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“‘Nother round for th’ table, m’lady,” Gascon drawled, sidling up to the bar, “an’ keep ‘em comin’ as long as my coin stands!”
He attempted to maneuver himself onto a stool to await the tray of drinks he had ordered. Unfortunately, the amount of alcohol he had already imbibed made the task far more challenging than he had anticipated. In the process of getting himself seated, he knocked his knee against the sturdy wood of the bar with a resounding crack, clearly audible over the din of the crowded common room. He felt the jarring impact and was dimly aware that, were he in full possession of his faculties, he should be experiencing a great deal of agony, but the fuzz of the alcohol mercifully muted all his pain. Well, all the physical pain at least.
He scowled at the thought, realized he was scowling, and then aimed for a charming smile to reassure the barmaid who had not, as of yet, made any motion toward procuring his ordered libations. Given the frown and wrinkle between her brows in response to his overture, his smile had likely missed the mark as inelegantly as his arse had missed the barstool.
Her hair was a soft brown, not the golden blonde of rippling fields of wheat under the summer sky, but her eyes were the same fathomless blue… and staring at him with the same heart-rending mixture of compassion and annoyance. His chest ached at the entirely unnecessary reminder of who and what he had ridden away from eight days past.
He had a moment of respite when her gaze flickered nervously to the burly tavernkeep—who was thoroughly distracted by the party of bounty hunters eager to brag about their latest catch at the other end of the room—before she leaned conspiratorially over the bar. “Are you sure you need another drink, sir?”
Gascon could have kissed her and not just for her, admittedly weak, resemblance to a certain monarch he was trying rather desperately to forget. He did not need another drink; he was already far more intoxicated than he had ever been before in his life, even more so than he had been after successfully drinking Gabor under the table when the dwarf had challenged him during the army’s sojourn in Mahakam. He did not need another drink, and it wasn’t her place to care if he drowned himself in ale—if anything, she should be encouraging it since it would bring more money in for her employer—but here she was, potentially risking her livelihood out of misplaced sense of concern for an ungrateful scoundrel like him.
He felt tears welling in his eyes, but quickly wiped them away before anyone could notice. No one liked a weepy drunk. Since fleeing Rivia like a thief in the dead of night, he hadn’t cried once or spent a single evening remotely sober, and he wasn’t prepared to break either streak tonight. If he had had any friends at his table, anyone who cared, maybe they might have made an effort to curb his self-destructive spiral, but he didn’t, so it wasn’t worth dwelling on. Oh, there were a few sets of sober eyes, and one quiet girl who seemed genuinely interested in the story he had been telling all evening of how he’d risen from brigand to Duke and then fallen again to drinking himself to death in this backwater in Temeria, but most of them were nothing but opportunistic leeches who he’d met when he walked in: all bright smiles and cheery laughs as long as the drink kept flowing. Just the way it had been when he’d lead the Strays. Just the way he liked it, to be honest. You always knew where you stood with people like that. You always knew not to let your guard down.
“‘Nother round for th’ table, miss,” he repeated gently, and she hesitated for only a second more before nodding and going to fetch his order.
Gascon wobbled on the stool as he turned around to face the crowd while he waited. In his current state, his eyes were having trouble focusing which rendered the room into a comforting mish-mash of colours, all soft edges bleeding into each other like a smudged painting. It was warm in the tavern and crowded and loud and it smelled rather strongly of unwashed labourer, but not a single living soul here expected anything more of him than to keep the ale flowing. He was completely free, unburdened by liege or lover, friend or family, which was, he reminded himself, a good thing. People were always going on about fighting to be free, and here he had it! His whole life laid out before him, unwritten. It was really only the most minor of inconveniences that he seemed to have to be mind numbingly drunk in order to enjoy it.
"Sir?" The returning barmaid caught his attention with a gentle touch to his shoulder. He still just about jumped out of his skin, flailing awkwardly in his surprise and almost unseating himself. She handed over the tray of drinks with a disapproving frown, and Gascon staggered under the weight of it. He sloshed a great deal of the drink out as weaved his way back to his table, but enough of it remained that his return was heralded by cheers from his fair-weather companions.
