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

"I'll allow it. And these too, I suppose," she says with her mouth still smarting from the depth of his kiss, her hands moving to tug faintly at his braces as if she's somehow arranged to read his mind.

Here, she ought to shift free of him and leave him to it. But having laid her hands so, she hesitates—seized all at once with some thought.

"Oh!" Is all surprise with herself for having never given the matter much thought. She checks it almost immediately, visibly reining in her sudden flare of interest. How funny though. To have never thought to ask—

"May I take them off for you?" she asks from between his hands, fingers straying curiously toward the most convenient fastening.

It's a surprise for Ellis as well. He has undressed in front of her on more than one occasion, but Wysteria has observed the process from a safe distance. Her fingers plucking at his braces, then tripping more intently over the strap raises his eyebrows.

There is no reason at all to deny her, it's only that he'd never anticipated—

Well, why should he expect Wysteria to stop surprising him?

His hands return to her waist.

"Aye," he tells her, before stipulating: "Only my braces."

It feels a step too far, asking her to manage his boots. Her delicate, ribbon-tied footwear feels like a very separate affair from the heavy, work-worn footwear Ellis favors.

"Yes, of course. Only them."

His hands at her waist. She bows her head, lowering her eyes to the fastening of the braces. It isn't difficult to undo them. It takes only some minor manipulation of the band of his trousers, and a shift of buttons and then he is free on one side. Her attention flickers briefly upward, and then diverts down again. In short order, Wysteria has undone other side as well.

"You must turn around for me now. So I may undo where it hooks in the back."

Her fingers at the band of his trousers marks perhaps the furthest Wysteria's ever strayed in her consideration of his body. Nonsensically, Ellis' breath had caught as she worked, freeing each buckle before turning her attention to the last remaining.

His hands come up to her elbows, squeezing there briefly before doing as she asked. Ellis turns. His hands hang loose at his sides, unfastened straps slack over his shoulders.

They've done this too. He's turned for her inspection before. But there's something slightly different to having Wysteria at his back, out of sight.

He turns, and there is something very secretly pleasant about having his back to her as he waits for her to do as she said she would. There are just two additional buttons there, easily undone, and then the braces will be free to simply draw down from his shoulders and set plainly aside.

She sets her fingers there to do just that and then hesitates over the v-shaped notch at the center seam of the waistband. Without being looked at, there is an impulse to—

Tentatively, Wysterian slides her fingers past the edge to where one of the relevant button sits. There, she thinks of Ellis's hand and how he had pressed his fingers between the panels of her stays and the shift's soft cotton. And there is too is the lovely sturdy width of his shoulders.

"Wait, I've forgotten something." Her hand retreats. "Forgive me but you must turn back around if you please, Mister Ellis."

The warmth of her fingers, the impression of contact hedging towards—

What? He has so little expectation as to what Wysteria might do if left to her own devices. In all the time she's bidden him to close his eyes, Wysteria has only every strayed so far. Now, the slight pressure of her fingers prickles at the nape of his neck, sparks some minor twitch of impulse in his hands.

Though whatever that movement might have been, it's subsumed into answering Wysteria's request. He turns, one hand rising to catch loosely at his braces. They'd be easily drawn off, but she'd asked, and he leaves them be, for the moment, as he comes around to face her fully just as requested.

Despite the unquestionable indulgence of her request, there is something hesitating in her posture revealed when he turns back. Her "Thank you," comes with a rare, fleeting flicker of something very like shyness. She meets his eye only briefly and then sets her hands at his waist.

When she shifts nearer, it's very near—set flush, her cheek laid on the soft twill of his tunic as her hands circle about him. He is broad, but not so broad that she can't follow the edge of his waist band in this fashion to that middle seam she'd just abandoned. It's only once she has found her way back there that she tips her face to glance up at him. Buttons aren't difficult to undo blindly: her fingertips sliding softly under the edge of his trousers to do it and her very warm against him.

"Thank you. It was very important."

He is always so mindful of looking at her when she has been undressed.

Oddly, the first thing that comes to mind is her hands, slick with elfroot, moving over the ragged mess of his back all those months ago.

His breathing remain very steady as she sets her hands, tucks in close against him. As Wysteria settles, Ellis reaches up to set one hand across her shoulder blades. And the other finds the hastily applied pins in her hair, and pulls one, then another, from their place.

"It is."

The placement of her hands less so than the line of her body tucked in close to his own. Ellis can't quite bend as he'd like without disturbing it, though he'd like to kiss her mouth.

