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

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

You came to the side of the bed
and sat staring at me.
Then you kissed me—I felt
hot wax on my forehead.
I wanted it to leave a mark:
that’s how I knew I loved you.
Because I wanted to be burned, stamped,
to have something in the end—
I drew the gown over my head;
a red flush covered my face and shoulders.
It will run its course, the course of fire,
setting a cold coin on the forehead, between the eyes.
You lay beside me; your hand moved over my face
as though you had felt it also-
you must have known, then, how I wanted you.
We will always know that, you and I.
The proof will be my body.

— louise glück

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Wysteria's hands are warm in his, quick when she slips one from the clasp of his palm and pinches his cheek. He watches the warmth of her smile and says, "I'll walk with you," meaning only to linger in her company a little longer.

Invoking the past is like cracking open the seal on a long-kept jar. The lid doesn't settle back into place as neatly. It is not so easy to contain the contents. It feels not so dissimilar to wrenching the fingers of his hand the wrong way, and feeling the reverberations of familiar pain course through his body. The fixed point upon which he steadies himself is Wysteria's hand, still in his.

When they rise, it is nearly in the same movement, Ellis drawn up by their laced fingers. They are stood too close in the space between two chairs. Ellis doesn't step back from her, though he should. He is aware of the wax lingering on her fingers, the sweet scent of honey. The word stay catches in his throat.

All those years ago, Shanae had kissed him first. She had seen something in his face when he was a boy and decided for them both. He wonders if his expression then would have been the same as whatever his face may look like now when his hand lifts to her cheek.

He opens his mouth. Draws a breath. Doesn't manage to ask her, though his fingers are very gentle against her skin.

Edited 2021-03-07 01:42 (UTC)

She is so ready to go. Her momentum is in fact already tilting subtly in the direction of leaning across the table to stuff a dozen last stray papers into the folio she means to take with them, but the sway of her shoulders is interrupted by-- By she doesn't quite know what. The closeness with their hands still together between them, maybe, because by the time Ellis' work rough other hand finds her face she has already hesitated.

It does however succeed at turning that pause into a realer kind of stillness. The straying point her attention veers so sharply back that it may as well come with a soft snap as it clicks into place on him. There it remains, and about it settles just the smallest pinch of uncertainty.

"If there is something more you wish to say on the subject, Mr. Ellis," she prompts. His hand is warm (or her face is—a flush of something like quiet exasperation tinging the back of her neck). "You must speak it now before we go. I would see the whole thing put to bed directly. I have no tolerance at all for loose ends when it comes to the resolution of—a misunderstanding."

If he were to drop his hand, release his grip on her, step back, this would be forgotten. Wysteria would do him that kindness, Ellis knows. She might have let it be enough, in the garden, a warning to do better without anything from but an agreement.

The silence stretches a few beats longer. His thumb skims across her cheek. The words don't come. The sentiment is too big. Among all the things he has tried to say, this is too much. It is not a loose end. His grip flexes over her hand as Ellis draws in a deep breath. Wysteria might be forgiven for thinking he is about to clumsily say something to her. She has weathered his attempts for some time now, surely she recognizes the signs of it.

But instead—

His palm shifts, cupping her neck. There is some shade of agony working across his face, indecision and regret and some other, overwhelming element resolving all at once as he looks into her face.

Despite her request, Ellis doesn't speak anything aloud. Instead, he leans down and kisses Wysteria in her little kitchen, hand holding very tight to hers as he does so.

Later, she will remeber this as a gentle thing. But in the moment, she is just keenly aware of the sudden hum that rises in her ears from the scuff of his thumb and the sharp impossible jab of something like heartache clenching behind her ribs. It's ridiculous to miss a person standing right there—the closest a person can be—in front of her, but that's what it's like. It is like standing behind a door in a dreadful little cabin while he and Tony stumble over one another, a ribbon of resentment stitching through her for the inconvenience of being separated.

