[open + closed] I know I've got a big ego

[altusimperius]

WHO: Benedict & you
WHAT: this and that
WHEN: Firstfallish
WHERE: hither and yon
NOTES: contains sluts and their slut problems

I. Girls' Outing feat. Abby (closed)

He's trying not to look haggard when he comes down to the courtyard, but it's clear that the effort Benedict put into his appearance today is significantly less than the usual: for instance, his outfit is clean but unremarkable, with his Riftwatch cloak thrown over it, and his hair is a bit mussed from the autumn wind. His lips are flat with indignation at how it blows across his face, but his eyes are grateful when he meets Abby's on his approach, slumping a little as he walks.


II. A Horrible Dinner feat. Basterly & Cassian (closed)

He brought wine, and a fancy dessert, and a new little sweater for Rattie-Wattie, which may have been knitted for a baby but she is a baby you see--
and Benedict has been at their house for a little while, ostensibly because he was invited for important diplomatic Tevene reasons but more transparently to dote on his favorite little dog. He even sits on the floor to help arrange her properly in the garment, monologuing quietly about how well it compliments her natural coloring. Byerly? Bastien? Who are they.


III. Let's Paint the Town (open)

With nobody to tell him he shouldn't, and no recent arrivals to interview and organize, Benedict has taken the liberty of continuing his dining hall mural into the adjacent hallway. He attends to it on his breaks, perched on a stool or a ladder as he painstakingly sketches, stencils, and paints an abstract but elaborate pattern around doorways and across the upper walls. It all matches. He is doing this for normal psychologically healthy reasons, as is evidenced by the hard set of concentration on his face that is almost certainly going to give him wrinkles.

He can be broken out of it, however, if addressed or distracted (or yelled at).


IV. Practical Magic (open)

Somewhat emboldened by his training with Isaac, Benedict has taken some of his studies out into the training yard; not to practice with his staff as a weapon on its own, as he's done in the past, but to actually cast offensive magic on the dummies and see what happens.
He's quite self-conscious about it still, seeming overly-aware of anyone passing by, and takes care to only do it when The Big Ex-Templar isn't nearby watching, but it's the most public he's ever been about combat magic. Perhaps yet another leaf is turning over, and perhaps he could use a sparring partner, if anyone's up for a particular kind of bad time.

V. Wildcard

Comments

[bouchonne]

Byerly tries very, very hard to make his laugh sound cruel instead of fond. He doesn't really manage. It's dreadfully irritating, those times when you want to be a bastard and can't manage it.

"All right," Byerly says, knocking a fist fondly against Bastien's shoulder as he turns away, "let's hope that our guest arrives soon. Before we have to throw dear Benedict into the sea."

[altusimperius]

Ignoring the bit about the sea— whatever, Byerly— Benedict holds the dog closer to his face, allowing her to lap with desperate, wagging affection at his cheek.

“Who is coming?” he asks, with muted interest.

[interroga]

By way of answer, there’s a brisk staccato (terribly-timed) rap at the door. And once it’s opened and their last guest is let in…

It’s Cassian Andor striding through the doorway, all genial bon homie and a bottle of Orlesian wine tucked under one arm. He considers Byerly and Bastien his superiors at Riftwatch, he very much wants to make a good impression after how his last visit to this house went —

But then he catches a glimpse of Benedict over the others’ shoulder, and his facial expression is briefly stricken, the surprise and mortification taking him over, before he manages to quickly smooth it over as if it never happened. Then it’s just back to genteel politeness, a flash of a smile, holding out the bottle.

“For the hosts. I promise to taste-test it if required,” he says, lightly. He’s being very normal. This is totally normal.

(He did not know anyone else was going to be here, for discussing and working on the Tevinter latest.)

[cozen]

The upside is that there are any number of reasons someone, especially a poor revolutionary Tevinter someone, might look at Benedict this way, long before they reach the fact that he is sitting on the floor letting a scraggly terrier cover him in saliva while they wear matching outfits, and long long before anyone begins imagining some prior dalliance. So the look Bastien gives Cassian in the wake of that stricken look is less what's wrong with you and more I know, right?

Still: interesting. He's paying attention.

"It will be," Bastien says a tone as light as Cassian's as he accepts the bottle and examines the label. He's both joking and not. Or, the joke will be actually making the fellow take the first drink, and perhaps the second all the way to the last. Byerly doesn't drink anymore, so neither does Bastien — not around him, anyway, or when it isn't a job requirement.

That will leave a bottle of wine apiece for Benedict and Cassian. Maybe they will get to see a brawl tonight.

"You've met Benedict," he says, not quite a question.

[altusimperius]

Benedict, whom Cassian has met, vacillates between glaring at him and avoiding his gaze. Rat Red gives a plaintive whine because he has stopped cuddling her; he looks as dignified as he can, sitting on the floor with their matching outfits, and scratches her behind the ear.

