Spicy prompts it is! Cullydia, stuck in a tight space with each other. 😏🤭 OR modern AU with Cullydia being in a club (dark, heavy bass, probably hole in the wall kinda place) getting handsy out on the dance floor~
Can be in established relationship or not (yet). 🤣
If either of those peak your interest, ofc.
As a rule Cullen doesn’t like dancing, but he loves holding Lydia. That afternoon when she came home from Emprise he would have been more than happy to stay in his office with her, or perhaps venture above, but she promised Cabot at the Herald’s Rest an Inquisitorial appearance with the Commander in tow. The sancere arrived from Orlais. She needed to try it. He should have known then she’d be lulled to dance once there.
When they were perched against the bar, Lydia with the sancere, she took a delicate sip. It was a rich and smooth wine with only a hint of acidity, or so said Lydia. Cullen couldn’t tell. He preferred Fereldan beer. Leaning against the counter after Lydia finished both his and her sanceres, she started swaying to the flute and the drum. It lulled her well. She asked him to dance.
Cullen doesn’t like dancing. Not one bit. Especially when he’s not properly inebriated. He doesn’t advocate for intoxication, but he recognizes his soldiers need a bit of fun ever now and then. He made that mistake, among many, in Kirkwall. He didn’t give his men time to celebrate, even if there were far fewer things to celebrate back then.
Lydia is a celebration. As he dances, or tries to anyway, he finds her his own brand of intoxication. How does she know he loves the way the little whisps of her hair hit her shoulder? How does she know he loves it when she pushes her hair away from her face, revealing that small and tantalizing widow’s peak at the top of her forehead that’s almost a crown? Her sleeves fall off her tanned shoulders, her embroidered corset cinching in. He gulps at the valley, sighs at the closeness of her. She doesn’t take proper form anymore as more couples and some singles scurry to the floor to dance, pressing them in. Lydia pulls him closer, too concerned with him than proper form. He’s always more concerned with her than proper form.
She’s been gone before now. He's missed her. It should be easier to part with her the more they’ve had to do it, but for Cullen she sticks to him more like honey with every reunion, making every parting all the less of a sweet sorrow and all the more a despairing torment. She’s pliant in his arms, lithe and strong, and she lifts herself to her tip toes so they are more shoulder to shoulder. If he thinks too much of how he’s missed her, he’ll harden and what good will that do for morale? His soldiers will laugh, perhaps call him whipped, as if he’s even cared about that.
It doesn’t matter. He’s hard. She grinds against him, all too aware of it. “I missed you,” he whispers in her ear, holding onto her more tightly as soldiers, loungers, friends—Sera even, and is that Dorian? crowd around him on the dance floor. “I missed you so much.”
“I know that,” she whispers back, groaning when her nails skim lightly down the nape of his neck. “I can feel you.”
“Let’s get away for a while.”
“Let’s stay right here.”
No one knows, she says. It’s just us. It’s not quite true but what’s also true is that Lydia has the uncanny ability to make anyplace seem paradise, and to make anyplace the place where only the two of them exist in the world.
“I missed you too,” she says. “I thought about you. I ached for you.”
“Still?”
“Yes. Still. Always.”
“Thank the Maker.”
“No. Thank me.”
No matter how many times she tells him she’s not some divine gift from above, but only herself who loves him as much as he loves her, he can’t quite help it sometimes. He asks himself how. He asks himself if it’s possible. She reminds him it is.
“There’s too many people here,” he whispers in his ear. “How am I supposed to look nondescript?”
Her warm hands slide underneath his tunic. “You don’t have to try.”
He laughs in spite of himself. “I can’t do that. What will my soldiers say?”
“Do you care?”
“Not particularly.”