In a long list of things she dreamed that should infuriate her but don't, that one still does. That split second where she'd thought there was a possibility that some cruel thing was somehow masquerading as him.

His beard scratches. His hands are warm and firm, and it isn't actually gentle at all really. Just so painfully considered, so much intention in so small a space that she can't see the edges of it. In that dimly lit room, the hearth cold and the winter light cold as it ekes in through the windows high on the wall, she lets him do it. There's a kind of relief in it, the fringe of ill temper draining out of her. In its place, she tightens her hands in his—drawing it thoughtlessly close to her middle where it's more easily clutched. She doesn't think to close her eyes until after and by then it's too late. She has already seen his dark eyelashes and the wind chapped pink of his cheek up close.

"I should slap you for this," Wysteria is so eager to say that it's nearly spoken right into his mouth. And then she bursts into tears.

More so than the yielding softness of her mouth, Ellis' attention fixes on the tightening clasp of her hand on his and the way she pulls their linked fingers closer. That small motion carries so much weight with it. All the places their bodies aren't touching, how careful he's been not to sway into her, to leave her space to pull back and step away from him, the clasp of her hand over his fires off a cascade of different, quiet wants in the back of his mind.

And then Wysteria is crying.

Her tears register the same way falling through a crumbling stone floor in an abandoned thaig would register. He sucks in a sharp breath, hand lifting away and settling back at her neck indecisively as he straightens up by degrees, the urge to lean back into her dissipating.

"Wysteria, I—"

What use is an apology? Dread comes coiling up in his chest, icy claws of panic gouging into his stomach. As tempting as it is to lapse into silence, he dredges up enough sense to manage something.

"Forgive me. Please."

By now he knows better than to say don't cry.

"No. No, it's—" Something rises in her chest and clenches tight there, then falls, then rises again. Her face is hot. It might be the tears on them or from Ellis' broad hand on her neck.

She cries harder, one ridiculous sob, then manages to insist, "It's fine. There's nothing to forgive," before laughing. It's a shrill sound, through tears rather than at end to them. She'd cover her face with one of her hands if they weren't both still grasping hard at his hand.

"It's just I'd been so concerned since that awful dream that you might ppssibly never want to speak to me again, and that I'd ruined everything by being so wretched to Mister Stark when he was in such a state and to you even though I knew well enough how painful such a thing was to you even before you— And I suspected that's why you didn't care to do as I asked. And the survey makes no difference at all. Truly it doesn't. But—If the rest had been confirmed, and if you'd wanted nothing at all to do with me after all—" she cries, hanging her head. "I'm so relieved, is all. That that isn't the case. That is very important to me. I'm pleased."

In the course of her recitation, the panicky clutch of fear eases enough that he remembers to let his hand fall from her neck to shoulder, encourage her in to be held. He makes no move to free his hand from hers, leaves them to be pinned between them as his hand rubs back and forth along her shoulders.

I'm pleased, Wysteria says, and he breathes out very hard. Envisioning the alternative, where he'd crossed a line and ruined everything, their friendship, her trust in him—

"I promise you, I couldn't bear the idea of not speaking to you," Ellis tells her, murmured against her hair. The admission is shorthand for a great many things he's found himself unable to tolerate now. The dream had illustrated all of that for him very clearly.

"You," he says, that single word infused with such tenderness. "You are important to me."

Whether or not he ever kisses her again. It's not about that. It's more than that.

Then, quietly around a small smile, Ellis offers, "You can still slap me, if you want."

She sets her forehead against his shoulder. It's not such a thumping a blow that it constitutes as a headbutt, but it's not wholly undivided from the thing.

"Your face would only scratch my hand," is perfectly sensible reasoning, blubbered though it is through fresh tears and the absurd, confused sense of elation that's pummeling her. She turns her face. Sets her cheek against his shoulder and stares for what feels like a very long time at the edge of his tunic while their hands are all cinched tight between them—

As then all at once it appears that one of her hands has come untangled, for she's scrubbing her face with her sleeve and it must have come from somewhere. Eventually, with her eyes are more or less successfully dried, she catches the edge of that collar and winds her hand in it. Securing a grip there.

