Some Corner of the Gym, Monday Late Afternoon
Despite classes and everything of their ilk, Arthur still had entirely too much time on his hands most days. Especially now. When he wasn't out hunting or frustrating blessing the student body with his presence, he liked to spend it either in the salle, or here, making sure his body was trained down to the nines for anything. Even if there wasn't anything to fight right now.
It was also blissfully mindless. More things about this time should be as comforting as pounding your frustration into a bag - or channeling it into the lift of some weights.
Well, in theory it was always comforting, anyway. Still, beggars couldn't be choosers. (Maybe he should just find Morgana and start a fight; that was always good for his nerves)
Francine was all for blissfully mindless. Not that she was, currently. She'd just love to be, instead of seeing the entire gym through a haze of red -- or really just the part of the gym she was heading for. If she'd bothered to look around the whole place instead of just making a beeline for the full-size punching bags, she'd probably have spat out something incoherent, watched her vision go purple, turned on her heel and left.
As it was, though, she just tossed her bag at the nearest wall, kicked her shoes off, and started punching.
Ow.
And yet. At this point she didn't really care that it hurt. Why should that be different from everything else?
Arthur suffered no such issues with sight, which meant that Francine's arrival made him wince... slightly. He'd been trying to avoid... issues. Yes.
However, wincing about that was quickly supplanted by wincing about-- "Francine," he said, having managed to make it up to her bag in a matter of seconds, "Francine. You have to take your thumb out lest you break something."
Oh, great. PUNCH. Ow. "Arthur, it's a punching bag. I'm not gonna break it."
"Your hand," Arthur specified, rolling his eyes lightly, but going for the most reassuring smile he could manage. "You'll break it." The gym gloves felt weird on his hands now that he wasn't using them actively.
Now she shot him a dark look over her shoulder. "And again, it's a punching bag." It was almost bitchy, if you could get your mind around the concept of using that word to describe Francine. Eyes back to the bag. And another punch. And another OW that she worked extra-hard not to say out loud. "If I didn't break my hand on the wall, I won't break it on this." Through sheer, dumb outrageous luck, and her knuckles were skinned all to hell and she didn't care.
Francine had been punching a wall? Arthur's Merlin did a very stupid thing senses were tingling (in so far as they weren't tingling all the time, giving him a stupendous headache and the need to use very small words on people). "You will if you keep punching like that," he said, gathering up all the authority he could muster in the face of a woman who looked like--
Well, she didn't look like she could tear something apart with her bare hands, because it was Francine and she had the comparative strength of a butterfly, but she did look vaguely threatening around the edges and he was trying to figure out how to deal with that. Women. "Francine..."
PUNCH. "OW!" Dammit. That wasn't supposed to be out loud. She rounded on him, fists still clenched. "WHAT? Got more tips? Don't tuck your thumbs in, buy some boxing gloves, go home and brush your hair and pick out wedding presents for me and Merlin, we're registered at Swords R' Us?"
Arthur... was not going to back away from the angry woman, because a) he was fairly sure he could take her, even in all her fury, evidence: Morgana, and b) he was a little busy being shell-shocked about half of that statement. Instead, he was just going to stand here.
A What would go well here. Unfortunately, what came out was a cursory, "Now that's ridiculous," before moving on into, "What?" sans italics before slipping into, "Merlin's an idiot," as realisation struck (to a point, anyway, for what he couldn't stave off as he desperately wanted to) and he was left fervently hoping this headache would grow to such epic proportions that it would make his head explode and he wouldn't have to ascend to any higher planes of cognition.
Besides, Merlin really was an idiot. He was going to cling to that fact.
"He is n--" Oh, what the hell, Francine. Is it locked into your chromosomes? "MAYBE. I don't know. As far as I can tell you all think I'm the moron here."
"He is an idiot," Arthur said, in that tone of voice that both implied he was getting very tired and he really desperately wanted to beat on something, preferably with his head. "I-- what? No. No, he is definitely the idiot, beyond all reason."
"He said--" Oh, where the heck would she start with that? "He said you and him... " There wasn't even an ending to that. Merlin hadn't given her an ending to that. She settled for an incoherent noise of frustration and turning around to punch the bag again. HARD. "GODDAMMIT, OW!"
Oh, sweet mercy, it was bad enough that he had to deal with this to begin with, and now--
Arthur wondered, vaguely, what his father would think if he came back and said he'd chosen to forego the throne to enter a monastery. Not that he would. But it certainly seemed like an attractive option right now. "...Stop that," is what he said, because it seemed like the more sensible thing, and his hand was shooting for her wrist before the idea that maybe that would be very dumb even connected. Stupid chivalry talking.
