howtoactfereldan | (no subject)

Alistair lifts an eyebrow, grinning.

"Oh, come on, don't hold back now. We're married. No lies between us."

"Now, it's not a lie, exactly." He squeezes Alistair briefly. "It just wasn't... foremost on my mind."

Softening: "We'd both had a difficult day. You far more so. And then... there we were. Quiet. You were better -- far better than you'd been in the morning. And I was... glad. Grateful."

Alistair's smile softens in turn. He twines the fingers of one hand with Cullen's.

"And so you kissed me," he murmurs.

"It was an accident," Cullen says, dignified. "And then it was... unobjectionable, apparently, so... that seems to have worked out for us."

He chuckles, warm. "I'd say."

Alistair lifts Cullen's hands to kiss his knuckles.

"Rest assured that if you hadn't, I probably would have confessed my feelings in truly embarrassing fashion a few weeks later. And then possibly run and hid in my old quarters depending on what sort of face you made."

Cullen blinks in genuine surprise.

"Truly? You -- ? I'd just assumed... neither one of us had thought about it before then. You didn't... did you?"

"Well -- "

He shrugs: a small, awkward one-shouldered movement.

"I told you I'd already begun to imagine us together after the war was done. I didn't picture it as anything but friendly, it's true. But there were times I'd look at you -- moments where you'd smile, or the sun would hit you just right, or you'd make some little gesture when you were thinking particularly hard about those trebuchets..."

He squeezes Cullen's hand.

"I don't think I recognized it at the time. But if I'd had a few more weeks, I expect it would've it hit me."

Cullen huffs, and tucks his face against Alistair's neck. Alistair might be able to detect how red he's turned by the extreme heat radiating off his cheeks.

"Trebuchets," he grumbles, for lack of anything else to say.

"It wasn't always trebuchets," says Alistair peaceably. "Sometimes it was other tactic-y things."

He turns his head enough to kiss Cullen's hair.

Still grumbly:

"Go kiss a siege engine, then. Or -- whatever."

Struggling not to laugh: "I love you, too."

He squeezes Cullen's hand. Then, more sincerely, Alistair adds, "I didn't mean to embarrass you."

"Hmph," Cullen says into his shoulder.

Then:

"At least trebuchets don't turn me on."

Alistair splutters a laugh.

"That is not how I meant it, Rutherford -- "

"I don't think I believe you," Cullen says cheerfully.

Alistair groans.

"I meant that seeing you deep in thought over complex math problems is incredibly endearing and kind of attractive," he says. "Not that I want to have illicit relations with a trebuchet."

"But I'm not doing anything. The trebuchet's more believable."

"Is this where I remind you -- "

And his smile is crooked now.

"That I'll still love you no matter how much or how little you may do?"

"It's good to know," Cullen murmurs, kissing his neck. "But I didn't think we were talking about love."

He tips his head to the side with a soft hum.

"All right, lust then," he says, chuckling softly. "Or that simpler moment when you look at someone and realize, 'Oh no, they're quite cute.' Anyway, I could also argue that you were doing something at the time. You were thinking."

"You don't know that for certain." He does it again, taking his time. "I could have been meditating. The opposite of thinking."

Alistair breathes out, eyes slipping closed.

"I suppose you could have been," he murmurs. "Were you?"

He kisses his way up Alistair's neck again.

"Of course not." Smiling against his throat. "I was learning about integrals."

"I -- " His breath hitches, faintly. "Knew it. Mm."

Right. Focus.

"When you're meditating you close your eyes. Very obvious."

Cullen hums with amusement against his skin.

"We could just leave it with 'there's no accounting for taste.'"

Alistair starts to chuckle again. "If we must."

He insinuates himself more thoroughly against Cullen.

Softer, "So long as you keep doing that."