!!!

YOU’VE NEVER TRIED A BATH BOMB OH NO. 

Okay, but do you like baths? Do you like nice-smelling things that turn your water pretty colors and sometimes have sparkles so that your skin is like magical unicorn-kissed skin after?

In my experience, all bath bombs are not made the same, and I’m kinda picky about them. (Oh, you should go send a note to @dearophelia, who can give you a list of approved places on etsy, etc.) I love Lush’s bath bombs. They smell divine, they turn your water pretty colors except that one time I used the honey one that smelled amazing but turned my water pee-yellow that was disturbing they leave your skin feeling soft (and sometimes sparkly). The only sad thing is that a lot of their bombs rotate throughout the year, so some of my faves are not available right now. I adore the Dragon’s Egg, though, and I think that’s a staple. (It smells lemony and turns your water GOLD–not pee yellow. With sparkles.) I bought a couple of their new Easter ones tonight, though.

To me, they’re just… the height of relaxation and self-care. They’re not cheap, but the lovely hour I spend soaking is definitely worth the price.

Rose’s not wanting to answer the question is really only about a 2 or 3 now. (As soon as something can be looked at in hindsight--especially when she was the one embarrassed--she can almost always make a joke of it.)

Rose’s embarrassment and horror and general face-like-the-sun feeling at the time was a 10. See, it was early early days in Skyhold, and she’d been gossiping with Dorian. Dorian was... enlightening her about things, which was having the side-effect of a) making her realize that there were, um, gaps in her education and b) making her realize she needed to get someplace alone (since her person of interest was still very much in mostly-unrequited terrible-non-flirting mode. “Is it flirting?” she asked Dorian. “My dear, if you have to ask, one or both of you are doing it very wrong.”).

So she was distracted as she headed out of the library. She took one look at the crowd milling around in the Great Hall and knew there was no chance of getting through it unnoticed. So she ducked down the stairs to the other library. The one with all the cobwebs. (Not that she found cobwebs arousing, of course but...) Flinging herself behind the desk, she, uh, let herself think about all the, um, possibilities Dorian was, uh, elucidating.

Rose isn’t particularly quiet. Especially when she thinks she’s alone in a cobweb library no one visits. Before she could do something really silly like call out a name (Oh, Maker, she hadn’t been moaning a name had she? She was never sure after), she heard footsteps--

Shit.

Peeking out from around the desk, she saw very familiar legs wearing very familiar boots and the hem of a very familiar mantle. The owner of said things bent slowly, quietly placing a stack of books on the ground, and then backed away, drawing as little attention to himself as he could. But she caught his face and it was blushing a blush to burn down all the ragged books around them.

(Later, when she thought about it, she was afraid this definitely meant she’d been moaning a name.)

He cleared his throat at the door and made a big deal of walking away. Loudly.

(What Rose doesn’t know, because it’d leave Cullen at an 11 to tell her, is that the time she caught him catching her was not the only time at all. For a while, he felt like it was some kind of Maker-forsaken joke fate was playing on him, happening to walk in on her, overhear her, get cornered by Dorian and his stupid insinuations...)

… moaning the other’s name

Cullen couldn’t sleep.

This, in and of itself, wasn’t particularly strange, of course. He’d had trouble sleeping since Kinloch Hold. Since the demons went digging around in his head and plucked out every dream, every hope, every secret wish and then used those to torment him with all he could not have.

And all that even before Kirkwall, before Meredith, before he woke one day and realized he did not like who he’d become. That, more than that, he could not abide the thought of his family seeing him thus. Mia thought him an inconsistent correspondent, but Cullen knew the truth of it: he had not written because he knew very well how unhappy the truth would have made his glowing, golden sister, with all her dreams and all her ideals.

He sighed, turning over in his bedroll, staring at the dim shadows of his tent. 

At first, he thought the sound of his name, uttered low and sultry, a figment of his imagination. Or, worse still, a ghost of a demon come back to taunt him. He pinched himself, hard, but the sting did not steal the voice.

Low, guttural, sexual, the voice murmured, “Cullen. Oh. Yes. Oh.”

He knew damned well he was facing the Inquisitor’s tent. He knew damned well he wished he was in that tent with her, that her pleading eyes and sad smiles hid disappointment. He’d taken her to his favorite spot, his home, the place where he’d been young and bright and idealistic. He’d kissed her there, and pressed his old coin into her hand, wishing, wishing, wishing he could give her more. 

She groaned his name again, and he knew she was sleeping; her voice was too drowsy, her guard too down. He thought of her delicate fingers pressed between her legs, and wished instead for it to be his fingers, his tongue, his--. His own groan caught him unawares. Maker, how he wanted her. Maker, how he was terrified, uncertain. He could not give her a whole man, only bits and pieces, like the shards she picked up in her travels.

“Please,” she moaned. “Oh, Maker, Andraste, spirits and demons, please.”

Soon, he thought, hoped, prayed, his own hands clenching in the fabric of his bedroll. Soon.

I am preeeetty sure there’s going to be a letter/chapter of Unshaken by the Darkness devoted to this very question. :) But goodness knows that is some way down the line, so... I reserve the right to change this up if things end up shifting a bit in the writing of it?

They do get together before Perseverance, though I don’t know that they’ve gone beyond flirting and kissing and blushing a lot and making not-very-subtle eyes at each other and playing chess and dancing (in my canon playthrough, Wicked Hearts comes before Here Lies the Abyss). In some ways, I think that’s interesting because Cullen is way out of his element during Wicked Hearts (made especially clear if you have Cole along, incidentally), so, regardless of how that plays out, I can see it potentially being a stone that begins an avalanche. It’s a reminder of how out of his depth he is in how many ways, and a reminder of the scale they’re working on. 

Then Hawke shows up (again, fiddling with timelines in order to make them work, and in order for it not ALL TO HAPPEN AT ONCE, and I figure um, people don’t just travel from Starkhaven to Skyhold overnight), and even though they were friendly enough in the end, she’s a reminder of all he left behind, and all he failed to do, and how far he fell before finding his feet again, and how close he came to losing it all. And how many people were hurt because he failed to act sooner, failed to question, failed to see what he should have seen, failed to remember the boy he’d been before Uldred.

Ahhhh. Let's see.