faderift | Closed | La Vie en Rogue

Entry tags:

Closed | La Vie en Rogue

WHO: Byerly, Lexie, and Loki
WHAT: A Fereldan, an Orlesian, and a Tevene walk into an opera. Then a restaurant. Then who knows.
WHEN: Presently
WHERE: Hightown
NOTES: cw: the woooorst ♫ they're the worst in the world. (will update if necessary)

[ Alexandrie was tired. Tired of feeling like trusting another lady's maid with her hair and dress was the same as wishing death or disaster on Emile. Tired of looking at her jewelry box and remembering only the souvenir she had bought for Gwenaëlle moments before happening upon the brothers Asgard and their mother and, consequently, what had followed. Tired of looking at two pairs of slippers and not being able to tell the difference between them because honestly what was the point of multiple pairs of slippers when Red Lyrium was being grown inside people to fuel the army rolling slowly but seemingly inexorably across Thedas.

Then eventually, one morning, she had been tired of being tired. Had stretched, had nibbled at Loki's ear persistently until he woke, (had been summarily distracted for an hour or so,) and had then informed him they were going to the opera that evening, that she would shortly be sending a servant out to get them seats, and that she would be requiring Fifi for the rest of the day, as she was beginning her preparation now.

This is how Alexandrie and Loki, both polished to a rather defiant perfection, ended up at the opera.

How Byerly ended up at the opera, however, slipping into the seat on Alexandrie's right just as the overture began and looking the very picture of innocent surprise that this was how events had transpired, was anyone's guess. ]

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Very little should please me more, Assguard. But, my dear Lexie -

[ He widens his eyes at her. ]

I'm surprised. You didn't share with him the fact that an old friend had come calling on you?

[ She widens her eyes back. ]

How very remiss of me!

[ Alexandrie turns back to Loki, briefly resting a hand on his knee as if suddenly remembering something. ]

A man whose bed I once shared is in town, lune de mon coeur! I also had coffee this morning, took a bath, read a few pages of a novel, spoke briefly with Fifi whilst she was fixing my hair, and saw a cloud.

[ What a lot of normal and unremarkable occurrences! ]

[Her delivery is delightful and just as scathing as he'd hoped it might be. However it does include a bit of information that gets under his skin. It has no right to, of course, he is not her keeper--and yet--Byerly?]

How I enjoy our chats. Was the cloud interesting?

[Because surely Byerly wasn't.]

Oh? Has having a man in your bed become such a common occurrence, ma belle, that it's like seeing clouds passing by?

[ A slow, innocent blink. ]

Well, sometimes being less discerning does open you up to experiences you'd otherwise disdain. I myself swore that I'd never try Chasind sack mead, but one time, out of desperation, I did. And I had a grand time.

[ And he favors Loki (the metaphorical sack mead in this situation) with a smile. ]

“Become”?

[ Alexandrie absolutely sparkles with unvoiced laughter. ]

Mon cher, really. My cloudwatching has been quite merry and vivacious since my twentieth year.

[ She’d found her stride, after Byerly. Through the breaking of them, really. For whatever that may mean to him. ]

Although come to think of it... [ she taps a finger thoughtfully—and lightly, lest she disturb the color—on her lips. ] It is strange, perhaps, but I have only seen the one floating about recently.

Ah! The same one I saw earlier. [ she looks briefly over at Loki with a catlike half-smile. ] It was riveting, since you asked after it, mon coeur, [ and back at Byerly ] But! I now find myself desperately desirous of hearing about your grand experience with Chasind sack mead.

[Loki arches a brow as Lexie claims some desire to hear Byerly speak, a notion he has trouble comprehending, but says nothing on the subject.]

Ah yes, do tell us about your discerning adventure into drunken tribal debauchery, I am certain it will be ever so riveting.

Well.

[ He leans forward, clearly prepared to start the story, when the person in the row behind them shushes them. Ferociously. Byerly says - ]

Oh, shush yourself - [ Then - ] Perhaps at intermission?

Yes, do be quiet, Byerly. [ she chides him, looking deeply amused as she does an immediate full pivot from having been the one who asked for the story in the first place. ]

[Loki absolutely doesn't bother to hide his relief at being spared this story and sits back in his chair as the lights dim and the orchestra strikes up.

