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

She doesn't start at the heavy thump of the boot. That would be very silly.

"I am to expel you to the floor should some dream of yours wake me. In which case, you had better relocate that side table slightly away. I wouldn't wish to clip your head against it."

See, how very rational. As sensible as stripping her darker stockings off now that the ribbons have been undone, looking anywhere but at him as she does so. It is dark. He can't see the color in her face and it's possible he isn't even looking. When she is finished and the edge of her shift has returned to its correct place, she folds them over once together and then they too are lain across the hard sided traveling case.

And then she makes to shift, beginning to draw herself further onto the bed—

And pauses.

"Ellis."

He is a series of edges in the dark, shadows cast in the lines of his face and under his brow and hanging about his seat on the chair like a draped mantle.

"Would it be very awful if I were to watch you undress? I would of course lie down and look at the ceiling if you preferred."

When she'd paused, his head had turned towards her, questioning even before she spoke. And in the space afterwards, he is very still. Ellis already knows the answer, but it takes a moment for him to draw breath, be assured that his voice would be steady when he spoke.

"I don't mind," he says first, even as he considers his body and all the wreckage of it. Like so many other parts of his life, he balks at the idea of her seeing it. So maybe this is the best way, with the pair of them cast all in shadow. All his scars, the dark shape of his tattoo, exist as smudges in the dim light rather than the stark, unavoidable reminder of his life.

He straightens from his slouch, one hand smoothing down the front of his tunic. He can't quite make out her expression, and wishes he could.

"I watched you, so it would be fair for you to watch me," is said a little absently, Ellis' thoughts snagging on his hands in her dress, wound into her hair. The impulse to cross the room to be within's arms reach of her is strong, but all he does is bend to finish off the laces of his second boot, work it free and set it beside it's match.

It's difficult to say whether the shadowed shape of her expression alters at all, but she must be satisfied by the form of his agreement for after a moment Wysteria nods and draws her legs up into the bed with her. The fall of her shift makes for a fine tent under which to one up, the point of its knee becoming a ready resting place for her chin. Her hands fold patiently about that leg, fingers lacing at the ankle.

He agreed to the terms, didn't he? So now she may obviously be as hawk-eyed as she likes in the muddled dark of the room.

Straightening from the slouch he'd leaned back into, Ellis spends a moment wringing the faint ache from his left hand rather than reach for the laces of his tunic, or the strap of his suspender. Even without clear view of her face, Wysteria's attention is nearly a tangible thing. He exhales a soft, short chuckle before he pushes up out of the chair.

Stood there, in the middle of the room, he indulges habit for a brief moment. Rolls his neck on his shoulders, shakes out his fingers, acknowledging the wear of the day before turning in towards Wysteria and prompting—

"Tell me what you'd have off first."

Well.

Presumably he cannot see her eyes go very round in the dark, but he must hear the faint demure clearing of her throat. Her hands shift absently about her bare ankle and after a moment, she offers, "It seems to me that there is usually a fairly natural order to the matter of undressing, Mister Ellis. For example, you might hardly remove your shirt before your braces. And I presume that your socks must go past the cuff of your trousers, so it only makes sense to be rid of the latter before sorting the former. Unless you keep your stockings on with your braies during sleep. I don't recall your state of dressing from the last time, given that all was dark and I was very determined to be unaware."

Is not an answer to his question.

"You must do away with the tunic and all its parts first, I think. I have seen quite enough of Mister Averesch's torso that I cannot imagine it will shock me. Whereas I can hardly picture the state of your knees."

"Ah, Mister Averesch," has a distinct note of humor in it.

Again, a hand passed down the front of his tunic, as if reminding himself of the whole of it before he makes a move towards his braces, shrugs them from his shoulders before turning his body to unfasten them where they've been attached. They join her dress on the chair, draped over one arm as Ellis reaches up for the laces of his tunic.

"My knees are unremarkable," he promises, as the laces come loose. Having turned from her to discard the suspenders across the chair, he pivots back to her as his hands move at the waist of his trouser, plucking the hem of his tunic free. Even with his eyes adjusted to the light, she is all gray shadow, sitting very still on the bed. He'd heard the shift of fabric when she'd moved, and is thinking of it still as he draws his tunic up and over his head.

His arms lift, pulling his tunic up and off, and then his arms drop. He doesn't move, not right away. How much can she see of him in all this shadow? The prickling awareness of her attention sparks a low swoop of sensation dropping from his chest as he stands in the center of the room for a long moment before—

Much like he had done for her dress, he shakes out his tunic, folds it over, and then discards it over the arm of the chair too before he turns again back towards her.

