Chapter Text
...won't listen to you!" cried Tintin. "I've learned to rely on my own internal derivatives!”
Louis Antoine Léon de Saint-Just, influential member of the Comité de Sûreté Général and ambassador-envoy to the Rat Autocrat of Paris (Joan of Arc), looked sad. "But everything is more fun if you are mean about it."
“That’s what you think.” Tintin lifted his head and steeled his gaze. “But you are just very bad and I believe in human kindness.” Then he pulled out a 15-mm revolver and shot Saint-Just through the head, spattering viscera all over the opera house. Blood flowed down the stage, glinting lowly red in the floodlights. Saint-Just’s knees buckled and, an expression of shock on his face, he crumpled to the floor. The audience (whom Tintin had not noticed) applauded.
OoOoO
Salut tout le monde... désolé que ça fait longtemps sans update mais la vie m'a foutu un peu :-((((( jsais pas comment expliquer mais en fait j'ai réalisé que l'amour n'existe pas et y'a seulement l'amitié car le cœur ne se concerne pas avec la moralité.... ouai je me suis tombé amoureux d'un catif, d'un méchant, mais maintenant je msuis décidé de me concentrer sur la famille et les amis. en sommaire le gars que j'aimais est un connard et maintenant il est aussi mon collègue et jnai aucune idée comment gérer cette situation car je nveux vraiment pas lui parler. merci à tous mes lecteurs :-)))))))) <3 <3 <3 <3
JnC
hey me and cameron put ur author’s note thru google translate :( sorry about life stuff. This was a really funny chapter i loved the bit where robespierre went to 18th Century Target and got a bunch of fake oranges. <3 hope life goes better soon
xxxbloodysecace666xxx
ahhhhhhh thank you :-) im doing okay actually u know french is my vent language so im just,,,,, hahaa u know its just life. Its just weird cause i was doing really well and i was i mean i was just well you know about it and now it is what things are… and i dont know if it is like that or how to feel about it when it does. but thank u :-) i will try to be as good as it should necessitate
JnC
what.
xxxbloodysecace666xxx
Thank u guys <3 :-(((((
“Why do the flowerboys get to look at their phones on shift?”
“Agh!” said Lancelot and sort of tossed his phone into the air, narrowly catching it as Gaheris stared at him judgmentally. “Hi, Gaheris. So— sorry Gaheris. I’ll leave.”
He stared blankly at the small breakroom. “Where?”
Lancelot panicked and gestured about a yard to the right of where he was standing currently. “Um, Over there.”
“Oh.” Gaheris shrugged. “Okay.”
“I— wait.” The voice of Cerise chided him gently in his imagination. “Actually, I’m not going over there, I’m staying here.”
“Okay,” said Gaheris again. “Bye.”
“Bye,” said Lancelot miserably, and sulked down at his phone again. It was nice of Jez and Cameron to leave him so many comments. He had never met them, and they didn’t know his name, and he was— in his heart of hearts— worried that they only kept reading his 200k The Adventures of Tintin /French Revolution RPF fanfiction out of a sense of moral duty, but they still brightened his day somewhat. And now that he was forced to work with people outside his immediate family (plus Aunt Morgan, who was honorary family), he had been taking more and more refuge in the latest chapters of Tintin’s entirely gen-rated, Graphic Depictions of Violence-tagged historical escapade.
“Ah, Ao3 dot com,” someone said smoothly over his shoulder.
Having learned from Gaheris, Lancelot avoided any unconscious reaction and opted to stand perfectly still instead. “Hng.” Turning to face his accuser, he shoved his phone into his back pocket. “You don’t— work here.”
“I do not,” Priamus agreed, and made no move to leave.
Lancelot nodded hesitantly. “Okay. Uh, hi.” He decided to try phrasing it as a question. “You don’t work here?”
“Correct again!” Priamus said cheerfully, surveying the folding chairs and table and finding nothing of interest. “I’ll do you one better: you do work here.”
“Uhhhh-huh,” Lancelot agreed again slowly. Where had Gaheris gone. He was surely rude enough for this. He tried to remember customer service, but it was difficult, because Priamus was not a customer and did not seem to want anything including service. “Why are you wearing a suit?”
