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

Obligingly, Ellis sinks from partially reclined to fully reclined to play the part of table. One hand finds her knee and settles there, face tipped to watch her.

"There's a bottle of wine at the very bottom," he tells her. "I think it's one I remembered you liking."

Ages ago, that party where they'd hidden in a closet together and abandoned Fitz to do the talking, Ellis remembers some offhand comment Wysteria had made about the vintage served along with dinner. Considering how little had been praiseworthy about that evening, that had stuck.

But otherwise, it's largely bread and cheese and meat, accompanied by little jars of berries and jam and fruit. Plain, but meant to be filling, and to keep on a day's journey in and out of Kirkwall.

"So there is," is a precursor to a much more approving noise once the bottle has been drawn free and she has had a chance to examine it. Glancing down past it— "I doubt whether this one will balance very well on you however, so I may as well keep it for myself."

And so the bottle is thoughtfully tucked securely into the crook of her bent knees before Wysteria closes the saddlebag and fishes it in the general direction of his head.

"Here. You may use this as your pillow."

She has serious work consisting of opening jars and arranging everything about his person to do.

The hand at her knee remains, shifting slightly to accommodate the addition of the bottle. Ellis reaches up to draw the saddlebag into place behind his head, propping himself up slightly.

"Very comfortable," Ellis tells her. "You'll have to me if it's a good picnic. The cook helped, but if there's something missing..."

Between them, Wysteria might have more experience with picnics. Ellis' experiences with eating on the road is likely vastly different and possibly lacking.

"That is, I think, the appeal of a picnic, Mister Ellis. The novelty of eating out of doors far from any kitchen makes everything taste altogether better than it might elsewhere. I have rarely been on one where I found myself wishing for anything that wasn't already close to hand."

She has cracked all the lids from all the jars and aligned them patiently along his side. The bread is torn into pieces and arranged on the cloth in which it was wrapped (still on his middle). The cheese is similarly divided.

"But no, I think it's all been very thoughtfully done. Now," she says, looking warmly down at him. It occurs to her that she has acquired a habit of seeing him so easy as this, where once that was—not not true, precisely. But it seems close to it. "What combination of things would you like first?"

The ruling on picnics and what best constitutes their make up goes unchallenged. Ellis is content enough to listen to her and watch as she works her way through the items.

There are points in which all becomes markedly surreal. That he has landed here at all is unbelievable at times, and he has a sense of it now, watch Wysteria arrange a picnic lunch across his torso to her satisfaction. It preoccupies him just long enough that his answer is delayed, though he draws up one elbow as if to sit up then abandons the idea of moving any further for fear of disturbing her handiwork.

"You choose," he tells her, broad enough to be mistaken for you choose for me or you choose for yourself, and I'll take something after.

"Then I will assume you like more or less everything to hand for otherwise why would you bring it. Did you know, I have never been very fond of raspberry jam but here I quite like it. The taste is entirely different to how the fruit is in Kalvad, though the appearance itself is quite near to identical. Isn't that funny? And it is only raspberries. All other fruits--the ones which are familiar to me--have all been as I remember them."

This she says as some of the tart jam in question is spread onto a bit of bread. A chunk of cheese is similarly assigned to it, and then the whole combination is passed over to him before she moves on to arrange the same combination for herself. The sun is warm. The air smells sweetly of clover from where they have trampled it, and the back of her neck is beginning to take on a faintly pink cast without the protection of her broad brimmed hat. It is a fine afternoon for sitting out of doors and they are far enough removed from the road and the city that it is easy to pretend that there is no one else at all who they should concern themselves with.

"Would that I had an example of a Kalvadan raspberry. I would like to look at them both under Miss Niehaus' telescope."

Microscope.

It strikes him as sweet, despite what a little gesture it is. His hand flexes on her knee, but remains as he takes a bite, processes what she's telling him.

"Maybe a bush will fall out of a rift one of these days."

It wouldn't be the strangest thing that dropped from a rift. And even possibly an improvement, comparatively.

"Will you tell me what other foods you like here?" is a genuine question. All the meals shared between Ellis, Tony and Wysteria had never really yielded an understanding of what she genuinely liked as opposed to what was simply sufficient and unobjectionable.

Ellis is no more equipped to distinguish between a telescope and microscope. What Wysteria would gain from using it to look at fruit is also beyond him, but he assumes Wysteria will outline it for him sooner or later.

"Oh happily!" She is getting into a rhythm now, falling into that familiar pattern where she speaks easily and without thinking while her hands and therefore the bulk of her attention are occupied with some other task.

"It is a great treat to have fish out of the sea, I think. They are all fantastically oily. Swordfish is quite spectacular. Have you ever had it? I gather it's somewhat expensive, but it was served at some party I was obligated to be at. I can hardly recall which one now. And there were those...I don't remember what they were called. The dumplings we ate in Ghislain with the cheese in them all floated in sauce. Do you recall? They were this size and shape."

