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Author: Guede Mazaka
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Arthur/Lancelot, Smecker
Feedback: Good lines, typos, etc.
Disclaimer: Not mine at all.
Notes: Crossover with Boondock Saints. dien is responsible for the summary.
Summary: “No matter what universe you come from, and no matter how sane and well-adjusted you think you are, the doctor is completely capable of fucking you up, over, or sideways, guaranteed, or your money back. Bringing weapons into your session is allowed and, indeed, encouraged.”
***
*Yo, Smecker. Next session’s here.*
The buzz of the speaker made Paul’s pencil leap across the page, leaving behind a horrific thick black streak. Fucking great—now his plans for Greenly’s ass were all obscured and he’d be lucky if he could redraw them before dinner. “About time.”
*About time? Christ, they’ve been here for the last fifteen minutes. The shorter one’s starting to get antsy with his fucking swords.*
“Well, that’s why I bothered hiring a big schmuck like you instead of someone whose hands don’t mash up my goddamn files. Just send them in and get me a coffee.” Paul flipped over the notepad page to a fresh one, then reached over to pick up the latest clients’ file. He did a quick read-through: stressful jobs, semi-isolation for most of the year, possible religious issues. And they were coming here because one of them wanted to improve their communication skills. Okay. Right. “And when I say coffee, I mean fucking coffee. Not the—”
“Horse-piss you’ve got in your waiting room?” snarled the dark, slender man stomping into the room. He stopped expectantly, but when it was clear that Paul wasn’t going to give up the couch, he impatiently threw himself into a chair. Something clanged and he winced, then angrily yanked two swords from behind his back. The look in his eye said he wanted to toss them at Paul’s head.
The second man was taller and broader, and to judge from the hangdog irritation on his face, this was his idea. He hissed something at the other man, who sulkily put down the swords, before calmly taking his seat. He was also smart enough to take off his broadsword before he did that, which was a relief since chairs as peculiarly uncomfortable as Paul offered his clients were hard to find. “Hello. I am Arthur, and this is—”
“—stupid fucking idea—”
“—Lancelot.”
“And I’m Dr. Smecker. I prefer to be referred to as Doctor or Smecker. Pretend I don’t have a first name; it saves on wondering time.” Paul put down their file so it was angled slightly towards Lancelot. He’d turned the papers around so that they couldn’t be read, but that wasn’t obvious to Lancelot, who casually began a process of twisting and craning about that hopefully would see him falling on his ass in a couple minutes. “So you’re here because you don’t think you can communicate.”
Lancelot flipped a hand-gesture that Paul didn’t recognize, but which meaning was clear enough. “Oh, we can communicate. In fact, we’re communicating right now, aren’t we? How long is this? I want to get back before Tristan talks Gawain into breaking into my room.”
Arthur already had his head in his hands. Damn. Much as Paul wanted to strangle Lancelot, he was good at this. Paul scribbled down a couple notes for trial later on Greenly. “Well, then. Why do you think you and Arthur are here?”
“Because he’s an IDIOT and didn’t LISTEN to me when I said that we should go.” The man didn’t even make it through the whole sentence before he’d turned on Arthur. He pushed up on a chair arm and dramatically threw out his hand. “There were hundreds and hundreds of them, and you’re surprised that some of us died? You idiot! Of course it wasn’t going to be you! You were the one with the strategy, that bitch was the one with the army—it’s common sense! You protect your moronic leaders!”
It was hard not to laugh, but Arthur was starting to reply and there wasn’t going to be any of that yet. Paul raised a hand. “May I interrupt? So if I understand you correctly, you feel that Arthur didn’t sufficiently respect your input.”
Lancelot needed a moment to process that; multidimensional translation rooms were usually pretty good, but slang based on technological advances slowed them up a bit. Then he nodded sharply.
“And so you supported him anyway in this erroneous decision? That seems to give conflicting messages.”
“I—” Click went Lancelot’s mouth as it shut hard, his eyes narrowing at Paul. He threw himself back in his seat and fingered his sword-hilts, looking pissy in a sultry way.
Smiling nicely back, Paul turned to Arthur. “I’ll guess from Lancelot’s reaction that usually you don’t rebuff his advice. Why the change this time?”
“I—” Arthur suddenly sat up, revealing an interestingly hard set to his jaw. Seems like even he could only take so much, because he shot one glance at Lancelot before letting it rip. Granted, he was quieter and more dignified about it, but bitching was bitching no matter what the clothing. “It’s not a change. I try to listen to him, but he fixates on details that I can’t do anything about and goes off on tangents instead of actually trying to solve the problem.”
“Excuse me?” Lancelot arched an eyebrow. “You couldn’t do anything about me dying in goddamn Britain.”
The chair creaked as Arthur drew himself up to face Lancelot. His shoulders had hunched over again, but his temper still seemed to be in control. “I told you to go. I didn’t want you to die. If you’d just gone—”
“—then you’d be dead, and then where would we be?” Lancelot snapped.
Paul coughed. They ignored him, so he sighed and dug in the drawers of his wrap-around desk till he’d found his gun. One shot in the ceiling worked fairly well. “I think we are looking at a communication problem,” he said as sweetly as he could. “Both of you think you’re right and want the other to agree with you. And you blame each other for what went wrong.”
Arthur flinched. “Look, it’s not that simple.”
