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]

[ Why doesn’t he? He knows he’s angry. There have been times at which his anger has simmered below the surface, a mystery even to him - this isn’t one of those times. And he’s shared things so much more vulnerable, so much more painful than just anger with Bastien.

But he doesn’t. ]

What would I be angry about?

[cozen]

[ Bastien would guess: that he invited himself into Byerly’s space, and then he was finicky and judgmental and difficult about the details. That supercilious sniffing about dogs and their proximity is particularly tiresome coming from an Orlesian to a Fereldan, and By has dealt with so much snobbery from his countrymen already, and Bastien was supposed to be better than that. That when Byerly fights or bickers with people he loves, he does it with both hands tied behind his back, bound by terror that he’ll hurt them or drive them off, but perhaps there’s a piece of him that recognizes and resents that he doesn’t feel able to stand up for himself without risking a disproportionate response.

But outwardly he only shrugs a little and tries, ] I don’t know. I’ve never done anything wrong in my life.

[bouchonne]

[ That would make it so easy to push it away and bury it deep. That little joke could let Byerly smile, and drawl, so true, and do nothing about it aside from packing it away in his memory, to ache when -

When what? When Bastien is gone?

There’s something in that pain that allows for a crack. ]

I did think we were done with all this.

[cozen]

[ There are all (or most, at least) of the things a fellow ought to feel, when he’s exasperated and irritated someone he loves. Regret and a tickle of shame.

But there’s satisfaction, too, at that crack appearing. ]

With all what? Disagreeing?

[ Patently ridiculous, trying to provoke a correction. ]

[bouchonne]

[ Another crack, this one a flutter of annoyance. But -

How can he even say it, without it being an agony? The best he can do is: ]

Alexandrie is gone now.

[ Miserable to say it. And hardly very enlightening. ]

[cozen]

[ That was not anywhere on the list of things he expected to hear. The brief, confused line that appears between his eyebrows is genuine. ]

For now.

[ Those two words are gentler. Reassurance—confused reassurance—rather than a counterargument. Whatever nebulous thing he wants out of this, it isn’t for Byerly to be miserable. Not that he’s done trying to pick a fight; he follows promptly with, ]

And I don’t see what that has to do with this.

[bouchonne]

And that was - I had hoped there would be one good thing that came out of that.

[ Still muddled and falsely, miserably breezy. ]

[cozen]

What? Me spending nights up here?

[ If he were in a conciliatory and capitulating mood, he might explain the contents of the bag he brought. But he isn’t. ]

Why does it matter? I know it’s a fair walk to my room, but you are already cooped up here all day. You have a key, I told you to come whenever you like, I don’t…

[ He gestures. He doesn’t get it. ]

[bouchonne]

I don’t know.

[ He plucks a barb from his feather pen. Plucks another. ]

I don’t know why. But it does.

[cozen]

[ Bastien watches him at his plucking for several seconds before he takes mercy. ]

Well, I'm doing it. I brought—

[ Another gesture, less ambiguous, toward his bag in its chair. ]

—a toothbrush.

[ It does not feel very romantic a proclamation, at the moment, amid the tension and confusion. ]

[bouchonne]

[ But - But. That awkward, unromantic proclamation melts a little of the ice. His smile fades, and he asks with just a slight hint of audible anxiety: ]

Is that so?

[cozen]

Yes.

[ His tone is defiant, reflexively, in the face of is that so—like just try and stop him, like By hasn’t done nearly the opposite of trying to stop him.

Of course he hears the anxiety. He doesn’t understand it. He’ll try in a minute. Right now he’s on a tear, in his quiet way; he grabs the toothbrush-containing bag and marches past Byerly’s desk to his bedroom door. ]

So there had better not be anyone nubile in there.

[ A joke, muttered without much humor on his way past, before he pauses in front of the door to whistle for Whiskey with all the dignity he can muster. Which is a lot. An outside observer would find it hard to believe that he’d never made a fuss about her at all. ]

[bouchonne]

[ Whiskey does not come, because Whiskey.- a darling girl - is perhaps one of the laziest creatures alive. She heaves a heavy sigh, thumps her tail a few times against the floor, and doesn't move at all. ]

There's not - Wait, though -

[ Byerly stands from his desk, giving a little gesture of anxiety. Not based in anything incriminating in the room itself - there are no creatures in there, nubile or otherwise, and the room (perhaps miraculously) isn't littered with emptied bottles - it's purely over Bastien's own actions. ]

You don't want to.

