Work Text:
Mercymorn had taken one look at Augustine’s suit and said, “Do you think. In that.”
Augustine stubbed out his cigarette and said, “I won’t ask what you expected.”
“It’s funereal.”
“I believe that you yourself agreed we oughtn’t be too flashy, lest we arouse suspicion. And I will proudly recycle it for your funeral.”
Mercymorn looked perfectly wretched, as anyone could have predicted, but she had done a nice job of it. Someone else might have complimented her.
“I will have either the unspeakable privilege of not giving a damn what you wear to my funeral, Augustine, or of attending yours. This, however—”
“Here,” Augustine said, “help me with the tie, won’t you?”
He held it out and Mercymorn nearly hissed, which was, quite frankly, pathetic, but she took it anyway.
As the tie was looped around his collar, Augustine recited, to no one in particular, “He did not wear his scarlet coat, For blood and wine are red.”
Mercymorn said, “Hence the white wine.”
“If it gets on your hands, Joy, I dare say you’ve gone and made a mess of it.”
Mercymorn’s expression twisted to something past contempt.
“Yes, we’ve discussed this, et cetera, and you may attempt to strangle me later, if you must. I will spit you out of my mouth.”
“Both coarse and unnecessary!” Mercymorn said.
“I dearly hope so,” said Augustine.
Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
By each let this be heard,
Mercymorn knew how the tie should be tied. Augustine would once have been able to imagine a life where something like this would be normal, though in an ideal world for both of them the other might never have existed at all.
There could have been a comment to be made about trying to look interested, but Mercymorn was standing close enough to him. Augustine himself was, at this point, moving on from desperately bored.
“It could hardly kill you to exercise a little more gentleness,” he said, “at least for the sake of the fabric. How long did you spend filing your nails?”
Mercymorn held the ends of Augustine’s half-done tie in one hand to reach up and press the edge of a thumbnail into the skin of his (meticulously shaven) cheek, hard enough to be painful.
“Oh, don’t make me bleed on this shirt, will you?” said Augustine.
“And if I do?” Mercymorn said, returning to the tie with no more delicacy than before. “If I do? I’ll bite your lip and play cat’s cradle with your facial nerves. I’ll rip out your tongue and your eardrums, you perfect ghoul.”
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!
“If you do,” Augustine said, “I’ll presume that the job is done, and that will satisfy me.”
Mercymorn said, “As if I care!” and tied the knot. “As if I could give one single ounce of care to whether you are satisfied, because I can tell you right now that I will not be, not until—”
“I know, Joy. I do know. We planned it.”
The Saint of Joy straightened the Saint of Patience’s tie, which was bound to be immaculately done and which he would have been perfectly capable of doing himself, and briskly straightened his vest while she was at it. Then she looked up at him.
“Pray don’t think about it more than you have to,” Augustine said.
Mercymorn kissed him. She bit his lip. Augustine followed along, and caught her wrist as she went to grab his arm.
“Any other time,” he said, very quietly. “Try me, Joy. Try anything you like.”
“Try! With you!!”
They kissed, again, in an imitation of rehearsal. Mercymorn was wearing perfume that Augustine recognised from a very, very long time ago.
“Don’t go to any trouble,” Augustine said.
“Not for you,” said Mercymorn.
For each man kills the thing he loves,
Yet each man does not die.