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]

Says the gorgeous man who brought me bacon in bed. [ On which note: ] Thank you for breakfast. And for understanding.

[ —that a chosen name isn’t necessarily a false one, that identities can form alloys instead of only layers and veneers—but of course By would understand that.

Bastien could keep going. Thank him for the drinks, for the whole evening, for managing to accept the confessions and promises Bastien shoved into his unprepared hands without dropping any. For a share in Whiskey, for whom Bastien slips a bigger piece of bacon-dusted bread onto the floor. He could thank him all morning.

It’s simpler and probably less annoying to hold By’s jaw, look him in the eye, and reiterate: ] The greatest.

[ He lets go. Attention back to his perfect stomach-curing sandwich. ]

But you were on the side of purple and green together. Right?

[bouchonne]

Of course!

[ He looks horrified that Bastien would even question it. ]

First off, it takes a very simple understanding of color to think that there is but one green and one purple, and to not comprehend that there are crucial questions of saturation and hue that matter here. And second - [ And most importantly - ] A person can pull anything off with enough panache.

[ Then, with a little tickle to Bastien's earlobe, he says - ] Thank you, my darling sweet carrot, for trusting that I would understand.

[cozen]

[ Darling sweet carrot makes Bastien smile wide—a silent laugh sort of smile, mouth closed only to hide his mouthful of sandwich instead of his teeth. Once half-chewed food isn't an issue, he says, light and matter-of-fact, ]

There was a woman in my house, Giliana. I caught her in a mood once—not long before she died. Maybe she knew. But she told me to keep something—like a memory, something like that—and to never sell it or use it. That way if I ever couldn't tell the difference between who I was and what I did, and everything felt like a lie, I would have that much. And I took myself very seriously when I was a teenager, you know, so. Maybe I took it too much to heart.

[ But it means he has things, is the point he's not quite saying out loud, that have never been used to manipulate or harm anyone. It isn't as simple as being one person under the mask of another, but it matters to him. It matters a whole lot. Even if he's discussing it in the same tone he'd use to discuss ink varieties. ]

It isn't so different for you, is it? Maybe you are not so pretentious about it in your head, but what you show people—it is you, but not all of you.

[bouchonne]

Oh, I am amply pretentious about everything.

[ He walks his fingers up Bastien's arms a moment, the two of them doing a poncy little strut, before he withdraws his hand to grab his coffee cup. He thinks about that a moment. And he wonders if he hates Giliana, or if he worships her, to teach Bastien that bit of wisdom - that perhaps saved him, or perhaps just made him put far too much emphasis on something rather irrelevant until it became nearly neurotic.

For his part, though - ]

Sometimes I feel like what I show people isn't me. They get to see things that confirm their suspicions, that Byerly is no one to be feared - that he's a loud fool, sharp-tongued but not anyone dangerous, but nothing substantial. Sometimes I think that the person I show to them is a complete lie. That Byerly Rutyer is actually, in his heart, a sturdy fellow - romantic but dependable, kind, just a bit melancholic. But then I find myself dizzyingly happy when I'm out reveling, so it's clear enough that that's not really the case.

[cozen]

[ Bastien polishes off his sandwich while he listens, save a piece of bacon sticking out beyond the edge of the bread. ]

You can have a sturdy, kind, dependable heart and still love a good night out.

[ Which is good, because Bastien wants this from him—sweet nights, slow mornings, coffee in bed, long conversations—but not only this. Despite sharing Byerly with a war and a mistress and whatever else he gets up to on his own, and therefore maybe getting laid less than Bastien would aspire to in peacetime and/or monogamous circumstances, he still doesn't drag By straight to bed every night he lays claim to him. Not when there are weddings to crash, strangers to fluster with double-team flirting, card games to win and to lose in the funniest ways they can arrange with bard sign, operas to accompany and impromptu concerts to perform, acting troupes to befriend, assholes to undermine, private garden locks to pick in the middle of the night—

He takes that last bit of bacon and holds it toward Byerly in offering. He has right of first refusal before it goes to the dog. ]

But even the simplest person is at least five different people, I think, from moment to moment, and you are not simple. Letting people think you are—maybe that is the lie.

[bouchonne]

Maybe.

[ He leans forward and eats the bacon directly from Bastien's hand. Chews it meditatively and swallows before saying: ]

Not a lie I'm particularly ashamed to tell, though. There aren't many people with a right to my soul. [ Well. ] I'm usually not ashamed to tell it. Maker, Bastien, sometimes it's so hard to be Fereldan. Everyone down there is so damned honest.

[cozen]

[ With playacted despair: ]

Oh no.

[ What is he getting himself into. Except the truth can’t be any worse than an Orlesian’s preconceptions of forthright barbarian farmers, which he already decided he could handle. It’s only a joke.

Then he shifts and wriggles and leans back against Byerly’s chest and shoulder, and he goes on more seriously. ]

Your work—

[ It’s the sort of question he feels like he should already know the answer to, at this point, but also one he’s still worried he shouldn’t ask. ]

You were spying on your countrymen, weren’t you? Not only foreigners and all of that.

[bouchonne]

[ His smile turns a little more melancholy as he wraps his arm around Bastien. ]

Almost exclusively my own countrymen. Searching for sedition, ferreting out treason. There are many hostile to the Queen - to any Queen, to this Queen - and many hungry for power...The peculiar structures down South mean that we have fewer schemers, but the schemers we do have can get rather a lot further. So: yes. My enemies and my friends, my kith and my kin.

