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Estrangement: June, 1829
After a meeting one Thursday night when the weather is warm and mild, Prouvaire gives Bossuet a slanting look of the sort that can generally be interpreteted as a "come hither" glance. Bossuet accompanies him to a nearby garden, namely the Jardin du Luxembourg, where they walk in the springtime dusk, close enough that every few steps they bump elbows or shoulders, as if by mistake. "I have missed you these past few weeks," Prouvaire says, reproachfully but softly. Bossuet brushes his shoulder lightly. "My dear man, I've seen you every other evening, at least." "At the meetings you sometimes felt obligated to attend, yes. What of that?" Prouvaire frowns. "You have seen me as often as you saw the rest of our friends, save Chrétien." He bites his lip and turns away. "I remember a time when we were not so distant from each other, but it seems that you, at least, are more pleased with this state of affairs." Bossuet stops, frowning. "Chéri--" Prouvaire shrugs. "If you have had more than enough of me, I will leave you be. You have only to tell me so." "Of course not." Bossuet rests his hands on Prouvaire's delicate shoulders, frowning in concern. "That isn't so at all-- don't you know that by now?" "Clearly you are tired of me," Prouvaire says, looking at the ground. "Clearly you want me to cease interfering with your schedule, your time with them." "What-- no. Of course not, of course I don't want any such thing, good God, Jehan!" "You do not want me to -- to -- I do not know what you want, love, but clearly you do not want me." Bossuet pulls him close. "You don't think so?" "Oh, and you will seduce me to prove it?" Jehan pulls away. "I am sorry, but that does not suffice. If that is all you want me for -- perhaps you would be better off with only Chrétien and whatever her name is." "Jehan!" "Théo! You love them far better and more deeply than you love me, and you hope to mend it with kisses -- but you cannot use me so." "Nonsense." Bossuet catches his hands. "Don't be absurd, chéri." Jehan pulls away. "I am not being absurd. Whyever should you care for me, after all, when I am such a stupid boy, given to, to overreactions?" He shakes his head. "No wonder you despise me so." Bossuet sputters. "Jehan! I do not. What brought this on?" Jehan shrugs and looks at the floor. "If you loved me, you would not assume that you could abandon me and woo me back whenever you pleased." "I don't." Bossuet looks unutterably hurt. "Chéri--" "Ah. So what would you call it, then? Your Musichetta, your Chrétien -- I am but a relic. Antiquated and infantile at once. You have no need of me, and we have both known it long enough that one of us should have said it before." Jehan turns. "I am going home. And you are no longer welcome there." "Jehan-- don't do this. Please." "Why not?" He turns back. "You need not explain that you love me, for I know that time is long past. You need not tell me that you want me --" he throws up his hands "-- by God, that is hardly an original affliction, and I am not waiting on your pleasure anymore." Bossuet catches his sleeve, terribly earnest and awkward and anxious. "I do love you. I don't know why that's so hard to believe-- Jehan, don't go." "You expect me to wait on your whims. Is that love? It is not courtesy." Jehan looks at him, furious and pink-cheeked. "Perhaps I shall take to dropping in on you when I would like to see you, but I do not expect your Chrétien would appreciate my company." "I don-- you-- I--" Bossuet puts a hand to his forehead. "You could have said something before now, cher-- you could have come to see me, asked me to come and see you, you know perfectly well I'd never refuse you!" "If you do not want to see me -- which you do not, for when was the last time you sought my company -- I am hardly going to insist that you leave off something you enjoy." Prouvaire sighs and loses much of his momentum. "You did this to me before, and I was heartbroken. Now you have begun again, and I find it does not matter so much --" he looks up and meets Bossuet's eyes "-- because I cannot trust you as I did before." Bossuet looks stricken, but sticks to his point. "Of course I want to see you -- and if you wanted to see me so badly, why wait for a month before telling me so? You're not being sensible, beloved." Prouvaire frowns. "Do you forget so quickly that I love you? Do you have so little desire to talk to me that I must hound you for a conversation, so little desire for anything else that I must drag you from your beloved and come rapping at your door to see you for a moment? I have not had your luck, Théo -- you are in love and you are happy. I am in love with you, and you make me weep and rage with your happiness, happiness that excludes me as surely as if you bothered to mention it. I will not hunt you down to tell you that I would like to speak to you, perhaps I would like to hold you, whatever it is. I will wait, and I will find other places to go and other people who might not abandon me with such offhand neglect." He backs away. "I care about you enough that I will stay out of your way." "Jehan. Please." "No." Prouvaire