The actors in this particular production are better than the last production he had seen in Kirkwall, but only just. The plot is a bit off color, but that had been the appeal.

An Antivan woman of noble birth is searching for her long lost brother and his best friend, whom they believe is lost behind Quanri lines. She is promptly in a shipwreck and is summarily discovered by Qunari forces and taken to...a palace apparently so she can be press-ganged into the King's harem.

It is a spectacular affair filled with a considerable number of plot holes and terrible false horns, but Loki can't seem to stop enjoying it.]

[ Byerly does not enjoy it one bit: the singing is pitchy, to his ear. If the singing were tolerable, at least, he could forgive the idiotic plot, but - However, he excuses himself at one point to go get a snack of grapes and cheese, and finds new entertainment when he returns: there's a young man off to his right who happens to meet his eye while he's biting down on a grape and who then blushes and looks away. By entertains himself through the rest of the first act by eating the grapes very slowly while making copious eye contact with the dear fellow. ]

[ Alexandrie, for her part, is torn. Loki's muted amusement is terribly endearing, and she spends more time watching for the twitches of his smile than anything happening on stage—she's seen it of course, and better performed.

On the other hand, Byerly's unfolding saga of seduction via grape of the poor young man off to his right who seems incredibly susceptible to it is absolutely delightful, and she can't resist very slowly shifting in her seat so that she can "notice", be "flustered" by it, then be in a little "huff", and finally wait until the next time the fellow is looking so she can dart a gaze at Byerly from behind him, tilt her head slightly to indicate herself, and then give a rather smoldering look of invitation to what is now apparently a threesome, all while trying to avoid Byerly noticing what she's doing.

She rather hopes the fellow isn't only interested in men, she wouldn't want to ruin all of Byerly's work. ]

[Loki, for once in his life, is largely oblivious to the flirting and flustering of someone in the immediate area. The plot of the Opera is obtuse, racist, and utterly overwrought--it is the perfect opera to ignore in favor of fucking a woman in public--and yet he cannot seem to look away.

It was like a natural disaster unfolding before him. When they arrive at the Qunari King's palace and meet his slave, the brother, and his slave is decreed to be married to his sister--it is all Loki can do to stare on in mute bemused horror.]

[ Byerly's young man clearly understands Lexie's invitation, and the poor fellow looks completely overwhelmed and terrified by it. Poor thing. Came for subpar opera, found himself the source of entertainment. By catches from his reaction on that Lexie is contributing, and looks around at her with an expression of mock-horror - how dare you torment the poor lad like this, honestly.

Then he leans over and whispers into her ear - ]

In another time, in another place, this is when I'd have you in my lap. Give him a view that would linger in his dreams tonight.

Edited 2018-09-30 18:58 (UTC)

[ Alexandrie would mock innocence back at Byerly, but she can see the poor fellow still looking out of the corner of her eye--the idea of them is rather like a natural disaster, that way--so instead she reacts as if he had just suggested something both entirely uncouth and desperately inflaming, which, in its way, it had been, so it's hardly a difficulty to amplify it. She darts an extremely obvious glance at their target in response, and then holds the gaze with a foxlike grin as she draws a couple of fingers delicately up Byerly's thigh to rest them there while she leans back to reply, ]

In another time, in the same place, mon cher. [ she corrects, ] Otherwise he should not be here, and I should be being had in your lap just for you.

[ An odd sentence structure. Or is it. She eyes him rather seductively through her eyelashes, sits back in her seat, recrosses her legs so she's able to covertly kick him in the ankle, and goes back to watching Loki, who is reacting precisely as a Tevene who has been engaged in a lifetime of fighting--and likely enslaving the prisoners from such a war with--the Qunari might to have their heroine and her re-discovered enslaved brother in such a position. It's absolutely fascinating. ]

Edited 2018-09-30 22:25 (UTC)

[There is a truly impressive array of plans to evade marriage and end marriages at play in this particular opera. It is, by in large, not worth listing out and the end of the first act culminates in a song to that effect. Loki, a bit dischuffed that he has been so taken in by such a terrible tale, leans back as they reach the zenith of that song and turns to regard Alexandrie at his side. She is sitting comfortably by and has her hand lingering on Byerly's leg.

A curiosity but not one that requires more than an arched brow on his part.