Oh, to make love to her with a thousand eyes upon them. They may as well have from the first. All the Inquisition had their eyes upon them. History has their eyes upon them. Love in the middle of war, the former Knight-Commander of Kirkwall with a former Circle mage. To love a woman not despite her magic but because of her fire she is so very warm at night and her hands heal. To love a woman who is a tempest on the battlefield and a tempest in bed, to have stories told about them and speculations thrust upon them. He loves seeing her in the mirror without inhibitions. To have others see her, see it’s his cock she takes, see it’s him she loves…
He groans into her neck, far too intoxicated and far too aroused. She pushes closer to him and he cannot pull away. They are surrounded, firstly, and secondly, he can never think of a good reason to pull away when they’re together. Work? What does it matter? The world? They are the world.
“I’d make love to you in front of thousands.”
He doesn’t realize he has voiced his thought until she asks him how. But of course. She’s a woman of details, though he had only the thought and the notion. But she’s a woman of a thousand good stories, a woman of only the best trouble, and his. He sees no reason at all why he shouldn’t inform her of how, or even a reason why not.
“Here.” He says.
“On the floor?”
He smirks. “As if we haven’t.”
“It hurts my back.”
“Alright. The war table.”
“It also hurts my back.”
“Mine as well, but only after. But it’s alright. You’ll be on top. I can make the sacrifice.”
“Your Inquisitor and lover appreciates your service.”
But I would hold you, he promises, as you ride me. You’d sink against me for a bit and I’d hold you close, and I wouldn’t even turn my head to see. I’d feel their eyes but I’d mostly feel you. I’d feel you with so much of me that the part of me that should protest is a mockery.
“I’d look,” Lydia says. “I want to know everyone who loves us.”
On top of me I’d hold you, he continues, as his hands remained concerned with the tantalizing dip of waist and hips. You’d feel so good, encased. Full. Feeling me as well as you know yourself. My extension, the other half of me. Sunlight would stream through. Sunlight was made for your body.
“You were carved in sunlight,” Lydia says. “It pours from you. It’s your own magic.”
It’s one thing to be watched, she says as the music changes to a slow dance met for lovers. But imagine if an artist were to paint us. My hands all over your scars, writing a love letter. Your hands cupping my face rather than my breasts because you are a sweet contradiction…
“I’d touch them too,” he promises, his lips already pressed against her ear, then skimming against her neck, tugging her hair down and kissing the top of her breasts. She moans at the slight prickle of beard, weaving her hands through his hair and keeping him there.
But he must pull himself upward, seize her in a searing kiss as if that will abate his want rather than enflame it further. He could kiss her for hours and lay in a bank of her arms for hours, and that is how he would have the world watch. The world would watch them kiss, as if they haven’t already, as if they’re love hasn’t been discussed and analyzed like scripture. If they are scripture, they should worship.
“If I do not have you now,” Lydia says, “I will cease to exist.”
“You must not say that.” On that matter, he’s firm.
“Then you must have me. That is that.”
First, he plants a kiss against her cheek. Then his lips linger against the corner of her mouth. His hand under her chin, their eyes meet. The shocking intimacy never overwhelms anymore. It’s quite like their kiss.
The kisses still overwhelm.
“You have me,” he promised.
He holds her tighter. He’s never going to fall in love again.
Asking for suggestions - I was recently reminded of your Butter Cakes and Cherry Tarts and we need more dadbod soft Cullen steamy content 👀
Oh wow, that story is a blast from the past! Totally inspired however, thanks anon! <3 Rated M, post Tresspasser.
If Cullen were awake he’d shower her with kisses for her homecoming, and though never having forgotten what it was like to be loved, she’d have her cups of affection and longing refilled by the only man who can replenish. Yet as it is, he’s sound asleep.
She should be quite put out and indeed it’s not quite the homecoming she would have expected, though truth to be told she’s anything but put out. He looks far too dreamy, literally and figuratively. He lays flat on his back with the covers draw to his waist as per years of Chantry living taught him, calm as he gently breathes. His brow isn’t furrowed. He is gentle. He is calm. He is good. He dreams of sweet things, perhaps herself if she’s so bold.
