flogger fell, spaces between the rhythm that felt too long, but even then – even with the pain so sharp he was gasping through it – he didn't move. It was as though something had clicked into place in his mind. He wasn't doing this to reach for that sea. It would be nice to have that guilt-free space, very nice, but he wasn't sure he deserved it, and it wasn't why he'd asked for this in the first place. In which case, he didn't need to be frustrated with Bull or himself for not finding it. It wasn't really about him at all. He was just there, Bull could have been practicing on an inanimate object, because he could not move.
The flogger kept falling. Cullen's eyes were shut and his chest heaving because the pain was sharp and stinging and tight, his back felt swollen, but he didn't move. His hands felt heavy.
The strokes began to speed up, and Cullen heard himself cry out, felt self-censure begin to move through him and then that fell away as well. The stinging was awful, his eyes burned behind the blindfold, but it wasn't like Bull could see, and the fabric wicked away any tears he shed, so the worry he had about that disappeared. It was as though every stroke of the flogger stripped away a layer of concern.
It hurt desperately. He wanted to move away from it. If anyone ever asked him in the future if he liked pain that thudded into him or stinging pain, he knew what to say to them.
Eventually, the concern he had about the pain was stripped away as well. Then between one stroke and the next, it was as though he lifted into nothingness. It wasn't meditative, exactly. He just gave himself over to what Bull was doing, he gave himself over to the desk and chair and floor that were supporting him. There was no guilt because he'd forgotten how to feel it.
This wasn't like a gently rocking ocean at all. He had no words for it. He was reduced to noticing textures and the sensation that he was being gripped tightly in a fist. Instead of falling, instead of floating, he was just...held. But it wasn't a calm or sweet thing. It was like being encased in stone, it carried a permanence to it that had him feeling safe enough to not think anymore.
The pain eased and Cullen hardly noticed.
His breathing was ragged. He was afraid to tune back into his body, afraid because the pain was there hanging over him like a threat. But he wanted other things too. Other things that would mean he'd have to come back to himself.
'...Cullen? Hey there, come on now, you can move your hands. Okay, Cullen, I know you're in deep right now, I just need you to let me know you can hear me.'
Cullen couldn't move. He was made of stone. Didn't Bull know that?
A shaky exhale as a hand started stroking his forearm. All the way from the inner elbow to the tips of his fingers. A faint sound before he inhaled again, and the next breath out still trembled. Bull was close to him. And warm. And steady. Cullen wanted to turn into him but he didn't quite remember how to move. His whole body felt stuck.
'You did so fucking well,' Bull said, his tone almost reverent. 'So well. Cullen, can you move your fingers for me? Just a bit. Hardly anything at all. I'm right here.'
Cullen wondered vaguely if this was the stream of talk that Bull had used last time, when Cullen had missed almost all of it. Contemplated that in a detached kind of way before he remembered that he was supposed to do something.
Move his fingers.
He made a faint sound of protest. He couldn't.
'I know,' Bull said, like he understood it was the hardest task in the world, and a hand was in his hair and by the Maker did he yearn. His breath caught in his throat and he was turning his hand to meet Bull's palm and blindly shifting in the chair – except he couldn't move his legs properly, and he was half-groaning, half-growling at the pain in his back and seeking all at once. Either Bull moved to meet him, or he was already that close. Cullen twisted sideways and slumped clumsily against Bull's meagre clothing, against overheated skin. Though nothing burned quite as hot as his shoulders.
'Okay,' Bull said. 'That's good.'
For a while it was nothing but his hoarse breathing, and his sweaty hand in Bull's sweaty hand, and the awkward angle at which he leaned against Bull that felt so good he wasn't willing to move away. There was a hand in his hair. Smoothing it. Ruffling it. Tracing the places where it met his ears.
The pain returned slowly, but all too soon it reached a point where it began hammering at him. He groaned, tried to shift to accommodate it, but nothing worked.
'Shit,' he murmured, his voice breaking.
'I've got some elfroot for that,' Bull said calmly. 'Potion might be better, but let me guess, you want the salve.'
Cullen nodded, dazed, and then made a pathetic noise when the gesture pulled at his back. He pushed his forehead into Bull's chest and thought that this wasn't quite right. This wasn't how he normally behaved...but it felt incredible.
And then Bull was pulling away and Cullen felt like his world was being rocked – and not in a good way. He froze, and then Bull was back and humming, like he was thinking about something.
'Just getting the salve,' Bull said. 'I'm right here.'
Cullen felt like he was hanging off a precipice when the contact disappeared completely, and then Bull was back and at his side, and a hand sticky with salve pressed in carefully at the outer edges of that seething mass of pain on his back. He flinched and then frowned, because...he didn't normally do that either.
He pushed his face back into Bull's skin, searching for it. Why – when he seemed to wear hardly anything on his chest at all – was it now impossible to find a stretch of skin to rest against? Then Bull's hand skated slick over his shoulders and he made a fractious sound and shifted to get even closer. His face was pushing against Bull's arm now.
'Ah, Cullen,' Bull said, sounding sad. Another thing that made no sense.