“Now”—he snagged a tankard for himself before the greedy hands surrounding him snatched them all up—“where was I in my tale?”
“Hunting,” the man on his left supplied, clinking his glass amicably against Gascon’s with enough force that the liquid spilled over the side onto his hand.
“Right, Waldenrad. Beautiful country that. Forest’s as old as th’ elves. Or ‘twas, before the Blackclads got at it. Still, ‘tis growin’ back well and has always been th’ court’s favourite huntin’ grounds, so off we went.” Gascon set his pint down to shake his sticky hand dry and, when he went to retrieve it, found that one of the whoreson’s he was drinking with had already nicked the damn thing. He frowned at the empty space in front of him and looked back to the bar, but the fawning woman seated on his right tugged at his arm.
“Were you really hunting with royalty?” she drawled, biting her lip and giving him a fairly suggestive look that left little to the imagination regarding what she thought of that. She was blonde, but her hair didn’t gleam golden; it sat a flat yellow. She was comely enough, though, and her eyes, while green and not blue, did sparkle with ambition if not intelligence, so she might make a good enough substitute for an evening’s entertainment—if he hadn’t drunk away his ability to perform in that regard.
“O’ course I was. Me, th’ hero o’ th’ second Nilfgaardian war? I was invited to all sorts of fancy dos.” He pointedly ignored a scoff from directly across the table. He had been pointedly ignoring the grumpy man directly across the table since he had sat down. Gascon threw an arm around the blonde's shoulders and grinned broadly, very intentionally displaying a nonchalance he didn't entirely feel under his detractor's golden gaze. “‘Twas a small party, a dozen out to hunt and then half a dozen retinues on top of that: the fair queen and her golden General Odo, the heir apparent, my esteemed self, Dragomir Caldwell and his little boy, Rordonn Obert and his two sons, and Vraldim aep Bullorn, leader of the Nilfgaardian settlers in Willowhain, and his son and charmin’ wife. ‘Twas a sort o’ reconcilin’ effort—a show o’ good faith on th’ victorious queen’s part. A bit o’ proof we could all play nice together now th’ fightin’s all over and done with. One big happy family. We were mostly out for birds, grouse and th’ like, but Mevie nabbed a buck th’ third day.” He leaned over to stage whisper in the woman’s ear. “Always an overachiever, that one.”
The blonde giggled encouragingly and set a hand high on his thigh. “What did you shoot?”
“Oh…” Gascon equivocated, trying to think of a suitably impressive lie.
“Not a damned thing. Except for off at th’ mouth, as usual.”
The group laughed uproariously at the joke at his expense and Gascon plastered an insincere smile on his face before turning to signal a passing girl for another drink. The barmaid who brought it over to him was not the same one who had shown concern for him earlier and she set the glass down sharply to spin lazily in the puddle in front of him.
“The coin purse you gave us at the start of the evening’s almost spent,” she informed him, in a very matter of fact tone, hands on her hips.
“Almost, but not yet!” he proclaimed with bravado. The barmaid just rolled her eyes and returned to her rounds, but Gascon when raised his glass in a toast to that sentiment, he was met with a cheer by all who had joined him at his table, save for one: the dour man across from him who had (of course) made the unkind (if accurate) observation on Gascon’s hunting results for that particular trip. He was becoming infuriatingly harder and harder to ignore. Luckily, the moment’s distraction had given his pickled brain a chance to come up with the perfect excuse for his poor performance. He put his drink down before quaffing it in his eagerness to share.
“Didn’t seem right,” Gascon continued, as if there had been no interruption, “given th’ nature o’ th’ endeavour, to show up all th’ blue bloods and their ilk. So I stayed my arrows, shot wide or short on purpose, let th’ little critters free to fly ‘nother day.” It was true that he had shot dismally those three days they’d wandered in Waldenrad, but in honesty it hadn’t been his intent. He’d been distracted: golden hair and golden eyes, golden armour and a golden cloak, how was any man to see straight when so dazzled?
“Awfully noble of you,” the man to his left japed, knocking his elbow into Gascon’s ribs in a way that was probably meant to be playful but was actually just uncomfortable.