"What'll you have next?" is steady, in spite of the catch in his breath, the sensation very close to nervousness cinching tighter as he looks back at her.

Her chin remains where it is, fixed across the bend of her knee, and if he can feel the weight of her attention in the dark then it can still only be half as keen as her focus actually is. It feels like she is hardly aware of anything else past the rasp of fabric shifting, the shapes of him and his tunic in the lack of light, and what comes uncovered by it. Even in the mostly dark, the radial lines across his chest draw the eye. They aren't stark for the shadow of the room casts everything in complimentary grays, but they aren't invisible, and the prickle of curiosity that they spark burns like an ember high in her chest.

It feels like she has to swallow it down, hot and firm, to say, "I suppose it must be the trousers which come after. Unless you have some preference otherwise."

He is so—very broad, thinks some distant part of her. Which she knew, because she has stood beside him and thrown her arms about him and lived in the shadow of him and buried her face against the sturdy shape of his shoulder. But it is a different thing this way. It is good, she thinks, that he is stood there rather than nearer. It would be very hard to look at him otherwise.

"Socks," he puts forth, which is perhaps an answer as to his preferences for sleeping attire.

The retreat back to the chair happens slowly. He is torn between relief at the darkness, muting the worst of the scarring, and wishing to have lifted off the cover of the brazier to better see Wysteria's face. Heat is working it's way down his chest, the unfamiliar warmth of a blush gathering at the nape of his neck, spilling down his collarbones. He puts his hand there, briefly, as he perches on the edge of the chair to tug his socks off one by one, and stow them away in his boots.

And while there, seated on the chair, he undoes the buckle of his belt. There is a soft hiss of leather as he draws it free as he rises back to his feet, half-turns to drop it onto the seat without breaking his gaze from her. His heart is beating very hard.

All the buttons he's undone this evening, and it's the fastenings on his own trousers that he fumbles with briefly. He pauses there, trousers undone and falling open in his hands, and looks at her. Not hesitating. Waiting is closer to the truth of it. Waiting to hear her prompt him, or not.

The metallic clink is very sharp in the dark. Her hands close silently about her ankle in sympathy to it, and she waits for a beat long enough after that she realizes she is holding her breath and must breathe out again, slow and quiet. Breathe in, gentle and regulated (with all the fine hairs at the back of her neck standing on end).

After this, what will they do? Lay beside one another under the blankets. She will be aware of the heat radiating off him, and he will almost certainly know how fast her heart is beating, and she will have to be pretend to be asleep for quiet some time before the tempo of the thing slows enough to admit her any real rest. That is probably the shape of it, she knows, both of them somehow made more tentative by the other. All flinching and spooking.

"Go on then," she says after a moment. She can't make out the exact look on his face, but imagines the question in it to be heavy in the air. More briskly, firm then because she has decided she will not be skittish: "I haven't all evening, Mister Ellis."

At a distance, in the dark, Ellis' smile is more or less unseen. But the exhaled laugh marks it, the same way his ducked head might.

There's very little ceremony to it: Ellis draws the fabric open, then bends to guide the fabric down his legs. It's not a graceful movement, but there's a fluid ease in everything Ellis does, at home in his body and aware of what it can do. When he rises, discarded trousers in hand, he folds them once, then twice over, forces himself to make that half-turn back to the chair once more before re-devoting his attention to her.

It leaves him stood there in the middle of the room, stripped down to his braies. The muted glow of the brazier finds his naked ankles more readily than it does his knees, or his thighs, bared where the loose fabric has been neatly cinched, or higher, where linen gives way to scarring. Some quiet, self-conscious urge works through his body, culminating in a flex in his shoulders, weight shifting from one foot to the other before his hands turn, palms up, in silent offering.

Really, they are hardly the first set of bare ankles she's seen. Or thighs even, for that matter. Young men have such a propensity for running about half dressed or less in seemingly every version of the world, and certainly she has been in Thedas long enough (and in Riftwatch's company, and in Kirkwall specifically) to be more than passing acquainted with the concept of the thing entire. But admittedly not in the dark, with the light leaking from the brazier illuminating only in parts and pieces. And not when she herself is in so little. And it makes a difference, too, that it is Ellis who has kissed her and whose smile she likes very much.

The turn of his hands tugs humorously at the corner of her mouth. She flattens her chin a little further across the peak of her knee, which even in the muted darkness lends her some air of cheek. There truly is only one cure for uncertainty, and in some sense all of this is so painstakingly silly, and he had laughed just a moment ago. So—

"Turn once around if you please. I should like to see all sides of you equally. And before you say, I didn't make you turn about, well—you didn't ask me to do it. So let that be a lesson to you."

