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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[bouchonne]

Bastien -

[ He intends to say it gently; it comes out, instead, as something a little wild and incredulous. One hand comes to Bastien's cheek, and By struggles to figure out where to start.

He settles on - ]

I love you. I love you - Maker, I love you so much.

[ Is this how it feels, when Byerly lets the impulse for self-flagellation overtake him? Does Bastien feel this frustration, watching him in misery, watching him heap more miseries on himself? Bastien apologizes - obviously - but rarely apologizes so ferociously, and rarely for something so very little his fault.

So he starts with: ]

I'd thought that you'd died. That I killed you when I pushed you down the stairs. And if that had been the case, I'd have - [ Exactly what Byerly would have done is perhaps - upsetting to hear. So he only says the first part. ] I'd have killed that creature, which was obviously what it wanted me to do. I -

[ He clutches tighter. ]

Thank you. For not killing it. For stopping me. And I'm so sorry for everything I said.

[cozen]

[ Bastien presses his cheek back into By’s hand. The reassurance seeps in slowly, but it’s tangible: tiny unspoolings, his body going from a controlled facsimile of relaxation to genuinely slack and soft. ]

You didn’t say anything, [ he starts to say, because he’s not thinking of Vincent. He’s thinking about Richars. Byerly believing he’d killed him. That’s—

It’s not good. Of course it’s not good. But it makes more sense, the look on his face. When Bastien encountered a bard who knew something about Vincent’s death, after he was gone, he broke her hand with a fire poker. If something happened to Byerly? If someone duped him into being the thing that happened to Byerly?

He doesn’t know what he would do. It would probably be frightening to onlookers, though. ]

What do you think you—oh, about Vincent?

[bouchonne]

Yes. I -

[ He pulls back enough to look in Bastien's eyes. ]

I will confess that I hate him. But to be cruel to someone you loved - even if he was a bastard - it was petty.

[ What a mix. What a tangle. A knot of apologies and emotions, levels of regret and guilt that can hardly exist alongside one another. ]

[cozen]

That wasn’t him.

[ Simplistic. Bastien’s looking back, thoughtful and frowning and maybe a little sad—though the details might be hard to see, with his eyes shadowed and pure black in the dark. ]

It’s alright. Even if it was him. You didn’t know him. If I didn’t know Alexandrie, I might have hated her for what she did to you. Not that it is the same. He didn’t do anything to me—but you know what I mean.

[bouchonne]

He didn't care for you as you deserved to be cared for. He -

[ By pulls back a little bit. He shouldn't be fighting this. He shouldn't be pushing back. He should just be accepting Bastien's feelings. But - ]

Stringing someone along is shitty. You deserved better.

[cozen]

[ Bastien doesn’t resist By moving back, but his hands stay where they are, ready to resist if he tries to get out of bed. He wouldn’t, right? Not over this. But in case. ]

It wasn’t his fault. We were friends. [ It’s possible Bastien has a pattern, if two can be a pattern. ] He never promised me more than that. It was my fault, thinking I could earn him if I did enough. That’s not how it works.

[ He’s had years to explain this to himself already. Neat and pat. However, ]

I guess he could have said something sooner. He did know,

[ is a new addition. A concession to try to keep Byerly from moving any further away. He hasn’t thought it through, and hearing it come out of his mouth—it’s true, and it makes his gut crumple like paper.

Take the secret out of secret hopeful yearning, and it isn’t romantic anymore. It’s pathetic. Really pathetic, talk pityingly behind someone’s back pathetic, not the cheerful self-deprecating sort of pathetic. ]

[bouchonne]

[ By comes in again, tightening his arms around Bastien. Pulling away was nothing more than an attempt to get a bit of perspective, to try to look Bastien in the eye. With that little concession, he's reassured that this is okay. Even if perhaps he is forcing it a little bit. ]

You, mon renard, deserve the world.

[ Because: this isn't, and shouldn't be, romantic. After all, in Byerly's eyes, this perspective is not pathetic - it is a fucking outrage. Because - ]

You deserve obsession. You deserve to be worshipped. Anyone who can't recognize that is a - a right son-of-a-bitch.

