Work Text:
“This is your new home Bug,” Locke said leading him down into the Elderglass cellar.
“Wowh,” Bug marveled, skimming his fingers across the walls before his eyes landed on the dinner table. His eyes grew wide as saucers. It was more food than Bug had ever seen in his entire life. More than he would eat in a year at Shades Hill.
“Take a seat. Eat your fill tonight. We’ll have more to do tomorrow, like introducing you to the Capa,” Locke said gesturing to an empty place next to the biggest man Bug had ever seen in his entire life. He would bet good silver the man could crush someone’s skull with nothing but his hands. Bug swallowed down his unease and climbed up onto the chair.
The table and chair weren’t all that high, but Bug was short for his age, and his feet hardly touched the floor. He looked up shyly, catching a glimpse of the twins. They looked a bit older than Locke and it was uncanny how they seemed to move in tandem. Their breaths and blinks completely in sync.
“I’m Calo Sanza,” said the twin on the right.
“And I’m Galdo Sanza,” said the twin on the left.
Bug watched as Locke and the big man shared a look; Locke tilted his head towards the big man who gave Locke a quick smile and slight shrug.
The man then turned to Bug. “I’m Jean Tannen. Welcome to the Gentleman Bastards.”
***
It had taken Bug three weeks to figure out which twin was which consistently. It was often their chosen question at dinner, when a wrong answer would make Bug have to do more chores and get less food.
“Am I Calo or Galdo Sanza?” One of the twins asked at dinner before they served Bug. They rotated through who quizzed Bug before dinner and today it was the twins turn, and for the past three weeks they always chose the same question.
“You’re Calo,” Bug said, finally certain that he’d gotten it right.
“Incorrect,” Calo said.
“What? No! You’re lying I know I’m right!” Bug protested. He looked to Jean and Locke who were wearing amused expressions. “I know I’m right.”
The twins smiled then to, for once not in perfect sync, Calo’s grin quirked more to the left than Galdo’s. “Correct,” Galdo said and piled food onto Bug’s plate. They never asked that question again after that night, and Bug’s training grew immediately more intense as the twins started teaching Bug cooking, which he found immensely difficult. He had no patience for recipes and no eye for how much spice was too much, leading to some rather unpleasant meals.
Bug liked Locke’s lessons the best. He taught languages and accents and some of pickpocketing. Bug was already rather good at pickpocketing, having been one of the best teasers from Shades Hill, but he was amazed by Locke’s skill.
Jean taught maths, politics and reading which Bug found rather interesting, if quite difficult.
One day Locke interrupted one of Jean’s math lessons. “Bug answer this for me,” he’d said coming into the room with his hands behind his back and a smile on his face.
“If I have six apple cores, and leave Jean alone in a room with them, in two minutes how many apple cores will I have?”
Bug thought. Apple cores? “What? Six?”
“Wrong. Zero, Jean would eat them all,” Locke tossed something at Jean he’d been holding behind his back.
Jean caught it with ease. An apple core. Jean smiled and popped it in his mouth, core and all.
Jean looked back up at the door but Locke was already gone.
Bug gaged.
“They’re good you just haven’t tried them,” Jean said.
“Think I’ll pass.”
***
One day after returning from the markets with new ingredients for a dish the Sanzas wanted him to make he found Locke and Jean splayed out on the couch in the living quarters of the Elderglass cellar, Jean with a book in his hands, optics perched on his nose and Locke with his head in Jean’s lap, feet hanging off the other end of the couch. Locke was flipping a coin up in the air and catching it.
“Heads or tails?” Locke asked, looking up at Jean.
Jean didn’t look away from his page. “Heads.”
Locke looked at the coin. “Tails. I win.”
Jean reached down and flicked the top of Locke’s head and Locke laughed then went back to walking the coin across his knuckles.
Bug paused in the entryway watching this exchange. Curious. But he quickly hurried on, knowing the Sanzas would surely come up with something else to torture him with if he was late.
