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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action.

[cozen]

Guimart wrote to me, [ Bastien says, wiggling the letter in question in the air on his approach toward Byerly. He's happy—to see him, always, and this time specifically to have a little bit of good news.

Though Lord Guimart Charbonnier is not himself news. Bastien told Byerly he was writing to him, and besides that—he was in Val Royeaux, in the old days. A short, blonde fifth child of a baron, a decade their senior, frittering away his allowance from his eldest brother in places someone of his sweet and open nature should never have been allowed to go. (Perhaps his brother had been hoping someone would take him off the books permanently.)

They'd only swindled him a little, back then. Mostly they'd shown him a good time. Bastien kept it up, after Byerly was gone, until Guimart left for Wycome—a better place for him than Orlais, by far. Most of the fun for half of the backstabbing. He's been there ever since. ]

He can get a "reasonable number" of us into Diomar de Ayon's soiree, [ in pursuit of persuading Wycome to either get off of its drunk, hedonistic ass and take in some refugees, or else to send money to Ansburg so that they can. ] What do you think that means, in Wycome? "Reasonable." Two? Twenty?

[bouchonne]

If history holds true -

[ By's smile is one of mingled fondness, amusement, sheepishness, and just a little bit of malice. There was nothing wrong with Guimart, of course. Nothing at all. He had never treated Byerly with anything but kindness. And yet the cruel pleasure of wringing fortune out of a fortunate younger son could not be denied. And it still sharpens his teeth now. ]

We'll show up with thirty, and it will take a glass of wine and three conspiratorial jokes before Guimart is thanking us for the crowd.

[cozen]

[ Bastien purses his lips but still laughs through his nose. It's terrible! It's true. ]

His thirty new dearest friends who he trusts with his life. And we would be making him look so important and popular.

[ Like saints.

He sits, saintly and professional, on Byerly's desk. ]

Unless he has caught on and this will be his revenge.

[bouchonne]

Ah.

[ By presses his fingers to his lips, obliquely and inexplicably delighted by what Bastien has just proposed. ]

I read a story, once, about a slighted fellow who buries the man who insulted him alive. Do you think that's what this will be? You and I will show up, and there will be twin pits in the ground?

[cozen]

What? Of course not. He was so uninterested in doing any work—he would ask us to dig the pits ourselves.

[bouchonne]

[ A cackle. ]

And we're so soft-handed, it'll take us ten hours. If we don't come back in ten hours, we'll make sure someone comes to get us. It's a plan. I'm confident.

[cozen]

It's flawless. He will never take us down, never.

[ Bastien taps the letter on his thigh—meaninglessly. An honest-to-Maker aimless fidget. ]

So I will tell him forty people— [ he'll do no such thing; I'm capping the sign-up post at four ] —and you will wear that lilac jacket I like?

[bouchonne]

If you'll let me put a bit of eyeliner on you. You'd look gorgeous, and I hear it's in fashion there.

[cozen]

[ Bastien's smile is silent and considering, for a few seconds, as if he could possibly refuse.

(He doesn't care for wearings cosmetics, but that's nothing to do with gender norms, everything to do with the paint he'd been expected to cake onto his face in lieu of a mask around the nobility being itchy and troublesome.

Eyeliner will be different. Plus he's, like, in love and shit, and By doing it for him sounds hot.) ]

Deal.

[ He picks paper and pen off of the desk he's sitting on to start writing the reply then and there, bent crooked to keep his arm low enough. ]

If I tell him you're doing well, will I be lying?

[bouchonne]

Well, I've lines around my eyes and gray at my temples. And there's a war on.

[ His hands come up to squeeze Bastien's knees none-too-innocently. Not, of course, that what he says is really all that lewd - in fact, it's rather sweet. ]

And yet I find myself alarmingly happy.

[cozen]

[ Bastien’s smile stretches wide and pleased, but he doesn’t look up from his letter. ]

Alarmingly… happy… [ as he copies it down, ] and alarmingly… handsome…

[ He extends a leg and hooks the back of his ankle behind Byerly’s neck to draw him in, like a very ungainly arm pulling him down for a kiss, except crotchward. ]

Married—so he owes me five royals. He didn’t want to bet against it, but I bullied him into it.