He had seen Merlin's nose, right? "Let me GO!" He did get the wrist without an elbow to the face, though. Just Francine yanking on it hard enough to do herself a mischief anyway, and the other hand coming round to smack at his.
Wince. Wince.
Well. Nowhere to go but down, right? "Francine," he said, attempting to snag the other one while he was at it. "Calm. You'll hurt yourself." Oh, this was going just swimmingly. At least it was distracting him from the endless repeat of MERLIN SAID WHAT?! in four different languages, including Welsh and one that was made up mostly by borrowing expletives from at least three other languages, currently trying to march through his brain.
"So what?" She was good at flailing; he was massively better at coordination. You can probably guess who won the wrist-snagging contest.
Yes, well, maybe he had some experience in the realm of hysterical women and even if he hadn't had any prior to coming here, he'd had plenty of exercise over the past few months. "So what, what?" Arthur asked, staring at her. "You'll get hurt." Beat. Beat. Just ride it out, Arthur. Just keep her calm. Just-- "Just. Why is it that everyone on this island sees fit to challenge me in the fields I've been trained in my entire life and yet I'm expected to answer these kind of questions at every turn?! So what, that."
Someone had some flail of his own.
Which, ironically, calmed her down. A little. For the moment. Enough to screw her face up at him and throw a "What?" right back.
"I don't know what Merlin said to you," he said, ineffectually, but at least she'd calmed down. Unfortunately, that was also just about all he had after that outburst. "But it's not--" What, exactly?
Francine gave a tug at his grip on her wrists that was just as ineffectual. "It's not what? He Likes you. Which I knew, by the way, so I'm not the dumbest person ever. You Like him which nobody bothered to tell me because that's not important at all or anything. That's what he said. Before he lost his ever-loving MIND, anyway!"
"I think he lost his mind quite a while prior to that," said Arthur. A little more faintly than he'd banked on. "He told you-- what? I told him-- I wasn't going to do that."
Oh, god, he was going to be a monk.
"...What, like him? It's not like you can just turn that off, like a light-switch or something."
"No, doing or saying anything. To him, with him, whatever-- You know what?" He glanced up at the ceiling. "I give. I'll-- marry Morgana, or something, and the two of you can go off-- doing whatever it is you do," and he'd commit ritual suicide because Morgana, dammit, "All right?"
It was not clear whether he was imploring Francine or God, right there.
Francine just stared at him, blinking in that Francine Peters way, though with that extra fun kick of being clearly three seconds from punching something again out of sheer exasperated confusion if nothing else. "...You like Morgana too?"
"--No," Arthur returned, much like his eye contact, which was heading back into her direction. "Morgana is very-- I don't know. But it's likely expected of me, so we might as well get on with it."
"That doesn't even make any sense! You're as crazy as he is. Why would you marry somebody you don't love?" Because cut all this Like-you like you, check yes or no bullshit in half with a sword or a cake knife and that's what would leak out, so Francine finally just said it, because she might be naive but she wasn't twelve, damn it.
...He finally stopped raving long enough to give her a look. "Francine," Arthur said, slowly, "You do realise that I'm the crown prince, and I'm expected to find someone to bear my heir?" He would have rubbed the back of his head if he could. "If I'm lucky, my father will let me have my pick of agreeable noblewomen to marry me off to for a chunk of land or a peace treaty, but..."
Please don't acknowledge any lack of denial about certain matters, here; he'd like to pass it off as just being dense.
She.... actually sort of did realize that, to an extent, but give her a moment. The last time he'd ever said anything about it, she was in something of an altered state. A different altered state than the one she was in now. She said now what she hadn't said then, because she was, to say the least, in a mood. "That's stupid." Aaaand back to yanking at him to let go of her wrists, because she really really wanted to hit something the second the next words slipped out of her mouth. "Fathers are .....stupid." Okay, maybe she was twelve.
Well, so much for his hopes that this conversation might make anything close to sense, but if Arthur was entirely truthful he'd given up on that since the moment Merlin decided to forego easy denial in the salle last Monday. He failed to let go of Francine's wrists, disinclined as she seemed to be to guarantee her own safety, and said, "Well, yeah, but if I don't have an heir, there won't be a king after me--"
Not the point, Arthur.
Which he realised a few seconds later. "...Are you all right?" He had no clue.
STARE. "DO I LOOK ALL RIGHT?"
Hysterical bloody women.
Arthur just stared straight back at her. "No, you look like hell," he said, succinctly. Possibly not the best response, but it's what he had. "What happened?" Pause. "If anything happened. Beyond the--"
That thing with the idiots.
