Work Text:
“River Proletariat. I am an artiste.”
River knew what he was like, to the harsh detriment of others who looked at him. He knew his accent made him stand out from the posh English pricks like a sore thumb. He knew he was as subtle as a cubist painting slammed over someone’s head in a crowded room. He knew his unflappable nature made him unique in this crowd of absurdly yet constantly paranoid critics.
But that was all an advantage. Because he, unlike many others, had nothing to be sorry for.
His eye for art had been a favourite of Sir George Reek’s, a welcome change from the stingy salauds who unfairly criticised his masterpieces in Orléans. The two mostly conversed through letters, something which River was thankful for as he doubted George would have been entirely impressed by his physical presence in the same way as his ‘eye for artistic integrity’ had impressed him. River still fondly remembered his first commission for George – a simple yet picturesque rendition of a flowerpot, the beautiful dahlias blooming fully over the rim of the porcelain jug. River could appreciate the newer styles and yet they all seemed to pale in comparison to the beautiful simplicity of realism.
He only wished that he had a little more cash in his pocket to reflect that sentiment.
George Reek’s sudden distant correspondence was, to be frank, a complete mockery of everything River had worked for. His passion, his art, his move across oceans and cities – all for nothing. River never took anything too seriously, never one to faire tout en fromage, but this was not a matter of small indecency. This was business, this was River’s livelihood and his passions in one undermined by an aristocrat, no less!
Alas, River was not the kind to take revenge. And knowing how shoddy the money transfers were when he first moved to England, it was a perfectly reasonable guess that George Reek was simply late with the mail that month.
So, when an admittedly elegant missive arrived for River inviting him to a dinner party with a certain Sir George Reek at Reek Manor, there was no doubt in River’s mind that George had invited him over to sort out this minor transgression. After all, Englishmen were meant to be reasonable.
Now, there had been a reason for River drinking a glass of wine before the cab ride. And a bottle of red wine into the cab. And sharing a few swigs with the driver, who was all the happier to dock off some of the fee for an extra glass or so. There had been a reason, River knew that. Something about getting himself ready for confrontation.
Although stood in the parlour, holding another glass of red wine, the reason slipped from his mind as easily as the wine flowing from the bottle.
Theresa clocked River’s accent in a second, the two sharing a glance and a nod over the wine before the maid left to hand out more glasses. It was a small gesture, but amid the alcohol swirling in his system, it did bolster River slightly to know that there was a française in the crowd.
And perhaps it was that, plus the alcohol in him, that made him keep his nerve.
“Who fired that shot?”
River looked around, appearing to be the first one to confront the point. Ivy Cordova looked faint, her arm half-submerged in the poor man’s body, two of the paler ones pressed against the wall and a woman had completely collapsed. And yet no one was actually doing a bloody thing about it. “Everybody—you are just slipping around in the body, but nobody is saying anything about who fired that shot! Who has a gun, who did this?”
The sweaty man by the wall was murmuring. “The killer… there’s a killer!” River immediately dismissed him as having any significant role in the murder. River knew a nouille when he saw one, and that man was nouille. No doubt, some British higher-up would claim to know his bluff and call him out in some bizarre grandiose play, but to River it was clear – that man had never touched a gun in his life.
River continued looking around, dismissing the shady priest who had immediately rushed to the woman’s aid (the less people inside the corpse, the better) and catching sight of Carlton. Unlike the panic or shock in the rest of the room, Carlton was steady. Secure. Admittedly uneasy at the sight before him, but he remained sat at the table, one hand still resting casually against his glass.
Through the haze of fear and buzz in the air, River remained calm. He did not hold anyone’s fear against them, for that would not be fair (although the woman inside the corpse was a different matter). Acting out would not ease the tensions. There were many routes to go down – he may as well take the level-headed one.
