pro_patria_mortuus | (no subject)

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Bahorel was volubly gleeful at the prospect of learning swordfighting from a genuine medieval English knight who lived and made war with his longsword, and equally gleeful at the prospect of teaching him canne de combat. Enjolras isn't surprised at all by this; it's why he felt comfortable making the offer to Harry Percy in the first place.

This would probably be true even without Bahorel's current level of boredom. As it is, he'd probably leap at the chance to teach canne de combat to a dressmaker's dummy.

(A poor analogy. He's probably already done that, too.)

At any rate, the idea being mutually agreeable and their schedules being largely free, Enjolras and Bahorel and Harry have made their way together to the practice room upstairs.

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But why would someone ever not take one of the interesting rooms?

Bahorel can make an all-day project out of cleaning up--Harry may be a bit confused by just how many bottles and jars and brushes can exist in one bathroom-- but he doesn't have to, and this time he's out in a couple of minutes, even if he is still half-wearing a towel instead of a new shirt yet.

" Yours, then-- did anyone order anything yet?" Since the answer is almost certainly no, he's already making a note for the rats.

(If Harry asks, Bahorel will explain that no, of course the lean-to isn't for Djehuty, he's a god and has like a palace and gardens and stuff apparently, the little shrined over next to it is for the god, it's got incense, see? The lean to is for reading in. Obviously.)

Harry might ask later-- for the present he is still in the phase of silent confusion.

"I thank thee," he says, moving slowly towards the washroom. What could one person do with all these books?

Two people! And the difference that makes in options for Things To Do About Books, when it's the right people, is something Bahorel can and has written articles about.

But right now he's just down taking lunch orders. "Found anything you'd favor from the Bar, Enjolras?" Hey, it's a new land of wonders! Possibly even including Enjolras caring about food!

They're artistic was the sum total of Enjolras's explanation of the room.

They're also Romantics, and that matters. But he suspects Percy doesn't know the word, not in this context, and Bahorel will do an explanation much better justice.

He did, of course, make free with some glassware he was pretty certain was clean to pour three waters, and give Harry one. There's familiarity in the way he sorted (only a little bemusedly) through the collection of mysterious bottles of mysterious liquids to find a water pitcher.

"No, we haven't ordered," he says to Bahorel's question. And to the second question, a look of faint amusement; he knows the teasing that's going unsaid (for the moment) there. "Something with meat, nothing too peculiar. Beyond that, order what you like."

Harry emerges from the washroom, hair even more tousled than usual.

"It is only thine, this room?" he asks, moving away from the door so Enjolras can go in.

Enjolras has, in the meantime, borrowed a clean shirt. He didn't ask to borrow it, only because he knows Bahorel would be mortally offended by a friend standing on such bourgeois ceremony, but he did have to request a little assistance in finding one, with the increasing variety of weird future varieties. Enjolras does not want to wear a 20th century poet shirt, let alone something covered in sequins.

He will, however, take the opportunity to sluice off with a quick shower. (Showers are still kind of weird to him; there's a convenience to them, but they just don't feel as clean as a bath. But the speed is undeniable, especially when you really just want to wash off the sweat of a workout.)

He'll emerge in only a few minutes, damp and cleaner and wearing his own trousers and waistcoat with the borrowed shirt. In the meantime: enjoy this decorative explosion of a room with its co-occupant, Harry.

Bahorel shrugs. "Jehan's living here too, at the moment. You've met him, I think--Prouvaire? Tall fellow, particular dress, blushes for no reason anyone could guess, eyes like he's looking somewhere far off and right into you at the same time?-- The tent's his idea. And the shrine--" Bahorel nods to it, maybe a little more clearly "that's to his god-friend. So it's his place as much as mine, for now."

"Yes, yes, I have met him indeed," Harry says. "He did speak most highly of you. --why has he need of a tent indoors..?"

"Oh, a great many reasons.Why not a tent indoors, after all?" That's a somewhat flippant thing to say; it's also part of the answer. "Have you sat inside it? I'm sure he wouldn't mind. It's not a closed tent."

Uh.

Harry edges a bit closer to the tent.

"...is there something inside it?"

He seems to be a person to whom the simple charms of just sitting in a tent are not evident.

"No, no-- nothing except what you can see. It isn't magic, won't come to life and try to eat you or anything. Or anyway it hasn't yet." Probably best not to rule such things out, and anyway Bahorel has a certain sort of optimism. " It just changes the view. And sometimes a person needs that. And it changes the space, of course. --Have you ever been in a room with screens? Or a space curtained off?"

The shower has not actually started running yet.