Gascon winced, but kept a grin on his face. “That’s me to a tee. I might’ve been th’ best bow out there, but I couldn’t go braggin’, you understand. Got to let th’ losers, Nilfgaard, Caldwell and th’ Osberts, save face.” Looking back, the drink in front of him was gone again. He frowned and furrowed his brow. He’d just put the damn thing down for a second.
“Your queen outshot the lot of you, though!” another man from further down the table offered with a laugh.
“Well, Mevie’s never been one to hold her shot, politics be damned.” Gascon smiled sadly at that. She’d conceived of the hunting trip, had it all arranged, and then immediately started grousing about having to go through with it, as if the entire thing wasn’t wholly her idea. She knew what to do, knew how to rule, but she didn’t always like it. Reynard had faithfully fallen into the role of belaboured counsel, ensuring that she didn’t cancel the whole thing on a whim. She never would have, she knew her duty too well, but it gave her peace to threaten it and Reynard was more than up to the task of shouldering her grumbling. They made a perfect team, the two of them, perfectly balancing each other.
“What else did the queen shoot?” The blonde squeezed his leg, drawing his attention back to her.
“Oh, nothin’ else after that.” For a second he considered laying his hand over hers and encouraging it suggestively higher up his thigh, but his thoughts had taken a morose turn, and so he fiddled with the pool of ale in front of him instead. “With th’ buck we had more than enough for a proper feast, so we turned tail back to Rivia Castle.”
“And that’s when you ran?” The woman who spoke was at the far end of the table and had been mostly quiet all night. Her voice was soft and non-judgemental, her eyes wide and interested—she was earnest, had been all evening, and was honestly just invested in the story of why he was sitting here funding their debauchery instead of dining with the queen—but it still felt like an accusation. The guilty see the hangman's noose in every passing tree, after all.
Gascon swallowed roughly, wishing to all the gods he had a drink. “No. First there was th’ baths.”
In the months after the war, when he was not at his own estate in Spalla, Gascon had mostly been at court with Meve in Lyria. The few days before the hunting trip had been his first stay at the castle in Rivia when they were not actively retaking it. While the Lyrian castle was obviously Meve’s—purposeful and severe in its architecture and furnishing, but wide open, airy and welcoming—the Rivian castle bore the traits of her dead husband Reginald: stout, crowded (or cozy, depending on how you were feeling about other people at the moment) and given to needless luxury. The baths were undeniably one of the greatest luxuries. Opulently decorated in the azure and gold of the Rivian lions on the king’s coat of arms, it could comfortably serve two dozen men simultaneously. Reginald had been known to host the entire Council of Peers there when the mood struck him.
“Is anyone else’s cup empty?” he asked the table, and did not wait for an answer before retreating to the bar for another round. He didn’t want to face the next part of the story empty handed. The moment where he’d known, completely known deep in the marrow of his bones, that he didn’t belong there played itself out before his eyes again and again. The barmaid had to touch his arm to wake him from his reverie when she’d prepared the tray.
“Thanks,” he mumbled to her, feeling the drink swirling in his head. It was the gentle blonde again, and he didn’t have the fortitude to deal with kindness at the moment.
“You’ve only two crowns left in your purse, sir,” she told him, smiling softly. “Last round and then straight off to bed with you, you hear?”
He shook his head at that, rejecting her concern outright, and turned to return to the table. He stumbled as he spun, balance all buggered by the alcohol, but someone caught him. Or rather, someone caught the tray. He blearily watched it bob off to the table without him, before gathering his reserves and staggering after it. When he fell into his seat, he noticed some kind soul had saved him a glass. He took a long pull off of it, relishing the cold, wet liquid on his dry throat, although he was so pissed it tasted of no more than water.
“So th’ first step to any proper royal feast, is dressin’,” he slurred, staring at the clear liquid sloshing around in his cup. “And th’ first step to that is bathin’. They’ve got a grand room for that at Rivia Castle, big enough for a whole squadron, ‘though you’d never see that many common people crowded into it at once. All done in blue and gold, truly a sight to see, I tell you. Our taxes hard at work there, eh mates? We were all down there soakin’, savin’ o’ course Mevie and th’ charming Mrs. aep Bullorn, and I notice…”
He noticed part of the table wasn’t listening to him anymore. The news of the depletion of his funds had made it back to the group, passed amongst them in hushed whispers, and most of them, the previously friendly blonde included, were now preoccupied with finishing their drinks and determining their next benefactor as efficiently as possible. But the quiet girl at the end of the table still looked invested. And of course there were the golden eyes he was studiously ignoring across the table from him.
