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

She's missed him. Which matters because she rarely misses anyone at all. Not even Alexandrie who is such a delightfully shameless gossip. But he is such fine company, and she has become very accustomed to his presence as her side, and to having his attention, and she has even once or twice in the weeks since his departure found herself thinking with fondness about the terrible scrape of his beard when he kisses her cheek.

There is some bristle like this too, of course and under her hands as they move from his tunic collar to Ellis' face. The fact that he bends in answer doesn't do much to diminish how fierce that impulsive kiss is.

When she has imagined him kissing her in that moonlit garden, it has always seemed a deliberate and quiet thing. This is not that at all. It is rushed and bursting with some wanting thing, as demanding as it is sweet. And after, blurted out against his mouth with all the enthusiasm of something who is certain they know the correct answer to a question:

"I love you. You should know it. I know you don't wish at all to marry me, but it makes no difference. I will anyway."

Once, on accident, Ina had misdirected a bolt of lightening in the training yard and struck Ellis rather than the training dummy set beyond it. (This was the point of the exercise: to aim a strike beyond the front line to incapacitate darkspawn.) Ellis remembers how his entire body had locked up, how the pain had come second to the crackling force of the blow and the way, for a moment, movement had been so entirely beyond him.

Wysteria's declaration is a cousin to Ina's lightening bolt. Ellis feels her words in the same way, a shock that prickles through his entire body, winding his arms tighter around her. Her hands are gentle on his face and her voice had been so clear, no hesitation in it, and Ellis had anticipated none of it.

It is a surprise. In spite of everything, there had always been some quiet impression set into Ellis' mind: Wysteria is fond of him, and that is enough. He had never needed her to be more than that, except—

I love you she says, and Ellis makes a soft noise in response, uncertain and overwhelmed by turns at the sentiment. His forehead rests against hers. His arms have cinched quite securely about her waist to draw her in tightly against him.

"Tell me again," comes quietly, a little pleading. Holding place for whichever parts of the truth Ellis can pull together for her. She must have guessed already, anything he might say aloud. Wysteria has grown so very adept in her study of him.

She is aware of it—how he starts, the sharp little catch of a noise—because it happens under her hands and nearly against her mouth and because it would be difficult not to know. Because—

"It's only that Lady Paget reminded me so forcefully of a dozen very dreadful people from Kalvad, and rarely think long on it but it really is true that I'm very pleased not to be there. And you've been nothing but good and kind. And not just to me either. I think it's very dear how much you care for Mister Stark and for Mister Dickerson. And even how measured you were angry with her Ladyship today. It's all right if you don't— If you don't feel precisely the same. I know it must trouble you, but I do," she insists, smoothing her hands across the bristle of his cheeks. "Love you, Mister Ellis. Very sincerely."

"I do."

An admission so sincere that he might as well crack his chest open in the process of it, show her where all he feels for her has rooted in among his bones.

"I do," he repeats. "Feel the same."

A clumsy declaration, by any metric. All those books of poetry and all those novels containing flowery proposals, and this is what Ellis has to offer her in this moment: not the words themselves, but an echoing of hers.

"You must know," follows after, Ellis straightening by only the smallest degree to study her face. "You must have known this."

Had she? Of course. Though there is something here in him now which lives right next to the agonized look he'd worn all that time ago outside the Gallows' library. That baffling, tangled knot of how he feels and how it's a thing she recognizes as being equal parts sharp and sweet to him. Or razoring because of it's a kindness. Or because of some obligation to do with the Wardens. Or something she doesn't understand at all.

"Yes, but—Only I know it's more complicated." She is very determined there in his shadow, a sort of stubborn pride in the set of her expression and her hands about his face. "I've just decided that I'm pleased by it regardless."

What else could he say?

That he is in love with her. That were his circumstances different he'd have tried to marry her already. That he is hers in every possible way, that he has been for longer than she might realize.

All these words are caught somewhere in his mouth when he leans back down to catch her mouth with his own. A better way to communicate anything, surely: dipping to kiss her rather than try to vocalize any complicated sentiment.

Or to explain that the way he loves her is not complicated. Ellis has no confusion over it. He loves her and there is no question of it. It is a truth that's set deep into his body. Ellis feels it in every beat of his heart. His hands have slid, palms against the small of her back and the dip of her spine, keeping her tucked in close against his chest.

Don't go beats alongside I love you, in every single flex of his hands and soft sound made against her mouth.

In some other circumstance—one where she has not spent the evening embarrassed or seething or jealous or impatient or all those things in combination—it might be easy to be overwhelmed by the sheer force of the thing. By this faint tilt toward desperation; the way he holds her in very close, how he bends to kiss her, and how the great shape of his affection looms very large. It would be easy to feel untethered in it.

But she is in a temper, and quite certain of her footing. So if he wants, then she and her kiss and her hands at Ellis' face and neck are insistent. She is staying, and—as if it's possible to be a little vindictive and petty about the thing, for the whole world and Lady Paget and everyone who doesn't have Ellis' full and abiding attention should be very jealous—Good.

