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

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.

The retreat is so quick that Ellis instinctively chases her up, shoulders coming up off the ground and holding there, still weighed down. He'd expected to stay that close, linger and disconnect slowly. The abrupt, decisive draw back leaves him blinking up at her for a moment, processing the re-established distance.

But he settles at her urging, eyebrows raising in silent question as she packs up the food, seals the jars. His hand falls back to her knee as the other lifts, plucks at the saddlebag behind his head, offering without an excess of movement.

"No, no. You may keep your pillow. I am merely rearranging. I shouldn't want your hard work to go to waste or for jam to get on anything. And," she adds, setting side some packet or another. "It is terribly unsporting of me to handicap you so."

Her glance is his direction is sidelong. A little sly, but only just—as if the moment she slings it in his direction, she wonders if it would be better to have treated the thing seriously.

And then the last of the cheese is displaced.

The cheese is dispatched. The food is cleared aside. Ellis' thumb strokes along her kneecap, watching her face. His hand drops from the saddlebag to his chest, as if marking out the cleared space.

"I didn't mind."

There's an element of humor in his tone, looking up at her. Of course Ellis didn't mind a tangible check on his movement. It's not so different than the way he proceeds at any other moment. The motion of his thumb continues, back and forth along her kneecap. Ellis keeps his place, limbs still sprawled loosely across the clover.

"Wysteria," might have been the prelude to some question, meant to be followed by What now? But Ellis stalls there, voice infused with such fondness.

Sitting there beside him, her legs tucked almost beneath her and very upright, she is all keen and clear-eyed when she looks at him. If his hand is restless at her knee, then hers are very patient where her fingertips have come to rest against his ribs. His tunic is still damp. Her own things are too.

"Yes?"

Her eyes go a little wide after, eyebrows rising in a blatant display of faux guilelessness. She can play dumb too, Ellis.

Come back down here, is very close at hand. Ellis feels it beating hard under Wysteria's hand where she's settled it over his chest. But it's not what comes when he answers her.

"You're very beautiful," is certainly not the intended response. But he says it anyway, because it feels as if he should say it more. She looks so pleased with herself, some element of expectation in her innocent expression, and Ellis finds himself with nothing else to offer her but that bit of truth while he works his way around to more actionable offerings.

"If you say so many more times, by head will become too large for my neck and have to be carried around all day on my shoulder."

Despite the scolding, it's clear that she's pleased to hear it for a smile tugs at the corner of her mouth strong enough to briefly flash her teeth, and there is something warm (equal parts fond and embarrassed) which lights up in her face. She pokes him between the ribs. Stop that.

The jab of her fingers inspires a fidgety shift, arching away and then relaxing back, unwilling to turn from her even when at the mercy of sharp fingertips.

"I've lost time to make up for."

Not that anything had ever been stopping him, it had just—

There were things that had been too revealing to say before. There are things that are too revealing still, though the weight of them feels less impossible now than they had then.

"Will you come down here?" is phrased so politely, a counterpoint to the restless grip of his hand at her knee.

There is a warm thing which blooms at the center of her chest for it. For his sincerity, and the sweet shape of the quest and the way his thumb cannot sit still, and for how for a moment there he could almost have been described as squirming away from the inciting press of her fingers. It's sweet, she decides. All of it is. He seems so untroubled in the shadow of its combination, all that severity which so often lurks at the corner of his eye or in the habitual tension of his brow smoothed away in the warm afternoon sun and on the cool bed of clover.

"Very well," she says, haughty so as to mask all her affection. "But don't think by asking that you have distracted me from noting your weakness."

Warden Ellis, sensitive having his sides tickled. It is good to have a secret weapon.

She shifts - not to lean down to him again, but to draw her legs out from under herself. That knee unbends under his hand. When she moves to join him, it is by stretching out on her side alongside him supported by elbows and forearms so as to be flush against his side but not over him. Not really, save perhaps by the height afforded from being propped slightly up where he is reliant entirely on the saddlebag for elevation.

Here she is meant to ask stubbornly Well not that I'm here, what did you wish to tell me? or something very like it. Something coy or clever or funny. Did you know, Mister Ellis, that this is all highly inappropriate?, or It is a good thing you thought to bring me a change of clothes; it is very hard to sit back up once you'd lain down in stays. But here she is and though the thought is there, the words fail to materialize. Instead, smiling, she regards him for a moment in that close up space and when she does speak it's to say with all her affection:

"I think you're very beautiful too. The wrinkle there, between your eyebrows. That one is my favorite for it tells when you're thinking very hard about something and I have used it often to overwhelm you."

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