[interroga]

Neutrally: “Yes, he’s very welcoming as the personnel officer.”

The vibes are off, but after that initial stumble, there’s no sign of animosity or avoidance from Cassian himself: just a glassy surface, collegially friendly, professional. He’s ostensibly here to work and ingratiate himself a little more with the men who came close to killing him, so that’s what he’ll do.

(He will need that wine to get through this, though, probably.)

[altusimperius]

Benedict is many things, and none of them are Subtle; there's a good reason he's not in Scouting. He wrinkles his nose with a roll of his eyes and sets Rat Red down with a toss of his hair, standing (with her trotting after him) to go fuss with the table settings or the wine or anything that can save him from directly interacting with Cassian in this particular moment.

[bouchonne]

Byerly's eyebrows are raised as he watches Benedict trot off. Then he turns to Cassian with the air of a parent with a child that's prone to biting.

"Do excuse him," he says. "He's been afflicted with a most dreadful curse on his bloodline. It renders him periodically mute. But of course you must already have deduced that, given that it's the only conceivable reason that he'd so completely fail to observe the most basic of social niceties, particularly when he's eating for free at my house."

(By is, of course, usually quite tickled by a bit of rudeness. But his overdeveloped sense of noblesse oblige, coupled with the class-related chip that Bastien has on his shoulder, has led him to thoroughly disapprove when someone treats their social inferior as their actual inferior.)

[interroga]

“Raised by wolves, probably.” Which is true, sort of.

With the bottle handed over to Bastien, Cassian doesn’t have anything to do with his hands and so he winds up tucking them behind his back; spine a little too straight, his posture automatically idling into a little too rigid, as if he’s reporting for duty and not stopping by for informal dinner. He’s never served in an actual military, but some of the rebellion hierarchy had adopted its trappings nonetheless; the general had been hard on discipline, rank, chain of command.

“Thanks for hosting, by the way,” he says. Look, he’s gonna be good about those basic social niceties —

[cozen]

Ragging on Benedict is a beloved pastime. They were doing it before Cassian arrived. But for Byerly to be so pointed — and sincere, even — about pointing out Bene's missteps in front of someone they don't know so well — well. It spares everyone from dealing with Bastien trying to unionize with his class-war comrade on the spot.

Benedict assists in this regard, too, by busying himself with the table setting. It at least has the appearance of doing something to help.

"Thank you," he says, "for sparing us a trip to the Gallows in this cold. We're getting old, you know? The next cough we catch could be our last."

They aren't even ten years older than Cassian. But there's a little grey in Bastien's mustache and the stubble on his chin these days, so clearly death is just around the corner.

He carries the wine to the table, beckoning Cassian to follow with a tip of his head and Byerly with an affectionate bump against his shoulder. He puts the bottle down with a quiet thunk and does his best to catch Benedict's eye, question and warning at once, before considering the chairs.

"What do you think, Andor? Do you want to salvage your friendship with the chair from last time, or is it ruined forever?"

[altusimperius]

Perhaps curiously, Benedict doesn’t have a snippy retort to Byerly’s jab or any sort of meaningful, snobby glance for Bastien; he has the look of total avoidance befitting someone who is desperate not to be humiliated any further than he already has.
Which is to say, Something Has Happened, and he doesn’t dare speak of it. Willing instead to be the butt of the joke if that’s what it takes to get through this, he averts his gaze and finishes setting the table.

[bouchonne]

"Artemaeus - "

There's nothing in Byerly's manner that suggests concern for the boy, or even interest in why he's acting so sullen. He doesn't watch Benedict or furrow his brow in worry. But this request is clearly an underhanded one, given that the dogs are always fed after the humans eat their meals.

"Come help me feed Rat Red and Whiskey."

A chance to draw him off to a bit of privacy, to try to get some insight into this odd behavior.

[altusimperius]

Benedict pauses and straightens with an uneasy look at Byerly: he used to work for him, after all, and although their relationship has mellowed significantly in the interim, there's never a fully zero percent chance of a tongue lashing.

He looks down at what he's doing, concludes it, and moves to follow with only the barest of furtive glances at Cassian. everything about this is terrible

[bouchonne]

But his slightly tyrannical former superior does not have cruel words for Benedict. Instead, as he stretches upwards to grab the rusk that goes into the dogs' meals off of an upper shelf, he leans in close enough to murmur, "Are you in danger?"

His manner remains exactly the same: casual, with a soupçon of judgey.

[altusimperius]

Though Benedict has never had a sibling, it's probably fair to say Byerly fits the bill of brother better than anyone ever could: both nemesis and confidante, they drive one another crazy and would never turn their backs on one another. It's for this reason that he's still a little afraid to confess what's got him all worked up, but Benedict is also savvy enough to know that it will get ferreted out, at this point, whether he says it or not.