Another pin, drawn out and held fast in his palm.

"You needn't thank me for it. I'm yours."

He has been, long before there was any proposal, before he'd kissed her the first time.

"Well, yes. I know that. Only I'd done you the ill-favor of asking you to turn twice around on account of my changing my mind, and it would be rude not to say something on the subject." There is one catch undone, slipped quietly free in sympathy to her drawn loose pins. She studies the line of his neck above the edge of his collar, and the soft weave of the fabric lain against it, and the vicious knot of scar tissue.

The second button comes undone as readily as her hair done, gold hair worked into twists and spirals that don't come naturally to it thanks to the duration with which is spends twisted about the the pins he is stripping her of. Behind him, Wysteria gathers the back of his bracers into her hand and pulls softly to draw the slack ends back across his shoulders. She is more than willing to let them fall away to the floor where they may take up residence with her skirts and stockings. She is significantly less willing to unpeel herself from where she has aligned herself or to draw her arms back from about him. She does however lift her face further, chin setting just beneath his collarbone so she might address him directly—

"Once you've taken off your boots. Will we go to bed then?"

"Aye," Ellis tells her. "If you like."

A little bit of a joke. Wysteria has made herself clear enough. Ellis had promised.

But still, it is a reminder: Wysteria can always change her mind.

As he unravels another pin, he lifts a hand to cup her cheek. His thumb sets against the corner of her mouth. When he looks back at her, his expression is full of a raw kind of affection. How often has he seen her like this, with her hair properly loose?

"You're lovely," he says softly. The last pin comes free. Ellis knows better than to let the pins scatter across the floor. So he is obliged to admire her, commit the sweetness of her so close, holding on to him so tightly, with her hair loose and gold around her shoulders, to memory. At least for the moment.

The temptation to prod him between the ribs is allayed by the shape of his hand at her cheek and by the soft set of his thumb, and most of all by how he looks at her with so much painted to clearly in his expression. It's the face he wears that warms her cheeks and sends something behind her ribs blooming and overwrites any prickling uncertainty (not for what she wants from him, but maybe inspired by his constant reassurances which suggests she ought to have some second thoughts—). For a series of seconds, she searches that expression he wears. And over the course of those seconds, her own expression brightens by a half degree. Then by one, and by two.

Wysteria smiles up at him, flush faced and infinitely pleased.

"Take your boots off, Mister Ellis."

And then she withdraws from him, her and her wild cloud of yellow hair promptly moving toward the bed. She doesn't have to wait for him.

No, she doesn't.

And while she settles herself, Ellis collects her dress from the floor to drape over a chair. His braces join the garment, dropped lightly over the arm before he sits and makes short work of his boots to put beside Wysteria's long-discarded pair beneath the table.

Then he follows after her, tugging the laces of his tunic loose as he goes.

But that's the last of the alterations. Loosened laces, bare feet. He draws up alongside the side of the bed, and then, as they have done so many times now, settles himself along one side of the mattress. And then he turns in towards her, reaches to touch her, put a hand over her waist. He doesn't say anything, watches her expression as his thumb runs along her hip.

She has made herself comfortable, but not too comfortable, having climbed into the bed but lain over top of the covers. She has settled with her hands folded across her middle. She has not watched him too carefully as he has taken off his boots and his socks or loosened the laces of his tunic. And then there is the dip of the mattress, and the shifting line of his shoulders beside her. Wysteria has already unraveled her hands by the time Ellis turns and reaches for her. She is prepared to reach back for him.

If that thumb at her hip is careful and unobtrusive then her hands moving to touch him on either side of his neck are equally gentle. It's a delicate touch, but not without intention. After a moment's study—

"I'm going to kiss you now, Mister Ellis," she says, quite seriously.

Has she ever done so while lying in bed beside him? Not like this: drawing him to her or herself into his space. Kissing him softly. And then less softly.

Wysteria's decisiveness is a helpful touchstone.

Ellis carries an amused furrow of his brow into the kiss. They meet over the coverlet, Ellis first content enough to be kissed before coaxing her onto her back with soft nudging nips of his teeth and gentle pressure. It is all easily deterred. He is so attentive to her, focus narrowing down entirely to her hands and her mouth and any noise she might make as they move together.

The impulse to remind her, yet again, that she might ask him to stop, beats in the back of his head. But rather than say it again, Ellis is simply conscious of the drape of his body over hers. All that broad bulk of him bears her down into the mattress, yes, but it would be a simply thing to kick him away.

