RÉGIS.
And finally, after no small effort on his part, wine still dripping, Degaré gives Régis the attention he so deserves. Régis expects near applause for his theatrics, but instead gets a look of such withering intensity radiates off the shorter man that it’s near better. Attention has been drawn plenty to Régis’ sponsor as of late, but if it were a leash as Degaré suggests, at least Régis would understand that it was a something meant to be severed or snapped. The dry truth is, Alain hasn’t even given him that. No leashes, no restraints. And so Régis finds himself with something far more welcome, though far less expected - autonomy.
“Only the barkeeps I find nice to look at.” He quips back with ease. “Or the ones I enjoy hearing say my name.”
Régis’ pursuit of the Mane on behalf of Alain has familiarized him with all the idiosyncrasies of Degaré, or more accurately, it has reminded him of how much of the man he already knows. Aware of it or not, Régis has haunted Degaré for a lifetime. The Aveline spent a youth with Edith Lambert, an engagement turned sour not in a moment, but a rotten vessel from the start that more or less was left in the sun to decay. He’d spent that same youth tormenting this bastard brother of his fiancée as boys do with pinned butterflies. Even now, there’s no hatred to be spared between them when the meal is measured and divided, and in such a way Régis has become familiar with the way anger shifts Degaré’s features, how it changes him into something else entirely. Once, Regis left another woman’s necklace on their bureau and Edith has been furious at the sight of it. She left Côte d’Opale for a month on horse, back to House Lambert, in a storm…. and for the life of him Régis can’t remember the way she wore her anger. He doesn’t know the way it touches her eyes in the way it touches Degarés, can’t remember the exact manner a frown presses its way into her mouth and her brow. Edith was simply forgettable. Degaré was not. Is not.
And perhaps that’s because Degaré won’t allow himself to be forgotten. Not when he chooses to wield his anger like the knife he cuts through the air (not when he literally brings a knife to a wine fight.) Régis watches the arc of it with amused interest, till it comes to a quivering halt in front of him, embedded into the wood. Can he find something admirable in the swiftness of the movement? A decision made, a decision carried through. A solid way to live. Laughter bubbles in his throat. He can’t understand further damage his own property to prove a point, but he wants to. Alain had recounted his encounter with Lambert’s bastard and how he’d almost returned to tell the tale with two fingers less than which he’d left that morning. Régis had laughed for ten minutes undeterred. He’d laughed harder when he learned it wasn’t a joke.
And then, Degaré turns around and leaves the knife to Régis.
Régis is left with a knife.
A knife has been placed within Régis’ reach and he has been left to his own devices, unsupervised.
No matter how it’s spun, there’s no avoiding what a monumentally bad, colossally misinformed decision this is. Régis raises an eyebrow at the instrument and then at the retreating figure of Degaré. Swift as ever, he snatches it up, jostles it free of the wood, and grips it with his own hand. He’s not too bad at it really, in fact, knives are the preferred weapon of one Régis Aveline. It allows him to get personal in a way little else does. There’s an art to this - it’s not broadsword nor an axe. He’d liken it to rapier if he had to, if only because he handles it with a similar elegance and finesse. How this evening wound up here, he doesn’t care to dissect. But It truly is something that an evening beginning with the intentions of gathering any new whispers heard of the Widrowem ambassadors can escalate so quickly.
To be clear though: Régis isn’t so quick to discard his plans for the evening.
He’s on his feet in an instant, sweeping his cloak back so it doesn’t drag in the wine he’s so considerately splashed all over the floor of the establishment. He catches up to Degaré, practically pounces in the way he grabs him by the arm and holds him, drags him back so their frames slot together, paralleled. If Degaré intends to turn around he can’t, lest he come to terms with the knife pinned to the small of his back. Régis uses his cloak like a curtain to shield it from any wandering gaze. No point in a drunken patron seeing something they shouldn’t and deciding this was their night to play hero.