She is bold. She is bolder still, pulling off her riding boots and slipping off her trousers, smalls, corset, and prosthetic hand. She only leaves on the shirt she confiscated from his stash before she left for the College. Slipping in bed, she curls closer, her leg pressed against. He humphs. She throws her arm around him, breathing him in. In the darkness as he stirs and responds she feels his grin, and she clutches his shirt as he wraps an arm around her. There are soft kisses on her forehead, a “welcome home,” whispered in her ear.
“They’re still sound asleep,” Lydia mutters, thankful their joyful and rather large mabari, too happy to see her mistress home didn’t wake the children. “I kissed them and they didn’t even wake.”
“They’ll be so excited in the morning,” Cullen says. “I told them you’d be home in the afternoon.”
Though he must ask, he says, why she’s early. “Thought it was obvious,” she answers. “I missed you too much.”
He kisses her like he used to kiss her, waiting for her on the battlements of Skyhold. They aren’t desperate like they used to be however, only grateful. Only loving. In truth however, she didn’t expect such a homecoming. She thought she’d fall into bed and turn groggy after a few sleepy kisses, Cullen only awake enough for a few kisses before settling soundly again. Instead he is as efficient as clockwork. Kisses are left here and there as he envelopes and entangles. She’s reminded what it’s like to be possessed again, like the first few times when they began a tentative relationship and he asked to try with her. A brave, gallant knight has me in his arms, she used to think, eternally soaring high in the sky. A braver man built her a home, a bed, and became the father of her children.
She grasps, she clings. He must be everywhere. He must be inside her. He grips her ass and pushes her to her back and she can feel his need to be inside and succumb. His weight is hefty on her body, comforting and strong. As her breasts smush against his chest she needs closer still, and she hooks a long leg over him. Her hand glides down his back, squeezing a dimple.
“You’re soft,” she says as his stubbly neck prickles against her sensitive neck. “Maker…”
There’s a stiffening above her, a detachment like she’s far away from home again. Underneath him, she wiggles her hips. “Is something wrong?” she asks as she strokes his hair and his back, kissing the top of his head. Her first thought is Kinloch or Kirkwall, though it’s been a while since he’s remembered either. In fact she can’t even remember the last time. When they dream, they dream of the Inquisition. They dream of each other.
“Darling.” She calls to him, hoping she’s not far away. “I’m here.”
“I know.”
“Oh.” She plants another kiss on his forehead. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” she hears muttered as he buries her head in the crook of his neck. And before she can ask what’s wrong, she hears his resigned, sad question.
Am I really that soft?
“Oh, you’re very soft,” she replies immediately. “You always have been soft. Of course you used to play the brooding and detached Commander but I always knew—”
He humphs in disapproval. It wasn’t what he meant and she knew it.
“Well, me too you know,” she answers. She retired and had two babies. It was bound to happen.
He peeks at her. He calls her beautiful and he sounds spellbound. “Glad you agree,” she says, kissing the little furrow in his brow away and wondering why he doesn’t think what has always been true, that he is beautiful. Yet he’s crestfallen in her arms, and though she couldn’t see that little furrow between his brows she knew she didn’t quite kiss it away.
“Does it bother you?” he asks, nearly pleading.
“No,” she promises.
Rylen told him he got soft, Cullen says as they settle into each other and to more kisses. It made him think.
Lydia sighs. “Darling you know I love him, but you also know he jests.”
“It’s true though.”
“But you’ve lived well. You’ve lived gloriously. You’re much cozier, but you’ll always be beautiful”
“I…”
She feels the patter of his heart against hers. They push and pull, give and take, but mostly give. Back into the earth they go. “Make love to me Commander,” she says, and he does and he does and they live that glorious life they carved for themselves.
“I care a little too much,” he admits sometime after, hands grasping and stroking her body with careless abandon, loving her as indiscriminately as she hopes he loves himself.
