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]

I don't get tired of listening to you. You know that song you let me save on my crystal? I don't understand a word of it, but I could sing it now.

[ He curls his arm around By's shoulders and demonstrates a few lines of the Antivan murder ballad, half-decent accent and all, ending obliviously in the middle of a sentence because he doesn't know it's not the end.

It takes care of his frown. ]

You should relax, too. I really will tell you in the morning, you'll see. I can tell you something else now. Or we could play another game. Or we could make out.

[bouchonne]

Mm. I just don't want you to feel like you have to work to please me.

[ Even though the obvious attention and care gone into that song, the way that Bastien has imitated Byerly's occasional idiosyncrasies of phrasing and lyric, pleases him immensely. Me, me, he cares about me. The thought fills him with elation mixed with an undercurrent of horrified repulsion. Maker, why me?

He nuzzles into the side of Bastien's neck. ]

Tell me something else.

[cozen]

[ For a moment he’d like to argue: it isn’t work, he was having fun, and he would really like to know By’s favorite place in Denerim because he needs help imagining it as a place he could live someday, so—

It’s very hard to want to argue when he’s being nuzzled. ]

Mmm.

[ Thinking. ]

I ran away from home—sort of. I was already gone most of the time, but I stopped going back at all because my mother found me a position. A boot boy. She had to beg for it. That would have been hard for her.

[ Subject matter aside, he does sound relaxed, and like maybe he thinks it’s all sort of funny now. ]

But I wouldn’t do it. I didn’t mind working, but… scraping the literal shit off their shoes, By. All those flowers and birds eggs and bells. Every day. [ Orlais. ] Can you imagine?

[bouchonne]

I did that a time or two. Scraping shit off shoes for few copper.

[ If By were sober, he'd be more sympathetic and delicate, rather than bluntly philosophical. ]

But I suppose it is different for nobles. You always have your blood. You can pretend it's irony instead of desperation.

[cozen]

Maybe.

[ He moves his hand to the back of Byerly’s head, to lightly scratch his scalp. He hates thinking of him hungry, desperate, willing to take anything from anyone but ashamed enough to need to be able to laugh about it.

He hates it, but he’s not sure he would have ever let Byerly in, if not for the bouts penniless suffering. He would have been resentful, competitive, waiting for condescension. Wouldn’t have let him near enough to love. It would have been a shame. ]

Maybe I was a proud little idiot. Maybe I’ve been luckier than you. I know I have been, in a lot of ways.

[ That was sincere. But here comes the pleasant stupidity; he doesn’t manage to sound deadpan, already tittering at how annoying he knows he’s being before he says it: ]

For instance, I was born in Val Royeaux. The luckiest.

[bouchonne]

No, no.

[ Byerly is already snickering, too. ]

That's why you're a proud idiot. That's what Royans are like. Sticks up their arses.

[ Which is - not true, of course, with Bastien, who's so cheerful and easygoing. But also a little true. It's an interesting view into who he was, and who he is, one that if By were a little more sober he'd be able to think on more cogently. Bastien the prideful. Who'd kill, yeah, but would run away from scraping shit. It's complicated, so instead of thinking cogently, he asks aloud: ]

What does someone have to do to offend you? Properly offend you, where afterwards you decide you're just finished with them.

[cozen]

[ Bastien’s laughter about arse-sticks tapers off by the end of the question. But he’s still grinning about it, and he’s entirely and joking—not even a tiny bit genuinely worried—when he says, ]

Looking for a way to get rid of me?

[bouchonne]

Looking for ways to give bad advice to your other would-be suitors. Like in The Valiant Goatherd.

[ A play in which - as in the plot - the affable-seeming goatherd won the heart of the fair maiden by being taken into confidence by all her more swaggering suitors and then ruthlessly sabotaging them. By fucking loves that little shit. He loves that play. ]

[cozen]

[ Bastien laughs, so tickled he nearly gurgles. (He’s also full up on earnest declarations of feeling for the evening, so they’re both spared an explanation of how unnecessary that interference would be.) It takes him a good thirty seconds to laugh, take another drink, and mosey back to the point. ]

Uhhh. What was…

[ The question. But he remembers on his own. ]

Mmm. I don’t know what would guarantee it. Sometimes people are upset [ or drunk ] and they say things they probably don’t mean. Like Alexandrie.

