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[cozen]

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[bouchonne]

Hm.

[ By runs his fingertips along Bastien's cheekbone. ]

Do you trust me when I say you're better-looking?

[cozen]

[ Bastien's eyes crinkle with his smile, though he gives his head an equivocating wobble. ]

Say it, [ he teases, fishing as shamelessly as if By'd never complimented him before, ] and I'll let you know.

[bouchonne]

The most handsome man in the world.

[ Byerly's gaze on him is deeply, intensely loving. ]

Beloved, wonderful in every way.

[cozen]

[ Bastien’s cocky smile lingers, but his cheeks turn faintly pink, the traitors. When he realizes that they have, he rubs his thumb and fingers over them, like he can wipe it off, and averts his eyes to nod. ]

I trust you.

[ He could argue about most handsome, except of course it’s subjective. All he could ever want is for Byerly to think so.

He leans in and up to By’s ear. Whispering is silly, but it’s easier. ]

With all my heart, for all my life.

[ Sealed with a peck on the cheek.

Then he needs another scrap of bread immediately, to replenish his strength after the Herculean feat of saying that sober and fully-dressed and in the daylight, and he needs to keep moving along. ]

It was only a metaphor, though. I’m not worried about—it is just, not everyone sees it the way you do. They say someone like your Calenhad, he came from common stock, alright, but he became a king because there was something special about him, and all his children after him, and now that we are not all barbarians we have found all of these special people with their special blood and elevated them to where they belong.

[bouchonne]

[ With all my heart. For all my life. These are things he can gather and save, like coins for a miser. Never to spend, only to hold, to take out and admire when the echoes in his head sound too unkind. ]

One might argue we're still barbarians.

[ Not because that's a counterargument; just to amuse Bastien with his wit. ]

But anyone who thinks that...I've known men of the nobility who do live that word, nobility, but I've known many more who are vain, base, stupid, greedy. And I've known a mix of the same amongst commoners. Anyone who really thinks there's a difference, a meaningful difference, is a fool. Which only goes so far, of course - because a man can be a fool and still have power, you can still be at the mercy of fools - but they're a fool all the same.

[cozen]

[ The wit gets a laugh, the rest of it pleased attention while Bastien chews.

He doesn’t always feel the same. In Orlais even the commoners’ beloved hero was Lord Remi Vascal, Bastien’s own namesake a duke. The nobles in Val Royeaux were untouchable and unknowable. He didn’t see a nobleman’s bare face until he was eighteen, and then only in the dark. The admiration and envy and fear and mystery all fed each other, and even when he had proof that they bled like anyone else dotting his sleeves, they felt like something separate.

But it’s been years. He’s learned better. There are crevices of resentment and hunger that the learning hasn’t reached, but with the better parts of him, he thinks Byerly is right. ]

Maybe we do not wait for slaughter, then, in Byerlia—Byerland. Byerland is much better. We are calling it Byerland, and maybe we do not need to kill all of the nobles before some commoners can come to your Landsmeet.

[bouchonne]

[ He gives a skeptical sort of hum. ]

A little slaughter? I really do know a lot of people who deserve it.

[ He takes a piece of bread and nibbles at it like a mouse, all front teeth. ]

But if you insist. We shall upend the social order altogether in Byerland. The sharing of power without the doing of violence first. Unheard of!

[cozen]

Absurd.

[ (c:) ]

And it will be an enormous scandal in Orlais. Their king did what without what?

Reason enough even if it weren’t the right thing.

[bouchonne]

Oooooh, yes.

[ He gives a theatrical shiver of pleasure. ]

I've never managed to hit on something that offends all of the nobility before. No matter what, there've always been a few who've thought, that's not that bad. But this -

[cozen]

[ Pronounced with the sort of relish usually reserved for dirty talk: ]

Paroxysms.

[ He drapes his arm around Byerly’s shoulders in a way that would pass for platonic camaraderie, if someone who knew nothing else about them caught a glimpse. ]

And before they have had time to recover—what next?

[bouchonne]

Education?

[ The fingers circling Bastien's kneecap are decidedly unplatonic. ]

Seems a place to start.

[cozen]

[ A low hum. ]

Are you trying to butter me up, Your Majesty? You should know, I am already buttered.

