#okay maybe the lick of poison line is for flattery

[utterdrip]

a different type of astarion line compilation; this is a collection of some of the prettier/more poetic things he says. and i don’t mean rehearsed lines meant to flatter, i mean genuine pretty phrasing

[ocean-in-my-rebel-soul]

Mutual Pining 5/?

Relationships: Templar!Carver Hawke/Merrill, background nonbinary!Hawke/Bela

Rating: E for eventual smut (will be marked)

Summary:  A week of shore-leave turned into an impromptu camping trip with Merrill, and Carver made the mistake of not checking when Isabela and his sibling helped pack the bags. It had all the essentials, Bela swore, except for one thing:

It only had one tent.

Notes:  set somewhere in Act 2, and Carver’s been a Templar now a year and a half or so. Turns out, it is probably gonna be longer than seven parts, as originally planned; these two keep surprising me. Who knows? (Not me, I’m only the author!) (Also, this chapter is almost 5k long, out of a total 11k. Prepare for lots of Carver feels.)

[Part 1]    [Part 2]    [Part 3]    [Part 4]   [Part 5]   [Part 6]   [Part 7]

==

Ozone burned like acid in his nostrils as he jolted, a half-strangled shout stuck in his throat. Already the dream was slipping away, just flashes and impressions--blood and bone, an oppressive wall of force battering against him. Trapped, walled off, restrained. Bright green eyes, crying, fading. Gone.

Merrill blinked at him like a cat as she hovered above him. “Carver?” The sound distorted around a yawn. Her fingers curled into his tunic where she clutched at his shoulders. “Wha’s wrong?’

His heart stammered in his chest, blood thrumming at the pulse point in his neck. She was too nice, too warm, too close. Was this one of those dreams that layered? He’d had them before, had woken from the horrors of the Fade countless times only to find reality to be as dream-tinged as ever. It had gotten worse after pledging himself to the Templars and taking his first draught of lyrium, putting himself closer to the Fade with every infusion. It could happen at any time, now. 

He shivered and pulled Merrill close without conscious thought, wrapping his arms around the narrow planes of her back. He focused on her heat, on the way she always seemed too warm for her thin frame. The way her hair tickled his nose. The solid root that prodded at his left hip. Carver took a deep breath and counted--in, two, three, four; out, two, three, four--just as Anders had taught Eli, and just how Eli had taught Carver. If he could only calm the shuddering of his nerves, he could focus.

“It’s a dream, I guess,” he muttered against her temple. Carver felt the sick flutter of his pulse in his belly. Would he be able to tell if this was just his imagination? Would he recognize a demon if it slept in his arms? “It was just a dream.”

Her fingers wound themselves into the sleep-smushed waves of his hair. “Dreams can be scary, but you’re okay. I’m here, right?” Merrill chuckled, low and husky, her breath puffing along the column of his throat. “The Fade responds to power and will. I will protect you, Little Hawke.”

His skin tingled at the weight of her words, and he could swear he felt her magic in them. Merrill’s hair smelled like elfroot and something else, something smokey and herbal, like the Nevarran tea Varric got him addicted to last month. He allowed himself to breathe it in for a moment. It did nothing for his nerves. “We should--we should probably get up if we’re awake,” he croaked. Please be awake, he thought.

Merrill only moved to turn her head and peer vaguely skyward, as if she could pierce the leafy canopy through the canvas ceiling. “Still early,” she huffed. “Remind me to find some bitter-blossoms. I told my neighbor I’d bring her some if I found any. Mm. You should take some, too.”

“Yeah?” Carver craned his head to peek at her and found Merrill’s bright green eyes peering back. “What’s that good for?”

She yawned and settled back against his shoulder. “Dreams,” she said with a sleepy snuffle. Merrill hummed a tune under her breath and Carver couldn’t fight the way his limbs slowly relaxed, the way his heart calmed to the soothing touch of her hand on his chest.

He couldn’t fight anything. It was the last panicked thought that raced through his mind before the blackness of sleep took him once more.

=

“I don’t think I can tell these apart,” Carver complained. “You keep telling me these are different but I just don’t see it.”

Merrill laughed. He loved when she laughed, even when it was aimed at him. “I’ll show you again,” she promised. “Look out below!” A shower of needles heralded her quick--and almost violent--descent from the tree.

