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[cozen]

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[cozen]

Yeah? [ Still slumped half-bonelessly in his chair, he puts his feet up on the arm of Byerly's. ] Good absurd or bad absurd?

[bouchonne]

Dreadful absurd.

[ He reaches up and, if Bastien is wearing boots, starts unlacing them. And if he is not wearing boots, By starts rubbing his feet. ]

I felt awkward. At a party.

[cozen]

[ The statement promptly distracts Bastien from trying to decide how to argue, to himself, silently, that foot rubs are platonic. ]

You?

Was it being hosted by Chantry Mothers?

[bouchonne]

I've actually been to festivities hosted by Chantry Mothers. I did all right.

[cozen]

The Qun, then. Assigned a party role when you walk in the door, death if you deviate, and they decided your role was demure wallflower.

[bouchonne]

[ Hm. ]

That actually sounds a bit erotic, doesn't it?

[ weird boners. ]

[cozen]

Mm. Perhaps for a night.

[ He swallows a few anecdotes about this or that Orlesian secretly into role playing and the possibility that he and Alexandrie will, someday, time and war permitting, have a party where everyone must come as someone else and stay that way. Instead he wiggles a toe. ]

Okay. I am done being silly. What happened?

[bouchonne]

Imagine this.

[ A droll smile. ]

You're invited to a party. And then when you show up, it's only three other people: Artemaeus, Athessa, and Colin. And you. In a very silly hat.

[cozen]

Ohh.

[ A sympathetic oh, this time, rather than a delighted one, and accompanied by a wince. ]

Which of them invited you? They didn't tell you it would be so small?

[ Obviously not, but he's asking anyway. ]

[bouchonne]

Artemaeus.

[ His smile is light and ironic, even as he delivers this agonizing twist in the story: ]

Athessa and Colin didn't know I was coming until I showed up.

[cozen]

[ He sighs in a quiet little burst. ]

Honestly. And he is nobility. What are they teaching people in Tevinter?

[bouchonne]

I'm honestly considering firing the boy over it.

[ A shrug. ]

It was either deliberate or accidental. If it was accidental, then he is too thick to be worth keeping; if it was deliberate, he is too malicious.

[cozen]

I would not think it malicious. He seems eager to please, whenever I see him. Or eager to fit in. Maybe he was trying to impress you somehow. Or maybe all that time in the dungeon rotted whichever part of his head stores his etiquette.

How silly was the hat?

[bouchonne]

Not dreadfully so. Three-pointed, brocade, with a mid-length plume. Something I'd have been proud to be wearing if any of the others had been wearing hats. As, again, I had been led to believe they would.

Maker, have you ever had those moments where you feel as though you're eighteen years old and knobby-kneed once again?

[cozen]

[ Bastien opens his mouth to say of course, yes, certainly. Habit. But he stops himself, and instead says, ]

I was never eighteen and knobby-kneed,

[ as an airy, braggy, but honest stand-in for a longer and potentially derailing explanation that by then he'd had any genuine clumsiness ironed out. ]

But I think I know what you mean. I do feel awkward sometimes here—it's horrible. It might be a symptom of actually caring what some people think.

[bouchonne]

Mm.

[ Right. For Bastien, it would have been - what - thirteen and knobby-kneed? By feels a strange little pang at the thought. The teenaged years weren't good, certainly, but they were necessary in many ways. By had started to figure out who he was in those years. It couldn't possibly be easy, to spend them pretending to be a series of others. ]

I think that's true. If it had been a combination of different people, or even of strangers, I think I'd have found it quite funny, actually.

[cozen]

[ It’s easy to imagine Byerly swanning into a gathering that didn’t expect him, oddly dressed for the occasion, and making it everyone else’s problem instead of his. But it’s also not very difficult to imagine him awkward, now that Bastien’s witnessed it a time or two.

Imagining both now makes his smile a little muted, but fond. ]

Why do you care what they think?

[ Asked with genuine curiosity, no damn people’s opinions of you rebellion. ]

Because you need to be taken more seriously? And Athessa and Colin—I suppose they’ve both seen some of who you are at your heart, when you helped them.

[bouchonne]

Well, for the record, I certainly do not care what Artemaeus thinks of me. Eager to please or not, the boy blows wherever the wind takes him. A true traitor, at least, would have the courage of his convictions.

[ He's a decent enough assistant, to be fair. But what little respect Byerly had built up for him as a person has certainly been stomped down again by this incident. ]

Colin and Athessa, though. That's more fraught. [ A shrug. ] You like Athessa; Alexandrie likes Colin.

[cozen]

[ Bastien considers that. He’s still considering it—how he can’t honestly say he doesn’t care what Athessa thinks of Byerly, and vice versa—while he stalls for a moment by gesturing to the mostly-bare shelves over the desk, now somewhat less bare for the addition of a painting of the night sky over a bit of harbor. ]

Colin gave that to me recently. He came by because he’d decided we should get to know each other better. It was strange—his favorite subjects seem to be how mages have suffered and how little he likes talking about himself.

[ A little mean to say. But what’s better for feeling awkward than knowing the people who made you feel that way aren’t any better? ]

But unless it turns out he wants something, later, it was sweet that he was trying so hard.

[bouchonne]

[ There is nothing better than someone saying something mean about someone you feel awkward around. It's better than the finest wines in Antiva. By thinks that this is part of his problem - there are so few bitchy people here that he can gossip with. ]

Oh, yes, the boy is sweet. No question of that. And also, in the way of so many sweet people, quite remarkably judgmental.

[cozen]

Is he?

[ He drinks his hot chocolate and raises his eyebrows. Go on. ]

[bouchonne]

[ A little shrug. Breezily: ]

Oh, you know. After all that - [ The arrangement and manipulation of the trial that saw Colin's tormentor punished - ] I offered the young fellow a place in Rutyer lands. With, of course, the caveat that he'd need to help ensure that my dear cousin Richars wasn't the Bann if he wanted the land habitable. I'll allow that I did not propose this in the most graceful way, but immediately the assumption was one of manipulation and ill intent.

[ And the record has certainly shown just how much that destroys Byerly. ]

[cozen]

Ah. Well—I feel less guilty for thinking he must want something from me, then.

[ He wouldn't feel guilty regardless. Not about Colin. Guilt doesn't happen to him easily, and nearly everyone wants something, so it isn't really an insult to think they must. But he does feel a little pang, unfocused in the background and in need of further examination, about what he's doing with Byerly. The hovering and waiting, anticipating discovering that he's been used, however unintentionally and forgivably, and that By doesn't really mean what he's said. Maybe it's not dissimilar. Maybe Byerly's earned better than that from him.

But staying on topic: ]

That would have been a long time ago, no? Do you think he still thinks that of you?

[bouchonne]

Oh, he apologized after. Baked me quite a grand cake as an act of contrition, or to show off his skills, or a bit of both. It ended in another fight, though.

[ He thinks of Colin. Thinks of Athessa. ]

I do not know if it will ever be otherwise. I wonder if there are some things which, once broken, can never be repaired.

[cozen]

I think most things can be put back together, but putting the same pieces back into the same shape, it is never really the same. There will be cracks. Points of weakness where you can never put too much pressure again. You have to add something new to strengthen them, or remake them into a new shape that uses the pieces as they are instead of as they were—

[ He stops, sighs at himself. ]

Metaphors. Do you want it to be otherwise?