Fashionably Late

[clayforthedevil]

((warning for mentions of injury and death and other doomed revolt issues))


The first guard through falls to the only shot in his rifle, a first explosion that seems to set off a chorus. He tries to block the next soldier's bayonet thrust with his empty gun and only feels the slide of metal along metal and a shock through his ribs too sudden to hurt. Bahorel leans his weight onto the soldier's gun, grinning, trying to force him back for another second, fist raised for a last swing, and then there's a dark flicker as his foot slips and his balance fails him completely.

---

His foot comes down on a rather nice bar floor. The weight of his own swing moves him forward a bit, but he's used to punching moving targets and recovers quickly. The noise and air of the place are unmistakeably a bar; voices, glasses clinking, the sound of a door swinging shut behind him. He is, very definitely, in a bar.

Bahorel blinks. It's not the first time he's come out of a fight in a strange place with no memory of what happened in between, but really now--

and then he sees the window.

Either he's having a fairly impressive opium dream-- not his best, but not bad-- or Lesgle really hadn't been talking out of a cracked skull two years ago. A bar at the end of the world is a more interesting idea, almost mythic, really, so Bahorel chooses to believe it for now. He walks to the Bar proper and tries an order, in the way he's been told it works.

"Madame, or Mademoiselle, Bar, whiskey, if you please?" The request is wholly formal, complete with elaborate bow. And up pops a bottle of whiskey and a glass, so it seems to work. He thanks the Bar with equal flourish and pours his first drink. He's quite enjoying himself when he thinks of his apparently not-last moments, and lets his hand stray to his waistcoat.

Which has an enormous hole right over the heart. And is sticky with blood. He immediately takes it off to examine the damage, loudly cursing every king ever born when he sees the whole in the back, too.

So: here is a man in very good (but progressively less--and devil take them all, the undervest's even worse) bloody 1830s formalwear, expounding creatively on the heritage of the kings of Europe. He could be interrupted, and probably should be.

Comments

[street_sparrow]

"You", declares a grinning young man from behind him, "are late. But not as late as Prouvaire and Feuilly."

[clayforthedevil]

He turns around with a grin and no more alarm than he would usually show at being greeted in a bar by someone he can't quite place.

"I am exactly on time. If others wanted to be boorishly early, I cannot be responsible."

He tilts his head a little. The age is wrong,the voice is different, but the eyes, that line of the cheek-- "Gavroche?"

[street_sparrow]

"Combeferre, too. But if only three are missing, it's still a society..." He beams. "You got it, and you're the quickest yet."

[clayforthedevil]

He snorts. "Prouvaire is a poet and Feuilly is almost respectable; they're necessarily unreliable. Combeferre is now late, and I shall remind him of it when he arrives." He grins again and pulls the younger man in for a rough hug."But if you're here for the same party you're still too damn early."

He hadn't seen Gavroche die in the breach. But of course it's not like a gamin had good chances anywhere.

[street_sparrow]

The hug is returned, tightly.

"Not quite the same, but explanations can wait. First, a drink - the first one's on the house - then we can find the others."

[clayforthedevil]

Bahorel lifts his bottle. "If you've got a glass, I think I've got our drink. Stories can be now." He holds up his wrecked waistcoats with regret. "I don't think there's any point trying to save these, so I'm in no hurry."

He'll just lounge around, drinking,with a torn bloody undershirt. Very picturesque.

[street_sparrow]

"Glasses we can get, and clean clothes - you sounded like you already know how things work around here, not many people jump straight to Madame Bar."

[gredya]

Gredya's just here to get a new pencil, after a long internal struggle about asking the bar for anything at all. And here is a man taking off his clothing and shouting at it.

Gredya objects to people who wander around in public injured, looking like prey that needs finishing off. She does not object to people who wander around in public looking like they just got out of a life-or-death fight and can go another round if you give them a moment to catch their breath and get their feet under them.

But she's not sure how she feels about people shouting at clothes.

Probably she disapproves. At least, that's the expression that shows on her face.

[clayforthedevil]

Oh, and now he has an audience. "Ah, I see you too recognize the outrage of crimes committed upon a craftsman's art. It's the flaw of those guardsmen, I tell you-- they recognize no beauty. And thus no truth! This is how they can look at a blood-boiled lobster and think him a fit leader! They take refuge in their uniforms to hide their deficient perceptions. But you, citoyenne, are surely not one to join their self-deception!"

He ends with a dramatic flourish, hand out in a gesture to encourage her to speak. It's a courtesy; if she doesn't want to join in the conversation, he can carry it himself. He's healthy! Improbably!

[gredya]

She stiffens, and unconsciously grips the pencil like a knife. The blood-soaked man is shouting nonsense, calling her words that she doesn't know, and shaking a hand at her.

The bottle probably explains it.

Her lip curls. "You are drunk."

[clayforthedevil]

"Not a bit, alas." He sees her focus, and tosses the bottle through a few circuits of a quick juggling pattern before spinning it around setting it back on the counter. He's never worried about whether his body will perform properly, and he's not about to start now that it's apparently defied steely death.

He finishes with a bit of a dramatic bow. "I am, however, impressed with your grip on that pencil-- truly, an excellent thrusting grip-- but would point out the length of it would not reach anything vital. Unless you intend--" he tilts his head up and gestures at the general direction of his throat.

Probably, she won't try to stab him. But he's still soaring from the rush of the last fight, and wouldn't mind if she did.

