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

"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."

It is silly, she thinks, to be at all thrilled by the shape of his mouth against her palm. He has kissed her hand more often than he has her mouth. But there is something delicate in it, not tentative just something very fine and carefully balanced, and there is always such an urge with careful things to pick them apart and see how they've been assembled. It is like a fragile piece of magic, easily crumbled but difficult to disassemble and understand. The desire to lay it out like a pattern she might measure rasps at her as real as the bristle of his beard does.

"Good," is very decided and still rather close. "Because I would hate it very much if I were to somehow be unkind to you. So you must swear to tell me so if I ever cause you any pain. I will of course instantly relent should such a thing ever occur."

Behind her palm, beneath their clasped hands, Ellis almost tells her, You could never cause me pain.

But he remembers the garden, Wysteria's mittened hands around the tin of chicken feed, her expression fierce with accusation, and knows that is not an acceptable answer. There is a difference between what Ellis is willing and able to take in stride and what Wysteria is asking.

"I promise," he says, solemn. "So long as you'll promise me the same."

"I swear it."

The immediacy of her answer should by rights render it flimsy. But in that small space drawn between them, she is so painfully earnest. Brisk, yes, but achingly sincere as if it were a thing she had put in her mind a long time ago and subsequently come to memorize it.

She'd said it before, hadn't she? That they need only be honest with one another.

"Thank you," is not as simple a thing as it sounds. She is certain of what a promise means to him.

"Now," she says, her hand which is still at his cheek shifting faintly to touch the edge of his sun-drying curls. "You have my permission to kiss me how you like."

There is nothing between them to distract Ellis from Wysteria's face in this moment, bright and open and promising him this without any hesitation. Wysteria says this as if she'd decided it already, is confirming what's already known, and Ellis was only late to ask her.

What has he done right in this life to be deserving of her, of this trust she bestows on him so decisively?

She must be expecting to be drawn back down to him then, rather than studied for a moment. Ellis does think of it, as his thumb runs along the back of her hand. But instead, he kisses the heel of her palm, then the inside of her wrist, before releasing her hand.

All the little obstacles are left in place, minor safeguards as a check against the sweeping permission he's been granted. He reaches up to put his fingers back into her hair and encourage her back to him, close enough that he only need lean up a short distance to kiss her.

It is in moments like the one where he looks at her so carefully that she wishes she could read the progress of his thoughts like words on a book's page. There is fondness there, she thinks, set beside something tender (in every sense of the word), but the exact depth of it she can only guess at. If it lasted a moment longer, she might have asked Tell me what you're thinking of.

How narrowly he misses further interrogation.

She instead obliges the gentle set of his hand, swayed down in easy range to be kissed. It's such a steady thing. Unhurried. She can taste the bite of the raspberry jam of the edge of the wine on her own breath maybe. And for a moment it feels very serious, like something is being placed in her hands to be responsible for, but then the severity of that very thought and how absurd it is makes the line of her mouth twitch toward a barely restrained smile.

Wysteria doesn't smile, but Ellis does after a point, interrupting them for a moment without drawing away. His hand shifts in her hair at the same point his opposite ranges out across her lap to find her hand without breaking away to look.

As you like still feels like the sort of offering that comes with limitations, and he can be nothing but attentive for the moment when they reach those limits. His hold on her is so carefully light, even when his fingers nudge in beneath the pins holding damp hair in place to draw her impossibly. She tastes sweet. Her mouth is very soft under his.

There's no urgency in the way they move together. It's easy with her. When Ellis breaks, it's with a soft, jagged inhale. He's left himself no real space to tip away, having urged her so closely to him, and the trappings of the picnic keep him in place. All he can do is stay there, nose bumping against hers, gathering himself.

It is close enough that she can feel silly things like the shadow of his eyelashes and the warmth of his cheek, the shape of his breath against the corner of her mouth. Somewhere between them, in her lap, she scuffs her thumb across the miniature mountain range of his knuckles then turns his hand so as to blindly examine the curve of his palm.

Then with a swift, punctuating kiss, Wysteria straightens up and away from his mouth and his fingers in her hair and even his hand in hers.

"Stay there as you are if you would, Mister Ellis," is closer to an order than a request, however politely worded. She tucks a series of loose strands of gold-blonde hair behind her ears. With the same sort of thoroughness she'd unfolded everything, Wysteria begins to refold the waxed paper and napkins and so on about their various picnic paraphernalia and shifting them prudently off him.

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