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[cozen]

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slackers!!

[cozen]

[ Courteously pretending it’s the right amount of casual and pleasant, ]

Sounds lovely. Where?

[bouchonne]

The Hanged Man? If you're as desperate as I am to get out of the Gallows for an evening.

[cozen]

I’m sure I’m not. They let me out so much more often than you. I am in Hightown as we speak. But after I drop this letter off I can walk that way and hold a table.

[bouchonne]

Ooh, in Hightown. I like Lowtown so much more - don't you?

[cozen]

Oh, infinitely. I cannot be up here for anything without feeling like I am working. And at least Lowtown as a reasonable excuse for everything being so grey.

[bouchonne]

And stinking, and vulgar. Agreed.

Get the first round? I'll get the second.

[cozen]

Deal. I will see you there.

[ With the drinks already ordered and the promised table defended from rowdy off-duty guardsmen and miners, as promised. ]

[bouchonne]

[ He comes in not late, not already drunk, not hung over, not stinking, well-shaven and well-dressed. On his best behavior, it seems. ]

Dear Bastien.

[ He claps Bastien on the upper arm before coming around to sit across from him. ]

How was Hightown?

[cozen]

Dull.

[ He doesn’t hide the quizzical quality to his look. Did they have important guests today? Is he about to be asked a favor?

He pushes Byerly his drink. ]

Oh, but: I am supposed to tell you that you are a good person and occasionally being an asshole does not make you a literal piece of shit.

—which is obvious, now that I am saying it. You cannot be the asshole and the shit, if we are being literal.

[bouchonne]

[ That - Catches him off-guard. And it lights a fire of worry in him. He stops with the glass halfway to his mouth, saying: ]

Who said that?

[cozen]

[ Bastien inclines his head a little. ]

Jenny Lou. She seems very fond of you.

[bouchonne]

[ His lips thin, but he finishes the motion of glass to mouth. Once he drinks, he says, gruffly: ]

She is a vulgar and graceless child.

[cozen]

That’s true. But I like her.

[ Maybe Byerly is possessed. That’s something that happens to non-mages in Kirkwall, sometimes, right? He heard. Because of the Veil. ]

[bouchonne]

[ He lets out a breath, and says, reluctantly: ]

I do as well. I just hope she's only saying these sorts of things to you.

[cozen]

We could make her swear an oath, [ Bastien suggests over his drink. ] Hand on a statue of Andraste.

[bouchonne]

That would be about as effective, methinks, as making Gwenaelle Baudin swear over a portrait of the Empress.

[cozen]

Maybe I don’t want it to be effective.

[bouchonne]

[ Which would normally be accepted with, if not grace, then a little squirmy feeling inside him that makes him feel like maybe things are going to be all right. But tonight - Tonight, it feels desolate.

He sets down the drink. ]

Bastien - look. I need to - speak with you about something.

[cozen]

[ His mind starts making lists of worst case scenarios—and maybe the right one is on there—but his face is just patient raised eyebrows. ]

[bouchonne]

You know about Alexandrie's offer to me. Request.

[ Whatever it was. He takes a breath, and stretches his mouth out into a smile, and tries to look happy. Because, Maker, he is happy; truly he is. But it feels like there's some sort of betrayal that he's committed. ]

Well, I said to her that we might give it a try.

[cozen]

[ There’s no hesitation in Bastien’s smile, which is a perfectly calibrated and convincing grin. For anyone to know there was something amiss about it, they would have to know it from other contexts where he needs to buy a moment to control his face. When he shuts his finger in a cabinet, when he’s turned his ankle and has to dance on it anyway, when someone has said something unexpectedly unkind. When Vincent said he was sorry, but—

This is easier than that. Bastien has learned better. Little birds can get fucked, like he said, and Byerly said he loved her. He’d known. ]

Maker, By. I thought you were firing me or something.

[ Which is why he needs a long gulp of terrible ale, obviously, and not because the effort visible in Byerly’s expression—this whole set-up, really—is making him feel pitied and transparent and small. ]

That’s good—right? You feel good about it? [ He gestures with his drink to Byerly’s general sober, well-shaven person. ] You look good.

[bouchonne]

I always look good.

[ His smile is rather weak, though, and his voice not dreadfully convincing. He can put on a better show than this, to be sure; if he put in any effort, he could put on a better show than this. But - it would be so astonishingly painful to try to. And it would be so cruel. ]

I feel - anxious about it. The last time I agreed to something with Alexandrie, after all, I ended up penniless in Antiva. She is a different woman now, but the burned hand doesn't forget fire.

[cozen]

She is different. And so are you. If it does go badly, you won’t be penniless in Antiva, you will be here with a job and a lot of people who care about you.

[ He thinks: he is a man with a great deal of self-preservational instinct and barely any heart to break, so how does he keep doing this to himself?

And then he takes another drink, and after he swallows his smile is different, smaller, not something out of a bag of tricks. ]

But maybe it won’t. So you should relax and try to enjoy it, ouais?

[bouchonne]

[ His instinct, as ever, is to list off each of those people and explain why they are wrong, or why their care will fade, or so on and so forth. But Bastien has spent too fucking long dealing with his self-pity, and really doesn't need to do more of that, and so he swallows the impulse. ]

Yes. Perhaps.

[ A breath in. He toys with his cup. He pretends for a moment that it's artifice, and that it's not real awkwardness that's driving him to these hesitations and twitches. He pretends he's playing a part. It wouldn't look so different, would it, if he were just playacting at shyness? He'd be making the same gestures, avoiding glances in the same way. He wishes he could convince himself he's just playacting. ]

I imagine you will not want to - continue as we have been, in light of that, will you?

[ Because Bastien had his heart broken, didn't he. Because Bastien should not, and could not, trust a man like him. What a terrible echo it would be of the cruelty that Bastien suffered. ]

[cozen]

[ Bastien isn’t surprised by the implication of question, exactly—of course Byerly and Alexandrie wouldn’t be sleeping only with each other, that’s absurd for multiple reasons—so much as the timing, and the asking. Out loud and everything. So he raises his eyebrows again, mid-drink, and takes his time with the swallow.

His thoughts don’t have to start from scratch. He’s been over it already, in his room. Byerly loves Alexandrie. Presented with the possibility that someone could love two people, Byerly said he wasn’t sure he was even strong enough to love one. Ergo. Bastien knew the score when he climbed into bed with him. All that’s been extinguished today was a stupid little hope that shouldn’t have existed.

So would he want to continue?

He tries to imagine it, in the fraction of a second he has for imagining anything before the pause gets long and awkward. Being in a room with them, someday—maybe playing, maybe talking, the way they used to when they were younger, but this time hoping for Byerly to look past her, with her laugh like the songs that pour out of the windows in Val Royeaux, to smile at him.

It’s— ]

Will you?

[ Casual, free hand coming up to hold his chin on the table. It’s not usually his way to turn questions back on people, instead of talking to keep them comfortable. But he needs a moment. ]