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“I don’t want a birthday party,” Mordred had said, “I hate my birthday.” This was true. He hated May 1st with a vengeance, although it was not entirely because it was the day on which he had been born. The actual source of his ire was not-- to his brothers, at least-- particularly clear. It didn’t matter, anyway. He shared a birthday with Gawain, and Gawain wasn’t much concerned about having a day to celebrate his existence. That sort of thing was a year-long event.
“Besides,” Mordred had argued, knowing his preferences were rarely a consideration in most matters, and thus throwing out this desperate trump card, “I have to work all day, remember?”
And they had agreed that oh, yes, work was very important. But he should have known that no discussion was ever won that easily.
So it was that the morning of May 1st (a Saturday, as it happened), at 10 AM sharp, the creaky double doors of Lionheart Coffee Co. swung open before the exuberant force of nature that was Priamus. Behind him, Galahad crossed his arms and smiled thinly.
“Rise and shine, bitches!” proclaimed Priamus, who had only woken up three minutes prior but was a very fast runner.
“Sir,” said Kay, poking his head out of the kitchen with a good-natured glare, “I will escort you from the premises.”
“No he won’t,” said Mordred, who was at the counter, eyeing this entrance warily.
“No you won’t,” Priamus repeated, and sauntered up to the counter, to Mordred’s increasing suspicion. Smiling with an edge he probably thought was ‘sneaky,’ he leaned against the cash register, tapped his fingers on the wood, and assumed a faux-casual air. “Do you know what day it is, Mr. Pendragon?”
Kay’s glare deepened. “Saturday.”
“But specifically which Saturday?”
“Oh, no,” said Mordred, extremely quietly.
“I can’t say,” Kay ground out, “that I do.”
Pouting, Priamus placed a hand over his heart. “You forget your own nephews’ birthday?” “I don’t know when I myself was born,” said Kay, “and you expect me to remember these good-for-nothings as well? Please.”
Despite Kay’s best attempts at putting him off, Priamus was not easily dissuaded. Limpet-like, he refused to budge, and simply grinned at them.
“Please order something then leave,” Mordred said darkly.
Ignoring him, Priamus rested one elbow on the counter and grinned. “Happy birthday!”
“One cup of drain cleaner coming right up.”
Priamus sighed over-dramatically and succeeded in dodging Galahad’s attempts to yank him out of the way.
“Seriously, my brother’s not here. What do you fucking want,” Mordred demanded again, in the dim hope it would bring this farce to a conclusion.
“I want an oat milk latte with agave syrup,” Galahad interrupted. “Not that you asked.”
Mordred barely had the wherewithal to write “fucking loser” on his cup. He did, of course, but his heart wasn’t wholly in it.
“Since you asked so nicely,” Priamus said finally, drawing it out as long as could be considered within reasonable doubt, “We come bearing gifts.”
“I will call the police on you,” said Kay, but there was no force behind the threat. “Or at least force you to order.”
Smiling, Galahad raised a finger. “I ordered. We’re together, I ordered for both of us. That’s the law.” He delivered this prediction with such confidence that even Kay, who was not generally inclined to listen to anything anyone said about any matter at all, acquiesced.
“I hate that you two are friends now. Have I mentioned that?” Mordred said, then walked two steps to the left, since there was no one else on shift, “order for a fucking loser and his annoying friend.”
“Thank you,” said Galahad politely. Mordred rolled his eyes and returned to the register, as well as to Priamus, who was fiddling with the various tchotchkes on the counter and would likely soon break one. That was a cheering prospect, Mordred thought distantly.
“So? You have stuff for me? Give it.”
“Patience is a virtue,” Priamus said, hard at work lining up all the little flags.
“Is that all they taught you in philosophy school?” Mordred asked. And then, to his immense satisfaction, there was a snapping sound. “Damn, I guess you hate gay people.”
“I am a gay people,” Priamus argued, trying and failing to turn two wooden pieces back into one.
“Stop deflecting.”
