Chapter Text
Surfacing from sleep, Leliana rolls over and feels the letter crinkle under her hand. She smiles.
The predawn light is enough to read the handful of words again. Cassandra has always protested she is bad at letters, but every page of blots and strikethroughs and frustrated additions is nearly like having her here.
She breathes the paper and ink, and throws her arms out across the bed with a sigh. Well, not quite; though her directness can still be surprising in writing, and Leliana cherishes some of those passages especially.
But this one says she returns today, after much too long at the new Seekers’ monastery.
Leliana pushes the covers aside. First the dawn prayers, and the daily meetings, and then some time to arrange something appropriately different.
When her study door closes behind the lord chancellor, Leliana closes the ledger he left her and pages through the sheaf of designs for a replacement chapel window. Her last task today is to approve one so that the repairs can proceed on schedule.
The drawing with the most eye-catching style also has a tiny procession of nugs marching in the border below Andraste. She chuckles at this bid for attention—her fondness for them is one fact she’s allowed to be public—but they truly are charming. And none of the other designs are as well executed. Well, then, she will play to type and the window will honor the Maker’s most darling creatures. She jots down the artist’s name and a direction to the stewards, and stamps it with her seal.
Leliana lifts off the Divine’s headdress, rubs her temples, and stretches the kinks out of her back. There. No one else looking for Most Holy outside a life-or-death situation will find her today.
Outside, she strolls through the courtyards, letting the late spring sun soak in and considering.
Her final scheme has several elements, of which the most essential is a raven from the first gatehouse Cassandra passes, so that the water will be hot.
At the half-built monastery, she happens to know, they wash from buckets, or in a snowmelt stream, and the mountain is too rocky for gardens. (As she walked she cut the richest-smelling of the new roses and plucked the petals into a bowl herself, a satiny-crisp shower of reds, a beautiful private joke.)
Cassandra’s room has been aired and scrubbed into the spartan shining state she prefers, and a tub brought up from the cellars that looks wildly out of place and must have been a past Divine’s chief indulgence. (Victoria is not too exalted for the bathhouse, but not today.)
As she waits, Leliana rearranges a tray: some good wine, a new book, a cold platter from the kitchen with the tiny strong Nevarran confections she likes, the rose petals. Beside that, a note, and a box of bath-preparations from the more decadent Val Royeaux perfumers, the sorts of things she rarely buys herself. (Leliana has no such reservations, and many thoughts about trying the ones she hasn’t.)
In the rookery she waits some more, feeding the birds and making conversation with the sisters, and when the raven comes fluttering in, she orders the bath filled, hot enough to last.
There are a hundred ways she could keep eyes on Cassandra from here, but she restrains herself and paces the halls, imagining what she may be doing instead: perhaps now arriving at her door, setting down her saddlebags, shaking her head, a gradually brightening smile as she discovers everything.
She won’t turn down a fresh hot bath after that journey, and certainly not this one, Leliana thinks she can say. So, then, now she will be undressing, dropping her travel clothes on the floor (and going now to help with that is a temptation, but not the plan).
And now perhaps lying back in the water and closing her eyes, letting a sweet melt on her tongue, or leaning to open the book with a careful dry hand, unable to resist her curiosity, or just washing off the sweat and dust, which Leliana can imagine well enough to warm her body as she walks.
A little perversely, she savors the last bit of waiting. When she decides it's been long enough, she lets herself return to the door on quiet feet and knock.
“It’s me,” she says, against the door.
When she hears a faint, decisive “Come in,” she breaks into a smile before slipping inside and latching it behind her.
“Was your ride very long?” She crosses the room in a few steps. “Do you need anything? More hot water? Or—”
“Come down here,” Cassandra interrupts from the bath, takes her hand and pulls her down as she feels her smile broaden.
Her kiss is pointedly grateful and long. Their fingers lock together, she smells like soap and roses and herself, and Leliana feels at home again, though she hasn’t left.
“So,” she says, now kneeling by the carved edge, “you liked it.”
“There is plenty of room in this ludicrous tub. So can you.”
“Is that a proposition?”
“I could have pulled you in just now. Your Holiness.” They laugh, faces leaning close. Cassandra brushes Leliana’s hair back, and it clings to her wet hand. “Was sharing not your plan? I have missed you more than all of this.” Her glance encompasses the room, the half-finished food, the wine, the water.
“No need to ruin these, then.” Leliana lets go and stands. She reaches behind her for her buttons, quickly, enjoying the way Cassandra’s look reflects her own anticipation, frank and restless, as she folds each part of the Divine’s vestments over a nearby chair.
“The cellar-brothers say the tub dates to the reign of Faustine II. I was curious about whether I would fit, I will say, but she must have been less dull than she seems.” She climbs in, and sighs as the water and Cassandra’s arms enfold her, at the tight, abrupt relief of fitting together.
The bath is still hot. Stretching her toes to the end of the tub, Leliana relaxes in contented expectation. Cassandra kisses her cheek from behind.
