[ Bastien doesn’t stop smiling; he’s just had his eyebrow smoothed and been called irresistible, so how could he. (With acting, that’s how. But he doesn’t want to.)

He shakes his head, though. ]

I didn’t enjoy it.

[ Dreamed or not, it will take more time for the memory of Byerly’s shoulders hitching while he cried to feel unreal and hazy enough not to tighten something in his chest.

And if it’s a compliment, he could peel it apart. It was a dream. It was Byerly imagining how it might feel to lose him after a couple of years, not how he’d feel now. Not how he’d really feel if it happened, with real time to heal.

But he doesn’t want to do that, either. He grins and kneads his thumb knuckle into the muscle of Byerly’s lower back. ]

But now that you mention it, you were pretty hung up on me, weren’t you? How utterly out of character.