In a fit of physical creativity, Galahad managed to poke his head under one of Priamus’ arms in order to enter the conversation. “I have a present too.”
“You do?”
He nodded. His gaze was so earnest that Mordred felt the icy shell of his heart soften slightly. “Well,” Mordred said, “that’s very nice of you.”
“Would you like it now?”
Priamus raised his arm slightly to allow Galahad the room to reach into his bag, but did in no other way shift to accommodate him.
“Yeah, sure,” Mordred agreed, curious despite himself to see what Galahad could possibly think he wanted. Whatever he had thought it might be, this was not, in any way, that.
A circle of silence started at the cash register and spread out through the room, mainly because the only people talking much had been Mordred and his harassers. In a hushed voice, Kay said: “What the fuck is that?”
For once, Galahad looked anxious. “It’s a bat.”
“You can’t bring a live bat in here,” Kay said. “It could have rabies.”
“But Gawain’s in here all the time,” muttered Mordred, out of reflex.
Galahad nudged it expectantly. “It’s not live.”
“It's a taxidermy bat?” Priamus wondered aloud, having not, evidently, been in on this part of the Make-Mordred’s-Already-Bad-Day-Even-Worse plan.
“Er-- yes. I thought it was goth? I'm sorry, is that a horrible gift?”
“No, no.” Mordred picked it up despite internal reservations. “It's delightful, I’m going to put it in unexpected places and ruin my brothers’ lives, thank you. Help me name it.”
Faster than anyone could make out, Galahad said a name.
“What was that?”
Galahad repeated himself. The others leaned in closer to try to decipher his instructions.
“I think,” said Priamus, squinting, “that he’s saying you should call it Sub.” He frowned. “Like a sandwich?”
Galahad closed his eyes, as if that would somehow bring an end to the observation, and repeated himself again. “ Saint Seb.”
When there were no reactions for a full eight-count, he tentatively opened his eyes again.
“Sure,” agreed Mordred. “That’s the one you have all the naked pictures of right? Yeah, that’ll do.”
“It’s the-- the theological importance,” Galahad argued lamely, and gave up.
Attempting to be helpful, Priamus said, “I have a friend from university named Gianni who specializes in smuggling watches across the Swiss-Italian border by hiding them in dead animals.”
“God, I wish I lived that life,” Mordred remarked. “Well, I doubt whatever you have is gonna beat this cool Catholic bat, but you can try.”
“We don't know if he’s baptized,” Galahad said. Then, after a beat, “Bat-ptized.”
Again, there was dead silence. Wordlessly, Priamus passed Mordred a gift card across the counter. It had a smiley face on it and declared it was redeemable for five bucks of frozen yogurt at Happy Times Fro-Yo Adventure Parlour.
“Gee,” said Mordred, staring at it. “Thanks. I’m glad I can afford one tablespoon of Peanut Butter Crunch. Maybe half of a cherry to myself if I scrimp. You’re so generous.”
“Be polite,” Kay said, in a resigned tone of voice. “And please take the bat off the counter, it’s at least three FDA violations.”
“Sorry Kay, Saint Seb lives here now. He’s the employee of the month.”
“There won’t be an employee of the month if they shut us down for health code violations.”
“If this bat shuts down the coffeeshop he will officially be the best present I’ve ever gotten in my life. It’s already up there just by the sheer amount he’s going to traumatize Agravaine when I put him in the fridge.”
It was at this moment of heartwarming friendship and esprit-de-corps that the door swung open once more to reveal the notably late-for-his-shift figure of Gawain to enter. “Hi guys,” he said, bypassing the cluster of chaos in front of the register and yanking on his apron. “Sorry I’m late, Kay. Happy birthday, Mo. ‘Sup, Priamus, Galahad.”
“Speaking of employee of the month,” Kay said sarcastically, and retreated to the kitchen. Gawain paid this no mind.
“Who's the bat?”
“Saint Seb, my newest and only brother,” Mordred explained, and Gawain affected an exaggerated expression of betrayal.