[gredya]

So, yeah, that does nothing to convince her to put down the pencil. In fact, it's doing quite a lot to convince her that next time she comes here she's bringing a knife. Because here's a large, loud man showing off how well he can fight with a bottle, and daring her to attack him.

"You fight? Outside."

It was painful enough letting that man Javert yell at her like a dog.

[clayforthedevil]

Oh, really? Far be it from Bahorel to tell a woman she can't fight. Especially when she's got such an expert grip on that pencil.

Still: Clarification. "Just you and I? No seconds? To first blood, to being pinned--? Bare hands? Or would you prefer to keep your weapon of choice?" He nods to the pencil.

He's grinning, but in excitement rather than mockery. Alcohol and random combat! The afterlife is, in fact,proving rather exactly like some versions he's heard of.

[le_centre]

Courfeyrac never actually made it to bed last night, and is therefore to be found dozing in a booth (with a number of bottles in front of him) when this particular entrance is made.

He is woken by the sound of loud cursing, which is disagreeable; but when the recipients of said curses appear to be kings, become less so. Moreover, he recognises that voice, and it takes no time at all to decide that opening his eyes would be a fine idea.

'Well now,' he says, rising with a grin. 'We shall have every reprobate in Paris here soon, and so much the better for it, say I! Bahorel, my dear fellow, you are fearfully behind the times. But no matter, you are here now. Come and embrace me at once.'


[OOC: must go afk almost at once, am afraid, but couldn't miss this! :D]

[clayforthedevil]

Bahorel grins, and curses in a much brighter tone. "Courfeyrac! Be warned, friend, you risk your own waistcoats to the gore that claimed mine." It's an empty warning;he's already half-lifting Courfeyrac out of the booth.

[le_centre]

He laughs, even if it sounds a little strained under the strength of Bahorel's grip, and claps him hard on the back.

'My waistcoats are acquainted enough with gore.'

Not these ones - he had to throw away the ones he died in, and very sorry he was about it too - but metaphorically, he is sure they can cope.

'My friend, it is good to see you. There was a time we feared none more might find their way.'

[clayforthedevil]

He relaxes his grip to a loose half-embrace and raises an eyebrown. "Really, Courfeyrac, it's hardly the most exclusive place. A dead man could find it."

He looks at the bottles. "Has it really been so dull without me that a leading light of Paris society must drink by himself for lack of interesting company?" He's teasing, but also wondering. If this place tends to be dull, he will have to prepare.

[le_centre]

'Then we must be doubly hard on the others for their tardiness.'

He will, in fact, be very stern should any more of their friends deign to show their faces. No, really.

'As to leading lights, you will have to tell me should you meet one.' He puts a hand to his chest in a most self-deprecating way, and intones, 'I am but a poor dead student, leaving behind nothing but the advice I gave Pontmercy, and a hat riddled with shot. Ah, it is very sad. No one wishes to drink with me.'

His face splits into a grin then, and he drags at Bahorel's arm.

'You must rectify this immediately. Come now, tell me everything! I take it you're here from the barricade?'

The blood would suggest it.

[clayforthedevil]

"The very same-- in 1832, outside the old Corinthe. I commend your speed; you were still standing when I last saw." When he'd last seen anything, over there. "Yet here you are ahead of me, though I took no detours. I expect you have more news from both the barricade and our new residence than I do, for the moment."

He ignores Courfeyrac's bottle-littered table and grabs a new one. "Please, first tell me some of your advice to Pontmercy involved the address of proper tailors." Really, now.

[heatherandsteel]

Quentin had slipped into Milliways to grab coffee as Toby seemed in need of it and he spotted it through the coffee house door. He's in his human disguise looking like a neat teenage boy with blond hair and blue eyes.

As he's ordering, he notes the blood on Bahorel, goes pale and listens to the cursing, its creative, "Don't forget Oberon, if you're going after kings and who shot you?"

[clayforthedevil]

That gets a grin. "Indeed! Let all lands overthrow their tyrants, even Faerieland! And may the Erlking shake in his throne and fear the wrath of mothers, child-blighter that he is." It is, of course, unwise to challenge the fae, but it's also unwise to get into riots, so. "And no one shot me. This was a bayonet."

[heatherandsteel]

He frowns for a moment as he goes through his knowledge for Erlking, it sounds familiar but he's not sure of it.

Its clearly another name for Oberon, he'll have to find out. He almost speaks to defend him as Blind Michael was the worst and its Oberon then stops, "Why do all lands need to be overthrown and why a bayonet?"

[clayforthedevil]

"Ha, which part of the answer do you want? Because he believed in the right of kings to dispose of their people as they wish. Because he had no shot left in his gun, and had to kill me somehow. Because he wanted to stab other people, and I was a necessary first step in the pursuit of his goals. Because I slipped, and gave him the opening." Bahorel shrugs. "Who knows why a Guardsman does anything? I wouldn't, in their position. I would revel in doing nothing, knowing the King as likely to cut off my pay either way.Perhaps he just resented his own clothing, and sought vengeance on the well-dressed."

[heatherandsteel]

"Oak and ash, you're not that well dressed," Its the only part it makes sense to grab onto for now, "Guardsman usually do what they're ordered to."

[clayforthedevil]

"Well not now, obviously. His revenge was successful. And yes, they often do; I suppose it's a lack of imagination." He shakes his head in only partly mock regret,and parses over the young man's last statment. " And I never said all lands should be overthrown, I said all lands should overthrow their kings. It's very different. Whiskey?"

The young man is clearly very confused about a great number of important matters, but that's no reason not to share a drink.