World: Paris
Scene: Musain, ca. 1830. Amy rocks my world.
Players: Grantaire = Amy; Manon = Abby
Dusk is falling over Paris, a softly scented June twilight full of warm breezes and sunset afterglow. Manon enters the nearly-deserted Cafe Musain, heedless of propriety, with a stormy face completely unsuited to these pleasant surroundings.
From his accustomed corner, half shrouded in darkness that could just as easily be internal musings as the play of light and shadows, Grantaire toys absently with a half empty wine glass, more intent on spinning it in his fingers than drinking it. With the observance of one who spends more time than most watching the entrances and exits of others, he glances up at the arriving thundercloud and smiles faintly. Trouble abounds. "Evening," he mutters, distractedly.
Manon bangs her handbag down on a table, and, her feelings thus relieved, looks over. "Evening."
Darcel winces at the connection of the bag with wood. Far too like the pounding of fists on the tables, and God knows he's had enough of that. This day and every other. Still, he's in the mood to be gregarious, so he pauses in his amusement with the glass to observe: "Careful, Titaness, you'll break the furniture." Then: "Something amiss in the world's crooked streets?"
"Isn't there always?" she snaps, and then, "Sorry. Nothing. I live with an idiot, that's all." She tugs off her rather battered bonnet and pushes her fingers into her hair, scowling.
Darcel chuckles dryly and raises the glass to his lips. Not easily perturbed. "Isn't there always," he repeats, with the satisfaction of having his sentiments echoed. "Hell, from Helen pouting at Menelaus onwards, it's always the way. We beat each other to pulp, then tolerate each other after all 'cause there's not much else to be done about it. What'd he do, forget to pay the rent?"
Manon blows out her breath in exasperation. "He can't keep his pants on, is what."
Behind the glass a slight grin broadens, though whether in sympathy for the furious woman, the chastised male or in general amusement is debatable. "An... unfortunate affliction," he rasps out. "Careful, Mam'selle Sultana, or you'll have to keep eunuchs."
Which earns him a blazing black glance and the tart retort: "You volunteering, m'sieur?"
Darcel puts the glass down, but only after emptying it, and slumps forward on the table. "Hell, no. I've no stomach for the Orient. Bad enough to be confronted with Michael, Zeus and Apollo without Ahura-Mazda as well." Irrelevant, yes, but it needed saying, apparently. "Save the jabs for your beloved, Titaness, or you'll blunt your dagger."
Manon blinks at him; then, abruptly, chuckles. "I'm sorry," she says ruefully. "That was uncalled-for." She crosses the few steps to his table, and pauses. "May I?"
Darcel gestures vaguely at a chair. "Bah. And if humanity never said anything uncalled for, it'd be bloody quiet. Then we'd be able to hear our own thoughts and we'd all go mad. 'Course you may." Ironically, though not with any particular direction: "We're all at liberty, or so they tell me." Switches tack. "So, why not hold his head under the Styx until he's tamed?"
"I ought to," she says crossly, kicking out a chair and dropping into it with an irritable rustle of petticoats. And, seeming to feel that all this ranting requires explanation, she goes on, "We were out somewhere, you see, and we run into this little blonde creature, if you please, and he has to invite her to sit down because, forsooth, he was seeing her two weeks before he ran into me. Spent the entire afternoon playing gallant to that little minx, she hanging all over him -- oh, it would have turned your stomach."
"I think my stomach soured long ago." He squints across at her, suppressing a chuckle at the image of this tigress stalking in the company of a trilling man and cooing girl, like any feline waiting to take its prey. "The path of true love leads straight to the chopping block. Have a drink, Titaness" he nudges a half forgotten, not to mention half empty, bottle beside him "and mam'selle la blonde'll lose her head as quickly as you. God-- spare some pity for your errant gallant. Chivalry rears her ugly head from her shabby tomb to dig her teeth in on occasion. And she and prudence have always been each other's Nemesis. We can choke poison ourselves with imagination or starve on practicality. The results are much the same."
Manon stares at him a minute, then laughs again, this time bemusedly. "Well! if he could talk as prettily as you, I might let him off easier. Lord." She slouches back comfortably in her chair, her fury fading visibly to mere annoyance. "He was so oblivious, that's what maddens me. He never realizes what a bloody fool he's being."
This time he does laugh, softly and ruefully. "You'd like it better then, if he knew what he was about and kept it up? Like Pompey, with Caesar on one side and Egypt on the other, you can't win either way, so stick your head under the axe and either laugh or grumble. There are three types of men, impulsive fools, reticent fools and-- the most painful-- poetic fools. And sometimes all three at once." Perhaps it's best if he doesn't go into what he thinks of women. "We're a shabby breed, all up, still trying to shake the mud we were moulded from out of our ears."
That gets a third chuckle out of her. "Oh, I suppose." She leans on the table, arms folded, and sighs; then looks up at him, dark brows tilted queryingly. "You got a name, m'sieur?"
"As do you, I imagine, mam'selle, unless your mother had the ill humour to leave you without." He pours himself another glass of wine, almost absent mindedly. "I've several, most of which the tattered collection of sentiments we call 'etiquette' insist shouldn't be repeated in company. But if you mean the name my kin saddled me with, it's Grantaire. Darcel if you want particulars."
"Manon Latour." She offers a hand. "Did seem a shame to keep calling you 'you there'."
Darcel takes the proffered hand with a parody of a chivalrous flourish, since he's just been assailing the subject of courtly matters. "Mam'selle Latour. Hell, I answer to that, too."
Manon grins. "I'll bet you do. You come here often?"
