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visndcaitswhore · 4 months

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AMAVI || Joseph Descamps (Mixte1963)

AMAVI (latin; The second-person singular imperfect of amare. Meaning: to love)

Veni Vidi Amavi

I came I saw I loved

The first day of school never made Gabrielle feel anxious; it was just school, after all. This time, however, she didn't want to be the first one in. She decided to let some time pass as she leaned on the wall of one of the buildings close to the school with a cigarette in her hand, watching a red-headed girl walk through the crowd of boys staring her down like she was some foreign entity. Scared to approach while also wanting to pounce.

"They are going to eat her alive," she mumbled to herself, her eyes never leaving the scene before her. Suddenly, she wished the cigarette break would last longer. But she tried not to back down; there was no point in feeling regret now that she was already here, and after she convinced her parents to allow her to try this out, Backing down wasn't something she ever did, anyway.

A few more girls gathered, greeting her as they passed her. It wasn't a big place; everyone knew almost everyone. Yet, when a blonde stopped next to her, Gabrielle realized she didn't know her. In fact, she had never seen her; if she had, she would remember simply because this girl had to be the most beautiful person she had ever met. Gabrielle wasn't ugly; everyone told her she was beautiful, but this girl was something entirely different.

"Are you going to attend here too?" the blonde girl asked, and Gabrielle had to blink a few times to stop her admiration before answering.

"Yes. Want to go in together?"

There was always one thing Gabrielle could depend on: that no girl wanted to be alone in a place surrounded by strange boys. And, like she expected, the girl nodded. Gabrielle nodded with a smile, threw her cigarette away, and offered her elbow to hold on. "I'll be your chaperone," she joked at the girls confused expression. "I'm already wearing pants, after all."

The blonde looked down to confirm that she was indeed wearing light pants and a button-up short-sleeved shirt, accompanied by a smirk. Gabrielle knew she almost looked like a boy, and her mom only allowed her to wear them if she let her hair down and didn't act like a crude boy. Hence, her dark hair was half down.

Finally, the girl hooked her arm around her own with a hesitant smile. "The pants look good. I'm Annick"

"Gabrielle"

Walking inside the school was easier with company, and both girls—as if they had talked about it beforehand—held themselves pridefully, were self-assured, and chatted like they weren't fully aware that they had pulled the attention of everyone in the yard. The small walk consisted of talk such as 'I like your dress' or 'They look so stupid looking like that'.

"Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell," mumbled a dark-haired girl when they finally reached the board to see their assigned classes and teachers.

The rest of the day was surely something; if Gabrielle had to use one word to describe it, she wouldn't be able to find it easily.

The first lesson was history with Mrs.Giraud. Climbing up the stairs, Gabrielle heard the red-haired girl tell the brunette that she wondered how bad Mrs. Giraud could be. "I heard she is a stuck-up bitch." Gabrielle said quietly, her pace matching theirs.

"Who told you that?" the brunette laughed.

"Someone from my neighborhood. He had some other words to use too, but I think I summed it up pretty well."

Soon she learned that the brunette was Simone, the new girl, and Michele, the butcher's daughter. She also learned that'stuck up bitch' wasn't enough to disappoint her teacher, who immediately shot her a look of shock and clearly disapproval when she spotted her attire. But she didn't say anything until she did.

Gabrielle found a seat at the back of the class and started getting settled, unaware of someone staring at her until they had all settled, and the teacher started talking when she spotted Annick at the front of the class. She was absolutely, totally, wholly scandalized by her seat next to a boy and promptly sent the boy to sit next to the 'boy with the long hair'.

It didn't take Gabrielle to realize she was talking about her, and her eyebrows shot up.

"In the list, I thought that we were getting five girls in this class. One of them turns out to be just a pretty boy." Mrs.Giraud spat out, and some laughed around.

"I'm pretty" Gabrielle mouthed

"She also called you a boy," said the boy who sat next to her.

"A pretty boy."

The boy that was sent to sit next to her was Henri Pichon, and he went to sit somewhere else the moment the next class rolled around. Latin, not her strong suite. History she could manage, but Latin not so much.

Annick, on the other hand, seemed to excel in that too, much to the displeasure of the teacher, who refused to call upon her even when she was the only one raising her hand. Gabrielle made a distasteful sound when the old man simply looked around like a lost donkey, trying his best to inspire a boy to raise his hand. And when one of them did raise his hand, he immediately gave him all his attention.

"I think the lady has raised her hand," the boy said, forcing the teacher's hand.

As Annick got up to say the answer, Gabrielle tried to subtly sneak a peek at the boy who was a few seats to her left as she moved her hair out of the way before quickly looking away when she made eye contact. Descamps was not someone she wanted to associate with during school hours, that was for sure. That is a testament she will circle back to at the end of the day, or even in five minutes.

A piece of paper started circling around the boys in class, and a boy got in trouble. Another reason to not even touch the papers Descamps gives around.

The rest of the day was calm, except for an incident at lunch hour, which of course involved Descamps. All the girls quickly realized he was one of the main troublemakers at the school and a constant annoyance. He was confident enough to present his art skills, but Simone shut that down easily, and Gabrielle added:

"Simone, don't be so hard on him. Poor thing has never seen real boobs before."

She winked when he glared at her.

Then the next hour rolled around. Catastrophic was one way to describe it. Descamps decides to concoct a prank on Michele, or maybe he was aiming at Simone. Gabrielle wasn't sure as she just watched him place a bucket of water on the door, which would fall on whoever opened it first.