[bouchonne]

[ He gives a skeptical-sounding noise, then licks Bastien's cheek. Hm. Yes. ]

That's true. Very buttery.

[ Then, less cute: ]

It seems a fine way to make way for other things we'd want to happen, no?

[cozen]

[ It is a mark of truest love and devotion that Bastien does not wipe his cheek dry. ]

Yes. [ Starry-eyed. ] Maybe you could do something with taxes to give everyone an incentive to make sure the children they are responsible for can read.

[bouchonne]

[ A disappointed noise. ]

But I wanted to do the beatings.

[cozen]

[ Snickering, ] Maybe for repeat offenders?

[bouchonne]

I'm hardly even going to become a tyrant with you whispering in my ear. Your heart is too good.

[cozen]

[ Bastien gently pinches By’s shoulder, where his hand is dangling, but he looks a little pleased instead of sad this time. ]

You would never, anyway. Come the next age they will call you King Byerly the Dramatic but Gentle.

[bouchonne]

Do you think so? Not the Mad, or the Perverse, or the Sinister?

[ He looks rather wistfully pleased by the thought. ]

[cozen]

Maybe the Mad... About His Handsome Concubine.

Or Byerly the Perverted in the Very Best and Most Admirable Ways. Were every man so innovative in bed, there would be no more wars. Everyone would be too happy all of the time.

And the Sinister... No, I cannot make that one work.

[ Bastien has to sit on one of his knees, to be close enough to Byerly's height to hug him one-armed into his chest and shoulder, so that's what he does. ]

Anyway, they will mostly call you Byerly the Dramatic but Gentle. They will tell their children: every day when his advisors began bickering, he would look at them and ask, Do I need to hire an executioner? Is that what it takes to get things done around here? But he never did hire one, the softie.

[bouchonne]

[ Byerly laughs warmly into the crook of Bastien's neck. ]

That does sound a bit like me.

[cozen]

Mmhm, [ with lazy, comfortable pride—not pride in his terrible impression, pride in Byerly and his soft, sweet heart.

And his dramatics. Bastien likes them. ]

But I will call you King By the Goatherd, or the Soggy Chicken, or the Most Cherished, or… Can I call you mine?

[ A serious question, not really about some hypothetical royal future. He still sounds comfortable and pleased, not shy and tentative like he might have some months ago, except for the inherent shyness of feeling the need to ask first. ]

When we are alone, you know, and we can know between us that I don’t mean only mine.

[bouchonne]

Yes.

[ Without hesitation. He's still nuzzling against the crook of Bastien's neck, because there's a bit of shyness to him, too, in saying this. But there's no doubt, from the aching sincerity of his voice, that he means it. ]

I am yours. If my soul were drawn from my body, dearest Bastien, it would find its way to you and wrap around your ankles like a purring cat. There is no part of me that is not wholly in your mercy.

[cozen]

[ It'd be invisible with any distance, but pressed this close, there's no disguising the single wave of tension through the muscles in Bastien's neck and chest. But it's not because he's tense, exactly. It's just his body gripping around the urge to laugh or choke or exhale a burst of unexpected relief, all so second-nature to suppress that sometimes it fully substitutes for his first nature. It will still bubble out eventually—perhaps in the lazy afterglow of their inevitable king-and-concubine performance. Then he'll be giddy and reverent, surveying his riches, silky hair to keen mind to good heart to beloved smelly feet. He'll leave a love bite on the back of one of By's knees.

For now he only squeezes him in more firmly, and smiles into his hair, and spends several silent seconds letting the warmth of it spread all the way to his toes. And at the end of them, he says, ]

Your soul would be a cat.

[bouchonne]

[ The tension worries him for a moment. He doesn't have the instinctual knowledge of Bastien that, if all goes right in life, he'll have someday; he feels that and worries he's said something wrong. It takes a moment's reasoning (and the warmth of Bastien cuddling him) to be able to understand that, no, it wasn't bad: that tension was suppression, pressing down a stronger reaction.

To sweet-talk a Bard so well that they physically have to reel themselves in. That's an accomplishment. ]

And yours would be... [ Hm. ] Fox feels almost too easy.