Fic: Leave It To Chance
My Muse took pity on me in my sorry virus-riddled state and stopped by for tea and quality boy time! This is extreme time displacement too... I've gone back in time.... to BEFORE SEX. Oy.
Title: Leave It To Chance
Rating: PG(ish)
Pairing: NONE. OMG. This is pre-slash. Though some of them might be thinking about it.... ;)
Plot: Aramis isn't even "Aramis" yet and he's having a life crisis! Athos and Porthos are wasted and are being no help. A discussion about names, flowers, and forks in the road ensues.
Dedication: This is for watercrescent because friends are important, and non-imaginary friends are even more important! (Sorry, about the whole lack sex thing in this fic!)
Leave it to Chance
It was becoming rather habitual that in the beginning of the night one would be hard pressed to tell whether it would turn into a memorable evening, memorable as much by the scars it left upon one’s body as by the impressions it might also leave upon one’s mind, or a quiet and humdrum occasion, notable for nothing more save the fact that the three of them were having more and more difficulties staying away from one another. So it was on this particular night, which started off so inauspiciously, and ended with twenty to thirty bottles of burgundy “borrowed” from certain gentlemen of the guard, and one of our protagonists’ noses pressed into floorboards of the apartment on Rue Férou.
“How did I end up on the floor?” the youngest man lifted his face off the wooden surface and turned his body over with a flourish of a powerless flail.
“I believe you went chasing after that bottle I kicked across the room,” answered one of his companions, who was still seated in his chair, albeit balancing that piece of furniture in a rather precarious fashion against his windowsill. “Waste not - want not, I think you quoted? But it is too late. The fleeting object has made its escape. And you, my friend, have been found wanting.”
“Indeed,” the younger man emitted an audible sigh and shut his eyes against the flickering of the candles.
“Oh I see it,” their third companion, who was apparently lying on his side underneath the table, piped in, fashioning his hands into an artificial spotting scope. “Athos is right. Call off the hunt: you don’t want to touch that thing now. It has been reclaimed by a small army of dust bunnies.”
“Yes, which brings us back to our earlier conversation: the one about calling off the hunt?”
“You were saying, I should give up the cloth,” the young man spoke from the floor, still keeping his eyes closed.
“I was saying,” the man called Athos took a quick look inside one of the bottles lined up like soldiers on the table next to him and emptying its contents into his cup, “Stick a fork in you - you’re done. Much like this bottle.” He tossed the voided vessel onto the floor and it rolled over to where the young man was lying, sprawled out. “The real question is, will you join us?”
“Athos is right. You should join us,” the third man echoed from under the table.
“Thank you, Porthos.”
“Yes, thank you, Porthos,” the young man repeated mockingly, sitting up and fixing his companions with a wild stare. “You make it sound so easy! And what do you expect me to do? Also change my name? Erase my entire past?”
Porthos rolled out from under the table and gave Athos a toothy grin.
“He is rather attached to his name, isn’t he?”
“And to his past. Hilarious as it is to hear someone his age even speak of having a past.”
“How did you even pick your names?” the young man asked, trying to keep his words from slurring. He crossed his arms over his knees and propped his chin up on them. “Did you go through all the mountains in Greece before you found one that appealed to you?”
“I did,” Athos nodded with a lopsided smile, “I even sacrificed a small cloven-hoofed animal and dissected its entrails to make sure I made the right choice.”
“I just picked mine to sort of… rhyme with his,” Porthos admitted with a dismissive shrug and made a grasping gesture towards the table, resulting in Athos handing him his wine cup.
“You don’t say,” the young man smirked and shook his head.
“Don’t get so hung up on the details, René,” Athos emptied his cup down his throat and repositioned his chair so as to no longer be risking defenestration. “Look at the bigger picture,” and he spread his arms and his legs in a way that was probably intended to convey an entirely different kind of bigger picture than the one he ended up evoking in the young man’s brain, as was evidenced by a sudden widening and shutting of his eyes, accompanied by a barely perceptible flush in his coloration.
“You can pick one of those Greek pretty boy names,” Porthos slurred from floor, lazily mouthing at the rim of his cup. “Such as… what was his name, Athos?”
“I don’t know… Adonis?”
“No. Well, yeah, him too… the one I’m thinking of was a flower or some such thing…”
“Hyacinthus?!” both of Porthos’ friends exclaimed simultaneously.