"This is so stupid," she said, reaching to remove the bucket, only for Descamps to grab her hand and pull her aside.

"No, this is fun," he corrected, taking the extra measure of blocking the way with his body. Now, Gabrielle was tall, but he was at least half a head taller.

"You are going to get in trouble on the first day for being stupid," she said, pulling her hand back, aware of the fact that no one else seemed to do anything to stop him. A quick glance at Annick did her no good, as she also seemed reluctant to help out.

"Don't be a bore."

Not having enough time to do anything, Michele opened the door, and she was drenched in water. Gabrielle just shook her head. Some people laughed, some others just seemed sorry, and most of them focused their attention on Michele's chest. They couldn't see anything of value, just her bra, but to immature boys, that was enough.

Gabrielle went back to her seat when the English teacher entered the class, but not before she exchanged a glare with Descamps, who winked at her.

Bastard.

Now to the catastrophic part: no, Michele having her bra exposed to the whole class was not the catastrophic bit.

"Then Michele's brother came into the class. He started punching around, and Descamps got glass in his eye; he was bleeding a lot. They took him to the hospital; he might lose his eye, they said. And yeah, that's about it." Gabrielle smiled uneasily as her parents stared at her in shock, speechless. "Other than that, the day was pretty quiet."

"The boy lost his eye?" her dad asked.

"Maybe, yeah."

"Are you hurt?" Her mom's sharp eyes scanned her, inch by inch, for any scratch.

She shook her head.

No, she wasn't hurt. She had been walking to her seat when this happened, and someone pushed her to the side when Magnan started punching. She just watched, even when Descamps was on the ground, hand covering his eye to the Dean next to him.

"Joseph Descamps is the boy that lives right across from us, right? Your friend"

"Not my friend," she mumbled, closing her eyes in exasperation and falling back on the armchair.

"Weren't you together all the time a few years ago?"

Her dad, who just a week ago was swearing to God he had never seen these girls' Gabrielle was with, even though she had been hanging out with them for years and they had been to her house plenty, suddenly seemed to remember that one old friendship that has been almost completely dissolved.

She blinked, her nose wrinkled. "Yeah, like 2 years ago."

They almost kicked girls out of the school; there is no need to mention something like that. It might actually make her mother happy.

"I heard they almost banned girls from the school." Her mother quiped, trying not to sound too dissapointed at the fact it did not happen.

"So much for, uh." Her dad looked towards her to fill him in.

Gabrielle smiled. "Progressiveness."

Javier Blanc was a large man with a beard and a scary disposition. A man like that you would think was fit for sons, but alas, God gifted him girls—four, to be precise. In the last 15 years, since the birth of his oldest, he has heard it all, from 'Oh, maybe next time you will get lucky' to 'it's okay, girls are gifts'. Yet he listened to his girls rants and echoed them to the best of his understanding.

Her mother never really agreed with that disposition fully. Marie Blanc did, of course, want her daughters to become capable and marry good men, but she still wanted them to remain girls. So Gabrielle being taught boxing, being more inclined towards math, wearing pants, and walking with her hands in her pockets rubbed her the wrong way. Gabrielle, breathing alone, rubbed her the wrong way.

She didn't care when her younger three came inside the house with muddy shoes and clothes or when it was obvious her oldest showed more promise at violin than the rest did. They were babies, and they would continue to be her babies till they reached their 50s. Heck, Sophie was 13 years old already. Precisely two and a half years younger than Gabrielle.

Not that it hurt Gabrielle. It annoyed her that her mother never had anything purely good to say about her without a backhanded insult, but it didn't wound her. So she simply listened to her rant about Voltaire without saying much before deciding to go to bed.

"I have school tomorrow after all," with a snarky tone and a pointed look. Okay, maybe she wasn't the easiest child. Maybe she had a short fuse and held a grudge. That wasn't her fault. Her mother was like that, too.

Finally, alone in her room she couldn't resist to urge to pull back the curtain that covered her window, peeking at the room that also looked directly into her own from across the street. Descamps' room. Well, back then he was just 'Joseph' but it felt wrong to use his first name now. Gabrielle had been the one to stop calling for him to hang out, after all. But when they were kids, when their mothers would tack them in bed, the window would be their immediate destination.

Even now, once in a while, they would throw cigarettes at each other if one of them had run short.

There was no light in his room tonight, they must have kept him at the hospital for tonight. As Gabrielle was about to close the curtain, she spotted some movement in the darkness of his room that had her immediately shoot forward, ignoring the art supplies she had accidentally kicked since they had been resting on the wall. Her eagerness was something that would torture her for a few days, and she would thank her lucky stars that no one saw that.

Especially when she realised that the movement was Descamps' mother, who seemed to be packing some of his clothes to take to the hospital when she suddenly froze, and by the fact that she put her hand on her face, Gabrielle could only guess that the woman was crying or she was just exhausted by the day. When the woman raised her head, and looked directly at her Gabrielle found out it was both.

The woman managed a smile, and waved. Gabrielle mirrored her actions, closed the curtain and climbed in her bed, holding the covers close to her chest. She wasn't sure how long it took for her to fall asleep, at some point everything just got quite and dark.

#multiple parts #uploaded on wattpad and ao3 #joseph descamps #fanfic #annick mixte1963 #michele #simone #alain laubrac

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