Despite that Thistle mumbled, Ragnar still heard her teasing words and what he thought sounded suspiciously close to insufferable. His grin turned positively cheeky (with a wild hint of devilish) then as he glimpsed at her from the corner of his eye, brow raised in that wicked arch that portrayed his cheekiness to a dramatic perfection. “I’ve been worse,” The Viking reminded her with a little snort of laughter. Of course she knew just how bad he could be though in reality Floki could tell her horror stories about Ragnar’s defiance that would put what she knew as ‘bad’ to look like fluffy dreams and sunshine. Ragnar had been known to even go so far as to attack Floki on occasion (which come to think of it was a really good that Floki never held it against the Jarl at the time). “Lilacs,” Ragnar repeated to himself, the word distorting upon his heavy accent his tone contemplative as if he had even the smallest inkling of what, exactly a lilac was. Other than he knew it was flower that was as far as his knowledge extended and he hesitated, loathe to admit it to her.
Never mind that he had an extremely good excuse to have a very small knowledge of flowers because he was a Berserker and the most important plant he’d ever had to know was the mushrooms that when consumed put them into the blood frenzy they were infamously known for (it was no wonder why the Englishmen thought they were demons, heh). “Have you seen any around here that you can remember?” He inquired curiously, trying to downplay the fact that he had no clue what type of flower a lilac was or even what it looked like (let alone what it smelled like) by asking her if she had seen any of them nearby-ish.
“I’m glad you enjoy them,” And, knowing it was a devilishly unfair thing to do to her - in reality he just wanted to make her swoon, really - he unleashed the full force of his smile against her, so different as it was from his coy, cheeky, wolfish, haughty smirks. It was Ragnar’s way of saying ‘you’re welcome’ without having to say those words. He tended to play with words so they meant “manners” yet got away without ever really expressing them directly (because I don’t think Vikings really had “manners” at least I’ve never heard Ragnar utter them on the show). “When our sons are old enough and have chosen a god to identify with I’ll start by giving them a talisman like these,” He gestured to the talismans of Frejya and Frigg. “And then if they want a marking like my mark of Odinn they can have it.” Of course, Ragnar would mark it upon them since Floki wasn’t there to do it for them but he intentionally failed to mention to Thistle that he could not promise his artistic skills were any better than Floki’s; though Ragnar had always thought Floki had done a good job with his marks.
