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thisengland2008-08-01 12:43 am
angevin2.livejournal.com) wrote in thisengland2008-08-01 12:43 am
[FICATHON] A Good Jest For Ever, for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
borusa
Title: A Good Jest For Ever (1 H IV 2.2.94)
Author:lite_bright
Play: I + II Henry IV (plus hilariously inept quoting of Henry V, by Pistol)
Recipient:borusa
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Pistol, Bardolph and Poins.
Warnings: (if necessary) None. Well, drinking. Also Pistol trying to whore it up.
Rating: PG
Notes: Very silly. Not really much redeeming value. Like beer, in a way.
Summary: Pistol has a good time. This is not such a great time for everyone else. Everyone may play beer pong. Whatever, internal chronology; set in some nebulously pre-modern pubs. Hackneyed attempts at rhetoric and humor follow.
It is an unseasonably warm evening for April, and the matted and rich-smelling rushes from winter have been turned, leaving their heavy stench in the air. The tavern-keeper and his mistress purposefully bustle, limiting their movement by foreknowledge, practice, and simple lethargy, as their lone patron sluggishly naps. He occasions to jerk his head up, when a particularly loud sweep perturbs him, quickly sliding back towards sleep the moment he has discerned that nothing more threatening than dust lurks here.
Pistol throws the door open, nearly lifting the hinges apart, and not entirely coincidentally, causes a set of small ornamental pots to crash loudly to the floor. Stepping over the shards, Pistol grins.
"Bardolph, let us go down! This day is not one for sitting at home." Bardolph rouses himself from his nap, and wrings the dregs of his ale out of his beard, shaking his head. Pistol continues, "For even your home could stand to do better than this, an abandoned hull, but for the flies."
Pistol sits next to Bardolph, leaning against the oiled-smooth planks of the table; he momentarily jumps, feigning a splinter, and begins. "There are many fine wines, even finer ales, and you desire this fester of a drink, an ale which does not run clear now, and will, most like, never run clear, not even as it is expelled. Drinking this when the sun has hardly climbed, though! Why, those nights of merry with the gracious knights; have you forgotten them so soon? For the forgetfulness from a hogshead is nothing to hide."
Bardolph scratches the back of his head, feeling for dirt, and anything that could explain Pistol's new-found friendliness. Their association runs back into the mists of early life, but even through that, Pistol has never been truly companionable; a companion, and a partner, and he generally wants payment for it, in the end. This newly-developed cheer is suspect, yet Bardolph only blearily rubs his eyes, and yawns.
Pistol slaps Bardolph on the back, and with a confused, and likely insulting, moral to the keeper and his lady, strides out the door, expecting nothing more than an unquestioning follower. Leaving his coin on the slick surface of the table, Bardolph runs his hand under his nose, and follows Pistol. Merely to see the next adventure, really.
As he leaves the tavern, and its still-shuddering door, Bardolph wonders where his next drink will come from, and where Pistol has found himself. Hopefully not in another East London brawl, and hopefully there are no women involved, although with Pistol involved, that is never a good chance. Looking up and down from the doorway, Bardolph does not immediately see the trail of destruction and violence which generally follows Pistol.
Well, not immediately. The crashing of yet another door sends Bardolph hurrying through the sparsely-populated streets, with only the afternoon vendors of drygoods, and and a few farmers with their livestock wandering through it. A plump goose half-heartedly flaps his wings, and Bardolph considers a roast goose, warm with fat and sauces. His belly growls in appreciation of this thought. Maybe a bit of crackling, with a warm jelly and a sprinkle of salt?
Before Bardolph is even finished with imagining the first taste of his fine, rich meal, the fatted duck at the center, and the jellies to come, Pistol comes out of the small lodging along the road.
"I have found the next of our merry men! I have roused him from sleep and old age, and he shall be with us, upon this day. Bardolph, come to me, and help hold this man." Pistol waves an arm, to demonstrate where Bardolph ought to help, and promptly drops the sleeping man, right in next to a stream of washing water. Not-so-gently nudging him out of the way with the toe of one shoe, Pistol looks from the sleeping body to Bardolph. "Well?"
Sighing, Bardolph crosses the narrow road, and looks down at the sleeping form. He nods. "Well."
The formerly sleeping Poins rouses himself. "What have you done, and why?" He closes his eyes tightly, as to drift to sleep, and out of Pistol's harm, again. "Why have you come back?"
Pistol laughs. "Why, we had never really gone! Had we left you alone much longer, well, none of the women in Cheapside would have been safe," leeringly, Pistol adds, "from me." Bardolph half-swats him, and Pistol returns a vicious right hook. Grimacing, Bardolph looks down at Poins.
