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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[cozen]

[ Bastien's smile fades along with By's moment of brighter mood. ]

Apparently? What happened?

[bouchonne]

I still don't really know.

[ Eyes closed, By smiles bitterly. ]

She hates the way I talk. Apparently. Everything I say causes her pain. We were just talking about work, and - that apparently was agonizing for her. So she shut off her crystal rather than hear me speak any longer.

[cozen]

[ Bastien does not know Gwenäelle very well, but he admires her work ethic, and he took an interest in the fact that she did seem to like Byerly and be a friend to him when those can be few. One good enough to spend a great deal of time on his Satinalia gift and to include Bastien to some extent as well. With a few seconds' thought he might see the pattern in her tendency to be a bit of an asshole—her actual opinions, unvarnished, all the time—and understand how she might struggle with By's very different sort of thing.

But first, out of instinctive defense of the person in this equation who he loves, he says: ]

That is awfully sensitive for someone who can be so fucking rude.

[bouchonne]

[ Byerly lets out a sharper breath - not a laugh, but something adjacent. He's too unhappy to laugh - tears are forming in the corners of his eyes even as he gives that not-a-laugh - but still, there's that grateful huff of air. ]

I suppose that was - also something like what I was thinking. She's so sharp-tongued. And we've spoken with each other, and shared hard honesty, that this - I was just shooting my mouth off, and suddenly she's saying that every word of mine hurts her.

[cozen]

[ A glimpse of those welling tears, and any potential semi-rational analysis of the situation will have to wait. Instead: ]

Oh, sweetheart,

[ with his tongue nowhere near his cheek, the way it usually would be for an endearment like that. ]

I'm sorry. It will be alright.

[bouchonne]

If I had known -

[ Byerly's grip on Bastien's arm tightens. ]

I'd have stopped it. I'd have tried. It was never my intention - It wasn't my intention.

[cozen]

Je sais.

[ It's rarely unwitting instinct, when Bastien chooses Orlesian over Trade, but right now it is. He pets By's hair with a little more force, twice, before running his finger tips up and down his forehead and the length of his nose instead. ]

I know. Of course it wasn't. You care for her. You wouldn't.

[bouchonne]

[ He lets out a shaky breath, and responds in Orlesian as well, his voice thick. Not quite in the careful Royan accent he usually has; instead, when he speaks, it's with a more Southern accent, the Orlesian of his mother's home. ]

But even when she said it, I just kept doing it. And I did realize that it was not my intention she hated. It was, it is, me. My personality, my manner, my voice, my speech. What I am.

[cozen]

You are a thousand things, Byerly, and no one has seen all of them. Not even me.

[ It's not only a semantic quibble. It's important. But it doesn't solve the problem. Perhaps because the problem is unsolvable; the mouthy bullshitter breed is not for everyone. All the things Bastien loves about Byerly—or about his surface, anyway—are things someone else, somewhere, will find unbearable and obnoxious. And those people will just have to find a way to carry on with their thin-skinned and self-serious lives without him.

It doesn't directly address the wound, though, either. Bastien needs another moment for that. ]

Sometimes people cannot handle something for their own reasons. It doesn't mean that they hate you.

[bouchonne]

Maybe not.

[ He switches back to Trade for this - the memory of the conversation, held in Trade, drawing him back to that tongue. ]

But she had said to me that she loved me. [ Orlesian: ] Not romantically. Of course. It feels pathetic to be loved but so tiresome that - You know.

[cozen]

[ A nod. His face-stroking narrows to, specifically, the place where the bridge of By's nose meets his forehead. ]

Do you love her?

[ —feels like a cruel question, almost, given his misery. But it's perfectly possible to feel abandoned and disposable and shamed by someone without loving them. ]

[bouchonne]

Yes.

[ His eyes open very slightly, glinting behind his long lashes. He doesn't blink even when Bastien's fingers come close. ]

Her father saved my life, when I was younger. And duty, debt - it can create love. Like to a sister.

[cozen]

[ Bastien has an underdeveloped sense of obligation at the best of times. Zero interest in owing anyone anything. He had, by the age of twelve, positioned himself as a sporadically present and largely unreliable fun uncle figure to his real blood siblings. So duty, debt—even in this circumstance, it's enough to make him wrinkle his nose, just a little, in silent ugh.

The last sentence distracts him, though, from arguing whether that's love, or maybe needs its own sort of word, like obliged or honor-bound. ]

Mm.

[ Intelligently. But he is thinking, about Gwenäelle—and Madame de Foncé, and Athessa, and Jenny Lou, and (in her distinct sort of way) Alexandrie. ]

Has a man ever troubled you this way?

[bouchonne]

[ The question catches him off-guard. He opens his eyes more fully, looking up at Bastien, grief momentarily displaced by confusion. ]

A man? [ His brows furrow. ] What do you mean?

