contact.

[bouchonne]

crystal my shit up here

Comments

[rowancrowned]

I understand you took my wife gambling.

[ is this an overture to a fight? maybe. ]

[bouchonne]

[ what are you doing calling at 11 in the morning, this is an ungodly hour

He grabs the crystal and, with the air of one clearly recently roused from sleep, mumbles - ]

What?

sent before gwenaëlle departed and ended up in the FUCKING FADE, LAKSHMI.

[elegiaque]

( being both too classy and too thedosian to scream PLAY FREEBIRD at byerly, gwenaëlle has sent to him a sheaf of music. not a single piece, but scraps of work—some lengthier than others—some rewritten, reconfigured attempts at earlier ideas—all in the comte de vauquelin's own hand, with his signature and absent-minded personal marginalia.

the comte had been most talented; had they ever occasion to play together, had emeric ever thought to write for byerly, it would have been unconscionably moving. she could not readily explain why she took this work, so it is the simplest thing in the world to decide that he should have them, since he's going to play her music. perhaps he can do something with it all. )

[bouchonne]

[ When she returns from her (mis)adventure in the Fade, she'll find a stack of sheer music. It's not what she passed along to Byerly: this paper is new and tidy. No notes, no marginalia, no obscene drawings: it's just music, written in an elegant hand, arranged for violin and harp. Clearly based off of several of Emeric's themes. Developed further - not improved upon, perhaps, as By is no musical genius, but elaborated and developed. Given march time, and general color that is somehow both mournful and jaunty.

Atop it, a note: a large question mark. Nothing more. ]

action; on the stairs between hightown and lowtown

[coquettish_trees]

[ She's there as she had said she'd be, a spot of white sitting halfway up the stairs that lead up from Lowtown with a bottle in her hand, sitting on a folded embroidered blanket to mitigate the chill of the stone stairs and wearing a fur-trimmed capelet to mitigate the chill of the evening fastened around her shoulders with a satin ribbon of dusty rose in a far too evenly tied bow reminiscent of the ones she used to pull her hair back with.

Some things don't change.

She raises the bottle slightly in acknowledgement. ]

Ah, he has found his way!

[bouchonne]

[ He, meanwhile, looks dreadful. He's sloppy, clothes misaligned, with a bruise blooming on his cheek. But he's looking cheerful enough, and he has a bottle of wine under his arm as well. And he bows, courtly and proper. ]

My lady. You're looking fine.

a letter, slipped under his door

[anillos]

[It smells like tuberose and saffron.]

To Byerly Vlad Rutyer,

I fully expect your complete cooperation.

Most sincerely,

Sofia Teresa

[bouchonne]

[ Oh.



Oh.





Shit. ]

delivered a few days after the battle.

[indissection]

[ It's a very simple bouquet of purple flowers, twined with a rather lovely ribbon, delivered with a very simple note, unsigned;

I hope you are better soon, my companion in wickedness. I will visit when I can - do try to be alive. ]

[bouchonne]

[ She receives a return gift -- though one without a note, unidentified. It's not a bouquet. Rather, it's a croquembouche - two feet in height, spiky with caramel, covered with sugar flowers, and pierced through with a lancet. ]

crystal.

[indissection]

Byerly. If I were to come and track you down with a bottle of wine and two glasses would I be turned away?

[bouchonne]

Dear heart, you'd not be turned away even if you came without the glasses.

[sarcophage]

[Leave bread crumbs, attract mice.]

Byerly, is it?

[bouchonne]

It is Byerly.

[ By lifts an eyebrow. The voice isn't terribly familiar as of yet - curious, to be getting a call out of the blue. Certainly not the first time it's happened, though. ]

A buyer and seller of wares and substances that fulfill a vast multitude of heart's desires. Tell me of yours, poppet.

crystal.

[indissection]

Are you busy? I could use a drink.

[bouchonne]

Never too busy for you, my duck. In private or in public?

crystal | morning after the disaster

[keenly]

I don't think I can do this if I'm going to lose her.

