boom goes the canon #2

[clayforthedevil]

As far as Bahorel can tell, there's no reason he shouldn't paint on the walls of his new room. (It's hardly going to damage the aesthetic unity of the place, which appears to be "secondhand bazaar held in a cave" . It's very liberating.)

So that's what he's doing tonight, dressed up even to the point of tophat and tailcoat and tracing the outline of a city-country-something skyline around the room in red paint, his door open in case one of the wait-rats needs to come in-- or anyone else.

Comments

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"I'm knocking," says a voice in the doorway, "to preserve your privacy and not interrupt you in any delicate work. Knock, knock."

[clayforthedevil]

"I've clearly been too long away, if you've fallen into the habit of knocking on open doors." In the middle of a particularly wiggly line, Bahorel doesn't turn around, but he does wave Lesgle in with his free arm. " Wine rack's by the large orange rock next to the candelabra on the floor. Want a paintbrush? "

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"Do you want me to have a paintbrush?" He doesn't mind, but Bahorel might want to think twice. "You've seen my construction work."

The wine rack is indeed by the large orange rock next to the candelabra on the floor. Of course. Had he and Joly seen this room on their tour? Lesgle thinks so, or at least a room in the same spirit.

He opens a bottle and wanders over to the painting area, ready to take a brush or not.

[clayforthedevil]

Bahorel grins. "I don't think even Joly could blame me if you manage to break your ribs on a paintbrush. Give in to the artistic impulse, if it moves you. It's good for the soul, and it might even improve the walls. Unless there's a more urgent reason for this visit-- is there a fire? A meeting? Has the furniture in your room come to life and began attacking, and you come looking for weaponry?"

...That last one probably isn't impossible in Milliways.,

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"Oh, all of the above, of course. I've come here for some peace and quiet."

He does pick up a paintbrush, and stares at it thoughtfully. "--No, but I didn't want you to think I was avoiding you."

[clayforthedevil]

"Ha, I didn't think it was me you were avoiding." He dunks his brush into the water bucket. "Did you talk to Joly?"

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"I'm very tempted to say No, I haven't," Bossuet answers mildly, "And we've been communicating solely through pantomime all week. --Yes, I talked to Joly; he's interested in your ideas about communication between universes. I've not seen Grantaire except for the Christmas party. I'll go over to his room after this, I suppose."

[clayforthedevil]

"Resisting temptation? You are becoming respectable." He leans back on his hands and looks at the wall. The line's very neat. Hmm. "You'll do fine with Grantaire. And yourself? Have you settled things to your own satisfaction?" It's not a flippant question. Seeing Bossuet of all people truly distraught over a novel was a strange experience.

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"Why do you wound me so?" Respectable, is it? Well! He had been going to warn Bahorel before he started putting his brush to work filling the city-country-something with naked women. But Bahorel can do without warning.

"--Mm, my own satisfaction. Who among us finds more than a moment of that? Anything approaching that state lasts some few seconds before the sweat is cooling on your back and you notice that the only warm blanket is on the floor."

[clayforthedevil]

Bahorel grins in exactly the way that comment deserves. "And thus life is ever in the searching. -- But you're settled in this, then? If I ask Joly how you're doing, I'll hear no more than the usual concerns for your health and sanity?" He starts tossing water from his brush along his earlier paint-line, watching the splatters mar and run the neat curves. Better.

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

It probably deserves some eye-rolling as well.

The naked people he's daubing in are, at least, not terribly large. He's putting in something like a satyr or two as well, so it's, you know, allegorical.

Also it's getting splattered by Bahorel's experiment. "Why, I don't answer for Joly's diagnostics. But he should have no cause to complain of me. --He's the only one I've spoken to about it. I expect Feuilly will just be annoyed that Hugo felt the need to redact the names of those boors who stood us up when the moment came to dance. Caught a case of discretion, did Hugo?"

[clayforthedevil]

"Ha, he should be annoyed; he has fewer lines than my waistcoats. I think it's Combeferre who really needs to hear of this; he's already injuring himself looking for knowledge to pursue, he could use the distraction. So-- nothing else, then?" He leans back and considers the skyline again. It's scattering nicely now.

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"Nothing else--at any rate, I won't pull a long face and read you a mournful lecture if you go talk to Combeferre about it."

Still, he's frowning. "Although--Javert. Fauchelevent. Marius's fiancée, that sweet creature." He didn't read extensively beyond the scope of the Amis and their business, but it was hard to miss the obvious bulk of novel addressing those others.

[clayforthedevil]

"Hmmmm. And Gavroche; he's got a few chapters. I did read some of Javert's of course-- after he crossed our barricade. The book's clearly wrong about some of his story, at any rate, however close it may cut with us. And I have no intention of telling him anything of it; not that I think he'd listen to any of us! But the others..." he thinks a moment, laying out something over the skyline in only water. " I don't know how truthful it might be. In our France, if the book ever exists at all, it won't be for decades. There's people in that story who have no way or reason of knowing about it until then.

But here-- Mlle. Fauchelevent and her father come here, they face the same problem any of us would if we didn't know of it, that others may read it and know of them, or think they know of them, and yet they'd have no warning. Damn! It feels like leaving them unguarded, to say nothing at all. Still."

Still. It's a problem.

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"Javert can go jump properly into the Seine for all I care," Bossuet answers. "But Fauchlevent. Valjean. He likes to guard his privacy, I think. But as you say, his story doesn't match Hugo's."