“So do I sometimes,” she replies.
“What makes it stop?”
The answer, she says as she strokes his cheek, is simple. “When we’re here loving each other.”
You asked me something a long time ago, Lydia says, recalling as she finger-combs through his hair. You asked me if I had a problem with your body.
“And you said only when it’s not on top of me.”
She buries her head in his chest as she laughs. “Oh. You remember!”
“I’ll remember everything.”
For the rest of the night, he showed her what he remembered. He showed her he believed her.
Some Cullen and Lydia for @14daysdalovers <3 Prompt Four, a Favor. So glad I managed to write this! Rated E.
“Cullen.”
One more moment, he says as her legs dangle against the desk. He foiled her plans earlier, choosing to remain below to go over war reports rather than come upstairs with her. Can’t you read them tomorrow? She once asked a while ago, and he patiently explained it wasn’t a mere matter of reading but setting the course for his soldiers, making sure they had enough men to anticipate possible enemy movement, and so many other things. There’s so much strategy too, a game of chess with too high stakes. The Commander must set his soldiers on the right course.
The soldiers need their Commander. They need him well. They need him good. They need him rested. They need him loved. She wishes love could be the only thing that mattered.
She puts her hand over his. Clenched on the desk it loosens, the other hand scribbling instructions stopping. “Tomorrow,” she says as he looks up at her. “I need a favor now.”
It’s a simple one, she says. Take a breath. He does so. He leans back in his chair and takes a single breath, recentering himself. One breath becomes another, and then another. “Now come here,” she asks, her second favor. Smirking, he rises, the chair creaking against the stone floor. He shrugged his mantle off hours ago, gauntlets and gloves after, the bits of armor making a pile on his desk. His bare hands that he used to be ashamed of cup her face. He ran through his hair in frustration a few times while he wrote, and she smooths the curls back and tidies them for him. It’s a favor for her Commander. When their foreheads meet they take breaths in tandem, their arms wrapping around one another. He kisses her to thank her, to stir her. She lets him know she’s not wearing anything under her silk robe. she’s wearing. She had a plan for him hours ago--a hope he’d find her nude in his bed. When he failed to climb up she donned her robe and slid back down to him, and now she has an inkling they’ll favor the desk over the bed.
Chuckling, he decides to see for himself. The silk falls off her shoulders and she shivers with the cold that hits her bare skin. He sees, eyes wide and lips slightly parted before embraces her, the plains of his armor sharp and cool against her skin. He absently thumbs her breasts, circling her nipples. They stiffen. “It’s late,” she promises, though he hasn’t suggested they take this upstairs yet. “No one will come in.”
“It’s alright. I locked all the doors.”
“Cullen.” She should have known. “Nefarious.”
She feels his smirk, his lips pressed against her ear. “Feel good for me.”
His broad hands spread on her thigh. She parts them for him, leaning back as he sinks to the floor and his days old beard lightly scratches against her inner thighs. She tugs at his hair, mussing it once more, more so moaning at the sight of his amber eyes peeking at her than the light dart of his tongue against her clit. His palms dig into her skin, keeping her open, and she scoots closer to the edge, nearly smothering him. He welcomes it. He asks for more, his lips encircling her clit and the tip of his finger smearing arousal around before gently pressing inside. She tugs at his hair, smothers him further. She fights with herself not to be too greedy, but he pushes her closer when she pulls away, moans loudly when she basks in the sight of him eager and on his knees and peering at her in prayer. It’s not so hard to come for him, to feel good for him. She doesn’t even have to talk herself over the edge. He catches her.
