[ Several minutes after they’ve wandered away from the waltz’s beaten path, the question does occur to him. If all of this is Byerly not loving him—his face against Bastien’s neck, his bashfulness and flattering sash, kissing him despite swampy jungle mouth and blowing him through a hangover, the honesty and attention, coffee and jaw harps, knowing just the thing and just the place to make Bastien feel capable of something monumental—then who gives a shit about the semantics? Who cares what By does or doesn’t think his heart has the strength for? When it comes to awareness of his own abilities, Byerly is frequently, with all due affection, a fucking idiot.

But the answer is: Bastien cares. Or if he doesn’t quite care tonight, he will later. When Alexandrie returns from Antiva, and time and attention—finite resources even at the best of times, however boundless someone’s heart—are in shorter supply. When Byerly is joking again about noble wounds taken for love. When he’s tender or troubled and needs someone to talk to about what it means for him to be with her.

It also occurs to Bastien that he could just, like, ask. To be sure. It’s what he’d tell someone else to do.

But he’s done that before, and it sucked. And it would be a waste right now anyway, with Alexandrie in Antiva and everything that might change on her return held in suspense.

So. ]

We are geniuses, [ as he winds down. They aren’t—or he isn’t, anyway—but he’s pleased enough to pretend. ] When the war is over and there is no more wrongdoing or pain anywhere in Thedas for you to worry about, we must go on tour. Or we can tour to where the pain is. It’s funny, I think there is a word—some profession, I’ve heard, for people who use music as a cover for other endeavors—