“Yes! That’s the one!”
“Great suffering God!” the young man turned an outraged face upon Porthos.
“He blasphemed,” the latter pointed at the young man while addressing Athos.
“I support this,” Athos concluded and uncorked another bottle. “The blasphemy, not naming you after a flower. No man should ever be named after a flower, no matter how…” Athos suddenly froze mid-sentence, his lips hovering ajar, while his eyes seemed to squint and slant, as if he was trying to look at himself askance.
“What?” Porthos inquired, leaning in.
Athos shoved him away with his foot.
“Huh?”
“Nothing, what?”
“Flowers?”
“You just have that face,” Porthos shrugged again, forgetting Athos and his sudden onslaught of incoherency and facing back towards his other companion.
“My face?” René’s eyes become very narrow and he skidded across the floor closer to Porthos. “My face will be the last thing you see if you don’t stop this nonsense.”
“He’s really rather violent for a man of the cloth,” Porthos addressed Athos again.
“You find?”
“I do.”
“Do you know what I like the most about you, Porthos?” Athos asked leaning over the desk and taking a slow drink.
“My uncanny ability to tolerate you?”
“That. And your uncanny ability to overstate the obvious.”
“You mean like how I’m about to hit you?”
“Oh stop it, you two overgrown infants. Can’t you see, I’m in the middle of a life crisis!” René’s sudden propelling of his body off the floorboards jolted his two companions into stunned silence, if only for a few moments. “I’ve reached the proverbial fork in the road. I’m staring down into an abyss. And all you have to offer is insults and names of Greek pretty boys?”
“There is also wine,” Athos offered with an almost chastised look.
“Not helping,” the young man sighed, and sat down onto the floor again, as if it was to become his permanent lot in life.
“Here,” Athos got up and grabbed something off the shelf. “Something as important as your new name cannot be left up to men to decide. Leave it up to your new favorite goddess. Fortuna.” He tossed a small sack onto the floor at René’s feet.
The younger man gave him a dubious look but finally peeked inside the pouch.
“This is your brilliant idea? Dice?”
“Chance, my young friend! It’s the only thing you have going for you at the moment. It was pure luck that you even met Porthos and myself at your self-proclaimed time of crisis, so why not put your faith in luck again?”
“I… no. What?”
“Athos is right. Or else, I am very drunk,” Porthos nodded sagely.
“It’s easy,” Athos reassured them both. “Look, you toss the dice. You get a number. Let’s say that number is a page in your favorite religious text. Your next roll tells you the number of the line in the text. And voilà - you get your first letter. Then you roll again. See? Easy.”
“That is a stupid idea,” René felt that perhaps he too was inordinately drunk because there was a part of him that did not find the idea as stupid as he had proclaimed.
“Well, I am officially all out of better ideas, and you know what else, René? I’m starting to really not give a damn. In fact, I’m this close to just suggesting we call you after the fair city we reside in, for Paris too was a very pretty boy.” Something about the way he enunciated those last few words, very pretty boy, made René feel something that was riding the edge of disgust and arousal simultaneously. He got up off the floor and brushed his clothes off habitually, even though there was nothing visible clinging to his attire, except barely palpable shreds of his own fear. He picked up the dice bag and put it in his pocket.
“I don’t gamble,” he said, shooting his two companions a conciliatory smile. “But I’ll see what I can do.”
“Leaving so soon, Monsieur l’Abbé?” Porthos purred from the floor, earning another foot-shove from Athos.
Athos, forcing his hand to reluctantly let go of his cup, finally parted himself from his chair to accompany his young guest to the door. He might have been drunk beyond caring, but he was not drunk beyond manners.
“It will all turn out all right, you know,” he felt compelled to say before letting René depart for the night.
“And when I tell you my new name, will you promise to forget my old one?” the young man asked, somewhat shyly.
“As surely as I have forgotten my own,” Athos spoke through the drunken haze in a sudden burst of sincerity.
The young man smiled and cast a suspicious look towards the adjacent room.
“And Porthos?”
“He won’t even remember this conversation tomorrow.”
René laughed soundlessly.
“Will you speak with M. de Treville then? About my commission?”
“Send me word tomorrow, if that’s what you decide, and then consider it done.”
The two men shook hands and René began to descend the staircase when he suddenly stopped and called back up to the landing, “You’re never as drunk as you’re pretending to be, are you?”