His victory is smeared on his face. When he rises she kisses it off of him, basking in a high known only to Cullen. He is heavy and hard between her damp legs. Her fingers are skilled in taking off his armor. He’s skilled at loving her, at filling her to the brim and centering her world. No preamble, she asks. No teasing. Once they may have teased. Once she would have scooted on the desk and asked for his weight on top of her, but they are rough as he stands and she sits, her legs coiling around him. He thrusts inside. He groans and tugs at her hair. He smells like so much man, and like he’s lived in the mountains freely all his life. He makes love like he’s always been hers and known her love all his life.
He’s warm inside when he sputters and spills, their lips skimming against one another before they meet and his tongue entreats her mouth to part. She can still taste herself on his tongue. It’s as though they’ve melded souls and essences. She nods when he asks if she’s alright. He laughs when she asks if he is.
“Perfect,” he replies.
She smooths his errant hair again, knowing they’ll travel upstairs, knowing she’ll fix it again, her eternal favor, her eternal joy. “You are,” she says. “You work so hard. You do good. You are good.”
He kisses her thinking she meant in terms of his skill. She hopes he knows he’s also simply good.
@dasmutquisition reveals happened today so I can finally formally share what I wrote this year!
All Aboard for @schoute
As Piper boards a ship to the Free Marches for a new adventure, Cullen wishes he could be a part of that adventure. However, he has a way of saying goodbye that may offer something a little more than a brief respite before parting.
Lady of the Skies for @ashalle-art (Cullen x Female Shepard)
Towards the stars in his loft, Cullen spends the night with a woman from another time and place, who found her way from the stars to Thedas, and to him.
From Merrill, with Love for @hollyand-writes (Carver x Merrill)
Merrill doesn't realize you're supposed to send love letters in the mail. Or maybe she knows exactly what she's doing.
Shameless Shakarian Smut for kinktober set after Garrus and Shepard tango at the bar. Please Enjoy!
Garrus is starting to think like a human. Or at least, he’s starting to think like his human.
She doesn’t like it when he calls her “his human,” and much prefers to be called his woman. In return she calls him her man, her best friend, her Garrus. But at the end of the day they’re seen as the cross-species liaison of the galaxy, and that difference is something a lot of people refuse to let go of. Though it doesn’t matter to him, or perhaps because it doesn’t matter, he’s been thinking.
He began thinking that evening as she got ready at her vanity. She was the one that started it, as she voiced a pondering about lives and the ones people choose to live. She came to the conclusion then, using a small wand to curl her lashes before coating them with a black paint called mascara, that people were afforded more than one life.
“Or at least,” she said, putting on her lipstick after, “at some point we come to a crossroads and we get to choose whichever life we want.”
Absurd, crazy. Or at least that was what he thought at first. His life was chosen for him. At least initially, he realized after pondering, before he picked his Arkangel identity. Then he chose to be with her. It’s the most selfish, the most humbling and beguiling thing he’s ever done. It’s his favorite choice.
Choices have made up their romance. He realizes that before he meets her at the bar again. Like before, they are going to meet as strangers. It makes him ponder Kate’s earlier inquiry once more. If they both say so, who was to say they weren’t meeting for the second time rather than the hundredth? Who was to say their fiftieth time could be their first again?
(Not that he’s counted. But it’s up there.)
He slides next to her at the bar, finding it impossible not to find her. She’s tall with heals on her feet that makes her taller, her glossy black hair worn down and big with her bangs pushed back. She holds a tall wine glass in her hand, the rim stained with her red lipstick.
“We meet again,” she says with a practiced carelessness.
He clears his throat, deepening his already smooth voice. “I couldn’t resist you.”
Wishing a very, very happy birthday to @jentrevellan 💜
For her birthday he wishes he could fill the room with stars.
Rather than have them spill from her balcony he would paint the room in bright, luminescent light. He’s make it so they two of them could dance in brightness, as if by dancing they sail through the heaven. Cullen isn’t the Maker, though making love to her makes him feel quite close to it. But he can’t catch the stars that remind him so much of her and have her wake in a room full of them. He can’t turn day to night. He can’t create stars in his hands. Not even with words.
