#doing period research is always so interesting my jaw actually dropped when i realised you would have to PAY as well as give coupons--

[treasureplcnet]

various karl and esther drawings :') netflix give them back to me PLEASE i don't want to keep going without them

[jewishzevran]

this heart is starting to come to life

So earlier this week, @cullenvhenan posted this about her inquisitor immy lavellan and cullen in a modern au setting, and i couldn’t stop my little goblin hands from writing it. i had to keep putting my head on my desk and take deep breaths because they love each other so much and they just don’t realise yet buhuhu ;____;

Cullen groaned, and dropped his head against his steering wheel, wishing the ground had swallowed him up on the walk from the restaurant to his car. 

What a fucking disaster. 

She had been nice. She was pretty. She was interested in his hobbies, and had been respectful about avoiding the topic of war. Yet, by the end of the meal, he somehow felt even lonelier than when he had sat down. It had been two years since he had left Eliza and that whole Maker-forsaken mess behind, but she was still finding ways to ruin his night. 

He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose, sighing heavily. At least he had a couple of days off. 

The drive back to the apartment block was, thankfully, uneventful, and he pulled into his usual space feeling marginally less shit than he had done 15 minutes prior. Nodding to the security guard at the door, he checked the mail and then headed up the stairs. He'd go for a run with Mushy to clear his head, and hopefully tire himself out enough that he didn't spend six hours staring at the ceiling.

There was no familiar barking or tail wagging at the door when he stepped inside, and he frowned for a moment, wondering where Mushy had got to before he heard whining and sniffling from the lounge. Cullen took off his shoes and padded gently towards the source of the noise; when he pushed open the door his heart sank, because Mushy was sat in front of the couch whining and pawing at Immy, who was curled up on on it, knees pulled right against her chest and her face buried in her lap while she cried.

"Hey, hey, hey, Immy…" He said, walking quickly to the couch and crouching beside it, gently resting a hand on her leg. "What on earth is wrong?"

She started at his voice and her head snapped up, but she relaxed and sighed when she registered who he was. 

"Oh, Cullen." She said, wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands. "I didn't hear you come in."

Cullen shifted to sit next to her on the sofa, still looking at her with deep concern. He waited patiently for her to take several deep breaths, and felt around blindly for the box of tissues that he knew was on the coffee table. Mushy boofed quietly and nudged them into his hand.  

"It's my boss. Again." Immy finally said, wrinkling her nose and yanking a tissue from the box angrily. "Do you know how much work I've actually done in the lab this whole week? Ten minutes. Ten! He treats all of us like children, talking slowly when he explains the most basic alchemical concepts like none of us have degrees or training. I filled out my own appraisal today, Cullen, because he told me he couldn't be bothered. It's humiliating. We're fucking miserable, and all I ever hear is how lucky I am to work for such an esteemed alchemist." She rolled her eyes at the last two words, flopping back against the cushions. "I want to quit. I should quit. But I have bills to pay, and lab work is so much easier to find when you're already working in one, and it took me so long to find this one, and I…" She trailed off, looking at Cullen and biting her lip as her eyes filled with fresh tears. "I'm scared."

"I understand," he said, rubbing her leg soothingly. "It's okay to be scared. And it's okay to be angry. He treats you terribly and I wish there was something I could do to help."

Immy smiled gratefully, scratching Mushy's ears absent-mindedly. "Thanks, Cullen." There was a pause where they lapsed into comfortable silence, before Cullen had an idea. 

"Come on," he said, smiling and getting to his feet, holding a hand out to Immy. "Let's go to the corner shop. You need ice cream."

Immy raised an eyebrow. "You're the one always telling me off for eating dairy." She adopted a mockingly serious expression and lowered her voice into a terrible impression of his own. "You're lactose-intolerant, Imryll! Stop eating cheese, Imryll! Why have you got a milkshake, Imryll? You'll only make yourself feel worse later on!"

Cullen chuckled and rolled his eyes. "It's an emergency. I'll let it slide. Now come on."

Immy grinned and took his hand, letting him pull her to her feet. “Fine. But you’re paying, and we get to buy treats for Mushy.”

The sun was just dipping behind the roofs as they stepped onto the pavement, and Cullen found himself enjoying the short walk to the shop. He and Immy were content in silence, and he watched as she hopped from paving stone to paving stone, skipping and twirling round lamp posts, dancing to music only she could hear. It was nice to see her like this for once; she spent so long working, and the rest of the time stressing about that work, that seeing her be herself was a rare sight these days. It was a welcome change. 

Cullen watched her in the store too, chatting happily to the clerk, who knew them well by now, smiling warmly as they both entered. She picked out ice cream, and managed to convince him to let her get two tubs, though both of them knew it wasn’t a hard sell. She snuck extra treats for Mushy onto the counter too, which Cullen pretended not to see, and Immy pretended were a total surprise to find in the bag. 

When she sank onto the couch, Cullen retrieved her favourite stuffed toy, and the pink fleece blanket that sat on the bottom of her bed, and tucked her in. She tried to protest but Cullen just raised an eyebrow, which, accompanied by a boof and tail wag from Mushy, was more than enough for her to relent. 