"But you are meant to ask before it."

There's some quiet in the wake of that statement. Wysteria's tears ebb into nothingness, and Ellis holds onto her, presses a soft kiss to the top of her head as he takes stock of the way their bodies fit together and the hitching sound of her breathing and the firm clutch of her hand in his own. It is good. It would be enough.

And having arrived at that conclusion, the implication in the question takes him almost by surprise. It writes itself across his face, mild shock passing into a small smile.

"Do you want me to ask you again?"

As if it had not occurred to him that Wysteria might want him to kiss her, that there might be anything but a brief deviation and a return to business as usual. Even in the space of time between her reassurance and the slowing of her tears, Ellis had the time to think I shouldn't have done that and weigh that truth against how good it was to hold her, how much he wanted—

The lay of his collar is smoothed, a fidgeting hesitation in answer to the faint smiling curve she can hear at the edge of the question and feel against her cheek as the words hum through his chest. It is rare for Wysteria to have no ready answer, particularly to so simple a question. She might only say yes or no if she wished to. But—

"You recall all the little folded notes I had left you in the summer."

Sounds like a change in subject. She straightens slightly too, face all unevenly flush from crying and her attention still fixed stubbornly at the neck of his tunic and her hand there at it.

"It is a sort of—a lady's game, you might say. The folding is. In Kalvad it's meant for a very particular sort of correspondence." She raises her eyes to him then. And chooses, because she has been crying and making a fool of herself all morning, to be very brisk indeed. "For the affectionate kind, I suppose. You see?"

Affection means a lot of things. That's the first thought that comes to him as Wysteria fusses over the lay of his collar. Affection doesn't have to mean anything more than the way his entire body warms to her presence, the easy way he puts himself between her any anything dangerous, the long-established acceptance that he will carry her things, return books to the library on her behalf, tend to house and garden. Ellis' affection is a quiet thing, without expectation or demand.

It had never occurred to him that it might be returned in kind. The possibility of finding those feelings reflected back to him, it's—

"I kept them all," isn't exactly an answer, doesn't clarify whether or not he takes Wysteria's meaning. Across her back, Ellis' fingers trace the hem of her cape, following the neat stitching.

In turn, his thumb runs across her knuckles. It seems as if that's all he intends to say, that he's kept her notes, let that carry his meaning, before he says quietly, "I'd like to kiss you again. But I don't have to. My...regard for you doesn't change, no matter what happens."

The seriousness of her regard of him flexes, slipping in reply to the mingled embarrassment and delight that flares sharp for, 'I kept them all.' The sentiment is so ridiculous, absurd and so infuriatingly endearing and so entirely unsurprising.

That lack of shock has some grounding effect. All at once it simplifies the closeness, and the points of contact between, and even the slow, small shift of his hands. There is a stark reality in it. Yes, she might have guessed that already if she'd ever have any reason to.

"It would be acceptable," she says, so promptly that she nearly talks over his qualifiers. Her hand at his collar is a delaying brace and she must say the whole thing before the resolve of her elbow degrades—

"On the condition that you understand it would become unacceptable to me if you intend for it to be the last of two. I recall in the past certain reservations regarding your oaths and I would refuse to entertain such a cavalier attitude to the thing if later you intend to recall them. I doubt that to be the case. I know you to be a particularly thoughtful sort. But I know this business is often not so serious here as it is in Kalvad and I want only to be very clear of its value to me. That is all."

The invocation of his oaths, the undertaking he'd tied himself to and what it had promised him in return comes accompanied with a chill, the way a cloud blocking out sunlight might dim the warmth of the garden.

"I'll kiss you whenever you want, as many times as you want," Ellis promises her. "As long as I'm alive."