And oh, it is not lost on Régis that Degaré despises this - he can feel the way his touch ripples through the other. After all, what lion wants to discover a knife at their back? That’s fine and well, Régis thinks the time for courtesy is over. He tilts down low, allows the warmth of his breath to brush across the shell for Degarés ear. It would be easy enough to write off their silhouettes as that of two lovers exchanging a quick whisper, but even with the few kisses Régis has managed to steal over the years from Degaré there has never been anything tender about them.
“Some would say it’s foolish to hand your enemy a weapon and then immediately turn your back on them,” Régis coos, words soft, only for Degaré to hear. “So I suppose it’s in your favor that I’m an honorable man.” That laugh finally bubbles forward. His eyes mark out the path in front of them. There is a paneled hallway in front of them that winds deeper into the Mane, but if Régis memory serves (and it does), a loose plank opens up into a back room; one of the many secrets of the Mane. The hand on Degaré’s arm grips tighter to cull the storm that threatens to spill over and Régis pushes them forward. He stands close enough that it wouldn’t be difficult to press a kiss to Degaré’s temple. “Unless of course you were hoping for this, mon puce?” Régis goads with another snicker. He can feel the heat radiate off Degaré even from this distance. “I’d ventured into your little establishment to discuss recent affairs, but I’m happy to engage in other activities while I’m here.” His words carry the weight of suggestion, but Régis can’t help but also call attention to the knife at his back once more, as if Degaré could have forgotten, “But you should know this about me by now Degaré, I don’t like to wait.”
He walks the man forward. His theories on Widrowem would fare better under the shadows of the backroom anyway. “Allons-y, Degaré,” He gives him a little poke with the knife. “Let’s see if we can find me another bottle.”
Regis leans forward into Degaré’s back, till they are flush, reaching around him to knock the panel on the wall. It opens like a maw and Régis ignores all protests. He all but drags the man over the threshold, into the darkness.
Only the barkeeps I find nice to look at. Or the ones I enjoy hearing say my name. It’s a shameless swipe. Even if it isn’t, Degaré takes it as he takes all things from Régis: as an act of provocation. A guttural sound climbs up his throat.
They’ve been like this so long, it’s a wonder he’s not grown used to Régis’ taunts. Further, the fact that he’s not yet accustomed to the smoothness of them, and doesn’t rightly know what to do with them, satiny and unshaven, like something with a suede-effect, is cause for more astonishment still. He bridles at the velvet of it, just as he does now, snarling as he turns on his heel, like a swelling hidden somewhere in the muscle. He clenches his jaw; tight. Régis Aveline has always been really quite capable of drawing his hatred with unpremeditated ease. Degaré has experienced a lifetime of it, intimately acquainted with all its forms: playful tricks, wanton contempt, cruel remarks and entitled demands, grim flirtations, humiliations, the mortifying faux pas in being of low and scant birth. Cheap shots, all of them, sharpened like a blade and pointed at his throat. When they were children, Régis insisted upon showing his spite as if it were his prerogative, running together, bare-footed, over the pebbles of the seafront. He would take his chin in his hand, jerking it left, right, regarding him in a harsh and frivolous sort of way. He would invite Claude and Edith to pass comment, too, casting their own aspersions on the bastard as if they hadn’t done so the moment he passed over their father’s threshold, and then Régis would release him, sneering with something clever and cruel. It was a careless sort of cruelty; the type that was entirely without cause, and entirely without consequence. Ever since, Degaré has always responded by revealing his teeth, as if daring him to put his hands on him, to find out if the wild thing bites. Such is an animal’s instinct: do not all beasts bare their teeth, biting, scratching, when they feel they are being hunted?
Just so. Degaré refuses to give him the satisfaction of having the last word, never relents or gives in, nor cedes to him the power he once held over him in their youth. Back then, he was beholden to men like Régis; forced to play by their rules. Now, they are equals. Bastards both, heirs to nothing.
