...

She cracks up, and kisses his forehead. Oh, but she has it bad for him.

Then she wriggles out from under him, and gets his boots and spikes off of him, and drags him so he's a bit better placed on the bed. This complete, her own boots come off, and she collapses beside him to join him in slumber.

He will sleep for a very, very long time.

She wakes first, since while she had probably technically gone longer without sleep, the Mists kept her from really feeling it.

Half asleep and still covered in soot and ash and monster blood, she looks at him through half lidded eyes. He's so pretty. And strong and brave and charismatic and friendly and good and courageous and maybe a little bit mad. It is the most obvious thing in the world that this is precisely how she wants to wake up every morning. Next to him. Covered in monster slime or dragged out of bed at an obscene hour or waking to a house on fire and filled with assassins, or...

It doesn't matter. She doesn't care. She nestles closer to him to listen to his heartbeat, and she leaves tear stains down her ash covered cheeks, wondering if she's in love.

He wraps his arms around her when she does, mumbling incoherently in his sleep and smiling slightly.

He's so great, how can he exist, this should not be possible, how could she have possibly landed on the perfect man right out of the Mists? That seems impossible, or crazy, or unhealthy in some way, but he's so wonderful and they're actually impressively thoughtful and respectful and communicative for all of their two days of knowing each other, and he calls her his princess and, and.

Yeah she's just going to be crying on him for a while.

He wakes up a bit later. "G'mornin'," he mumbles, before yawning enormously—and then shutting his mouth. "Ngh, morning breath, sorry."

She hiccups a little giggle-sob, feeling very ridiculous.

"Good morning, I don't mind, you're perfect, I'm crying and I can't seem to stop."

He looks down at her properly through bleary eyes and blinks some sleep away. "Crying? Why, princess, is everything okay?"

"Mhm," she affirms. "Better than okay. G-good tears, you're wonderful, I want to wake up next to you covered in monster blood every morning. If I get to every day until we're in our hundreds, it won't be enough, shit I'm sorry that's probably coming on a bit too strong."

"Oh."

Pause.

"Maybe we should talk about it sooner rather than later then."

He doesn't sound displeased at all, though. Just—wondering.

"Maybe, yeah! I'm sorry, I didn't expect to randomly burst into tears at the sight of you, I absolutely wanted to give you time to think, darling. I still do, I just. You're so great."

He laughs. "How about we talk about it while we get Destroyer grime off us?"

"That sounds like a good plan," she agrees, sniffling a little. She is vaguely aware that crying has led to snot, and getting cleaned up sounds great right now.

So after James asks his servants for food they can go to that huge bath again.

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!”