For her birthday as he wakes up before her, he wishes for the words that let her know she is so much like a star. She’s bright like one, and his constant like the North Star is constant. But what beyond that? How can he summarize the woman that is everything? A star seems most apt, but what else to say? He’s a man of action. A grand gesture, sweeping everything off the desk to make love to her for one moment, but he wishes there were words for what she means to him. For her birthday she deserves both. She deserves everything.
But when she wakes, she doesn’t seek words at first, a tender “good morning” or a “happy birthday.” She pulls him into her arms, and in lieu of words and they end up wrapped and entangled. They end up making love. At first she craves the press of him on top of her, the strong solidness and the slight tug of her hair as he smooths it back and away from her face. He asks her if she feels good. She asks what’s already so obvious. Do you? Yes he says, yes, yes, yes.
Then she’s on top of him, golden in the sunlight that streams through her open balcony. Her brown hair tumbles behind her, her green eyes sparkling as they search for his, seeking more. He gives, circling her and drawing only the sweetest sounds. He’s more undone by her becoming undone. Even as she holds him as he shudders in her arms, he still sees her flushed cheeks, her smile as she sinks back down from the heavens to him. “Happy birthday love,” he says, finding that same soft place to land in her. “I’m sorry I’m only as eloquent as that.”
An eyebrow quirks. “Only?”
“Elsie,” he says. “I am sorry this is…unpolished. Or even bad.” He laughs, just considering the this metaphor may not work or be downright awful. But they are his words. That must count for something. “You’re like a star in the night,” he says. “You’re bright. Beautiful. Constant. You remind me there’s always something worth fighting for. If I could I’d fill this room with stars, but my words must do. I am sorry they are not as good as—“
“Cullen,” she says softly, caressing his face. “You love me. I know. You have given me the happiest of days. I don’t need your words. Or anything other than you. But.” She kisses him softly. “I love them. You mean everything you say. I know.”
“I love you,” he says simply. “You know that right?“
Yes, she says with her kiss, his woman of words and action. And she loves him too. She, like him, only says what she means.
They make love again. As he kissed her, he shows her how to see the stars.
For @14daysdalovers prompt one day one, wildflowers. Cullen and Lydia Trevelyan, no warnings, just fluff :D
“What...is that?”
She came to him as she had been coming to him, and Maker he took the habit of counting the hours to when he may see her again. Today however she held something in her hands, a small circlet of flowers. A flower crown she called it, rising to her tip toes and putting it on his head. Instinctively Cullen adjusted it so it wouldn’t fall, Lydia bringing forth a looking glass so he can inspect himself. His own puzzled self reflected back, with a crown made of red blooms and white flowers encircling his head. He knew the white flowers from their scent, elderflower. It was his mother’s favorite.
“I picked a few wildflowers just outside of Skyhold,” Lydia said. “Elderflower as well.”
She smiled, and he wondered if he was supposed to wear it to drills, or worse yet, the war room. Maker Leliana will find something to say...
“It’s...going to be a topic of conversation in the barracks,” Cullen said, realizing yes, she indeed wanted him to wear it so it may be properly displayed around Skyhold. It was better than the lion helm Rylen bought him in jest he supposed, and as he gingerly touched one of the blooms on his head, it unlocked a forgotten and previously buried memory, one of Rosalie crafting crowns of wildflowers by the lake. Back then he dutifully he wore them so not to make her frown.
“It’s Nevarran tradition,” Lydia said. “Every year during this month, lovers make each other crowns of flowers and wear them to show they’re taken. My father wasn’t too keen on every tradition, but my mother always made him a flower crown during this time. Typically as well you pick the flowers based on the person and what they like. I picked red because...well...” She regarded his burgundy coat. “And elderflowers because you said your mother used to pick them.”
“I...”