“I can have rabies, too, if that’s what it takes,” he promised. “I already act like it.”
“That’s not a joke, you seriously need to drink more water,” Kay yelled from behind the perfunctory divide between counter and kitchen.
“What?” Gawain said, tilting his head in confusion.
“Hydrophobia is a symptom of rabies,” Galahad informed him helpfully. “Saint Hubert is the patron saint of rabies, did you know that?”
Making as though to pat him on the shoulder and then thinking better of it halfway there, Gawain floated his hand awkwardly in the air and said, “That’s nice. Thank you, I didn’t know that.”
“Happy birthday!” input Priamus, who was vibrating slightly from excitement. He had spent quite a deal of time and effort finding the perfect present for the man whose aggressive back-parking-lot fisticuffs had accidentally launched Priamus into a very different social circle than he was accustomed to. He had friends now who, if not normal, did things like get each other birthday presents. It was a true adventure.
“Did you get me rabies for my birthday?” Gawain asked offhandedly, grabbing a roll of tape from behind the counter and applying it to the flag Priamus had broken.
“Next year, I promise. I got you something almost as good, hopefully.”And with that, he placed a large wrapped box on the counter. Where had he gotten it? Had he been holding it this whole time and no one noticed? The mystery would be forever unresolved.
“Oh, wow,” Gawain remarked, trying to appear nonchalant.
Mordred frowned. “He just got me a shitty gift card.”
“Open it,” said Priamus, clapping his hands together. He was a hardened criminal with a Bachelor’s degree in Moral Philosophy, and he was bouncing up and down slightly with an expression of anxious glee. “Open it open it open it.”
Gawain opened it. “It’s a… T-Shirt?”
“Inside the T-Shirt,” Priamus instructed. “You can look at the T-Shirt afterwards.”
Gawain dutiful set the shirt aside on the counter, and peered into the box, blinking in surprise. “Oh,” he said, then smiled, the closest thing to an awkward smile as could fit on his face. “Wow.”
“Yes?” Priamus asked, which wasn’t quite the right line, but got the gist across.
Mordred, growing both curious and impatient, tugged the box away enough to look in. “It’s a bunch of books,” he told Galahad, who already knew, but nodded anyway. “De architectura,” he sounded out, reading the spines, “Vitruvius.”
“It’s the foremost historical survey of classical architecture in the Mediterranean,” said Priamus. He tended to get very excited about all things vaguely related to Italy for someone who, despite his alma mater, was not Italian and had no prior allegiance to the country other than the nice scholarship they had given him to lure him away from Cairo. “Yes?”
Gawain, shockingly, seemed almost a little thrown by this. In the space between Priamus’ question and his response, the other three waited in second and first-hand mortification, unsure if the desired reaction had been affected.
Then Gawain flipped open the first volume and examined the opening page. “This is a beautiful edition I-- I had only read it online before. Is this the Fra Giovanni Sulpitius translation? These are the Cesare woodcut illustrations. Oh, wow. I mean, these observations constitute most of the information we have about Etruscan temple construction, due to the materials they used, this is--” He stopped himself. “I mean, thank you. Where on earth did you get this?”
“Um,” said Priamus, and debated whether or not Kay’s threat of calling the police on him would be outweighed by Gawain’s potential reaction to more details of his varied and somewhat suspicious life. He decided the risk of being arrested for soliciting a foreign criminal transaction was not worth it. Later, perhaps. In private. “Friend of a friend. Mhm.”
“Well, thank you. This is-- really nice,” Gawain said, like the words weren’t altogether familiar.
“This is very touching stuff, Etruscans and all, but do we have fucking actual customers?” Kay asked.
Gawain rolled his eyes. “Could you stay in the kitchen for five minutes? Make a scone about it if you’re so mad.”
“I’ve already made scones today,” said Kay, with a stiff expression. “An apple one for you and one with black food dye for Mordred. I put them on the kitchen counter, which you would know if either of you had bothered to do the dishes. Don’t mention it.”
