Getting Comfortable
It caught him off guard, at first, how casual she was about touch—how she would lay a hand on his upper arm to get his attention, rest her head on his shoulder when they sat side by side, or throw her arms around him for no reason at all. At first he'd flinch or automatically move away. Not because it made him uncomfortable, but because he wasn't used to it.
As he got to know her better he realized that this was simply who she was. She was tactile, but only with people she knew well. She greeted Dorian with kisses on the cheek and danced in wild circles with Sera. Once, he'd even seen her run up and hug Solas—Solas—because he was "Looking a little sad." But before their first kiss, she never once touched Cullen. It had been she who pulled away whenever he made as if to move closer.
Through the torrent of emotions that had come with that kiss on the battlements, he remembered being surprised by how uninhibited she seemed. There was none of the tentativeness that he associated with a first kiss. All of that had come from him. She had thrown her arms around him, melted into him. Kissed with such oblivion that even when he tried to pull away she followed as if unwilling to let him go.
"I suppose I'm more comfortable now than I was when we first met," she said when he asked about the change in her behavior one night. They were sitting on his bed with a book open in front of them and, in usual Aylwen fashion, she was basically draped over him—her arms around his middle, head against his chest, and legs looped over his.
He breathed in, and he could feel the press of her body as his chest expanded. He had his arms around her as well, and he realized suddenly that there was hardly a place on his body where he couldn't feel her warmth. Realized also that he felt no self-consciousness or nervousness at all about being so closely entwined. It was the most natural thing in the world.
"I suppose I am too," he said.
She hummed happily and hugged him tighter in response.