Five minutes later, they were settled in their usual position: Immy snuggled into one corner, legs stretched out, feet in Cullen’s lap, with Mushy curled up under Cullen’s arm on the other side. Immy tucked into her ice cream happily and raised an eyebrow skeptically when Cullen picked out their entertainment for the evening.

“A chess documentary?”

“What?” He replied defensively. "It’s informative, on a subject I like, and not nearly complicated enough to require our full attention.”

“Fine.” She said reluctantly, nudging him with her foot. “You’re lucky I like you, Cullen.”

He chuckled. “So you keep reminding me.”

It was about another half an hour later when Immy suddenly sat up, eyes wide. “Oh!” She said around a mouthful of dessert. “I completely forgot! How was your date?”

Cullen groaned in response. 

“That bad, huh?”

“It was… fine.”

“Buuuuut?” Immy encouraged, and Cullen sighed. 

“But it was just fine. It was… boring, really.”

“No spark?”

Cullen shook his head. “Nothing. She was nice and pretty and I barely remember anything we talked about. And the worst part is, I think I knew it would be like that before I arrived. I’m not even sure why I agreed to meet her in the first place.”

That part was a lie. He did know, but he couldn’t bear to admit it to Immy. He already felt pathetic, he didn’t want her to pity him on top of everything else. 

She smiled at him sympathetically. “Hey. It happens. At least it was forgettable as opposed to disastrous.”

“Well, there is that.”

“You know, like that time you went to Joe’s Bar, and-”

“Yes, thank you, Immy.” Cullen said, blushing furiously and glowering at her. “You know I swear the reason no one has forgotten that is because you keep bringing it up.”

Immy grinned. “Who? Me? Never.” 

It should have annoyed him, but for some reason, he just rolled his eyes and shook his head fondly. “You’re impossible, sometimes.”

“Look, someone has to keep you interesting, Mr ‘I-Watch-Chess-Documentaries-For-Fun’”

“Hey, you were getting really into it before you decided to bring up my shambles of a love life!”

Immy just stuck her tongue out, and took another large spoonful of ice cream. 

They watched the rest of the documentary, then Immy found some ridiculous foreign drama to watch that Cullen had never heard of, and they ordered take-out. The next several hours were mostly spent laughing. Immy stole his glasses to do a terrible impression of him sat at his date, and he helped her brainstorm outlandish scenarios in which her boss would get his comeuppance, and she would be appointed head of the lab and given crown funding from the King to do whatever research she fancied, and make dairy-free ice cream that didn’t taste like garbage. Mushy posed several interesting ideas, which Immy listened to intently and rewarded him with treats for, agreeing with everything and pretending to take notes. They shared food from each other’s plates and Cullen gave her the spare dumpling in the serving of five, because he knew it would get him a smile. 

It did, and her eyes crinkled with delight as he insisted she take it, and his heart definitely didn’t speed up when he noticed her dimples, or how endearing they were. He didn’t see them very often, but whenever he did, it was a smile that lit up her whole face, making her eyes sparkle. 

“It’s okay, you know,” she said quietly during a period of silence. “That you’re struggling. With dating, I mean.”

Cullen sighed and closed his eyes, putting his food down on the table. “It’s been two years, Immy.”

“That’s not that long.” She shifted position, rotating to lean against his shoulder, tucking her legs up underneath her. 

“Isn’t it?”

“Not after what happened, absolutely not.” Her hand came to rest on his knee. “Stuff like that takes time to get over.”

Cullen felt his jaw tighten. “But I-”

“But nothing, Cullen,” Immy said, lifting her head and turning to look at him. “You’ve been through a lot of shit. You wouldn’t say the same things to me, would you? That I was taking too much time to recover or that my progress was meaningless?”

He wanted to disagree, but she was right. He would never say those things to her. But she was kind, and passionate, and she spread light wherever she went, and he was just… him. He turned to meet her gaze, and she was looking at him with such a fierce intensity it momentarily stole his breath away. 

“Be kinder to yourself, Cullen.” She said, quietly. “You deserve it.”

"Thank you," he said, his mouth suddenly dry as sandpaper, "for listening to me. It… helps." She was so close he could count each individual freckle on her face if he wanted, a canvas of constellations he suddenly longed to chart. 

"I'll always listen," she replied. "You're my friend, Cullen."

The silence that followed only lasted a few seconds, but it might as well have been a millennia. Cullen's eyes flicked to Immy's lips, and it felt as if the entire world was holding its breath. His pulse thudded in his ears. How had he never noticed how nice her lips were before? 

A police siren wailed outside, and Cullen cleared his throat, pulling away and rubbing the back of his neck, feeling heat creeping up his face. "Yes. Well. I'm glad. You're mine too. My friend, I mean."

Immy was blushing as well, looking pointedly at anything that wasn't him, and he seized the opportunity to disappear before he embarrassed himself further.

"I'm going to. Um. Go for a run. Take Mushy. It'll help me sleep. Okay. Cool." He stood up from the sofa like it had burned him and nearly power walked into his room, closing the door far too loudly. He leant against it and slid down until he was sat on the floor, groaning loudly and banging his head against the wood. He could still smell her hair. It would have been so easy to reach out, to tangle his fingers in those beautiful, thick, black curls and press his lips against hers—

Oh. 

Oh no. 

He was fucked.