Gascon looked to her, but he was speaking to him. “Th’ water’s so clean and clear in there, you can see right to th’ bottom. No modesty to hide your bits at all. Suppose ‘tis good for the king in that sense; you can be sure no one’s hidin’ any dagger unless they stashed the blasted thing up their bum. Th’ water’s so clean and we’re all sittin’ there and I notice… dirt.”
He dropped his eyes to his glass again and took a quick swig to steady his nerves. “I mean, we were in the bath, so you’d expect— but ‘twas only around me, only comin’ off of me, like those blasted nobles didn’t sweat. We were all out on the horses, all out for three days in the mire and muck, but the only one who was dirty was me.” He tried for a derisive laugh, but wasn’t entirely successful. “O’ course after th’ fact someone tells me you’re supposed to have a quick rinse before settlin’ in to soak—a step which I was th’ only one to skip—and that’s when I knew,” he lied. “That’s when I knew it was all a load o’ horse’s bollocks. Bathin’ before you bathe? What sort o’ waste is that? What sort o’ madmen dream up that nonsense? Knew I had to get out o’ there ‘fore I went mad too.”
It hadn’t actually been when Prince Anséis had taken him gently aside after the bath and quietly explained the proper etiquette to his uneducated arse that he had decided to run; it had been before that, when he had been sitting in a sort of existential horror watching the filth slough off of him and waft away toward the other noble lords. Everyone had noticed the mess he was making, it would have been impossible not to, but no one said anything. They were all too well bred to state something so obvious as Gascon’s ineptitude. Even the little lordlings had known to hold their tongues as they’d sidled unobtrusively further away from him along with everyone else. Everyone else, but Reynard. General Odo had stood his ground, paying the dirt swirling in the water around him not one care. If the infuriatingly stoic man had moved, had made any effort to save himself, maybe, maybe Gascon could have swallowed the ignominy of the situation and shown his face at dinner, but knowing that Reyand had sat there with him had made running the only course of action open to him. Gascon didn’t enjoy being a disappointment, but it was only to be expected. He couldn’t bear the thought of sullying the golden general and his queen, though.
“So I ran,” he finished, looking up to realize that even the quiet girl, his last neutral audience member, had fled, abandoning him to his sorry fate.
“Over a bath?” Reynard asked from across the table, sounding obviously unimpressed. “I knew you were a coward for runnin’, one way or ‘nother, but never thought you so craven as to flee still water.”
Gascon briefly contemplated continuing to ignore him. When Reynard had entered the tavern, and Gascon’s money had still been keeping him in boisterous company, it had been a fairly trivial matter to pretend that Reynard didn’t exist. Gascon knew that Reynard’s voice, while well pitched to carry over the battlefield, faltered in the face of drunken peasants he couldn’t sternly order back to their barracks to sleep it off. Unable to corner Gascon, but apparently unwilling to abandon his mission either, he’d set himself down sullenly at the table for a battle of attrition. Gascon had tried to be his most annoying, his most flamboyant, had encouraged his drinking partners to mock and belittle the other man, but Reynard had evidently made the bet that he could stubbornly outlast Gascon’s purse and the wager was now coming due in the stubborn man's favour.
Surrendering to the sulk he’d been feeling all evening, Gascon pouted and crossed his arms. “‘Twasn’t just a bath. ‘Twas embelmic.”
“Emblematic,” Reynard corrected. “And ‘twas not. ‘Twas just a damned bath. Now get your head out of your arse and come—”
Gascon shook his head. “No, I saw— I know what I saw.”
“You saw dirt in the water and some pretty lords skuttlin’ away from it like they didn’t stink of horse themselves half an hour earlier.”
“It got on you.” Gascon hadn’t meant to say that, but the message to shut up was taking a long way to traverse the distance between his ale-addled brain and his mouth. “It’ll get on you and it’ll get on Meve. You can’t… you can’t keep dross in th’ cupboard with th’ silver; it’ll tarnish.”
