contact part deux

[bouchonne]

if this were modern times byerly would probably make you listen to total eclipse of the heart before you were able to leave a message

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[bouchonne]

[ That makes Byerly feel good. It's nice to have someone be needy at you.

Well, no. It's nice to have someone you love be needy at you. ]

I can come there. That'd be nice.

[cozen]

Alright. [ Quiet, satisfied. ] I'll warm the bed up for you.

And don't try to be quiet, if it takes a while. Wake me up.

[bouchonne]

I'll put my cold feet on your belly. How about that.

[cozen]

You will not. I’m tucking in my shirt right now.

[ He’s not. He’ll warm By’s feet one way or another, happily. But there’s no need to wake him up that way; he’s only lightly dozing, whenever By arrives, and the sound of the door is enough to make him open his eyes. ]

Did we win yet?

[ The war. It’s a little mumbly. He’ll be more awake in a few seconds. ]

[bouchonne]

Mmhmmmm.

[ Byerly's washing his face in the basin beside the door. A bit of water goes up his nose; he snorts to try to clear it out. ]

We can sleep in tomorrow. War's done.

[cozen]

[ Bastien smiles at that snort while he stretches his arms overhead ]

I knew we could do it.

[ Eyes clearer, he rolls onto his side to watch Byerly's tall, slender silhouette in the dark. Bastien can't quite tell if he can make out the details of his features or if he just knows them so well his mind fills them in. Elegant mouth, aristocratic nose. Eyelashes you could do the dusting with. It's a face designed for spoiled haughtiness, and that much more arresting when silliness and sweetness and vulnerability come through. He put the sun in the sky, he invented music—the bastard thing pretending to be Vincent got that much right.

He would have strangled that ghost of his cousin. All rage. Hot and cold at once.

Bastien's still not sure he shouldn't have let him. ]

But we can't sleep too late, [ is what he says, while By's still out of arm's reach, ] or we'll miss the victory parade.

[bouchonne]

Right.

[ He shucks his shirt, shimmies out of his trousers. Stands in his altogether in the cold of the room. He doesn't usually do this, not in the winter: he's not shy about sleeping nude in the summer, but in winter, he has the habit of staying clothed. But this evening, clothes off.

It's not erotic, either. When he slides under the blankets, he doesn't go for amorous kisses or caresses. Instead, he just wraps himself around Bastien, limpet-close, more tightly than usual. ]

We'll be getting medals.

[cozen]

[ Bastien regrets his clothes, but not enough to pull free of Byerly right now to remove them. He wraps both arms around him and spreads his strong-boned hands out on By’s skin, as wide as they’ll go, first rubbing to speed up warming, then staying still.

Medals. It’s his turn. Something about medals— ]

I love you.

[ Blunt sincerity only comes easily for him like this, alone and close. ]

I love you so much. And I’m sorry. I should have—I should have held onto you better, [ first of all. He knows it isn’t his fault that they lost each other in the castle—twice, more. Everyone lost everyone.

Still. ]

I shouldn’t have let that thing [ Vincent, he means ] talk about you that way. You wouldn’t let it, about me. I shouldn’t—what it said, it had to come from somewhere. It must have come from me. And your cousin—I don’t know. Maybe I should have pushed him for you.

[bouchonne]

Bastien -

[ He intends to say it gently; it comes out, instead, as something a little wild and incredulous. One hand comes to Bastien's cheek, and By struggles to figure out where to start.

He settles on - ]

I love you. I love you - Maker, I love you so much.

[ Is this how it feels, when Byerly lets the impulse for self-flagellation overtake him? Does Bastien feel this frustration, watching him in misery, watching him heap more miseries on himself? Bastien apologizes - obviously - but rarely apologizes so ferociously, and rarely for something so very little his fault.

So he starts with: ]

I'd thought that you'd died. That I killed you when I pushed you down the stairs. And if that had been the case, I'd have - [ Exactly what Byerly would have done is perhaps - upsetting to hear. So he only says the first part. ] I'd have killed that creature, which was obviously what it wanted me to do. I -

[ He clutches tighter. ]

Thank you. For not killing it. For stopping me. And I'm so sorry for everything I said.

[bouchonne]

"Then what did you do to help them?" he asks. He tilts his head slightly to the side.

[cozen]

[ Bastien presses his cheek back into By’s hand. The reassurance seeps in slowly, but it’s tangible: tiny unspoolings, his body going from a controlled facsimile of relaxation to genuinely slack and soft. ]

You didn’t say anything, [ he starts to say, because he’s not thinking of Vincent. He’s thinking about Richars. Byerly believing he’d killed him. That’s—

It’s not good. Of course it’s not good. But it makes more sense, the look on his face. When Bastien encountered a bard who knew something about Vincent’s death, after he was gone, he broke her hand with a fire poker. If something happened to Byerly? If someone duped him into being the thing that happened to Byerly?

He doesn’t know what he would do. It would probably be frightening to onlookers, though. ]

What do you think you—oh, about Vincent?

[bouchonne]

Yes. I -

[ He pulls back enough to look in Bastien's eyes. ]

I will confess that I hate him. But to be cruel to someone you loved - even if he was a bastard - it was petty.

[ What a mix. What a tangle. A knot of apologies and emotions, levels of regret and guilt that can hardly exist alongside one another. ]

[cozen]

That wasn’t him.

[ Simplistic. Bastien’s looking back, thoughtful and frowning and maybe a little sad—though the details might be hard to see, with his eyes shadowed and pure black in the dark. ]

It’s alright. Even if it was him. You didn’t know him. If I didn’t know Alexandrie, I might have hated her for what she did to you. Not that it is the same. He didn’t do anything to me—but you know what I mean.

[bouchonne]

He didn't care for you as you deserved to be cared for. He -

[ By pulls back a little bit. He shouldn't be fighting this. He shouldn't be pushing back. He should just be accepting Bastien's feelings. But - ]

Stringing someone along is shitty. You deserved better.

[cozen]

[ Bastien doesn’t resist By moving back, but his hands stay where they are, ready to resist if he tries to get out of bed. He wouldn’t, right? Not over this. But in case. ]

It wasn’t his fault. We were friends. [ It’s possible Bastien has a pattern, if two can be a pattern. ] He never promised me more than that. It was my fault, thinking I could earn him if I did enough. That’s not how it works.

[ He’s had years to explain this to himself already. Neat and pat. However, ]

I guess he could have said something sooner. He did know,

[ is a new addition. A concession to try to keep Byerly from moving any further away. He hasn’t thought it through, and hearing it come out of his mouth—it’s true, and it makes his gut crumple like paper.

Take the secret out of secret hopeful yearning, and it isn’t romantic anymore. It’s pathetic. Really pathetic, talk pityingly behind someone’s back pathetic, not the cheerful self-deprecating sort of pathetic. ]

[bouchonne]

[ By comes in again, tightening his arms around Bastien. Pulling away was nothing more than an attempt to get a bit of perspective, to try to look Bastien in the eye. With that little concession, he's reassured that this is okay. Even if perhaps he is forcing it a little bit. ]

You, mon renard, deserve the world.

[ Because: this isn't, and shouldn't be, romantic. After all, in Byerly's eyes, this perspective is not pathetic - it is a fucking outrage. Because - ]

You deserve obsession. You deserve to be worshipped. Anyone who can't recognize that is a - a right son-of-a-bitch.

[cozen]

[ Bastien’s smile is strained, when Byerly starts, but by the end of that little speech he’s huffing with quiet, flattered laughter—not that he thinks it’s a joke, he’s just happy, or at least happier. He gives By a squashed, fumbling kiss on the hair. ]

Honestly, it’s good that he didn’t want me.

[ His adorable children might not exist; Bastien might never have abandoned his life as a bard, might have sunk deeper into the Game, might never have come to Riftwatch, might never have reconnected with By at all.

Less realistically, yet more importantly: ]

I would have felt very guilty about leaving him for you.

[bouchonne]

[ It is emphatically stupid how much better he feels thanks to that comment. Was that it, then? All along? Was Byerly jealous of a ghost? Was his aggression in that room, his simple-tongued cruelty, purely because Bastien was looking at Vincent with an expression that By wanted to be his alone?

His hand stills a moment, then resumes its stroking of Bastien's back. ]

I - perhaps - have occasional tendencies towards jealousy. Which I have no right to have. None at all.

[ A little breath. ]

But I suppose perhaps I really want to be the one you love the most.

[cozen]

You are.

[ Faint. Maybe a little sad. It’s easy; it’s also hard. Bastien’s never considered himself jealous, but he has his pride. His independent streak. His private certainty that Alexandrie could have had Byerly, all of him and forever, if she’d chosen him over the Game or her husband when she had the opportunity, and maybe right now Bastien would just be having a drink with him, sitting at a platonic distance, wishing.

He takes a pause and a breath, gathering up threads of happier thoughts—that you deserve the world, daydreams about Denerim, the explanation someone gave him in a tavern once about their several loves, and how it was like having children, none of them loved any less because another was born, no such thing as a heart divided into fractions—until he feels as generous as he aspires to be. He does love him most. Byerly deserves to be sure of it, especially after so many people have loved him poorly. Not to have it withheld out of pettiness and pride.

He adjusts his head and his hand so he can trace By’s face. ]

You always will be. If Vincent came back, I would choose you. If we have a handsome, funny neighbor in Denerim who talks to me about books—it will still be you. If we are old and bickering and someone young and lovely bats her eyelashes, it won’t matter. I’ll want you and your creaky knees more. Even if Remi Vascal returns, magically young… Well, we could have a threesome, no? Just the once.

[bouchonne]

Absolutely.

[ Byerly kisses his thumb gently. And then, with a little grin, admits - ]

Do you want to know something that will make you feel extremely smug?

[cozen]

Smugger than you deserve to be worshipped? [ He smiles and follows the outline of By’s grin, then traces out onto his cheek. ] Yes.

[bouchonne]

Lately, whenever someone mentions the Black Fox -

[ He nuzzles against Bastien. ]

I get really horny.

[cozen]

[ Yes, okay, extremely smug is accurate. His grin is wide; his laugh is quiet but comes from all the way in his chest. ]

Do you. [ He better, because Bastien is putting this heart to heart on pause to roll over on top of him. ] Have you heard the one about he escaped Karolis through the, ah, through les Bains de Laurier, naked and unarmed except for a jar of oil?

[ —and he goes on like that for some time.

But eventually he returns to the entangled-lying-together thing, minus a few articles of clothing and plus some sweat, and draws spirals and stars on By's skin. Serious thoughts (Richars, the ghosts in general) are nipping at his heels, about to take his attention back, but he dodges, for the moment, with, ]

It's weird how that never gets old.

[bouchonne]

Which part?

[ Byerly's hand is on Bastien's cheek, thumb stroking over the bone, again and again. Just gazing at him. His voice is light, but his eyes are so steady and so intense and so infatuated that it makes the lightness almost odd. ]

Our historical and factual reenactment of the night that Remi Vascal and Karolis were trapped in that chilly cabin with just the one bed and the one blanket?

[cozen]

[ Even though people have looked at Bastien that way before—or, no, that's not right. People have looked at whoever they thought Bastien was that way before. By's the first to look this way at him, and that's why it makes him feel like he's been caught in someone's arms mid-fall—that mix of thrill and shocking safety, drawn out over whole minutes instead of a second or two. ]

Mmhm. Such a classic. And—every part, honestly.

[ He slides his hand down to draw one of his spirals on By's ass. Speaking of parts that don't get old. But the serious thoughts catch up, and his smile doesn't vanish but does shrink down. ]

What else did you see there? Other than your cousin.