She pauses, first stuffing her piece and bread and cheese and so on wholesale into her mouth before using both hands to mime a small square. Ravioli.

The careful arrangement of food across his middle keeps him from leaning up to her, and the urge manifests in his hand tightening at her knee as he suggests, "Ravioli."

In which he remembers the dinner in question, being there with her, and the food exists as a note in the side margins of it. They'd both been oddities, and Wysteria had made the careless scrutiny of their hosts tolerable.

She'd made a fair amount of things tolerable. That's something to tell her eventually, he thinks, but not right now. He doesn't want to invite even the adjacent trappings of Riftwatch's work into this moment with them.

"What else?" he prompts, as she chews her way through the bread and cheese. "Was there a dessert? The cakes, from that night in Ghislain?"

In reply, she makes some humming noise and wobbles her head from one side to the other in exaggerated consideration. One hand rises to shield her mouth; the other drifts absently to touch his fingers where they have caught her knee. Her thumb marks the rise and fall of his knuckles--drums briefly against the finer bones across the back of his hand.

"They were pleasant. But that strange thing we had in Orzammar. The one that was mushroom and cream custard with the burnt sugar on top? That was very good. I liked how much is tasted like..." A rare pause. She squints, studying the line of shrubbery nearby as if it might reveal some vocabulary to her. "Sweet smoke, I suppose. Which sounds dreadful, but feels correct."

She looks down to him then.

"Which is your favorite?"

"Between cakes or the custard?"

— isn't exactly what she's asking. The answer splits the difference between teasing and stalling, Ellis' free hand moving across his chest to lift a piece of bread up towards her in silent request.

No particular food comes so readily to his mind. It would be terribly predictable for a Fereldan to say stew, which Ellis does consider even knowing that Wysteria rarely picks up on such things.

Edited (wedges in one small addition) 2021-05-03 19:55 (UTC)

The look which cuts in his direction confirms that no, that isn't what she's asking. But the piece of bread, she takes.

"I realize it is something of a habit you have formed, Mister Ellis, and so it is possible you do it without thinking. But it isn't technically required to be so consistently obtuse."

It requires both hands to assign a bit of jam and—what is this? She tastes it to be certain, and hums in approval for the salty tang—cured pork and cheese and whatever else she can contrive to fit on the bread wedge before passing it back.

A flicker of a grin, there and gone, schooled into contrition as he folds the piece of bread over once before taking a bite.

Wysteria is obliged to wait until he has chewed, swallowed and cleared his throat, returned his hand to her knee. Ellis certainly can't pretend he's coming up with any great, groundbreaking answer, but—

"I've always been partial to stews," he admits. "But I didn't mind the way they seasoned that duck in Orlais, nor the meat pies we were given in Ghislain over the summer."

Considering this is discussion of Orlesian food, Ellis is talking in extremely glowing terms.

Identifying the opportunity to rib him for his painfully Fereldan tastes may pass over her head, but lest Ellis think that renders him totally safe Wysteria parrots back, "'Didn't mind,' he says," in a rough approximation of his timbre and tone.

Her attention meanwhile has turned to the bottle, unwedging it from behind her knee so she might work the cork free. It comes away with a small squeal. Wysteria takes a sip directly from the bottle and, in evidence of how accustomed she has come to his company and various eccentricities, makes no overture at sharing it. Instead, she plants a hand in the clover behind her and allows herself to settle her weight back onto the locked joint of her elbow.

"It's a shame neither of us is very inclined to music. I imagine this is the exact sort of situation a flute it meant for. When it isn't being played indoors in front of other people, I mean."

"The next time you take me to a tavern, I'll see about some singing," Ellis promises. "It's the extent of my capability, and best heard after several drinks and accompanied by a few other people."

It's a big promise, one that Ellis is banking on never quite coming to pass.

He's a long way from any of the circumstances where singing had been a common event. But it's the nearest he can get to any kind of music. (If he had picked up an instrument, he thinks he'd be better suited to drums than to a flute.)

"I was worried, when I remembered I hadn't packed a cup," is a subject change. It's not that he hadn't thought Wysteria could swig from the bottle, only that she might not care to do so in front of him.

She must sense it--the extreme unlikelihood of ever engineering the circumstances under which she might cash in on such a promise--, for ordinarily it is the sort of thing which would light a spark in her eye and make her laugh and here she just rolls her eyes toward him and paints him with some arch, skeptical look. She has heard your humming or your whistling Ellis, and has never yet wheedled a proper song out.

Instead, trailing willing along as he diverges:

"Why? You have seen me drink from a waterskin. It is virtually the same thing."

"I've heard there's rules about wine," is mostly a tease. Maybe there are rules about the best way to appreciate a particular vintage, but that's not really what had come to mind. Ellis' hand had meandered back to his chest, but now settles up over his breast bone as he looks at her.

"I thought you'd prefer it," he tells her. It's no deeper than that, really. A little incongruous, considering he'd brought her here to engage in an activity she most certainly would appreciate about as much as she appreciated archery, but he'd had some sense of a proper picnic involving a little more fanfare than could be arranged.

