Slow Burning Dreamer

He took the last few steps more slowly than the others. His eyes scanning the room as his head rose over the bannister. Isala had already taken the last of the steps ahead of him and the Commander found his eyes wandering over the slender elven woman as she crossed into the room.

She was a wild and beautiful thing. Her pale hair curling around behind her long ears and down her back like spun moonlight. The faint traces of ancient elven writing that skimmed her forehead like a mystical circlet. The toned expanse of her legs peeking out from beneath his own shirt as she padded across the room in delicate bare feet.

“I’ll just be a moment.” She offered over her shoulder. She’d stopped in front of her wardrobe and withdrew a slip of material into her hands before disappearing behind a dressing screen.

Cullen remained at the top of the stairs, at the very edge of truly entering into her bedroom. The Commander kept his hands fixed at his sides while he waited, as if he were simply awaiting orders rather than standing in the Inquisitors quarters, without his shirt on.

After a few moments, Isala emerged from behind the screen with a garment of her own on. This one was shorter than the first. The slinky material fell like water over her lithe body and left little to the imagination.

Cullen let his gaze fall to the floor.

“Cullen, you can come inside a bit more.” Her voice was gentle, teasing. “You act as if something’s wrong.”

“No, n-nothing’s…” He blurted a little too hastily. Cullen licked his lips and tried again. “Everything is fine.” He was rubbing the back of his neck again.

She had crossed the room and stopped less than a foot away. His shirt hung across her arm. Her soft eyes stared up at him with the barest hint of concern pulling at their aquamarine depths.

“Do I frighten you, Cullen?” She asked quietly.

Cullen reacted almost instinctively. His hand dropping from his neck. He took a step as if he meant to touch her, but his hand fell back to his sides.

“No, of course not. Have I done something to make you believe…Maker, I…you could never…”

Isala’s gaze fell away then. She searched the wooden floor, the stained glass windows, the cold stone walls, anywhere but his face.

“It’s just, back there, in Josephine’s office, you flinched when I lit the fireplace and I wonder sometimes, what you must think of me. What could you think of me?” Her voice trailed off and Cullen took another step into the room. She felt his fingers brush down her cheek before he gently lifted her chin with the barest of pressure.

“What I think of you…what I believe…is that you are something…special.” He murmured.

Isala let her eyes meet the molten gaze of the Commander whose touch sent a little thrill through her body. There was a weight to his eyes that she felt inside her chest. It had nothing to do with the exposed flesh of his torso or the heat she felt radiating from his skin. It was the way he could look at her. Like he saw something past the moment they stood in. Like he could see a future there. A happy ending.

“There are moments when I want to touch you, but I’m afraid you’ll shy away.” Why was she telling him this? Why confess to some preposterous insecurity that made almost no sense?

Isala shook her head then, trying to cover the previous statement up with a smile. “Pay me no mind. I’m being ridiculous.” She held out his forgotten shirt in offering. “Your shirt, Commander.”

It was her hand that he grabbed, and the shirt fell haphazardly at their feet. He pressed her palm against the bare skin of his chest, just over his heart. He was almost hot to the touch. Alive and solid beneath her fingertips. She could very nearly feel the heavy thumping of his pulse and Isala swallowed to coat her suddenly dry throat.

“I’m not shying away, Isala.”

Creators, when he said her name…

The elven Inquisitor licked her lips and let her fingers spread wide across his skin as she allowed her eyes to wander over his form. It felt like an invitation and a promise and Isala warred with herself for a moment over the silent opportunity. Could they? Would he? Now?

“Will you humor me?” She asked softly, resisting every urge in her body. Willing herself to be more than this primal need.

His answer came in the lift in his brow and the soft smile that pulled at the little scar above his mouth.

Isala let her hand slowly fall away from his chest, as difficult as it was. “Lie down over there.” She motioned toward the sofa that sat nestled against the long banister of her staircase. The arching, stained glass windows casting moonlight and shadow across the large piece of furniture and farther into the room.

Cullen followed her gesture with his eyes, giving her a curious look before turning slowly to humor her.

“On your front.” She added before he could reach the couch. Cullen shot her a look over his shoulder and Isala bit her bottom lip as she watched her Commander lower himself onto her sofa. His muscles shifted beneath the skin in his arms and back as he found a comfortable laying position on his stomach. His face turned so that he could still see the elven mage standing at the edge of the room.

“On your order.” He teased gently and Isala took another moment to simply gaze at him lying there before she made her way over to the couch.

She held her breath as she took a seat at the very edge of the cushions. She was sitting parallel with the Commander’s waist and very nearly didn’t fit with Cullen resting comfortably against the bulk of the sofa.

The elf quieted her racing pulse as her hands slowly slid from the base of the human’s spine, up to the broad expanse of his shoulders. His warm skin was smooth and lean save for the occasional forgotten scar. Isala let herself simply learn the terrain of his muscles, his skin; let herself take in the story of his body as she caressed him. She knew she’d never get much purchase from this angle and so, without much warning, she adjusted her position. Isala climbed up and over the human lying on her couch, straddling his lower back suddenly.

She felt Cullen tense, rising a little from the sofa to attempt to catch a glimpse of her over his shoulder. She ignored his reaction, anticipating it in a way, and continued tracing gentle lines over his back.

"What are you…” he began, just as her fingers gripped the curve of his neck, where he was infamous for touching out of anxiety. “Oh…that’s…rather nice…” She felt him relaxing beneath her hands, sinking back against the cushions as she kneaded his neck and shoulders.

Isala smiled. “I wondered if you’d ever had a massage. You’re always rubbing your neck and I can only imagine the tension you must feel.” She was using her thumbs to root out knots beneath his skin.

“I can’t say that I have.” He murmured, half into the pillows.

“Well, now you can.”

She heard him making low, satisfied noises as she worked through the tension in his muscles. Isala smiled at his appreciative groans and continued along quietly while she struggled to ignore the fact that neither of them were particularly dressed and she was positioned precariously atop him. It he had rolled over…

“Better?” She asked softly when her fingers had grown too tired to keep going.

Cullen didn’t answer at first and Isala leaned down across his back to hear him in case he’d been speaking into the cushions. All she heard, however, was the slow, even rhythm of his breathing. Deep inhales and long exhales of a steady pace.

He’d fallen asleep.

Isala felt the little smile tugging at her lips as she listened to the Commander breathing beneath her. Slowly, very slowly, she lifted her weight from his body, worried she might wake the sleeping human. When his breathing didn’t change, Isala drew the small blanket resting on the back of the couch down across his form and folded her legs beneath herself on the floor. She sat there, for how long, she wasn’t sure, simply watching him sleep.

What was it about him? What made him different? What was it about this shemlen man that had her twisted up in knots? She’d never been a closed minded sort of person. Her clan often traded with humans and rarely came into confrontation with them. She’d seen and spoken to several of them before her Keeper had sent her to the conclave and yet, Cullen stood out among the rest. In an Inquisition overflowing with diversity, he continued to stand out to her.

“You do not love Cullen?”

Solas’ question played over in her thoughts. Her answer to the other elf becoming more confusing by the day.

“I do not know.”

Looking at the sleeping man in her room now, she felt something stirring inside her chest, a kind of juxtaposition she couldn’t explain. An intense weight that fluttered inside of her like the delicate wings of butterflies. Both heavy and uplifting.

Creators she couldn’t.

Could she?