bouchonne: (delighted!!)
Byerly Vlad Rutyer ([personal profile] bouchonne) wrote2020-10-03 12:55 pm
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contact part deux

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
cozen: (n152)

[personal profile] cozen 2023-01-15 04:49 pm (UTC)(link)
[ The last little hardened bit of wall Bastien has up promptly crumbles. The shake of his head is immediate and earnest, and he gives up on forcibly acclimating to the bedroom after all, to step out and come closer and slide his hand up By’s neck and into his hair. ]

Ils mêleront nos cendres.

[ Orlesian because what he’s quoting is in Orlesian—a cliche from overwrought, twistingly dramatic romances bearing no real resemblance to theirs, except for the ashes part. ]

We’re going to argue—we have to be able to argue—but I won’t do it like that again. I promise.

[ For the very first time, as someone quite attached to his space and privacy and being able to accumulate piles of books without apologizing, Bastien feels a significant pang of envy for the couples (and throuple) sharing rooms the Gallows, who might go to bed angry but do it together. Who’d have to put real effort into not seeing one another instead of it being a thing that can happen almost naturally.

But the fact that Alexandrie could come back any month now keeps him from making an impulsive proposal. That and the fact that he’s probably the least impulsive person in the Gallows. ]
cozen: (n078)

[personal profile] cozen 2023-01-15 08:16 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Bastien nods. He feels an urge to break eye contact, because it’s nearly too much—the shame at having caused all this pain over something so silly, the realization of how thoroughly he could ruin the man, the responsibility to never ever do that. But he doesn’t look away. He brushes his thumb over By’s cheek, and he says, first of all, ]

You are easy in the ways I need you to be easy.

[ He chances a little smile. Not too lighthearted, certainly not flippant, but encouraging: it’s going to be alright. ]

I knew I was wrong, and I knew I’d been a bastard, but I didn’t doubt for a second that you would still want me here.

[ Thus the bag. Bastien wouldn’t have risked being turned away. Not with his toothbrush in hand. Too humiliating. ]

And since you first said it, you’ve never let me wonder for a moment if you loved me. I always know you do. That is all the easy I need from you. Okay?
cozen: (n156)

[personal profile] cozen 2023-01-15 09:39 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Another nod. Bastien doesn’t want that either; he knows he would snap eventually. Fortunately— ]

I don’t. Or, I won’t. It was the silence that was the problem, wasn’t it? If we’d only kept bickering about it, we would have settled it within the hour.
cozen: (n040)

[personal profile] cozen 2023-01-15 11:42 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Bastien lets go of By’s face, but only to come closer, nudging into his side in hopes of an arm going around him. He’s cold. ]

It was a silly thing to have meant. And I am hard to read.
cozen: (n080)

[personal profile] cozen 2023-01-16 12:22 am (UTC)(link)
I did mean it.

[ Said with the slow caution of a fellow who’s searching his own insides (with some difficulty; it’s dark in there) to be sure he’s being honest. ]

I’ve always been particular about. About beds. But I think mostly I wanted to be bossy about something.

[ Being led into the bedroom is better than marching it alone. He sits; he can sit here. By provides a blanket; he can use the blankets. The uptight and uncomfortable clench in his chest relaxes by degrees as the list of things he can do without worrying he’s overstepping gets that little bit longer. ]

And it was the worst thing to be bossy about, because you love her, and I love her, and we both know she is the boss. Even if you had gone along with it I don’t know if I would have been able to tell her she wasn’t allowed.
cozen: (n195)

[personal profile] cozen 2023-01-16 01:55 am (UTC)(link)
[ Bastien winds both arms around By's middle, presses his cheek into his shoulder, and lets a belated shiver escape, the way people do when they walk in from the cold and stop bracing against it and clenching their teeth. Warm, but finally relaxing. ]

You know.

[ He has little reason to know. ]

I'd never really slept in one until I was living with the bards. I mean, every now and then— [ a handful of anecdotes for another time, maybe ] –but at home we had kind of a nest, for all the children, and when I wasn't home it was—wherever. So once I did have one, I was—they had to tell me to stop having the linens washed so often, just because I could.