And so, he did not follow Monsieur Peeps as he dashed out the door like a madman, followed closely by Buck McFadden who stalked after him like a hunter would his prey. He aided Father Fairmont in helping the woman who had fainted as that was an action that was sensible. He chastised Ivy Cordova on her foolish fall and regarded the beautiful painting above the desk in the study.
River knew true art when he saw it.
Claude Lorrain had been a favourite of River’s for a while now – not only because of his French origins, but because he could always depict a landscape with such realistic integrity and beauty, always finding the perfect spots to bring out the life in a place. His depiction of Reek Manor was no exception – the little windows with their slight glow, the trees that cast haunting shadows across the grounds.
Although, as River was mildly disdained to see, Lorrain had forgotten Reek Manor’s glittering lake. No real matter, perhaps he painted it from memory.
He was a little happier to see Lorrain’s work here – the same person had commissioned both Lorrain and Proletariat. Naturally, that meant that River’s work was on par with Claude Lorrain. Now, if only the public saw it the same way.
Come to think of it, Lorrain did always print the name of whoever commissioned him on the back of the canvas. It would be prudent to make sure – pride was a dangerous slope, after all. And besides, the sweetness of being right would be wonderful.
And since the delightful bloody Miss Cordova had offered to help him, it would be silly not to.
“Putain, madame!”
Ivy Cordova’s arm was halfway through the beautiful painting – non, the masterpiece, ripping a clean hole right through it. River swore some more under his breath, snatching the painting out from her blood-soaked hands as quickly as he pleased. She did have the grace to look sheepish, if even paler at her offence. Alors, could this woman avoid sticking her entire arm through something for one minute? Art truly was dead if this was how Madame Cordova wanted it to be.
Nevertheless, River looked at the back and saw Randall Reek, 16-whenever. Not George Reek. His pride did fade a little.
Luckily, the woman’s abrupt awakening assumed his remaining attention, although the Father and Ivy ‘Butterfingers’ Cordova seemed to have that particular interaction sorted, so he merely looked around the study until something actually important occurred. While he was unflappable, he was not entirely patient.
As much as he seemed to be the only person outwardly happy about the policemen arriving (finally, someone was being productive in this place) he did notice how no one else seemed to react positively to them. Father Fairmont had near sprinted away when he heard the doorbell go, and everyone else in the hallway seemed incredibly uneasy (other than Carlton, who watched everyone around him with a degree of distance). It was as though everyone in the entire house apart from River had held the gun. So, when there was a party to go to the generator, River was more than happy to join.
And when Father Fairmont instructed him and Monsieur Peeps to look through the potting shed, he more than obliged.
River sat in an old chair with a spiderweb on the ribbing, legs crossed and arms happily dangling from the rests. It was a miracle that through all the haste and frivolity, Peeps was still somehow composed enough to catch River’s eye, produce a small tin from his waistcoat and pass the artist a lighter.
“You know what uh, Monsieur Peeps.” River took a long puff, feeling the fumes through his windpipe and settle oh so sweetly in his lungs. The last time River had done this was years ago back in Orléans, after a particularly poor dinner party with the Limongis. He and a few other true artistes had gone to a smoking room afterwards, passing the puff around, making long remarks in French about the economy and their families. He had missed the simplicity.
“I think you’re actually a pretty alright guy.”
Harry took the joint from River’s lax hand from where he sat on the floor, taking a deep inhale himself and wafting the exhale away with a fervent hand. “That’s what people don’t realise about me, actually, when you get to know me. I’m a really loyal friend.”
River sighed, resting a hand on Monsieur Peeps’s head, and ruffling his hair. The writer was clearly new to the world, hardly a decade older than River, but with much less of the ease and experience. “I think you just need to chill out, you know.”
Harry nodded under his hand, either enjoying the affection or too stoned to notice. “Yeah, yeah, yeah—"
“Just be yourself! What I see from you is you are just trying to be the big man—”
“Yes, yes—”
“But you don’t need to be—"
Harry waved a hand. “No, you don’t need to be--!”
“Just be your Peeps.”
