It was difficult to maintain one’s warlike countenance when one descends the stairs to the smell of cooking eggs and merrily whistled creole tunes. A few choice laid words of French chorus floated contemplatively over the pot along with a cloud of herbs, and Harry’s thundering resolve dissipated in a cloud of thyme. The jollity of mothers and the all-conquering aura of domesticity! so many times had Harry laughed scornfully at the power of pans, pins and preparedness, and yet he wandered away from the lintel, leaving his bellicosity hanging upon its luck-clad iron shoe with the air of a distracted guest. The aura of war turned upon him, and he suffered a vague but striking desire for toast. Remi greeted him with a mile-wide grin and he found himself seated over a cup of thoughtfully brewed tea.
Harry hated the smell of eggs, and, in fact, always had, but Remi was a good cook. Smell being one of Harry’s favorite senses (touch, of course, reigning smugly supreme), he was loath to describe with disfavor the smell that emanated from Remi’s pan, whether or not it had the indecency to claim descent from a hen’s behind. Remi couldn’t distinguish battle-herbs from battered herbs, but his cooking was second to none.
Taking another bloom from one of the many, many pouches hooked onto his belt, he gave the air a sniff and let fall a fragrant patter onto the pan. These pouches were the result of many a failed experiment, all marked forlornly with a wide black ‘X’ descriptive of their unsuitably for combating the forces of evil. Not one to remain discouraged, the positive side of his inability was that Remi had one hell of a portable spice cabinet.
Harry did, however, have a reputation to maintain as a picky eater, or as he would style it: ‘connoisseur’- and what’s more had the memory, if not the emotion, of meaning to be angry with the world today. Sallying forth the forces at his disposal (namely, discontent and wit), he took a deep unnecessary breath, and said that his tea was over-brewed. Remi responded with a small shuffle-step and the information that Harry liked milk in his tea, and complained it was too weak whenever he added said milk.
Harry, with much defeat of spirit, performed the necessary adjustments and had to admit that a colonial (a French one, at that) brewed tea better than he did, albeit silently. The smile on Remi’s face was disappointingly knowing.
Harry, unable to divorce wit for the sake of domestic peace, attempted a snide remark about an evening paper, but Remi pointed to one folded on the table without disturbing his refrain. The truth was that Harry had absolutely no interest in the evening paper, but now was obliged to read it. His pride required nothing less than that ultimate sacrifice from him. He tried to open his mouth to complain, but Remi renewed his song, leaving Harry’s forces in rout. Harry accepted a slice of toast in defeat.
In truth, Remi’s singing made him oddly comfortable, foreign as the song was to him. The tune was strange, though not so strange as to be uncanny, possessed as it was of the simplicity in all music sung truly. Yet it warbled with vines and hollows and hidden lovers in hidden oaks, and the secret nonsense words of children, staying all the more familiar for every part that was foreign-
“O femme Romulus, oh!
Belle femme Romulus, oh!
O femme Romulus, oh!
Belle femme qui ça voulé mo fai.”
Remi knew the song from childhood, and it soothed him to sing, though he had no talent for it. Luckily, he came from a place where talent was always seconded to passion, and singing was one passion which Remi could give in to.
As for desires, he had no clue why Harry had decided to eat breakfast. The vampire had no need to eat, Remi knew, receiving all its sustenance from its dark arts. He was uncertain whether eating was perhaps only an obliging gesture that Harry often did, or if it was further sign of Remi’s good influence reminding him of his former, graced humanity.
It was often that Harry forgot he was unnecessarily eating at all, Remi knew, from evidentiary facts such as his occasional chagrin at getting marmalade (which substance Remi found dubious in the extreme) on his vest, and thereafter not falling into his usual tirades of fastidiousness about the state of his clothes. He was more apt to respond with a polite, ‘damn’ and go on eating toast and dubious, dubious marmalade until such time as Remi reminded him he was going out that evening. Upon hearing this reminder, he often paused as if he had misheard (doubtful again, considering the nature of vampiric hearing, i.e. curséd sharp), and responded with an entire change of clothes and the frittering away of half the evening on usually season-themed ‘colors’. (Remi had no idea what or who had decided that certain colors and certain seasons ‘matched’, but as England had only one season, ‘rainy’, and Louisiana had two, ‘wet and warm’ and ‘wet and hot, with occasional breaks for devastating storms’, he suspicioned it was yet another ill that could be blamed on the French and clothiers). Remi had only lately convinced Harry of the futility of getting him to change his clothes as well, to make them a more ‘aesthetic pair’, and often had to respond to Harry’s dithering about clothes with staunch urgings and loud announcements of the precipitous bongings of whatever large clocks were in the vicinity.
If Remi had any doubt as the unsuitability of himself for marriage, he would assume this was something of what marriage was like, albeit damned, unnatural, coarsely inflamed with worldly concerns, and inconvenient.
He flipped his eggs.
“Li tombé dans chagrin...”
They were done.
“From whom did you connive this lovely night-beginning breakfast, Remi?”
Remi turned from the oven and quickly hid his smile. Harry looked every part the breakfasting Englishman. Perhaps attribute the kitchen’s darkness to a depth of India jungle fauna and add in an Irish servant, and Remi was uncertain he would be able to control his mirth.
So he fumbled with his words slightly, earning a condemning copper brow.
“The landlord. He was going to boil the eggs for saving, but I convinced him to let me have some.”
Harry now cocked a brow in disbelief, “You’ve convinced a landlord to ‘give’ you something?”
Remi nodded, setting himself down. Harry’s disbelief grew into a pall over the conversation that Remi cheerily ate right through.