“It’s important to make a good impression,” Priamus said evenly. “Never know when you might meet a potential employer or lover.”
“But the tie is undone,” Lancelot pointed out.
“For sexy, people-who-know-how-to-tie-a-tie reasons,” Priamus assured him.
“Okay.” He thought for a second. “My break is over.”
He technically had thirteen more minutes, but it was worth the sacrifice of not having to stand there while Gawain’s mean friend made fun of him. He could go back out front where Gawain’s mean brothers could make fun of him, because that was his life now. He hastily tied on his apron and fled the breakroom.
Priamus watched Lancelot leave, shrugged, and went back to lingering for a spell. He hoped entertainment would find him and, as usual, it promptly did. The door flung itself open and Lionel, Lancelot’s eldest cousin, threw a Libertea apron vaguely in the direction of Priamus, who did not catch it. It crumpled on the floor, and lay there ignored by its owner who slammed the door to the breakroom behind him and leant heavily against it, running a hand through his ill-cut black hair. “Gawain!” he said in explanation.
“I agree,” said Priamus, hoping that whatever crisis Lionel was having would prevent him from pointing out that Priamus wasn’t, strictly, allowed in the backroom, due to not in any way being an employee.
“I'm totally straight,” Lionel said defensively, unasked.
“Gawain,” said Priamus again, guessing the gist of the issue.
Lionel lowered his hand to cover his face and huffed. “Okay, yes, maybe I hooked up with him last year on Halloween, but that was Halloween and it doesn’t count, Priamus!”
“Right, totally. Which is why you bring it up now,” Priamus agreed mildly.
“There’s been a...” He gestured vaguely. “Resume-ment of tensions.”
“I don’t think that’s a word,” Priamus said in an aside. Then louder, “Oh, yes, the merger. Close quarters and all that, yeah?”
“Yeah,” said Lionel pointedly. “He’s doing it on purpose. It’s part of his evil plan.”
He’s trying not to do that anymore, Priamus didn’t say, because there were things that had been divulged to him in confidence which other people did not need to know. Instead he said, “He’s too distracted with school to have evil plans. I think you’re just not straight.”
Lionel took his hands from his face to glare at Priamus. “I don’t like you. I don’t trust you. Do you really think so?”
Ignoring the rapid about-face, Priamus shrugged. “Yeah, sounds like it. Wanna run through it?”
Lionel was his least favourite Du Lac— he had not yet been informed that Hector existed— and ranked only slightly higher on his list of most attractive French people, which he would have been surprised to learn was not something most people had. But Priamus was a fundamentally decent person and besides, he had nothing to do for the next ten minutes until Gawain’s shift ended. Other people’s crises were entertaining enough.
“Uh, no,” said Lionel, distrust increasingly overriding his breakdown. “I barely even know who you are. You just appeared at my workplace one day and said your name was Priamus. Is that even your name?”
“It’s my last name,” said Priamus.
Lionel frowned. “What?”
The door opened.
“Hey, Priamus. Lionel. You know where Kay is? I have like ten minutes left on my shift and we’re out of—” Gawain stopped. “Why are you making that face? Are you okay?”
“Hm,” said Lionel. “I'm fine. Hey, Gawain, do you think I'm straight?”
Gawain opened his mouth, his eyebrows raised, and then paused as though checking himself. His face twisted in polite faux-consideration. “I mean, it’s your own decision. But you did very much have sex with me, so I’d go with no.”
“Gawain Orkney!” A distinctive holler broke through the peace of the backroom.
“Well,” said Gawain, “found Kay. Good luck, Lionel!”
The door closed.
“Hm,” Lionel said finally. “So, I'm definitely not straight. Thank you Priamus, I still don't like or trust you.”
With this pronouncement, he walked out, letting the door slam behind him.
Morgan gave him an odd look when Lancelot joined her at the counter. “Don’t you still have ten minutes?”
“Uh, well— I’m a real go-getter,” he explained lamely, looking like he didn’t want to go anywhere but home or get anything but a nap.
“Good for you,” she said, not believing him remotely but kindly letting it go. “I suppose you can take the compost and coffee filters out back with Gawain.”
