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

"Cider? Oh! Yes. Yes, of course. —Madame Hill!" This shrill call comes as Wysteria, having stopped short during her progress to the table, turns swiftly in the direction of the closed door leading to the kitchen. The speed at which the landlady answers is, it must be said, somewhat suspect and suggests the possibility of her having been stood just inside it there, halfheartedly banging pots and pans while listening with one ear.

"Has the fire been put out yet? No? Excellent. Could I trouble you or your nephew for two cups of hot cider? There's no hurry at all. And then we'll have nothing more at all to trouble you with this evening, I promise—"

The result of which is, ten minutes later, two clay mugs of steaming pressed apple cider made sweet and rich with spice, being deposited unceremoniously between them on their little table in the otherwise empty taproom. Wysteria has arranged herself in the chair opposite him, and has for these past many minutes been absently jiggling her knee under the table while discussing (in very broad terms) where they might hope to store the wolf upon their return to the lodge.

Regardless of plans for the evening, of whatever Wysteria has been attending to while sequestered in their room, or Madame Hill's investment in their supper, Ellis is pleased to listen and offer piecemeal advice for Wysteria's newly acquired specimen.

But, by and by, Ellis and his cup shift over a seat so as to set himself adjacent to her. Reaches beneath the table to put a hand gently over her jiggling knee. They are alone in this room and the door to the kitchen is closed, but Ellis is attempting to be mindful of what sort of displays of affection Wysteria might permit. One that is not so easily seen feels like the best bet.

"You look very fine," in a borrowed dress, but surely it was some trouble to arrange on such short notice. "But I'd remind you that if we wish to change our plans for the evening, it wouldn't be any kind of hardship."

This is predictable, surely. Unable to assign the nervousness to any one thing in particular, Ellis attempts to address it this way: they might put the whole business off, if it isn't as Wysteria hoped.

The jiggle of her knee stops abruptly once the placement of his hand calls attention to it. The solid heel of Wysteria's field boot sets resolutely down on the floorboard.

Her "Nonsense!" is quite abrupt, practically bristling although neither of her hands presently wrapped around her warm mug unpeels from it. She promptly lowers her voice by a decibel or two, continuing along in a not-quite-whisper. "We've an appointment, Ellis. I've no reason to delay it."

And then, at an even lower volume still—so like a whisper that it may, miraculously, actually qualify as one: "Why, do you wish to change our plans for the evening?"

"No."

So resolute as to be beyond doubt, despite how reserved his tone is.

"But you know it's important to me that you are satisfied with all aspects of it."

Satisfied is a delicately chosen word, meant more as a ward against any potential eavesdroppers than because Ellis thinks it's the best option to express his meaning.

He wants her to be comfortable. Ellis doesn't imagine there is any approach that won't create some level of anxiety, and he is admittedly uncertain whether he can fully judge the difference between what is unavoidable and what is exacerbated by their present location but—

But it's important to remind her of her options. That he will not fall to pieces should she ask to wait a night or two more.

"Yes, yes," has a sort of clipped, hasty air to it. Yes, she knows. Delicately chosen words aside, she has heard this refrain from him enough times before that it has become rather like the little step which leads up through the door and into the kitchen of the house in hightown—something navigated with such regularity that she hardly registers its presence save when some unlucky turn results in stubbing her toe against it.

"Which is precisely why we ought to adhere to the schedule we agreed on yesterday. If you're satisfied"—to borrow the word—"with the arrangement, and I'm satisfied with it as well, then delaying the whole affair further will only make it seem like one or both of us is avoiding the whole thing for some reason. Which we are not."

It's only after she does so that she realizes the volume of her voice has clambered back toward its naturally conversational register. This is promptly corrected, reduced once more to that veritable whisper as she partially turns toward Ellis altogether. Her knee shifts under the shape of his hand beneath the table's edge.

"You needn't be shy, Ellis. I realize it may have been some time since last you were in such circumstances, but I assure you that you will only be performing for an audience which knows no better and who will be perfectly happy with however you choose to conduct yourself."

Look, how thoughtful and reassuring she can be!

It's nearly the truth. Yes, it has been some time since he did this in any sort of functional way, where space existed for softness.

The disparity between Wysteria and Cathán is so vast it may as well stretch across the entirety of Thedas.

But the certainty with which she reassures tugs at the corners of his mouth. Tilts him towards a smile rather than introspection. (This is a choice.) His thumb runs along her kneecap, light pressure as he lifts his mug to his lips.

"I have a suspicion you'll form some opinions along the way," Ellis tells her. "And I'll be glad to hear all of them."

Which is followed easily by, "You'll give me a little time to wash up?"