[cozen]

[ Bastien nods to himself, cheek squashing up and down against Byerly’s chest. The easy thing—the Orlesian thing—would be to shrug at that. Orlesians are always out to get one another, up to and including the Empress. It’s expected. Your cousin might ruin you for your title, but that’s not a betrayal of cherished national values. It’s a fulfillment of them.

But Fereldans are honest, like Byerly said. Not immune to back room deals and treachery, because no nation is, but their idealized image of themselves isn’t masked and scheming. It’s hashing things out with words or fists in broad daylight. Going the Landsmeet (Bastien’s been reading up on those) and saying their piece in front of everyone and seeing a fair outcome.

So to be masked and scheming in the midst of them— ]

That sounds lonely.

[ He rests his hand on Byerly’s knee. ]

Do you have to do it all alone? Other than reporting in.

[bouchonne]

[ There's only a very, very brief flicker of paranoia, of all of this has been to entrap me - It flies quickly away, and By sighs and reaches out to play with those fingers on his knee. ]

There are others. Even some seeming ne'er-do-wells who move in the same circles as me. That was how I was recruited originally, you know - I stumbled back from Antiva, and fell in with a bad crowd. Only one of them wasn't actually as bad as he seemed to be. And he saw that I wasn't, either, and so he started giving me little tasks here and there, until I was a spy in all but name.

[ His voice sounds amused, and a little proud, rather than betrayed. ]

There's a full network focusing on domestic affairs. Nothing like what Orlais has. Certainly nothing like what the Chantry has. But for something crafted largely just in the reign of Queen Anora, it's not too bad.

[cozen]

[ Untaken roads don’t interest Bastien very much, once they’re behind him. Not fifteen waking minutes of his life have been cumulatively devoted to wondering what might have happened if he’d stayed with his family, if Vincent had said yes, if he’d never quit as a bard, if Byerly had stayed in Orlais—any of it. None of that happened. Who cares. The future is much more interesting.

But he gives a good fifteen seconds of thought to the thought of Byerly, good-hearted in a bad crowd, fresh from two heartbreaks and a murder, with his penchants for misery and drinking. Fifteen seconds imagining who he might have become if he hadn’t been offered something steady to turn his energy toward. That’s plenty for Bastien to decide he’s glad. ]

It sounds—well, you know. If I praise it too much they will come take away my antiroyalist card.

[ A joke. Mostly. Kind of. It isn’t only Byerly’s you’re mine that would make Bastien refuse even very good recruitment efforts. ]

But it sounds like a perfectly respectable arm of a reasonably benevolent government. [ That is sincere. ] And I am glad you were not out there alone.

[ He holds the fingers Byerly is playing with out flat over his leg. Piano keys. ]

Do you think it will be the same when you go back, after you have done all of this?

[bouchonne]

[ By doesn't play a chord. Instead, he interlaces his fingers with Bastien's and squeezes. He doesn't say it aloud, but in his mind is an echo of Bastien's words - Thank you for understanding. Because others, they've heard the cruelty and squalor of his work, and they've struggled to comprehend why he doesn't leave. But Bastien understands.

His tight grip releases a moment later, and he smiles, and goes back to playing idly. This time, it is a chord - major, minor, major again, the web of muscle between each knuckle serving as the black keys. ]

No. I was really quite dependent upon my reputation as a lout. I fear that's quite spoiled, now.

[cozen]

Ah, quelle tragédie, [ Bastien says, head lolling against By with badly-acted despair, though his arm stays still and rigid for that silent music. (At other, less talkative times, he's made a game of trying to hum the appropriate chords, but not now.) ] Years of sullying your reputation, really getting mud into every crevice—ruined.

[ He smiles up at the underside of By's chin. His stomach is better; his headache has retreated so far into a dull and distant ache that ignoring it takes no work at all. ]

Do you know what I would do, if I were the Queen of Ferelden?

[bouchonne]

[ Byerly sighs winsomely. ] Step on my bare chest, the way I've been praying to the Maker for years that she would?

[cozen]

[ Bastien opens his mouth for a moment, a not-quite-surprised gotcha face, which bleeds easily into a bit of a leer. ]

Oh, yes. First priority. In leather slippers with good heels—and fur lining, of course, for Ferelden.

[bouchonne]

[ Byerly's noise of lust is not not a joke, but also, it is not a joke. ]

You are a beautiful man.

[cozen]

Mmmhm.

[ Smug. Although, ]

You should tell Alexandrie about that one, if you haven't. Her accent will be more convincing than mine.

[ Among other more convincing things that he won't be explicitly mentioning, out of respect for her history and their privacy—even if she did try to suggest a threesome before Bastien had even said yes to Byerly—and the fact that, like he said, It's Complicated, platonically. But not out of jealousy. He's well past that. And not out of any need or desire to be told he would be a very good Sexy Queen of Somewhere Kind of Like Ferelden But With A Different Garbly Accent. He knows. ]

After I stepped on you, though, and, ah, saw that to its conclusion, I would give you a position. A public one, I mean. Maybe not ambassador to anywhere. That would tie your hands—not in a fun way. But an assistant or attache or something not quite so intimidating, so you could do some of this and some of that.