“It’ll clean,” Reynard insisted, “if you’re concerned about that. And I can tell you right now that Her Grace doesn’t give a damn. Anything that sees use gets dirty, and she doesn’t keep anything close to her that doesn’t see use. She’ll find a cause for a feast and th’ silverware won’t stay in th’ cupboard for long.”
“No, you don't get it. I’m not talking ‘bout literal silverware, Reynard.”
“I know, damn it! Neither was I!"
"There isn't actually a cupboard—”
"I know! It was your blasted analogy I was trying to upset! And it wasn’t a very good one to boot. I thought Her Grace and I were supposed to be gold in your little fable, not silver, so you'd have nothing to fear as gold doesn’t tarnish anyway—”
“It’s a metamore—”
“Metamphore,” Reynard stuttered. “Ugh. Metaphor. Gods, how many of these horrid things did you down before I got here?”
Gascon finally really looked across the table at the other man and noticed the obscene number of tankards arranged like a battlement before him. His brow furrowed in confusion at that sight; Reynard, ever allergic to anything resembling fun, was a teetotaler. “Did you drink all o’ those?”
Reynard rolled his eyes and Gascon was briefly distracted by how they sparkled in the firelight. “I couldn’t very well let you drink them; you’d be dead of alcohol poisoning.”
“You— You were stealin’ my drinks! You were tryin’ to cut me off!" He lifted the one glass he had left and waved it accusingly. "This is just water ‘fore me now, isn’t it? I thought I was just pissed and th' ale was weak, but you—” Gascon gaped, before narrowing his eyes and trying to bring the other man into something resembling focus. “Reynard, are you… are you drunk?”
The only other time Gascon had ever seen the man waver had been outside of Red Lobinden facing Meve’s fury at their respective betrayals. This time was decidedly more pleasant. A slight flush crept up his cheeks, making him look much younger than he was, although that could have also been the drink. “I am. And I can tell you I am not enjoying it.”
“You’re drunk!” The novelty of the situation was making him giddy.
“So are you!” Reynard retorted. “Goin’ on ‘bout baths and hunts and dross and gold and gibberish. And my eyes are not golden! They’re just brown. Boring brown.”
Gascon hadn’t been aware he’d said that part out loud. If he wasn’t already flush with his own drink, he would have blushed too. It was one thing for them to rib each other over their shared admiration of the Merry Widow, but quite another to admit that she wasn’t the only one he admired. He’d only been imagining her in others all night because he hadn’t had to imagine Reynard, sitting there as he was like a lodestone at his table. “I… uh…”
“Your’s are prettier. Green. Like emeralds. And deep. Like Meve’s.” Reynard’s voice trailed off, seemingly embarrassed by what secrets the drink had loosed from his lips. “You’re not dross, Gascon. Not to me. Not to us.”
“Us?”
“D’you think I wouldn’t be here without Meve’s permission? Ha! D’you think she didn’t order me to drag you back, in chains if need be? She doesn’t let go of what’s hers lightly!”
“That she doesn’t.” It was an impossible statement to deny. Her (at the time seemingly hopeless) devotion to reclaiming her lands from Nilfgaardian oppression was even now being sung and lauded in every tavern and banquet hall from here to the Blue Mountains. It was being posited by scholars in Oxenfurt and Novigrad that her stubborn refusal to capitulate in the face of an overwhelming enemy, had formed the unbreakable backbone of the entire North's commitment to the war effort. Even after the betrayal of her own son, Villem, even after being dethroned by the treacherous Council of Peers, even when left with nothing but her faithful general and a disgraced highwayman for allies, she had refused to go down. It was impossible to honestly accuse Meve of a lack of devotion.
Gascon had just never considered applying that possibility to himself. The thought was overwheming. For one thing, he didn't belong to anybody, had never belonged to anybody, didn't want to belong to anybody! He was a free man! "I'm not hers," he muttered, trying to work himself up into the outrage he had decided was the appropriate response, but did not actually remotely feel.
Reyand didn't even do him the courtesy of pretending that was a real argument. "Bullshit."