This is the promise that matters. There's no reason to be anything other than transparent about his attachment to her. Hasn't he already confessed as much?

But what comes after are the complications, the things that temper the broad sweep of what he is giving to her.

"I can't marry you," he tells her. Wysteria isn't the only one between them who remembers reservations, what had mattered to her. (Again, the cold prickle of awareness: I shouldn't have done this.) His hand flexes in her grasp, holding tight. "But there is nothing cavalier about this, for me."

The unspoken refrain: I am devoted to you.

"Is that enough for you?"

Edited (fusses) 2021-03-07 22:08 (UTC)

The indecision is a visible, flickering thing in her face. It is an earnest calculation, the serious examination she might give a particularly challenging problem of mathematics, or a page of unfamiliar runes, or the headache inducing tangled shape of an unknown bit of magic. It is last one, she thinks, that is the most accurate. The workings of mage craft in Thedas look so irregular is comparison to the regimented, orderly spells and seals of Kalvad. In Kalvad, all webs are made of a single bright cord woven in and over and through itself and the challenge is to undo the knots without severing it. In Thedas, there is nothing unfragmented. A dozen threads might make up a knot.

"I understand how it is possible to have one without the other," she says at last, quite decided. Is it no more or less difficult to untangle a knot consisting of two separate strands, only different.

"And I suppose, given the sincerity of the one, that I would be willing to see if it is. But I don't actually know." Her tone is very measured, severe even. But Wysteria's hand on his is secured fiercely, unrelenting through indecision and hesitation and whatever reasoning must be done. "So it would be something of a mutual compromise, you see. Is that enough?"

Is that enough? Ellis laughs softly, unable to stop himself. He cannot think of any scenario in which Wysteria would be the one who fell short between them.

"You will always be enough."

Even if she decides that she wants more than Ellis could give her, a husband and all that would bring along with it. (She should have that. He wants her to have that.) Even if in a week, a month, a year, she decides that she has had enough of him. It seems to Ellis that between them, Wysteria is making the bigger compromise. What is Ellis doing but passing into her hands something that has always been hers?

And Ellis thinks she deserves to hear those words regardless of whether his hands are on her or not. It is a very straight-forward thing, without qualifiers or conditions. She is enough, just as she is.

"It's enough," is only repeated for clarity's sake, to make his position clear knowing Wysteria will mark it. His fingers resume their progression back and forth along the hem of her cape.

To hear it one time at the tail end of that relieved kind of laughter might be flattering, but it's not promising. But to hear it a second time—the repetition turns a theoretical thing into fact. She does mark it. It is visible in the way her expression narrows and in how her jaw briefly sets in a flash of stubborn pride rather than jabbing insistence.

"Then you may kiss me again," she announces, like it is a thing she will wait for.

Instead Wysteria tips her face up expectantly, and rises a demanding half inch.

Instead of bending immediately, Ellis considers her for a moment. He needs to fix this moment in his mind. Wysteria's cheeks are flushed and her hand is warm at his collarbone where she's taken hold of his tunic and her expression is so determined. He can feel the way his expression softens in the course of his study, thumb flexing over her knuckles. His hand leaves off it's study of her cape's hem to set gently at the small of her back to keep her cinched close when he finally dips towards her mouth.

He kisses her, softly, deliberately. There's some indulgent edge in this moment, to kiss her thoroughly, to only break to draw breath and rest his forehead against hers. He draws a breath, but instead of speaking, drops a second, light kiss to the corner of her mouth before gathering himself enough to consider practicalities.

"I'd ask you again, but I've already made you late," Ellis says softly. Which he expects she'll remember, sooner or later.

And it occurs to him, in the wake of their agreement, this compromise, that he considers he'd like to do this properly. Whatever properly looks like to Wysteria.