"The women? After all that Prince-" Poins seems ready to drown himself in the leavings of wash-water in the street, so Bardolph lets the comment sink unsaid, although he privately knows that there is something. Somewhere. He wants another drink.
After a tense moment of staring, which Bardolph rather misses, thinking about the duck and salted jelly, Poins stands up, and seems cheered by Pistol's insistent jokes. They have all heard Pistol's attempts at comedy before, even the one about the prelate and the dogs, but Poins seems, if not interested, then not running in the other direction. Bardolph dogs their steps, a few paces behind slowly listing from one side to the next, like an unballasted boat on heavy seas.
Pistol opens the next door, slamming it into the wall, and knocking down a long bundle of kindling, and producing a shattering and clattering beyond all noise. Poins follows in, holding his head, and Bardolph brings in the last, hoping for a drink.
He faintly recalls this place, from months ago, and a long ago expedition with the knights and nobles. Now they have just left Poins, a poor shadow of a man, and Pistol is calling to others. Perhaps a fight has been set? Bardolph gingerly feels the bridge of his nose, cracked in a boyhood brawl, and wonders if he could triumph over any opponents, today.
The men who converge on them are only old acquaintances, though. Pistol brightly greets them each by name, "Nym. Peto. Quick." A neat joke comes toward each man, but Bardolph can feel his body drying from too long away from the sack, and gives them no attention.
The drawer slowly comes toward them, a small smile lighting his features, as if calculating the coin from them, in advance. He sloshes a heavy earthen mug in front of each man, and Bardolph takes a long draw of it, feeling the cold heat of it slide through him. He is distracted from the man's conversation with the rest of the table, who seem to be describing some gentleman's game with the pitch of a small wooden ball. Bardolph narrowly catches it, and begins to listen, rolling the smooth ball under his fingers.
"So, you're meant to drop the little ball into the ale? Then, finally, to drink it?" Pistol's face shines with the exertion of thought. The drawer smiles widely, clearly pleased that his halting explanations, illustrated by Peto's tankard, have become clear. Peto, jealously and immediately, pulls his tankard close, like a prodigal finally come home from abroad. Bardolph tosses the small wooden ball from hand to hand, considering.
The tavern is of a class better than those they usually frequent; it will undoubtedly lead to their unceremonious dispatching soon enough, but now, with the drawer speaking them, even Pistol is well-behaved, picking his teeth in a darker corner. The place is short on dark corners, generally, though, so Pistol must have brought his own, Bardolph thinks, mildly. The tallow burns cleanly, and even the benches are mostly whole, bearing Bardolph, Nym and Quickly on one side, Poins, Pistol and Peto, with their other early patrons on another. The stone floor feels cool under Bardolph's worn leather shoes, a quiet reminder of the moderate wealth of the tavern.
"Oh, great gentlemen." The drawer is speaking again. "I have mentioned this lark for your amusement. Shall I bring the ale?"
Bardolph nearly shakes his head, declining. He'll take a simple tankard, none of this throwing wood in perfectly good ale. Possibly even perfect, from this place. Pistol, predictably, cuts in.
"Have you told us right? A debt was forgiven? We shall remember this. Shhh!" Pistol jumps up, holding a hand across the man's mouth. "A whole debt?" The drawer nods, with Pistol's hand still on his face. "A debt, here? Could you give us the name, perchance?"
The drawer pulls back. "Well, I could. But I had told him that his secret would stay safe with me to the grave, even with threats." Pistol finishes muttering to himself guiltily, about nobility and something with kings and fords, but continues to question.
"A whole debt? All the ale and wine? Even with the old sack, and the lot of us? All that, and he had paid it, even after leaving us for what he said was forever? Like a woman, perhaps, with promises and devotions?" Pistol elbows Poins, "like a woman, what do you say? He must have a woman now, to teach him what could not be learned from us rougher men."
Poins sharply elbows Pistol, curiously looking as though he is searching for a forgotten toy, one he has long neglected, and only recently realized the hours he spent with it, as a child. There is no more talk as the drawer sets down the masses of cups and tankards and every vessel in the house, for the game. The flowing cups sit among themselves, waiting, while Bardolph dunks the ball in and out of each one, testing it. Perhaps if he throws it low, and lets it bounce? That is surely deserving of an extra point, although with these gross rules, less ale.
"Well, it floats," he announces to the room. There is a great rearranging and clutter, but eventually they have sides, and Pistol lets out a cry. "This shall be a memorable day, and those not here," Pistol pauses to cough, "shall think themselves accursed and rather less thick with wine."
Author:
lite_brightPlay: I + II Henry IV (plus hilariously inept quoting of Henry V, by Pistol)
Recipient:
borusaCharacter(s)/Pairing(s): Pistol, Bardolph and Poins.
