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]

Something in her face does fall though. Just a little. It's there in how the lines of play severity about her mouth and the set of her brow gentle just enough that they read as more genuine than imitation.

Sometimes flowers are perfectly all right, she doesn't say. It depends on the flowers, the season, and how long he will have been gone, and where they might come from and why he would think to bring them to her to begin with. Instead--

"I was only teasing you. You don't have to do either."

[heorte]

"I want to."

His fingers curl lightly at her hairline, nudging just so into her hair beneath the weave of her braid.

Wants to what? Bring her gifts? Flowers, artifacts, books, sweets, anything that would travel in his pack all the way back to her? He's wanted that before. Or to tell her everything?

He lapses into quiet, watching her face, attention circling back to all the places their bodies are touching.

[heirring]

A list of them: his hand high across the nape of her neck, fingers slid just high enough to count as being in her hair and the curve of his arm about her to get there; the link of their hands, and so her arm too where it's bent across his chest; and so much of the whole line of her in that borrowed dress thoughtlessly turned flush against his side.

It's a series of things she's forgotten to give much consideration, favoring instead an earnest study of the things his face does when he gets quiet and mostly still as if there is something to be divined from out of the wrinkles spanning brow and those tracing the corners of Ellis' mouth. She looks down at him, and the seriousness of it turns her mouth toward a soft frown.

"The thing I thought to say earlier," she says, because she can't ask him to tell her what he's thinking because it's so rarely what he wishes to discuss. "It's that my parents met under very similar circumstances to how you described it. They didn't know each other as children, but everything else—I believe it was similar. So there doesn't have to be such a difference between here and there. It shouldn't concern you so much."

[heorte]

In response he turns his head, just a fraction along the carpet, to look at back at her.

There's a joke he could respond with, easily made: Your mother sent a goat to your father's family? Thinking of it nudges a small smile onto his face as his fingers curl in her hair, thumb set just behind her ear.

"My only concern is that I make you happy," Ellis says slowly, the slight frown that appears more for trying to parse the sentiment into words that make sense than anything else. "I think what we build for ourselves here will look different than the possibilities either of us described, but I don't worry about that. I worry that we fashion something you're content with."

Because Ellis is so easily contented. What more can he want? He had been very serious when he'd told her it wouldn't matter if she ever kissed him again that night in her kitchen. It is enough to be here, with her. He is not so particular about the form their future takes, but he thinks Wysteria might be. There is still a chance this not enough, with all his limitations.

Their relative levels of life experience and otherwise might be a discussion worth having, but Ellis has the sense that maybe it's better saved for the cart ride home, or after some other near death experience they survive together.

[heirring]

Surely that is the exact thing everyone in the world wishes to hear. It's certainly a very agreeable sentiment. But it irritates in the way that a mystery does; in the way that wanting to know the answer to a question but being kept from it does. Not irritating in the trying sense; in the one that itches. A brush of something scratching.

The thoughtful set of her jaw is a delicate, temporary thing. Crooked.

"Then do as you promised and close your eyes."

[heorte]

What Ellis had expected was further questions, a rebuttal or prodding. But he takes a moment to study her, before he raises her hand to his mouth to kiss before releasing it. Presumably they are going to bed, which is fair enough. His fingers disentangle from her hair, arm stretching back across the rug, all easy, small separations to make her leaving easier.

He closes his eyes. Properly. The little prickle of unease at the disadvantage comes and goes. All this room contains is Wysteria, and Ellis trusts her, enough so to dispel the ingrained need to be very aware of everything happening in the space around him.

[heirring]

Yes, they are going to bed. That much is confirmed by the shift of her alongside him and the withdrawal of her arm. She gets as far as pulling her legs up under her, not quite on her knees but—

But before that, sitting on her feet and tucked in alongside him, she pauses. In the low golden glow of the firelight, she studies him where he lies flat on his back. It's a rare unobserved moment for it. To look at the slightly crooked arrangement of his left hand, and the scratch on his cheek, and the knotted scar that comes curving around his neck.

Her hand isn't tentative, just studied. She touches his jaw, and his cheek, and then eventually moves her hand into his hair. It's smoothed back, all gentle waves, with her thumb setting just there at his hairline.

"I am being easy on you, Mister Ellis. You would do well to remember it, should you ever find yourself laboring under the false impression that it is the other way around. Understood?"

slaps bow down

[heorte]

Wysteria's scrutiny prickles along his skin long before her fingers find his jaw. Ellis draws in a deep breath, eyes fluttering once but staying closed as her fingers map their way across his face. He holds that breath, exhales only as Wysteria slides her fingers into his hair.

A beat of quiet follows after her proclamation. Slowly, his hand moves along the rug, clumsily lifts to find her knee and squeeze gently.

"Aye," he answers. "I'll remember that."

It isn't lost on Ellis, that Wysteria is generous with him when she needn't be. His hand tightens, then lifts away, lacing together with his left hand over his chest.

"Go on, make yourself comfortable. I'll wait to get up until you tell me."

All the easier to claim the outside of the bed, fit himself in alongside her in the space she's left him.

Sleep comes easier alongside her. Ellis might tell her that, someday.