[ Gently, as he does. ]

[bouchonne]

[ And By, obligingly, plants several sweet, romantic little pecks right on Bastien's crotch. What sexiness there is in the gesture is somewhat undermined by the fact that those kisses are like what you'd deliver to someone's cheek. ]

Married to someone respectable, no less. Did you trick him into any extra money over me having a good marriage?

[cozen]

[ Bastien’s silent chest-trembling laughter at the kisses obscures the length of his pause, but it’s long, before he says with sheepish reluctance: ]

No.

[ He wasn’t so starry-eyed about Byerly back then, as much he adored him. ]

Julia Bachelot— [ a singer of moderate disrepute ] —told me she would bag you eventually. [ When the Lady de la Fontaine won or grew tired of whatever game she was playing, that eventually means. ] I would have bet on her.

[bouchonne]

Hold on -

[ His eyebrows lift. ]

This is a long-standing bet? I thought this was something you just tricked the poor fool into.

[ But, with a tone of remembrance: ]

Julia Bachelot. She'd have made a fine wife.

[cozen]

She would have torn you to ribbons.

[ Said with admiration, not disagreement.

He releases Byerly from the grip of his leg—though he rests his foot on the arm of his desk chair rather than drop it entirely—while he adds to the letter. ]

But I am glad you saved yourself for Lady Rutyer. I like her. [ He likes everyone. But specifically: ] She always seems to have your back. And she helped me catch a runaway goose, a while ago, and she was very kind about how stupid it was.

[bouchonne]

She's a very good lass.

[ He sets his chin on Bastien's thigh, and looks up at him, unintentionally but strongly giving a momentary air of a loyal hound gazing adoringly at his master. ]

And her family is full of fools. And it's so hard to resist adopting those little babies who are just starting to discover their queer little desires, isn't it? You just want to take them in and teach them all about the art of perversion.

[cozen]

There’s nothing perverted about it, monsieur aux beaux yeux, [ Bastien says cheerily with a glance and a smile, just in case that’s twenty years of Fereldan micro-aggressions talking rather than real delight.

But after signing his name to the letter, he relents: ] At least not about the basics. The other night, that was a little perverted.

[ Pen dropped, his hand is free to touch By's face, thumb on his cheekbone and fingertips finding the cherished threads of silver at his temple. ]

Do you think she would like to come out with us sometime?

[bouchonne]

[ It was a bit of both - some real delight, some internalized unhappiness. So there's a flicker of wryness when Bastien strokes his cheek, a sort of oblique gratitude in his face for pushing back. ]

I think so. Especially since she now has a fine lady-companion to decorate her arm.

[cozen]

Does she?

[ The aww is in his eyes. ]

Is it a secret?

[bouchonne]

Something to be treated with discretion. But not a secret.

[ He practically beams with pride. ]

She's grown up.

[cozen]

[ It would be odd to hear a man talk about his wife like a little sister, if Bastien didn't know better already. But he does. So it's not odd. It's sweet. ]

How darling. They have to come, then. We can go to the Belltower. [ The cleanest place he can think of where no one will look twice at who's dancing with whom. ] Can you tell me who her companion is? Or should I ask her.

[bouchonne]

Well - I'm sure you'd like a tiny mystery to solve, wouldn't you?

[cozen]

Yes. I would.

[ He thumbs By's cheekbone, then lets go to trace the length of his nose with one finger. He could get off the desk now that the letter is gone, but he's enjoying feeling so tall. ]

I'll report back with my findings—have you spoken much with Astarion?

[ There's no graceful segue aloud, but his thoughts do follow a path: his future endeavor to find out who Sidony fancies, Astarion's teasing threats about finding out who he does, an on to the man himself. ]

[bouchonne]

A bit.

[ An eyebrow lifted. A chin snuggled in further onto Bastien's knee. ]

Why do you ask?

[cozen]

[ Bastien’s smile doesn’t go entirely away, but it does shrink down to something more serious. ]

Be careful with him. Of him, I mean. He told me he finds killing exciting. That he aims it at villains and our cause is a good excuse, but we’re all animals and he embraces it. All of that.

He might be full of shit. [ Bastien punctuates his possibility by pressing the tip of Byerly’s nose like a button. ] I used to try to swagger like that, to pretend—

But I know how you like to wind people up. Maybe don’t wind him up if you are very alone.