[bouchonne]

[ His response is uncharacteristically blunt and annoyed. No layers of flowery language or irony, just a snappish - ]

She's being dramatic.

a very late mysterious invitation

[matchymatchy]

[ When Byerly wakes, he’ll find that he’s received a terribly mysterious invitation to meet with an 'importer' of rare fruits. She claims they’ve been cultivated off seeds 'recovered' from a Qunari ship, and intends to auction them to the highest bidder. A stranger (terrible, mysterious) may already be waiting.

The invitation is beautifully calligraphed, and includes a rakish silk scarf to wear, to signal his involvement. The sale takes place in a small, rickety ship that's been converted to a floating bar; the crowd is less than fashionable, perhaps due the fact that they've several fewer limbs than they ought to between them. Their host is nowhere to be found, and those rare fruits are definitely just normal fruits painted gold painted gold — golden apples, golden grapes, a golden...potato.

It's mostly golden potatoes. At least their tab's been covered.

Byerly doesn't have to actually accept the invitation. Not intentionally. Should he ignore or otherwise attempt to circumvent its summons, a chain of coincidences (terrible, mysterious, you get it by now) and well-timed accidents will conspire to see him there.

OOC Note: Freddie is played by Cass. Feel free to play out a thread, handwave things, or ignore it entirely, but check with each other first! ❤ ]

letter; about a week later

[coquettish_trees]

[ An envelope addressed to him in a perhaps too-familiar curling script is waiting on the floor just inside the door, likely slid beneath. It's sealed with a tiny spray of dried flowers settled into the dusty rose of the un-stamped wax.

(ooc: You just let me know if/when it comes open, and I'll put the text! 🌸)]

[bouchonne]

[ He nearly doesn't open it. Nearly buries it underneath a pile of other papers, nearly "loses" it "accidentally." But - he doesn't - and one night, maybe a week later, with nearly a full bottle in him, he opens it. ]

action;

[coquettish_trees]

(after this!)

[ The afternoon had stretched on damp and grey, darkening through the talks. Byron had, at one point, come to light the sconces, but she'd gently gestured him away before he'd taken half a step onto the balcony. Not for lack of trust of course; for lack of culpability. And so the gloom persisted.

Colin and Anders had risen, gone back into the apartments, likely to hold their own council. She isn't worried. While she doesn't trust the healer outside the immediacy of his work in the slightest—a mutual wariness, she thinks—she trusts his care for Colin, and she trusts Colin to be level-headed.

That leaves her and Byerly, in the gathering dimness.

Later, she'd gestured. Here was later. ]

Will you stay?

[ Said quietly. There'd been some small return to light banter over the crystals, but they hadn't spoken alone since he'd come to the café to accept, in a way, her offer of friendship. It makes the air strange. At least there is something to drive conversation. ]

It seems prudent to block our lace.

[bouchonne]

[ The thought of lingering overlong in her home does make him uneasy. No matter their peace, her paramour is a man he does not want to spend much time around...a preference that is not entirely about the man's general unsavoriness. To a certain extent, to endure a fellow who successfully courted the woman who...Well. It's uncomfortable, let it simply be said.

But she asks. And how churlish it would be to refuse her. Besides - they've still more to discuss. ]

Pour a bit more brandy and I shall.

[ He's barely drunk any of the liquor through this whole little summit of theirs. But the performance of being a drunkard is automatic. ]

crystal;

[heirring]

Mr Rutyer, I would like to consult you on a matter in which I believe you may have some expertise.

[bouchonne]

Oooooooooh.

crystal. private.

[indissection]

Do you think I ought to go to a... [ A pause. ] House of ill repute?

[bouchonne]

[ his baby
she's growing up ]

I find them to be lovely places, myself, so long as they're decent and well-run. I could guide you to one.

a letter;

[sarcophage]

[It isn't sent to wherever Byerly lives, or otherwise tends to stay—too menacing a gesture in context—but finds its way to him in the Gallows. The paper is common stock, the ink boiled from walnut shells, and the handwriting is beautiful. (With a Fereldan foundation, if one knows what to look for.)]

