Chapter Text
"Oh good, you made it."
"-oHH, heyyy, yep, here I am, in the flesh, wow, super stoked to be here, wouldn't want to be in any other place on this fine night-"
"you don't need to act so excited. Come in." He says, stepping to the side of the open door.
"oh." Rody steps into the apartment, glancing around and trying to look as polite as he can. It isn't working. "Right, uh- pardon the intrusion, uh- wow. This place sure looks- uh, well."
"What." Vince narrows his eyes at him, daring him to finish that sentence.
Rody takes that dare. "Your taste in interior design never goes anywhere I guess- woah, wait, hold on a sec, where are- I thought this was a dinner party?"
Crossing his arms, Vince says, "It is." There's chairs and decorations set out everywhere, what kind of maniac just keeps all these tables out for no reason? Just for fun? Honestly, this man can't hold a rational thought as well as he can hold a tray. Vincent should have just hired somebody.
"Then why am I the only guest here?"
He can't be serious. He cannot be serious. "...guest?"
"Yeah? I'm supposed to be your guest, right?"
He's serious. "pfft-! No. I had to find somebody to cater for them when they arrive."
"Are you for real? You called me here for work? On a Sunday, you mop-top?"
"The plates are on the counter." The doorbell rings. "That must be them. Just get the plates, Rody." When he opens the door, there's a few people on the other side. It's actually almost everybody, but one person is missing. "Hey, where's Jude? I thought he was going to be driving you?" The girl on the right, Juliette, speaks up, flipping her hair over her shoulder. "He said he'd be up in a minute. Leann drove. I think Jude was still downtown by his house when he called because I could hear the train from the phonebooth."
"What a flake. Whatever, he'll show up. He's probably with that girlfriend of his." Vince says, rolling his eyes.
"She's all show and no go, the poor girl," Leann chimes in. "I swear she's got something wrong with her."
The group walks in and sits down around the living room, chatting, while Vincent realizes that the entire time he was there talking, Rody has just been standing around in the kitchen. He hasn't come out of there once.
"Will you all excuse me for a moment? I have to go check on something," Vincent walks into the kitchen, leaning on the door impatiently. "What are you doing in here, trimming the window and painting the ceiling? Get out there, it's already been ten minutes." Rody side-eyes him, grabbing a random plate and half-running out of the kitchen. Must be a habit.
The doorbell rings. Must be Jude. When Vincent goes to the door, though, there's at least more than two people there. Opening it, he says, "This was supposed to be a small get-together, what happened?"
"Sorry, I hope you don't mind if I brought a couple plus ones!" Jude laughs nervously.
"This is plus two. Can you count?" Changing his mind about the next thing he wanted to say, Vincent shakes his head and goes back into the apartment. "Just come inside, it'll probably be fine, don't worry about it.." Jude follows him into the room, and just when the door closes, the bell rings again.
Vincent stops dead in his tracks, turning around slowly. "You and I are both gonna stand here and hope that's the mailman."
It's quiet.
It's quiet some more.
It might be the first time France has ever had a moment where Rody wasn't talking.
And the doorbell rings again. "If this is your plus three, I'm going to get you."
"W-wait, haha, uh, that wasn't me this time!" Jude chuckles nervously, waving his hands. "I swear I didn't do that, I only brought two people..!"
There's one person in the hallway, and they don't look familiar at all. Sighing and opening the door, Vincent gets ready to turn this person away, but they run in and jump into a hug with Juliette. "You're joking. You? Really?"
"I'm so sorry! I didn't know she was coming, this wasn't me!" she shouts across the room in between laughter with this random girl. This random girl who is in his house. Completely uninvited. He closes the door and drags a hand through his hair. This can't be happening today. "Look, I'm sorry, miss, but--"
The doorbell rings.
Vincent turns around so slowly you can actually see the gears in his head turn with him. "Alright." he takes a deep breath. "which one of you thons thought it would be funny-" the doorbell rings again. "oh, for the love of-- god damn it!" He yanks the door open. "I'm really sorry, you must be at the wrong-"
There's genuinely enough people out there to take up half the hallway. What? This many people don't even know where he lives. "You're the Chef, right? We saw your flyer!"
"My WHAT?" Nobody answers, because they're miraculously, like a bunch of rats, already in his house. Fuck.
And now there's music coming from somewhere? That's definitely music he hasn't ever bought, listened to, or thought about. Somebody is whistling from in the kitchen. Dumbfounded, Vince runs into the kitchen and there's a million people just hanging out. Already? They already found out where his kitchen is? There's only one other door, but still. This is ridiculous. But Vincent is tired and can't be bothered to get them all out of there, so he gives up, throws his hands in the air, grabs a full bottle of wine and leaves to go find a nice hole to die in. Maybe a good high window to conveniently fall out of.