[ In spite of the fact that he is marching in. ]

[cozen]

[ Some of Bastien’s mustered dignity disintegrates at Whiskey’s COMPLETE BETRAYAL (which she will be forgiven for the moment she looks at him with her droopy eyes). He’s still frowning at her when he answers. ]

Yes, I do.

[ The frown turns on Byerly for just a moment before he turns and goes through the door.

And then he stops, looking around, clutching the bag, paralyzed by the presumptuousness of putting it down anywhere in particular. The impossibility of making himself at home without being given permission. The flashback to standing here before, one shoe off, feeling like a member of the ensemble awkwardly stuck on the stage while the title characters of some romance carried on.

It’s easier to turn around again—still in the room, but talking out through the door—and focus on something else, like, ]

Say you’re angry.

[bouchonne]

I'm -

[ Rather categorically incapable of stating his feelings outright. I'm angry, I'm happy, I'm sad - even I'm annoyed has some difficulty passing his lips. It's all so gauche, stating your feelings, isn't it? So he struggles a bit, then says something that is at least related to his sentiment: ]

It was - a rather unpleasant thing, to - When you did know it was rather an important thing.

[ Not great, but something.

He remains standing behind his desk, though he is leaning so he can see an angle of Bastien's face through the door. ]

[cozen]

Ouais.

[ He doesn’t look as uncomfortable as he feels. It’s all channeled elsewhere—into stubborn, chin-up poise, into sounding like he is trying to pick a fight even while he’s agreeing. ]

I offered you something I knew you wanted and then I took it away over a minor quibble. It was petty and unkind and you deserve better than that.

[bouchonne]

[ He gives a little grunt. Looks down and away from Bastien. ]

Let's not go too far, now.

[ It's easy, when he feels unhappy, when he feels pushed and picked-on, to fall back into that wry self-loathing. He knows Bastien hates it, after all. So maybe it's a sort of cruelty of his own. ]

I did not even realize that we were quibbling.

[cozen]

[ Bastien hates it. His expression darkens by hardly moving at all—a slight adjustment of the eyebrows, a sharpness in the eyes, a few degrees of a head tilt that means stop that. ]

We weren't. I was. Because I like—my stuff,

[ is true, but ridiculous, and only there as a form of hesitation before he progresses on to the deeper admission it'd taken him some stewing to understand, ]

and having some authority and knowing where I should put my damn bag.

[ He's still clutching it. But acknowledging it is the incentive he needs to stop and instead pretend to be someone who feels entitled to put it wherever he wants. He chooses a stray chair in the corner, his voice rising to keep reaching through the door as he moves further away from it. ]

But I love you, and you deserve better, and I'm sorry, and I wasn't cross with you at all until, [ in a poor imitation of Byerly's accent but an excellent imitation of his intonation, ] Were you being a pain in the ass? What would I be angry about?

[ Hat, coat. They also go on the chair. So far his forcibly faked presumption only encompasses rights to the chair. Maybe he will also sleep on the chair. ]

[bouchonne]

Yes you were.

[ He won't let that go, not entirely. He shouldn't argue; he should accept it, and say, that's all right, I don't care, you're here now, what does it matter, put your bag anywhere. But he can't quite release that desire to chase down any tiny trace, any hint that Bastien's love is imperiled. That there are conditions on it. Not even because he wants them to be there, but because he needs to seek out all danger.

So his finger traces across his desk, and he says, ]

A fellow doesn't go silent for a week if he isn't cross.

[cozen]

I was—

[ Sulking. Being stubborn. Various synonyms for cross. Bastien doesn't choose any of them, partly because Byerly is right, and partly because he's wrestling out of a doublet. ]

—I was. And then you weren't talking to me, either, and I was trying to be more stubborn so you'd let me have my way, because I—

[ He likes some authority, like he said. That's as far as he was able to think it through. Even if he tried, he couldn't explain that he wanted some control over the situation, some sense of ownership to help erase how much he felt like a trespasser the last time he came in here, and inadvertently made probably the only demand in the world that By wouldn't agree to. ]

Well, clearly that failed. And you're right. And I'm sorry.

[ Once various layers of clothing and his shoes are piled neatly on the chair, his presence occupying as little space as possible, he's left in the various inner layers he'd wear to bed. He has half an impulse to go directly there and continue his fit from beneath blankets. But he remembers quite clearly which side of the bed By was on, before, and what is he supposed to do? Take Alexandrie's side? Take By's? Both feel untenable.

He does back to the doorway instead, to stand there in his off-white shirt and hosiery. ]

I'm sure she's a fantastic foot warmer.