"No," he scoffs miserably, but pauses to rethink as he bends to pick up the dogs' bowls; after dwelling on it a moment, he concludes indeed that he probably isn't in danger and shakes his head to confirm.
"He," he mutters, careful to keep his voice low, "...we... had a bit too much to drink in Val Royeaux." Where tensions were already high, of course, but that doesn't explain why things happened the way they did. He keeps his eyes lowered, firmly looking away from Byerly, because this doesn't need to be made more excruciating by perceiving his reaction.

[bouchonne]

Proof positive that Byerly is just a bit more Fereldan than he is Orlesian is that this is where his mind goes -

"Ah. You fought?"

[altusimperius]

Now Benedict looks at him.

[bouchonne]

And proof that Byerly is still a fair bit Orlesian: he can't imagine that a decent encounter with a handsome man would incite this much misery.

Careful to keep his manner still casual and easy, he asks, softly, "Did he hurt you?"

[altusimperius]

When one is prepared to be (perhaps rightfully) called an idiot, it's easy to be completely blown apart by the opposite reaction. With a little gasp, Benedict's face reddens and he nearly forgets to put the bowls back down for the dogs.

"Not-- like that," he says quickly, shaking his head, and he straightens again to wipe his hands on the sides of his tunic. Dog food.
"It was... well it was going all right," he says grimly, a little bit hating himself for opening up about it, "...and then he just. Left. In the middle."

like was it really that bad

[bouchonne]

Byerly doesn't laugh. He'd laugh if someone did that to him, because if done with a bit of malice that truly would be the most deliciously obnoxious act - but he's quite a bit less tender than Benedict is when it comes to things like this.

Instead, he just says, "Ah." He replaces the jar back on the shelf, considering this a moment. Then he says, "Perhaps that's a good sign. If I were to guess why that occurred, I'd presume that he'd originally intended to kill you mid-screw and changed his mind."

His fingers flash a quick Bard-sign summary of the story to Bastien. Bad sex. Embarrassing. Maybe something deeper.

[altusimperius]

Leaning back to let that sink in, Benedict perches lightly against the kitchen counter and watches Byerly's hand. He can never keep all the signals straight, but at least recognizes it to be Bard-sign, and doesn't object to the communication even as he somewhat wishes he could be disintegrated on the spot.

"Good thing we're all here, then," he mumbles drily, without as much humor as the quip suggests. It hurts.

splitting the timeline

[interroga]

“I can reuse it. And at least all of your furniture was spared. I was really strongly considering doing a backwards swan-dive to break it,” Cassian says, patting the back of his good old captor-friend the chair. Which is what would’ve happened if he did had to fight his way out of the room, but thankfully, they’d avoided the worst of the damage.

He also steals a quick glance at Benedict and Byerly as the other men move off to deal with the dogs, thankfully giving them all some space and breathing room. He rearranges his face while they’re gone. This isn’t what he’d expected from this meeting, but at least in comparison to the other Vint, he’s being his best approximation of normal: polite, professional, on task.

“Do you often hold strategy meetings here?” he asks Bastien. Cassian hasn’t questioned why he merited the invite. He did have some fairly fresh intel which needed mulling over with someone, and no official Scoutmaster to deliver it to.

[cozen]

Bastien laughs and winces at once, over this alternate future where their little misunderstanding wrecked the house instead of only bruising Cassian's skull. Perhaps that would have been more fair? He and Byerly had even been spared, by her departure, any unimpressed sighs from Yseult, so they've gotten off more or less entirely free.

But Bastien will not be offering to let Cassian hit him over the head with anything to balance scales. He's never really cared that much about fairness.

"Not for Riftwatch, no," he says. There's stew bubbling on the stove in a pot borrowed from the neighbor who also made it; Bastien fills bowls while he talks, one after the other, and distributes them around the bread and cheese already on the table. "We thought we owed you a friendlier welcome, and Benedict is already here all the time. We thought it would be, you know," with a sheepish lean over the table to share this embarrassing optimism, "fun."

He picks an adjacent chair. That it gives him a clear view of Benedict and Byerly's goings-on is a benefit.

"As much as this kind of thing can be."

[interroga]

“””Fun”””. That word’s getting stretched pretty much to its limit tonight, for a few different reasons. Cassian hesitates with his hands leaning against the back of the chair — with the current layout, it means he doesn’t get a view of the other men in the room, and won’t have any idea if Artemaeus is currently glaring lethal daggers behind his back — but, well. Needs must.

“Homier than the public dining hall, at least.” A beat. “Any other table-setting I can help with? Cups, glasses?”