Oh, but there was so much to explore with the idiots! Not that Francine knew where to start when he'd asked and Katchoo wasn't here, and Merlin was .....gyaaaaaaaah and rarrr and WHY wouldn't he let her hit things and godDAMNIT. "He LEFT us!"
Trying to punch Arthur or crying all over him in three.... two...
"...Who?" Arthur asked, sensibly, on one. (Or possibly, senselessly. Certainly sans a sense of self-preservation)
So, he'd chosen option two. Whether he realized it or not. "HIM. My stupid...FUCKING --" No, she didn't actually learn that word from Katchoo. She'd learned it from her parents. Because they never did have any idea of volume control when they argued. "Father!" One last feeble yank at her wrists and then he had a shoulder full of angry, sobbing girl-face. Best option ever!
Crying girl. Crying girl. This happened to him around Francine an awful lot, he was starting to find.
"I'm sorry," is what Arthur managed, his hands slipping off her wrists to hover... somewhere near her shoulders for a moment before he curved them for a sort of awkward... ish... hug. If you wanted to call it that, anyway. He was better at handshakes.
Francine was actually really good at hugs. But this was the getting time, not the giving time. She just concentrated on her complete meltdown. As you do. "For his SECRETARY." Well... really it was with, since he'd go through at least a couple more before he settled on one he was stupid enough to marry. "That... that he's been s--" Oh, S-words were not good right now. "Sleeping with for like a YEAR!"
She might actually be lucky she had that wrong. He'd been sleeping with his secretary for at least a year; it just wasn't all the same secretary. Nice one, Frank. Nice.
"I'm sorry," Arthur repeated, feeling utterly unequipped for this particular task, but unable to let it go. He was starting to get a dawning sense of now I get the worst upset; he was also trying to deal with the fact that he wasn't quite managing to be angry at Merlin over this, which was both very unfortunate and very confusing and--
Something he wasn't going to go into right now, as he had his arms full of crying girl and his duty complex had just set in to remind him he should deal with that. By... letting her cling, and hoping it didn't seem too untoward, and finding it utterly ridiculous that he was hoping for it, and mostly just really, really wanting her to. Er. Feel better. "Francine."
It was the best he had. He would just be over here. Not moving.
She'd reached the crying silently stage, at least? With a pause for a sniffle. "What?"
[OOC: To be continued in comments! *provides more popcorn* And, hell, open to OOC if anyone's got any. Contents NFB, but that they talked is OK for broadcast ]
It was also blissfully mindless. More things about this time should be as comforting as pounding your frustration into a bag - or channeling it into the lift of some weights.
Well, in theory it was always comforting, anyway. Still, beggars couldn't be choosers. (Maybe he should just find Morgana and start a fight; that was always good for his nerves)
Francine was all for blissfully mindless. Not that she was, currently. She'd just love to be, instead of seeing the entire gym through a haze of red -- or really just the part of the gym she was heading for. If she'd bothered to look around the whole place instead of just making a beeline for the full-size punching bags, she'd probably have spat out something incoherent, watched her vision go purple, turned on her heel and left.
As it was, though, she just tossed her bag at the nearest wall, kicked her shoes off, and started punching.
Ow.
And yet. At this point she didn't really care that it hurt. Why should that be different from everything else?
Arthur suffered no such issues with sight, which meant that Francine's arrival made him wince... slightly. He'd been trying to avoid... issues. Yes.
However, wincing about that was quickly supplanted by wincing about-- "Francine," he said, having managed to make it up to her bag in a matter of seconds, "Francine. You have to take your thumb out lest you break something."
Oh, great. PUNCH. Ow. "Arthur, it's a punching bag. I'm not gonna break it."
"Your hand," Arthur specified, rolling his eyes lightly, but going for the most reassuring smile he could manage. "You'll break it." The gym gloves felt weird on his hands now that he wasn't using them actively.
Now she shot him a dark look over her shoulder. "And again, it's a punching bag." It was almost bitchy, if you could get your mind around the concept of using that word to describe Francine. Eyes back to the bag. And another punch. And another OW that she worked extra-hard not to say out loud. "If I didn't break my hand on the wall, I won't break it on this." Through sheer, dumb outrageous luck, and her knuckles were skinned all to hell and she didn't care.
Francine had been punching a wall? Arthur's Merlin did a very stupid thing senses were tingling (in so far as they weren't tingling all the time, giving him a stupendous headache and the need to use very small words on people). "You will if you keep punching like that," he said, gathering up all the authority he could muster in the face of a woman who looked like--
Well, she didn't look like she could tear something apart with her bare hands, because it was Francine and she had the comparative strength of a butterfly, but she did look vaguely threatening around the edges and he was trying to figure out how to deal with that. Women. "Francine..."