“Aww, Kay,” said Gawain, “that’s really sweet.”
“I specifically instructed you not to mention it. Fired.”
“At last, I’m free!” Gawain made a dramatic faux-lunge across the counter and grabbed Priamus by the sleeve. “Take me with you, Priamus! It’s time for us to ride off into the sunset! Your shitty Italian college town awaits!”
“Oh god,” said Mordred, “please don't talk about your horse. I can’t take any more, I'm going to go do dishes and retrieve my scone. And I'm bringing this with me.” He picked up Saint Seb and exited stage left into the kitchen.
“You own a horse?” asked Priamus.
“No! Don't ask about it!” Mordred protested from behind the incredibly thin divider.
Gawain crossed his arms. “Technically the school owns him,” he said. “But Morholt 2 is his own beast.”
“Uh…” Galahad’s left eyebrow twitched slightly. “Why is he called Morholt 2?”
“Because he bites a lot.”
“Was there a Morholt 1?”
“Well,” said Gawain, “there was Morholt. I didn’t have a number for him. Actually, that was one of the reasons he got a little annoyed with me. I never saved
his contact info. Apparently you’re supposed to do that. I mean, I just memorize people’s phone numbers.”
“See?” hollered Galahad at the disappeared figure of Mordred. “It’s not that weird! Gawain does it too!”
“That means it’s double weird!” Mordred yelled back.
Priamus shrugged. “I don’t have a phone. I had one but I threw it at an alligator on my trip to Florida last year and didn’t really need another one. Besides, my boss only communicates via really snippy emails.”
“Lucius? You’re still working for him?”
“Yeah. Kind of. I mean, it’s a small college down, there isn’t a wide market of available people to stand around looking menacing in a suit. Most of my coworkers are twice my age. Lucius knows he has to hold on to the young talent.” He spread his hands modestly. “And I’m very talented.”
“You’re going to Hell,” said Galahad, but in a fond way.
“Thank you,” said Priamus. “That means a lot.”
Then the doors once again opened, with significantly less exuberance than the previous two such events. Any half-baked hope harboured by Kay that this would herald the arrival of an actual customer was sadly unfounded.
The bell dinged.
“Why does it only do that when I open the door?” Agravaine grimaced. No one answered, being too busy shoving past him to rush to the counter. A shock of curly fox colored hair reached it first, slamming their hands on the edge of the counter to keep their momentum sending them tumbling over it.
“Happy birthday Gawain!”
“Thanks, Nellie,” he said, as the final four Orkneys followed behind them, Percival looking by far the most cheery. He said hello to Galahad, who was lingering a few steps from the counter, his mission technically complete but without anything to replace it.
“Where's Mordred?” Agravaine asked.
“Aw gee, thanks for wishing me happy birthday Aggs,” Gawain said lightly, then pointed behind him, “he's hiding in the kitchen.”
“I'm doing dishes!” Mordred yelled. “At my job, where I work, which is where we are! Just thought I'd remind you.”
“I didn't realize you were so invested in the business,” Gawain said, grinning. “Y'all want coffee? For Mordred's sake?”
“Frappuccino,” said Ragnelle, yanking their wallet out of their purse.
“What kind?”
“Dunno. Just throw stuff in there, really.” They passed Gawain a fiver and smiled sunnily. “Your biggest size, please. Is that a venti? Is that the word?”
From nowhere Kay apparated behind the counter and glared at them over Gawain’s shoulder. “This is not,” he hissed, “a Saxons Cafe establishment, Ragnelle Inglewood.”
“Okay,” said Ragnelle, and appeared to think about it. “Just a size big, then, please.”
“Anything for you,” Gawain said gallantly.
“Why did you say it like that? This is a coffee shop. They gave you money and you gave them coffee.” Gaheris commented.
“I'm being chivalrous,” he said, and wrote “nellie :3” on a cup and threw it at Kay, who caught it with a resigned slump of the shoulders.