[cozen]

[ A small shrug. He smooths the furrow with his hand. ]

Whenever you have been so upset about someone saying something to you or being cross with you, it has been a young woman. I have never rubbed your back because you were quarreling with Benedict.

[ Back to Orlesian, ]

I suppose he might not have that in him. But you know what I mean, yeah?

[bouchonne]

[ A moment as he thinks that over. And then a choked little laugh. ]

Maker. I think you're right. How ridiculous. "Like a sister" indeed.

[ At least, when he's prompted, he's able to find a little bit of insight into his own soul. That's a relatively new development. ]

[cozen]

[ Bastien smiles, faintly pleased despite the general awfulness of the situation. Maybe he ought to push harder for them to go see Nadine sooner rather than later, or to invite her here if By can't be spared that long. Maybe a few days with her would give Byerly a bit more of a shield, where sister-shaped people were concerned, if it didn't fill the hole entirely.

Or maybe that is too optimistic. But it would be nice, surely, regardless.

He'll bring it up later. Now, cautiously hopeful they'll be able to get through it now that By is thinking and laughing a little: ]

What happened exactly? Was it about that— [ little spat? not even that ] —conversation you had over the crystals?

[bouchonne]

Yes.

[ Now fully in Trade: ]

I followed up afterwards. I tried to invite her to play cards with me - She said no. Then she explained that I was being hurtful to her, and then I said that I hadn't meant to, that that's...just how we talk. You and I talk that way all the time. I insult you, you insult me - And she said that it was hurtful, and that speaking to me hurt, and that she would prefer not to. And did not allow me to respond.

[cozen]

[ Smoothing eyebrows with his thumb, ]

That's all? Had she ever said anything about not wanting to carry on like that before?

[bouchonne]

Speaking with her has...rarely gone smoothly.

[ He lets his eyes close again, enjoying Bastien's caresses. ]

But I've usually expected it, at least. It's been in moments of charged emotion. Not something like this.

[cozen]

[ A hum. ]

Maybe she wanted you to say you were sorry it hurt her, [ is a casual proposal, with little basis, ] and you would stop—instead of that that is just how we talk. But she might have given you more time.

[ Byerly, in his experience, isn't not someone who says he is sorry to his friends, so much as he is not someone who does it lightly. Bastien will say he is sorry to anyone, for anything, without much thought—maybe because most of the time the sorriness isn't a particularly deep sort. Like little seedlings that have barely grown roots and slip cleanly out of the earth when tugged. Meanwhile Byerly wrenches out fully-grown apology-shrubs that bring up chunks of dirt and stone and other plant's roots along with them. ]

[bouchonne]

But that would be a lie, wouldn't it?

[ For a liar, Byerly has an odd sense of honesty. The thought of being dishonest when it comes to this - Out of the question. He might delude himself, but he won't knowingly deceive others. Not when he cares about them. ]

I likely won't stop. We can't just - be different, like flipping a switch. The way we walk in the world, the way we speak and thing, is habit. Old mabari don't take to new commands.

[cozen]

[ It is an odd thing for a liar. But it's not an odd one for Byerly. ]

You are not a mabari, [ is accompanied by a smile and the obvious, teasing withholding of any similar assurances that he is not old, before he repeats: ] You are a thousand things.

You are gentle and kind and serious, when I need you to be. If something bothers me, you don't joke about it. You listen.

[ He listens to Bastien in a way he does not listen to everyone—even to Alexandrie, Bastien knows, from his experience as an unhappy observer. There's something to chew on there. Some similarity between this and when Alexandrie was sitting on the floor, miserable about being denied the specific comfort she asked for, and he'd said do you want me to manipulate you? because I can—

or something. It has been enough years for even Bastien's memory to fail on the specifics.

In the meantime, while he's trying to chew, he taps the tip of By's nose. ]

It would be awful and exhausting if we had to carry on like that forever, I know—so, alright, we won't invite any people who don't like the teasing to live with us. But that part of you is not a lie.

[bouchonne]

It is - not.

[ He admits that, because Bastien is looking at him so kindly. Even though in this moment he wants nothing more than to bury himself in shit and deny every decent part of himself, he can't. Not to Bastien. ]

But it's when I know that you need it of me. This wasn't - It wasn't anything like that. It was just silliness, from beginning to end, but even so it sparked some flame in her.

[cozen]

The part that I heard, she seemed embarrassed.

[ A questing tone, not one of finality; he doesn't know if that's right, or if that's all of it. Maybe it's a bit of projection, from a man who's thrown handwritten manuscripts out of windows and knocked Towers-age vases off of their pedestals because their owners made him feel stupid or small, but it's easy for him to imagine embarrassment setting someone off. ]