when i go towards you it is with my whole life.

[heorte]

You came to the side of the bed and sat staring at me. Then you kissed me—I felt hot wax on my forehead. I wanted it to leave a mark: that’s how I knew I loved you. Because I wanted to be burned, stamped, to have something in the end— I drew the gown over my head; a red flush covered my face and shoulders. It will run its course, the course of fire, setting a cold coin on the forehead, between the eyes. You lay beside me; your hand moved over my face as though you had felt it also- you must have known, then, how I wanted you. We will always know that, you and I. The proof will be my body. — louise glück

Comments

[heirring]

She sets her forehead against his shoulder. It's not such a thumping a blow that it constitutes as a headbutt, but it's not wholly undivided from the thing.

"Your face would only scratch my hand," is perfectly sensible reasoning, blubbered though it is through fresh tears and the absurd, confused sense of elation that's pummeling her. She turns her face. Sets her cheek against his shoulder and stares for what feels like a very long time at the edge of his tunic while their hands are all cinched tight between them—

As then all at once it appears that one of her hands has come untangled, for she's scrubbing her face with her sleeve and it must have come from somewhere. Eventually, with her eyes are more or less successfully dried, she catches the edge of that collar and winds her hand in it. Securing a grip there.

"But you are meant to ask before it."

[heorte]

There's some quiet in the wake of that statement. Wysteria's tears ebb into nothingness, and Ellis holds onto her, presses a soft kiss to the top of her head as he takes stock of the way their bodies fit together and the hitching sound of her breathing and the firm clutch of her hand in his own. It is good. It would be enough.

And having arrived at that conclusion, the implication in the question takes him almost by surprise. It writes itself across his face, mild shock passing into a small smile.

"Do you want me to ask you again?"

As if it had not occurred to him that Wysteria might want him to kiss her, that there might be anything but a brief deviation and a return to business as usual. Even in the space of time between her reassurance and the slowing of her tears, Ellis had the time to think I shouldn't have done that and weigh that truth against how good it was to hold her, how much he wanted—

[heirring]

The lay of his collar is smoothed, a fidgeting hesitation in answer to the faint smiling curve she can hear at the edge of the question and feel against her cheek as the words hum through his chest. It is rare for Wysteria to have no ready answer, particularly to so simple a question. She might only say yes or no if she wished to. But—

"You recall all the little folded notes I had left you in the summer."

Sounds like a change in subject. She straightens slightly too, face all unevenly flush from crying and her attention still fixed stubbornly at the neck of his tunic and her hand there at it.

"It is a sort of—a lady's game, you might say. The folding is. In Kalvad it's meant for a very particular sort of correspondence." She raises her eyes to him then. And chooses, because she has been crying and making a fool of herself all morning, to be very brisk indeed. "For the affectionate kind, I suppose. You see?"

[heorte]

Affection means a lot of things. That's the first thought that comes to him as Wysteria fusses over the lay of his collar. Affection doesn't have to mean anything more than the way his entire body warms to her presence, the easy way he puts himself between her any anything dangerous, the long-established acceptance that he will carry her things, return books to the library on her behalf, tend to house and garden. Ellis' affection is a quiet thing, without expectation or demand.

It had never occurred to him that it might be returned in kind. The possibility of finding those feelings reflected back to him, it's—

"I kept them all," isn't exactly an answer, doesn't clarify whether or not he takes Wysteria's meaning. Across her back, Ellis' fingers trace the hem of her cape, following the neat stitching.

In turn, his thumb runs across her knuckles. It seems as if that's all he intends to say, that he's kept her notes, let that carry his meaning, before he says quietly, "I'd like to kiss you again. But I don't have to. My...regard for you doesn't change, no matter what happens."

[heirring]

The seriousness of her regard of him flexes, slipping in reply to the mingled embarrassment and delight that flares sharp for, 'I kept them all.' The sentiment is so ridiculous, absurd and so infuriatingly endearing and so entirely unsurprising.

That lack of shock has some grounding effect. All at once it simplifies the closeness, and the points of contact between, and even the slow, small shift of his hands. There is a stark reality in it. Yes, she might have guessed that already if she'd ever have any reason to.

"It would be acceptable," she says, so promptly that she nearly talks over his qualifiers. Her hand at his collar is a delaying brace and she must say the whole thing before the resolve of her elbow degrades—

"On the condition that you understand it would become unacceptable to me if you intend for it to be the last of two. I recall in the past certain reservations regarding your oaths and I would refuse to entertain such a cavalier attitude to the thing if later you intend to recall them. I doubt that to be the case. I know you to be a particularly thoughtful sort. But I know this business is often not so serious here as it is in Kalvad and I want only to be very clear of its value to me. That is all."

[heorte]

The invocation of his oaths, the undertaking he'd tied himself to and what it had promised him in return comes accompanied with a chill, the way a cloud blocking out sunlight might dim the warmth of the garden.