[bouchonne]

[ Byerly understands, suddenly, that impulse - tell me you're angry. Because all of this, I'm sorry, I failed, it was my choice and you're right, all of it is so - frustrating. Byerly wants, in some obscure way, to feel the sting of guilt. He wants to have been the rotten one, and he wants Bastien to look at him with disgust, because that feels comforting. To have been the person wronged and to have someone apologizing to him, it's...

He doesn't like it. He brings his hands up to cover his arms in an unconscious little flinch. ]

I should have let you have your way. It was stupid of me.

[ But...He shouldn't have. It's his right to not want to make compromises. It's his right to say no. He wants to go to Bastien and wrap his sleepwear-clad form in a great hug. He wants Bastien to punch him. ]

I was being difficult.

[cozen]

No.

[ Bastien's frown is somewhat less irritated than before, but no less frowny. His eyes don't flick down to Byerly's self-protecting arm fold, but it's noticed. The few feet of distance between them is awful, but Bastien stays in the doorway—worried, maybe, on some level, that if he lets himself escape from the discomfort of the bedroom before he's fully faced it, he won't be willing to go back in. ]

You were being reasonable. You're allowed to have lines, Byerly. You should have them. Even with me. Especially when it's your room, and your bed. And someday there will be a room that's ours, and bed that's ours, but you can't let me run all over you then, either. It's not like I'm afraid of her or she makes me sneeze. I know you would work with me if it were something like that. But when it's only...

[ He wiggles his shoulders half-heartedly in a way that's meant to suggest frou-frou. ]

You get to have the dogs on the bed. All four of them. And I get to say that if there are fur rugs, they can't have faces. If we stay somewhere where the rug has a face we have to roll it up and put it away. They creep me out.

[ It's an attempt at levity. (And the truth.) Over the course of the speech, he's transitioned from imperious, bossy irritation to something more subdued and watchful. Maybe arguably, in a nearly-forty-year-old-man-with-a-mustache way, pouty. ]

You were angry. You ought to have been. And you're—what are you worried about?

[bouchonne]

I'm not worried.

[ He puts his hands down and repositions himself in something approaching insouciance. Yet there's still a stiffness to it. The difference, of course, between a Bard and a normal spy - Byerly can't fully control himself, not like Bastien can, not to a practiced eye.

And so the struggle that follows is visible - in the set of his mouth, in the brush of his fingers on his desk, in the downward slant of his gaze. But the struggle results in this, more truthful: ]

I simply hope that it is not fragile. What's between us. If loosening one's protection on it might lead us to...

[ To fight. To go silent. How could it last, outside of the flush of infatuation, if something like sleeping arrangements can imperil it so horribly? They'd been cold with each other for a week. Over this. Has he been staking all his hopes for happiness on something breakable? ]

[cozen]

[ The last little hardened bit of wall Bastien has up promptly crumbles. The shake of his head is immediate and earnest, and he gives up on forcibly acclimating to the bedroom after all, to step out and come closer and slide his hand up By’s neck and into his hair. ]

Ils mêleront nos cendres.

[ Orlesian because what he’s quoting is in Orlesian—a cliche from overwrought, twistingly dramatic romances bearing no real resemblance to theirs, except for the ashes part. ]

We’re going to argue—we have to be able to argue—but I won’t do it like that again. I promise.

[ For the very first time, as someone quite attached to his space and privacy and being able to accumulate piles of books without apologizing, Bastien feels a significant pang of envy for the couples (and throuple) sharing rooms the Gallows, who might go to bed angry but do it together. Who’d have to put real effort into not seeing one another instead of it being a thing that can happen almost naturally.

But the fact that Alexandrie could come back any month now keeps him from making an impulsive proposal. That and the fact that he’s probably the least impulsive person in the Gallows. ]

[bouchonne]

[ He raises his eyes to meet Bastien's - his lovely eyes, full of visible anguish, fixed so desperately on him. There's no anger in them now, just grief and fear. He lifts his own hand to grip Bastien's wrist - firmly, with love, with heartbreak. ]

I -

[ He swallows. ]

I do want to be easy for you. I know that I am frequently not easy, and - Ah, it's - [ A grimace. ] It's different, isn't it, when we're struggling with other sorts of things. [ Questions of guilt, questions of grief, where they both know which answer is right. Where they're not fighting each other; they're fighting their weakness. And of the other sorts of arguments they've had - The other sorts of arguments were ones where Byerly was certainly in the wrong, and that, too, was different, and easier. For some reason. Maybe because Bastien is more forgiving, kinder, better, or...He doesn't know. Maybe because it feels so much easier to simply give in and surrender. ]