[Fanfic, 100% OJ] Peat and Greet

Series: Flying Red Barrel

Genre: Slice of Life

Length: 3081 words

B/D: I wanted to goof around more with FRB characters, but this ended up being a little more dialogue heavy and 'cartoony' than I would otherwise like. Oh well; practice is practice.

Unofficially, he doesn’t like Fernet. He doesn’t know too much about her other than the scuttlebutt from ex-Guild pilots, but he knows that she’s a big landowner with a big house and a big fleet of airships and she has a big mouth with a big smile on it that probably means a big headache in his immediate future. Officially, however, he has to be civil to her, because she’s Marc’s friend and Marc has more missiles than she has scruples.

“Oh, Marc! I’m so happy for you!” Fernet says when they walk in.

He and Marc look at each other, which is a mistake. He’s been studiously avoiding looking at Marc all day, because apparently Fernet doesn’t let her visit if she’s not wearing a pretty dress. He has enough things that keep him awake at night without adding ‘Marc in a pretty dress’ to the list. But in the half-second of eye contact he makes before returning his gaze to his shoes, he manages to communicate the thought echoing in his heart: She’s your friend, so if this goes off the rails, you’re dealing with her.

“You’ve finally decided to take my advice and get yourself a nice, strong manservant! Now, I know it feels strange at first, but give it a month and you’ll never go back, I promise you. It just makes life so much more convenient when you’ve got somebody you can trust to attend to things. You know, I knew you had it in you – I’ve always thought that underneath that country girl exterior, there was a sophisticated lady screaming to get out,” Fernet says. She enjoys talking, which is why it annoys her so much when people shoot her in the face before she’s done.

Marc’s eyebrows furrow. “Uh… You have the wrong idea. He’s not a servant.”

“Oh, don’t tell me!” Fernet gasps, putting a hand on the table to steady herself. The fine china rattles ominously. “He’s a butler? My goodness, Marc! It’s an odd choice in uniform, but I can’t deny that he seems very well-kept. I did think he looked too well put-together for a common servant. And so young, too! My, this is beyond even my expectations.”

Marc nudges him with her elbow and drops her voice to a low whisper. “Oh, she likes you, Mr Fashionable. Do you want to be a butler for the day? I can clear it up with her later.”

“No way. It’ll only cause trouble. Besides, I won’t settle for being anything less than your equal, Red Barrel.”

“Fine, fine. I think it would have been fun, though,” Marc says, before turning her attention to the lady of the house. “He’s not my butler, either.”

Fernet takes a moment to mull this over. When she speaks, her voice is much more brusque. “Then why is he here?”

“Because he’s my friend, and I wanted to introduce him to you. You’re always saying how you want to introduce me to high society, so why shouldn’t I do the same for my friends?”

Fernet pauses at this, and part of her is very pleased. Not only because Marc has accepted her as high society, of course, although that is a large factor, but because there is a wonderful sense of noblesse oblige in the girl’s sentiment. She herself believes firmly in the idea that a lady with the means to be generous should use them, and that it was the duty of a noble not to look down upon her fellow man but to elevate them to her own level. But even so, there are matters of protocol. There always are.

“That is because you would make a lovely debutante, Marc,” she says, before looking meaningfully at Peat. “Debutantes are traditionally female.”

“So what? We can put him in a dress. He’s pretty enough.” She dodges the elbow Peat sends her way and continues. “Besides, nowadays it feels like I’m the only person who ever visits you, Fernet.”

“Well, that’s entirely besides the poi–”

“That’s exactly the point. You never go out and socialise with people our age. You just go to fancy balls and talk to rich old people. You’ll end up a lonely old lady with lots of money and no friends, and I don’t want that to happen,” Marc says. “So, I’m introducing you. Peat, this is Fernet. She seems stuck up but she’s got a soft centre. Fernet, this is Peat. I shoot him down about three times a week and he doesn’t know when to shut up, but he’s one of the most passionate pilots I’ve ever met.”

There’s an awkward silence as Fernet juggles her priorities. She’s not used to be spoken to so directly, especially in her own home. She understands that it’s just the way Marc is, of course, but a woman’s home is her castle, the centre of her authority, and she’d be quite grateful if people would stop storming it.

“Well… I suppose I can allow it. He has the grooming of a noble, if nothing else. Take a seat, both of you, and I shall fetch us some tea,” she says, finally, before fleeing at what Peat supposes is her top speed.

“Well, that went better than expected,” Marc says when she’s gone, and takes a seat at the table. The chair is too big for her. The table is too big for anybody. If somebody at the other end asked you to pass the salt, you’d have to send a courier. “So what’s eating you? You’ve barely said a word since we got here.”

He takes a seat one space away from her. The temptation to lean back in his chair and put his feet on the table is absolutely gigantic, but he abstains. Every single place at the table has been set, he notices, which seems very strange and very desperate considering that Fernet doesn’t get visitors. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Marc frown. “You sure? You usually have a lot more energy. If I’d called you a servant or a butler any other day, you’d have slugged me. Come to think of it, you’ve barely once looked in my direction. Did I annoy you or something?”

