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

Having half-parsed the first question, Ellis finds himself entirely unprepared for the second.

It does not cease the methodical work of his hands. His head remains bowed over her boot as his fingers work the ribbons to a satisfactory laxness. He is quiet as he eases the boot from her foot. One hand cradles her heel as he sets the discarded item aside. His thumb sweeps along her ankle.

"I intend to consult Kostos Averesch. And I expect to wear my breastplate for the first few months, while we wait for your housemate to tire of trying to drive me out."

Fortunately, he has had several years to grow accustomed to ducking whenever he enters a room.

But as to the second question—

Ellis' head has not lifted. He has shifted from crouch to kneeling on the floorboards, and his knees have not yet begun to protest. The loose grasp of his hand eventually guides her foot to the top of his thigh, and his grip shifts to resettle at her ankle instead.

It is tempting to answer a question with a question, but Wysteria would not appreciate it unless he provided some answer first. And so he must think: is there any part of him left that might grieve the loss of something he'd already considered torn from him?

"No," Ellis say finally, the word tumbling like a stone from his mouth. It is true and it is not true. He is having a hard time parsing the emotion the prospect raises.

So he tries, stumbling over the words to explain, "I haven't thought I would father any children. Not for a long time."

But once—

No.

"You couldn't disappoint me," is straightforwardly true. Ellis settles on it as his thumb draws along her ankle, back and forth, while he raises his head to look at her.

She is examining him in a straightforward fashion from her place in the chair, elbows hooked thoughtlessly at the arms of the chair and her hands strung together across her lap. There is no real mark of severity in her expression—only the sense that she is listening very sincerely, and that nothing he has said seems to have ruffled her.

In a sense, it's the answer she'd expected. Typically reserved, carefully reassuring. To say that she is suspicious of it isn't really true. Just—

"You're right." Wysteria flashes a whip quick smile at him. She's going to tell a joke now. "I'm not terribly motherly, am I?"

It should prompt a laugh.

What she receives is a smile, muted but sincere, as he regards her.

"Neither was my mother."

A thing said that Ellis wishes to take back. It invites ghosts into the room with them. He regrets speaking it aloud.

"Do you want children?" is not a question Ellis intended to ask a moment ago. But he wants to know now. Had Wysteria once wanted children for herself? It seems unlikely. Ellis knows her to aspire to many things, but not motherhood.

It should draw a shadow across the room, shouldn't it? She knows the matter is delicate to him. But despite herself, Wysteria finds something cheering in the way he summons the woman. Has Ellis ever said much of anything about his family that she didn't make some singular effort to pry free? It's strange to be given this little detail without demanding it. It warms some part of her, full and bright behind the shape of her ribs.

"I suppose. Though you know, I had decided to have more than one. That way even if there were no other children about, they might be friends to one another. It's a very grim sort of situation to only have friends your age when you go off to visit cousins and so on. Anyway, it's a different thing to consider here than in Kalvad. And I doubt it would pair very well with this Riftwatch business, so it may be all for the best.

"But," she says, prattling on. "I think you would have been perfectly suited to it. You mind your chickens very carefully, Mister Ellis."

This they had not included in their imaginings all those months ago in that little attic: a version of events where they had a cluster of children, with Wysteria's bright eyes and quick minds, all rushing towards mischief at once.

It is pretty to think of.

What kind of father would he be to children now? Children are not chickens. They need more from a man than a scattering of feed.

"You owe me a kiss," Ellis says instead of thanking her for the compliment. Or contradicting her. He turns his face up, grip loosening on her ankle.

"Two," she corrects as she draws her stocking foot from his possession. "And I'm owed one as well."

Elbows removed from the chair's arm, Wysteria reaches for him before she really sways down: her hands, which are both a little rough work and one limned in the green glow of the anchor buried in its palm, catching him at either side of his face so she might encourage the tilt of his chin or set her nails just there—gently into the curls about his temples.

The first kiss she gives him is quickly applied to his cheek. The second is pressed firmly to Ellis' mouth.

There is a point where Wysteria means to draw back. Ellis doesn't let her.

Or rather, he kneels up, prolonging their kiss rather than allowing any sliver of distance between them. Her hands feel good where they are, heels of her palm bracketing his face.

One hand has come to rest loosely at the bend of her knee. Ellis doesn't need to be steadied, but he keeps his hand there while he reaches further, finds the arm of the chair and leans in closer to her. It is begging stay with his entire body.

There is a game they're playing and she is meant to ask a question and he is meant to be bestowing a kiss. Does this count as one kiss or two? Does the lack of a sufficient pause mean this is still Wysteria's kiss?

Questions for whenever she breaks away in earnest. Not for Ellis to ask now.

His pursuit warrants a soft sound—not of protest, but of amusement. It's gentle like a smothered laugh, made encouraging by the supportive shape of her hands about his face. The earnest quality of his kiss is charming and simple and pleasantly straightforward. It's very easy, like this, to feel as if she understands him perfectly well even despite the great many things she doesn't know at all.