[ He would never mention it, if not for the liquor seeping in. Even with it, he realizes he shouldn’t have, and there’s a puzzled, frustrated pause before he resumes. ]

But if they mean it, if it’s a—a pattern. I had a friend once. Sort of. You know. [ A friend, and one who barely knew anything honest about him. ] He was one of those… aspiring tortured geniuses. A writer. Kind of an asshole, but I hung in there.

Then he was unhappy with something he’d written, and I told him I thought it was good, and he went off about—how of course I liked it, I didn’t know any better, I didn’t know anything, I… All of that. So I dumped a box of his drafts out of his window. Just into the street. I think he got most of them back. But we were finished.

[ And, with belated defensive embarrassment, ] I was young. If it happened now I’d do something subtler.

[bouchonne]

No, [ By declares, ] that's good. Fuck him. I'd cut off his fingers, too, to keep him from ever writing anything else. Not that it'd make any difference. He'd probably be a failure even if he had four hands to write with and all the time in the world.

[ Ride or die, motherfucker.

(they'll come back to Alexandrie, now that the thought is in his head.) ]

[cozen]

[ Bastien grins, touched by this imaginary violence, and raises the arm By isn’t lying on to press the back of his hand to his forehead in a pantomime swoon. ]

My hero.

[ The cushions were smart. If they were on their feet, he might try to make Byerly actually catch him. ]

He was good, though.

[bouchonne]

Mm.

[ Skeptical. ]

Have I heard of him?

[cozen]

Galois Bacque?

[ A Royan merchant’s son known (if at all) for a handful of poems, a somber essay on the death of Grand Duke Gratien, a charming laugh, and a habit of taking way way way too long when it’s his turn at cards. ]

[bouchonne]

[ Byerly, with his encyclopedic knowledge of artists and artistes, knows of him. But he won't give the fucker the phantom satisfaction of acknowledging the fact. ]

His name sounds like a shitty cake.

[cozen]

That would be some revenge. Bribe a baker to name a cake the Galois. Something dry.

And beside it in the window, [ with a hand lifted for a sweeping look at this imaginary shop window gesture, ] the Byerly—a perfect tart.

[bouchonne]

[ Byerly makes an indecent face of wanton ecstasy, and then licks his fingertip and uses it to draw a circle around his nipple. It's filthy, but also so filthy that it's not really all that sexy any more. ]

And yet an extraordinarily cheap tart, despite its splendor.

[ He laughs, then, and leans down and nibbles at his collarbone. A moment of quiet, then: ]

I'm sorry I fucked things up between you and Lexie.

[cozen]

[ The journey from snickering at the nipple bit to being nibbled to being serious is a little more difficult to keep up with than it would be sober, but Bastien catches up in time to only be a few beats late with, ]

Oh, By, you didn’t.

[bouchonne]

Yes, I did.

[ He swallow, his throat suddenly obscurely tight. Then, an attempt at lightness: ]

No lying, remember?

[cozen]

No lying.

[ He tries to squirm to see Byerly’s face better. It’s not very effective. ]

Things are not fucked up. They are complicated. And you are some of the reason why. But you’re also why we… We know one true thing about each other. That’s what she said.

[ Wrote, actually, and he’s misquoting a little. For the record. ]

More than one now. You are the reason for that too.

[bouchonne]

What - that you're Bards, and...?

[cozen]

And we love you.

[ He lifts his head to talk into the side of Byerly’s, with drunk earnest urgent bossiness: ]

Don’t be sad.

[bouchonne]

[ Oh. ]

I'm not sad.

[ But he says that with his voice thick with tears. ]

[cozen]

[ Bastien pulls further away from him (which is terrible) so he can push him by the shoulders and expose his face. He points beneath one of By’s eyes like there. Proof. It’d be triumphant if he didn’t also look concerned. ]

[bouchonne]

Stop.

[ It's more petulant than angry, and certainly not truly upset with Bastien. But those tears are real. And he confesses rawly: ]

I just love you both so much.

[cozen]

Oh.

[ The melting is visible in a way it never would be sober. His face is gloopy puddle of warmth.

There’s an ache too, attached to a jumble of half-thoughts about Alexandrie, about the day she’ll leave and there will be another wound that Bastien can’t soothe. And about the day maybe she won’t leave after all, about the husband who has been gone for an awfully long time—

He can’t grip onto any of it. Not while he’s drunk and melting. He pulls Byerly in instead, onto his chest and into his neck. ]

That’s all right, then. [ The crying. ] If you’re not sad.