A pleasant surprise: we mislaid our senses needlessly, after all.

I received worse, elsewhere. Bled like a split wineskin.
Weeks in bed, slow to heal. Now like a corpse about town.

May it please you also to know that.

—

[bouchonne]

[ The note is posted outside Byerly's door later, By's addendum scrawled in a looping hand: ]

Was this delivered to the right person?

[ new phone who dis ]

crystal.

[cozen]

[ On the verge of being so late it's rude to bother people, but not quite— ]

Rutyer. Are you busy?

[bouchonne]

If I were, it'd be a truly extraordinary day. What do you need, my dear comrade?

action;

[unshut]

"--It's a beastly game on almost every occassion, but the instances where it goes well are far too satisfying to really consider not playing at all."

This, she is saying as she slowly makes her way up the series of stairwells leading to the shared rooms in the Templar tower. After the evening's festivities - if something so mild as a quiet game of cards can be named so -, she isn't unsteady on her feet but she isn't strictly confident in them either. Each step is navigated with the kind of over care born of a half glass too many and at intervals, she steadies herself off Byerly's elbow.

"Do you know, I once managed to secure passage on a packet out of Ostwick with a last round of cards?"

[bouchonne]

"Did you really?"

It is a pleasant thing indeed to have her grasping at him. Such a marvelously attractive woman she is - such magnificent cheekbones, such fantastic lips. He's a little bit in his cups as well (the glory of a good game, it gives you the license to make some poor decisions that your overactive sense of paranoia would usually prevent) and so it makes him just a touch reckless, a touch bold. It makes him wonder if he might continue this delightful encounter behind closed doors.

"Tell me everything."

crystal.

[indissection]

[ The most panicked Sidony has likely ever sounded, even if she is trying to muster the strength to sound... Less so. Failing miserably, of course. ]

Darling. Would you, perhaps, be inclined to do me the most terribly inconvenient of favours?

Re: crystal.

[bouchonne]

[ He immediately tenses at that tone in her voice. In spite of his fear, though, he sounds perfectly cheerful and casual as he replies: ]

But of course, my dearest girl. What would you have of me?

crystal.

[murderbaby]

[Formality hides nerves excellently.]

Messire Rutyer. Have you enough time to recuperate, or would this be an imposition? In the... incident that followed, I never had time to give you your wedding gift.

its ok you can cry

[bouchonne]

[ By sounds, well...perfectly well. From the smug confidence in his voice, you wouldn't know he'd been so much as scratched. ]

Is it poetry.

crystal, post wedding drama;

[heirring]

Are you quite dead, Mr Rutyer?

[bouchonne]

Quite dead.

action. post-kidnap, the return!!

[indissection]

Octavian had slipped her off the ship and then she had promptly slapped him around the face, first for being there and second for not stopping their parents from such an ignorant display of their power and prowess. It was clear to all involved that Sidony was less concerned with the fact that she had been stolen and more concerned with the fact that it had embarrassed her to the tips of her ears, at least until she had heard that her husband had been stabbed on her account.

A farcical wedding was one thing, but a near-death experience? She had never asked that of him.

It does not take her long to march her way back to where she has been assured Byerly has been put to bed, still dressed in her wedding jewels, heels rather a little too loud on the floor of the halls. Eventually, she simply kicks them off, leaving them wherever they might land for whoever might decide to find them and fetch a few silver for them in Darktown - or Lowtown, whichever might find them the best profit. She's hardly the expert in these things.

She does not slip into Byerly's room so much as she does storm, a whirlwind of concern as she shuts and latches the door behind her (anyone would expect this, of course, given the fact that they are wedded now). Bare feet pad gently as she rushes over, immediately moving to sit on the bedside, reaching out to touch his face with both her hands, stroking her fingers over the shape of his cheekbones.