"You have to tell me what feels good," Ellis tells her, steady in spite of how shallow his breaths come. He catches a lock of her hair where it's strewn across the pillows, twirls it around her fingers. "And if I tread on your foot."

Compare this business to a dance once—

Perhaps it ought to be very intimidating, this business of being rolled over and him settling in close. But there is something thrillingly secure about the width of him, and the low pressure of being—not pinned, exactly. But some cousin to it, secured there by the breadth of his shoulders and just enough of his weight.

It's very appealing, she decides while all the small hairs of her body prickle in reply to him. This close, she can see all his dark eyelashes and the grey flecking his beard. And he is very warm both over her and under the curve of her palms.

"I will tell you everything," she reassures him. Funny, how that's what it feels like she's doing. "—Oh, but only if you agree to tell me if I ought to do something. You must promise not to be unduly delicate. I am a very quick study, Mister Ellis. Ellis."

Edited 2021-12-18 10:56 (UTC)

Having arrived at this point, it occurs to Ellis that he has very little idea of what he might ask of her in return.

But here there is a smile, a soft peck of a kiss to her mouth, a bump of noses. Silent agreement. Yes, she is a quick study. Yes, he will try very hard not to be overly delicate in his handling of her.

But when he ducks his head to kiss her again, there is some slight, instructive bent to it. It's an encouraging thing, even with all the tenderness set into the action. His hand leaves her hair to hook beneath the neckline of her shift. His knuckles graze her collarbone on his way down, skirt across her skin as he draws the loose, yielding fall of fabric to one side so he might lift his head from her mouth and consider the dark scar slashed there.

Into the quiet between them, Ellis might say some narrative thing, so Wysteria might anticipate what comes next. But he makes study of her, her expression and her scar and her collarbone and nearly her shoulder bare, before he lowers his head again to put his mouth there at the highest point of that dark line and begin working slowly, glacially down over the mark with soft kisses and the graze of teeth to mark his progress.

It's an ugly scar. Nevermind that he finds it dashing or has such a collection of his own—it is one thing for a Warden to be marked and battered, and quite another thing for a Kalvadan young lady of a reasonable well to do family to be sporting such a gruesome testimony to her own ridiculousness. And anyway, it does have a little to do with vanity. Even she would admit so. Although not to Ellis. To Alexandrie, maybe. Or to Maud. Someone who might appreciate the distinct agony of having once had a reasonably attractive bosom now marked with some flaw so blatant that it would always be the very first thing anyone noted. But— Well. Supposing Ellis means to use it as a sort of guiding line, then perhaps there are worse things.

The bristle of his beard is more notably really than the light set of teeth or even the soft series of kisses. And as he shifts lower along that dark ragged line, her hand creeps absently higher from the back of his neck and into the curls at his nape; this close, she can only see a little of his face but there is something pleasant in the slope of his shoulders.

"That tickles," Wysteria tells him, because he'd asked her to and because she means to prove that she can be perfectly amenable to following directions.

"Is it tolerable," is asked in return, directly against her skin. Ellis' mouth has progressed to the point of meeting the topmost hem of her shift. He could draw it down further, if he cared to. But he pauses there, leaving his grasp of the fabric at her shoulder to brace one hand at the mattress as his head lifts to look up at her.

"I know you hate it," Ellis adds, without waiting for a proper answer to his question. Or if not hate, then she doesn't care for it. Ellis' palm sets against her ribs, just beneath her breast, near enough to be improper under any other circumstance. "But I think of it as often as I think about the way there is sometimes soot here," marked by a slow upward stretch of his body, so he might put his mouth to the line of her jaw, and murmur against the high point of her throat, "Or ink on your fingertips."

Were her hands not occupied, and his mouth not busy, he might have put her fingers to his mouth as well.

"Or your hair when you let me take it down, or your hands."

But if he had to begin unraveling all the things he found particularly attractive about her, they might be here for ages. Until the dawn. And it would derail his promises otherwise, and he intends to keep them.

The low shape of his voice against her skin hums so pleasantly. The sensation of it is so keen that she might almost overlook the set of his hand across her ribs. With her boned stays and bodice on, it might not be such an outrageous place for him to touch her. Surely a hand has strayed close while dancing. But without them—

"I think it's charming that you're so very sentimental, Ellis."

It's true as much as it is teasing, though the way she can feel her own words vibrate under his mouth cuts some of the playful tenor.

Sentimental makes him laugh, low and stifled against her throat.

"Is that what I am?"

It is more tease than question. Wysteria has a habit of answering such things very directly, with more insight than she is given credit for.