(That too is a very broad thought. It might apply to the shaded parts of the life Ellis led before Riftwatch, or to this business of kissing and bodies, or simply the silly discrepancies between Kalvad and Thedas that even now despite years of experience occassionally catch her unawares.)

It makes for a very sweet kiss, doesn't it? And while it's doubtless that the semantics of the game might be debatable, it seems clear that Wysteria considers the lack of sufficient pause to be a defining trait to the exchange. When she breaks back from him, it's brief. The smallest hesitating punctuation—not to debate whether she should kiss him again, but how exactly.

Slowly, she decides. It's a kiss designed to take full mechanical advantage of his leaning up to her, and her fingers at his temples that might quietly encourage more severity from the angle. Not tentative, really, but testing in the same way she might any other idea.

In all things, Ellis endeavors to leave Wysteria space for retreat. In this, that possibility is assured. He can only pursue her so far before he finds the limitations of his body, before his knees must leave the ground and in doing so require some disentangling and rearranging, enough so that any reprieve needed would be noted and granted.

She has assured him time and again of her trust in him. But still, there is much to be mindful of.

Trust given on his part has not yet registered in his mind. (It was given so long ago that it cannot be noteworthy now.) Her hands are so gentle in his hair, but they are insistent. Ellis' laugh is more exhaled breath, throat working around some unsaid thing as he tips obligingly back under the coaxing of her fingers.

His hand flexes at her knee, tightening. It is permission. It is some permutation of alright pressed firmly into the bend of her knee by each fingertip.

It's rather like the pleasure of being rewarded with good indicators from any experiment. There is a thrill of optimism, and a further narrowing of her attention as she measures the trending direction of the result. The squeeze of his fingers, and that little laugh, and the exposure of his throat with its heavy scar are all very encouraging.

The kiss she rewards him with (it's his, technically, if they're still counting and she is), is all slow and more smiling than she intends it to be. She would rather have kissed him very seriously like something out of that chevalier romance he gave her so long ago where everyone was always making a great fuss about lingering touches and soft sighs and all that. But thinking on it makes her laugh even despite all this leverage. She wheezes against the corner of his mouth.

"Is it my question or yours?" is asked more or less against the scruff of Ellis' chin, hands still cheerfully bracketing him.

There is so much to be said for this kiss. It's sweeter for the curve of her smile, for the way she breaks on a laugh. Ellis' hand shifts just so, from the bend of her knee and just a fraction higher, thumb over the top of her thigh as his palm sets just across the side of her leg. Fabric crinkles softly under his hand. His eyes don't leave her face.

It occupies him throughout the moment of careful consideration necessary to trace back conversation far enough to say decisively, "Yours."

He might take this as some release, but the position she's set him in is maintained. Her hands feel very good where they are. And it is no hardship to watch her expression, how pleased with herself she is at the success of her game.

So it is.

With him caught between her hands, Wysteria straightens just slightly so she might survey him there. It's good humor masquerading as highly serious study; there is a spark in her pale eyes and a laugh lurking at the corner of her mouth and neither of them are well disguised by the furrow of her brow.

"How would you like me to kiss you? —And don't," she hastens to say. "Say something like 'However you like, Wysteria.' That would be a very poor answer, Mister Ellis, and not at all in keeping with the spirit of the game."

This is an unexpectedly difficult question. How would he like her to kiss him? Anyway she pleases is true. It is the first thing to comes to mind.

Specifics followed closely after, memories of all the ways she has kissed him spinning out in an exhaustive list: from the quick pecks to the soft, lingering press of her mouth to the way she'd kissed him that day beside the lake. He thinks, briefly, of the yielding shape of her body against his in the clover.

"You're too quick for me. What answer do I have left?"

And so his hand leaves the arm of the chair, reaches for the clasps of his gambeson without looking away from her face.

"Have this in exchange."

He might follow her example, and start with his boots. But he doesn't care to pull back from her to do so. Yielding his gambeson is a worthwhile tradeoff.

The wrinkle between her brows deepens, and for a moment as he shifts to shed his gambeson the frown she wears is real and this lay of her fingers in his hair is— Well, it would be inconsiderate to give him a little checking tug there at his temples, and so she doesn't do that. But the twitch of Wysteria's fingers suggests the impulse is very real.

"I'll make do with that," sounds very like how a scolding slap at the back of his knuckles might.

A flicker of apology works across his face. He squeezes Wysteria's thigh as he works the fastenings loose with his right hand. The gambeson comes loose, and he shrugs it free from one shoulder, then the other, relinquishing his hold on her leg long enough to sweep the fabric around and lay it over the arm of the chair.

It's all easily done. Ellis doesn't shift his attention away from her as he does it. The movement of his body is contained, holding his place so as not to disturb the placement of her hands.

"Ask me something else, so I might work my way towards a late answer for you."

"It's not my turn," is a prim reincorcement of the rules they have been delicately bending for quite some time. But here she is, insistent.

"You will just have to come up with something."

