faderift | open. you believe what you want to believe.

His grin shifts his face again, changing the angles that her fingertips are pressed to. It's a small grin on the Matthias scale--he has a variety, usually wider than not--but it's still a grin. And things move one notch closer to better.

"No, that's not it. 'Cause you are, and you don't need me to say it. Like I will say it, 'course, but it's also true on its own." He shifts his hand, pushes back to carefully tuck some of her hair back behind her ear. And here's her face, close to his, perfect and pretty. "I reckon I could look at you forever. You really don't like beards at all?"

She doesn't strictly disagree. However she might feel about the scars blanketing her limbs, Laura's aware that she's generally not unpleasant to look at. And Matthias is the only person in the world from whom she likes hearing opinions, when it comes to the subject of her appearance. But she has yet to find a way to accept the compliment easily.

So instead, shrugging at his answer--but with the corner of her mouth twitching up slightly, something shy coming into her face--she tells him, "I would see less of your face."

It's better than the other answers at hand: sometimes they smell bad, they can be unpleasantly bristly, they remind her of other people she'd rather forget.

Edited (fixing a bad sentence) 2021-03-04 14:30 (UTC)

"Yeah, true. Might not always be a bad thing."

He rubs at his chin, thinking--then, spurred to sudden action, reaches for some of her hair. It's long enough that he can get a bit of it and lean in as he pulls it closer--and holds it over his upper lip, making a long and droopy moustache of it.

"But just look at this," he says through her hair.

Hers is the startled laugh of someone who didn't realize a moustache made of her hair was even an option. Laura shakes her head--minutely, careful not to disrupt his attempt at facial hair.

"You look like Bastien." (He doesn't, really. The only point of comparison is some dark hair over his upper lip. But for their purposes, that's enough, and it's the first thing Laura thinks of, anyway.) "I couldn't kiss Bastien."

"He is old," Matthias concedes, and, trying out a very bad Orlesian accent, repeats, "old."

But he doesn't take her hair away from his face just yet. Instead he curls it around so it makes a loop, and holds that to his lip to make a very bad pseudo beard. "Less Bastieny," he guesses, though he can't see for himself. "Maybe the trouble is that it doesn't match my hair, yeah? When I was small we said it was demons that had hair that didn't match their beards. Stupid."

"Ancien," she agrees, with only a little Nevarran colouring her Orlesian, a hand going to her mouth as she tries not to laugh more at the sight of her hair wrapping about Matthias' chin. Why it's so amusing, she wouldn't be able say if asked. A lifetime spent mostly without small moments of silliness, perhaps, and the continuing surprise at being able to sit with someone and have moments like these. "Beards are always darker. That would make every man a demon."

"Ancien," he repeats dutifully, and sticks his nose up in the air. This is in part to balance the hair and in part to be posh and Orlesian--not Bastien-Orlesian, whatever else might be said of Bastien (not much by Matthias, Bastien confuses him), he isn't posh.

"Beards might be a bit darker, but I mean like if I really had a beard what grew in as black as your hair, but I had my hair along with it. That's too much a difference, yeah? I ought to have at least a brown beard to go with brown hair. And if I hadn't, then," he clicks his tongue against his teeth, "demon, obviously."

"You are a mage," she points out, leaning in a little to help him with the extremely important matter of keeping his facial hair on his face. "You could make your beard any colour."

Of course, a child like he was might see a mage and think one step from a demon. Laura wouldn't be able to blame them. She doesn't say it, just aware enough to realize they likely shouldn't return to the subject of all the ways Matthias' magic might endanger others. Instead, she tells him, "Brown hair and a green beard."

He laughs, and some of her hair falls into his mouth. Gross, mostly for her, but also not great for him. Carefully he tries to push it out, maybe wipe it off.

"Tell you what, when I've learnt the spell for hair coloring, I'll grow a beard then. Or I'll try. At least for a bit, only so I can change the color around. Brown hair and a red beard, but proper red. Like crimson red. Not ginger."