When he laughs this time, it's a louder, warmer thing, head tipped back instead of downwards. It dispels the creeping awareness of vulnerability, the mental calculation of the last time anyone has seen him laid more or less bare.

"Poor conditions for it," Ellis remarks, without any inclination towards a remedy. Instead, his arms lift slightly, uncertain as to position, as he obliges her. He hardly feels short-changed, but the prickling sense of exposure needles from the nape of his neck down his spine in direct counterpoint to the self-conscious flush that's worked it's way down his chest.

To his credit, it's a slow turn. He takes his time, only speeding slightly at the very end when they are very nearly facing each other again. His raised hands lower by degrees, returning to his sides as he steps forward, once, twice, but halting out of arm's reach to study her on the bed and ask, "Further requests?"

How much does she look at him, really? At the shape him, anyway. She must. For example, she is aware of the curve of his shoulder and the shadow of his spine, of some mottling at his hip which might be some freckling or scars or might be the cast of the darkness. But he's right; these is hardly the ideal environment under which to observe him. But mostly, she finds herself watching the angle of his chin and shoulder, the tilt of his head, and deciphering the shadows of his expression first as he turns away from her and then eager again to see it once he's rotated back.

It is so good to make him laugh, and to see him smile. Better, when he shortens the distance by those few steps. She can see him a little more clearly because of it. An arrangement of scars, dark ink, sturdy muscle—a long annotated series of questions she might ask.

Instead, with some small glint of the brazier light in her eye and some adopted arch air, Wysteria simply says, "No, that will do for now. I am quite satisfied, thank you." Her chin remains on her knee, hands loosely knit about her ankle. "Though in the spirit of equity I shall at least pretend to be open to negotiation, should you have any demands of your own."

Ellis' smile widens, sparked a little brighter by Wysteria's expression. He thinks for a moment to dither over the opening she's given him, but there is nothing to be but straightforward with her in this moment.

"Please kiss me," is not a demand, but the repetition of it is fraught in a different way than it been earlier in the night. What a new thing this is, wanting so deeply, feeling the way he cares for her rooted low in his chest, wound and tangled in his ribs. His skin is humming under her study. It has not been so long since he'd had his hands on her hips, but suddenly the sense of separation is acute and all-consuming. Why had he stopped touching her?

Wysteria is wound neatly into herself, coiled up securely and Ellis thinks to take her hand or cup her cheek, if she'd loosen but a little. He ends up stalled at the edge of the bed, reeled in towards her. When he reaches down, it's to gently curl his fingers beneath hers where they rest at her ankle, rather than repeat himself.

She should be more embarrassed, not less; his fingertips are so warm across the top of her bare foot and ankle and the drawn up cinch of her leg does, fundamentally speaking, put his hand outrageously close to the edge of her shift and everything below it. And he is warm in different ways; she can hear it in his voice, and feel it in the shape of his shadow as he migrates close.

But it is dark, and she's made this into a joke already and it is very hard to take anything so seriously once she's laughed at it once. And it's strange to recognize, but there is that odd sense of vulnerability in him. The awareness that he is made up of all these delicate marks and that pressing on any one of them might make him flinch. It inspires the kind of tenderness fit to replace uncertainty.

Someone must be sure.

"As you've have been so agreeable," she concedes, already raising a hand to touch his neck and draw him down by. She must tilt her face rather far up to kiss him, but there is something pleasant in that too—him having to bend, and the supple openness of the kiss because of it.

And he does bend, easy and biddable, though even lowering himself doesn't diminish the kiss itself. His fingers catch at hers, encourage her grasp away from her ankle until he can lace their hands together and hold onto her. His grip is very firm, an anchoring point as he sinks into their kiss under the slight pressure of her hand at his neck.

When he draws back, it's not to go far. It's for his forehead to rest against hers, for his hand to come up to cup her cheek as he sinks from there to set his face in against her bared neck, sunk lower in the process. The touch of her fingers at his neck have drummed up some quiet ache in him, all this wanting held in check as he leans in against her with their hands clasped tight.

He inhales, forms the first syllable of a word, then lapses into silence. He kisses the high point of her throat, a lightly dropped brush of lips over the beat of her pulse, before making to straighten upright again.

Which earns him an abbreviated noise of protest, her hand in his tightening like a tug. He's made the mistake of winding his fingers through hers, letting her hand settle at his neck. There is a low center of gravity and an unwillingness to separate that he must pit himself against if he wishes to fully draw upright and away from her.

"No wait." She leans after him. Just a little. "I want you to say it. Whatever it is."

Here is the thing: he doesn't really wish to part from her.

