[ He watches Byerly drink. He can feel it—heaviness seeping into the places that felt floppy and silly before, probably with grogginess to follow behind. Drinking more is a good call.
But first, while he still feels grounded enough to to speak in complex sentences, ]
I trust you. [ Okay, that one's not complex. But here's one: ] I decided a while ago, after those dreams, I don't want to hold something back from you. I'm sorry for going back on my word, and I'm sorry if it makes you nervous, but—it's too late. It's done. So we will just have to deal with it. All right?
[ He feels childish, in a distant sort of way, to be keeping track of a promise as if he made it with his pinky. Fortunately there's a layer of lingering buzz to keep it from turning into full-blown embarrassment, and a bottle that promises more. ]
I told you I'd keep some of my heart in reserve. That's all.
[ Bastien nods, businesslike. Glad that's settled. He sets the bottle back down in both of their reach and brushes By's hair away from his forehead. Then back onto his forehead, for good measure, waiting to feel pleasantly stupid again. ]
Ask my name in the morning, when I'm mad at you because my head hurts. No advantage then. And now tell me... your favorite place in Denerim.
I thought you were asking all these questions to compensate for the one big question you were going to be answering. Now it turns out I was answering all of them for free?
That's right. [ Very pleased with himself. ] Unless you are willing to turn your back on gentlemanliness and be a scoundrel with me, like old times. Then you can ask whenever you want.
[ He takes another drink for the road and tries to resume his prisoner-keeping straddle, but if he's less silly-drunk than before, he's also more heavy-drunk. He quickly lies back down. ]
Fine. All right. Because I love you, not because those are the rules.
[ It's a weak joke. He's frowning, even as he worms his arm under Byerly as a silent offer to take his turn as pillow, and trying to make his sludgy brain locate the angle Byerly is looking at this from. ]
[ He takes that offer, settling in bonelessly atop that arm. ]
But it gets tiring. Asking, asking, listening, listening. The game of spying. I don't want it to be doing more of that tiring work in time when you should just be relaxing.
I don't get tired of listening to you. You know that song you let me save on my crystal? I don't understand a word of it, but I could sing it now.
[ He curls his arm around By's shoulders and demonstrates a few lines of the Antivan murder ballad, half-decent accent and all, ending obliviously in the middle of a sentence because he doesn't know it's not the end.
It takes care of his frown. ]
You should relax, too. I really will tell you in the morning, you'll see. I can tell you something else now. Or we could play another game. Or we could make out.
Mm. I just don't want you to feel like you have to work to please me.
[ Even though the obvious attention and care gone into that song, the way that Bastien has imitated Byerly's occasional idiosyncrasies of phrasing and lyric, pleases him immensely. Me, me, he cares about me. The thought fills him with elation mixed with an undercurrent of horrified repulsion. Maker, why me?
[ For a moment he’d like to argue: it isn’t work, he was having fun, and he would really like to know By’s favorite place in Denerim because he needs help imagining it as a place he could live someday, so—
It’s very hard to want to argue when he’s being nuzzled. ]
Mmm.
[ Thinking. ]
I ran away from home—sort of. I was already gone most of the time, but I stopped going back at all because my mother found me a position. A boot boy. She had to beg for it. That would have been hard for her.
[ Subject matter aside, he does sound relaxed, and like maybe he thinks it’s all sort of funny now. ]
But I wouldn’t do it. I didn’t mind working, but… scraping the literal shit off their shoes, By. All those flowers and birds eggs and bells. Every day. [ Orlais. ] Can you imagine?
[ He moves his hand to the back of Byerly’s head, to lightly scratch his scalp. He hates thinking of him hungry, desperate, willing to take anything from anyone but ashamed enough to need to be able to laugh about it.
He hates it, but he’s not sure he would have ever let Byerly in, if not for the bouts penniless suffering. He would have been resentful, competitive, waiting for condescension. Wouldn’t have let him near enough to love. It would have been a shame. ]
Maybe I was a proud little idiot. Maybe I’ve been luckier than you. I know I have been, in a lot of ways.
[ That was sincere. But here comes the pleasant stupidity; he doesn’t manage to sound deadpan, already tittering at how annoying he knows he’s being before he says it: ]
For instance, I was born in Val Royeaux. The luckiest.
That's why you're a proud idiot. That's what Royans are like. Sticks up their arses.
[ Which is - not true, of course, with Bastien, who's so cheerful and easygoing. But also a little true. It's an interesting view into who he was, and who he is, one that if By were a little more sober he'd be able to think on more cogently. Bastien the prideful. Who'd kill, yeah, but would run away from scraping shit. It's complicated, so instead of thinking cogently, he asks aloud: ]
What does someone have to do to offend you? Properly offend you, where afterwards you decide you're just finished with them.