"I'll kiss you whenever you want, as many times as you want," Ellis promises her. "As long as I'm alive."

This is the promise that matters. There's no reason to be anything other than transparent about his attachment to her. Hasn't he already confessed as much?

But what comes after are the complications, the things that temper the broad sweep of what he is giving to her.

"I can't marry you," he tells her. Wysteria isn't the only one between them who remembers reservations, what had mattered to her. (Again, the cold prickle of awareness: I shouldn't have done this.) His hand flexes in her grasp, holding tight. "But there is nothing cavalier about this, for me."

The unspoken refrain: I am devoted to you.

"Is that enough for you?"

[heirring]

The indecision is a visible, flickering thing in her face. It is an earnest calculation, the serious examination she might give a particularly challenging problem of mathematics, or a page of unfamiliar runes, or the headache inducing tangled shape of an unknown bit of magic. It is last one, she thinks, that is the most accurate. The workings of mage craft in Thedas look so irregular is comparison to the regimented, orderly spells and seals of Kalvad. In Kalvad, all webs are made of a single bright cord woven in and over and through itself and the challenge is to undo the knots without severing it. In Thedas, there is nothing unfragmented. A dozen threads might make up a knot.

"I understand how it is possible to have one without the other," she says at last, quite decided. Is it no more or less difficult to untangle a knot consisting of two separate strands, only different.

"And I suppose, given the sincerity of the one, that I would be willing to see if it is. But I don't actually know." Her tone is very measured, severe even. But Wysteria's hand on his is secured fiercely, unrelenting through indecision and hesitation and whatever reasoning must be done. "So it would be something of a mutual compromise, you see. Is that enough?"

[heorte]

Is that enough? Ellis laughs softly, unable to stop himself. He cannot think of any scenario in which Wysteria would be the one who fell short between them.

"You will always be enough."

Even if she decides that she wants more than Ellis could give her, a husband and all that would bring along with it. (She should have that. He wants her to have that.) Even if in a week, a month, a year, she decides that she has had enough of him. It seems to Ellis that between them, Wysteria is making the bigger compromise. What is Ellis doing but passing into her hands something that has always been hers?

And Ellis thinks she deserves to hear those words regardless of whether his hands are on her or not. It is a very straight-forward thing, without qualifiers or conditions. She is enough, just as she is.

"It's enough," is only repeated for clarity's sake, to make his position clear knowing Wysteria will mark it. His fingers resume their progression back and forth along the hem of her cape.

[heirring]

To hear it one time at the tail end of that relieved kind of laughter might be flattering, but it's not promising. But to hear it a second time—the repetition turns a theoretical thing into fact. She does mark it. It is visible in the way her expression narrows and in how her jaw briefly sets in a flash of stubborn pride rather than jabbing insistence.

"Then you may kiss me again," she announces, like it is a thing she will wait for.

Instead Wysteria tips her face up expectantly, and rises a demanding half inch.

[heorte]

Instead of bending immediately, Ellis considers her for a moment. He needs to fix this moment in his mind. Wysteria's cheeks are flushed and her hand is warm at his collarbone where she's taken hold of his tunic and her expression is so determined. He can feel the way his expression softens in the course of his study, thumb flexing over her knuckles. His hand leaves off it's study of her cape's hem to set gently at the small of her back to keep her cinched close when he finally dips towards her mouth.

He kisses her, softly, deliberately. There's some indulgent edge in this moment, to kiss her thoroughly, to only break to draw breath and rest his forehead against hers. He draws a breath, but instead of speaking, drops a second, light kiss to the corner of her mouth before gathering himself enough to consider practicalities.

"I'd ask you again, but I've already made you late," Ellis says softly. Which he expects she'll remember, sooner or later.

And it occurs to him, in the wake of their agreement, this compromise, that he considers he'd like to do this properly. Whatever properly looks like to Wysteria.

[heirring]

As far as second kisses go, she imagines it to be a fairly good one. Though were someone to interrogate her on the subject, she might have more to say for the broad shape of his hand at the small of her back than the gentle shape of his mouth or the rasp of his beard. But there is a moment where, in reply to that lighter kiss, she begins to turn her head toward the bristle of—

Wysteria balks. With a dismayed squawk, she punches him in the collar with the heel of her hand and twists free. A flurry of papers must be swept up, shoved into the waiting folio at comically off angles. There is a crunch of bent corner and edges as she snaps the thing shut and shoves it into his arms.

"Oh—! Damn! Really, Mister Ellis! Your timing could scarcely be worse."

The waiting scarf is thrown haphazardly about her shoulders, hat and gloves smashed under an arm. She snatches back the folio, pausing just long enough to regard him and exhale a singularly exasperated sigh before turning toward fleeing the room.

—And then she rears back.

"You will have dinner with me this evening. And then you will read something to me and we will discuss it, and then you will go back to the Gallows. Best luck on your watch duty. Goodbye."

And then she really is going, bursting back out into the garden with such enthusiasm that it sends chickens scattering in every direction.