“Fool. I’m always more drunk than I’m pretending to be.” And with a chuckle, Athos went back inside to collect various parts of Porthos off his floor.
Title: Leave It To Chance
Rating: PG(ish)
Pairing: NONE. OMG. This is pre-slash. Though some of them might be thinking about it.... ;)
Plot: Aramis isn't even "Aramis" yet and he's having a life crisis! Athos and Porthos are wasted and are being no help. A discussion about names, flowers, and forks in the road ensues.
Dedication: This is for watercrescent because friends are important, and non-imaginary friends are even more important! (Sorry, about the whole lack sex thing in this fic!)
Leave it to Chance
It was becoming rather habitual that in the beginning of the night one would be hard pressed to tell whether it would turn into a memorable evening, memorable as much by the scars it left upon one’s body as by the impressions it might also leave upon one’s mind, or a quiet and humdrum occasion, notable for nothing more save the fact that the three of them were having more and more difficulties staying away from one another. So it was on this particular night, which started off so inauspiciously, and ended with twenty to thirty bottles of burgundy “borrowed” from certain gentlemen of the guard, and one of our protagonists’ noses pressed into floorboards of the apartment on Rue Férou.
“How did I end up on the floor?” the youngest man lifted his face off the wooden surface and turned his body over with a flourish of a powerless flail.
“I believe you went chasing after that bottle I kicked across the room,” answered one of his companions, who was still seated in his chair, albeit balancing that piece of furniture in a rather precarious fashion against his windowsill. “Waste not - want not, I think you quoted? But it is too late. The fleeting object has made its escape. And you, my friend, have been found wanting.”
“Indeed,” the younger man emitted an audible sigh and shut his eyes against the flickering of the candles.
“Oh I see it,” their third companion, who was apparently lying on his side underneath the table, piped in, fashioning his hands into an artificial spotting scope. “Athos is right. Call off the hunt: you don’t want to touch that thing now. It has been reclaimed by a small army of dust bunnies.”
“Yes, which brings us back to our earlier conversation: the one about calling off the hunt?”
“You were saying, I should give up the cloth,” the young man spoke from the floor, still keeping his eyes closed.
“I was saying,” the man called Athos took a quick look inside one of the bottles lined up like soldiers on the table next to him and emptying its contents into his cup, “Stick a fork in you - you’re done. Much like this bottle.” He tossed the voided vessel onto the floor and it rolled over to where the young man was lying, sprawled out. “The real question is, will you join us?”
“Athos is right. You should join us,” the third man echoed from under the table.
“Thank you, Porthos.”
“Yes, thank you, Porthos,” the young man repeated mockingly, sitting up and fixing his companions with a wild stare. “You make it sound so easy! And what do you expect me to do? Also change my name? Erase my entire past?”
Porthos rolled out from under the table and gave Athos a toothy grin.
“He is rather attached to his name, isn’t he?”
“And to his past. Hilarious as it is to hear someone his age even speak of having a past.”
“How did you even pick your names?” the young man asked, trying to keep his words from slurring. He crossed his arms over his knees and propped his chin up on them. “Did you go through all the mountains in Greece before you found one that appealed to you?”
“I did,” Athos nodded with a lopsided smile, “I even sacrificed a small cloven-hoofed animal and dissected its entrails to make sure I made the right choice.”
“I just picked mine to sort of… rhyme with his,” Porthos admitted with a dismissive shrug and made a grasping gesture towards the table, resulting in Athos handing him his wine cup.
“You don’t say,” the young man smirked and shook his head.
“Don’t get so hung up on the details, René,” Athos emptied his cup down his throat and repositioned his chair so as to no longer be risking defenestration. “Look at the bigger picture,” and he spread his arms and his legs in a way that was probably intended to convey an entirely different kind of bigger picture than the one he ended up evoking in the young man’s brain, as was evidenced by a sudden widening and shutting of his eyes, accompanied by a barely perceptible flush in his coloration.
“You can pick one of those Greek pretty boy names,” Porthos slurred from floor, lazily mouthing at the rim of his cup. “Such as… what was his name, Athos?”
“I don’t know… Adonis?”
“No. Well, yeah, him too… the one I’m thinking of was a flower or some such thing…”
“Hyacinthus?!” both of Porthos’ friends exclaimed simultaneously.
“Yes! That’s the one!”
“Great suffering God!” the young man turned an outraged face upon Porthos.
