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

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[heorte]

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."

[heirring]

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.

[heorte]

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.

[heirring]

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.

[heorte]

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."

[heirring]

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.

[heorte]

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.

[heirring]

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.

[heorte]

"It's not as interesting as you think," he cautions, drawing his feet up on the bed, breaking the line of contact along their legs as the sheets drape into a tent around his raised knees.

There's a few beats of quiet, presumably Ellis gathering his thoughts. He's focusing instead on her fingers, skimming lightly over his skin.

"I told you about my mother's books," he says, a little abrupt into the quiet. As his arms raise to rest upon his knees, the muscle of his shoulder flexes under her fingers, shape of the scar shifting under the new position of his arm. "Some of them were about chevaliers, so my friends and I imagined we'd become chevaliers ourselves one day. Or the Ferelden equivalent. We had a lot of plans I don't remember now."

And hadn't Ellis ended up in armor regardless? Some of it had come to pass.

"One of my friends wanted to make a great spiked club like we'd seen in the pictures. He mostly managed with some stolen nails and a tree branch, and you can imagine where it landed, once we worked ourselves up to weapons training."

[heirring]

"And you claimed to be a good child," she scolds, scoffing across the line of his arm. "I hope you got revenge on your friend. Reminded him, say, every time you didn't wish to do some chore that he'd gone and put a nail into you and maybe he ought to do the heavy lifting instead."

But also—

"It is a wonder anyone child ever manages to survive to adulthood, given how predisposed they are to whacking one another with sharp sticks or throwing themselves from things. Look."

Raising her right arm, she removes her left hand from his shoulder so she might use the light of the anchor to see by. It takes some moments to find the spot, and she has to sit up a little—twisting almost fully toward him—but eventually she illuminates a fine line one or two inches long and nearly invisible save for the way the light plays a little differently across it along the backside of her upper arm for him.

"I jumped down from the very top of the stairs," is a proud declaration.

[heorte]

Two little scars.

There's something charming about Wysteria proudly pointing out this second set of scars pointed out to him, knowing that she doesn't care for the idea of scars, even a pair so easily concealed as this. It's an unexpected return for a childhood story.

Gently, he reaches over and draws two fingers across her skin, one over each line. Down once, then again, in the little flicker of light from her shard.

"Rough landing?"

[heirring]

"I have little memory of it, but I choose to believe the vase on the little table was at fault and that my landing had very little to do with it. I am also evidently a stupendous bleeder, or was as a child. And that only if my mother's assessment is to be trusted and I very much doubt that it is. She is quite dramatic at the best of times, and a broken vase and ruined rug cannot possibly account for any measure of best.

"Stop," she adds, batting his hand away. "It tickles."

[heorte]

Swatted hand raises, palm up, in surrender as Ellis grins back at her.

The fragments of story she parcels out about her childhood are charming, even if they're quite literally worlds away from what Ellis knows or can conceptualize. His hand lowers, rejoins his opposite hand he's let dangle over his knees.

A few questions flutter through his head, but drawing out descriptions of her mother is likely best done when they're fully dressed and out of this room. Or when Ellis is ready to offer a description in turn, if that moment ever comes to him.

Rather than say anything, he slouches back against the headboard, crumpling the pillow beneath him, and hooks his hand back through hers. The kiss this time is more deliberate, mouth moving over her knuckles before he lifts his head.

"I've kept you up very late, I think. With all this talk."

Ha, ha. Ellis, the verbose instigator.

[heirring]

She imagines his mouth is warmer for the grin he'd worn there before it. Certainly it curves better to the rise and fall of her knuckles because of it.

"So you have." It is a harmless enough thing to let him take the blame for, if he really wants it. In the mostly dark, her mouth tugs towards a smile and then is smoothed over into a very serious line. "We will have to keep it in mind tomorrow, and either return earlier or go straightaway to bed without any conversation at all."

It is said in fun, but it also isn't. Perhaps he means to only stay here this evening. Or perhaps tomorrow she will suggest he return to his room, for a person can only have so much of a pleasant thing before it becomes saccharine. Or maybe she will find tomorrow that the idea of sending him away is very unbearable. But for the purpose of the joke—

Anyway.

Still sitting up, still twisted toward him and given his slump nlw with a little height in her favor, she pauses then to set a hand on the headboard. A tentative flicker is overcome before it really shows, and then Wysteria bends. She kisses his forehead.

"Remember, you must not tell me if I snore," she reminds him, and then makes to wriggle her way between him and the wall and so down under the blankets and to the pillow.