[cozen]

[ Bastien’s smile is strained, when Byerly starts, but by the end of that little speech he’s huffing with quiet, flattered laughter—not that he thinks it’s a joke, he’s just happy, or at least happier. He gives By a squashed, fumbling kiss on the hair. ]

Honestly, it’s good that he didn’t want me.

[ His adorable children might not exist; Bastien might never have abandoned his life as a bard, might have sunk deeper into the Game, might never have come to Riftwatch, might never have reconnected with By at all.

Less realistically, yet more importantly: ]

I would have felt very guilty about leaving him for you.

[bouchonne]

[ It is emphatically stupid how much better he feels thanks to that comment. Was that it, then? All along? Was Byerly jealous of a ghost? Was his aggression in that room, his simple-tongued cruelty, purely because Bastien was looking at Vincent with an expression that By wanted to be his alone?

His hand stills a moment, then resumes its stroking of Bastien's back. ]

I - perhaps - have occasional tendencies towards jealousy. Which I have no right to have. None at all.

[ A little breath. ]

But I suppose perhaps I really want to be the one you love the most.

[cozen]

You are.

[ Faint. Maybe a little sad. It’s easy; it’s also hard. Bastien’s never considered himself jealous, but he has his pride. His independent streak. His private certainty that Alexandrie could have had Byerly, all of him and forever, if she’d chosen him over the Game or her husband when she had the opportunity, and maybe right now Bastien would just be having a drink with him, sitting at a platonic distance, wishing.

He takes a pause and a breath, gathering up threads of happier thoughts—that you deserve the world, daydreams about Denerim, the explanation someone gave him in a tavern once about their several loves, and how it was like having children, none of them loved any less because another was born, no such thing as a heart divided into fractions—until he feels as generous as he aspires to be. He does love him most. Byerly deserves to be sure of it, especially after so many people have loved him poorly. Not to have it withheld out of pettiness and pride.

He adjusts his head and his hand so he can trace By’s face. ]

You always will be. If Vincent came back, I would choose you. If we have a handsome, funny neighbor in Denerim who talks to me about books—it will still be you. If we are old and bickering and someone young and lovely bats her eyelashes, it won’t matter. I’ll want you and your creaky knees more. Even if Remi Vascal returns, magically young… Well, we could have a threesome, no? Just the once.

[bouchonne]

Absolutely.

[ Byerly kisses his thumb gently. And then, with a little grin, admits - ]

Do you want to know something that will make you feel extremely smug?

[cozen]

Smugger than you deserve to be worshipped? [ He smiles and follows the outline of By’s grin, then traces out onto his cheek. ] Yes.

[bouchonne]

Lately, whenever someone mentions the Black Fox -

[ He nuzzles against Bastien. ]

I get really horny.

[cozen]

[ Yes, okay, extremely smug is accurate. His grin is wide; his laugh is quiet but comes from all the way in his chest. ]

Do you. [ He better, because Bastien is putting this heart to heart on pause to roll over on top of him. ] Have you heard the one about he escaped Karolis through the, ah, through les Bains de Laurier, naked and unarmed except for a jar of oil?

[ —and he goes on like that for some time.

But eventually he returns to the entangled-lying-together thing, minus a few articles of clothing and plus some sweat, and draws spirals and stars on By's skin. Serious thoughts (Richars, the ghosts in general) are nipping at his heels, about to take his attention back, but he dodges, for the moment, with, ]

It's weird how that never gets old.

[bouchonne]

Which part?

[ Byerly's hand is on Bastien's cheek, thumb stroking over the bone, again and again. Just gazing at him. His voice is light, but his eyes are so steady and so intense and so infatuated that it makes the lightness almost odd. ]

Our historical and factual reenactment of the night that Remi Vascal and Karolis were trapped in that chilly cabin with just the one bed and the one blanket?

[cozen]

[ Even though people have looked at Bastien that way before—or, no, that's not right. People have looked at whoever they thought Bastien was that way before. By's the first to look this way at him, and that's why it makes him feel like he's been caught in someone's arms mid-fall—that mix of thrill and shocking safety, drawn out over whole minutes instead of a second or two. ]

Mmhm. Such a classic. And—every part, honestly.