(Yes, he ought to love her. If he didn't, she might be rather cross with him.)

There is a great deal of emotion behind the kiss, all this feeling winnowing down to the clutch of his hands at her back and how open his kiss is, the way he shapes his body in against hers as if to give it all over.

What is there to give, really? Wysteria has had hold of all of this for such a long time.

He's had so much time to make a study of Wysteria's hands. Her soft palms make it all the more obvious as to where the work has marked them. It's a nonsensical thing to consider as she touches him, some small observation running alongside the beating repetition of her words echoing in his ears.

I love you, she'd said.

What does he do with all of this feeling? There is a scalding element to it, like warm water over long-frozen fingers. Ellis draws a breath against her mouth, breaking the kiss to lay a second, sweet peck at the corner of her mouth before bending further to put his face in against her neck and stay there for a moment, breath rising and falling in time with hers.

He bends further and the natural thing is to slide an arm about his broad rounded shoulders and a hand into the curls of his dark hair, and to twist, reflexive and minor, in reply to the ticklish scrape of his beard against soft and sensitive skin. His breath is warm, and the shape of him pressed and clutching so is not at all intimidating. If anything, she might conjure up some narrow filament of guilt on account of how she might have said earlier had she known it might mean as much to him.

To have that kind of sway over a thing is appealing and pleasant and very like being given a kind of responsibility all at once, isn't it?

"There is just one thing," she says after a moment of his holding there. The breath in her chest rises and falls in sympathy to him, and she turns her face just a little to say so into his hair. He smells a little like some strange and expensive soap (Lady Paget's doing, no doubt) and like a more familiar tang of work (Ser Pouncival's).

"But it's a very minor complaint. And not at all irreparable, I don't think."

The implication of some minor thing to be rectified doesn't dislodge Ellis from her neck. But it does stall the trail of soft kisses Ellis had begun applying to Wysteria
s throat, the motion coming to a tapering halt.

"Aye?" he asks, prompting.

If she has lifted her chin just a fraction to encourage that path—Well. No one else is there to see and she is fairly certain he won't fault her for it. And also it means she can be quite self-sure, delivering her assessment to the crown of his head more or less down the length of her nose:

"Well only that it seems to me as if one of the fundamental advantages in being courted by some strapping Fereldan farmer is to occassionally be swept off one's feet or thrown over a shoulder in the very literal sense. That's how it is in all the books I've consulted on the subject, you know."

This time, the progress of his mouth is halted by a short burst of laughter. He presses his smile in against the curve of her neck.

"I see."

Not a no. His fingers come around to her waist, palms running up her ribs then down to the curve of her hips, then back up again.

"So you'd like me to lift you that way?" comes the question, considering. "Carry you around the Gallows in my arms?"

His laugh or the tickling burst of air or the scuff of his facial hair from it makes her laugh too—a twittering, absurdly girlish sound—, and it's only after that she considers the possibility of the sound carrying from beyond the room to the corridor where anyone at all might be listening.

(Or peering through a keyhole or—)

But it's a brief flicker of awareness, there and gone as she tucks her face in closer to him and hisses a little well humored protest.

"Mister Ellis, you have truly forgotten all semblance of propriety! But also, I believe it's meant to be a surprise."

A surprise.

Or it's meant to be a surprise, the way he's meant to ask before he kisses her. If Ellis prompts her, he's sure Wysteria will tell him almost exactly how he's meant to sweep her off her feet and the right circumstances in which he should be on the look for to deploy such methods.

He weighs it against how nice it is to have her tucked in against him. His lips move against her neck as he speaks again.

"I'll think on it then," Ellis tells her softly. "Ways to surprise you with it."

Would the ghost object to Wysteria being swept off her feet?

"I shouldn't expect to carry you from the room in the morning?" is entirely teasing. Ellis knows the answer already.

Her appalled hiss and the hand which flaps at his shoulder must be answer enough. Honestly, Mister Ellis.

"If you try, I will scream," is somewhat undermined by the inviting tilt of her chin. He can kiss her neck more if he likes.

Yes, he could kiss her neck more. He would like to.

He thinks again of the way her voice had sounded, telling him I love you.

So his mouth moves briefly at the underside of Wysteria's jaw, setting a last kiss to the high point of her throat before his hands lift from her hips. Maybe a disappointment, right up until—

Ellis sweeps her up into his arms, hoists her up off the ground to hold her against his chest.

"This way, aye?" he asks, inviting instruction, practice for a real attempt.

Edited 2021-09-25 02:38 (UTC)

Her squawk is half indignant, half surprise—scrabbling at his shoulders as her soft soled shoes come up off the thick carpet. By the time he's secured her high in the sway of his arms and she has ceased her squealing, she's anchored the grip of both her hands somewhere on his tunic.

"No, that's not—! Well yes," she lowers her voice to a hiss. "More or less, I suppose. But you can't simply pick me up and do nothing with me, Mister Ellis. What would the point of that be?"