Gascon huffed in exasperation, and let his head fall to the slightly sticky table. He was hers. He had been hers, body and soul, from the moment he'd decided not to betray her to Nilfgaard at Red Lobiden. When she'd discovered his abandonned treachery and descended on him in her cold fury, when she'd sent him and Reynard both away, cast them out for their respective sins... well... being made to leave had never felt like a punishment before. Staying, being chained to something, that had always been the threat. Now he felt incomplete without her metaphorical collar around his neck—not as a symbol of his subservience, but as a promise of his value. It wasn't to keep him from running, it was to ensure he would be safely returned to her care if he got lost. Now, as he had then when he was dejectedly following the army through the muck and mire, he wanted to return to her, to them, more than just about anything. But he couldn't. She may have needed him once, needed him in her army, needed his briggands turned soldiers for her campaign, but now? What reigning monarch needs a courtier who doesn't know the court?
"Who says she needs you?" The words were objectively harsh, but Reynard's tone was soft. "Who says she needs me? She..." He stumbled over the words. "She wants us."
The usually calm and reserved general took a minute to compose himself and Gascon turned his head to study the man's face in wonder as he did so. Reynard was uncomfortable doing this, brow furrowed and looking to all the world like he was sucking on a lemon. He was uncomfortable expressing whatever this was while drunk and in a room full of strangers, but like the consumate professional he was he soldiered on.
"After Red Lobiden, she made it through th' swamp on her own. It was hell, a death march, ate away at her soul like a rot, but she made it. She didn't need us. But she took us both back anyway."
"We should have been there." It spilled out of him unintended, with a conviction he was unaccustomed to feeling and found more than a little surprising.
"Aye." Reynard fixed him with as steady a gaze as the besotted man was capable of. "We should have."
Gascon groaned in frustration and threw his weight off the table and back into his chair, which rocked precipitously. "This isn't th' same as that!"
"'Tis not?"
"No! This isn't me unable to help 'cause she's sent me off. This is me helping by taking myself off."
"So you don't get her dirty?"
"So I don't get either of you dirty!"
The tension simmering between them was almost a physical presence in the room, but eventually Reynard just sighed and staggered to his feet. "I don't rightly think that's your decision to make: what Meve or I am willing to wade through for th' pleasure of your company, and that's begging the question as to if there is anything to wade through at all. You think she is so weak that she could not bear whatever you bring to her? You think me so weak? Do you, yourself feel what burdens we place on your back in return as too heavy a load?" He sighed again. "But 'tis ultimately your decision if you'll see sense or not. Run, if you must; I'll not be your unwilling jailor. But don't deceive yourself into thinking your flight is some altruistic sacrifice for our benefit. You're caving to your own craven misgivings. You don't even want this, you're just... you're just scared of losing what you do want, so you think 'tis better never to have had it at all."
"You're one to talk!
Gascon pushed himself to his feet. "I haven't seen you take one step forward toward your own true desire in the entire time I've known you! Meve would take you to consort if you just—"
"Perhaps," Reynard conceded. "Or perhaps you're mistaken as to th' shape of my true desires. Perhaps I am far too selfish to settle for anything less than everything I desire. 'Tis a trait I've always much envied Her Grace for possessing; perhaps after these many years it has rubbed off on me." He met Gascon's eyes, unwavering. "But even if my progress forward is greatly slowed or entirely halted, at least I'm not running away."
And with that, he left.
Or at least he tried to. He actually got about eight swaying unsteady paces before he collided with another patron and collapsed, laughably easily, to the floor.
The other drunk, incensed over his spilled drink and never one to pass up the opportunity to kick a man when he was down, landed one solid blow to Reynard's stomach before Gascon was on him like a rabid dog. The fight was short lived, both participants so unsteady as to be as much of a danger to themselves as each other. There were a few good blows landed on both sides, Gascon feeling the force of the impacts, but not the pain, just as he had earlier when he'd knocked his knee into the bar. He would be a mess in the morning, but was ultimately victorious, chasing the bully off. Adreniline fading, he sunk to the tacky floor beside the fallen general.
Reynard was outright pouting. Gascon tried desperately (and failed utterly) to not find it adorable. "I didn't ask for your help! I was storming off, good and proper. Ruined the whole affect..."