He held out the two sprays of red flowers he had been examining, each a cluster of tiny blossoms on thin stems rising from a single stalk. “They’re the same, aren’t they?” he asked. “You gave me a trick question, admit it.”

She smiled and pointed at the one in his left hand. “This one’s what we’re looking for. You can tell, it’s more woody and sturdy than the other, and it’s all red, not red and yellow flowers.”

Carver frowned and examined them closer. “These are barely yellow.” He snorted, shaking the offending flower. “So what’s wrong with this one, then?”  

“The red and yellow one is very poisonous.”

He dropped them both like rocks. “You could have told me that earlier!”

“I did! I said that we want the—”

“--the red ones, so please go pick a few from each bush, and don’t worry, half of them are going to be toxic,” he supplied in a high, mocking voice. Carver eyed her smiling face with suspicion. “What?”

“You’re just so—so silly!” Merrill laughed, and he felt his annoyance melt away. “I don’t sound anything like that!”

He blushed and looked away, smushing the poisonous flower with the toe of his boot. “Well, whatever,” he grumbled. “How poisonous are they, anyway?”

“Don’t eat any,” was all she said before clamoring up another tree. “Oh, and don’t lick your hands!”

Carver watched the branches shake as Merrill made her way, following below her with one of her baskets. He fought off a yawn and shook his head. The morning hadn’t been any better after truly waking up; Merrill had already gotten up, humming to herself outside the tent by the time he awoke. His rest had been fitful and he wasn’t unconvinced his dreams were playing tricks on him, offering warm touches and soft sighs and murmured promises in the dark.

Blood mage, something in him warned, but the more important thing was his knighthood in proximity to her--and the lyrium draught that still lay wrapped in its protective case in his pack.

He had about another day or so before the shakes started in.

“Uh, Merr,” Carver called, “I, uh, question. Can you feel lyrium? Is it a mage thing?”

The leaves rustled above him. “A what?”

“I said, can you feel lyrium. Or, maybe,” he hedged, his fingers clenching around the basket’s wicker rim. “Maybe what I mean is… can you sense templars?”

The movement stilled. Silence fell in the gaps. “No?” came Merrill’s eventual reply, hesitant. “I don’t—I don’t think so? Coming dow—oh!”

A branch cracked and sent Merrill spilling in a flutter of leaves. With hardly a thought Carver dropped the basket. He meant to catch her but she flailed as she fell; Merrill managed to kick him square in the chest and sent them both careening to the ground. He still broke her fall, at least. Carver took that as a meager win.

They sprawled atop moss that was still full of yesterday’s rain, squishy and cold beneath them. Merrill shook herself like a dog. “That was scary,” she muttered, voice wavering. Her hands rose to his face and she cradled his temples. “Are you hurt?”

“Just my pride, I think.” He squeezed his eyes tight and performed a quick check, wiggling his toes and fingers. Each success loosened the tension in his chest; he’d seen a man wreck his back after a fall, leaving him all but crippled and discharged to some foreign monastery somewhere. When Knight-Commander Stannard had commended his recruit class for committing their lives to the Chantry, Carver didn’t take it at face value, but he did in this split second.

“Yeah,” he finally said, satisfied and worried all the same, “just my pride.”

“Well!” She laughed, the sound high and slightly nervous to his ears, “I don’t know how to kiss that better, so I guess you’ll just have to be fine!” Merrill rolled to her feet and offered her hand. Carver eyed it dubiously before rising, trading only the barest of his weight on their clasped grip.

They were standing too close by the time he found his feet, just a breath between them. He could feel the heat that radiated from her like she was a brazier; a mage thing, he assumed. Carver knew he ran hot nowadays, after taking the lyrium. She blinked up at him, their hands still held tight. Her eyes were such a bright green, like--like leaves, but maybe that was a racist idea. Carver was a little lightheaded at the thought. She deserved flattery, but he never was good at it, and surely it was a bad idea, anyway.

The moment stretched. He couldn’t look away. A smear of sap smudged her cheek, right along the lines of her tattoo, and without thinking, he raised his hand to wipe it with his thumb.

Merrill leaned into the touch, rubbing her cheek into his palm. Carver stared at the width of his hand compared to her face. Maker, she was so small, so tiny, but she never seemed it. Merrill was just… so much. What, he wasn’t certain, but she was.