"I would like your with a red beard." Her hair falling into his mouth is, for her, the end of this particular bit of entertainment. It's nowhere close to the least pleasant place her hair has been, and yet--she takes the locks he borrowed carefully from his grasp, letting them fall back against her shoulder again. Still smiling, lips and all now, though, and touching his jaw again lightly. "But then I would like shaving it off again."

"All right, then." He turns his head just a little, leans in to her touch with a grin. "That's what I'll be working on. I'll let Enchanter Leander know, all other work has got to stop for a bit so's I can learn to grow a beard and color it red."

Under other circumstances, she might draw her hand away a moment later--but he seems to like it, in the same way their cat appreciates being petted, and there's a sort of relief that comes from being able to touch his face and know the things he's promised. So her fingertips rest idle, there at his jaw, a little longer.

"Good." There's a pause, as she wonders what to say--unlike Matthias, she hasn't jokes at the ready. After a moment, she settles on, "What kind of work will have to stop?"

It's conciliatory--tell me about your magic, the kind I'm trying to understand--and it's a test of sorts. His enchanter hasn't been teaching him blood magic, surely, but.

"Oh, y'know--"

No, she doesn't, obviously. Pleased to tell her more, Matthias sits back a little--not too far--and that means he moves his face out from under her hand but he reaches for it to hold it instead. It feels natural. When she'd walked in the room, things had been horrible. This is better.

"I'm trying to get better at healing, mainly. I'm getting quite good. Derrica reckons I could help with it, official-like--she said that ages ago but I dunno, I don't want to cock it up in some way. Spirit blade--Knight Enchanter Voss is helping me with that. And control, in general. I can write my whole name with fire but with everything else I'm crap."

"I remember the spirit blade." That, she still likes the idea of: weapons matching, fighting together, one more thing they're both capable of. Her other hand comes and covers his, enclosing it loosely between her palms. Healing, too, is good, and being able to control the things he does. All of it useful, all of it manageable by people without magic, only more quickly.

It's thinking of that--only more quickly--that leads her to add, "You want people to be better. That means you would be a good healer."

"I hope so." He looks down at where her hand is laid, covering his. The spaces between her knuckles, where her claws appear, are smooth. There's no sign of them. There never is, not until she needs them.

"I think--I want to help people, y'know? I always have." Saying that after doing blood magic in a dream might seem counter to that statement. Matthias puts that thought--and his immediate defensiveness--to one side. "Healing is the most straightforward, like. And I'd be glad to learn it, and be good at it. I'd always want to be on the front lines, though."

Her knuckles are smooth, the backs of her hands only faintly lined--old wounds, not self-inflicted, places that were neatly pinned open for lyrium experiments and then closed again. Her fingers and knuckles, compared to everything above them, and particulary everything behind her wrists, aren't marked much at all.

"Other healers couldn't," she points out. Matthias has this on the others she's encountered: he can fight as well as heal, can fight better. That makes him more useful than anyone scrambling along the edges of a battle. "So you would be more helpful. No--you will be more helpful."

"I will be," he repeats. Her affirmation means more than his. As ever, Matthias puts more stock in the opinions of others than he does in his own--and more, still, in Laura's opinion. She's numbered among those most important. Of course what she thinks counts for more.

He turns his hand so that his is now covering hers, so that he can run his thumb over her knuckles, raised like tiny mountains, the smooth valleys in between. Back and forth, almost meditative. In some future, he could be a healer and a fighter, both at once. In some future, he could still do blood magic--but he won't, he swore it. In some future, they could be in a tent together in a swamp, and the world could be horrible outside, but they'd be together.

"D'you think," he starts, then stops himself. "Sorry. I was thinking-- It doesn't matter. Or, I mean, it does matter, quite a lot, but I dunno if... Just, there's a lot of time between now and the point in time we were dreaming about. Right?"

"Yes." Five years, or around that long--though he likely doesn't need the exact number supplied. He remembers the dream as clearly as she. "Enough time to learn the things you want to."