Warnings: (if necessary) None. Well, drinking. Also Pistol trying to whore it up.
Rating: PG
Notes: Very silly. Not really much redeeming value. Like beer, in a way.
Summary: Pistol has a good time. This is not such a great time for everyone else. Everyone may play beer pong. Whatever, internal chronology; set in some nebulously pre-modern pubs. Hackneyed attempts at rhetoric and humor follow.
It is an unseasonably warm evening for April, and the matted and rich-smelling rushes from winter have been turned, leaving their heavy stench in the air. The tavern-keeper and his mistress purposefully bustle, limiting their movement by foreknowledge, practice, and simple lethargy, as their lone patron sluggishly naps. He occasions to jerk his head up, when a particularly loud sweep perturbs him, quickly sliding back towards sleep the moment he has discerned that nothing more threatening than dust lurks here.
Pistol throws the door open, nearly lifting the hinges apart, and not entirely coincidentally, causes a set of small ornamental pots to crash loudly to the floor. Stepping over the shards, Pistol grins.
"Bardolph, let us go down! This day is not one for sitting at home." Bardolph rouses himself from his nap, and wrings the dregs of his ale out of his beard, shaking his head. Pistol continues, "For even your home could stand to do better than this, an abandoned hull, but for the flies."
Pistol sits next to Bardolph, leaning against the oiled-smooth planks of the table; he momentarily jumps, feigning a splinter, and begins. "There are many fine wines, even finer ales, and you desire this fester of a drink, an ale which does not run clear now, and will, most like, never run clear, not even as it is expelled. Drinking this when the sun has hardly climbed, though! Why, those nights of merry with the gracious knights; have you forgotten them so soon? For the forgetfulness from a hogshead is nothing to hide."
Bardolph scratches the back of his head, feeling for dirt, and anything that could explain Pistol's new-found friendliness. Their association runs back into the mists of early life, but even through that, Pistol has never been truly companionable; a companion, and a partner, and he generally wants payment for it, in the end. This newly-developed cheer is suspect, yet Bardolph only blearily rubs his eyes, and yawns.
Pistol slaps Bardolph on the back, and with a confused, and likely insulting, moral to the keeper and his lady, strides out the door, expecting nothing more than an unquestioning follower. Leaving his coin on the slick surface of the table, Bardolph runs his hand under his nose, and follows Pistol. Merely to see the next adventure, really.
As he leaves the tavern, and its still-shuddering door, Bardolph wonders where his next drink will come from, and where Pistol has found himself. Hopefully not in another East London brawl, and hopefully there are no women involved, although with Pistol involved, that is never a good chance. Looking up and down from the doorway, Bardolph does not immediately see the trail of destruction and violence which generally follows Pistol.
Well, not immediately. The crashing of yet another door sends Bardolph hurrying through the sparsely-populated streets, with only the afternoon vendors of drygoods, and and a few farmers with their livestock wandering through it. A plump goose half-heartedly flaps his wings, and Bardolph considers a roast goose, warm with fat and sauces. His belly growls in appreciation of this thought. Maybe a bit of crackling, with a warm jelly and a sprinkle of salt?
Before Bardolph is even finished with imagining the first taste of his fine, rich meal, the fatted duck at the center, and the jellies to come, Pistol comes out of the small lodging along the road.
"I have found the next of our merry men! I have roused him from sleep and old age, and he shall be with us, upon this day. Bardolph, come to me, and help hold this man." Pistol waves an arm, to demonstrate where Bardolph ought to help, and promptly drops the sleeping man, right in next to a stream of washing water. Not-so-gently nudging him out of the way with the toe of one shoe, Pistol looks from the sleeping body to Bardolph. "Well?"
Sighing, Bardolph crosses the narrow road, and looks down at the sleeping form. He nods. "Well."
The formerly sleeping Poins rouses himself. "What have you done, and why?" He closes his eyes tightly, as to drift to sleep, and out of Pistol's harm, again. "Why have you come back?"
Pistol laughs. "Why, we had never really gone! Had we left you alone much longer, well, none of the women in Cheapside would have been safe," leeringly, Pistol adds, "from me." Bardolph half-swats him, and Pistol returns a vicious right hook. Grimacing, Bardolph looks down at Poins.
"The women? After all that Prince-" Poins seems ready to drown himself in the leavings of wash-water in the street, so Bardolph lets the comment sink unsaid, although he privately knows that there is something. Somewhere. He wants another drink.
After a tense moment of staring, which Bardolph rather misses, thinking about the duck and salted jelly, Poins stands up, and seems cheered by Pistol's insistent jokes. They have all heard Pistol's attempts at comedy before, even the one about the prelate and the dogs, but Poins seems, if not interested, then not running in the other direction. Bardolph dogs their steps, a few paces behind slowly listing from one side to the next, like an unballasted boat on heavy seas.