turns away. "You know where to find me, if you need me. Goodnight, Théo." He walks down the path as quickly as he can go without running. * * * * * The next night, Bossuet is not to be seen at the Café, although he spent a good deal of the morning there, in a less than sober state, according to the staff. The night after that, neither he nor Joly shows up, but on the morning of the third day there is a sharp knock at Prouvaire's door. "Who is it?" Prouvaire asks in a hoarse voice. "Chrétien," tightly. "Open up, will you?" A moment. "I -- at this hour?" "Yes, at this hour." Prouvaire opens the door. The room is a mess. His clothes are even more disorderly and rumpled than usual, as though he has slept in them for at least a night, though he has dark circles under his eyes that make it seem as though he has not slept at all. "I do not want to speak to you. If you must know." "I'm sure you don't." Joly's voice is harsh with the effort of keeping the stammer out of it. "I don't much care what you want, brother. If you must know. Would you rather talk here in the doorway, or are you going to let me in?" Prouvaire backs up to let him in and shuts the door behind him with a little too much force. "What brings you here, brother?" as if the last word is a mortal insult. Joly flinches at the noise, but faces him like a man about to be shot. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" "I told him he is not obligated to me for anything anymore." Prouvaire looks away from him. "I would have thought that you would appreciate that." "Appreciate?" Joly's voice cracks slightly. "I'd appreciate not seeing him torn to pieces because, God forbid, you're put out with him. Damn you. What did you --" He stumbles to a halt, almost choking with vehemence. "I am sure you can comfort him between the two of you." Prouvaire shrugs, looking even more like a sullen adolescent than usual. "He will be fine. If he was so dependent on my good opinion -- he would have not been so thoughtless, and I would still think well of him." "Oh-- thoughtless--! Because he has sense enough not to want to nursemaid you every spare moment?" Joly stops, visibly struggling for calm. "No-- What do you mean, 'the two of you'?" "You and her," waving a hand. "I do not want him to nursemaid me, damn you. I am simply tired of being ignored, and rather than impose my presence where it is so clearly not wanted -- you can have him." Prouvaire glares at Joly. "You win. Go home. Tell him how wonderful he is; he is tired of hearing it -- or anything -- from me." Joly clenches a fist convulsively. "Don't be such a child. God! Are you jealous of 'chetta, then, is that it? You have less sense than I thought. He came to stay with us because you were busy with somebody else, little brother." "By God, I am not your brother, and -- I am doing my best to stay out of his way. He wants to be with you, from all I can tell. He has not said anything to me about wanting to be anywhere near me, let alone sharing a flat." Prouvaire bites his lip. "I do not want to bother the three of you any more. You can do what you like, and I will do as I please, inasmuch as I can -- and I will miss him, damn it, I have been missing him, but he knows that, he must know that, and if he does not care --" He shrugs again. "Oh, yes, you are. Whether we like it or not." Joly laughs shortly. "If you cared that much, you'd swallow your precious pride and talk to him. If you could see--" he swallows. "But you're quite comfortable, I suppose, you and your righteous indignation. I--" And breaks off again, his face twisting. "Damn you--" "You won," Prouvaire says again, coldly. "Leave me alone. I have no pride, not in this, that he has not already tranpled into dust." His shoulders hunch. "He has not acted in any way as though he wants me around in the last five months. He has changed; you have changed him. In a week, he will be happy that I am out of the way." Joly gives another coughing laugh. "'Won'? Is that what it is to you? I decline the victory. I'm not your enemy, you stupid, theatrical boy. I want what you claim to want; I want him not to be miserable." And this is punctuated, anticlimactically, with a sneeze. "He does not need me to stop him from being miserable. If he did, he would have come here instead of sending you, or whatever it was that he did, or whatever you did by taking the initiative to torment me in my own home." Prouvaire sighs and loses some of the tension in his frame. He gives Joly a wry, sad look. "I do not know why you think he will be miserable without me. He has not been miserable -- to the extent that he has been without me -- these past months, anymore than I have been actively miserable because he was busy." He bites his lip. "I know I've been -- busy -- but I couldn't bear to think about everything, and the only way I could stop myself was to -- do something else." "Tell him, not me!" Joly throws up his hands, and turns away. "He's in love with you. God knows I don't understand it-- but--" The stammer threatens to resurface. "Damn it, he's my best friend. You don't-- you-- go and see him. You owe him that much. Unless this, this, fit of pique is more important to