He scoffs. “You always annoy me.”

“No, this is something different. Do you have, like, a tummy ache, or – oh. Oh. I get it.”

He doesn’t like the sound of that, and he especially doesn’t like it when she leans over and stares straight into his eyes. “You like Fernet, don’t you?”

There are so many undertones in her voice that he can’t possibly sort them out. Hope, excitement, accusation, maybe a little jealousy right at the very bottom. He turns his head, and grunts in annoyance when she immediately moves back into his view and stares him down again. Her eyes are wide-open; he can see how short her eyelashes are, and how there’s a little wetness at the corner of each eye.

“Don’t be stupid, Red Barrel!”

“No. It all makes sense,” she says, slowly, as if she’s piecing it together. “That’s why you didn’t fuss at her the way you fuss at me. I bet you’re being quiet because you’re all nervous. And you’ve been avoiding looking at me because there’s a prettier girl in the room, and you don’t want her to think you’re interested in me instead of her.”

He sighs, and tries to drag his eyes away again. But he can’t avoid looking at her, now. She’s wearing a dress in brilliant red, with a high neckline and a cinched waist, and a hem that flutters around the knee. Sleeveless, of course. It’s the first time he’s ever seen with bare shoulders, and he wishes that he hadn’t because he’s going to have trouble forgetting it. He hates how even she can look sophisticated and alluring if you just wrap her up in satin and lace.

“If I fuss at you, it’s because you’re worth fussing at. If I speak to you, it’s because you’re worth speaking to. To be honest, your friend doesn’t interest me at all,” he says. He tries his best not to make it sound cruel, or acidic. “She seems nice enough, but she’s just a noble, stuck up here in a fancy house. She’s not like us.”

A long and volatile silence. He wonders where their host is with her promises of tea and polite chatter. That’s what nobles were supposed to do, wasn’t it? Take silence like this and fill them with chatter.

“I really can’t stand you sometimes,” Marc says, finally. Her voice is oddly calm, and he senses that this is not a good thing. “Of course she’s not like us! Do you remember back when everything was going on with the Guild? We just went up into the sky and shot each other – sometimes for really stupid reasons, right? Don’t get me wrong – if we didn’t fight so much, we probably wouldn’t have been able to take down that huge castle when the time came. But my dream is a peaceful sky, where everybody can fly freely. Didn’t you say that was your dream, too? If it’s just people like us, who shoot before we talk, we’ll never make that dream last. We need people like Fernet, who sit down and chat about things over tea before they open fire. That’s what I like most about her. That she’s not like you and me.”

He groans and puts his head in his hands. First she’s accusing him of being besotted with a girl he only just met, and then she’s lecturing him because he’s not? He can’t win. He can never win against Red Barrel. She’s completely right – too many people like her and he’d hang himself. He looks up just as Fernet comes back into the room with a bone china teapot balanced on a silver tray.

“Finally!” he says bitterly, his tongue running away from him. “How long does it take to make a pot of tea? Did you get lost in your own mansion? If I’d have known you were going to leave me alone with Marc for so long, I’d have come with you as a chaperone!”

There is a long silence, in which Fernet does not move and the expression on her face remains that of the genial hostess. “I’m sorry. I’m not entirely that was what you wanted to say to me, Peat. I think you were looking for something more along the lines of, ‘thank you for the tea, as I’m quite thirsty’. Would you perhaps like to retract that and start again?”

“Do it,” Marc hisses.

“No. I meant exactly what I said,” he declares, and stares Fernet straight in the eye. “To be honest, you two have been driving me crazy all day.”

Fernet smiles sweetly, but ominously, and takes a long step towards the table. “My, my. Well, you certainly have a very good question. How long does it take to make a pot of tea, hm? You know, I’ve never thought about it, myself. Perhaps I’ll pour this one out onto your lap and make another, so I can time it properly. Marc, be a dear and hold your friend for me, would you?”

“Whoa, now,” Marc says, holding up her hands for peace. She sounds exhausted. “Can’t you just slap him instead? We don’t live in a big city, Fernet. Word has a way of getting around, and if I bring him home with burns on his, uh, fuselage, people are gonna start spreading rumours.”

“To be entirely honest, I think that’s rather an acceptable trade-off. I do love a good rumour, you see; they add much needed spice to social engagements. And it is simply unacceptable for him to talk like that to a lady in her own house and receive no comeuppance. Besides, Marc, if you don’t help me you shall be spreading the idea that have some special reason to want his… ahem, ‘fuselage’, intact. Now, do be a dear and seize him before he gets any ideas about running away.”