“He blasphemed,” the latter pointed at the young man while addressing Athos.
“I support this,” Athos concluded and uncorked another bottle. “The blasphemy, not naming you after a flower. No man should ever be named after a flower, no matter how…” Athos suddenly froze mid-sentence, his lips hovering ajar, while his eyes seemed to squint and slant, as if he was trying to look at himself askance.
“What?” Porthos inquired, leaning in.
Athos shoved him away with his foot.
“Huh?”
“Nothing, what?”
“Flowers?”
“You just have that face,” Porthos shrugged again, forgetting Athos and his sudden onslaught of incoherency and facing back towards his other companion.
“My face?” René’s eyes become very narrow and he skidded across the floor closer to Porthos. “My face will be the last thing you see if you don’t stop this nonsense.”
“He’s really rather violent for a man of the cloth,” Porthos addressed Athos again.
“You find?”
“I do.”
“Do you know what I like the most about you, Porthos?” Athos asked leaning over the desk and taking a slow drink.
“My uncanny ability to tolerate you?”
“That. And your uncanny ability to overstate the obvious.”
“You mean like how I’m about to hit you?”
“Oh stop it, you two overgrown infants. Can’t you see, I’m in the middle of a life crisis!” René’s sudden propelling of his body off the floorboards jolted his two companions into stunned silence, if only for a few moments. “I’ve reached the proverbial fork in the road. I’m staring down into an abyss. And all you have to offer is insults and names of Greek pretty boys?”
“There is also wine,” Athos offered with an almost chastised look.
“Not helping,” the young man sighed, and sat down onto the floor again, as if it was to become his permanent lot in life.
“Here,” Athos got up and grabbed something off the shelf. “Something as important as your new name cannot be left up to men to decide. Leave it up to your new favorite goddess. Fortuna.” He tossed a small sack onto the floor at René’s feet.
The younger man gave him a dubious look but finally peeked inside the pouch.
“This is your brilliant idea? Dice?”
“Chance, my young friend! It’s the only thing you have going for you at the moment. It was pure luck that you even met Porthos and myself at your self-proclaimed time of crisis, so why not put your faith in luck again?”
“I… no. What?”
“Athos is right. Or else, I am very drunk,” Porthos nodded sagely.
“It’s easy,” Athos reassured them both. “Look, you toss the dice. You get a number. Let’s say that number is a page in your favorite religious text. Your next roll tells you the number of the line in the text. And voilà - you get your first letter. Then you roll again. See? Easy.”
“That is a stupid idea,” René felt that perhaps he too was inordinately drunk because there was a part of him that did not find the idea as stupid as he had proclaimed.
“Well, I am officially all out of better ideas, and you know what else, René? I’m starting to really not give a damn. In fact, I’m this close to just suggesting we call you after the fair city we reside in, for Paris too was a very pretty boy.” Something about the way he enunciated those last few words, very pretty boy, made René feel something that was riding the edge of disgust and arousal simultaneously. He got up off the floor and brushed his clothes off habitually, even though there was nothing visible clinging to his attire, except barely palpable shreds of his own fear. He picked up the dice bag and put it in his pocket.
“I don’t gamble,” he said, shooting his two companions a conciliatory smile. “But I’ll see what I can do.”
“Leaving so soon, Monsieur l’Abbé?” Porthos purred from the floor, earning another foot-shove from Athos.
Athos, forcing his hand to reluctantly let go of his cup, finally parted himself from his chair to accompany his young guest to the door. He might have been drunk beyond caring, but he was not drunk beyond manners.
“It will all turn out all right, you know,” he felt compelled to say before letting René depart for the night.
“And when I tell you my new name, will you promise to forget my old one?” the young man asked, somewhat shyly.
“As surely as I have forgotten my own,” Athos spoke through the drunken haze in a sudden burst of sincerity.
The young man smiled and cast a suspicious look towards the adjacent room.
“And Porthos?”
“He won’t even remember this conversation tomorrow.”
René laughed soundlessly.
“Will you speak with M. de Treville then? About my commission?”
“Send me word tomorrow, if that’s what you decide, and then consider it done.”
The two men shook hands and René began to descend the staircase when he suddenly stopped and called back up to the landing, “You’re never as drunk as you’re pretending to be, are you?”
“Fool. I’m always more drunk than I’m pretending to be.” And with a chuckle, Athos went back inside to collect various parts of Porthos off his floor.