Hugo didn't envision his characters wandering between worlds in quite this way. Maybe it's finding Milliways that set off some tremors--resonances--in the whole system of universes and gave shape to Hugo's dreams. Lesgle is so absorbed with that notion--though he still has his suspicions about the greater power of an author--that he forgets the wet brush in his hand and reaches up to rub his chin.

"Ah, damn. I've painted myself. --But Mlle. Fauchelevent, surely she doesn't need to be told, at least not by some strange young man, about any--floral metaphors. I think she's not here often, anyway, to be vulnerable to much mischief. Have you met her? I did once, but she was a bit shy of speaking to the bartender."

[clayforthedevil]

"She's grown bolder, then; I did meet her, and she was quite willing to have an innocent conversation. I say innocent, I'm slighting the word, she'll need years before she's worldly enough to be just innocent. No, don't worry, I'm not going to tell her; not unless she somehow comes to ask me of her own accord. It's gossip, in her case, slander, and what's the use of passing it on? But if anyone else tells her to hurt her, she will rather have the right to despise us for silence, you know."

He sighs, suddenly disgusted. "Filthy trick, every word of it." He means more than the book; but the book's the immediate problem. "No, I'm not passing it on."

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

Lesgle laughs a little as he wipes paint from his chin, spreading it further. "I've been despised by pretty girls before; I'll survive the experience. --No, of course she might despise us for it, and she'd not be wrong, but I think it would be a worse wrong to tell her."

His laughter fades at Bahorel's disgusted look; he falls silent, in case his friend wants to say more.

[clayforthedevil]

It's old, his outrage over the demands of silence and ignorance and who those demands fall on. Real and always ready to flare up, but old and familiar and easy to come back to, and so mostly easy to set aside in any given moment. Any elaboration he might have considered vanishes into a laugh when he looks over and see Bossuet's impromptu cosmetics.

" I correct myself and apologize; you are not becoming respectable at all, you are braving quite the new style. You would astonish the bourgeoisie, were any at hand."

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

He'll let the subject drop, then--and his attempts to clean up without soap and water--and take up Bahorel's laughter. "An absolute cut-throat I must look. You felt the room wasn't red enough already, I take it?"

[clayforthedevil]

"I asked Madame Bar for paint, and somehow she had the odd notion this would be the color I'd want. It is dangerously close to matching, but clearly worth the hazard for your new experiment in style." He waves towards the sort-of-bathroom. "Go, have a look at yourself, decide if you want to clean it up here, or try and convince Joly that you've been becoming very friendly with our local vampires."

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"Hmm, have you met any of them? A handsome set, the vampires I've seen here, though I haven't yet had the impulse to get that close..."

He pauses, reaching the bathroom, and shakes his head. It's a good thing his explorations with Joly have prepared him for the caves and waterfalls. Yes, he'd better wash up. At least it's his own cravat he's stained this time. "--By the way, I apologize for my little foray into melancholy and ill-humor and lecturing. Quite unlike me, I know."

[clayforthedevil]

"Yes, indeed, and you know I've no patience at all for melancholy or dark moods.-- I only regret we didn't have a proper fireplace at the time. Our next literary debate will have a much better setting here." He picks up the small bucket of paint and starts walking along the wall, finger-painting an extension of the skyline. "I've met one of the vampires. Tall fellow, claims to have been a Viking. Apparently he quite despises whatever he thinks Romantics are." Which amuses Bahorel to no end.

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

Bossuet snickers, in the middle of washing his face, which results in water up his nose and extensive spluttering.

"--Ask him--" cough "--ask him what he does for a living, some day. If he answers anything other than 'sit on a mock-up throne in very tight trousers to make money off humans' fantasies of domination and abasement,' he's lying." At least, that was what Bossuet understood from the conversation.

He emerges from the bathroom, toweling off his face, more or less clean. "I don't deny that the trousers are effective, mind. What's his objection to Romantics?" Bossuet can think of several valid ones, but he's curious.

[clayforthedevil]

Bahorel absolutely cackles. "I shall have to listen to him with more respect, then, you make him sound to be living in triumph. No, I don't know his objections; he seemed to assume I'd share them. If that is his occupation, you'd think he'd like a bunch with so many enthusiasts of De Sade; then again, perhaps he takes offense at amateurs in his business. " He wipes off whatever paint is still on his hand by twisting it into the cuffs of his shirtsleeves; it's a satisfying contrast scattered in the white cloth. "That's done for now. I'm going to go see what happens for lunch. You?"

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"Of course I don't know what Romantics have been getting up to since our time--you've read more on that than I have. Perhaps the vampire has suffered from personal acquaintance with a few, and has taken an unfair prejudice against the lot. --I like lunch," Lesgle adds hopefully, in case that's an invitation.

[clayforthedevil]

" Indeed, I gather he's in America; given what I've read of their Romantics, he might have some dire impression indeed." He throws an arm around Bossuet's shoulders and starts for the door. "Come on then, we'll put it on my tab and perhaps delay the ill fortune of the bill coming due; and I can tell you what was going on Christmas Eve."

Because who doesn't want to hear about fighting a bug-monster during lunch?






(want to take the last tag, and wrap?)

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"Hush, don't speak the word." (TAB, he mouths dramatically.) "The old year has passed and a new one arrived without any calamity in that direction, and I see no need to summon it by name. --But yes, by all means, tell me about Christmas Eve. I was staying home like a good little boy, under Joly's watchful eye."

(Sounds good to me!)