“Of course it is. You’re an idiot—an honorable, generous idiot, but an idiot nonetheless.” Lancelot flipped a hand to emphasize how obvious that was.
“Then if he’s so stupid, why’d you stay around and die?” The gun went back in the drawer and Paul resumed scribbling nonsense on his notepad, since it made him look more nonchalant. “Wild guess—you admire how honorable and generous he is. But if he’d acted differently, then he wouldn’t have been the man you admire. He’d be you.”
Up went Lancelot’s eyebrow again. He swung one of his swords to lie across his lap and thoughtfully drew a finger down it. “And what’s wrong with me?”
“Well, according to Arthur, you can be somewhat mono-focused. After all, you were worried enough to come back and die even though he specifically told you not to do that.” Paul shifted around on the couch, listening to the springs. He detected a small sagging spot and above one of his porn doodles, made a note to have Greenly fix that later. “That’s kind of a stupid thing to do.”
“Tell me not to die?” The grin was a bit wobbly. Lancelot knew he was deliberately missing Paul’s point, and he obviously didn’t like the feeling it gave him.
“Wait a moment. Lancelot did what he thought was honorable,” Arthur protested.
And Lancelot promptly rounded on him. “Oh, thank you for the commendation. I’m so relieved to know you approve—I don’t need your damned protection!”
“It’s not protection! It’s wanting you to live!” Now Arthur was even flailing a bit with his hands. It was a wonder they’d made it through the fifteen minutes of waiting.
Paul clucked. “Actually, those are the same thing.”
Lancelot smirked.
“So, Lancelot, why don’t you think you deserve to live?” Paul went on. He allowed himself a small smirk at Lancelot’s discomfiture, and did a quick sketch of Connor and Murphy creatively desecrating the Holy Sacrament. “I mean, you just disagreed a moment ago with Arthur on that.”
“I did not! I was only trying to point out that—that—Arthur, he isn’t a Roman, right?”
Arthur’s head was back in his hands. “Don’t kill him.”
“All right, you didn’t have a death wish. So why did you come back, then?” Paul asked. Ah, now this was exactly why he’d given up the FBI. Much better entertainment with less danger to his sanity.
Lancelot just stared at him. “Because it’s a little hard to be fucked by a man when he’s hundreds of miles away, dead, or both.” He twitched at Arthur’s sudden fit of coughing, then shrugged. “I mean, you can see him, right? My homeland certainly doesn’t breed them this big and pretty.”
“Lancelot!”
“Yes, I know, you were going to Rome, but we would’ve had to go together through Gaul at least. I figured that would be long enough to get you to change your mind,” Lancelot matter-of-factly told a red-faced Arthur.
Paul considered that while Arthur tried to stammer something. Once Arthur’d stopped for breath, Paul spoke up. “But weren’t you having intercourse previously? Why would a month in Gaul change his mind if that didn’t before?”
“We were stationed on the border.” The scathing tone of Lancelot’s voice could have brought a whole school of over-drugged under-parented brats to tears. “Didn’t exactly have time for a really good roll in the hay. Now, a month with nothing to do but get lost in Gaul and have sex against convenient trees? Tell me that wouldn’t be a compelling argument.”
“Your extreme self-confidence never fails to astound me,” Arthur muttered. He was pressing his hands against his temples as if his skull were pounding.
Too bad Paul wasn’t the generous type. His bottle of aspirin was his bottle of aspirin, and not even Greenly was allowed to mess with it. “All right. So have you had intercourse since?”
Lancelot actually flushed. He shifted edgily in his chair and looked repeatedly at Arthur, but Arthur was too busy mumbling about not giving enough spankings to upstart brats. Meanwhile, Paul simply pasted on a patient, expectant face and waited till finally Lancelot couldn’t take the stare any more.
“No. He wanted us to go to fucking counseling,” Lancelot grumbled.
“Ah. Well, then, I think we’re done here.” Paul dropped his notepad and pencil on the desk, then dug around till he found a spare tube of lubricant. He straightened up just as Lancelot was saying what a waste this had been and Arthur was complaining about the half-hour still left that they’d paid for. “And you’ll get your money’s worth, but this part of your therapy’s over. Now—” he tossed the tube to Lancelot, who unsurprisingly needed only a second to figure out what it was for “—see that door? There’s a bedroom behind it. Are you familiar with the concept of make-up sex?”
Arthur was staring at Paul as if he’d lost his mind. Lancelot, however, looked like he was about to thank Paul.
“Here.” Paul scribbled a quick definition down and tore off the sheet, then handed it to Arthur. While Arthur was reading it, Lancelot was sensible enough to hustle him through the door, which consequently snapped shut with a hasty click. Then there was a loud thump followed by the beginnings of a moan.
“Christ, again? I just changed the sheets.” Greenly stood in the doorway, holding a cup of non-steaming coffee. He noticed Paul noting that and scowled. “Don’t fucking even. The coffee-shop you liked closed down and I had to drive across town to find another branch.”
A tap on the desk, and a monitor and keyboard slowly rise. Paul adjusted the video-feeds for the perfect angles, then laid back on his nice, cushy couch. “And you couldn’t buy a bag instead, bring it back and brew it here?”
Pause. “You know what? Fuck you. I’m drinking this myself. Oh, and your eleven o’clock called to say they’d be late.”
“No problem…” After all, it wasn’t like Paul did this for the money. No, it was entirely personal satisfaction.
***