OPEN♔POST

[tinkertank]

❧Dance ❧With ❧Me?




➷ Pick A Muse
➷ Post a prompt, picture prompt, or set the scene.
➷ Label who you're tagging.
➷ NO REGRETS, JUST LOVE. We can dance until we die, bb.
➷ ...Something like that!

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m. prouvaire

[unaccepted]

Their discussion of politics wanes as night falls, save perhaps in one or two tables of the backroom, but the drinks certainly do not. There is a festive mood in the air that comes with bringing excitable young minds together, and even Grantaire cannot repel it for long. His drinking tonight does not send him into melancholy, and instead he chats excessively with any who will listen to him.

When one partner leaves, he latches on to the next (unknowingly) in line, and this time it is Jean Prouvaire. He places a firm hand on his shoulder and wastes no time on greetings, "My friend, I come to you with this secret as I know you speak too softly to reveal it. Surely in your readings you have come across creatures known as fairies, fae, demons. I will tell you now that they came to me at Parc Monceau and stole my best hat."

[vivelavenir]

Looking upwards as a hand clapped down on his shoulder, he smiled in his brief, fluttering way, as warm from conversation as he was from wine, and as willing to listen as ever. It was the wine that generally baited him to speak, where usually his chords were rusty, and topics of passion gained an especially fond vocal attachment. Who among mankind could not be tempted to passionate words by the introduction of a topic so fanciful as the wee folk?

"You come to me and tell all in the guise of a secret, but you must know me better than that. Poets who enjoy the pagan gods as much as the good god are in the habit of finding fae on their long, rambling walks, and beg an audience. They are demoted deities, you know; they have stooped in holy esteem, and so they will stoop to pick up your purse, or glove, or cane if you drop it." He leaned back in his chair, and posed in return, in a cheerful mood for playing along, "I dropped a glove in Champ de Mars yesterday evening, and sure enough, a fairy wearing your hat dropped to pick it up. It was an ill fit, and it rolled off in the attempted theft; I took the hat hostage, and he with my glove, we were at an impasse. So we talked into the evening, beside where the tree of liberty used to grow, and he told me all about you, Monsieur." Looking pleased with his own account, he finished with a light flourish of fingers, "There are no secrets kept from poets by the muses."

[unaccepted]

Grantaire's look only became more troubled as Jehan continued, his eyes genuine in their concern for his hat. With a scratch of his chin, he dropped into an available chair by the side of Jehan and leaned himself on the table in interest and intoxication.

"So the fiend travels! I knew you were the man to come to, yes, you of all people have that ethereal look in your eyes, and speech better suited for the creatures of myths. It must be that when you look to the clouds, you are traversing another plane. You see, I know as much of you as you of me. No doubt those beasts have seen me near you, and decided to play tricks on us both." He muttered something only to himself, and then fixed his eyes profoundly on Jehan. "Then, did you trick this thief into relinquishing our goods? Do not leave my head cold, give me an end to this adventure of yours!"

[vivelavenir]

"Tricks?" Jehan grew closer as well, hunching; halfway because it was natural, to hunch, it came comfortably to his attempts at ruined posture and hiding his height in the relative safety of a balled-up form, and half because the conversation seemed quite made up of conspirators. To speak of mythic beasts with one's companion hunched so far forward, it had in it the hint of something clandestine... even if it was just that Grantaire was drunk, and being a bit flush with wine himself, he'd become giddy.

To think that it was a secret added a flare of drama, and from the flame of drama one could draw the warmth of excitement! They were telling tales here, and nothing was so good as a well-made story between men.

"I do not think that she would play a trick on me, for you see, she had bright, clear eyes, as wide as the night is long, and as tender as the day is bright. I trust this brand of eyes to belong to only a sort of oracle; and thus, I took her upon her word that your hat has some great future, some dear destiny to accomplish. It leaves your head cold, yes; but in favour of a hotter tomorrow, a summer of mankind. You must suffer the winter to find the summer. And so, in conclusion: the wee one said that she must have your hat, and taking it as a matter of urgency to mankind's fortunes, I let her go with it. We parted ways in well, and she swept my glove off along with your hat. I assume they are wonderful allies now."

Was he making absolute sense? Possibly not. In his own mind he had certainly made enough sense that he himself was entertained; and so, he was pleased with his own rebuttal, and end to the tale.

[unaccepted]

Grantaire almost gave their secret to the spies around them when he hit the table with his fist, coming from surprise and grief at the loss of his hat. It was not loud enough to catch the eye of anyone in particular, and only shook the table which was rather unsteady in the first place. Alcohol drowned his strength, he would say, just as he claimed sobriety left none in him at all.

"I should have guessed it," he spat, as there suddenly seemed nothing more logical than what Jehan had described to him. "You revolutionaries care not for the cold heads of men! You would toss your hats away, your coats, too, for whatever a conniving fairy might claim. She is laughing at your name this moment, I assure you. She has made a camp in my hat, and has invited her sisters. Oh, the next time I go out, I shall be accosted. What will they take from me next? When we meet again, Prouvaire, I will be without a boot."

He ran a hand through his hair in distress; what he had been threatening Jehan of now seemed too real a possibility. He stood, then, pushing his chair back. He reached out a hand to Jehan. "Then, we must be off," he decided, after a debate within his own mind.

[vivelavenir]

The blast to the table nonetheless drew out a breath of surprise from Jehan, who stiffened into an almost-respectable posture in his mild alarm. It was rare that he sat with his shoulders straight at all, and his body naturally recoiled from the strain of it, and slowly wound back in on itself in the moment following.

He might have said a lot of things, to such a rebuttal. 'Better the laughter of a fae, than the ire.' 'Better a pile of coats with which to make a fire, than one coat against an endless cold.' 'Better to lose a boot for a sister, then...' ...well, no, perhaps not that. That did sound troublesome, he agreed within his own mind, with a bit of a face.

But his hazy, alcohol-snug mind was whisked away from all of that by the hand suddenly offered to him, which he took hastily, on reflex. There was a pause of a moment before he realized he also might stand, and did so, blinking at Grantaire in a slow, bemused manner.

"...You are eager to lose your boot?" Queried, with a darting look at the door. "Or where are we off to?"

Many left the cafe with company, and often. He was not usually among them.