It's really dark. Not in a midnight way, but in the desolate, no hope left, slasher movie go ahead and kill me way. It's looking bleak for a guy who hates parties, at a party, at his house. It's like the only place you get to use as an excuse is just out of reach and also currently where you are, and that's just too much. There's wine bottles all over the place, if that's any measure of how loud it is.
They're playing some new British band, and the music kind of sucks. Somebody brought a stack of vinyls, and another person brought vodka, and Jude might be doing shots on his cello case. This is a nightmare. What's worse is, Rody's out there making a complete fool of himself in the middle of the room. And everyone is loving it. He's doing this ridiculous dance, and Vince can't not watch. It's fascinating how one man can have so much wrong with him. Rody must have noticed, because he waves enthusiastically and then pulls a familiar looking girl, maybe someone he knew in school, out of the crowd around him and they start dancing together while the record gets flipped. Vince feels a pang that he chooses to ignore completely, and goes back to re-reading the label on his wine for what might be the fifth time. He could recite it if you paid him.
There were actually one or two good songs on that last record. He would ask what they were, but Vincent absolutely refuses to move from where he is. He went to go hide in his room, but right when he walked into the hallway somebody closed that door, and he kind of wants to burn the house down. They can have it if they want it, but he legitimately wants to move out. Kind of. He still likes his house, but not as much anymore.
Chateau Margaux! Grand vin 1921! Mis en bouteille au chateau! Etampe de caisses, bouchon.
That was an entire wine bottle label completely from memory. Somebody celebrate. Call the Queen of England. Write to Mr. Magoo.
This is the worst party Vincent has ever been to, he has not a single friend but this half a bottle of red wine. Everybody's still dancing, and now they're playing some crappy American rock band on his record player. Rody's become the life of the party; this should have been his job instead, honestly. Not that you can get paid for it, but it would probably work out for him anyway. It always does, doesn't it?
But now he's coming over here. Is he coming over here? He's on his way over here. Oh, boy, he thinks, because some jackass is on his way over here. Rody hits his shoulder lightly, or tries to. Vince thinks that if it weren't for gravity, he'd have flown across the coffee table. "Are you bored or just really blitzed?"
Rubbing his punched arm- which is a tragedy, he may never write with it again- Vincent raises one eyebrow at him. "Do you have something wrong with you? Were you dropped?" He snaps back. Rody ignores this and starts pushing him towards his living-room-turned-dancefloor, still talking his ear off about the music and all kinds of stuff that would make sense if maybe they were both completely sober.
"Come onnn," Rody slurs, "You're at your own party and you've been standing there all creepy-like, for, uh, forever? You were over there for like, an hour, go do something..!"
"No, no, no, I'm not doing shit, let me go and I'll go back to being all- what the fuck, 'creepy-like'. Who talks like that, hey, are you listening?!"
Pulling him by his arm and completely ignoring him, Rody keeps on dragging him to the middle of the room. When they get there, people see them both and start whooping and cheering. Rody must not have been the only one that noticed him standing around.
"Will you loosen up, little man? You've been standing like a soldier for the entire time you've been here! Will you- hang on," Rody decides on his solution to this problem, a glint of mischief in his eyes, which never means anything good. "Can we get the Beatles back on?!" He cheers, and the group starts going wild again. He throws one arm around Vincent, and he's so distracted by this that he doesn't notice the wine bottle disappearing from his hand.
Until Rody takes a big swig of it, which Vincent chooses to deliberately pretend he did not see, and he passes it off to somebody in the circle of people. The music starts up again, the 'Beatles', he said? Must have been those British guys with the guitars and no taste.
The circle looks different from the inside. Out there, from the corner, it looked like a bunch of people jumping around. From in here, though, when the music turns on, the crowd starts waving. Not with their hands, but it's like an optical illusion.
"You're at a party and you're not dancing, you lunatic," Rody laughs, "and it's your own party, that's worse!" Without any warning, grinning like an absolute fool, he grabs Vince's hands and starts dragging him around in drunken circles. Vincent is sure that to anybody rational, this would look so stupid, but the circle of people start doing the same thing. They're all just jumping around and into each other, boogie-woogieing like somebody's grandma, and they all look ridiculous. He must look the same, right? But eventually they figure out the song and start falling into step, and it's almost, for a second, a little nice?
What?
This is incredibly not nice. It's the opposite of nice. It's un-nice. This isn't nice.
But at the same time, though, it's a little fun. Vincent kicks himself internally for even thinking it, but it's kind of fun. And Rody's surprisingly really good at whatever this bouncing side-to-side thing he's doing is. He looks really stupid doing it, but it's not like it isn't really funny watching him, so he doesn't pull himself away.
