Closed | La Vie en Rogue

[coquettish_trees]

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. ]

Comments

[bouchonne]

[ 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. ]

[coquettish_trees]

[ "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. ]

[hwaaaitsme]

[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?

[bouchonne]

You don't want to follow her?

[ Byerly, wearing an unrepentant grin, rises. ]

That seemed like an invitation to me.

[hwaaaitsme]

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.]

[coquettish_trees]

[ 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!

[hwaaaitsme]

[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?