"Yes, you are," Cullen said, the rest of the conversation forgotten for the moment. Bickering about templars and mages was all he had heard for the longest time, and Cullen was growing rather sick of the whole argument. For every person that thought mages should be freed, there were only a rare few of them who gave any thought to the templars within the equation, and the equation held the same for the opposite. Those concerned about keeping mages confined had little to no issue with how the system seemed to run for those doing the confining. And often those concerned about the templars didn't particularly care for the plight of mages in the same way. It was a mess, and honestly, Cullen was rather relieved that he and Neria seemed to be on the same page. So he didn't see any problem in turning his attention to much more important matters.
"I know what the Tower was like, Neria. What most of the other apprentices were like to you," Cullen said. They'd been friends, after all, for a really long time. He'd seen some of the worst they'd had to offer, had chased some of the more particularly vicious of the taunters off more than once, and it had been impossible to miss just how hard a blow each of those incidents had been to Neria. The fact that she'd been one of Irving's favorites had made everything that much worse. "But you are beautiful. Just as beautiful as you are brilliant and capable." Because he knew those were compliments that she would take without question. Tied together, they played off one another to form a more elaborative whole.
"I..." Cullen started, suddenly seizing though at the thought of what he wanted to say. It was stuck in his throat, probably inappropriate after so long apart, and he swallowed it down, moving to replace it with something else. "I really... I just...." Why were words so hard? "Oh, hell."
Cullen hadn't kissed a lot of people in his life, and certainly not like this, but it was easier than trying to find the right words, words that weren't overwhelming or trite, that didn't sit well with him to say, or that he just couldn't come up with. This was... Well, it was neater. And Cullen had always rather liked keeping things orderly.