"Come on, you're just standing there! Are you gonna stare at me this whole time?" Rody lightly kicks Vince's ankle. "Come on, casanova, do something!"
Vince glances around, decides that as far as he knows, he hasn't met any of these people once, and grumbles, "..fine."
So now they're both making complete fools of themselves. There must be some kind of pattern to this dance everyone's doing, but it's not really making much sense, so Vince is just jumping around, really. He looks so silly doing this, and he knows it, and he can't stop thinking about how ridiculous he must look to his actual friends.
And then Rody dips him and he completely forgets what he was thinking about.
They both freeze right then and there. "Uh," Rody blinks really hard a couple times, and then spins Vince to be standing again and keeps dancing, staring in a random direction. "Um.."
For a good few moments there, Vincent actually forgets to look around and make sure nobody saw that. He just looks at Rody for a little while. This song isn't half bad.
Some people are still left dancing, but they're really quiet now. A guy with a really shiny jacket changed the record a while ago and now it's playing one of Vincent's records, the one with a singer- he can't remember the name- a singer that only sings in English. Nobody else but him ever understood a single word, and it's one of the slow, jazzy types that puts everybody to sleep every time he plays it, so it's been gathering dust on the bookshelf. For the life of him, he's not sure how they found it.
At the cost of his whole entire reputation, he's hanging out on the couch with Rody and some people that he might have seen at the bistro a few times here and there; he found his wine, at least, and to be okay with all that dancing he's going to need the rest of it. Maybe a little more, if there's any left in the kitchen. But there's probably not, the entire house is wasted and there's people asleep on the corner of every piece of furniture in sight.
Rody's leaning over the side of the couch talking to some girl that's hungover on the floor next to him. He's looking all around the room while he talks to her, and somehow still can't be bothered to look at Vince. Not that it matters. He'd be avoiding eye contact too, if he dipped his boss in front of a whole party.
He's still thinking about that.
That's embarrassing, right? He should be embarrassed. That's the normal reaction. He should be finding any other thing to think about, like Rody's doing.
But he only knows what Rody's doing because he's watching him talk. Watching him talk to somebody else.
So he sits there and just quietly stares at this man on the couch, this man who is so distracted and oblivious and completely lost in his own world that he won't even look at Vincent. Once.
And Rody's eyes keep wandering around the room while he's telling these obnoxiously embellished stories and both Vincent and the girl are hanging off of every word and the bastard doesn't even know it. He won't look, he won't see, so he won't know.
The record ends. It's a shame. Vincent really liked that one.
Rody's gaze finally lands on something.
Noticing that his mind has stopped wandering for some reason, Vincent follows his gaze and sees that somebody had brought a guitar. What kind of tool do you have to be to bring a guitar to a party?
In a single blink, Rody has already made his way across the room to have a chat with the person who brought it.
He's walking over with the guitar. He can't possibly be serious. And he's walking over to Vince, of all people?
Rody all but throws himself down on the couch with the guitar, next to Vincent. Clearly on purpose, laughing and giggling like he's got some scheme, he knocks into Vince's shoulder as if just to mess with him. He leans on him as dramatically as possible. Vincent doesn't move. "D'you know I play guitar?"
He crosses his arms. "You never mentioned it, no."
Rody starts trying to play the guitar, but it's horrendously out of tune. Whoever's taking care of it has no idea what they're doing. "Uh," he stares at it for a second. In his genius drunken thinking, it almost seems like he thinks he's got perfect pitch or something, because he starts humming trying to tune the first string and the noise it's making is worse than it was to begin with. Vince sighs and shoves Rody sideways by the back of his head.
"-Ow! Hey, what's wrong with- oh." Vince is reaching for his cello case (which someone left a bunch of shot glasses on), pulling it over to the couch. He always keeps it tuned, because he's normal, so it should be alright for this. He checks to make sure it hasn't come out of tune, and turns to Rody.
"What note are you trying to get?"
"E2?"
Vince finds the note and plays it as long as he can so Rody can tune. It ends up taking a couple minutes, the poor fool, but he figures it out eventually.
Putting the cello back in its case and leaving it over on the floor behind the sofa, Vince leans his head on his hand, absentmindedly tapping his cheek. "Why do you have this, anyway? Who gave this to you, in their right mind, with the headache everyone has right now?"
Rody blinks really slowly. "How many questions was that?"
"Were you listening?"
"Uh... no."
"Oh, whatever. Go ahead, Tárrega." The girl at the side of the couch has sat up and is leaning on the armrest, watching. It must have grabbed a good few people's attention. They were being a little loud.. "Are you gonna play something?" She asks.