“Huh?” said Lancelot, as at the same time, across the shop, Gawain also exclaimed wordlessly. Morgan, who probably thought she was being nice by giving him a simple, non-customer task, watched this passively. After an awkward moment Lancelot mumbled some agreement and found several bags of coffee grounds foisted upon him. This was fine. He’d made it through several brief and awkward conversations with Gawain in the intervening weeks since the merger, and this one would surely be no less painful. Ah, wait. That wasn’t reassuring at all.
They made their way to the back in coordinated silence and emerged into the dusty late afternoon, concrete and gravel of the alley turned almost soft in the low orange glow.
“I usually do this alone,” Gawain offered, making it sound more like an explanation than an accusation. Lancelot was still deciding whether he should respond when Gawain knocked a few times on the side of the dumpster, as if politely announcing their presence.
A reddish shape shot out of the far end from amidst the accumulated debris, and across a stretch of crunching gravel, setting into a fox behind a cardboard box about ten yards off.
“I found a fox in the trash,” Gawain said, as if this was very normal. “A few weeks ago.”
“Oh?” This was not a word, and therefore did not break his attempted moratorium on talking to Gawain.
Gawain nodded, accepting this as encouragement. “Yeah I’ve been feeding it on my breaks, trying to, you know, domesticate it. I call it Renard.”
“Huh.” He gave up, upending one bag of coffee grounds into the metal bin. “Why?”
“It’s a fox,” Gawain said, a defensive isn’t it obvious rather implicit. Then he frowned at his own statement. “I guess it’s uncreative.”
“I meant why are you trying to domesticate it?”
Gawain blinked. “Oh.” He glared at the trash bag he’d been given, and tossed it into the dumpster as if this was an action that required intense concentration. “I mean, very few people don’t hate me at the moment. This possibly rabid animal is the only one here who hasn’t actively been wronged by me.”
Oh. He didn’t know quite what to do with this. He didn’t like feeling sympathetic in this direction. “Is it working? Uh, domesticating it— Renard?”
Gawain hummed thoughtfully. “Hard to tell. Last week he bit me twice, and he’s only done that once this week.”
“Huh. That’s probably good.” It probably wasn’t, but it didn’t seem worth getting into. Gawain could get rabies if he wanted. That was his prerogative.
“I don’t know what I’m doing, really, I don’t think I’m making any progress at all,” Gawain admitted, shutting one half of the dumpster lid, leaving the other open, presumably for Renard egress.
“I don’t hate you,” Lancelot said suddenly in the silence after the crash of metal against metal. “I— just so you know.”
Gawain did not look up. “Uh— thank you?”
Something brushed at Lancelot’s pant leg and he looked down to find the fox staring at him piteously. “Shoo,” he said. “I don’t have any food for you.”
“He doesn’t want food.” Despite this, Gawain reached into his pocket and produced a cough drop, which he placed on the ground in front of the fox like a votive offering. It was still wrapped. “He wants violence and bloodshed.”
“Don’t we all…” mumbled Lancelot. Gawain glanced up at him in half-amused surprise, his hair glinting bronze in the glowing sunlight. “I mean— hypothetically. Not— I’m not threatening you with violence. Oh, God.”
Fortunately Gawain didn’t look uncomfortable, just concerned. He propped the dumpster open with one hand and emptied in his last bag of coffee grounds. “Are you alright?”
“Yes,” said Lancelot firmly, and then felt guilty for lying. He was very stressed. He did not enjoy his job as it was and he enjoyed it less now that he had mean colleagues. Not that that was Gawain’s fault— no, as far as he could tell it was Lionel’s, and possibly the mean Orkney brother who hated him was also involved. The one with the pink hair who, mercifully, had not made the switch over to the merged location. Eggs. That was it. Eggs Orkney. “Well, no. I mean. Yes.”
There was a polite pause. “Uh-huh,” said Gawain slowly. He crossed his arms, his shoulders raised. It was none of Lancelot’s business, but whatever life development had prompted the merger seemed to have put Gawain through the grinder as well— he had lost weight in the last month, and the shadows under his eyes, once a charming addition to his face on Monday mornings and sure to be gone by Tuesday, had made their permanent bruise-like home. “Can I say something? I understand if not. I don’t want to, like, make you listen to me or anything.”
Lancelot squinted at him. He looked earnest, his hands fidgety. “Okay.”