There's a further hitching motion, securing her just that much more closely as he widens his stance.

"Then what shall I do with you?"

If he leans in just so, he can put his mouth against her shoulder, put a kiss there too. A slip of her scar is showing. Ellis has only ever seen it once before, and he considers it for a moment before lifting his head to meet her eyes.

And some of the humor cools, as Ellis considers the broader meanings of the question. Watches Wysteria to see what she'll make of it.

Clutching at him and cinched very close, she is maybe slightly less advantageously posed to consider the broader implications. At least at first, as she instantly answers, "How should I know? That is the entire object of the thing, Mister Ellis."

But after she has said it and with the shape of his kiss cooling gently on the bare skin of her shoulder, it occurs to her that he is asking properly. That there may be true answers to the question.

And that she is only particularly interested in one of them.

Bound in close to him, her hands absently shift at his tunic. This is not a slow kiss in a garden and heat prickles faintly at the back of her neck.

"What would you care to do with me?"

How many occasions has he had to look up into her face?

It's a novelty. That's charming enough on it's own, though it becomes secondary to the question she's put to him.

Holding her this way, turning until he's put his back to the fire, he can watch the thoughts turning over in her mind, the way her consideration shifts the expression on her face. He's always enjoyed watching her puzzle her way through things, though the present moment is far removed from the question of rifts or chemicals or even the care and feeding of chickens in the garden.

"Help you out of this dress," Ellis tells her, the easiest request to offer up. They've already done that, after all. He's adopted a slow, small sway where he stands, his hands tight and secure on her. When he continues, it's to offer a second, more ambiguous wish: "Then I want to share that uselessly big bed with you."

In the little garden under the brisk snap of fall air, she had imagine he might kiss her goodnight. His hands would be at her waist, and he would be very warm in the dark, and she might say, Might you stay? Just for a little while.

"Very well," is almost comically prim given their current arrangment. She studies him. Her fingers fidget at his collar; the door to her room is still unlocked. She ought to say so. She ought to send him round to see the door bolted and her things brought over.

But instead:

"You will have to set me down first. I'm uncertain you can see to my buttons like this."

As she speaks, Ellis presses a second kiss to her shoulder.

"Aye," is terribly fond by contrast, though the agreement doesn't see him setting her down there. It only sees a minor adjustment of her in his arms as he turns to cross the room, over the plush carpet, to set her down beside the bed.

He lifts a hand to cup her cheek, spends a long moment looking at her. Thinking again of what she'd said, how firmly she'd declared her feelings.

"Tell me, what do I do with these laces?" he asks, as his opposite hand steals down to her waist, slips around to the small of her back. "You're strapped in more securely than I am in my armor."

"It is hardly so complicated, Mister Ellis," she snips very gently. Her hands rise to set, fingertips first and delicate, at his wrists. "You only undo them."

It's almost strange to be upright, on her own feet, and below him once more. And she is very aware of the expansive bed behind her. Not that it means anything at all, of course; they've shared even smaller beds before. Why, they might lie in this one and hardly even touch.

(He looks so fond and so intent and she isn't particularly frightened or embarrassed.)

"And then you will have to help me step free of it. And then undo my stay laces here." In a line down her front. She studies him. "And my stocking ribbons."

Having begun his work after Wysteria had set his hand into place, the way Ellis pauses over the instruction is easily seen.

She'd attended to her stockings on her own in the past. Ellis had put a hand on her ankle at one time or another, but never more than that. The initiation set to him marks out a shift in the comfortable proceedings they'd established for themselves.

"I prefer your dresses," he says, rather than call attention to the instruction involving stocking ribbons. "But you looked very pretty in this one."

Imparted with great sincerity as the lacing comes loose, muddling the effect of the garment. The laces feel very delicate in his hands, and he takes his time with the undoing of them. Whether or not Wysteria intends to keep this dress is a question for the morning. For now, it's enough to create enough space for the fabric to begin slipping down her body as Ellis finishes his work.

"Here," is a little prompting, meant to draw her forward towards. Not perfect, but it's well-enough for a Fereldan brought up on a farm.

"It's a very fine dress, Mister Ellis. But you're right that there's hardly anything at all to this one." Though the fabric is very soft and smooth, and drips willingly from her into a dark lavender puddle once the laces have been undone and he has helped her that prim little step forward.

"When we return to Kirkwall remind me to show you all the seasonal pamphlets from Val Royeaux. The corset boning alone might turn an arrow, I think."

And then there she is in her short stays and pale chemise. One hand to his wrist is for balance so she might slip free of her soft soled shoes. Her stockings are all dark and designed to coordinate with that pitch blue dress.

"Here." That hand at his wrist turns, fingers and thumb angled to guide. Here, is the lacing of her stays, pale cording at the base of her sternum.

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hey what the fuck

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clenches my fist

hey they're Good

yells about it tbh

honestly

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