"Ah, well," is a scoff, light and dismissive. "What you failed to account for was the context of the thing. I wouldn't drink from the bottle at a dinner table, but in a field it is a very different thing. Needs must, Mister Ellis!"

She raises the bottle in question by its neck and takes another sip for emphasis. It is only after, when she has replaced the cork and tucked the thing back into the crook of her knee again that she continues.

"No one ever thinks I will be adaptable, but I will have you know that I was quite the willful young lady where I came from. If my mother were here, she would show you ever single one of the gray hairs I have given her and be able to list the meaning behind each one."

"I'd never have suspected."

Ha.

"I'm not worried about you adapting," he tells her, abandoning his reach towards bread to stretch back out to reclaim his place at her knee. "I just didn't think you should need to on this outing."

"No one expects to adapt, Mister Ellis. Otherwise it would be a plan."

This is a conversation of semantics, and there is something petty and funny in it which makes her smile. Or maybe that is merely a product of his hand at her knee, or the sunshine, or some combination of all of it.

"Anyway, I think it's charming."

"What's charming?" he prompts, tipping his head up to her. Wysteria has such an appealing smile. From the very start, Ellis remembers being so pleased by it, wanting to see her smile more than he should have.

Looking down at him as he lies there on his back in the clover, him having been such a good sport to and for her all afternoon—it doesn't escape her that she is, on occasion, perhaps not the ideal student, for she has been hearing so from the people assigned to give her lessons for as long as she has taken them—, Wysteria is struck by a sudden flare of affection. Which is not surprising, especially. She is often fond of him. But there is something instant about the intensity of the sensation which she likes very much. It reminds her of having decided quite all at once they were to be friends once he revealed himself to be so fond of books, and all at once to be his particular companion in light of him kissing her. It it simply facts, she thinks, that thus far making impulsive decisions with respect to the man have only served her well.

So she unlocks her elbow and sits up, setting aside the wine bottle in more or less one motion. The contents of their picnic is still balanced over him of course, but that is an obstacle to him and not to her. For her, with his face tipped up to her, is it very easy to bend down to him and kiss him. To touch both sides of his face with her hands, and to smile into the shape of his mouth when she does it.

The picnic, she might say. Or Pretending to be something else, or You are. But this works out to be more or less the same thing anyway.

(Despite her smile, it is not a chaste kiss or a brief one. She has decided she doesn't want it to be one, and when has she ever communicated anything succinctly)

When Wysteria straightens, Ellis expects it to be in preparation of some lengthy answer. Expectation sparks in his expression, followed by quiet amusement, waiting to hear whatever it is.

Almost every time he's in Wysteria's company, Ellis reminds himself it is foolish to predict any single thing she might do. The thought occurs to him now, as she comes down to meet him where she's pinned him down with pieces of bread and cheese, hemmed him in with glass jars. His low chuckle is muffled by her mouth, smile momentarily interfering with Wysteria's intentions.

Wysteria does not lean back when he expects her to. The suggestion of movement prickles through Ellis' body, some minor, restless shift that shifts his hips, bows his shoulders momentarily up off the ground, but settles before it sends the assortment of bread and cheeses on his chest rolling into the grass.

It is enough, it seems, for Ellis to reach up a hand to Wysteria's nape, put his fingers gently into her damp hair. The smile ebbs, softens as she kisses him. There is an ease to this. Wysteria can draw back as she pleases. Ellis' grasp is carefully, deliberately light, even as his attention splits between her hands on his face, the taste of wine in her mouth, the beating knowledge of everything he feels for her drawn out in a hot flush spread down his neck and collarbones.

The way he shifts, then stops, and then finds some other outlet—the delicate set of fingers—is equal parts funny and sweet. Satisfying, in a sense, to be aware of the gentle upward press of his face between her hands and to be so aware of her autonomy in this. She could straighten if she liked, whenever she wished to. She has made it very hard for him to follow after her, hasn't she?

Instead, her fingertips gentle at the stubble rough of his cheeks, she breaks softly back from the kiss. Then kisses him again, equally warm and fond and insistent about a thing he has been so diligently careful with. Her third kiss comes on the heels of a small drawn in breath, is sharper for it, and after—

She draws back. Just enough. It is the width of space necessary to study him.

"Your face is very red. If I'm presuming, you may tell me."

Almost: Am I that red?

But perhaps it would not be as amusing a question as he thinks, pretending he is unaware.

Having been on the receiving end of Wysteria's scrutiny more than once in the past, Ellis hadn't expected to feel her study to draw out some further sense of self-consciousness. Whatever she might glean from him here is not a secret. He thinks he had made himself clear to her more than once. Can she possibly gather anything new from this moment?

Instead, his hand drops from her hair to take up one of her hands in his own and lift it to his mouth. He sets a kiss to the center of her palm, keeps her hand clasped in his own as he answers her, "You aren't."

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