She hadn't been anticipating that she might make him smile, but the hint of it is highly rewarding—warms something right in the center of her chest in a way the hot cider can't. She is so pleased with it that she says, "Yes, of course," and doesn't even think to be cross with herself over the fact that she might have just said the same thing to him and thus been perfectly at her leisure rather than scampering around like a chicken's body recently parted from its head in the effort to see all the sweat and viscera and so on scrubbed from her person.

(Nevermind that part of the embarrassment had been to do with having entirely forgotten the whole thing.)

"I believe there is even a washbasin in the hall outside our room. I have no idea how it arrived there, obviously." Obviously. "But I did happen to notice it leaned there against the wall, and I doubt Madame Hill would refuse you its use. Now," she says, lifting her mug with both hands so she might take a prim sip from it. "I've been thinking we might ask to borrow a sledge and some dogs, so as to convey the corpse up the river more smoothly. I've never driven a string of dogs, but I can't imagine it's very difficult—"

And so, they spend some time considering the transport of an oversized wolf corpse. Who might be prevailed upon to spare sled and dog. Whether or not Tomar might vouch for them and instruct them on the use of the sled. They finish their drinks. Madame Hill clears Ellis' plate, reassures them that she's had water sent up to their room.

Not that they'd been asked, but Ellis hadn't had any illusions about who was listening behind the swinging door to the kitchen.

The fire has been stoked, the room warmed. The basin has been set behind a threadbare screen. Ellis steps behind it to begin the business of stripping off articles of clothing.

"I'll be brief," he promises. "Should we check to see that there's no one hovering outside our door even now?"

"No, I have a strange sort of confidence that when our proprietess wished us goodnight that she may have actually meant it."

Partly on account of the fact that Wysteria had stuck her head back out of the room under the pretense of thanking Madame Hill for her attentiveness, and the two of them had shared an exchange of significant looks and the working of eyebrows at various heights on the face. Yes, thank you for the substitute skirts, and for the hot water, and the advice, Messere—

With Ellis having become a shadow behind the screen, Wysteria has perched herself on the little room's bed with the field book retrieved from her pack. She is making notes in it presently—or cleaning up the remarks she's always made while sitting in the wood shed, expanding them into proper sentences she might easily decipher some weeks from now.

"But if you like, I can cram my shawl under the door and some paper in the keyhole."

"I'll trust your judgement."

Bracers, tunic, trousers, one after another after another landing over the screen. It rattles under the weight. A rush of water, sloshing into the basin, follows after.

For a stretch of moments, there is quiet. Wysteria left to her notes, Ellis focused on the business of sluicing away the day's work. The worst of it all came off with his armor. He is economical, brisk in his movements.

"Wysteria," comes after a comfortable stretch of shared silence. The cloth wrings an excess of water into the bowl. "Have you finished your work for the evening?"

"Aye."

Ha ha ha, she's very funny.

This, from where she has transitioned from sitting on the edge of the bed making her notes to lying on her side crossways across it to do the same. Only after answering does she raise her attention from the page, tucking the snub of the pencil behind her ear.

It occurs to Ellis belatedly that they might have banked the fire.

Still, though Wysteria has observed all his scars, all the violence of his life writ large across his skin. It is very late to consider that he might prefer all of it go unseen.

For a moment, he contemplates all this scarring. The lines of ink on his chest.

"Would you rather I put something back on before I step out from behind this screen?" he questions.

There's some difference between undressing in front of her and simply appearing entirely undressed. All other hesitancies aside, this feels like fair warning.

On the other side of the screen, Wysteria perks up like a particularly irascible little terrier that's heard something scratching at the window pane. She doesn't sit up. She does, however, prudently close the little leather bound field journal.

Well.

Would he prefer to put something back on? Should she ask him that? Should she rather it that way? Is it very dreadful if she doesn't? If she hesitates to answer him much longer, will he simply put all his clothes back on and say how long the day has been and that they ought to sleep?

"No," she says abruptly. And then amends, "It's quite all right if you don't. Unless you would prefer to. I have been in the Gallows baths, you know."

(She absolutely doesn't use them herself, and this is stretching the truth. But she is aware them and that must certainly count for something.)

"But I can close my eyes if you like. Were it me, I would feel very ridiculous simply appearing suddenly without any clothes on. Not that you ought to. I'm only speaking very broadly."

Would Ellis like her to close her eyes?

There is a split second of consideration, what might be best. He thinks back to that night in Markham, in the near-darkness of that little dormitory. Wysteria instructing him which items to take off, in which order.

Ellis sets down the cloth over the edge of the basin. A moment later, he steps out from behind the screen. This is apparently Ellis' decision, appearing without preamble or further deliberation. His skin is still slightly damp. He doesn't reach up to snare his tunic from the top of the screen as he passes by it.

The room is not of remarkable size. It's easily crossed, in a few strides, unless he is otherwise stalled.

