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How long had it been since they had been able to go out?
Paris was not kind to people like them—to people like Serge, more like it, when all Gilbert had to do was flash a smile and get his way. It crawled and licked like fire under Serge’s skin to watch, but strangely, Gilbert had become ever easier to pull back in since their escape to this city. A tug on his arm was often enough to get a giggle and a flirtatious apology to his latest target, and off they were again. It was easy enough for Serge to swallow down and ignore, knowing Gilbert was looking for entertainment.
If it was entertainment he wanted, it was entertainment he would get.
Serge was warned the day before that the bistro would be closed. It made sense enough—except for those places along the street and near enough to the revelry to benefit, there was no point in opening a store that no one would come to. The fair was in town. With the sun out on a warm spring day, and people from all over pouring into the town and bringing with them enticing foreign marvels, it was the perfect way to fête Gilbert. It was also the perfect way to act on something that Serge had long yearned to accomplish to bring some light back to his lover’s too-often sullen, comely face. He just wanted a laugh. (Being honest with himself, it was hard enough to do that even before coming to Paris. This, above all else and as a God-willing light at the end of the tunnel, was a chance to make up for years.)
“What do you say?” Serge had asked, already pulling on his rough but reliable overcoat to combat the late morning breeze. Before Gilbert could even respond, Serge had slipped a light scarf from the nail on the wall to wrap sweetly around Gilbert’s neck, and that was that.
To the fair they went.
All sorts of folk were laughing, hawking, dancing down the streets and in parks and clearings. The noisy squeals of children raised even above the tunes being pushed from accordions and churned out of music boxes, and Serge couldn’t help the way his free hand—the other bravely, subtly occupied by Gilbert’s—drummed along an accompaniment on his thigh. It had been some time since he’d been able to play, or even think about it, but the light air and the song swirling around them brought it back as naturally as breathing. Moving through the crowd, blocked by any number of faceless visitors that would never see them or be seen again, Serge was thinking about a life in pink, and the smooth, soft feeling of Gilbert’s skin felt like a treasure against his own.
“I want a prize,” Gilbert said, as they passed one of the brightly-colored stalls. The line was short, a bad sign if any for the probability of a win, but the selection was flush with more variety than the options on either side of it. Likely, Serge suspected, because no one could succeed.
“You want—?”
“—I want that prize,” Gilbert corrected himself, speaking right over Serge, and he gestured with their joined hands to some shapeless chalkware object in the vague silhouette of a cat.
The man in charge of this specific joint grinned, sensing a mark, and invited the pair to come closer with a broad sweep of his hand.
“The young lady has a good eye,” he said, and Gilbert shrugged one shoulder up at Serge.
“He said I had a good eye.” With an emerging twinkle of delight in his gaze, and a coy smile.
Serge smiled weakly back at Gilbert. There was now pressure from both sides, and he thought surely that Gilbert had to be able to see that this was a trap. The balls didn’t look round and the hole of the “face” into which Serge—because it was going to fall to Serge, wasn’t it—was intended to toss one of those balls seemed to have some kind of strange bump on the contour that was most certainly intended to throw off the momentum of anything that got too close.
“That’s right,” the man continued. “This is a genuine article from the finest craftsmen in America, hand-painted by…”
There were any number of questions that could follow. Why would a craftsman hand out his hard work to be given as a carnival prize? Why even bother bringing it all the way to France? Could the craftsman not sell it? Even unaware as they were of the current financial and artistic state of affairs in America, both Serge and Gilbert had been raised in an aristocratic home, and had an understanding of what was a genuine article and what was a terrible imitation intended to sucker in those who thought they would get an incredible deal if they could just toss a ball in a hole. It’s probable, painfully so, that this man just made it himself from whatever he had lying around in the backyard.
The most offensive part of it all was that it was ugly, and Serge deeply did not want to spend the money on it. But Gilbert had asked.
“Did you hear all that, Serge?” Gilbert prompted. “It would look so good on our nightstand.”
Serge took a deep breath and, knowing his chances of winning the game were better than winning against Gilbert, withdrew his hand from Gilbert’s to dig into his pocket for some change.
“I’ll just try one round,” Serge said. “And that’s all.”
He purchased his chances, and the man handed him three of the oblong objects to toss. They were even lighter than they looked, and Serge wasn’t sure how they were supposed to even get over to the mouth without being carried away on the breeze. He tested the weight of one in his hand and, without any other preparation, threw it with all his heart. It bounced off the wooden face with a hollow noise.
Gilbert and the man both drew a sharp inhale, amusement mirrored for different reasons. Serge tensed his jaw.
“Two more,” the man reminded him. Serge was already annoyed that he let Gilbert talk him into this.
He threw the second. This one didn’t even get close.