The vampire shook his head, putting down the disdainfully unread paper.
“Remi, you do realize you’ve now broken more laws of nature?”
Remi’s face bolted up, mouth half-full of eggs, eyebrows bunched in deep concern. He began to open his mouth to enquire, but Harry decided to allow his comedic talent a blow in order to avoid that consequence.
“It is the landlord’s nature to give nothing up without a pint of blood spilled. Free eggs is very drastic rebellion against the tenants of Nature herself.”
Remi looked down at his eggs, both betrayed and heartbroken. Harry shut his eyes tiredly.
“Do not spit those out, I’m unsure I could handle it.”
Remi shrugged, after a moment’s deep debate.
“They’re still tasty.”
Harry flipped open his paper again. “My dear friend, you have no idea how tasty most sins against nature are.”
Harry wasn’t sure if that was laughing or choking. It was probably both. At any rate, no one should make breakfast a matter for moral contemplation, so he sipped his tea and read an utterly dull evening paper while Remi noisily Consumed. Presumably, he could make penance for enjoying his eggs somehow.
There was a sort of holistic peace while Remi finished, enjoining everything in an almost daybreak-like silence, in spite of the rumbling night-cabs and lantern lighters. He stood and scraped his plate off, washing it like an tenant of unearthly goodness (certainly not one of Harry’s quality, of course) and setting it on the counter. Harry had just begun to open his mouth, when the waft of bad air came in.
“Good evening to you, fine gentlemen of my acquaintance, and I hope you’ve supped well.”
Benjamin set his hat (jauntily, of all ways, which was perfectly wasteful of a good angle) on the coatrack and gave them both a little bow, though Harry didn’t fail to notice it turned more to Remi than himself. In case it was not apparent, he was beginning to grow annoyed already.
“Oh, very well, indeed,” Remi responded, with a bright smile that also sickened Harry. Little didn’t now, though.
“Good!” Cried Benjamin, as if he were just absolutely pleased, and the doubtful, sarcastic commentary in Harry’s head was going to have to stop or this conversation would take all night.
“...Because,” continued Benjamin, rudely as if there had been no pause for commentary at all, “I think I have found most pleasant ways to spend our evening.”
“...Eradicating the forces of darkness?” Remi tried hopefully.
Benjamin’s perfect smile never faulted.
“Of course, my dear, but perhaps after a show? Or, even a little dinner theater? Perhaps a tour of some of the sights, which really don’t lose their splendor at all at night. I could take you around the old quads, which I’m sure Harry wouldn’t mind, though the regaling with old tales would almost as certainly occur as they would certainly bore you.” His false reluctance fooled no one, except Remi, whom Harry supposed it was meant to fool and there was the potential that he was brain-damaged, anyway.
“Oh,” Remi looked hopefully at Harry, whose eyebrow had not-unquirked since the other vampire had arrived, and appeared to have lost the means to do so. “I wouldn’t mind that, actually. Harry isn’t very forthcoming with his past.”
Forthcoming? Forthcoming? What could he possibly have forth-come with? This implicit criticism wounded his pride.
“Ah, no worries, my friend,” Benjamin insinuated his arm over Remi’s shoulders, turning that cherubic smile conspiratorially towards his ear, “I’m sure I could tell as many stories of our old days as you’ve got hairs to stand on end at the scandal of them.”
This implicit revelatory story-telling wounded Harry’s sense of self-preservation. And Benjamin knew it. He showed a toothy smile next to Remi’s half-hopeful one.
“I’m sure it isn’t all that bad. Anyway, in spite of your satanically extended lives, we were all young once!”
And he said it with all the good-will of someone whose ‘youthful indiscretions’ consisted entirely of having once chased girls around a playground holding a frog. Harry hadn’t exactly been holding a frog, but then again, neither had they exactly been girls.
“Indeed,” Benjamin intoned, and as the cherubic smiled quirked upward, just slightly, Harry actually considered doing violence to him very presently.
“At any rate,” Benjamin continued, his host-mantle once more about him, “the night is certainly young now, but it won’t be should we dilly-dally.”
He crooked an elbow out and smiled his deadly, poison-darted smile, that Remi had no idea the dangers of, that every instinct of his should stand and shout at, that bore with it all the wickedness of the truly damned...
And Harry watched it stick home. Right in his gullible, still-living heart. Remi smiled his pleased embarrassed smile, and a flush came into his cheeks that only two in the room knew as appetizing. Harry despaired as his misplaced trust let him loop his arm into that of one.
“Come now, let’s begin.” Benjamin showed his fangs.
Harry stood. “Let’s.”
Remi smiled, his voice betraying fatal hope. “I think tonight will be fun.”
The two vampires exchanged glances.
Remi let Benjamin lead him out, using the fact that he and Harry seemed intent on staring each other into natural death to hide him slipping a stake back into its sheath across his chest. He’d have to tell Benjamin not to lay unsuspected hands upon him- needless to say, he was disinclined to control his urge to cause the vampire fatal hemorrhaging. Luckily, neither Benjamin nor Harry seemed to notice, apparently having a full and silent conversation with the use of dimples and eyebrows. With any good luck, Remi could stay out of it, and not have to stab anyone at all. Happily wondering what he might learn of Harry’s upbringing, Remi whistled to himself as they headed out into the night. Standing between Harry and Benjamin and peacefully mumbling his song, he went over all of the material he remembered from the Brotherhood’s archives on how territorial truly aged vampires often got.
“Belle femme qui ça voulé mo fai.”