[ Bastien’s laughter about arse-sticks tapers off by the end of the question. But he’s still grinning about it, and he’s entirely and joking—not even a tiny bit genuinely worried—when he says, ]
Looking for ways to give bad advice to your other would-be suitors. Like in The Valiant Goatherd.
[ A play in which - as in the plot - the affable-seeming goatherd won the heart of the fair maiden by being taken into confidence by all her more swaggering suitors and then ruthlessly sabotaging them. By fucking loves that little shit. He loves that play. ]
[ Bastien laughs, so tickled he nearly gurgles. (He’s also full up on earnest declarations of feeling for the evening, so they’re both spared an explanation of how unnecessary that interference would be.) It takes him a good thirty seconds to laugh, take another drink, and mosey back to the point. ]
Uhhh. What was…
[ The question. But he remembers on his own. ]
Mmm. I don’t know what would guarantee it. Sometimes people are upset [ or drunk ] and they say things they probably don’t mean. Like Alexandrie.
[ He would never mention it, if not for the liquor seeping in. Even with it, he realizes he shouldn’t have, and there’s a puzzled, frustrated pause before he resumes. ]
But if they mean it, if it’s a—a pattern. I had a friend once. Sort of. You know. [ A friend, and one who barely knew anything honest about him. ] He was one of those… aspiring tortured geniuses. A writer. Kind of an asshole, but I hung in there.
Then he was unhappy with something he’d written, and I told him I thought it was good, and he went off about—how of course I liked it, I didn’t know any better, I didn’t know anything, I… All of that. So I dumped a box of his drafts out of his window. Just into the street. I think he got most of them back. But we were finished.
[ And, with belated defensive embarrassment, ] I was young. If it happened now I’d do something subtler.
No, [ By declares, ] that's good. Fuck him. I'd cut off his fingers, too, to keep him from ever writing anything else. Not that it'd make any difference. He'd probably be a failure even if he had four hands to write with and all the time in the world.
[ Ride or die, motherfucker.
(they'll come back to Alexandrie, now that the thought is in his head.) ]
[ Bastien grins, touched by this imaginary violence, and raises the arm By isn’t lying on to press the back of his hand to his forehead in a pantomime swoon. ]
My hero.
[ The cushions were smart. If they were on their feet, he might try to make Byerly actually catch him. ]
[ A Royan merchant’s son known (if at all) for a handful of poems, a somber essay on the death of Grand Duke Gratien, a charming laugh, and a habit of taking way way way too long when it’s his turn at cards. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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Walpurgk.
[ He watches Byerly drink. He can feel it—heaviness seeping into the places that felt floppy and silly before, probably with grogginess to follow behind. Drinking more is a good call.
But first, while he still feels grounded enough to to speak in complex sentences, ]
I trust you. [ Okay, that one's not complex. But here's one: ] I decided a while ago, after those dreams, I don't want to hold something back from you. I'm sorry for going back on my word, and I'm sorry if it makes you nervous, but—it's too late. It's done. So we will just have to deal with it. All right?
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[ He licks a little bit of liquor that's escaped from the corner of his mouth and passes the bottle over. ]
All right.
[ But... ]
When did you go back on your word?
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[ He feels childish, in a distant sort of way, to be keeping track of a promise as if he made it with his pinky. Fortunately there's a layer of lingering buzz to keep it from turning into full-blown embarrassment, and a bottle that promises more. ]
I told you I'd keep some of my heart in reserve. That's all.
[ He takes his longest drink yet. ]
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[ That's - Byerly feels flushed and dizzy. ]
Certainly. Yes. That makes sense.
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Ask my name in the morning, when I'm mad at you because my head hurts. No advantage then. And now tell me... your favorite place in Denerim.
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[ He can't help but laugh. ]
I thought you were asking all these questions to compensate for the one big question you were going to be answering. Now it turns out I was answering all of them for free?
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[ He moans that. But: ]
But I do get some questions. Just questions that you'd answer anyway.
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[ He takes another drink for the road and tries to resume his prisoner-keeping straddle, but if he's less silly-drunk than before, he's also more heavy-drunk. He quickly lies back down. ]
Fine. All right. Because I love you, not because those are the rules.
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I like you being commanding.
[ But - ]
But I don't like you hearing me say that I'm pleased that you care enough to ask questions and then deciding that your job is to ask me questions.
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[ It's a weak joke. He's frowning, even as he worms his arm under Byerly as a silent offer to take his turn as pillow, and trying to make his sludgy brain locate the angle Byerly is looking at this from. ]
I wasn't trying to—to be manipulative.