PUNCH. "OW!" Dammit. That wasn't supposed to be out loud. She rounded on him, fists still clenched. "WHAT? Got more tips? Don't tuck your thumbs in, buy some boxing gloves, go home and brush your hair and pick out wedding presents for me and Merlin, we're registered at Swords R' Us?"
Arthur... was not going to back away from the angry woman, because a) he was fairly sure he could take her, even in all her fury, evidence: Morgana, and b) he was a little busy being shell-shocked about half of that statement. Instead, he was just going to stand here.
A What would go well here. Unfortunately, what came out was a cursory, "Now that's ridiculous," before moving on into, "What?" sans italics before slipping into, "Merlin's an idiot," as realisation struck (to a point, anyway, for what he couldn't stave off as he desperately wanted to) and he was left fervently hoping this headache would grow to such epic proportions that it would make his head explode and he wouldn't have to ascend to any higher planes of cognition.
Besides, Merlin really was an idiot. He was going to cling to that fact.
"He is n--" Oh, what the hell, Francine. Is it locked into your chromosomes? "MAYBE. I don't know. As far as I can tell you all think I'm the moron here."
"He is an idiot," Arthur said, in that tone of voice that both implied he was getting very tired and he really desperately wanted to beat on something, preferably with his head. "I-- what? No. No, he is definitely the idiot, beyond all reason."
"He said--" Oh, where the heck would she start with that? "He said you and him... " There wasn't even an ending to that. Merlin hadn't given her an ending to that. She settled for an incoherent noise of frustration and turning around to punch the bag again. HARD. "GODDAMMIT, OW!"
Oh, sweet mercy, it was bad enough that he had to deal with this to begin with, and now--
Arthur wondered, vaguely, what his father would think if he came back and said he'd chosen to forego the throne to enter a monastery. Not that he would. But it certainly seemed like an attractive option right now. "...Stop that," is what he said, because it seemed like the more sensible thing, and his hand was shooting for her wrist before the idea that maybe that would be very dumb even connected. Stupid chivalry talking.
He had seen Merlin's nose, right? "Let me GO!" He did get the wrist without an elbow to the face, though. Just Francine yanking on it hard enough to do herself a mischief anyway, and the other hand coming round to smack at his.
Wince. Wince.
Well. Nowhere to go but down, right? "Francine," he said, attempting to snag the other one while he was at it. "Calm. You'll hurt yourself." Oh, this was going just swimmingly. At least it was distracting him from the endless repeat of MERLIN SAID WHAT?! in four different languages, including Welsh and one that was made up mostly by borrowing expletives from at least three other languages, currently trying to march through his brain.
"So what?" She was good at flailing; he was massively better at coordination. You can probably guess who won the wrist-snagging contest.
Yes, well, maybe he had some experience in the realm of hysterical women and even if he hadn't had any prior to coming here, he'd had plenty of exercise over the past few months. "So what, what?" Arthur asked, staring at her. "You'll get hurt." Beat. Beat. Just ride it out, Arthur. Just keep her calm. Just-- "Just. Why is it that everyone on this island sees fit to challenge me in the fields I've been trained in my entire life and yet I'm expected to answer these kind of questions at every turn?! So what, that."
Someone had some flail of his own.
Which, ironically, calmed her down. A little. For the moment. Enough to screw her face up at him and throw a "What?" right back.
"I don't know what Merlin said to you," he said, ineffectually, but at least she'd calmed down. Unfortunately, that was also just about all he had after that outburst. "But it's not--" What, exactly?
Francine gave a tug at his grip on her wrists that was just as ineffectual. "It's not what? He Likes you. Which I knew, by the way, so I'm not the dumbest person ever. You Like him which nobody bothered to tell me because that's not important at all or anything. That's what he said. Before he lost his ever-loving MIND, anyway!"
"I think he lost his mind quite a while prior to that," said Arthur. A little more faintly than he'd banked on. "He told you-- what? I told him-- I wasn't going to do that."
Oh, god, he was going to be a monk.
"...What, like him? It's not like you can just turn that off, like a light-switch or something."
"No, doing or saying anything. To him, with him, whatever-- You know what?" He glanced up at the ceiling. "I give. I'll-- marry Morgana, or something, and the two of you can go off-- doing whatever it is you do," and he'd commit ritual suicide because Morgana, dammit, "All right?"
It was not clear whether he was imploring Francine or God, right there.