No, she doesn't stall him. Partly because, for a very short instant as he appears there out from behind the screen, she is struck briefly dumb over being so indulged. Or because it is quite a lot of skin. Or because she has seen him in his wet clothes with his trousers sticking to him, but so rarely has she seen the rest of him in so much firelight. She is distantly aware of the jolt of her pulse, the sudden flush of adrenaline.

But mostly she doesn't stall him because it doesn't even occur to her to do so. Does she look a little round eyed and shocked? Certainly. But before Ellis has finished crossed the little room to the bed, she has also levered herself up onto an elbow so as to look at him more directly.

"Oh." She can feel the prickle of a flush at her scalp. "Well there, you see. Hardly ridiculous at all."

(Her neck has gone instantly very hot. She can feel that too.)

Stopping just short, at the edge of the bed, Ellis observes her. Marks the expression on her face, the focus of her study. It may as well be a physical touch. He feels the prickle of it on his skin.

"I hoped not."

Even if he hadn't been worried about looking ridiculous, as much as he had worried over the scarring, and what questions they might raise. Ellis is certain that isn't a discussion conducive to what Wysteria had hoped to accomplish tonight. Or even one he wishes to have.

It is better to look at her. She is so rarely at a loss for words.

"How would you have me?" is only a little teasing; it's a very seriously posed question but for the way he is looking at her, the warmth in his voice. "In bed alongside you?"

It is more a question of this: has she completed her study?

Yes, he is very battered. But she knows that—has seen that harsh mark across his throat, and has inspected at least some small portion of the array across his chest. She knows his back is scarred too, and knows at least part of what made those marks. It makes sense that the rest of him ought to follow in kind. Indeed if she's never really interrogated the marks, it's because there is a reasonable conclusion she might draw from nearly all of them: that Ellis has lived a very rough sort of life, both in Riftwatch and before it.

She isn't looking at his scars, or the dark mark of the tattoo sprawled over his chest. Rather, she is absorbing the general impression of him there at the edge of the bed. Something of it in combination with fondness in the sound of his voice prompts that color to spread from her neck to her face.

Wysteria plucks the snub of a pencil from behind her ear and chucks it off the foot of the bed without actually blinking away from him.

"Yes, that would do. Only—" is quickly added, lest he otherwise take her immediately up on having reached a conensus. Though she pauses a long time before saying, "Only would you turn about for me? Just the once round."

The request does stave off some forward momentum, hold him there at the edge of the bed. It is a smaller bed, not nearly as vast as the one they had shared covertly at Lady Paget's manor, nor even as comfortably proportioned as their accommodations at the lodge. Wysteria is more or less fully attired, and Ellis had wasted a moment's time thinking of how he might arrange himself beside her without preventing her from shucking her borrowed skirts if she were so inclined.

But seeing as he had offered, and she had requested—

"Aye," is so predictable that it is unnecessary. He has grown accustomed to giving Wysteria what she asks for, in one form or another.

He steps back from the bed. Only a pace or two, recalling again that dormitory. The brazier had been dimmed so low that she had been only gray shapes in the dark, but Ellis had no difficulty parsing the intensity of her attention. Seeing her in the full light of the fire only clarifies what he had already parsed.

And that moment of study, looking at her, observing the blush across her face and the movement of her hands and brightness of her expression—

It is a wrench to turn from it. But he does. And he obliges her in this too: it is a slow rotation, because he knows without being told what the intention behind the request might be. The flicker of unease at turning his back to any kind of observation comes and goes, finds no purchase as he turns a circle on the worn floorboards for her.

For years now, Ellis' body has been unremarkable. Sinew and bone, raised scars here and there. Capable of wielding a mace, bracing a shoulder against a heavy door, lifting weighted crates. Admiration has been limited to it's capability. Wysteria's examination is another thing altogether. As steady as his movements are, as calm as he is when he comes again to a halt facing her, the difference kindles a slow-burning heat in his chest.

"You needn't rush your study," is an offering too, patient and easy. Perhaps this is all there is tonight. He would have no complaints.

It is both easier and harder to look at him as he turns his back—because she wants to see him, and because it feels a little silly to be so blatant in her study. Even so, without the fixture of his attention on her, she promptly lowers her examination from the respectable level of the clavicle and Ellis's scarred neck and the curl of his hair about his ears. Because— well, why shouldn't she? Particularly when he has out so much effort into scrubbing up, and is still damp from the task.

When he begins to turn round back to her, Wysteria's eyeline snaps briskly up again. It's possible she's gone marginally more red. Who can say? The fire light may very well be playing tricks in this end of the room.

"I believe we've discussed the matter of mine being a quick study, Ellis," sounds far more arch than she actually feels. That's fine. "But thank you. I assure you that I'm most appreciative of the sentiment and am not at all insulted by the suggestion otherwise."

