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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[sulahnan]

It takes a moment for Athessa to settle on a course of action. She could press, be the brat that they all know she's fully capable of being, and risk grinding some sensitive portion of Byerly's friendship into dust. She could stand and return to her own business, leaving Byerly with the open offer and gifts if he should change his mind.

But she's tried those tactics before and they didn't yield the best results, now did they?

"Ben," she calls, leaning to look past the back of her chair at the walnut known as Byerly's assistant.

"Give us the room, please."

[bouchonne]

And Byerly opens his mouth - but then shrugs, and doesn't countermand the order.

[altusimperius]

All too eager to comply with what gives him an easy out, Benedict gathers up his documents, quill and ink, and takes his leave with the barest of backward glances. Seeya, wouldn't wanna be ya.

[sulahnan]

Athessa waits until the door closes behind Benedict to return her attention to Byerly, a smigeon of her ease slipping out of place to reveal a bit of trepidation in the cant of her brow. With Bene there, oddly enough, she would have been able to hide that.

Instead, Byerly has to see and hear her hesitation before she has anything even remotely resembling the right words for what she wants.

"Are you angry with me? About what happened?"

[bouchonne]

"What?"

Of the questions he was expecting, that certainly was not among them. It's rare that his real emotions show in his face - he's quite expressive as long as he's camouflaging all his feelings - but this one does startle him enough to show.

"No. Why would I be angry?"

[sulahnan]

"Cos when you're angry with me you tend to clam up," she says, hunching her shoulders in something like a shrug but also something of a demonstration of clamming up. "You shut up, shut down, and there's no talking to you about anything until someone — me — starts throwing shit."

She, clearly, is not about to start throwing shit right now.

[bouchonne]

"When I get angry, I get revenge," he mutters, and then amends, "or something like it." Which is not entirely true, he must acknowledge - there are, after all, different types of anger, not all of which are the sorts that lead to vengeance - and maybe in the past, he has been angry with her. Yes. Just -

"What do you think you'd have done to make me angry, precisely?"

[sulahnan]

"I dunno. But you clammed up when you saw my arm was in a sling. And when I got this—" She traces the scar on her cheek with her thumb.

[bouchonne]

His lips tighten, and his eyes turn away.

"Well, I'm not angry."

[sulahnan]

"You're doing it again."

At least his assurances that he's not angry are some small comfort, if not enough to take away the sense that she's done something wrong. But what? It's not like she purposefully gets hurt. It's not like she tries to get hurt. And she survived every scrap she's gotten into so far, so...

(Maybe there is something to her getting hurt being the only excuse she has to see a certain healer, but in this instance it doesn't apply. Colin's the one who healed her shoulder.)

[bouchonne]

"I'm not doing anything."

If anything, her pressing is winding him up even more. The signs of his discomfort become more and more obvious with each moment.

"I'm not angry. Anger would be an idiotic reaction to your situation."

[sulahnan]

He is doing something. He's doing a bang-up impression of a stone wall.

"Then what is this? This whole...I'm gonna make my mouth a flat line and stop engaging thing? You're making me feel like I've done something wrong."

[bouchonne]

There's a tiny twitch in his cheek, like a single muscle gaining sentience and rising up in rebellion.

"Have you done something wrong?"

[sulahnan]

"Plenty," she insists with the insistence of one insisting the opposite. "But none of it anything you'd disapprove of!"

And, needing an example, she points at the bottle of mead. It explains everything to her, and nothing to him, as he doesn't know its provenance.

[bouchonne]

His brows draw down. He looks to the bottle, then back up at Athessa, and spreads his hands in a gesture that says what, I don't get it.

[sulahnan]

Ah. Right. That actually didn't explain anything at all, did it? Like a withering plant her pointing finger curls until her hand is in a loose fist and she taps the heel of it on her knee.

"...Well. I hardly own a distillery, do I? So how else would I make mead if not...ya know. Via a little wrongness?"

[bouchonne]

Ah. She made this? Well, it's of decent enough quality for that.

"There's no sin in brewing. If there were, then every farmer in Thedas would be accursed."

[sulahnan]

Rather bluntly: "I broke into Wysteria's house to make it."

[bouchonne]

Oh. Well. A shrug.

"She hoards her resources. Good they're being used."

[sulahnan]

Her fluttering wave is both a dismissal and an agreement. Anyway.

"That's not the point."

[bouchonne]

"The point is - what? You want to be scolded for doing something illegal?"

[sulahnan]

"No! Augh!"

Athessa lets her head fall against the back of the chair with a soft paff of her curls hitting the upholstery, eyes imploring the ceiling for patience, or a better vocabulary with which she might actually say something that he'll understand.

"The point is," she tells the rafters. She takes a breath, lets it go. And another, before she continues. "That it hurts. To be shut out when I'm already hurt. And I wasn't keeping secrets or not trusting you or whatever you might've thought when I said I didn't want to talk about it."

[bouchonne]

Any looseness or good humor that had emerged when they'd started inching away from this subject evaporates again. The tension returns to his face; his hands thread together, long fingers twisting themselves nearly into knots.

"I'm not - Shutting you out. There's nothing to be shut out of." Then - "I apologize for pressing you, before. I was wrong to do so."

[sulahnan]

It strikes her as a bit sad that apologies have been so few and far between that, much like love, she never learned how to deal with them. A dozen different responses make it no further than the back of her throat before she presses her lips into a tight line — a perfunctory facsimile of a smile — and nods once.

Rather than let the silence stretch out uncomfortably long, Athessa leans forward and nudges her glass in Byerly's direction. Pour, please.

[bouchonne]

By lets out a breath. Leans forward and pours. Then sits back and takes up his own glass, drinks deep.

Finally - "You haven't done anything wrong. I'm the one who does things wrong. You're fine."