Chapter Text
The turtle was sitting in a shallow wooden box in the shop window when Montparnasse wandered along the street, glancing idly at the shopfronts. It was nibbling at a pile of wilted cabbage leaves, and it ignored him entirely even when he paused to stare through the grimy glass at it.
It was a rather handsome turtle, its glossy shell about the size of Montparnasse's spread hand, and the exact colour of his finest and least battered waistcoat. He wanted it immediately.
He pushed the shop door open and entered with practiced casualness, meandering around the little shop with the air of a browser just interested enough to be worth tolerating, but without fixing his attention on any one thing long enough to set off a sales pitch. The man behind the counter looked up as he came in, but as Montparnasse showed no sign of either leaving or buying anything immediately, his attention drifted back to his account book. Montparnasse glanced at him under the pretext of inspecting a hanging birdcage near the end of the counter, then, assured of his inattention, made his way over to the window. He darted a hand out and seized the turtle, and, finding it just too big to fit in his coat pocket, shoved it as surreptitiously as possible down the front of his trousers, tipped his hat to the clerk, and left the shop.
He hadn't gone ten paces when he realized how ill-suited his chosen hiding place was for carrying living creatures. The turtle, thoroughly discontented at being snatched away from its comfortable box and generous supply of cabbage to be jostled about inside Montparnasse's clothing, took the opportunity to take a bite at his thigh. Montparnasse let out a strangled and utterly undignified yelp (followed a few seconds later by a silent burst of gratitude that it hadn't chosen to attack two inches to the left), and ducked abruptly into a nearby alley to get it out of his trousers before it had another go. Fishing it out, he held it at arm's length and gave it an angry shake. The turtle, equally angry, hissed furiously at him, and they glared at each other for a long moment while the turtle flailed impotently in Montparnasse's grip and he wondered what to do with it. It wouldn't fit in his pockets, and while he could tuck it inside his coat, given that it appeared to have a taste for human flesh he wasn't sure he wanted it that close to his body. Eventually, with a long-suffering sigh at the thought of the sartorial faux-pas he was about to commit by wandering through the street bare-headed with his hat in his hand, he removed his top hat and dropped the turtle into it.
(It didn't help his mood that when he eventually got home he discovered that the turtle, out of what Montparnasse presumed to be pure spite, had defecated in his hat)
*
Montparnasse spent rather more of his evening than he would have liked cleaning turtle excrement out of the lining of his hat. Combined with the bruise on his leg - which by the time he inspected it while putting his trousers on the following morning, had firmly settled in to an angry dark colour - left him with a most unfriendly disposition towards the turtle the following day.
Nonetheless, it was not a pet, it was an accoutrement; he didn't have to be friends with it any more than he had to be friends with shoes that pinched or tight-laced corsets. The point was the external effect they created, after all. And it was indeed a handsome turtle.
Time for the creature to fulfil its purpose, then. Montparnasse shot it a glare across the room as he knotted his cravat. It stared implacably back as he buttoned his waistcoat and tugged on his coat, tweaking irritably at the sleeves to straighten them. Finally, fully dressed, he scooped up the turtle and set off out the door.
Not much later, he could be found strolling – very slowly, as befitted a good Parisian flâneur and as was unavoidable for anyone walking a turtle on an improvised ribbon leash – through the Jardin du Luxembourg. He spent a good part of the day making his stately way around the park, basking in the stares of passers-by. The wealthier dandies who usually ignored him as beneath notice were suddenly watching him as he and his turtle made their way along the paths, and Montparnasse smirked as he tipped his hat to them. A gaggle of grisettes whispered and giggled to each other as they darted glances at him from where they sat on the grass, and a group of uniformed soldiers paused in their conversation to point out the turtle to each other. The turtle paused to nibble at the contents of a flowerbed, and a pretty girl on a nearby bench left off her conversation to stare at it (Montparnasse was sure her appreciative look included him as well, even if it did seem mostly focussed on the animal, which was munching on a pink petal as large as its face). A little further along, a young man in a shabby coat looked up from his book to glare jealously at Montparnasse.
It was a fine sunny day, and the gardens were crowded with people; from wealthy bourgeois couples strolling arm-in-arm to gamins splashing in the fountains. Montparnasse preened at every glance he and his turtle received, but the creature itself soon flagged, worn out from the exercise, and eventually refused to move at all. On the vague idea that turtles were aquatic, Montparnasse picked it up and dumped it unceremoniously in a a nearby fountain, where it paddled about and guzzled water gratefully until Montparnasse, getting bored, fished it back out. He sighed over its soaked ribbon harness, while it hissed angrily at being dragged away from the water.
It left wet prints on the path as they set off again, though the dark patches quickly evaporated in the summer heat.