And so he does touch her, as promised. The full press of his palm first, cupping as his thumb runs over the swell of her breast while he reapplies himself to the exploration of her collarbone, the downward slash of her scar. He thinks again of how thin the fabric of her chemise is. It's such a thin barrier; the heat of her skin is hardly blunted, and regardless, his mouth is tracking along the bared scoop of her chest left vulnerable by the drape of her chemise, following in a loose downward trajectory.

The fingers of his opposite hand nudge in at her hip. Bracing himself in this manner, he is afforded some room to maneuver. Wysteria has the suggestion of Ellis' bulk, broad shoulders and chest held over her to create sliver of space between them so that Ellis might touch her as he pleases.

Presumably this is not the sole point of his attention, but it is at least a starting point. An indication of intent, where otherwise he might have been suspected of skirting around the very edges of his promise to her.

"Oh, terribly," she begins to say, the hint of high spirits in it going sideways in reply to the shape of Ellis's hand and the line of his thumb. Somehow, she is surprised by it—as if despite everything he'd said to her and the fact that she had asked and their arrangement in the bed that there is still something shocking about actually being touched so. Her fingers at the nape of his neck flex absently. Beneath him, there is some notion of involuntary flexing tension that passes through her. Not pressing into the touch exactly or shifting up against the hand he has at her hip, but not not that either.

(Sentimental, and very true to his word.)

It is a little like having pressed so close to him as they'd stood earlier. She'd wanted to set herself against the width of him and to be closer to the warmth of him, and here are his hands and his mouth which are very warm indeed. Only that had been benign. She has laid her cheek on his chest before in a perfectly chaste fashion, after all.

But there can really be no arguing the purpose in this, now can there?

That tension doesn't pass unnoticed. It holds Ellis where he is, the swipe of his thumb slowing but not stopping, just as his mouth pauses at the low-slouched neckline of her chemise so the ministrations of his mouth have come to rest over the top of her breast. Wysteria has not said anything, but the lack of clear reaction keeps him from pressing onward. Ellis holds his place. He keeps hold of her, for the moment.

"Tell me," Ellis prompts, low against her chest. "I can feel you thinking."

Even without raising his head to look at her face, Ellis knows that there is no event in which Wysteria isn't thinking seven things at once. His weight shifts slightly, adjusting to realign himself to one side. The downward trajectory of his mouth is not indiscernible, but it is easily abandoned. There is much else he might set himself to, depending on what she might say.

She doesn't make a noise of frustration, but she does think it loudly enough that for a moment it is difficult to shift past that to parse what she had actually been turning over in her head prior this beat of slowed momentum.

"I was thinking," about something. His breath is very warm. "About that scene where the bann's son touches Katherine's breasts and that I told Lady Asgard it was very stupid. I have touched my own chest, Mister Ellis. It is not that compelling."

Yet there is the slow stroke of his thumb and the soft rasp of thin fabric between it and her, all of which is in fact rather interesting. There is something in the sedate touch that makes her want to squirm.

"But I think your hands are very nice."

Briefly, Ellis' smile is turned in against her breast, easily discerned.

And then—

"Remind me of which book that was."

As he shifts lower, mouth moving from bare skin to sheer fabric so he might apply his mouth as a counterpoint to the increasingly purposeful sweep of his thumb. The weight of his body settles carefully over her stomach so that he might keep hold of her hip. In this too, he reaches farther than is his habit, setting his thumb at the hinge of her thigh to hold on tightly, grounding himself as much as satiating the need to keep both hands in constant contact with her.

"It was—I don't remember the title. The author's name is"—what might be a thoughtful noise is strictly not one; despite the fabric of the chemise, the heat of his mouth and the weight of him is shocking—"Lavery, I think. It's the tragic one where her lovers duel in the flax field at the end and everyone but the main character dies. You remember. We spoke about how it's clearly meant as an allegory for the spread of the Chant among the Alamarri people."

Clearly. As clearly as the soft sound she makes under the sweep of his thumb across the stiffening peak of her breast isn't one of protest, though one of her hands has fallen to the collar of his tunic where fingers might twist softly at the twilled fabric. She is aware of the flush on the back of her neck. The soft shift of his hair under the fingernails of her other hand.

"It has that ridiculously obvious passage where someone falls in love with the main character on account of her befriending their mabari. Really. Why not simply write 'The Chant was effectively spread in Ferelden because Andraste appealed to the tradition of folkoric heroes among the southern tribes—'"

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reuploading an icon specifically for this

doing gods work

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