“You don’t need it.”
This medicated mumbling was like a sigh of relief to River. Finally, someone else in this house was making sense with him, even if it was an intoxicated Harry Peeps. Peeps’s honesty with himself was refreshing, the false-broken-bravado now laying in a marijuana tin on a potting shed table. River scratched Harry Peeps’s scalp, the writer humming either with agreement or mild perturbance. No matter which it was, he did not move away. He simply took another puff, blowing the smoke out through his mouth and watching it float up to the ceiling.
And when River felt Peeps freeze against his leg in a manner very unlike a stoned man, he looked up too.
The spiders were, admittedly, disgusting. All multicoloured, shifting and pulsing, some with heads bigger than their bodies, some with legs so long they looked like hair. A shiver passed through River, not enough to send him running, although he did feel a little sick at the horrible pustules above him.
Monsieur Peeps, on the other hand, screamed as though shot through the chest and bolted.
Really, River should have noticed the horrors far before this point. Long before Peeps spoke in a voice that sounded unlike his, storming back to the house with a certainty unseen in him before. Long before he saw the mild-mannered writer cold-bloodedly shoot a man in the chest. Long before he realised that the ‘French detective’ was not French but a murderer.
So, when a particular Monsieur Peeps offered to get out of there, he was inclined to agree.
“Let’s run!”
Harry was even more erratic than before, holding the shotgun he used to kill the Colonel in his arms like a child, yet leaning in towards River with all the glee and optimism of one, despite the blood on his face and the mud on his slacks. “We can run back to London! It’ll only take us, what… twelve hours? Six hours? How fast are you? I’m really fast! I used to do cross-country as a boy.”
He crumpled. “Oh, mother!”
Had River only been onlooking the situation, he perhaps would have found it funny. But being on the receiving end of Peeps’s tirade was something he did not need to experience ever. “Okay, why don’t you come with me, Mr Peeps?
“Okay.”
“We can go, and we can try and find a car—"
“You’re my best friend!”
Oh, Jesus. “Oh, Jesus. I suppose I’m your best friend, you’re my best friend too.”
Truth be told, River’s emotional intelligence ended a while ago, just after Sir George Reek was shot in the chest. A mere day ago, he was just a disgruntled artist hoping to get an apology from an Englishman. Now, he had a man who was clearly cinglé and not in a regular way, both of which needed to leave the house before he – or whatever clearly possessed him – killed another. Easily in the top three worst dinner parties he had gone to.
River did not enjoy people hurrying him, and he certainly did not enjoy people hunting him down like an animal. And he very much disliked a certain Monsieur Peeps referring to him as a sack of spiders.
“Monsieur Peeps! Monsieur Peeps, what are you talking about?”
And the two were chasing each other out of the house, the sight of a man who should be dead of little importance compared to the need to run, aller vite, to get the hell back to London or a working car or anywhere other than this godforsaken house. And Monsieur Peeps for a man of his weediness was rather fast, or at least fast enough to maintain a distance from River the entire time as River sprinted after, yelling at him to calm down.
Of course, it could never be that easy. Heaven help the man who thought he could just leave a bad situation, pop to a smoking café with a mate and smoke until his eyes went white. Because, of course, Monsieur Peeps led him directly into the face of a lead pipe that knocked him out cold, rocking off into unconsciousness with the smell of blood in his mouth and lungs.
And then back into the strangest consciousness he had ever hated to experience.
Carlton’s presence had been something of a comfort. To know that (other than River himself) the least flappable man was right there with him. Inside him? Inside the same body as him, it appeared. There was a strange numbness, a severe disconnection from anything physical. And yet, trapped inside a body that felt simply too big to be his, it felt crowded with Carlton’s voice echoing right beside him.
“Can you think to move, your, say, right arm?”
Even in this horrible place, Carlton was calm, thoughtful. His mild tiredness from earlier seemed only to be from River himself, not this horrible space he found himself in. Earlier this week, River may have called him out on his blatant vulgarity. Right now, he found it almost comforting.
