Hooray! Exposure to the bath gets her to finally stop crying. If she had to guess why, it was probably the coordination it takes to disentangle herself from him enough to take off her clothes and get into the bath.

"Ugh," she says, scrubbing at her red and swollen face. "This is embarrassing, I'm sorry."

He also gets his clothes off and once into his bath promptly takes her into his arms again. "If you say so. I'm not sure I quite understand what people mean when they say that."

She snuggles him and resists the urge to cry again. "What, 'I'm sorry?' Or that it's embarrassing?"

"That it's embarrassing."

"Oh, uh. Well, usually I'm very proud of all of my personal qualities and quirks? I like being myself, and I like who I am. I'm not ashamed of crying on you, and I don't think it's bad, or that I should have had a stiff upper lip and held it in, but it's. A side of myself I'm not accustomed to. And now you've seen it. And it's sort of private and a little personal and I'm bizarrely concerned that you'll find it off putting or treat me differently because of it, even though you're wonderful—" her voice cracks and she takes a deep breath. "Damn it, no, it will be so much harder to talk if I'm crying in the middle of it, stop that."

He kisses the top of her head. "I won't find anything about you off-putting, nor treat you differently because of it. How does that sound?"

"Pretty good. I'll maybe be embarrassed anyway, it's not entirely logical." Leaaaan. "Okay. Talking. Conversation. A real grownup conversation about our serious grownup feelings. Yes. That. Shall we that?"

"Do let's," he says, kissing the top of her head again.

"Okay. I guess I can start, then." She takes a deep breath. "I have no clue in Tyria what I want from you besides, like. Waking up next to you and adventuring with you and saving the world with you and having sex with you on a regular basis. I want you to be happy and fulfilled, I want you to keep calling me princess, I sort of want us to see if we fall in love and spend our lives together? But we're from two different cultures and there are bound to be differences, and I don't know how it works in yours. Or if you care about how it does or not. I don't have a, a guidebook or model for how a relationship of this kind should go, to compare against. Or any idea where to find one, or if we'd even want one."

"My culture," he says, finding soap to clean her hair and massaging her scalp with it, "involves finding a nice girl of royal blood, marrying her, having lots of children, and continuing my line. So I think I'm on track," he says, archly.

She is briefly distracted by the scalp massage, then she blinks and sits up.

“... I actually have like, half a drop of royal blood in me, on my mother’s side. To Ascalon’s line. Which she technically forefeited when she fled the country, not that she was ever in line for the throne. Just. Distantly related to people that were. Um.” She opens her mouth, then closes it. “I have the vague suspicion that if I mention this to anyone but you, I might have a. A flock of suitors. Tell me I’m wrong, James, I do not want a flock of suitors!”

"Princess, I think if you weren't clearly attached to yours truly you would have a flock of suitors all the same," he says, a smirk playing on his lips. "That's also a thing we should talk about," he adds, musingly, then shrugs. "But in any case I'm not actually sure what their reaction would be, Ascalon is charr territory now, with perhaps the exception of Ebonhawke."

“I’m up for just never mentioning it again. Then I never have to find out,” she says, pausing to wash the soap out of her hair. “Anyway, the culture thing was just waving at a concept, what I mean is that I don’t want to leave either of us to assume how this delightful whatever it is will go? Because I bet if we did that there’d be a huge gap. Somewhere. And I hear those can be hazardous to one’s health.”

He grins at her and turns her head to kiss the tip of her nose. "What was expected of me, romance-wise, was just... never going to happen. I am not going to settle down and have many royal-blooded kids and teach them table manners and play Krytan politics. I had not expected to... ever do anything resembling romance, even. The closest I have to that is Canach and." He raises an eyebrow and shakes his head before continuing, "And I think this is in our blood. My older sister, Deborah, was a Seraph and later joined the Vigil—they're one of the groups dealing with dragons, or were before we created the Pact—although now she's taking care of her late boyfriend's family here in Divinity's Reach.

"So I suppose what I mean to say is, I cannot promise stability or children or even a very long life. And that has informed most of my choices in the romance and sex department so far."

She nods.

“Yes, that makes perfect sense, and is a very responsible sort of decision. I like children, but I’m not... I’d want to do right by any I’d have? And I don’t think I could do that with my current set of goals. Not responsibly, anyway, not without exposing a child to danger and being their mostly absent mother, and...” She trails off. “It feels like I have more pressing matters. So that’s not a loss for me, I don’t think my lifestyle would work with having a bunch of children. Or maybe any.”

"I've also, ah, had my share of lovers. Of many genders and species."

She blinks, then scoots over to scrub his back. “I’m sort of curious about the range and mechanics there, but that seems like it might be prying a bit too much to actually ask. I’ve been with a fair number of humans. Probably less than you, from the sound of it. Some casually, some... not. Uh, distributed genders too, since I doubt you’re going to tell me to grow up and marry a nice boy instead of ‘pursuing childish indiscretions.’”

"...was that how it was? How positively ancient."

She giggles.

“Oh am I allowed to kiss girls in public now without getting condescending looks?”

"Yes. You met Marjory, right? I will introduce you sometime to her girlfriend, Kasmeer. Both of them helped defeat Mordremoth. And Kas is a mesmer, too, I'm sure you will have much to discuss."

“Ooo, a mesmer friend of yours. Yes, I’ll want to have a highly technical chat with her. I’m glad she can kiss girls in peace. My parents didn’t condescend, but. It happened. It was very grating.”

"I can imagine. Some people find it peculiar to have relations with sylvari, and somewhat unimaginable to do so with charr, but I have been with both—yes Canach, but not Rytlock, I think Rytlock swore off humans after Logan."

“Charr’s brave, I’d be too thrown by the... everything... to get as into it as I’d feel the other person would deserve. Canach is cute, though, that one I can see. Sylvari are weird to have relations with, because of the age or... I suppose Canach was a bit prickly? Is that, does that follow everywhere, he was in armor I couldn’t really tell. Wait, no, this is rude, I should not ask intrusive questions about your previous partners, I apologize.”

He laughs. "I would have to ask him if he has problems with sharing this information but I would expect not, sylvari are all fairly laid back about sex and all bisexual. But yes, people wonder about these things and find it strange for others to decide to figure it out empirically." He shudders a bit when she scrubs a particularly nice place to be scrubbed at then says, "So, I take it you are not about to run away screaming?"

She blinks at him, confused. “... No? Why would I do that? If you’ve caught anything, there are spells for that, and I don’t expect you’d have slept with me without warning me if any were incurable and transferable? I do not expect my partners to be as untouched as freshly fallen snow. I don’t see a problem with finding things out empirically.”