“It's all right, you know,” Merrill murmured, her eyes never straying from his own. Her words rang out like a bell despite her whisper. “Even you can be happy once in a while. It won't kill you.”

A noise punched out of his chest and, just like that, the moment was lost. Carver dropped his hand and stepped back, turning away from the visible disappointment that flashed across her expressive face.

“I, uh, thanks,” he said, shoving his hands in the pockets of his vest.

Maker, that was inappropriate. That was wholly inappropriate. He was a templar, and she was a mage, and—and Merrill was his friend, no matter the wibbly quality his stomach took on whenever she was around. She asked him for help, and he was supposed to be helpful, not—

Merrill sighed, soft, and turned to another tree without a word, leaping up into its branches in an acrobatic twist that would have had even Father green with envy.

Guilt settled low and heavy in his stomach, but he couldn’t figure out what for. He chalked it up to just another day in the life of Carver Hawke and set about to recollecting the foraged plant matter that had spilled from the baskets when they fell.

=

The rest of the day passed much like the one before. Merrill identified plants, showed him what she wanted, and he would search the forest floor while she picked from the trees and then they’d meet in the middle. Her laughter had returned shortly after it had fled, and he was immensely grateful for it.

A Merrill who didn’t smile or laugh was a terrifying, sunburst-shaped thought, and it only reminded him of the very real dangers present to them both.

He put the maudlin thought away for dinner. A trap set further into the forest that morning yielded a pair of plump rabbits, and they had become the subject of a disagreement on how best to season while Carver stripped and prepared them for roasting.

“You see, if you wrap it up—” Merrill pantomimed wrapping the animals like a present, the movements wide and exaggerated “—you can roast it in its own juices. It’s how we would do them around at home, wrapped in leaves and clay.”

He pulled a face. “And how do you suppose you’d do that here?” Carver waved to the woods around them with his knife, inadvertently dripping blood down his knuckles. “We’re in the middle of nowhere.”

Merrill looked around, a frown creasing her face. “Hm. Well, maybe…” She flitted to the trees, studying the brush and surrounding flora. “I’m sure there are some good herbs here, too.”

Carver shrugged and returned to his task, taking care not to nick the fur more than he needed to; these rabbits would make a nice pair of mittens if he were careful, or maybe a pair of earmuffs.

He stopped at the thought, looking from the carcasses to Merrill and back. Maybe he could get Eli to gift them to her. That’d be--that would be appropriate, right? She and Eli were friends. That would work. Merrill didn’t have to know they were from him, and he could still make sure she didn’t freeze her fingers or ears, her magic be damned.

It would have to be enough.

Carver turned back to the rabbit at hand and pulled the fur off, setting it as neatly as he could on the log beside him before finishing his preparations. The next went as quickly as the first and soon enough he had their dinner ready for roasting.

“D’you find anything over there?” he asked. Carver snorted when Merrill came back to the fire with her hands full of herbs and mushrooms.

“I did!” Merrill shoved the bounty in his face and Carver made a show of inspecting it all, even though he was sure they both knew she was the expert. Farmboy all he was, he wasn’t the foraging type, not the way Merrill was. “With these and the salt from our rations kits, these will be the best rabbits you’ve ever tasted, I promise!”

Her earnestness never failed to make him smile. “Rabbit’s pretty good on its own,” he snorted, even as he made room for her at the makeshift kitchen he’d rigged from a mostly flat rock and a log to serve as a bench. “Think that’ll all survive spit-roasting?”

She nodded, then winced, reconsidering. “Well, I think so. We’ll never know until we try.”

“Good thing we’re adventurous.” He traded her the rabbits for the mushrooms and made quick work of cleaning them, setting them on a flat, hot rock at the edge of the fire at her direction.

Merrill had already threaded the seasoned rabbits on their roasting pole by the time he finished and laid them out over the fire. A quick sprinkle of herbs dusted the mushrooms and she sat back, satisfied.

“I do love a good rabbit stew,” she said wistfully. Merrill dug into her baskets and began laying out bundles of flowers and herbs around the fire. “That’s something I miss about Ferelden, you know. They were fat and happy, and so big! How were they always so big? They tasted so much better than the ones here outside Kirkwall.”