My parents would have had conniptions if there was ever an animal in their bed. Or in the room at all. My sister sort of had a cat for a little while, outside, but it just wasn't something we did. [ He squashes his cheek in a little harder. ] So in a way you are saving me from becoming my father.
cozen: (n134)

[personal profile] cozen 2023-01-16 03:42 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Bastien smiles; if it isn’t visible, By can probably still feel it against his shoulder. ]

It’s the best.

[ The same dreamy tone he has applied, most recently, to trying to describe a perfect cinnamon bun he had when he was a teenager, which has never been matched since.
cozen: (n026)

[personal profile] cozen 2023-01-16 05:01 pm (UTC)(link)
And when I wake up with your armpit in my face, and when you come to bed only a few hours before dawn and ruin my very favorite dream. Even then.

[ He gives a little pinch where his hand is resting on against Byerly’s side, affectionately. ]

Are you trying to make a point at me?
cozen: (n054)

[personal profile] cozen 2023-01-16 05:25 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Bastien hums. He is not sure he understands, himself. But he tries: ]

I don’t know. I’ve shared a bed with men before.

[ He pulls his cheek away from By’s shoulder to look at him, face a pantomime of someone trying to inspire jealousy. ]

A lot of men. I mean, so many.

[ As if By hasn’t shared with more. ]

But never a dog. Maybe it was reflexive, or—I don’t know. Orlesian snottiness. Kaitenese snottiness? Maybe it was cultural, for my parents. Maybe no one there allows animals in their houses. I don’t know.
cozen: (n053)

[personal profile] cozen 2023-01-16 06:41 pm (UTC)(link)
[ You never invited me, would be the petty response, if Bastien wanted to try to squirm out of this intimate, cuddly honesty by being combative again, but he knows full well that it would be a technicality. He'd made it so clear he didn't want to be here that asking him to outright would have been begging for rejection or hurtfully transparent excuses. He's glad By didn't.

So instead he sighs. ]


That was—I know you hate this, you don't want us to do this, but it feels like it is hers. Hers and yours. Votre. [ Orlesian is better for some things. ] I need to get over it, because it might be a while before she comes back. And maybe a dragon will attack us tomorrow morning, and I will over there and you will be over here with—with all these people who would not protect you like we would, [ is the kindest way to put Bastien's distrust of the other division heads when it comes to Byerly's safety, ] and I will be so upset you were alone.

But I have been worried that when she comes back, it will be, you know. A whole thing.

[ Also the kindest way he can put that. ]

It's alright, though. Even if it is a thing. That's why I'm here now—to get over it.
cozen: (o021)

[personal profile] cozen 2023-01-16 08:59 pm (UTC)(link)
I know.

[ He snakes his hand out of the blanket cocoon to touch By's face again, fingertips on his pretty bottom lip. ]

I know that's how you've seen it.

[ It's Alexandrie he's unsure of. Perhaps because the both of them are so horribly Orlesian. It's a country where Josephine Montilyet can destroy a marriage by leaving the proper glove on the proper table, and so Bastien couldn't help but look for meaning in the hairbrush on the vanity or the embroidery left in progress on the bedside table, and he couldn't be certain she didn't mean for him to find it.

He pinches By's lip between his fingers. Half of a fish mouth. It makes Bastien smile. ]


I think, [ with some caution—it's only tangentially related, but while the door is ajar and Byerly doesn't seem too miserable about it— ] that she wanted me to be a gift she was giving to you. Something to console you in her absence. But with her permission, and on her terms. You know? Not that that is—I am not in any position to blame someone for wanting the biggest piece of you they can take.
cozen: (n177)

[personal profile] cozen 2023-01-16 09:47 pm (UTC)(link)
[ A peasant on her estate receives an upward tic of Bastien’s eyebrows that means yes, it does sound like that, doesn’t it, how odd. She likes you receives a smile. ]

I like her, too.

[ It has the tone of a beginning. Something that’s about to be followed by a but.

But. ]


I don’t want to put you in the middle of anything. That’s only—it’s why I have been so ridiculous about everything, I suppose. I am trying to stop.

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little nsfw

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too bad!!

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>)

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