***
When Bug first started learning Vadran they’d spoken it exclusively in the cellar. Locke had said it would help Bug learn the language faster but he only found it frustrating. He only knew the basics, good morning, thank you, pass the salt. He could hardly carry out a whole conversation, and the others spoke so quickly Bug could hardly keep up.
Locke said something to Jean and the Sanzas had collectively rolled their eyes while Jean flushed a bright cherry red.
At that moment Bug would have given his left arm to know what Locke could have said to color Jean like that. None of the Gentleman Bastards sheltered their tongue around Bug even though he was young and he’d heard filthy things come out of all of their mouths.
While Jean blushed and the Sanzas rolled their eyes Locke looked immensely proud of himself.
He said something else, another string of harsh vowels that Bug couldn’t even begin to guess at.
“Not at the dinner table you two,” Calo said, still in Vadran but those were words Bug actually understood.
“There are children present,” Galdo said.
“Later,” Locke said, looking at Jean and taking a sip of his wine. Jean in turn took a sip of wine seeming to be trying to hide in the glass.
***
Jean often interrupted Locke’s lessons as they tended to run for far too long right through lunch. Bug couldn’t say that he minded, Locke always made his lessons interesting, but towards the end of the lesson Bug was always exhausted and hungry.
One day when Locke was going on and on about the specifics of a Vadran accent Jean came in with a plate of food. It wasn’t extravagant food like they made for dinner, more like street food that Jean had just picked up. Jean gave Locke a stern look as he set the plate down next to Locke.
Locke looked up at Jean then with the softest sort of smile. Jean grabbed Locke’s hands and forcefully fit the utensils into them. “Eat,” he said.
Locke rolled his eyes but did take a bite of the food.
Bug pouted. Jean never brought him food, even though he spent the same time locked up in the lesson as Locke did.
Jean turned and left, Locke’s eyes lingered on the door for a moment and then he resumed the lesson, getting Bug to parrot back specific accents until he could do them perfectly without prompting.
***
Bug had been living with the Gentleman Bastards for a year by the time he started really picking up on all the little things Jean and Locke did for each other. Locke would pickpocket little trinkets and pieces of jewelry while he was out and leave them for Jean to find. They always had gems—real stones or alchemical compounds it didn’t seem to matter—but they were always of the same slightly green blue color that almost matched the color of Jean’s eyes.
Jean wouldn’t get mad at Locke when Locke ate the batter of whatever treats he was making even though he scolded Bug and the Sanzas for trying to do the same.
Locke would always seem to know where Jean’s optics were.
Jean would always do the hard pole work of moving about the canals when it was just him and Locke going out.
They were always next to each other. Sort of in the way that the Sanzas were always together, but in a different way. Bug couldn’t imagine Calo Sanza without Galdo Sanza in the same way that he couldn’t imagine Jean without Locke, or Locke without Jean. They were two halves of a whole, the leader of the Gentleman Bastards and his right hand.
Bug imagined that it was the years they spent training under Father Chains that gave them such a close connection, and he imagined that he might some day be trusted enough, competent enough to be as close as they were.
He’d expressed his thoughts to the Sanzas who had laughed and told Bug not to wish for things he didn’t know the whole half of, which he thought an odd thing to say, but he didn’t ask any further questions.
***
After a while the Sanzas had moved on to teaching Bug all their hand signals. Bug had seen the others use them when they were out and occasionally when they were in the cellar. He often noticed Locke making a sign of putting his hand to his chest and tapping his index finger once, and he’d seen Jean repeated the sign back on more than one occasion too. Come to think of it, that was just about the only hand sign they used while in the cellar. Bug just hoped they wouldn’t spend a month only talking in hand signs like they had when he was learning Vadran.
Calo and Galdo first went through the most important signs: help, run, hide, look, missing, yellowjacket and then moved to showing him the signs they had for each others names, which could then be strung together with the more obvious phrases to say things like Calo missing, or, help Galdo.
The twins let Bug figure out his own sign for his name, different from any other invented sign but still subtle enough as to not be noticed.
They also showed Bug the signs for Locke and Jean’s names, which, as he thought about it He’d sometimes see Jean or Locke sign the other’s name when they were just sitting alone in the cellar. It would get a smile out of the other and then sometimes they would sign back. Curious.