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[ He takes that offer, settling in bonelessly atop that arm. ]
But it gets tiring. Asking, asking, listening, listening. The game of spying. I don't want it to be doing more of that tiring work in time when you should just be relaxing.
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[ He curls his arm around By's shoulders and demonstrates a few lines of the Antivan murder ballad, half-decent accent and all, ending obliviously in the middle of a sentence because he doesn't know it's not the end.
It takes care of his frown. ]
You should relax, too. I really will tell you in the morning, you'll see. I can tell you something else now. Or we could play another game. Or we could make out.
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[ Even though the obvious attention and care gone into that song, the way that Bastien has imitated Byerly's occasional idiosyncrasies of phrasing and lyric, pleases him immensely. Me, me, he cares about me. The thought fills him with elation mixed with an undercurrent of horrified repulsion. Maker, why me?
He nuzzles into the side of Bastien's neck. ]
Tell me something else.
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It’s very hard to want to argue when he’s being nuzzled. ]
Mmm.
[ Thinking. ]
I ran away from home—sort of. I was already gone most of the time, but I stopped going back at all because my mother found me a position. A boot boy. She had to beg for it. That would have been hard for her.
[ Subject matter aside, he does sound relaxed, and like maybe he thinks it’s all sort of funny now. ]
But I wouldn’t do it. I didn’t mind working, but… scraping the literal shit off their shoes, By. All those flowers and birds eggs and bells. Every day. [ Orlais. ] Can you imagine?
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[ If By were sober, he'd be more sympathetic and delicate, rather than bluntly philosophical. ]
But I suppose it is different for nobles. You always have your blood. You can pretend it's irony instead of desperation.
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[ He moves his hand to the back of Byerly’s head, to lightly scratch his scalp. He hates thinking of him hungry, desperate, willing to take anything from anyone but ashamed enough to need to be able to laugh about it.
He hates it, but he’s not sure he would have ever let Byerly in, if not for the bouts penniless suffering. He would have been resentful, competitive, waiting for condescension. Wouldn’t have let him near enough to love. It would have been a shame. ]
Maybe I was a proud little idiot. Maybe I’ve been luckier than you. I know I have been, in a lot of ways.
[ That was sincere. But here comes the pleasant stupidity; he doesn’t manage to sound deadpan, already tittering at how annoying he knows he’s being before he says it: ]
For instance, I was born in Val Royeaux. The luckiest.
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[ Byerly is already snickering, too. ]
That's why you're a proud idiot. That's what Royans are like. Sticks up their arses.
[ Which is - not true, of course, with Bastien, who's so cheerful and easygoing. But also a little true. It's an interesting view into who he was, and who he is, one that if By were a little more sober he'd be able to think on more cogently. Bastien the prideful. Who'd kill, yeah, but would run away from scraping shit. It's complicated, so instead of thinking cogently, he asks aloud: ]
What does someone have to do to offend you? Properly offend you, where afterwards you decide you're just finished with them.
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Looking for a way to get rid of me?
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[ A play in which - as in the plot - the affable-seeming goatherd won the heart of the fair maiden by being taken into confidence by all her more swaggering suitors and then ruthlessly sabotaging them. By fucking loves that little shit. He loves that play. ]
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Uhhh. What was…
[ The question. But he remembers on his own. ]
Mmm. I don’t know what would guarantee it. Sometimes people are upset [ or drunk ] and they say things they probably don’t mean. Like Alexandrie.
[ He would never mention it, if not for the liquor seeping in. Even with it, he realizes he shouldn’t have, and there’s a puzzled, frustrated pause before he resumes. ]
But if they mean it, if it’s a—a pattern. I had a friend once. Sort of. You know. [ A friend, and one who barely knew anything honest about him. ] He was one of those… aspiring tortured geniuses. A writer. Kind of an asshole, but I hung in there.
Then he was unhappy with something he’d written, and I told him I thought it was good, and he went off about—how of course I liked it, I didn’t know any better, I didn’t know anything, I… All of that. So I dumped a box of his drafts out of his window. Just into the street. I think he got most of them back. But we were finished.
[ And, with belated defensive embarrassment, ] I was young. If it happened now I’d do something subtler.
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[ Ride or die, motherfucker.
(they'll come back to Alexandrie, now that the thought is in his head.) ]
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My hero.
[ The cushions were smart. If they were on their feet, he might try to make Byerly actually catch him. ]
He was good, though.
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[ Skeptical. ]
Have I heard of him?
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[ A Royan merchant’s son known (if at all) for a handful of poems, a somber essay on the death of Grand Duke Gratien, a charming laugh, and a habit of taking way way way too long when it’s his turn at cards. ]
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hit ffwd if they aren’t derailing (or I can next tag) xoxo
hee hee
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