Ha ha ha, how witty she is!

The high handed effect being thoroughly ruined when she says, far more abruptly and far more genuine, "Thank you for letting me look at you. I enjoy it, that's all."

All other things aside, all other emotions clattering in his chest, he is abruptly so desperately aware of the way he cares for her. This affection has been held so close for so long that it's roots excavate down beneath all other aspects of the foundations Ellis has built his life upon. It is too big to speak of, particularly for Ellis who is so economical in his choice of words.

Even as this reels him back to her, he is still stalled at the edge of the bed. Reaches for her hands rather than any other thing.

"You might look at me whenever you please, until you've gotten tired of it," he reminds her, the words thick, weighted down with more than just the obvious humor of this instruction. "I'm yours."

Pleasing still, to be able to say so. It has been true for a very long time, but now it is bound up in other kinds of vows. Less easy to wander away from. (Tonight he is choosing not to be troubled by this.)

It's an automatic thing—to lean further up on the prop of her elbow and deliver her spare hand into his possession. How could she not when he sounds so warm and so fond, when she can hear his feeling in the thickness of his throat while he promises to do as she pleases, and that he belongs to her? If she failed to surrender her hand to him, she might risk floating away as her ego swells to enormous proportions.

No, the curl of his fingers about hers makes for a fine bit of grounding. Keeps her where she might feel the thump of her pulse, and the spirited hum of anticipation in her fingers. How very spoiled she's become.

And so, after a moment of being nothing more than flush with all his affection, she gives his hand a small tug.

"In that case, you should do as I say and come lay down next to me."

Nevermind that she's repeating the suggestion he'd made himself only moments ago. This can be hers too if she wants it.

"Aye," has the cadence of a joke. He says it only because he thinks it might make her laugh.

The bed is not as small as some they have shared, but it is not as luxurious as others. He can lever himself down alongside her without leaving very much space between them by absolute necessity, because any farther from her would see him tipping off the edge.

Lain down beside her this way, his nakedness is underscored, accentuated. His fingers retain their hold on hers, linked loosely as he settles his back against the quilt, head on the second pillow. Considers her many layers, her bound-up hair. Brings her hand to his mouth, kisses her fingertips before questioning, "Do you have a list of requests?"

It does make her laugh—sudden and bright and very real. Presumably somewhere, Madame Hill hears some small part of it and considers the whole evening with her semi-invited meddling a success.

Meanwhile here in the room, Wysteria is still smiling at Ellis settles in beside her. The bed is just wide enough that their combined weight on the mattress doesn't automatically tilt them in against one another which is, were she to express her opinion on the subject, something of a shame. Though as far as environmental shortcoming go, this one at least is highly navigable.

Lying alongside him, fully dressed save for the field boots she'd removed shortly after having closed the door behind them, there is something almost charming in the question he presses to her knuckles. After all, he is so very (incredibly!) naked, and she is so very not. And he is asking her opinion, and she may answer him however she likes. That she has no immediate answer for him ought to be embarrassing, yet—

"I haven't drafted one, no. Though you may kiss me," she says, leaning very faintly over toward him. "And then I suppose you may tell me your list, and I will consider its merits."

Checkmate.

"My list," is so lightly put that it betrays what is surely easy to guess: Ellis has no particular list in mind.

But he's been asked for a kiss first. Her hand, still in his custody, is caught against his chest as he reaches up for her cheek. Wysteria is flushed and beautiful. Ellis would study her for a time, if he thought either of them had the patience for it.

So she is drawn down to him. Given all the leverage in this, with only Ellis' hand at her jaw to encourage her. He leans up only a fraction to meet her, just enough to hold his body taut in service of keeping that contact.

They have done this before. She has laid him out across a bed of clover and kissed him, tasting of earth and water, all those months ago. Before they were married. Before they had kissed very much at all.

His thumb is very gently insistent at the hinge of her jaw. If he is going to give a list, at this rate he will speak it directly into her mouth.

Edited 2022-10-18 03:26 (UTC)

Small though the point of contact might be, it's a fine bit of a encouragement and easily answered as she leans softly over him and down—carefully angling the line of her face in sympathy to his thumb and the tips of his fingers—

"Yes of course," she says very closer to his mouth, in imitation of being wide eyed and guileless. "Your list." For all his protests, he isn't totally devoid of creativity. She trusts something will occur to him. In the mean time, she is happy to take advantage of his being vulnerable to her.

Wysteria is smiling when she kisses him. It's a brief, almost chaste thing—there and done so that after she might examine his face from very close up. His dark eyelashes and the wrinkles about his eyes and the nearly invisible flecks of grey in his eyebrows. And then, because he is there and his hand is warm at her jaw, she kisses him again, which is less brief and less chaste.

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