Carver checked the sky; it was still light out, though dusk was falling through the canopy. He took his pile of rabbit furs and began scraping them clean. “I miss not having everything want to kill me. There’s a Maker-damned Varterral up that mountain—” he gestured vaguely in the direction he hoped was the Sundermount before turning back to the hides “—and dragons in the mine. There’s Carta, and Coterie, and all the rest of those stinking gangs who’ll gut you as soon as look at you.”

Once he started he couldn’t stop, the words falling out of him without reason, his voice hitching higher and faster. “And the harbor smells like fish and sewage, and Darktown is disgusting and not fit for habitation, and so is most of Lowtown, and definitely the Alienage, but no one cares, because it’s just poor humans and elves who live there. And there’s the insanity of the Gallows, don’t even get me started on that, I can’t—I just can’t even begin—and even the air’s not right here, and—”

Merrill laid her hand on his wrist, her thumb rubbing gentle, tentative circles on his skin and jolting him out of his thoughts. Carver’s fingers twitched and he only belatedly caught himself from dropping his knife to the ground, letting it clatter to the makeshift table instead.

Maker, her eyes were just… so green, so bright where they smiled up at him.

“Little Hawke,” she said, “tell me about Lothering?”

The hills on the outskirts of the village flooded his mind. The lake. The nearby forest. The long, wide stretch of pastureland, where he and Eli would drive their neighbor’s sheep during the golden summer months. The gnarled apple tree that stood on their little property where he and Bethy had played from the first fingers of dawn to the languid stretch of dusk during the summers. There was a patch of grass they had played in, pretending to be princesses and princes and whatever role Eli would choose to wear that day, whenever they decided to come to play, too. He remembered the ways the floorboards would squeak on nights Eli snuck out to watch the sky, waiting for the storms to roll in. He saw the way the light filtered through the wooden shutters of the main room, where Mother would mend clothes and earn extra money from housewives who had lesser skill in the trade than she.

Carver saw the little shrine they made for Father: an urn, a sketch at Bethany’s hand, a book of stories read to the children over the years, a lock of his hair. They had left him behind to the Blight and the darkspawn, just one more Hawke lost to the demons from below.

He didn’t realize he was crying until Merrill pulled him against her side, her arms wrapping around his ribs. Carver let himself slump into her and she took his weight gladly. Merrill’s breath rustled his hair where she cooed soft, unknown words against his crown.

“I miss it.” He stared blankly into the surrounding forest. “I miss Ferelden so much, Merr. Eli and Mother pretend that everything is fine here, that Kirkwall is home, but it just isn’t, and no one understands why I hate it here—and whenever I try to talk about it, all of Eli’s friends make fun of me for being homesick after all these years. I was in the army,” he said, the words hollow. ”I was at Ostagar, fought the darkspawn with my own two hands. I—I love my country, was willing to die for it. Wanted to, even, if it came down to it. But no one gets it. No one talks about it.”

“I understand.” Her voice was small, reedy, and he twisted his head a little to see her own cheeks gleam wetly. She smiled down at him and sniffled, one hand rising to pet at his hair. “I miss home, too.”

Carver shifted to snake his arm around her waist, pulling them upright. She tucked into him gladly and pressed her cheek to his chest. “Tell me about it?” he asked hoarsely.

She shook her head. “Maybe later,” Merrill sighed. “It would be a shame to let our dinner burn.”

They sat huddled together in the blooming twilight, quiet and still. Carver waited until the last second he could comfortably spare to turn the rabbits. Couldn’t let them burn and waste all that work. She looked at him with something soft in her eyes when he turned back, and Carver hesitated.

But she just gave a small smile and patted the log beside her and he returned. She nestled under his arm like he’d never moved, like whatever spell that had grown around them hadn’t broken when reality encroached.

Evening came on, quiet as a mouse, and they ate in comfortable silence after she declared their meal ready. Merrill pressed into his side, making satisfied little noises as she ate.

They were a mismatched pair, he thought; human and elf, templar and mage. One always had power over the other. It wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t right, and it was the way of the world, and he hated it. His father had taught him a lot over the years, but maybe the most important lessons were on power and authority, on how Carver had to be a good man because there were plenty of bad ones already. How he had to shelter and protect those in need because there were other people who would take advantage of the needy. He was gifted by the Maker with strength and a big heart, Father would tell him again and again, and they were their own kind of magic. Carver had a duty to use them to help and never to hurt.