“Shoot,” Serge cursed softly.
“Your coat?” Gilbert suggested. The offer came even though he clearly wasn’t going to take it, with his arms folded against his chest. (Serge didn’t look to see whether or not the man was leering down Gilbert’s open front. The ball might really miss its mark in that case.) A moment of consideration for the effort later, Serge pulled off his coat and set it down on the ground, then rolled his shoulder to limber up as he should have done two throws ago. Gilbert inclined his head in appreciation, able to see the movement of Serge’s honed muscles even through the fabric of his shirt. “Good luck.”
“One round,” Serge said again, for Gilbert’s benefit. Gilbert’s hair moved slightly with the puff of breath from his nose.
When Serge tossed this one, however, a few miraculous things followed: the ball hit the hole, but due to the shape of the ball itself and the clearly rigged shape of the mouth, it merely stopped on the lip of the wooden face. It seemed, in fact, caught between the sides, and without Serge being able to hop the fence and push it over, it wasn’t going to move.
“Dommage!” the man apologized, as insincere as only one who made a quick buck from an idiot could be.
Then, as if called by Fortuna herself, the wind that had been present but quiet all day suddenly picked up, and with a whistle and a gust that blew Gilbert’s scarf into his pretty moue too ready to ask Serge to go again, the ball—pop!—fell right over into the basket on the other side of the target. At the sound of it, Serge lifted his head, curls bouncing and eyes wide, and the man who had just taken a step to offer a potential round two hesitated.
“That’s it,” Serge said, quickly. “We’ve won, haven’t we?”
The man, opening his mouth to protest, was distracted by Gilbert lowering the scarf from his face and the carefully-calculated toss of his hair to reveal both sparkling eyes. He smiled. The man, feeling like prey, swallowed.
“We have, haven’t we, Serge?” Gilbert chorused, without looking away from the man. “So, I want my cat, if you please.”
The day thus continued like that.
Gilbert, in the end, came away with quite a collection, and even the games that had no prize but satisfaction to win were fun, and there was no other word for it. The entire day had been spent tossing balls and rings at sometimes futile, sometimes fair wooden and glass constructions, and even if Serge’s pockets were lighter than when they had arrived, wasn’t it all according to plan? Not everything had been won, but less had been lost. By the time the sun began to set and the crowds began to clear, even Gilbert’s implacable porcelain face was flush with amusement and potentially some sunburn. (And, at Gilbert’s behest, Serge’s coat never came back on as they made the rounds. Gilbert squeezed closer when the chill of a falling afternoon started to roll over them.)
“We should go home,” Serge said, on the heels of a shiver. He found himself oddly disappointed, in saying it.
“I’m not ready,” Gilbert replied, resting his head on Serge’s shoulder. This only lasted for a moment, before something in the distance caught his eye and he perked up like a rabbit noting the rustle of a bush. “Oh? I’ll be right back.”
“Gilbert—?”
But before Serge could actually make sense of Gilbert’s whims, Gilbert’s figure had darted, still leporine, beyond a throng and, as far as Serge could tell, back toward the main fairground.
This left Serge standing, feeling a little foolish, in the middle of a quickly-dissipating crowd and still holding his coat, until Gilbert re-emerged with a single glass bottle of some dark and carbonated liquid. Serge’s brow furrowed, but Gilbert was pushing him toward a bench with an explanation, pre-empting either questions or a scolding on how he might have acquired that.
“It’s ginger beer,” Gilbert said. “From England, I’m told.”
“Gilbert!” Serge began to chide, and there was more to come before Gilbert pushed the glass to his mouth. To avoid choking, Serge was forced to drink, and he found the taste—well, reluctantly, he found it pleasant. The bubbles cut at his tongue and the ginger was so sharp that it burned in his nose, but the sugar made it easy and addictive to swallow. They couldn’t normally afford things like this. Gilbert kept it at his lips, until Serge hummed his displeasure to signify that he was done.
“Well?” Gilbert followed.
“It’s alcohol!”
“It’s just called beer,” Gilbert said, and he took a drink so graceful that Serge wanted to buy another just to keep watching. “It isn’t actually alcoholic. And besides, aren’t we supposed to be having fun today? You’re always such a buzzkill.”
“Gilbert,” Serge said again, exasperated. Gilbert was good at breaking his own image with those blunt comments.
“Here,” Gilbert said, and he passed the drink back, sure to let their fingers brush. Waiting until Serge—who sniffed, as if he could scent out the so-stated lack of alcohol and only got the strong bite of ginger in his sinuses for his efforts—had indulged another sip, his feline smile stretched a little wider. “It isn’t alcoholic, but the man who sold it to me did say it’s a very, very strong aphrodisiac…”
Serge spit, and Gilbert’s high, musical laugh rang out over the moment.