Darcel picks up his glass again, swirling the contents. "When I've nothing better to do. Which is often enough. My friends like the ambience; God knows why. The furniture's battered enough--" grins "though not usually from being assaulted by the possessions of ladies, I'd wager if I thought my luck'd hold, but Eden had snakes, Elysium's flowers would cause a sneezing fit in a hospital and heaven, no doubt, stinks of the feathers of moulting angels' wings. There's no sanctuary without a hole in its wall to let the winter wind in."
Manon chuckles, shaking her head. "I like you," she says then, bluntly. "I do believe I do."
"What's believed and what is are two different things," he remarks, on a tangent. "Well, mam'selle--" he half drains the glass. Probably his idea of moderation. "Can't account for taste. Polyphemus ate people. Adam liked apple pips. Some people like war. Some people like turnips."
"And you?" she fires back.
Darcel raises twisted brows. "What I like's anyone's guess. Except mine, I don't play guessing games, they're likely to swallow you in their machinations before the Sphinx can so much as flex her claws." Shrugs and finishes the glass. "You make good company, Titaness, when you're not flashing your claws."
Manon blinks, suspecting that a compliment from this man is not so easily come by. "Well, thank you." She flexes her fingers at him a couple of times, teasingly. "I do try."
Darcel snorts and slouches back in his chair. "Try. Hardly worth the effort. Xerxes tried, Brasidas, Marius, Caligula; where'd it get them? In a box, the same as the rest of us." Stops before he ends up with a full blown diatribe on nothing in particular. "Save your scraps of sweet temper for tangling with your star-crossed, or star blinded, since the feeble things have a lethal edge, like everything else, lover."
"Hmph." She sits back in her chair abruptly, though she doesn't seem to be really offended. "Very well."
Darcel goes to all the effort of leaning forward to pour out another glass. "Not that that matters, either. Agamemnon's fate or Robespierre's. The patience of one or the patience of hundreds. Hell with it." Gestures dismissively by way of apology.
Manon grins a bit. "Often," she agrees.
Darcel begins toying with his glass again, as if it were a necessary appendage. An odd shaped extra finger on his right hand. "And see who cares who wields the axe, once their head's performing the service of some grotesque ball. If temper doesn't get you, mildness will." He realises that he's been agreed with. "Often as not, and odds aren't worth weighing. They're as dependable as a paper hat in a deluge."
"Yes, well." Manon leans on the table again, still grinning a bit; there is something about the R that irresistibly amuses her, apparently. "Are they all philosophers who come in here, or is it only you?"
Darcel grimaces, slightly, the physical resemblance to a gargoyle increasing with the twisting of features. "Heaven's rusty gates and hell's unfastened ones! Philosophers are gnarled old treestumps who sit about creaking with each other over whether we'll be blighted by fires, blizzards or locusts. Damned if I care which. This place" he gestures vaguely with the hand not occupied in twisting the glass, as if in reference to the absent multitude "takes what stumbles in off the streets." Muses. "Attracts rhetoric like siren song does sailors, though."
Manon gazes at him solemnly, eyes dancing. "I've noticed."
Darcel tilts his head back to drink from his glass. Snorts, though fortunately not at the same time. "Titans can throw thunderbolts, or bags. All we mortals can do is sputter about it."
Manon chuckles. "The way you talk," she chides, not displeased. And, musingly, "If I'd thunderbolts on hand, I wouldn't waste them on /that/ sort of nonsense."
"The way I talk, or billions of others, with heads stuffed full of the kindling that is human history and not a damn thing to do with it except blurt it out and trip over it when it lies flickering out in the street," he observes for the sake of doing so. As well as not. Looks at her dryly. "For which your absent M'sieur may offer up a fervent prayer of thanks-- and probably have his foot trodden on by an absent-minded divinity for his troubles."
Manon rejoins rather sourly, "Or his pocket picked by the latest nymph."
Darcel raises his glass in an ironic salute. "The epitome of humanity. With our feet squashed to the earth, paupered by our stupidity and God in his ragged robes and iron weight sandles glaring down at us in hypocritical disapprobation."
She can't help herself; she breaks down into laughter. "Good Lord, man!"
Darcel finishes the glass and puts it down again. "That, mam'selle, is entirely debatable. If debate ever went anywhere but in dizzying circles."
Manon leans forward, black eyes sparkling. "I don't believe even you know what you just said," she challenges.
Darcel spreads his hands, grinning. "Do you want it repeated, Titaness? They're only words, after all."
Manon only laughs again, and reaches out to capture one of his hands in her own. "You're absolutely mad."
Darcel shakes his head, probably a mistake after God knows how much wine, and shakes her hand like an ambassador reaching a mutual agreement. "Is it any wonder? State of the world."
Manon chuckles, shaking her head. "It is," she says, ambiguously, "it is." She glances out the window at the dark street, and sighs. "And I ought to be going."
Darcel slouches further back in his chair, the implication being that he might as well live in it. "Places to go, mortals to chastise? Give your amorous Don Quixote my condolences. We're all hopelessly flawed and suffer for it-- when we manage to remember."
"Ah, don't I know it." She looks rueful for a moment, and rises. Pauses, then, and of a sudden reclaims his hand long enough to press a kiss to his knuckles. "'s better to laugh than cry, m'sieur, and you made me laugh. Thank you." With that, she whisks away to collect the maltreated handbag and head for the door.
Darcel blinks once, bemusedly, then summons his wry grin again. "Adieu, Titaness." Odd lot, human beings. Bloody odd. Not likely to make any significant move in the near future, he puts a hand forward with customary ease to pour out the last dregs of his bottle of wine.
Manon casts him a last small grin, and departs.