“I'm not just giving him money. I have a gift,” they declared, and plunked a small wooden box on the counter. Gawain picked it up and turned it over a few times, holding it as if it might explode.
“It's a puzzle box, you have to solve it to get your gift.”
He stared up at them with an expression of exaggerated hopelessness. “Nellie,” he said, “you know I don’t have any brain cells at all. You’re gonna need to help me here.”
“I knew you’d say that,” said Ragnelle, raising a finger. “Which is why actually the puzzle box part is a re-gift from my shitty brother’s Christmas present to me, and to access your present you have to crush it.” Grinning, they reached into their purse and produced a hammer whose dimensions did not seem congruous with the size of the purse.
“Not on the counter!” Kay exclaimed helplessly.
Gawain accepted the hammer, and took the box. “Boo, you whore. Let’s go break things in the parking lot!”
The merry cavalcade rushed out the back door into the parking lot, leaving Kay to mind the counter. Mordred abandoned his pretense of diligence and followed, always happy to see things broken. With an impressive amount of energy for 10 in the morning on a Saturday, they formed a circle around Gawain, who placed the box reverently on the concrete and took a step back. He raised his arm to swing the hammer, paused, and glanced at Ragnelle. “I’m not going to break whatever’s in here, right?”
“Nah, you’re good. Go for it.”
He swung. There was a satisfying crunch as the box snapped into multiple pieces and some flew off in surprising directions. One lodged itself in Galahad’s shoe, but otherwise there was no damage to the bystanders. Crouching down, Gawain peered into the wreckage.
“It's a very very small book. Thank you, I will record my darkest secrets inside it.”
“Oh, you would need a twenty-volume hardcover set for that. It's a pendant,” they explained.
“What is it with you and books? Someone get him a knife or a flamethrower or something,” Mordred said, disappointed.
“I really don’t think your brother needs more ways to damage persons and property,” Galahad noted.
“Well, this has been a shitshow,” Mordred said, backing away from the circle. “What a delightful morning.”
“What would your ideal birthday be?”
“No birthday at all.”
Gawain resurfaced from the splinters of the puzzle box. “What about a bonfire?”
A light caught in Mordred’s eyes. “Ah,” he said, and the corners of his lips turned up, “now you’re speaking my language.”
It was far later that day, after they had scraped the charcoal off of the cement out back and managed to avoid setting off any smoke alarms, that Mordred sagged down onto his bed and checked his phone for the first time in several hours. Surprisingly, the evening had been quite nice. They had gotten to set quite a number of things on fire, which made him happy. He had almost managed to distract himself from the memories of a different birthday, several years ago, and the last time he had seen his mother.
She hadn’t contacted him since they had left. Well, she hadn’t contacted any of them, but Mordred-- Mordred had always been different. She had loved him. And for all he hated himself for it, for all he felt it was unfair to the others, who did not receive the same treatment from her, he had loved her back. But when push came to shove it was brothers or mother, and it hadn’t really been a choice. Still, somewhere deep down, he missed her.
When he saw the notification on his phone screen he almost stopped breathing. He stared at it mutely for a few seconds, brain not parsing the letters at all, but when he remembered to suck in air again the words resolved themselves into an undeniable meaning.
1 new email from: [email protected]
He didn’t know whether to click on it or not. Chances were she wouldn’t harass him about bygones-- no, if it was spite she was looking for, she would have contacted Gawain. But there was nothing he could imagine her saying to him that would be kind, not now.
His fingers shaking, he tapped on the notification and typed in his password.
From: [email protected]
Subject: n/a
Mordred. I don’t know where you are right now. It is, however, your birthday, no matter what else happened on May 1st. I hope you’re well. No need to respond.
Morgause
For an indeterminable length of time, Mordred stared at his phone. Then, almost imperceptibly, he smiled. His brothers didn’t need to know everything.
He turned off his phone, yanked the laptop monitor over to him, and charged up Dragon Age. It wasn’t the worst day ever.