As far as second kisses go, she imagines it to be a fairly good one. Though were someone to interrogate her on the subject, she might have more to say for the broad shape of his hand at the small of her back than the gentle shape of his mouth or the rasp of his beard. But there is a moment where, in reply to that lighter kiss, she begins to turn her head toward the bristle of—

Wysteria balks. With a dismayed squawk, she punches him in the collar with the heel of her hand and twists free. A flurry of papers must be swept up, shoved into the waiting folio at comically off angles. There is a crunch of bent corner and edges as she snaps the thing shut and shoves it into his arms.

"Oh—! Damn! Really, Mister Ellis! Your timing could scarcely be worse."

The waiting scarf is thrown haphazardly about her shoulders, hat and gloves smashed under an arm. She snatches back the folio, pausing just long enough to regard him and exhale a singularly exasperated sigh before turning toward fleeing the room.

—And then she rears back.

"You will have dinner with me this evening. And then you will read something to me and we will discuss it, and then you will go back to the Gallows. Best luck on your watch duty. Goodbye."

And then she really is going, bursting back out into the garden with such enthusiasm that it sends chickens scattering in every direction.

Here is a thing Ellis is surprised to find himself susceptible to: the ebullient glow that comes along with newly admitted affections. It's hums like a song in the back of the head everywhere he travels, accompanies him through the Gallows and in the training yard and on a jolting wagon ride into Tantervale escorting a trio of Chantry Sisters and the precious relic in their care.

It is not so new, wanting to please Wysteria. There are still notes, accompanied by sachets of tea or a tiny bouquets of snowdrops and hellebores and winter jasmine, and books with passages marked for her. It is not even new to spend time in the Hightown house, talking about what she's read that sticks in her mind or playing cards or rearranging the library while she sits among stacks of books. He always returns to the Gallows at the end of the evening. It is much the same, except for what's shifted, inescapably, and glows warm between them.

It's a thing to be carefully tended. Whether or not he still recalls how to do so—

Today, Ellis has been charged with the delivery of a wagonful of goods on behalf of a merchant the Ambassador is currying favor with. Ellis hadn't asked after the particulars of the arrangement, nor was it necessarily the type of errand that required company, but he'd mentioned (offered? requested?) it to Wysteria.

Which is how she came to be sat beside him on the cart on the road to one of the outlying villages along the coast. It's very cold and the wind is brisk, but the sun is out, and the ride has been uneventful. Ellis' gloves are tucked into one pocket, scarf tugged up around his ears. The sea stretches out along their right, beyond the grassy incline at the side of the road. The journey has been very pleasant, all thing's considered.

Wysteria has been speaking at length, the kind of explanation of what she and Tony are working on that Ellis only half-understands but enjoys hearing regardless. In the course of it, he shifts the reins to one hand and reaches over to where she's folded her mittened hands in her lap to lace his fingers through hers.

"Go on," he says, because he'd hear whatever she cared to talk about. It hadn't been meant as an interruption. It had occurred to Ellis that he could take her hand, and that it needn't be anything more than that.

It is a difficult prospect to chatter at a near constant clip over the high edge of a woolen muffler, but Wysteria has been making fine work of the challenge for this half hour at least. The pause prompted by his hand insinuating itself between hers may in fact be the first time she's taken a full breath since she begun talking about the casting the levitating rings for the skiff she and Tony have been laboring over these past weeks. There is a matter of copper and iron banding, you see--considerations regarding different temperature resistances in various types of metals--And the complicated nature of the undertaking is the sort of thing which warrants a great deal of lung capacity. Ideally, there would be papers and diagrams involved as well but she has been doing her very best to make up for the lack by illustrating the concepts verbally in exacting detail.

But now, having been reminded of the necessity to breathe, she sucks down a lungful of air rather than continue right away. It's held for a moment, the bitter sea air all desperately cold in her chest, and then released all at once in one strong exhale. She fancies she can taste something like salt in it.

