Work Text:
It was Dominique who suggested it. She was sitting in the parlor with January, finishing the hem of a gown, and in between savaging the reputations of half the street and speculating on the upcoming presidential election, she bit off her thread, white teeth flashing, and said, "And you know, it must be so lonely for poor Hannibal, living in those horrid attics with those awful ruffians tramping in and out under him--"
"Lonely?" said January, startled. He could have applied a great number of descriptors to Hannibal Sefton, but lonely was probably not one he would have thought to use.
"Well, and none of his friends ever last for long, do they?" said Dominique, distractedly examining the stitches already in place before she picked up another, already-threaded needle. "You wouldn't believe what they're charging for thread these days, p'tit, and the fabric prices--" For a moment January thought the discussion of Hannibal's personal life and emotions was going to end as quickly as it had begun, but then Dominique doubled back on herself in one of the conversational cul-de-sacs she was so prone to. "Anyway it would be nice if he really had someone, wouldn't it?"
"I suppose," said January, bemused. "Although you can't be picturing him marrying."
"No, of course not," said Dominique, anchoring her thread in the hem with a tiny stitch. "He would be a terrible husband. He needs someone already married, obviously--"
"I think he's already found several of them."
"Not like that, bad man." Dominique reached out from her yards of silk to swat his arm. "No, someone whose husband wouldn't mind--"
"I'm not sure there are that many of Mademoiselle Viellard in New Orleans," said January, who was relieved for Dominique's situation but alarmed by the turn the conversation was taking. "Where are you expecting to find more of her?"
"Well, maybe it would be best if he simply took up with both of them," suggested Dominique impishly, and then, beaming, "For instance, there's always you and Rose, p'tit!"
January choked on his coffee.
Dominique was never one to maintain a subject of conversation for more than two minutes without being skillfully and meticulously piloted back to it. Without any such intervention she was telling January about Charmian's newly acquired vocabulary, and from there to the Viellards' latest family argument, and from there to an affair between her friends' younger sisters which had ended in someone's dress bodice cut up the night before a Blue Ribbon Ball, so January did not have to discuss this suggestion further.
He forgot about it entirely, in fact, until he was on his way home. Crossing the banquette to the large, Spanish house which contained Rose's school and their home, he remembered, and had to laugh at Minou's steadfast belief that her own domestic arrangements could be generalized to other people.
He found Rose upstairs, preparing for tomorrow's chemistry experiments with the girls in the room used as a laboratory. "Planning to burn the house down?" he said in the doorway.
"Yes, of course," said Rose, looking up and pushing her gold-rimmed spectacles up her nose. "I think I might need a bit more gunpowder to manage it - do you think this is enough?"
"We'll have to send out for more," said January seriously, coming over and waiting to see that her hands were in fact clean and the jars she had out were nothing dangerous before he leaned down to kiss her. He was still struck by his permission to do that, sometimes - that all of the years of waiting had ended in their marriage, that Rose would turn her head up to kiss him when he came in.
That struck a note in his memory. "Minou had a suggestion for us," he said, going to straighten the books that had been left out on a table.
"Oh?" Rose went on measuring powders carefully. "Does she think we should add fancy stitching to the curriculum?"
"Not this time," said January, glancing over the laboratory for anything else out of place, and stooping to pick up a ribbon that had been dropped on the floor, half-under a table. Adolescent girls, he mused, had way of going through any room like a hurricane. Particularly in groups. "It was about our marriage, actually. She thinks we should add Hannibal."
"Add--" Rose made a funny choking noise as she understood. Concerned, Ben straightened hurriedly to find her leaning on the table, wrist pressed to her mouth to stifle laughter. "--The students' parents would love that," she said, several minutes later, once she had calmed herself.
"Perhaps she just wants us to have incentive to smuggle him into the attic," said January. "She does have a soft spot for him."
"It's true his sleeping arrangements can't be helping his health." Rose frowned, thoughtfully. "I don't know that we could offer him a room in the house, but I suppose if one of us arranged to pay his rent directly to a better room..."
"Somewhere nearer," said January, thinking along the same lines, and then met Rose's eyes.
She smiled, ruefully, at him and pushed her spectacles up again. "We're considering it, aren't we."
"He would certainly give us a hard time accepting it," said January, hearing in his mind the unearthly, angelic tones of Hannibal's violin - and seeing his pallor last winter, in the poorly constructed attic of his current sleeping arrangements.
"I suppose it would be more persuasive as - er - a debauched plan," said Rose, who was now worryingly thoughtful. "How does one propose such an arrangement? I suppose it's not like asking for someone's hand in marriage..."
January put his hands together solemnly, and intoned, "Are you prepared, Monsieur and Mademoiselle - and Monsieur - as you follow the path of marriage..."
Rose started laughing and swatted his arm precisely where Dominique had. "Quiet, all we need is for the girls to hear. --Especially if we're really going to ask him."
"Are you serious?" said January, regarding her, and wondering if he was dreaming.
"Are you?" said Rose.
January thought again of Hannibal's violin, of how graceful his hands were on the fingerboard and the bow, even when he was so drunk he could barely stand and so sick he had to conceal coughing fits at performances. He thought of the years that had somehow gone by since his return to New Orleans, of how unexpectedly long Hannibal had been in his life - even longer than Rose; about as long as the adult Dominique, who he knew as more than a small child. He had never thought he was inclined to interest in men, and most men, he would not have been; but then neither Ayasha nor Rose had ever been like most women, either.
"I might be," he said, and crossed the laboratory to kiss Rose again. "Perhaps, since it was her idea, we should ask Minou for advice."
"That depends on whether you want to be fed lines from one of her romances," said Rose. "Not that I have any better ideas."
January's eyes fell upon the open jar on the work table. "You could put it to him as a matter of scientific curiosity," he said.
"That's worse," said Rose, leaning against his chest. "No, he'll be over for dinner tonight. We can talk to him then. After the girls are in bed. We have that long to think."
"So we do," said January, taking her hand in his.