River was still the same French artiste he always had been.
“Mmhmm. Okay.”
“Just do it on three.”
And on three, a great hulking arm lifted. And River felt no surprise.
This body was not his own. He had gathered that the moment he had stumbled back into whatever consciousness this was. And, despite the mild pride at being able to do something, he did really want to get back to his own body, the one with the beret and the glasses and the broken nose. But River only ever looked forward and did it without hesitation.
“Push… push…!”
And the slab of wood creaked off them, sliding harshly against the floor, the sound grating in a number of ears that River could not count, so he did not. And, with murmured instructions between the two of them, two grand arms hauled them out, a third, fourth growing out of the torso to hold them up against the floor.
Alright, River did flinch a little at that.
“‘Ave you seen anything like this before?”
Carlton was smooth inside the head, operating a leg completely on his own. “I work in a strange business, artist.”
“Okay. Can you answer the question?”
And there were bricks in front of them, tall and imposing but rather weak, clear gaps between them and no mortar in sight, but River could see them from all angles – looking up, above, in front, left, right, diagonal, from the floor, too many visions and angels and eyes all over his chest.
Carlton remained unflappable. “Smash?”
Internally, River grinned. “Ouais.”
And River reached up and out, whatever his face and shoulders and arms were pressing against the bricks, the makeshift wall falling away so, so easily. River had never been a physically imposing man, but he had to admit that even among the horror, this was quite nice. The rolling mass of muscles and tissue and more muscles did little to shake him.
Okay, he was a little shaken. But with this body right here and Carlton right there and the wine cellar only a few feet away, there was nothing really to fear. Besides, fear had never helped him before.
(Neither had certainty.)
And he and Carlton were working well together, which was a shame considering River had spent the entire night être une nounou to an insane literary graduate. River could not help but feel like he could have done more – even in this body that he and Carlton now commanded, he realised that he had no idea what was happening. Privately, he doubted that Carlton did either, although Carlton at least gave off the impression of a well-learned man.
So, there begged the question – what had River come here for and what had he done?
Climbing up the stairs three legs at a time, he pondered this, half his energy driving this body while the other half allowed his mind to ponder. River had come here for an apology, for George Reek to offer money or condolences, even another commission if he was lucky. The two would have shaken hands, enjoyed a nicely cooked dinner by a French maid and an elderly chef and River could have made the long walk back to his cottage not a couple miles away from the city.
What had he done?
Monsieur Peeps was certainly to blame for much of his dallying – if he had not completely freaked out over some mere spiders, perhaps neither would be here. Perhaps they could have stayed in the potting shed, passing joints between them until the two decided to just go, ignore the ‘policeman’ and his inquiries, leave Ivy and Father Fairmont to do whatever intense discussions and vague threats they wanted to trade, leave Carlton and Buck to do the hard work while they fucked off back to London. They could have shared artistic insight over some of River’s champagne he had in a cupboard. Maybe Peeps would have talked kindly and calmly of his mother and his past, asked River to remove a spiderweb in his kitchen.
But none of that had happened. Here he and Carlton were, stuck in a body that was not their own yet grew with the speed of ten. Muscle over bone over skin grew and grew, more eyes and hands and fingers to use and squeeze up the staircase, far too narrow for a being like them, Carlton’s voice gently guiding and pushing them upwards as River controlled the reins.
And maybe if he had heard quick enough through his hundred ears the whispers behind them, of a butler he had not cared about and a woman he abandoned, he would have cared enough to speak out loud through mouths that were not his.
Maybe if Carlton had noticed the failed shot at the same time as River, they could have ducked, slammed their monstrous body to the side and dealt with the bruises as they blossomed and grew and swelled.
But maybe River did not care. Maybe he just wanted to say au revoir to this horrible dinner party and let whatever was beyond drag him to a place where art was dead and everywhere.