Alive. Not dead. The relief is clear on her face.

"I hear you are to have a fetching scar, my darling."

[bouchonne]

The thing is - The thing is, he scarcely even has time to register who it is storming in before she's grabbing at him. How funny; this is becoming something of a pattern. Him prone, her impossibly returned from seemingly being lost, irrecoverably -

At least this time he is not such a fool to doubt the truth of her. He gapes for only a moment, and chokes out a - "How?" Before reaching out and grasping her and pulling her close to him. It hurts, but he can't help it.

"Sidony, my dear, this is - Who rescued you?"

action; post diplomacy move

[coquettish_trees]

For weeks, nothing. Nothing since her marriage, nothing since his. Appropriate to her colour palette, Alexandrie had become a ghost, employing every trick she knew to be as elusive, as ephemeral.

And then, one evening, she is there at the door to the suite that accompanies Byerly's new station with a piece of parchment in her hand held so tightly that its edge trembles, looking the very picture of coiffed calm save for the edge of chaos in her eyes. A porcelain doll filled with wind. She holds the missive out towards him with no preamble, no explanation.

[bouchonne]

For one brief, shining moment, he thinks it might be a document of divorce. It's a silly thing to think, of course - the winds of fortune never blow his way like that. She'll be with the maleficar until the skies fall. But even so, briefly, from the look on her face, he hopes -

Ah, well. He glances at it, and then up at her. Under normal circumstances, he'd take it at once, all solicitousness and comfort. But after the drama of saying nothing to him even after he nearly perished, out of - as far as he can tell - spite that he had the audacity to leave bachelorhood so soon after her wedding to the beast, robbing her of her chance to gloat over her success (not fair, Byerly. But she never even checked on you, didn't even send a single flower, even when you were hurt and alone and afraid that it was all for nothing - ) he's feeling a little spiteful himself.

So. He doesn't take it. Instead, he just lifts his eyebrows and offers, dryly - "Glass of wine?"

action, uninvited, fight meee.

[cozen]

[ Reports have been handed off, or letters, or whatever—the important thing is that Bastien hovers rather than leaves. ]

Since you are, [ a pause, two pointed clauses, ] for the very first time, and in only this way, my superior—

[ Teasing. Also not teasing at all. And that out of the way, his face shades a little more serious. ]

—you know I do some work for Yseult.

[bouchonne]

Come now, Bastien, there are a few other areas in which I am acknowledged to be superior.

[ Does his hand gesture downwards, in the direction of his lap? Surely not. Surely the esteemed head of diplomacy would never imply something so childish as I'M A BIG DICK BOY. Especially not when Bastien is trying to talk about something serious. ]

But yes. I suspected as much.

action some time after the breakfast messenger distraction

[sulahnan]

At this point she's been to the Diplomacy office often enough that she knows the way by muscle memory alone, which frees up her brain for thinking about other things.

Like how to start to say what she wants to say without sounding stupid, sounding forced, or sounding like an asshole. She's still unclear on that when she pokes her head in through the door, the way she usually does when looking for her favorite Diplomacy Division Head.

"Hey," she says, upon seeing her second favorite Diplomacy Division Head.

[bouchonne]

Ah. The girl's face certainly isn't a strange sight; he hardly misses a beat before he tells her, "She's not here."

And then he returns easily and indifferently to the papers in his hand.

action.

[saam]

At some fucking point, Eshal will walk into their office when Byerly's doing whatever it is Byerly does in there (his job. She has faith in that). Closing the door behind her, she makes a b-line for her special cabinet of Qunari rotgut.

And then, quietly, "hey, prettyboy. I need your help on something. You'll enjoy it." She doesn't expect him to show any signs of that, but she saw how he acted in their little meeting. He'll enjoy this.

Being honest, she will too.

[bouchonne]

"My life is joyless," he murmurs in response, "so we shall see."

He settles back in his seat and gestures her on with a little wave of his fingers.

"Ask away."