He glances at Byerly and, because he is not an idiot, catches the way the boy in the sidelines is utterly flustered in their direction. There is either a game ending or one beginning.]

[ Why not both? Byerly glances over from the boy to see Loki looking at him. And he lowers his long, long eyelashes to best frame his dark eyes, and traces a thumb across his lips. He doesn't blink, but just holds Loki's eyes as intently as he can while simultaneously reaching over to touch Lexie's knee. ]

[ "oh really", say Alexandrie's eyebrows rather eloquently, arching up towards the perfect sweep of her coiffure across her forehead, her gaze swinging back and forth between the two of them.

It is, of course, at that precise moment, the end of the first act, and the lamps are unshuttered for intermission, which reveals...

Is that a real blush? Oh ho ho no. Up she stands, rendering her knee less touchable. ]

Do excuse me while I powder my nose—I shall rejoin you in the foyer for that most anticipated of stories in but a moment.

[ and off she sweeps in a graceful whisper of skirts, with an affectionate run of her hand along the slope of Loki's shoulder as she passes him, Not Flustered In The Slightest By That Thought. ]

[It takes considerable effort not to simply laugh at Byerly's insinuation--as though Loki had not made advances on the man previously. But then it is intermission, the lights come up, and Alexandrie rises to dash away, an honest flush high on her cheeks.

Well. How entertaining.

He looks back at Byerly and examines the man critically for all of half of a second.]

Enjoying the opera I see.

Shall we summon more champagne while we wait, or suffer the distance and acquire a bottle ourselves?

You don't want to follow her?

[ Byerly, wearing an unrepentant grin, rises. ]

That seemed like an invitation to me.

Well, I was trying to be polite and not to exclude you, but I do suppose that is not wholly my decision.

[Loki gestures in the direction that Lexie has gone and rises, himself, taking a moment to straighten his shirt.]

[ It hadn't been an invitation. Well, not in any thought out way.

Although she hadn't gone to fix her face either. Alexandrie is, instead, staring into the mirror in the powder room with a sharp look of irritated frustration and ruminating on precisely how this is, really, disastrously unfair of the both of them.

First, Loki has the audacity to be such persistently enjoyable company that she breaks her cardinal rule and lets herself become attached, a set of feelings which once allowed to exist immediately grew vinelike all over everything and stuck their tendrils into all the cracks she'd let appear in the shell she'd so painstakingly created against just such a thing.

Then Byerly has the absolute nerve to join the Inquisition, and she the newly revived heart that requires she render him an apology for how she had treated him, admit to her reasons, and thereby renew their acquaintance to find him as unfortunately quick-witted and debonair as he had been all those years ago, only in a way that had been refined and was perhaps a little sadder in a way that tugged at the softness in her both old and new.

And now she is in the truly unfortunate position of staring down the arrow shaft of another hour in the darkened theatre sitting between the both of them and their propensity for roguery, far too aware of... well... everything; a situation which, if it had occurred a few months before—another time, as Byerly had leant to whisper at her ear—she would have been absolutely sparkling with anticipation of. What an evening that would be, if she could muster the wherewithal to consider it a simple bit of fun. And what a fabulous falsehood she'd now have to spin herself to achieve that belief.

She angrily touches up her face despite not needing to in the slightest, pats her hair, glares at her reflection, and then suddenly and summarily decides that if there is seducing to be done, she shall be the one doing it. Alexandrie de la Fontaine is no shrinking violet to be plucked. If she has to feel things, then so do they.

That decided, she pulls open the door with firm resolution...

To find the both of them standing right the fuck there.

Despite her firm resolution of all of half a second ago, she startles, one hand flying to fan over her chest. ]

Bon dieu de merde!

[Startling Alexandrie was rarely his goal but, as she drew open the door, resolute and intending to charge forth only to start with surprise, well, he cannot say he laments it. Her sudden exclamation is soft and reprimanding and it brings a slow smile to his face. He does recall, however, that he stands next to a truly infuriating man and so the tenderness in that expression is quickly masked and it is replaced, wholesale, with a more fitting smirk.]

My dear.

[Loki leans on the edge of the doorway, his shoulder just braced to the wall.]

Was our guess incorrect, was your sudden departure not an invitation?

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Closed | La Vie en Rogue

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Guess who is free from work and convalescing in bed with a laptop. Guess.

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