you." "Like hell he is. He was, but that was -- that's changed." Prouvaire puts a hand on Joly's shoulder. "You don't know what it's done to me, all of this -- you don't know what you've done to me, all of you. Damn you, Chrétien, and your pretty mistress, too. You could at least have spoken to me sometimes, any of you -- because if you think this is pique, you don't know what we had, then. You don't know how much he meant to me, how much I childishly thought I meant to him." He squeezes Joly's shoulder. "He does not care about me, whatever he may say to you, and he never did." Joly seizes his wrist, looking rather as though he's frightened by his own fierceness. "How stupid do you think I am?" Prouvaire shivers. "I don't know you. Not at all. All I know is that for a long time now, I've hated you when I was supposed to be your friend and resented you as strongly as if you were my blood brother. And -- you think I am a stupid child. I --" He falters, then takes hold of Joly's lapel with his free hand and kisses him forcefully. Prouvaire has tears on his cheeks even as he does this. Joly goes rigid as though he's been stabbed, and puts a hand roughly on Prouvaire's shoulder. Beyond that, he fails to respond, but when the kiss ends, there are tears in his eyes as well. His face is stormy. "I'd rather think you're a stupid child than that you're a self-centered fool. I never agreed to suffer that from self-centered fools." Behind the sharpness of his tone, there is a hint of pleading. "I may not know what's between you, but I know the state you leave him in when you throw fits like this." He takes a deep breath. "For the last time, Jean, I have no interest in taking your place even if I could. Get that through your head right now." "You may not want to, but you have." Prouvaire lets him go. "I don't know him anymore, Chrétien," half-pleading, "and you know him, and he loves you. I don't know what to say to him, but -- I will speak to him." He winces at his own words. "I don't mean to be -- to be self-centered. I thought I was doing what was best for all of us." He bites his lip. "It isn't as though I threw him out, or -- or anything. I don't know. And I don't know why he loves me, if he does, anymore. We've been so far apart --" "Neither do I." Joly winces, scrubs a hand across his face. "I mean-- I don't understand. But-- yes. Go. Talk." He fumbles for the latch of the door. "If you go and break his heart, I'll--" "No! I'm not going anywhere." Prouvaire looks fierce for a fleeting moment before he dissolves into tears again. "I couldn't talk to him about this in front of you, in front of her -- in a place where I'm not welcome and where I'm never going to be welcome." He sniffs. "Please. Tell him I'm here, and he can -- he can come if he wants to, but if he doesn't, I -- I don't know. I don't know anything," despairingly. Joly glares at the floorboards for a minute. "I'll tell him," he says roughly at last, and jerks the door open. "Good morning, then." "Chrétien -- don't hate me. I was trying to do what was best for you," using the plural. "I wasn't playing games, not at all. I -- damn you," switching abruptly to the singular. "I want you to understand why I've done this. But you don't," not a question, "and you -- what you must think of me." Prouvaire covers his eyes with one hand. "Does it matter what I think of you?" Joly fidgets with the latch. "I don't hate you. I have never hated you. Wake up, Jehan." "Then you think I'm an idiot," Prouvaire says, and wipes his eyes. "You don't know me. And -- I don't know you, and why should I, except that we're brothers and -- and all of this." Joly is quiet a minute. "Those aren't good reasons?" he says at last, a bit more gently. "Of course they're good reasons. Just -- I think they've kept us from caring to know each other, rather than anything useful." Prouvaire gives him a wistful, watery smile. "Not that it seems like it's going to change, but wouldn't it be nice if it did?" "It might be easier," Joly says testily, "if you didn't begrudge me a conversation with your beloved." Prouvaire loses his tentative smile. "I don't begrudge you a conversation, or twenty. It didn't bother me -- much -- until he took to spending all his time with you. Until he moved in with you, until he stopped talking to me. You do think I'm a petty brat, don't you? Look past your irritation for half a moment. I have some right to be upset in this situation, whether you'll acknowledge it or not." "I know nothing about it," stiffly. "As you keep telling me. I've said what I came to say." Joly turns away again. "And you don't care? No, no, of course you don´t. Why would you? I am, after all, only a stupid boy," scornfully. "Damn you, I'm trying to do what's best for you." The bitter mimicry seems to take the last of Joly's composure. "And as usual I've made a mess of it. I should-- should have stayed home and let you torment each other-- I--" He clenches his hands. "I'll leave you in peace. Good morning." With that, he goes out, shutting the door abruptly. Prouvaire sighs and locks the door behind him before pouring out water to wash his face.
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