“I’m— really sorry that we kind of— invaded your workplace.” The words seemed forced. “I wasn’t involved with that and I didn’t suggest it and I would really quit if I didn’t need the money, because I don’t want you to be uncomfortable and I— I guess I, ah— I respect that you don’t want to talk to me and also that my brothers are really mean to you and I’m sorry about that— but I also can’t tell them what to do because they’ll take it— I mean— wow. Sorry. I should rehearse these things.”
“No, well— I got the jist of it,” Lancelot managed, because this was quite a lot really and he certainly couldn’t address it all. “It’s not— I mean I was already not great it’s not, your fault really. Um—” something between morbid curiosity and dangerous sympathy had been drudged up in his mind. “Did something happen to you? With you? Uh— I shouldn’t ask— sorry.”
Gawain watched Renard gulp down the wrapped cough drop like a pelican with a squirming fish, in somber silence. “I mean, if you’re asking— I don’t want to just unload all my problems on you. I don’t— I really haven’t earned that honestly.”
"Oh, I mean—" Lancelot considered his words for a moment. It was incredible what watching someone fail to tame a fox did to humanize them in one's eyes, but still, Gawain was a bad person. This wasn't arguable. He was a selfish, manipulative asshole and Lancelot was self-aware enough to know he was pretty easily manipulated. But Gawain looked so genuinely miserable, and the spell that held everyone in his orbit seemed to be fundamentally broken lately. "I asked you."
Gawain gave him a sidelong glance, a measured gaze on his face. It was an odd feeling, to recognize something would have made him breathless a month ago, and didn't anymore. "I had a huge fight with my brother, the day before the merger, and was— informed that I left a lot to be desired, uh, as a brother. And person. I—" He frowned suddenly and dug around in his other pocket, producing a stick of gum. "Foxes can't have gum, probably?"
They both looked at the fox, which crouched a few yards off, wary but hoping for more food that wasn't a still-wrapped cough drop.
"Probably not," Lancelot guessed, trying to remember if he knew anything about the care and keeping of stray foxes found in the dumpster. He did not.
Gawain nodded. "Okay, yeah. Sorry." His hands seemed lost without pockets to search, and folded over themselves uncomfortably behind his back like a soldier at miserable attention. "So. After the fight I left— it was around 2 am. I did— I did something really stupid. Uh—"
"Oh, no," Lancelot muttered, concerned about what Gawain would qualify as such and whether he was about to become an accessory to something.
Gawain looked up, a bit alarmed. "What are you thinking? I didn't kill anyone." He paused. "Wow, there is no more suspicious way I could have phrased that. I'll just— I did a breaking and entering into a place of business. Uh, heavy emphasis on the breaking."
"Oh!" Lancelot said, maybe more brightly than that statement warranted. "That's not ideal, uh, could be worse."
"...Thanks."
The fox shuffled off a few steps in the gravel and yipped experimentally. Gawain shrugged, looking defeated. "That's all I had on me."
"Maybe he wants..." Lancelot trailed off. He vaguely remembered having a dog when he was quite young. It hadn't wanted anything of him but to go away. He'd met Morgan's cat a couple times. It usually wanted to hurt him. "Like a toy or something," he posited, unconvinced of his own suggestion.
Gawain also didn’t look convinced but, willing to give the plan a fair shake, he picked up a stray stick and tossed it in the vague direction of Renard. Renard did not like this and, with an irritated fox noise, returned to the relative stick-free safety of his cardboard box.
Gawain blew out a breath in defeat. “Well. Anyway. I sort of— completely was caught and lost my scholarship and— and kind of had a pretty public breakdown in my place of employment, which— wasn’t great— God, I hadn’t cried in a whole decade? It really sucks apparently. Uh, there was a gender crisis— my brother still hasn’t really forgiven me— God.”
He seemed to hit Why am I telling you this, at about the same moment Lancelot did, and lapsed into silence. “Um, I know I asked, but—” Lancelot spoke each word carefully, “You don’t have to tell me all this out of, like, guilt or something.”
“I’m not,” Gawain said quickly.
“Oh- okay. Why— why are you telling me this?”
He shrugged, like it was obvious. “It’s you?”
Apparently noticing Lancelot’s confusion— he looked a little confused himself— Gawain went on. “I mean— you’re nice.”
