du_vallon | (no subject)

It's been a profitable day for him. Porthos has been quick with his hands and has managed to get himself a good helping of trinkets, money, and other possessions. After making his drop offs at the shelters and to the kids on the street he watches out for, he grabs the bottle of wine he'd "freed" from one of the wealthy penthouse owners and heads up to visit Mssr de la Fère. He's been robbing him a little lightly this week, only taking a cufflink pair from him in the streets along with some of his bills.

He hasn't even robbed his actual flat this week. It's practically a reason to visit (and not just because he misses the man and he enjoys the frustrated and pretty look on his face every time he actually gets close enough to rob him). Porthos isn't going to think too long about why he enjoys riling Athos so much, though he knows in his heart why.

With a good bottle of red, he adjusts his shirt (almost as tight as his jeans, even if that's an impossibility) and knocks on his door, ducking to check that his new diamond stud earrings glimmers as best as it can in the light.

"Delivery!" he announces, filled with gruff amusement.

Threaded | Flat

Athos isn’t having a very good day - but then, he hasn’t had a good day in quite some time. Only the need for some income beyond the meager sum automatically granted him gets him out of bed at all. He spends most of hours in the dusty back room of a high-end antiques shop; the owner employs him to assess his wares. Being ‘historical,’ as the gentleman (to use the term broadly) puts it, has this minuscule amount of value. But it is a demeaning business, full of cheats and grubby businessmen, and retreating from that disgusting world fills the man once called the Comte de la Fere with relief.

That is, until he closes the door behind him, and the silence of his apartment engulfs him. Athos hates Darrow. He hates its rude and tasteless people, its pollution, its oppressive heat, its shining, steel buildings that blind him with the way they reflect light. But most of all he hates this loneliness that settles over him when he shuts away that mess and that noise. Athos thought he understood loneliness, thought a lifetime of it had rendered him immune, but now he craves some glimmer of companionship, some person to fill the void and quiet his own thoughts. He would accept the company of Remy, the blacksmith who has made every sword Athos has ever owned, or Guillaume, his long-trusted groom. The children, even, might be a welcome distraction, as little as he ever knows what to say to them. Even Katharine, the wife to whom he barely spoke before being swept away to this strange world, could provide some small amount of human warmth.

Athos loosens his tie and tries to remove his cufflinks - only to find that somewhere between the antiques dealer and his apartment, they have gone missing. He curses, wondering where they might have fallen, and if it is worth going in search of them. Suspicious now, he checks his wallet. Yes, it is just as he suspected: though the credit card and identification remain, the contents of his billfold have disappeared. Not again.

On cue, he hears a knock at the door.

He isn’t surprised to discover Porthos waiting for him on the other side. Pressing his lips into a thin line, he stares the man down. Porthos is one of the few connections he has to the world he once knew (however distantly) and a constant, maddening thorn in his side. ”You."