His hand returns to her thigh. There is a slight pinch in his brow, assessing, as he casts about for a question.

"When did you decide you intended to marry me?"

It would be rude, maybe, to borrow her question and turn it back to her. So this, an idle query. Ellis has wondered whether it was simply that terrible cat and her mistress that tipped the scales, or had she already made up her mind before that.

She opens her mouth to reply, an answer clearly ready just there behind her teeth— and then she stops herself, the sound of it like a breath split in half. She closes her mouth. Purses her lips. After a moment of consideration, Wysteria adjusts the line if her calf in that narrow space between them and shifts her boot out from under the shadow of the chair. She prods his knee with the shoe's toe.

"The other boot if you please, Mister Ellis," says says, drawing her hands from his face. It's a very petty sort of revenge, made more so by the fact that she doesn't wait for him to comply before asking—

"What did you think of me when we first met?"

Ellis sighs as she lifts her hands away, but protest begins and ends there. Without the bracket of her palms, he settles by degrees, the angle of his head coming down as he sits back on his heels to attend to her boot.

"I liked you," is the beginning of an answer as he hooks his fingers into the laces. Ellis voice dips low and fond over those three words. They carry weight. He'd been surprised then. Ellis shakes his head, continuing, "I liked hearing you and Tony talk, very much."

Looking back, it is hard to map out exactly what had hooked into him. Like Tony, their friendship had simply settled into place without any question or effort. Caring for her had come easily.

"I thought you were very clever. And that you could use better protection than standing fifteen feet back from whatever dropped out of rifts."

'Clever' is fine.

"Not that I was very pretty?"

She has moved her hands to the arms of the chair, but it still leaning slightly forward—ready to twist her foot free once the lacing of the boot has come loose and Ellis makes to remove the shoe.

"Don't answer that. It wasn't a proper question, and we're playing by the rules now."

"I liked to look at you," Ellis answers, ignoring her instruction. He has to kneel up again to cup her face, catch a stray lock of hair to twist around his finger. "I don't remember when I realized why."

Whether why is because Wysteria was very pretty or because he was very much in love with her—

Well, this is a contraband question. He doesn't need to make himself very clear. With her help, the boot comes free. Ellis sets it alongside it's mate, nudges them carefully beneath the chair and out of the way.

"I'll let you have both for one kiss."

"Only because I told you not to answer, and so it isn't my fault the you didn't let me retract the question."

Apparently the removal of her second boot has done nothing to rescue them from arguing semantics territory. But at the very least, she does bend partway for this: tipping her face down toward him, and leaving some part of the distance for him to close. It's meant to be his kiss, after all. And if he can't tell her what it is that he wants from her, then he will simply have to find some way of showing her.

It's fair enough.

Or Ellis is content enough to kiss Wysteria without arguing the finer points of the rules as he's heard them so far.

Here, his hand cups her face. He slides his fingers into her hair, heedless of the hastily reapplied pins. Ellis is not thinking as to what might be instructive. He is thinking about how much he wants to kiss her, and that he misses her hands on his face.

It is a slow, coaxing sort of kiss. There is a scrape of teeth at her lower lip. His hand is very gentle at the nape of her neck, keeping Wysteria close as he kneels up to her and stays there. His kiss is very open. And with Wysteria above him, she can do with that as she wishes, draw back when she pleases.

It is, in effect, the sort of kiss designed (intentionally or otherwise) to inspire impatience. Is there nothing more infuriating than having one's little display of vindictiveness met with methodical patience? To offer something as simple as kiss me how you like and be given this opportunity instead. It's like having a question answered with a question.

With the same impulsive urge to never let go of an argument (no wonder Byerly Rutyer finds her so exhausting), Wysteria stubbornly sways in under the shape of Ellis's hand. All at once, her hands do return to him: catching Ellis once more by the soft curls of his hair, only less gently. From this vantage she may take that sweet, yeilding kiss and make it insistent. Take the openness of his kiss and impetuously fill it with a little sound of exasperation and some impromptu, uncalculated press of tongue.

She can't very well throw him over her shoulder. But this is near to an equitable alternative. Stupid, well intentioned man.

It is an argument, yes. There are ways Wysteria does things, even when she's silent, that telegraph her rebuttal as clearly as if she were speaking aloud at her usual clip. The exasperation is so clear. He can almost taste it.

The chuckle it draws from him might be an infuriating thing too. But it's gone quickly. Wysteria is making a demand of him, and Ellis can do nothing but answer it.

His teeth nip a second time at her mouth. He arches up under the tightening of her hands in his hair. Wysteria is obliged to part her knees for him, the pressure of his hand at her thigh coaxing so that he might fit himself into that new-made space. Fabric rustles as he leans further in, further up. Insistent, that's what Wysteria brings. Intent is what Ellis answers with, that same patience lingering even as heat kindles between them.

There is still that same element of those early kisses in the attic of a small tavern after they'd fought off a handful of bandits. A sense of something held in check, even as he fills the space, grip tight at her thigh, pulse beating hard in his throat.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject