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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me again (action; evening after That Man shows up on crystal)

[coquettish_trees]

[ Often around this time, Alexandrie will show up with a fresh carafe of coffee and whatever bit of pastry she could come by this late. They have been fresher the last two days, as the kitchens caught wise to her efforts and have been saving some dough for an evening bake.

Today she is here with coffee and pastry and a small pot of cream, a little bowl of strawberries and a rather subdued look; quiet until she puts down the tray, and for a short moment afterwards. Then: ]

You heard, I assume.

[bouchonne]

[ He could play the fool. There'd be a pleasure in it. The man's voice, and her resounding silence afterwards, a clear signal that whatever words she was exchanging with him were private -

No. Stop it. He's not a jealous man. His lovers can take a hundred lovers; he hardly cares. ]

I heard.

[bouchonne]

[ By doesn't play a chord. Instead, he interlaces his fingers with Bastien's and squeezes. He doesn't say it aloud, but in his mind is an echo of Bastien's words - Thank you for understanding. Because others, they've heard the cruelty and squalor of his work, and they've struggled to comprehend why he doesn't leave. But Bastien understands.

His tight grip releases a moment later, and he smiles, and goes back to playing idly. This time, it is a chord - major, minor, major again, the web of muscle between each knuckle serving as the black keys. ]

No. I was really quite dependent upon my reputation as a lout. I fear that's quite spoiled, now.

[coquettish_trees]

For a moment I thought—

[ She had found the prettiest view of the strawberries, had turned it to face herself so that when she got here she could rotate the bowl with some exactitude and know he saw it. Does that now, the bowl softly scraping against the tray.

Shakes her head a little. ]

But it was not.

[ With a small pained smile— no tears, those have been shed already— she lifts the carafe and tilts her head, the ubiquitous gesture for coffee? ]

[bouchonne]

[ Shit.

He melts a little at that, holds out his hand in sympathy to her. And there's sincerity when he says to her, softly: ]

I'm sorry for that. [ If she takes his hand, he'll squeeze it tight. ] I'm so sorry.

[ And - yes, he'll take coffee, of course, but this does matter more. ]

[coquettish_trees]

[ She does take his hand, looking down when the squeeze and the gentle tone of his voice makes her lip tremble. Raises it so she can press her lips to his knuckles before squeezing back.

Soft as well: ]

Do not be too kind or I will fall apart again.

[ Back to the coffee, his first. ]

They are very much alike. How strange it must be, to come into a wholly unfamiliar world and find that someone knows your secrets.

[ A shake of her head as she pours. ]

Not all of them, I am sure. They have not lived entirely analogous lives. Different men, and the same. It is...

[ A long pause, the carafe held in the air, and then she shakes her head again and turns to fill a second cup for herself. ]

It is hard to bear.

[bouchonne]

[ He pulls his hand back, and, obediently, pulls back his softer sentiments with it. Turns instead towards blunter assessment. ]

This one is likely just a dream of the man you know, made flesh by the Fade's instability. So it makes sense that the secrets are largely the same.

[coquettish_trees]

[ She is quiet as she finishes fixing the cups; adds a few strawberries to the side of the pastry and passes him both plate and coffee.

Without looking up: ]

Whose dream?

[bouchonne]

Your - husband's.

[ He doesn't like saying the words much. Clear enough from the way he hesitates over them. Embarrassing thing.

He takes the plate with a quiet noise of thanks. ]

[coquettish_trees]

[ Alexandrie has never tried to understand what creates Rifters because Alexandrie has never had any reason to try to understand what creates Rifters. She has accepted what others know: that they are divergences from lives that continue in their own worlds, that sometimes they wake with new memories from those lives, that sometimes they leave and far more rarely return.

She has never heard about what makes them.

But if this is true, if her husband has dreamed this Loki into their world, then her husband is alive. ]

Did my husband dream the Provost as well? They know one another.

[bouchonne]

[ Byerly offers a slight shrug of hesitant confirmation. ]

Your husband is a powerful mage. I would not be surprised if the Fade reacted particularly strongly to his dreaming.

[coquettish_trees]

[ Alexandrie looks hesitant as well, resistant even, because she does not want to think of this Loki as a dream made flesh— even if Byerly is right and that is what he is. Even if she cannot help but feel that she somehow pulled him from the Fade herself with her fretful yearning.

She will not be the one who tells him again that he is not what he believes himself to be. ]

I have... treated them always as if they were who they say they are.

[ She picks up a strawberry, then only holds it. ]

Does it not seem cruel to do else?

[bouchonne]

[ A shrug. ]

It's what we do with all people. Most people are deluded, in some way or another, about who they are or where they came from. It's part of the social contract that we don't point out that delusion.

[ Then - ]

I'm sorry. I thought you were acquainted with this theory.

[cozen]

Ah, quelle tragédie, [ Bastien says, head lolling against By with badly-acted despair, though his arm stays still and rigid for that silent music. (At other, less talkative times, he's made a game of trying to hum the appropriate chords, but not now.) ] Years of sullying your reputation, really getting mud into every crevice—ruined.

[ He smiles up at the underside of By's chin. His stomach is better; his headache has retreated so far into a dull and distant ache that ignoring it takes no work at all. ]

Do you know what I would do, if I were the Queen of Ferelden?

[bouchonne]

[ Byerly sighs winsomely. ] Step on my bare chest, the way I've been praying to the Maker for years that she would?

[coquettish_trees]

[ Alexandrie shrugs in return, small and one-shouldered, and offers a crooked little smile. ]

I spend as few moments as possible engaged in theoretical discussions that ultimately have little bearing on how I choose to live my life.

[ The strawberry goes on her own little plate, and is left to wait there while she goes to pull a chair around to sit beside him. ]

It very rarely matters to me why things are as they are. It is important only whether or not they are.

[cozen]

[ Bastien opens his mouth for a moment, a not-quite-surprised gotcha face, which bleeds easily into a bit of a leer. ]

Oh, yes. First priority. In leather slippers with good heels—and fur lining, of course, for Ferelden.

[bouchonne]

A wise way to live.

[ He's being cautious. He bites into that strawberry, though, with careful pleasure. ]

[bouchonne]

[ Byerly's noise of lust is not not a joke, but also, it is not a joke. ]

You are a beautiful man.

[coquettish_trees]

Not always.

[ The little smile turns wryly self-aware. ]

It sometimes makes a reckless child of me, such that it does not matter why I cannot have something, it only matters that it is being kept from me. I lay siege upon the walls of 'cannot' and 'should not' and pound them until either they or I am broken, and it hurts.

And if I break them, there will later be a time I am forced to understand why the walls were built, and both myself and those who relied upon them for protection are hurt then too.

[ Retrieving the strawberry from her plate, she turns it in her fingers again, muses: ]

But strawberries are sweeter on the tongue than in the mind; the clouds and waves and the curving branches of trees are forever beautiful as I let them keep their mystery, and when I love it is with wild abandon. My heart is in my mouth for every kiss.

[ Still wry, her smile; but now, as she looks at him, it is a fragile thing as well. ]

Although I have learned that can also hurt.

[cozen]

Mmmhm.

[ Smug. Although, ]

You should tell Alexandrie about that one, if you haven't. Her accent will be more convincing than mine.

[ Among other more convincing things that he won't be explicitly mentioning, out of respect for her history and their privacy—even if she did try to suggest a threesome before Bastien had even said yes to Byerly—and the fact that, like he said, It's Complicated, platonically. But not out of jealousy. He's well past that. And not out of any need or desire to be told he would be a very good Sexy Queen of Somewhere Kind of Like Ferelden But With A Different Garbly Accent. He knows. ]

After I stepped on you, though, and, ah, saw that to its conclusion, I would give you a position. A public one, I mean. Maybe not ambassador to anywhere. That would tie your hands—not in a fun way. But an assistant or attache or something not quite so intimidating, so you could do some of this and some of that.

[bouchonne]

Mm.

[ He looks down and away, a little uncertain smile on his lips. He doesn't want to agree with her. That'd be unkind, especially at this moment. Instead: ]

I've had plenty of disappointing strawberries.

[coquettish_trees]

[ Noncommittal little sentences he won’t look at her for, smiles that aren’t quite. He’s full of something that isn’t making it into words.

She waits a little, stirs cream into her coffee, and then looks at him. ]

What worries you?

[bouchonne]

[ He gives a little shake of his head. ]

My worries - don't matter, Lexie. This is -

[ Your crisis. But, after a moment, he lets out a breath and says, painfully, aware of the wretchedness of this sentiment: ]

You came to me only in your husband's absence. His presence - or the presence of some form of him - will...cause changes, I should think.

[coquettish_trees]

You may recall I made attempt whilst he was still here.

Perhaps you did not see it as such; but I did.

[ An old saw, but Alexandrie will take it to her pyre.

She stirs her coffee again, more to gather her thoughts than to attend to its mixing. Breathes. ]

They are the same in all the ways that made me love him, and so I will. Perhaps they are the same in all the ways that made him love me, and so perhaps he will.

I cannot say there will not be change. But—

I do not think it will be bad. I think I will be calmer, will stop making both of us wretched with my swinging back and forth betwixt trying to drag everything I need from you— including what you have said is a danger to you— and trying to convince myself I do not need what I do.

[ Stir.

More softly: ]

There are things Bastien gives you that I cannot. I think when I, too, have someone else to love me I will be less envious of the ways in which you love him that are not mine to have.