The cardboard box rocked back and forth a bit. “Ah. I hope I am, I try to be.”
“I don’t know how to do that,” Gawain said, like it was one word. “Maybe my brain isn’t— isn’t set up for it or something. I don’t know how not to be myself, and— that seems to be a pretty awful thing. But I think if I keep going I’ll keep— hurting people, and I don’t want to— I don’t want to want to.” He took a deep breath, looked a little shaky. “Fuck. Fuck. Sorry. This isn’t— it’s my fault I’m like this, you don’t deserve— I’m going to shut up now.”
He did, in fact, shut up, watching the cardboard box wiggle forward inch by inch. Maybe the fox hoped to sneak up on them having food.
Whatever he’d thought was up with Gawain, this certainly was a lot more than that. Lancelot’s first instinct was to say something like “Huh! Good luck, sorry!” and flee inside, then pretend to only speak French to get out of further interaction. But he really didn’t want to be the sort of person who did that, and besides was fairly sure Gawain spoke French, anyway.
“I could— help you. Teach you?” he offered, after enough time to give it fair consideration but not enough to talk himself out of it.
“What?”
Oh God. That was so stupid. Change your name and get a job processing uranium in Croatia. Already considering the logistics of this petrified impulse, Lancelot chanced to look at Gawain’s face. Found surprising uncertainty, something like gratitude. “You wouldn’t— it wouldn’t make you miserable? I don’t— God, you really owe me less than nothing, seriously.”
Which was true, but there was some terribly familiar caste to Gawain’s expression, far too reflective. “I don’t think so. No more than anything else and— I’m offering.” Because it’s you, but that was an unconnected series of words that presented itself in his mind with no justification or permission.
“If you really— you’re really offering. I— uhm— am a little lost at the moment— metaphorically, I mean, I can get out of this alley no problem.” He chuckled awkwardly. “So. Yes. Please. If you truly don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind,” he said, and found he didn’t think it was a lie. At least, it wasn’t completely a lie.
Gawain looked at him for another half moment, then sharply away. “Cool. Okay. I— Thank you, really.” He paused as the box shuffled a foot closer. “We’ve been standing out here a while, God.”
“Oh— yeah.” The air remained painfully awkward, but at least that discomfort was more of a shared enemy now.
Gawain turned back to the box from which a fluffy tail emerged unsubtly, as they stood at the back door. “Sorry I threw a stick at you.”
“That’s a good start,” Lancelot said encouragingly. It wasn’t really, but he was trying to be positive.
The smile Gawain shot him was small, half of a pout, but a smile nonetheless. “You don’t have to patronize me,” he said, but it didn’t sound accusatory. Then, as though it was the same thought, he said, “Here— I can teach you to make coffee in return. I’ve seen you try. It’s a nightmarish experience.”
“I’m even worse at flowers,” Lancelot said, almost bragging.
“Yeah, I know, I’ve seen the blood.”
Thoughts caught up. “Oh— I mean by that— that I accept. Uh.”
“Cheers,” said Gawain, and raised his fist as though it held a fine wineglass. “To mutual edification.”
“Cheers,” said Lancelot, and the sun set.
It was later that evening, much later, that Priamus got an email from Lucius. He had climbed onto the roof of his apartment complex and was sitting propped against the blocky ventilation shaft, his headphones on and his laptop open on his lap, when the notification pinged up.
He clicked it, mainly out of boredom. He had dragged his portable telescope up the fire escape to the roof, hoping to look at cool things in the sky and maybe point lasers at passing planes, but as soon as he had emerged, a smog had rolled in and blocked his view. It was very depressing. Life was a dreary never-ending battle against the tides of boredom.
The subject line of the email was FUCK TIME WHAT NOT EXCUSED. This was relatively par the course for Lucius— he tended to put words together to convey emotion, rather than any actual sense. The contents were more concerning. First there was a link to TikTok, which was odd, and under that two words: Call me.
Priamus clicked on the TikTok. It had been shot in a dirty parking lot by someone who was not a very good cameraman, but what it depicted was undeniable: Priamus and Gawain, fighting their seminal back-alley knife fight, and then really very much not fighting anymore.
“Fuck,” breathed Priamus.