She thought about the kiss for days after the tumult of the ball. She had missed the finale of the evening—she’d fallen asleep on a chaise in the hall and was escorted out by the arm during the ruckus—and she hadn’t seen the commander since. It felt distinctly like he was avoiding her, although she found she wasn’t exactly eager to seek him out either. She was distracted in her work; the soldiers mentioned that she was less chatty with them, the ladies in the garden noted she seemed even more absent-minded than usual, and the merchants said she haggled her wares less viciously. But how could she focus on the here and now while she labored over the meaning of Cullen’s grasping, greedy kiss? Brief as it was.
She was half-heartedly bargaining with a raven at the window when the spymaster’s slim hand lighted on the small of her back, offering a wax-sealed letter that she insisted needed to be delivered to the commander immediately. When Aerith questioned why she did not instead send one of the underlings meant for exactly that job, she received a reprimanding pinch to her cheek and nudge toward the stairs.
She held the letter up to the moonlight as she climbed the stone steps to the commander’s office, trying to discern the contents from the outline. She surmised that it must have been backcoated with some wax or thicker ink, probably to prevent that exact method of reading. Her invasive curiosity found that very disappointing.
She lingered outside the half-open door when she reached the top, feeling the faint flutter of nerves somewhere in her chest. She almost found a soldier nearby to relay the letter, but instead she leaned around the door frame and knocked two light raps on the wood.
“Cullen?” she said, flashing an easy smile in spite of the nervousness that had plagued her only seconds before. Her steps were light as she sidled over to his desk. “Good evening. The stars are noisy tonight, aren’t they? I couldn’t sleep with the chatter. They must be keeping you awake too.” She extended the letter in her hand before he could remark either way. "I’m supposed to bring you a missive. And I’m supposed to report back with your answer after you read it. But no rush, if you’re busy. I can come back later, if you like.“
Agonizing over schoolboy crushes was something Cullen had thought himself beyond, in both maturity and age. He found himself remembering during those moments when his consciousness slipped away, allowing the disarray of his heart to seep into his forefront, when he was a younger, greener thing, with grand ideas about the world and the people in it, when faith and hope and love were what colored his worldview. When love was a beautiful possibility, an adventure yet to be undertaken, and not a vexatious inconvenience.
And yet it was not with resentment colored with rue that he contemplated that purloined kiss, the moonstruck foolishness that plagued him the rest of the night and after, even after the spell of her lingering perfume had faded and fled. He’d fallen asleep thinking of it. Woken up thinking of it. Of her. And not with a despondency or the irrational idiocy that came with falling in love, but with a lightness, an incontestable joy that felt very much like the unfamiliar boon of hope.
And despite that exquisite despair of wanting to see her again, to speak with her, to hear her voice, to discern her strange patterns and processes in the way she spun her sentences, he absconded. Hid out in the recesses of paperwork, of training, of any occupation that felt less frivolous and more impactful than sitting around in a spun sugar reverie of a girl with the prettiest green eyes he’d ever seen.
But her voice had struck as sure as lightning as it carried into his office, borne on the wind, and the parchment in his hand fluttered madly with the ingress of the draft, echoing the frenzy of his own heart. Cullen received the letter in a gloved hand, his eyes meeting hers only in passing as he scanned the room for anything to focus on, before boldly settling on her shoulder. “No, no, it’ll only take a moment,” he assured her softly, already devouring the contents of the letter, which was a very pertly-scrawled “You’re welcome” in Josephine’s beautiful penmanship, with an addendum of something rudely playful in Orlesian tacked on in Leliana’s strict hand.
Cullen folded the letter quickly, stuffing it into his drawer as he regarded her again. “You can tell the Spymaster to get stuffed,” Cullen informed her brusquely. “But in your Aerith way. Which I’m sure will be much sweeter and a thousand times more roundabout. Possibly spoken in riddles. But don’t you have better to do than run as an errand girl for her?” He paused, considering. “H-how have you been? Besides the stars ruining your repose.”