"Yeah," Rody says, "but only because Mr. Serious finally decided to let people live a little- damn!" Vince shoves him again with his elbow. "Watch it!"
"Sorry, I must not have seen you there," Vince grumbles sarcastically. They glare at each other for a second, but Rody still leans on him dramatically. Actually, he might be being more exaggerated this time, just to mess with him. "Sorry, Magoo, I'll just wear a big old shiny hat next time." The girl giggles at that, and Rody looks proud of himself.
Vince pushes him away this time. "You're not gonna be able to play laying down like that, you know." Rody sits up straight, but he doesn't move away. He just laughs again.
Everybody who was still awake was looking at him. He sat still, clearly trying to think up a song. "Guys, I got nothin'." The party goes still. An entire room of drunken brainstorming, and nobody can think of one. Impressive.
The girl at the end of the couch is talking again. "Do you speak any English? You could do Frank Sinatra."
"Hold on, you've got a good idea." He sits up properly and nods his head. "Yeah, actually, I think I know one or two of his songs. He's alright."
He moves the capo and strums the guitar for a little bit, humming while he tries to remember how the song goes. His playing is kind of hesitant, like he's worried about messing up. That or he's drunk off his face, which isn't off the table, either.
Eventually he gets the hang of it again. "I haven't sang in a while, guys, I might be a little rusty.." He chuckles and clears his throat. He's not necessarily bad at this whole music thing, but he's played the opening of this song at least twice by now.
"I know I stand in line, until you think you have the time to spend an evening with me,"
A few people around the room, including Vince, start looking surprised. Nobody, out of anyone here, expected him to be able to actually sing. Vincent couldn't come up with any reason why not, but it's not something you look at him and just make that association for.
"And if we go someplace to dance, I know that there's a chance you won't be leaving with me.."
Rody glances over at Vincent. He'll always and forever swear that he didn't, or that it was just his eyes drifting while he sang, but he still looked at him on purpose. Vincent won't ever be sure.
He'll think about it all the time.
"And afterwards, we'll drop into a quiet little place and have a drink or two,"
Rody stumbles over a couple of his lyrics here and there. It doesn't matter to Vincent at all. Nobody notices the mistakes, least of all him. Vince forgets to go reach for his wine, and just sits there, completely entranced with the song. It's going to be impossible to forget.
He'll think about it constantly.
"And then I'll go and spoil it all by saying somethin' stupid, like, 'I love you'.."
They make eye contact for history's most painful second. Rody must have done that by accident. It must have been some kind of mistake. Vincent had to fight to pull his eyes away from that second, though. Rody can't have had any trouble looking away. He was so embarrassed to dance with him, he must have been. He only ever talks about Manon.
"I-- I can see it in your eyes, that you despise the same old lies you heard the night before,"
Rody coughs. He looks like he's embarrassed, he's got to be. Vincent really hopes the rest of the party can't see the look on his face.
This song is going to drive him crazy. It's so..
It's cruel.
"And then I'll go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like, 'I love you'."
"I love you," when the group starts to cheer, Vincent almost forgets to look away again.
"I love you," he almost forgot to look normal and applaud.
"I love you." but he doesn't forget. He never will. And it's not like the song wasn't great.
For everyone else.
He'll think about it forever.
When he wakes up in the morning, completely hungover and feeling the worst he ever has, in every way, he's not entirely sure where he is.
Until he opens his eyes and realizes he was sleeping on Rody's shoulder.
And that they're making eye contact.
Vincent immediately bolts from the couch to go hide in the kitchen, mumbling excuses about making breakfast for the people that stayed over and kicking Jude out and something about laundry. Laundry? Seriously, that couldn't have been what he decided to say?
He's never hidden from anything. Especially not in a kitchen.
He's also never been legitimately mortified when somebody he's hiding from went looking for him.
"Are you okay? I just didn't want to wake you up is all, my bad.. you looked, I dunno," Rody had better not be hesitating on the word 'normal'. For any reason. "..peaceful? You were freaking out the entire time, I figured I'd just let you sleep."
"You're not mad, or weirded out or, something? Something like that?"
"..No."
"You seem like the type to be. You were acting weird when I called."
"What are you getting at, man?"
It's quiet for a very long time.
"Nothing," Vincent says, turning around to go actually make breakfast for the house. "It's not important."
He's not looking, but he can tell Rody's still there, even though he isn't talking. He doesn't turn around to check, though. Eventually Rody leaves, but he doesn't say goodbye. When Vince goes into the living room, he just isn't there.
He'll try to forget that.
He doesn't want to go look for him, but Rody left his keys on the couch. He'll leave them downstairs in the bistro. He doesn't want to go look for him and say something stupid.