Now, that’s only half true. Degaré has no inheritance of his own, has nothing to fall back upon but his name, which is only half his, in truth, but he has forged a birthright of his own. And Régis, even now, stripped of all the greatness that once made him truly great, still glimmers in the low light like something vulgar. He despises him for that, and he means nothing to him, and Degaré is thinking of how pleased he is to have left him at the table having had the final word, slamming the point of a knife into the wood to illustrate his own… when Régis hoists him back by the arm, pulls him into him with all the force and suddenness of a man going for broke. The movement is so abrupt that, were it not for Régis’ body, slotted against his, holding him in place, Degaré might’ve fallen headlong.
There’s a knife at the small of his back. Régis’ knife, which had been Degaré’s knife mere moments ago.
Well, fuck.
Régis has always wielded the upper hand. Such is the right of patrimony, no? Esteemed heirs make quick work of sorry, pauperised bastards. Whether it’s the point of the knife in his back that causes him to realise this, or it’s in the way that Régis cants his head to the side, close enough that Degaré can feel every warm breath that passes by his lips, he isn’t sure. His entire body goes taut: he clenches his jaw, something sour and sharp pooling at the back of his throat, hands balled into fists at his side. He stares dead ahead. Degaré isn’t sure which makes him seize up more: the fact that Régis has him so entirely at his mercy, completely dispossessed, or the fact that the dog enjoys it so much. Call it intransigence, pride, the bulldog spirit of dignity and years of contempt, he’s compelled to go with the latter. In point of fact, perhaps he has never hated Régis Aveline so much as he does right now, knife pressed into his back, helpless to turn to meet him. When Régis murmurs into his ear, barely more audible than a whisper, Degaré feels a shiver thrum through him. Instead of bending to it, however, allowing it to make him yield, he straightens, looks away from his attacker’s eye, blood thrumming hard beneath the flesh. He almost laughs, cruel, beggared by disbelief. It crawls from his mouth like something harsh and throaty, like the edge of a razor. “Honourable?” he near spits, a little louder than Régis’ whisper, but still conscious of the fact that he’s being held, rather compromisingly, a knifepoint in his own establishment. “Oh, Aveline. You wouldn’t know what honour was if it ran you through with a fucking sword.”
When Régis laughs, it’s grim and mirthful. He almost recoils at the sound of it. He titters on about nothing in particular, the blade still poised threateningly at the small of his back, and all that Degaré can think is that Régis’ laugh might be among the worst sounds he’s ever heard. The bite of it is only severed by more gibes, silky as the first. Unless this was what you were hoping for, mon puce? Against his will, he bristles at it, begins to thresh in Régis’ grasp, begging release—as close as Degaré Lambert has ever come to begging, at least—his blood boiling, seething, but Régis holds fast. Worse still, he tightens his grip. As Régis pushes the both of them forward, Degaré makes his animus plain, grunting through the struggle.
When Régis leans forward to knock the panel on the wall, their bodies are flush, just for a moment. When Régis leans into him, he instinctively flinches away. At last, the man with the knife finally releases him, and the force with which Degaré bolts from his grasp makes it difficult to determine whether Régis shoves him into the room, or Degaré shoves himself.
Once he’s certain there’s enough distance between them, he spins ferociously on his heel, shoulders rolled over, greeting his accoster, who leans languidly at the room’s entrance. Degaré wears a look of convulsion: brows furrowed, every muscle around his mouth clenched, bitter words held tightly at the back of his throat, as if by a noose. “Get your fucking hands off me.” The words are almost a snarl. He straightens his shoulders, then rolls his sleeves up his forearms; a distraction, a way to occupy his hands. “You touch me again, Aveline, I’ll kill you where you stand. I’ve more than enough tools in here that’d do the trick.” He chuckles darkly. “I’m not above getting a little creative.”
A pause.
“Actually, you know what?” His anger makes no effort to subsist, but he turns his head to the side, considering. “I’d revel in the opportunity. Would make short work of you, too. So by all means,” he motions with his hand, falsely cordial, “Go ahead.” Though they don’t sound it, the words are more a warning than an invitation; an effort to demonstrate just how readily he’d cut his throat, or delight in stabbing him in the back. Degaré smiles cruelly—the sort of smile that isn’t a smile at all, not really, but a threat.
He shows his teeth: “What do you want?”