There were so many reasons he shouldn’t have been out here, not when just the thought of her made something bloom in him, something sappy and warm and disgustingly sweet—but when Merrill smiled at him, mouth unrepentantly slick and shiny with rabbit fat, Carver wished that the divide between them wasn’t so sharp.

He told her about Lothering and focused on the ember of warmth that still lingered in his heart for home.

=

Merrill lay plastered against his side, her head pillowed on his arm, half-awake and quiet in the dark of the tent. It really was a small shelter, and the bed even smaller. He wasn’t entirely convinced of her argument on needing to conserve body heat, but it was almost nice, once he got used to the idea.

Nerve-wracking, too. He didn’t know what to do with his hands, literally or metaphorically.

It was always easy for Eli to make friends, and then to make friends; Bethany, his twin, closest to him in all things, was definitely the easier one to talk to and get to know. She managed to befriend people, even though she had admitted to him, not-quite-lost in a deserted hayfield, that she was always nervous, always waiting for something bad to happen. Someone would notice Father’s talents with animals, or Bethy’s affinity for fire, or the way Eli always knew when a storm was going to hit. Someone would find them out and take them away, or worse.

But Carver never let it. Carver had stood as a lookout for his family for so long that he sometimes wondered, in the middle of the night, if maybe that was the problem, if he’d spent so long watching them that he never had time for anyone else. He put himself between the world and his father and siblings since the day he figured out there was a reason to do so, and no one else came close until he was called to the King’s service.

But that level of introspection never paid off, so he’d grab a drink and think of something else, something that didn’t make him think of home and Ferelden and the green, green hills of Lothering. His friends--Eli’s friends, anyway--were right: Carver didn’t do well with looking inward. Give him something to hit and a reason to do it, that’s his talent, that’s his skill.

There was still a flask of something drinkable in their packs, but getting up and distracting himself meant jostling Merrill, so that just left him with his thoughts.

Merrill snored in her sleep, soft, little chirruping sounds on every exhale. That was a new knowledge he could not un-know, thanks to this trip. He didn’t know what to do with that tidbit. Her smile was wide and beautiful, and she had a gap on her right side that only showed when she grinned as big as the sea. That information was new, too. He’d never seen it before, and it made his stomach wobble. Carver had known her for years now, had camped with her, had played cards with her, had drunk themselves stupid under the light of the moons and had imagined kissing her in every shadow and winding alley for the last two years, and he’d never seen her smile so big as in the last three days.

“We had a tree, too. Tamlen, Lyna, and I. We were mostly inseparable for a long time.” He hummed something he hoped was vaguely encouraging, and she continued, soft in the night air. “They were older than me, but Tamlen’s mother had taken me in as a child. He and Lyna let me play with them between lessons, even when I became Marethari’s First. We would pretend to save each other from dragons and sylvans, and we would practice hiding from mabari and their humans. Lyna taught me how.”

Carver’s stomach twisted. No wonder Merrill only ever came by the house when Eli was gone, or met them all in public places where the dog wasn’t allowed, or declined invitations for excursions on which Hawke was accompanied by Trouble. “I didn’t know.” A sense of horror grew in his chest. “The dog thing.”

She nodded, the slow movement scraping his shirt along his chest where they touched. “Fereldans and their dogs,” she laughed weakly. “I don’t understand the appeal.” She hesitated and then ducked her face into his chest. “I don’t understand a lot of things, I think.”

Carver turned the phrase over in his mind. It felt like a trap. Like something he should know already, but he couldn’t see what kind of revelation, exactly, he had been led to. He let it lie for a moment before whispering, somewhere on the edge of curious and desperately not wanting to know, “Like what?”

Her fingers bunched in the fabric over his abdomen. It sent a lick of heat through him, sure as if she’d burnt him with a gout of flame. “They all say things they don’t mean to hide what they do. Like it’s a game, where everyone knows how to play except me. But no one tells me the rules, do they? ‘What’s so funny?’ I ask, and Bela laughs and tells me she’ll tell me when I’m older, but I’m not a child. I know when they talk about dirty things, just not why they don’t say it plain.”