Francine just stared at him, blinking in that Francine Peters way, though with that extra fun kick of being clearly three seconds from punching something again out of sheer exasperated confusion if nothing else. "...You like Morgana too?"
"--No," Arthur returned, much like his eye contact, which was heading back into her direction. "Morgana is very-- I don't know. But it's likely expected of me, so we might as well get on with it."
"That doesn't even make any sense! You're as crazy as he is. Why would you marry somebody you don't love?" Because cut all this Like-you like you, check yes or no bullshit in half with a sword or a cake knife and that's what would leak out, so Francine finally just said it, because she might be naive but she wasn't twelve, damn it.
...He finally stopped raving long enough to give her a look. "Francine," Arthur said, slowly, "You do realise that I'm the crown prince, and I'm expected to find someone to bear my heir?" He would have rubbed the back of his head if he could. "If I'm lucky, my father will let me have my pick of agreeable noblewomen to marry me off to for a chunk of land or a peace treaty, but..."
Please don't acknowledge any lack of denial about certain matters, here; he'd like to pass it off as just being dense.
She.... actually sort of did realize that, to an extent, but give her a moment. The last time he'd ever said anything about it, she was in something of an altered state. A different altered state than the one she was in now. She said now what she hadn't said then, because she was, to say the least, in a mood. "That's stupid." Aaaand back to yanking at him to let go of her wrists, because she really really wanted to hit something the second the next words slipped out of her mouth. "Fathers are .....stupid." Okay, maybe she was twelve.
Well, so much for his hopes that this conversation might make anything close to sense, but if Arthur was entirely truthful he'd given up on that since the moment Merlin decided to forego easy denial in the salle last Monday. He failed to let go of Francine's wrists, disinclined as she seemed to be to guarantee her own safety, and said, "Well, yeah, but if I don't have an heir, there won't be a king after me--"
Not the point, Arthur.
Which he realised a few seconds later. "...Are you all right?" He had no clue.
STARE. "DO I LOOK ALL RIGHT?"
Hysterical bloody women.
Arthur just stared straight back at her. "No, you look like hell," he said, succinctly. Possibly not the best response, but it's what he had. "What happened?" Pause. "If anything happened. Beyond the--"
That thing with the idiots.
Oh, but there was so much to explore with the idiots! Not that Francine knew where to start when he'd asked and Katchoo wasn't here, and Merlin was .....gyaaaaaaaah and rarrr and WHY wouldn't he let her hit things and godDAMNIT. "He LEFT us!"
Trying to punch Arthur or crying all over him in three.... two...
"...Who?" Arthur asked, sensibly, on one. (Or possibly, senselessly. Certainly sans a sense of self-preservation)
So, he'd chosen option two. Whether he realized it or not. "HIM. My stupid...FUCKING --" No, she didn't actually learn that word from Katchoo. She'd learned it from her parents. Because they never did have any idea of volume control when they argued. "Father!" One last feeble yank at her wrists and then he had a shoulder full of angry, sobbing girl-face. Best option ever!
Crying girl. Crying girl. This happened to him around Francine an awful lot, he was starting to find.
"I'm sorry," is what Arthur managed, his hands slipping off her wrists to hover... somewhere near her shoulders for a moment before he curved them for a sort of awkward... ish... hug. If you wanted to call it that, anyway. He was better at handshakes.
Francine was actually really good at hugs. But this was the getting time, not the giving time. She just concentrated on her complete meltdown. As you do. "For his SECRETARY." Well... really it was with, since he'd go through at least a couple more before he settled on one he was stupid enough to marry. "That... that he's been s--" Oh, S-words were not good right now. "Sleeping with for like a YEAR!"
She might actually be lucky she had that wrong. He'd been sleeping with his secretary for at least a year; it just wasn't all the same secretary. Nice one, Frank. Nice.
"I'm sorry," Arthur repeated, feeling utterly unequipped for this particular task, but unable to let it go. He was starting to get a dawning sense of now I get the worst upset; he was also trying to deal with the fact that he wasn't quite managing to be angry at Merlin over this, which was both very unfortunate and very confusing and--
Something he wasn't going to go into right now, as he had his arms full of crying girl and his duty complex had just set in to remind him he should deal with that. By... letting her cling, and hoping it didn't seem too untoward, and finding it utterly ridiculous that he was hoping for it, and mostly just really, really wanting her to. Er. Feel better. "Francine."
It was the best he had. He would just be over here. Not moving.
She'd reached the crying silently stage, at least? With a pause for a sniffle. "What?"
[OOC: To be continued in comments! *provides more popcorn* And, hell, open to OOC if anyone's got any. Contents NFB, but that they talked is OK for broadcast ]