"You'll survive."
"Will I?" he sneered. "Or should I go throw myself off th' nearest cliff in repentance for th' great dishonour of having dragged you through my own dirt? Sullied your good name in this fine establishment with my embarassing failures?"
"Oh, stuff it up your arse, Reynard. You made your damned point already." The last time they'd come to an agreement regarding their shared interests had been around a dismal fire in the disgusting muck of Ysgith when they'd stumbled upon each other both doggedly following the beacon of Meve's passing despite their disgraced status; it seemed fitting this compact should be sealed in the equally distasteful stale beer and other questionable fluids of a bar room floor. "Seein' as how 'tis got you in such a tizzy, I'll come back."
Instead of accepting his victory graciously, Reynard added, "You look a right mess and you fight like an amateur."
"You're a mean drunk, you know that?"
“I don't want to be any kind of drunk. I— Oooh…” Reynard was starting to look decidedly green around the gills. “Gascon, you know the proper etiquette here: where does a man go when he fears he’s about to…”
Gascon smiled as he stumbled to his feet and helped pull the other man to his. “Let’s get you outside, Ser Odo. You can gift the ale to the gutter with the rest of the drunkards. Then we’ll get some water in you and you can share my room. We’ll head back to Rivia when we’ve suitably recovered. Midday at th’ earliest, I wager.”
“I’ll… I’ll owe you one, for this. So th’ next time you don’t know something at court you can just bloody well ask!” Reynard leaned heavily on Gascon, eyes fluttering as he fought to focus them.
“They really are golden, you know.” Gascon didn’t remember bringing a hand up to cradle Reynard’s scruffy cheek, but the prickly stubble under his fingers informed him that that is precisely what he had done. Reynard blinked back at him, aforementioned eyes wide. The general’s hand was warm on Gascon’s waist and squeezing tightly as they clung to each other. He lurched slightly, and their faces were mere inches apart, and for a single blessed drunken second Gascon thought Reynard was going to do something wonderful with that.
Instead, he moaned again and resumed his miserable pilgrimage to the door. “Tell me that again when we’re sober.”
Gascon sighed and followed, despondent in the knowledge that he’d never dare. That was the crux of their dance, after all: the three of them all spinning around each other like drunken revellers at May Day, hopelessly entwined but painfully aware that tradition bade them not to touch, each terrified to make the first move. Meve couldn’t make a move for either of them for fear of accusations that she was abusing her power. With her every request bearing the posibility of being seen as a potential command, she wouldn't risk asking anything more of them. Reynard, for all his bluster, wouldn't make a move for fear of overstepping his prescribed role; he would grow old, wither and die before asking for anything that could be see as untoward. And Gascon, who didn't truly give a whit for tradition or propriety save when it came to the two of them, wouldn’t make a move for outright fear. He was, as Reynard had rightly accused him, a coward.
Although, on the other hand, he’d never thought he’d have the courage to return to Rivia, tail between his legs like an obedient dog, but apparently he was willing to do that. Meve had risked herself and weathered the accusations of abusing her power from her recently pared Council of Peers when, after the war, she’d taken him, a known bandit, into her inner circle. Even Reynard had stepped out of the comfort of his familiar position in order to get utterly pissed and fetch him back to court. Maybe there was hope for the three of them yet. Maybe the shape of Reynard's true desires were not that far off his own. Maybe, for them, he could find a way to be brave.
He winked cheekily at the blonde as she left the tavern on someone else's arm from his post reassuringly patting Reynard on the back as worn and weathered soldier emptied his stomach onto the cobblestones. The man was going to be a chore all night and likely long into the next morning and Gascon, while more experienced with the effects an abundance of alcohol had on the body, was going to be in hardly any better shape himself. Oddly, though, he felt he would still rather be here, consoling a miserably sick Reynard through his first hangover, than running off into the night for a quick tumble with her. If Reynard at his worst was more desirable to him than any stranger, if Meve's inevitable peevish anger at his flight was more desirable to him than his freedom—and if Reynard and Meve felt the same way about Gascon—maybe it was time to start believing that the risk would be worth the reward.