(It would be easy to say that very little has changed between them. But that would be emphatically wrong. There is no one else's hand in the entire world who might contrive to interrupt her. And even if there was, she certainly wouldn't welcome the thing much less allow herself to feel any sense of the warm self-satisfaction which rises in reply to it.)

"My grandfather kept a house by the sea for a time," is in no way a continuation of her presentation. Squinting toward the rocky strand of beach, she wraps his hand a little more securely between her mittened ones. "I only saw it a few times while he was alive and Kalvad is very different from the Marches for most of the year, but in this season and with the water just there I'm reminded of it very much."

Some time ago Wysteria wrote him a letter containing some details of Kalvad, enough so that Ellis has some minor touchstone to fall back on when Wysteria speaks of the place. He thinks the house by the sea might be far grander than the first image that comes to his mind, but the more interesting thing to consider is Wysteria, smaller and maybe a little sunburned and still fantastically ambitious, collecting shells and crabs.

"Can you swim?" is an easier question than Do you miss it? Ellis knows better than to invoke topics he doesn't care to answer in kind. His thumb strokes overs hers, a small, deliberate movement that doesn't disrupt the arrangement of their hands.

This is not chief among the questions he should be asking her. He's had some time to consider what should be settled, to think of what is due to her. But in the present moment—

"I'm not suggesting we stop now," he clarifies, in the wake of the strangeness of thinking so far ahead, that he might take her to a lake in the summer without any purpose beyond breaking away from Kirkwall's heat. "But I can't remember if I've ever asked."

"Can I swim?" is spoken like a scoff, as if it is the most ridiculous question anyone in the entire world has asked. As if he has asked her whether she can run, or if she has to think to breathe. "Mister Ellis, I believe I have already once described to you the river near to my home. I obviously swim fantastically well."

Well.

"For a young lady."

So.

"So long as my feet can touch the bottom of the thing."

And.

"And I am well insulated from any current, for I have found that they disagree with skirts."

She is a fabulously accomplished wader.

Edited 2021-03-08 19:04 (UTC)

With Wysteria and Tony both, it tends to be more productive to wait and listen while they work their way towards a particular point. If he has a sense of the destination ahead of time, well—

Ellis doesn't laugh, but the beginnings of a smile work across his face in the same moment his hand tightens around hers.

"I'm not so much at swimming in the ocean myself," he tells her, which may sound diplomatic but is not so much a kindness as one might imagine. "But I can manage alright in a pond, or a lake."

Which leads him, despite some consideration that the offer won't be well received, to continue—

"If you'd like to learn how, so it doesn't matter so much whether or not your feet can touch the bottom, I'd show you."

The matter of skirts is a whole other discussion, most likely.

And yet—

"Certainly," she declares, patting his hand with the mittened hand he hasn't captured quite so thoroughly. "That would be very agreeable. Particularly once the weather has turned. Kirkwall—indeed so much of the Marches, to say nothing of everywhere else—becomes so wretchedly hot in the summer. I imagine it's a relief to go swimming properly. To say nothing of the practicalities! At this rate, it can only be a matter of time before some business of the war sees fit to dump me into a great body of water and expect me to float. It is one of the only inconveniences remaining. I may as well be prepared for it."

She gives the shape of their hands together another robust pat for good measure.

"Actually. As we are on something near to the topic, this recalls to mind a small matter I have been meaning to discuss with you since we left Kirkwall."

So it is decided. Swimming lessons, agreed upon with a great deal less complaint than the archery lessons, for which Ellis is grateful. But there's not a point to trying to parse what qualifies as practical and what does not. He'll accept being humored on the archery and optimistic about the swimming.

And accept a turn in discussion, which doesn't dim the pleased smile on his face as he glances over to her.

"Aye?" he asks, inviting as he shifts slightly in his seat, lifting one boot to rest on the lip of the toe board. He is comfortable, his hand is warm between Wysteria's mittens, and he expects a question about Lake Calenhad or some such thing. It feels the natural progression in topic.

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

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essential thread research: google show me "wagon parts"