Pistol opens the next door, slamming it into the wall, and knocking down a long bundle of kindling, and producing a shattering and clattering beyond all noise. Poins follows in, holding his head, and Bardolph brings in the last, hoping for a drink.
He faintly recalls this place, from months ago, and a long ago expedition with the knights and nobles. Now they have just left Poins, a poor shadow of a man, and Pistol is calling to others. Perhaps a fight has been set? Bardolph gingerly feels the bridge of his nose, cracked in a boyhood brawl, and wonders if he could triumph over any opponents, today.
The men who converge on them are only old acquaintances, though. Pistol brightly greets them each by name, "Nym. Peto. Quick." A neat joke comes toward each man, but Bardolph can feel his body drying from too long away from the sack, and gives them no attention.
The drawer slowly comes toward them, a small smile lighting his features, as if calculating the coin from them, in advance. He sloshes a heavy earthen mug in front of each man, and Bardolph takes a long draw of it, feeling the cold heat of it slide through him. He is distracted from the man's conversation with the rest of the table, who seem to be describing some gentleman's game with the pitch of a small wooden ball. Bardolph narrowly catches it, and begins to listen, rolling the smooth ball under his fingers.
"So, you're meant to drop the little ball into the ale? Then, finally, to drink it?" Pistol's face shines with the exertion of thought. The drawer smiles widely, clearly pleased that his halting explanations, illustrated by Peto's tankard, have become clear. Peto, jealously and immediately, pulls his tankard close, like a prodigal finally come home from abroad. Bardolph tosses the small wooden ball from hand to hand, considering.
The tavern is of a class better than those they usually frequent; it will undoubtedly lead to their unceremonious dispatching soon enough, but now, with the drawer speaking them, even Pistol is well-behaved, picking his teeth in a darker corner. The place is short on dark corners, generally, though, so Pistol must have brought his own, Bardolph thinks, mildly. The tallow burns cleanly, and even the benches are mostly whole, bearing Bardolph, Nym and Quickly on one side, Poins, Pistol and Peto, with their other early patrons on another. The stone floor feels cool under Bardolph's worn leather shoes, a quiet reminder of the moderate wealth of the tavern.
"Oh, great gentlemen." The drawer is speaking again. "I have mentioned this lark for your amusement. Shall I bring the ale?"
Bardolph nearly shakes his head, declining. He'll take a simple tankard, none of this throwing wood in perfectly good ale. Possibly even perfect, from this place. Pistol, predictably, cuts in.
"Have you told us right? A debt was forgiven? We shall remember this. Shhh!" Pistol jumps up, holding a hand across the man's mouth. "A whole debt?" The drawer nods, with Pistol's hand still on his face. "A debt, here? Could you give us the name, perchance?"
The drawer pulls back. "Well, I could. But I had told him that his secret would stay safe with me to the grave, even with threats." Pistol finishes muttering to himself guiltily, about nobility and something with kings and fords, but continues to question.
"A whole debt? All the ale and wine? Even with the old sack, and the lot of us? All that, and he had paid it, even after leaving us for what he said was forever? Like a woman, perhaps, with promises and devotions?" Pistol elbows Poins, "like a woman, what do you say? He must have a woman now, to teach him what could not be learned from us rougher men."
Poins sharply elbows Pistol, curiously looking as though he is searching for a forgotten toy, one he has long neglected, and only recently realized the hours he spent with it, as a child. There is no more talk as the drawer sets down the masses of cups and tankards and every vessel in the house, for the game. The flowing cups sit among themselves, waiting, while Bardolph dunks the ball in and out of each one, testing it. Perhaps if he throws it low, and lets it bounce? That is surely deserving of an extra point, although with these gross rules, less ale.
"Well, it floats," he announces to the room. There is a great rearranging and clutter, but eventually they have sides, and Pistol lets out a cry. "This shall be a memorable day, and those not here," Pistol pauses to cough, "shall think themselves accursed and rather less thick with wine."
no subject
You've totally nailed the Eastcheap crew. They're hard to write! And Pistol anticipating HV. AWESOME.
no subject
This was not in any way a surprise to anyone, was it? But, yay! I found myself liking the Eastcheap crew, while writing this. Shockingly enough, they're interesting, and not just a bunch of drunks. (Though they are that too.)
I have long theories about Pistol and Hal, but they are boring, and sort of go nowhere. Except here! I'm really pleased that you liked that gesture.
I'm really pleased that you liked this, full stop. Hooray!
no subject
And you do a terrific job, as I said, on the Eastcheapers (heh), who are pretty hard to write. :D
no subject
*claps loudly*
no subject