He didn’t know what to say. One week since he kissed her and promised he would try with her, and she’d already given him the happiest of days. He wasn’t lonely when he went to bed anymore. She gave him memories of kisses and her throaty laughter to think on before the fade instead of the thousand things that should be done when he woke up in the morning. He wasn’t so stony, or thorny perhaps to go with the theme of flowers. Perhaps he was made for softer things like love, her, flowers.
“It’s perfect,” he said. “Thank you.”
“You don’t like it.”
“No, I do, I do...”
The crown stayed on as they kissed, Lydia smiling between, believing when he said he loved the gift. Rylen gave him a look after Lydia left and he delivered the weekly reports, Cullen shrugging and calling it tradition. “I’m taken,” he said of it, and he rather liked being taken. He had a mind to show off her status as taken as well when he slipped up to his room later and dressed more comfortably whilst keeping the crown on. Before slipping to the tavern to meet her he made one stop in the garden, fashioning his own gift for her with unpracticed finesse. Last time he was a crafter of crowns made of flowers was years ago. But that was Lydia’s doing to unlock what he once forgot, to make him remember there was also good in the past.
He got a few looks from a few of his men when he at last made it to the Herald’s Rest, Lydia sitting at one of the tables with a glass of wine and her back toward him. He put his hands on her shoulders first, and she chuckled and settled against him before he slipped the crown on her head, sitting next to her.
“Jasmine and roses,” he said, Lydia’s cheeks red as she adjusted the crown, touched. “For you.”
“Oh, Cullen...I thought you thought I was being foolish earlier...”
He thought of his lucky coin buried in his pocket. “Maybe I like to be foolish.”
He leaned in, gently kissed her as she pressed her forehead to his, his golden head and her dark brown head adorned with blooms, the taken two the lord and lady of flower crowns. “Now everyone knows we’re taken,” he said, proud.
“Ah. We all knew that already. You two are the utter opposite of subtle. Good on you though boss.”
Laughing into his ale from across the table, Bull called them exhibitionists, making Lydia laugh and Cullen stare, indignant. Then Lydia kissed him again, and he was all too willing to deepen it. He proved Bull right, of course, but he was far too taken to care.
Thanks so much! Context (and light fic spoilers): Rowan meets Morrigan at Skyhold after the events the main game.
“Are you happy?”
He smirks. “Such a question. Your naked and on top of me and you ask what’s the most obvious thing in the world. Of course.”
She matches his smirk with one of her own, and he tucks a wayward lock of jet black hair away from her face. It came undone when she rode him, falling from it’s haphazard bun. He likes to see it fall, likes to thread his fingers through it as her silver and gold around her neck and wrists glints and chills his fevered skin as she touches him. He's memorized every detail of her to remember when he's away. Everything from the plum of her lips to the berry taste.
Reunited. They’ve basked in it. They’ll bask more, and more. All later though. For now, he only wants to hold her. Hold and just be. But there is something else.
“Rowan--”
He sighs. He knows that expression she wears, wishing the satisfied smirk was back. “Later,” he says. “We’ll talk about later."
"Do you swear?"
He nods. "I swear. Later."
Once he hated that word, later. Constantly she would say it in their early days. We’ll talk about it later. Later, later, later, and Rowan sometimes believe it would never come. Yet already in a sweet later, together after parting in the might of the Inquisition and he throws it back at her. Later. It’s turned from a thought to a promise.
“Alright,” she says, knowing it, and she leans down, her lips soft against his forehead, and then his cheek, and then the corner of his mouth before they kiss softly. They’re not afraid of futures anymore. They came back once, and then again now. Later is still a promise.
Later is now, Rowan bringing her to her back against the tiny bed she sleeps in above the Inquisition’s garden. But they’ve made do in tents and against grass, and once a boat along Lake Calenhad. Later they’ll have a grand expansive bed, and Kieran will likely come and knock on their door, and they’ll scramble to dress before they let him in and they all fall asleep together. Promises, futures. Later is s till a promise. They fall in love with the now.