[ He slides his hand down to draw one of his spirals on By's ass. Speaking of parts that don't get old. But the serious thoughts catch up, and his smile doesn't vanish but does shrink down. ]

What else did you see there? Other than your cousin.

[bouchonne]

[ Byerly stays in it for a moment, lingers in that bliss. Thinks only about Bastien, and his smile, and his fingers, and his ass. Wraps himself up in it like a blanket.

Then he lets out a breath. ]

My family. A bit of playing through what would have happened had I stayed. Of course.

[ His eyes lower just a bit. Even though Bastien knows much about that time, the whole story, there's still pain in it. ]

[cozen]

[ Bastien hums an agreement with that of course. It’s not surprising; it’s not new. It still breaks his heart a little. Always will.

He lifts and leans over and kiss By between his averted eyes, and when he lies down again he’s closer, at a distance worse for gazing in adoration but better for murmuring about secrets and wounds. ]

Where do you think you would be now, if you stayed?

[bouchonne]

Dead?

[ It's only half a joke. Maybe less. ]

Likely as a punishment for parricide. Maybe just by drinking myself into the grave.

[cozen]

[ That this is a terrible outcome that Bastien is very glad did not come to pass goes, he thinks, without saying. Though the way his fingers curl half into a grip against By's back might say it pretty clearly anyway. ]

Do you, [ is the beginning of a slight detour. He pauses to consider whether he really wants to take it. ] Do you think you drink too much? Now, I mean.

[bouchonne]

[ That - is a detour. Yes. By stops his stroking, unconsciously, for just a moment. Then he forces himself to resume. ]

Do you think I drink too much?

[ It's said lightly. ]

[cozen]

I don’t know.

[ He nudges his cheek further into By’s hand, insistent he not stop again. Thinks a moment, and provides: ]

My father grew to where he drank too much. He wasn’t violent or anything. He would just drink and sleep and let everything go—his work and his debts. And us.

[ A sliver of explanation for the freewheeling, unsupervised childhood Bastien used to attribute to being orphaned, back when he was a liar, and for the way he still squirrels away money, always looking for more. ]

You aren’t anything like that. So I don't know. I only worry a little sometimes because I don’t want you to make me outlive you. Not by very long. I’d be so bored.

[bouchonne]

[ Byerly's quiet. How could he not be quiet, learning that? Of all the lies Bastien has told, so many of them have been to cover for his pain. Or - no. To make his ordinary pain extraordinary. It comes from the same desire Byerly has to make everything a joke, to laugh, to speak lightly of miserable things. Trying to preserve their pride.

So. It's that honesty that makes him speak honestly. He says - ]

I've tried to stop a few times. When I first became head of diplomacy. And then again a few months ago. And then someone offers a drink, and I remember how much I like it, and...Well.

[cozen]

[ Bastien lifts his hand to cover By's on his face, holding it in place as he turns his head to pepper his wrist and palm with pecky little kisses. Gratitude for the admittance. Apology for being the one offering a drink, often enough. He doesn't want to regret that night they got smashed together, with everything it gave him the courage and loose tongue to say out loud, but he hopes that wasn't the end of a dry spell. He's sorry if it was.

But most of all the kissing is a silly little bit of love-you-no-matter-what adoration, for balance. ]

We'll help you, [ he says, confident offering Alexandrie's services as well, ] if you ever want to try again. And you and me, we could drink less even if you don't want to stop altogether. If you want.

[bouchonne]

[ He's soothed by those little pecks. He feels so foolish even saying this. It's sotted fools lying in gutters who need to fear liquor, isn't it? Not men like him - spies who need perfect control over themselves and their impulses...

He traces his fingertips over Bastien's lovely nose. He says - ]

I started getting drunk when I was - I don't even know what age. But it's been a relief for as long as I remember.

Maybe if I stayed sober I'd find that I need to relax by doing something daring and exciting. Maybe I'd become one of those people spending all their time on the training ground.