The idea of running away has been occurring to him intermittently throughout the entire day, but it’s never seemed quite so attractive as it does now. Fernet, he is very quickly realising, is tall. Tall means long legs, with which to glide effortlessly around the house as noblewomen do – the house that, upon further consideration, is like a many chambered labyrinth that she knows her way around and he doesn’t. Gliders, as he realised as a child, can move surprisingly fast.

“I thought you said she wasn’t aggressive like us?” he hisses at Marc.

“I never said she wasn’t aggressive. Just that she’ll at least negotiate with you first. We gotta have something in common, or we wouldn’t be friends,” she replies, and claps a hand on his shoulder. It would be perhaps a little more reassuring if she didn’t have a grip like a vice. “Sorry, Blue Crow. If it makes you feel better, you did it to yourself.”

It does not, in fact, make him feel better at all. But he feels that, even though Marc is being leveraged against him, she’s trying very hard to drop him a clue – an escape route. He seizes upon it in the nick of time.

“That wasn’t negotiating,” he spits. Fernet slows to a halt, her teapot still held out like a handgun. “She just gave me a warning shot. Nobles are meant to be all about negotiations and contracts, right? They’re just puffed up merchants, after all. Why don’t you make me an offer?”

She puts a finger to her chin and thinks, or pretends to think. He doesn’t know which one is scarier. The hand holding her teapot is absolutely still, without so much as a shake or a tremble. Any pilot would kill for steady hands like that. Perhaps he’s been underestimating her. Just a little.

“An offer? Why ever would I do that? You have nothing that I care to barter for. I don’t know where you got this idea that nobles are like merchants, but it’s quite wrong. A noble, you see, does not give offers. She gives commands. Of course, if you’re so desperate to avoid your punishment, I might be able to scrounge up a task or two for you,” she says. There’s no vindictiveness in her voice. She sounds almost reasonable, which he is beginning to realise is her true ability: to talk nonsense with a straight face.

He grits his teeth, raises his gaze to stare her directly in the eye, and, against his better judgement, says a single word: “Shoot.”

“Do you remember, dear Peat, when our friend Marc told me that you weren’t her butler? I’m afraid that, as of right now, she was incorrect.” She puts down the pot of tea, and Marc releases her iron grip on his shoulder. Suddenly her voice is all business, her sentences on stiletto points. “You’ll find a cleanly pressed uniform hanging up the next room; put it on, quickly if you will, and then proceed down the hallway to the kitchen, where there is a tray of sweets for us. Oh, don’t give me that look – surely as a pilot you must deliver things from time to time? You may, if you wish, help yourself a slice of the tart. Also, as a servant, you should speak only when spoken to. Well? Get going. This pot of tea will remain hot for quite a while, and you shouldn’t push your luck until it’s cooled.”

She’s wearing the face of a woman who expects to be obeyed, and in that moment he realises that he doesn’t just not like Fernet, but he hates her. He hates her in the same way that he hates Marc, because the two of them are so far more alike than he was prepared to guess. Because they’re both deceptively strong underneath their feminine wiles. Because he wants to fight them, but he’s never quite sure if he wants to win. As he walks out of the room to get changed, he curses them both under his breath – but only barely.

They wait a few seconds for him to get out of earshot before Fernet bundles herself into the chair next to Marc’s and breaks down in a fit of giggles.

“You said it would work, but I really didn’t expect it to work that well! Oh, Marc, you always bring the best toys,” she says, and wipes a tear of mirth from her eye. “Did he really think I would chase him around my house with a teapot? And risk staining the carpet?”

“Don’t call him a toy. He just likes losing more than he thinks he does, or else he wouldn’t look for excuses to fight me so often,” Marc replies. She’s grinning too, although it’s a more subdued one. “I do feel kinda bad tricking him, though. I knew he’d mouth off eventually if I poked him, but I was sorta hoping he wouldn’t.”

“And miss the opportunity to be served tea and cake by a strapping young man in finely pressed trousers? You boggle the mind sometimes, Marc, you really do. Oh… I do like him, though. All the men I ever meet are so cowed by prestige. Perfectly spineless, as you might imagine. It’s so rare to see one with backbone.” She takes a deep breath, to replace all the air she spent laughing.

“And?” Marc asks, expectantly.

Fernet rolls her eyes. “And, since he's to my liking, I’ll see if I can scrounge up a few jobs for him, as we agreed. I have some fine tea waiting for transportation in the next town over, and I could stand to have somebody fetch it for me.”

“Good. Don’t tell him I asked you to do it, though. He’ll hit the roof.”

“In that case, I might tell him just to watch the reaction.”

Fernet leans back in her chair, and assumes an air of satisfaction. Today has, thus far, been a very lovely day. It is, after all, the privilege of a lady to surround herself with fine sights, fine food, and fine company. And as Peat approaches in a white dress shirt, morning coat and (of course) some finely pressed trousers, a plate of scones held in his gloved hands, she knows that she has found all three.

A/N: Meme story wheeeeeeee. At least I'm taking steps towards addressing the lack of FRB fics, right? ...Right?