Carver had almost swallowed his tongue by the time Merrill took an indignant breath. She rose, sitting up, pulling the blankets with her. “And everyone cheats at cards, except Aveline and Sebastian, but no one says anything, even though cheating isn’t fair. But why? I don’t know that, either. Friends aren’t supposed to cheat, even at silly things, even if it all evens out again at the end. But why don’t they get in trouble?”

“I wonder the same thing,” Carver muttered under his breath. He threw his forearm over his eyes. “Sometimes I hate playing with everyone.”

“And Varric calls me Daisy, even though it’s a silly thing, and daisies aren’t even my favorite flower! And he never told me why he thought it fit, just that it did, and now that’s what he calls me, even though I like my own name better, but he doesn’t listen. And you, you just—” Merrill cut off with a muted gasp, her breath coming quick and heavy like she had run up the whole of the Sundermount.

Carver waited, stunned in the dark and wishing he could see her face. But maybe it was just as well; he was never really good at reading people, not in the way Eli was. Merrill was camping with the wrong Hawke, Carver was sure of it, and it was highlighted in the way her shoulders tensed when he sat up and tentatively reached for her.

“I… what?”

She shuffled, bending forward to hug her knees to her chest. “Sometimes you say the nicest things, Little Hawke,” Merrill said. Her voice was muffled slightly, and Carver leaned forward to hear her better. “You--the way you look at me, it’s so kind, and sweet, just like you are, when you’re not grumpy. But then you look away and don’t see me anymore, and sometimes you look back. I get so dizzy, waiting to see what you’ll do. Sometimes it feels like a Hightown dance and everyone knows it but me, and everyone laughs when I fall down.”

“Merrill—”

“And I don’t even know! I don’t even know if that’s what it is. Bela thinks so, and Eli thinks so, and everyone else thinks so, but you don’t say anything, and really, isn’t that what matters? Everyone but you treats me like a child, like I don’t know anything about sex or love or relationships, but I’m an elf, not a child. Sometimes you say the nicest things, and I don’t know what to do with that. ”

It felt like a stab to the gut. His cheeks flared hot and red in the dark. “I… I don’t mean to make you sad,” Carver said dumbly. This was way over his head. He sighed and ran his hands through his hair, tugging lightly. “I’m sorry. I’m not good at making friends or being around people. Surely you’ve noticed that by now.”

Merrill brought to life a tiny mote of magelight and let it float to the apex of the tent. It cast her in stark relief when she turned to him, her huge eyes catching in the dim light.

“You don’t make me sad,” she said fervently, “you make me so happy. So happy, Little Hawke, all the time. You walk me home when you can, even though I hardly ever get lost anymore. You bring me tea sometimes. When I stop to pet the stray cats when we’re out with the others, you always wait for me. You sharpened my knives, even though they make you nervous, even though I’m a--a blood mage.”

Her breath caught in her throat, a barely-audible hitch. “Last winter you got me a coat so nice I almost didn’t wear it because I didn’t want it to get it dirty. Kirkwall is such a dirty town, you know. Bela told me that all things break eventually, so I might as well wear it and be warm. And I did, and I thought of you every time, and prayed to the Creators that they keep you safe, even though you’re not an elf.”

She was just so damn earnest. It was going to be the death of him. Carver swallowed thickly around the lump that threatened to block his throat. “Merr…”

Merrill only scooted closer, their knees touching. “And you come with me on foraging trips to the middle of the woods even though you don’t have a lot of time at home anymore. That means a lot to me. More than I can say. I just…”

“...yeah?”

She squeezed her eyes tight, the motion squinching up her tattoos, and opened them again to find his hand before looking back at him. “You’re one of my best friends, Carver. I just want to know you’re happy, too.” Her voice wobbled, and she gave a weak smile. “I would be glad about that.”

He could barely breathe. It was… surreal, the way she looked at him, light shining in her eyes. Without his permission, his hands reached up to frame her cheeks. Her eyes fluttered a moment but she kept them trained on him, rising on her knees until they were almost of a height.

Carver’s gaze flickered from her lips to her eyes and his stomach gave a frightening lurch. “I don’t know what to say, except that I am. Happy, I mean,” he said quickly. They were so close he could feel the soft caress of her breath on his skin. He brushed a thumb idly over her cheek. “I…”

Merrill blushed, and the hammering of his pulse pushed all logical thought out of his head.

He closed the scant distance between them and kissed her, soft as the relieved sigh that caught between them.

=

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