Bug thought that the twins would eventually explain the hand over heart gesture that Locke and Jean did so often but after two weeks when Bug was practically fluent in hand signs they moved on to a new topic.
Bug brought it up in his lesson once it was clear that they were done going over hand signs.
“So what’s the sign Jean and Locke do all the time?”
“You don’t mean,” Calo started and Galdo did the gesture, right hand over the heart, one tap of the index finger.
They both made a gagging noise in unison.
“What? What does it mean?”
“They’re both such saps,” Galdo said.
“Which is why we can’t tell you,” Calo said.
“It can’t possibly be that important!”
Calo and Galdo shared a look. “You’ll figure it out when you’re older.”
***
Bug couldn’t quite remember when he’d realized, but he started to notice that Jean and Locke always wore matching rings whenever they weren’t in disguise. He remembered back at Shades hill some of the girls would make friendship bracelets for each other out of bits of loose string, rope and wire and he wondered if the rings were like that. Friendship rings, just of a nicer build than the literal garbage the Shades Hill orphans picked up off the streets.
***
Jean had finally started teaching Bug how to fight, and it was the greatest thing he could have asked for. Jean was amazingly strong and had so many tips on stance and how to hold a blade.
“Kick him in the nuts Bug,” Locke had said from where he stood watching their sparring match. Bug was two weeks into his fighting training and this was the first time Locke had come to watch.
“Locke,” Jean said, a clear warning in his tone.
“You’re smaller than him, use advantages where you can get it.”
Bug risked a glance away from Jean towards Locke, who was leaning all too casually against the wall with an all too happy look on his face. Bug had thought Locke had come to make sure his training was coming along well, but Locke seemed to be looking more at Jean than at Bug himself, and Jean in turn seemed to be paying more attention to Locke than the opponent right in front of him.
Locke made that hand sign, right hand to the heart, tap of the index finger and Bug sprung on Jean in a flash while Jean was distracted, hitting the flat of his blade against the back of Jean’s knees and sending him falling forward where he barely caught himself before he fell flat on his face. Bug pointed the tip of his blade at Jean’s neck.
Jean laughed and shook his head, getting to his feet. He repeated the hand sign to Locke who looked immensely proud of himself.
“Now get out,” Jean said, and Locke practically skipped out of the room.
***
It wasn’t often that Bug found Locke in the kitchens. He did his fair share of cooking just like the others, but it wasn’t his day to prepare dinner.
“What are you making?” Bug asked. He didn’t really want to get roped into helping Locke, he only had a few minutes before he had a lesson with the Sanzas that he did not want to be late for.
“Tarts,” Locke said, adding a spice into the bowl he was mixing.
Of all the things, Bug had never seen Locke cook tarts. Usually that was Jean’s signature dish.
“Bug!” Galdo called.
“If you’re not over here in two minutes you’ll have kitchen duty for the next week!” Calo finished.
“Coming!” Bug shouted back, before running off to his lesson.
That evening at dinner Locke and Jean were missing. It was the first time in the nearly a year Bug had been with the Gentleman Bastards that any member was missing for dinner. Dinner was no less extravagant, prepared by the twins tonight, but it felt weird not having Locke and Jean there.
“Are they ok? Did something happen?” Bug asked after the Sanzas had finished asking him their question, a lowball question about the geography of Tal Vedar.
“What day is it?” Calo asked.
Galdo inspected the calendar they had posted on the wall. Bug had looked at it earlier but had noticed nothing interesting about this date, it was completely empty of any holidays or birthdays or special events.
“It’s that day,” Galdo said.
“What day?” Bug asked.
“They’re fine Bug,” Calo said.
“Ok but where are they?”
“How should we know?” Galdo asked.
Later that evening after dinner Bug was washing the dishes when Locke and Jean came in, laughing softly and whispering between each other. They rounded the corner and saw Bug in the kitchen.
Locke nodded once to Bug, smile never falling from his face as he reached up and pulled their nicest bottle of wine from the shelf and the plate of tarts he’d baked earlier and head back into the living room.