Some of the reason for this is certainly the need to undress and so forth, but the rest of the reason will become apparent when the door cracks open and Enjolras's voice emerges: "Bahorel, which of these bottles is soap?"

There are so many. And yet, not a single honest cake of soap.

...There are so many bottles he could suggest for hilarious effects.

Alas, he's dealing with Enjolras.

"Green bottle, round black top." It's a perfectly decent bodywash that doesn't even smell like anything but soap.

Enjolras is only half-aware of the extent of Bahorel's kind forbearance. But he appreciates the half he's aware of.

"Thank you."

The door closes; the water turns on. Back to the artistic indoor lean-to investigation or whatever you guys want!

Edited 2015-08-28 03:23 (UTC)

Harry would look more amused if it hadn't taken him more than a month to figure out what a shower was and how to use it. Where 'figure out' means 'Feuilly showed him.'

But while this conversation happens, he takes the opportunity to creep cautiously into the tent and sit down.

"--it does alter the view," he concedes once the door has shut behind Enjolras.

"It does-- for as long as it stands. And it's good to have something of the outside here, against the order of the walls."

This is not said with any particular sarcasm, though Harry might think that the place has very little evidence of order. But there are totally straight lines still visible in places!

"It's good on nights when the ceilings here are too strange, too. Jehan's idea, so of course it works; he understands about dreams better."

Edited 2015-08-31 18:30 (UTC)

"...what becomes of the ceilings?" Harry asks. He casts an uncertain look upwards-- but, of course, sees only the top of the tent.

"Hah, nothing becomes of them, though that's a fair question here. --No, but sometimes after the wrong dreams..." Bahorel lounges sideways across the bed and looks up. They're good ceilings, really. Solid. He does like the room.

"Sometimes, after the wrong dreams, it's just the wrong ceiling, that's all. It's not home. Wake up dizzy in a dream and it feels like drowning." He says it with no embarrassment at all. "But both of us used to wander around at night, and fall asleep under a balcony or a branch; so that--" he stretches out to tap a branch of the odd lean-to "is close enough, sometimes."

"Wander?" he asks with a laugh. "For what cause?"

He feels a bit silly, just sitting and parroting questions, but-- to touch on the subject of dreams, wrong dreams, well-- that's a topic he is not capable of broaching with Bahorel's ease and lack of embarrassment, and certainly not to the man who has soundly beat him in now two fights.

Bahorel's smile is for somewhere far beyond the current conversation.

"Ah, so many reasons. To know the city. To hear her speaking, the voices of the people, and their silence at night; to learn her shape and the feel of her in the dark. To find a friend in the shadows where you expected an enemy, or find an enemy and become friends, when the nights made that possible."

He looks towards the ceiling again, not seeing it, one arm up to sketch out the remembered shapes of another life. "To watch the shadows take the walls at sunset, or the light take them in the morning; to learn the patterns of the people in the street in the lighter hours. To feel the Paris falling asleep around you, and going into her own dream, and being a waking part of it-- ah!"

He laughs. " --Or to steal a measure on the good officers of the law, and do things that Respectable people would stop when the light gave them courage to get out of their houses-- that, too." It was all the same, all for the life and love and liberty of home.

That faint whooshing sound might be all of this flying right over Harry's head. He looks more than a little bewildered.

"--I have not ever tried such things," is the best he can do. What?

Bahorel's laughter is friendly. "Well, you've never lived in Paris." Of course an Englishman isn't going to really understand.

He turns to study Harry for a moment; how to put it into English Knight-speak? "Say: because I loved my city, and meant to fight for her; and that meant I had the duty to know her. And because Paris was home, and a man should know his home, and the people in it."

Harry nods.

"Ay," he says. "Ay, I see."

Not about Paris specifically, of course, but-- yes, those are terms he can more readily understand.

Gad, it's like talking to Feuilly. All that dire seriousness. If the lean-to weren't in the way, Bahorel would ruffle Harry's hair.

But at least Feuilly knows not to be so damned respectful with him. Bahorel grins. "No need to be so sober about it; you'd have despised me there. Most of the people I met, I met in bars and cafes; we drank, we gambled, we brawled, we danced. And I loved that, too." That had been part of the whole conversation, the flow and art of Paris herself and the preparations for revolution in particular. Bahorel knows he can argue for it well enough. But he'll give Harry a chance to understand it on his own.

It's a testament to Harry's growing respect for Bahorel that he briefly considers politely lying!

"--no indeed, I would have liked thee not," he agrees. "And yet-- to do such things, and still to fight in a good cause--"

Well, it's not like anyone he's ever known. But he's getting used to that idea with Bahorel. Slowly.