Work Text:
Richie was taking a very rare and a very well-deserved (if you asked him) lazy morning, sleeping only to wake up and then doze off from the effort. He rolled over, stretching happily, only to freeze as a large banging sound came from the front of the barge.
A million possibilities rushed through his head, each worse than the last. He half-leapt half-fell out of bed and into the first clothes he saw. He burst out of his room, braced for anything.
"Anything" turned out to be Mac, holding a plunger like it was a dagger, facing down the bathroom toilet. From the smell and the pool of water on the floor--Richie took a cautious barefooted step back--Mac was losing this particular battle. Maybe if the toilet had a head...Richie snickered.
"Richie," Mac said without looking back at him, "Go get the mop."
"As long as I don't have to do anything with it."
Mac just said again, "Richie."
Richie barely saved himself from a broken toe, pulling his foot back just in time before a kick to the doorframe. Why were they fine--kind of--when there were bad guys and swords and things, and so awkward when normal stuff happened?
"You act like I'm your kid," he muttered under his breath and stormed out to the galley, and to his room. Shoes needed to happen.
Tessa was delighted a few minutes later when she came to investigate the gradually worsening smell and found him mopping up while Mac did more things with banging behind the toilet. "Richie! How wonderful. Thank you so much for helping."
Richie felt his cheeks go red as he stared at the mop. "Mac made me do it."
"Then I hope he thanked you properly, too."
Somehow, even with his torso twisted behind the toilet, Mac managed to look even more uncomfortable. "Thank you, Richie," he called, voice echoing off the tiles.
Tessa made a sound somewhere between a sigh and a laugh. She was probably, definitely better at cleaning things than him (all that practice with her art if nothing else) but didn't bug him or even offer advice while he mopped--twice as clumsy with an audience. Finally most of the gross stuff was in the mop bucket and Mac's clanging around had actually fixed the toilet. Maybe.
Unfortunately, you couldn't mop or bang on the air, and it smelled. It smelled BAD.
"It smells BAD," Richie said.
Mac gave him a speaking look as he washed his hands and arms for the third time.
"I guess that means our sparring plans are cancelled until it de-grosses in here?" Richie asked hopefully.
"There's always the deck," Mac said mildly.
A million possible objections ran through Richie's head. He opened his mouth to start listing them, and closed it with a snap when Tessa said, "But Mac, we've all been working so hard since we got here, and there's been so many...stressful events."
Immortals, Richie mentally translated.
"Perhaps we should take advantage of this free spring day we've been given," Tessa said.
"Given?" Richie asked. "Like, by the toilet gods?"
Mac cracked a smile at that. Richie looked down at his shoes.
"Given," Tessa said firmly. She put one hand on Richie's shoulder and one on Mac's. "What do you say?"
Richie thought about third-wheeling those two lovebirds around the romance capital of the world. Then he thought about hours of getting beat on by Mac, now with background stink.
"Sounds great," Mac said. His smile seemed to include Richie along with Tessa.
"...okay," Richie mumbled.
***
Their "day of wandering," as Tessa put it, began a little awkwardly. Mac and Tessa were laughing and happy (and handsy, Richie noticed) with each other, but half their attempts to include Richie fell flat. Richie tried to respond, he did, but he felt like everything he said was half a second too late. He felt obviously, miserably in their way.
Fortunately, before Richie could follow through with his plan of faking a fall and a twisted ankle, to be sent home to the stink, the three of them discovered the solution to their mutual problem.
Food.
Lots of food.
They had fruit. They had cheese. They had something Tessa called a tarte au citron, which was some magical combination of sweet-crunchy-creamy-tart. Richie waited til Mac was looking away to lick the bottom of the plate. Tessa grinned at him.
They finally dragged themselves away from the food. Tessa seemed to have a destination in mind this time, and Richie stomped along cheerfully after her and Mac, chewing on a baguette half the size of Mac's katana.
"I know growing boys need their food," Mac said, "but after today I expect you to grow a foot overnight."
"I'm not a boy," Richie said through a mouthful of bread.
Mac lifted a brow. Yeah, probably everyone under 50 was an infant to him.
***
Tessa's goal turned out to be the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, a wizard-hat-shaped park with a tiny lake in the middle, and stone arch things, and waterfalls. Waterfalls like more than one waterfall.
"Snazzy," Richie said, looking at the border of flowers separating their walking path from a long downhill grassy slope.
Mac bumped his shoulder against Richie's. "Looks a bit different from the last time I was here."
"Yeah?" Richie asked.
Mac pointed back the way they'd come. "Not far from here was main gibbet of the Kings of France. You could hang 45 men there...or leave 45 men hung there to display to the people while the scavengers ate what they could reach. Sometimes the bodies would hang there for years."
"Gross," Richie said with relish.
"I have a book on Parisian history," Tessa said. "I believe there's a drawing of the gibbet in there. You're welcome to borrow it when we get back. I'm sure there are other ghastly things you'd like to learn about."
"Maybe," Richie said, keeping his voice casual. "If I remember."
Tessa gave a minute shrug and wandered to the edge of the flower bed.
"I remember rolling down this slope, or at least one like it. It seemed the fastest way to get away from--well, never mind that." Mac rubbed the back of his neck. "Of course, there wasn't any soft grass then. Mostly just dirt and rocks. Painful rocks."
"It would probably feel better today," Tessa said over her shoulder.
"Shall we try?" Mac asked. Richie had a bad feeling about that "we." He inched away from Mac. He looked around. No one else was rolling down the hill like a weirdo. There must be, like, guards or something, right? But nobody looked guard-like. And Mac got away with weirder stuff all the time.
Maybe someone would come challenge Mac to a duel. That was a terrible thing to wish for, probably.
"I'm too old for this!" He could hear the whine in his voice that clearly said otherwise, but something about it was too--too--family. A fun afternoon and a happy memory seemed like things to stockpile for when things stopped being all Hallmark and real life came back.
"Richie?"
"I'm not your kid," he said again.
"That doesn't make you less ours," said Tessa.
Richie jammed his hands in his jacket pockets. "Yeah," he said under his breath.
Tessa's face lit up. Richie smiled cautiously back.
"Besides," she said, "Mac was probably 200 years old when he first did this. How can you possibly be too old?"
"And I'm doing it again," Mac said. "I'll race you two to the bottom. Unless you don't want to see me beat you?"
"Hey," Richie said. "I can take you on." He paused dramatically. "Old man."
He waited until Tessa and Mac were both laughing to yell "Last one down’s a rotten egg!" and leap over the flowerbeds.
Laughing while rolling downhill meant a mouth full of grass, which was not great. But landing at the bottom, with Tessa and Mac almost on top of him, that was okay.
Yeah, he thought, smelling grass and flowers and spring. It was pretty okay.