She takes her hand again and examines it, intertwines their fingers. No different from when she left, this time. “And I’ve missed you. My bed is full of letters from you again, you know.” She feels Cassandra’s mouth curve, pictures the abashed expression she knows is there, and grins.
“I said I would try.” Cassandra squeezes her hand. “But I am no competition for you. I opened one of yours one day in front of poor young Seeker Theodric and almost choked. He would not believe I was well. I had to accept a home remedy to escape.”
“Perhaps I should start double-sealing them. Which one was it? For future reference.” She’s eager to discuss trivial things just to hear her talk, feel their voices’ counterpoint, after so much mute paper.
Cassandra clears her throat. "It was the one where you had ... ideas about your desk in the Divine's study. Many of them."
Leliana does remember this, and laughs, curling around against her. "Oh, yes. I had been working very late. My imagination ran away with me."
"I did not say they weren't interesting."
“Noted.”
After a prolonged and enjoyable pause, Cassandra says, "The ride was long, but not hard. And you have everything here I could want."
“Mmm.” Leliana waves a hand toward the box of bottles. “Did you have a chance to try it all?”
“Of course not. It is all beautiful, but I don’t know how I could in that time. Or what half of those are.”
“I could help with that.” She unfolds herself and reaches for the box, patting her fingers dry.
She picks up a round bottle at the front. “Leclair compound number seventeen, balm of night-blooming flowers. I have used this—it’s lovely for your skin.” Cassandra makes a noncommittal noise, so she sets it down and reads off the next few. “Gill's captivating salts. Oil of the shadow-of-violets. Lydean dreaming salve.” Above them is a tall smoky fluted vial. “Severin's effusion of five blackened resins, which I have not tried, but sounded quite fascinating.” Beside it, “Imperial crystal grace essence, Picardie's proprietary prismatic philter—”
At this Cassandra breaks into a laugh. “These names are pretty but nonsense. Let me smell … that one.” She points.
“All right.” Leliana pulls a small crimson-sealed bottle from the box. “Hundred-glories attar?” She pulls the cork, and a warm spiced rose-gold scent tickles her nose. She passes it under Cassandra’s, who closes her eyes and inhales.
“I do like that.”
“Shall we try it?”
Cassandra takes the bottle from her. “I think I should try it on you.”
"Absolutely." Leliana leans on the carved leaves at the tub edge. “Maybe while I read to you?”
“You have always known me too well.” She pours the aromatic liquid into her palm, a few stray drops escaping down her forearm before she can catch them.
Leliana reaches for the tray and pages through the book. Outside, the sky over the Cathedral is streaked with pink clouds, and this room is placed high enough for light to stream in, golden and unimpeded, at this hour before sunset.
Cassandra is never what she’d call languorous, of her own accord, anyway, but she can be deliberately, formidably attentive, like this. She leans close behind her and strokes a slow line down Leliana's left arm, staying clear of her fingers on the book. Then the other arm with her other hand, releasing the scent further. She leans her chin on Leliana’s shoulder to see the pages, and asks, “That one?” when she finds the beginning of a poem.
Leliana starts to read, but keeps losing focus on the words as Cassandra smooths the attar over what feels like every inch of her skin above the water, and she can almost taste the hundred glories: back up, curling around her wrists, up her neck as she lets her hair fall forward, down over her shoulders and ribs, up her belly to run light trails over her breasts, until she feels like a glistening anointed creature.
She manages to read to the end of the first long poem and then another. Because her distraction amuses both of them, she lets herself gasp between lines, repeat herself, and insert small praises and exclamations that make Cassandra laugh.
Maker, she has missed that sound. She knows they have all night; she planned it that way; nothing they share is forbidden to Divine Victoria, or anyone, anymore.
Then, as she is embellishing another silly compliment, Cassandra's left hand dips to her inner thigh, and her lips touch between her shoulder blades, and Leliana feels her breathe in, and suddenly she can't wait longer.
“Oh, I just need this right now.” She drops the book, and slips back from the edge against her.
“I missed you so much.” Cassandra buries her face in her neck. “This,” she says, “I—”
Leliana covers both her hands with her own, kisses the right one. “Hmm?”
“When I write to you. I don't have the words to say it.”
“And I have so very many.”
She twists to face her then, and leans in and whispers, and marks her with scented skin, until their embrace turns hungrier and the tub feels too cool.
“We should—”
“Yes.”
And they stand up, splashing and disentangling, climb out dripping, and lead each other to Cassandra's tidy bed, which isn't for long.
Night has closed in around them, the curtainless windows starred with reflections of their few candles, when Leliana leans over her, catching her breath.
Without lifting her head, Cassandra gives her a slow smile that fills her half-closed eyes, amber and shadow.
Leliana smooths still-damp strokes of hair across her forehead. “Don't sleep yet,” she says. “I want to hear about everything else you did for the Seekers. I have so much to tell you that’s happened here.”
“It is not as though I’m leaving again soon. Unless you have some new plan.” She clasps Leliana’s arm in a quicker grip. “But I don’t need to sleep if you don’t. Tell me.”