Bug peaked out at them from the kitchen.
Jean’s face lit up when he saw Locke walk back in with wine and tarts. “Did you make those?”
“No, I found them in a back-alley.”
Jean took a tart off the plate and took a bite. “Butter tarts?”
“With extra raisins, which you’re a monster for enjoying by the way.”
“You can give me your raisins and then yours will be raisin free and mine will have extra, extra raisins,” Jean said.
“You’re disgusting,” Locke said with a laugh. He uncorked the bottle of wine and poured himself and Jean a glass.
“To five years,” Jean said, holding up his glass.
“Gods has it really been that long?”
“And to think the Sanzas said we wouldn’t last five months.”
Locke held his glass up to Jean’s. “To proving the Sanzas wrong. And to five more years to follow.”
“To five more years,” Jean echoed as they clinked glasses.
Jean leaned in and whispered something into Locke’s ear. Locke sighed heavily.
“Bug, less sneaking more dish washing!” Locke called.
Bug jumped and raced back from his hiding place to the sink, making a big audible show of washing the dishes. Curious. Curious indeed. They were an odd pair of friends those two.
***
Bug remembered very clearly the day Locke had sat him down and told him that he was going to spend three months as a stable hand in a small country city some ways north of Camorr. It had been just under two years after his initiation to the Gentleman Bastards.
He’d complained a lot then. He’d been progressing a lot with his lessons and he’d hoped to just continue doing that, but Locke had insisted that it was all part of the training and that all the other Gentleman Bastards had done random apprenticeships during their training with Father Chains.
The actual work as a stable hand had been remarkably dull, but the practice playing a role for so long was welcome, though Bug was glad when the three months were up and he could go back to Camorr. He arrived back at the temple long after Falselight, but he was just happy to be back. He wasn’t too proud to admit that he’d missed everyone. He’d missed his lessons, the teasing of the Sanzas, Jean’s fighting lessons and kind words, and Locke’s overenthusiastic teaching. He’d missed their nice dinners and nice wine, and he’d even missed cooking, though he still wasn’t the best at that.
When he came back into the cellar he’d expected it to be utterly silent, it was rather late after all, but there were candles lit, burning low in the dining and living room, though there wasn’t anyone around. The atmosphere set him on edge, and he let his stiletto fall into his hand.
He snuck towards the kitchen where he saw a broken wine glass and a bottle of red wine tipped over on its side, slowly drip, drip, dripping from the counter onto the floor in a pool so red it could be mistaken for blood.
Listening close, Bug heard noises coming from the bedrooms. He stuck to the low shadows cast by the candles and snuck around the twisting hallways of the cellar. As he got closer to the bedrooms the sounds crystalized into faint cries and heavy breathing.
A fight. It must be. Though how someone could have snuck into the Elderglass cellar wasn’t something Bug had the time to work through right now. Someone was in the cellar and the others were probably fighting for their lives.
The noises came from Locke’s bedroom and Bug snuck over to that door, pushing it open slowly. His nerves were inclined to slam it open and race to help his brothers against this intruder, but he’d been taught to always keep a level head. The intruder didn’t know Bug was here, he’d probably planned to make his attack while Bug was gone so that he had less people to deal with, but had miscalculated Bug getting back to Camorr a day early. He could sneak up on the intruder and put his stiletto straight in his neck. That would do it.
Bug gently tipped the handle of the door. It opened the smallest crack and. . . Bug closed the door. So that was what was going on with Jean and Locke.
Calo and Galdo appeared in the hallway out of nowhere, ushering Bug down the hall to his own room.
“You’re back early,” Calo said, practically shoving Bug into his room.
“Thought you’d be back tomorrow,” Galdo was about to close the door to Bug’s room when Bug jammed his foot in the door, keeping them from closing him inside.
“How long have they. . .” Bug made a crude gesture with his hands, lacking any of the subtlety of their street signs.
“Too long,” Calo said.
“What six years since they first. . .” Galdo said
“Far too long,” Calo said shaking his head.
“Sweet thirteenth,” Bug muttered. “I’m never washing that image out of my head.”