[ There isn't any spoken response to this. No recording. Nothing. Bastien might be made to feel self-conscious by the silence, save that the intimacy between them is great enough that he's quite unlikely to think that it comes from judgment.
The response, instead, comes on paper. It is left in his room when he gets back. And it is a portrait, specifically of Bastien, done in pencil. And what is most telling of all about what this gesture signifies: it is amateurish. Unpolished, unprofessional - not something done because there's some hidden talent here bursting to get out, but just as a simple act of unselfconscious love. A contrast to Byerly's normal shame, his reluctance to share the more earnest and awkward parts of himself. Just simple love and trust. ]
[ Despite the simplicity, Bastien spends as long looking at it as he would a gallery painting. Soaking in the earnestness of the gesture, basking in the obvious love and attention in the inexpertly rendered details.
He doesn't say anything in response, either. Not immediately, and never really much. Later, when he's half-asleep in the tangle of Byerly's spindly limbs, he'll murmur I missed your face, too, and leave it at that. But weeks or months or years from now, when he's been asked to fetch something from a drawer or is helping pack for relocation or aiding in the search for something Bastien's misplaced, Byerly will come across the drawing again, protected between clean pages of a book chosen solely for its adequate size, with an added coat of wax and resin to preserve it. And not by Bastien, who doesn't know the first thing about doing that. He had to take it to one of their art friends, awkward and proud and pleased and slightly horrified by the first hint of smudging on the drawing, and ask them to help. ]
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The response, instead, comes on paper. It is left in his room when he gets back. And it is a portrait, specifically of Bastien, done in pencil. And what is most telling of all about what this gesture signifies: it is amateurish. Unpolished, unprofessional - not something done because there's some hidden talent here bursting to get out, but just as a simple act of unselfconscious love. A contrast to Byerly's normal shame, his reluctance to share the more earnest and awkward parts of himself. Just simple love and trust. ]
no subject
He doesn't say anything in response, either. Not immediately, and never really much. Later, when he's half-asleep in the tangle of Byerly's spindly limbs, he'll murmur I missed your face, too, and leave it at that. But weeks or months or years from now, when he's been asked to fetch something from a drawer or is helping pack for relocation or aiding in the search for something Bastien's misplaced, Byerly will come across the drawing again, protected between clean pages of a book chosen solely for its adequate size, with an added coat of wax and resin to preserve it. And not by Bastien, who doesn't know the first thing about doing that. He had to take it to one of their art friends, awkward and proud and pleased and slightly horrified by the first hint of smudging on the drawing, and ask them to help. ]