It doesn't occur to her that he's not still talking of magic, in bringing up the numbers. Even with his thumb idly rubbing her skin, the new stumbling in his question. Matthias is confident, but he isn't always confident; this is something it's taken her time to figure out about him. And magic is important to him.

So it must be about magic.

"Right, yeah. Or-- you know, do the things I want to. Or the things I think I want to."

He looks at her, properly like. They're quite close still. It wasn't long ago--minutes, maybe--that the space between them felt like a gulf that couldn't be crossed. No, yeah--it's too recent, he can't say what he's thinking. If he told her that he would marry her, still, that he might want that--and might is such a stupid word here, a word he might use as a space between himself and the real truth--but if he told her now, with all that fear and all that she has lived, blood magic, and him with blood on his hands (in a dream, of course, it was a dream), all of it so close, still--well, saying it now would spoil it. It must be better to wait.

So instead, Matthias says, "I like you."

Which is stupid, really. But he means it, and he means the weight that it really has, which maybe she won't know--but she will know, of course she will know, because Laura is much cleverer than he is and can pick up even the littlest of things.

Laura understands, after a moment or two, what it is he means. There's a gap between the things Matthias wants to do and the words I like you, and inside it is everything they haven't talked about: all the parts of the dream that still feel like a dream, everything possible that she hasn't told anyone in the waking world.

"I asked Commander Flint what is required for a wedding," she informs him. Her voice is its usual flat, steady thing, made softer by the topic at hand. I like you, too, she means, dressed up in knowledge gained--like the taste of oranges and the rules to card games--later than most. It's easier, somehow, to explain what she's done than it is to explain what she feels.

And here, her eyes are on their hands, a lock of hair falling before her face. "It is not complicated, and it may not be legal. But he is capable of marrying people. If it becomes...relevant."

A grin jumps to his face first, and he squeezes her hand. There. She got it. And she brought it up, which means that it's all right, it could happen, and Matthias can feel his heart knocking very hard against his chest--but he collects himself, he marshals his face and tries to put on a look of pleasant consideration, like the thought is very new.

"If it becomes relevant," he repeats, "that's good to know, like. Phworr--" He breaks just as quickly as he'd put that on, blows a breath out, "you really asked Commander Flint, didn't you? You're brave, you know."

"I knew he would know," she answers, burying her smile, chin tucked against her throat. But Matthias is smiling, too, and they are agreed in all this, and he has promised never to use blood magic. So, careful, she squeezes his hand back, her gaze meeting his. "And he was very helpful."

To the best of his ability, at least, which apparently is only somewhat more detailed than what Laura knew before that point.

"I reckon he was," Matthias agrees, "but him just looking at me turns me half to dust. Never mind if I were asking him about weddings and he were looking at me while I was asking it. You're brave."

It bears repeating. During his compliment, he's gone and said the word itself, hasn't he--wedding--and a quick nervous grin jumps on to his face which hasn't got anything to do with Commander Flint.

"Since you've asked, I reckon I don't have to. Lucky me."

It's hard to imagine being afraid of Commander Flint. He's serious, and he's rarely friendly, but he doesn't wish people in Riftwatch harm. For her, at least, that takes away the sting from his flat stare and terse comments.

But she does see much less of Flint than Matthias. Perhaps being around him is more difficult when one's Riftwatch career depends entirely on his opinion.

"He said," she adds, since her knowledge won't do Matthias any good unless she speaks it aloud, "someone who wished to be married should ask people to observe and come to him. There are other expectations for people with land or families. People pay each other before weddings occur. But that sounds...unnecessary."

"Dowries," Matthias says, with a nod. He knows that much about weddings at least. "But we haven't got anything, so, yeah--unnecessary, I reckon."

We, in the context of weddings and dowries, has a great deal involved in it--a headiness that makes Matthias' stomach pitch a little. He weathers it by holding to Laura's hand, running his thumb over her knuckles again back the other way.

"Who would you ask? To, y'know. Observe. If that happened."

open. you believe what you want to believe.

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