It is not so much a drawing back as a realignment. His mouth moves along the line of her jaw, seeking her mouth. One soft kiss to the corner of her mouth, before one softer kiss set to her lips, gentle and maybe stolen, considering the rules they've been playing by. His thumb strokes along her cheek.

"Not yet," he says, soft against her mouth. "I can't yet."

Wysteria deserves to hear it, this thing that lives in the shape of his hands when he touches her, catches in his mouth over and over. It's been there for such a long time. It bloomed, unnoticed, and wove roots through his bones. It colors everything. Maybe she's already discerned it in him. But he doesn't know how to say it to her. Not yet.

"But I will. If you can give me a little time."

It seems like it's been such a long time since he last refused her something, that to be told to wait is strange. Something pressed into the hand that she now has to carry, unable to set it down anywhere. In the nearness of the lack-of-space and the darkness between them, makes some small disgruntled noise. It's breathed out so near to his mouth that she may as well hum it against him.

"Then you will have to think of something else to tell or ask me now," she insists, a small huff of sound as her hand comes away from his neck.

It's not a withdraw—merely a relocation, her hand falling back to where his fingers have circled about her ankle. She mirrors it, thumb and forefinger wrapping about his wrist.

The answering chuckle is so painfully fond. He kisses her again, once more, before drawing back enough to see her face. A passing regret for the plaits: he has the urge to put his hand back into her hair, but instead—

"Lay down with me?" he questions, instead of telling her she is generous, that she's more patient with him than he deserves. It's not no, and it's not necessarily stalling, though he hasn't decided which of those options appeals.

Yet the tsk says she has taken it for the latter, and a fundamental waste of the offer at that. Yes, she has already agreed to that. He need not really ask again. With a brief pinch to the soft underside of his wrist and a long suffering roll of the eyes, she draws his hand from her ankle and so too releases him so she might hike herself further into bed.

"One of these days, Mister Ellis, you will discover some impulse or question you cannot restrain. I am looking forward to it. For I think it a very charming attitude, and should like to see you cheered in such a state rather than distressed by it."

She has successfully wriggled her way back into the bed and up toward the head of it, wrestling to draw back the blanket from underneath her without exposing too much leg.

Rather than climb in after immediately, Ellis takes the few moments while Wysteria settles herself to crack his neck, then nudge the nightstand a few inches further away. It occupies him to the point where Wysteria's drawn up the blankets to her satisfaction, covered enough so he can follow her in and settle himself along the outer edge of the bed.

Rather than protest the unlikelihood of such a thing occurring, he slouches up against the headboard, blanket pooling in his lap. Wysteria's assessment of the mattress had been more or less correct. It's smaller. By necessity, they are touching all along one side, hip to thigh to knee.

"Here, let me see your hand."

The line of his leg is very warm against her. She can feel it radiating through the thin fabric of her shift and thinks distantly that if he remains this temperature that she may be required to push him out of bed for the sake of not sweating through the bedclothes. But that is a concern for a few hours from now, and is presently tucked away and forgotten.

"You may take your pick of them," she says, drawing both out from under the blanket.

Wysteria rests them palm up across his thigh, the acidic green of the anchor set into the one such a low and murmuring glow that the light it casts hardly illuminates much. It has been quiet today. Dormant - fit for illuminating little flashes of skin and the edge of clothes and not much else.

The light is blocked for a moment as Ellis folds his hand over hers. He brings her hand to his mouth briefly, though that's not the intended point of this exercise. It's just for the pleasure of the thing, being able to kiss her hand casually on the way to a greater point. His thumb runs along her knuckles as he holds onto her, attention drawing back to the point he was attempting to make.

"Here," he says, a little absent as his opposite hand prods carefully along the muscle of his shoulder until he finds a punched-in divot, smaller than her finger, ragged along the bottom and smoothly circular along the top. He puts her fingers there, then lets his hand drop back to his lap. "It's the first injury that scarred, and it was very foolishly acquired."

This counts as something told, surely. Foolish, boyhood story though it might be, it's a truth offered up to her.

She is amenable to the guidance--first to his mouth and then to the line of his shoulder, setting her fingertips where he wishes them. But then his hand falls away and her touch becomes featherlight, drawing back as if uncertain about the weight of her own hand against the heavy mark dug into him. It's a delicate thing, touch gone tentative about that scar's ragged edge. In close proximity, the murmuring light of the anchor illuminates the divot's edge.

"Well?" Half told at best, surely. "You must know that you will now have to describe what manner of foolishness."

But she does at least sound equal parts pleased to petulant. It is not overlooked generosity.

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

no subject

no subject

picks this icon, lols

good work being prepared for this specific scenario

thanks im an artiste

i've been in the presence of greatness all this time, geez

whatever i see these bespoke suspenders icons

look

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)