there, right there!

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/50028610.

Rating: General Audiences

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Category: M/M
Fandoms: Poirot - Agatha Christie, Agatha Christie's Poirot (TV)
Relationship: Arthur Hastings/Hercule Poirot
Characters: Arthur Hastings (Poirot), Hercule Poirot, Felicity Lemon, James Japp
Additional Tags: alternate universe - homophobia doesn't exist, Love Confessions,
Romance, Awkward Romance, Falling In Love, Accidentally Common
Law Married, Mistaken for Being in a Relationship, Didn't Know They
Were Dating, Arthur "Himbo" Hastings, Happy Ending,
Misunderstandings, Getting Together, Fluff, Friends to Lovers
Language: English
Stats: Published: 2023-09-12 Words: 1,477 Chapters: 1/1
 there, right there!
by thisisthefamilybusiness

Summary

“Captain, I don’t mean this unkindly, so please don’t interpret it that way,” Miss Lemon said
slowly. “But it seems like Mr. Poirot’s affections might be apparent to everyone but you.”
Hastings made another sputtering noise, and turned bright fuchsia. “I say.” He cleared his
throat again, futilely. “I say. The man is a Belgian. Nothing more. I’m the only one who
appreciates that. Nothing there to be apparent to anyone. Can’t two men just be friends
without involving the question of romance?”

Arthur Hastings is somehow the last person to realize that Poirot is not merely Belgian, but
in love with him.

Notes

Inspired the Legally Blonde the Musical song "There, Right There! (Is He Gay or
European?)" and the bizarre number of candlelit dinner scenes between Hastings and Poirot.

See the end of the work for more notes

“I say, I don’t understand what you mean, Japp. It’s not as though Poirot’s in love with me,”
Hastings said with a laugh. “I can go to Argentina whenever I please.”

Japp pulled uncomfortably at his collar, a nervous tick that the man was not aware he
possessed. “Oh.”

Hastings’ smile fell. “What do you mean, oh?”

“Nothing. Just...” Japp glanced around the room. “Sorry, chap. We all just... assumed you
knew.”

“Captain, he cooks you candlelit dinners,” Miss Lemon said, voice calm and collected as
always from her perch on an overstuffed chair.

Hastings shoved his hands into his trouser pockets with less grace than usual. “Well, we’re
flatmates,” he blustered. “It’s not unusual.”

Miss Lemon coughed demurely. “I suppose your previous flatmates have done the same,
then?”

“Well.” Hastings desperately glanced around the sitting room, looking anywhere except at
Miss Lemon’s face. “Well, he’s Continental, you know. I assume it’s the custom.”

“He took you to his tailor,” Japp said, finally lifting his head up from his clasped hands
propped on his knees. “Can’t say I’ve ever had him offer that to me.”

Hastings clears his throat, settling his sights on a slightly askew book on the shelf to the right
of the mantle. “He’s Belgian. They do things differently there.”

“Captain, I don’t mean this unkindly, so please don’t interpret it that way,” Miss Lemon said
slowly. “But it seems like Mr. Poirot’s affections might be apparent to everyone but you.”

Hastings made another sputtering noise, and turned bright fuchsia. “I say.” He cleared his
throat again, futilely. “I say. The man is a Belgian. Nothing more. I’m the only one who
appreciates that. Nothing there to be apparent to anyone. Can’t two men just be friends
without involving the question of romance?”

It sounded, Miss Lemon would later write in her daily journal of recollections, that Captain
Hastings was trying to convince himself of that fact as much as the present audience.

“I’m sure they can,” Japp said. “Been friends with Poirot myself for years. Of course, he’s
never taken me to dinner and the opera.”

“We both like the opera,” Hastings said, desperately. “We both like dinner. He’s just... He’s
just Belgian, by God.”

“Captain, it’s not really my place to say anything,” Japp began, ignoring Hastings mutterings
that it damn well wasn’t Japp’s place to say anything, “but it never occurred to you, that,
hum. Don’t take this the wrong way, chap, but did you never imagine that Poirot kept you
around for reasons besides your detective skills?”

“I won’t hear this.” Hastings, however, made no gesture to leave the room or otherwise
prevent himself from hearing what Japp said next.

“I just think you might be rather cruel to him, if you didn’t mean anything by all this.” Japp
gestured vaguely around the entire room, and then waved his hands towards Hastings.

“He loves you,” Miss Lemon blurted out. “Really, Arthur, you listen to cricket too loudly on
the radio and you never hang your coat up properly, and he never once complains. Don’t be
so dense.”

Hastings squared his shoulders. “I cannot stand to listen to this,” he said, and finally stormed
out of the flat without even stopping to grab his hat and coat.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Hastings groaned into his fourth whisky of the night. “He’s just...
He’s just continental, you know. Gallic.”

The barmaid nodded sympathetically. She’d been quite loyal to her role as trusted confidante
of any patron desperately lonely enough to seek the comforting words of a heavily-muscled
woman in a poorly fitted pantsuit. “Suppose that’s why he ended it, then. Got that Latin
temper?”

Hastings looked blearily up at the stocky woman from the melting ice in his glass. “He didn’t
end anything,” he said, with a noise too quiet to be considered a proper mournful wail. “We
never had anything to start with.”

“That’s what they always say,” the barmaid sighed as she wiped the wooden counter down.
“That’s the problem with foreign lovers, you think you’re all cozied up and ready to settle in,
and then they tell you it wasn’t serious at all. I swore off them completely. Only real English
roses for me, there on out.”

“For God’s sake, we weren’t a couple. He’s...” Hastings hiccuped while trying to find the
right word. “Look, Miss,” he started, seemingly finally realizing that he never asked the
barmaid’s name. “I never even said he was attractive. He looks like an egg.” He said it with
great relish.

At this, the barmaid thoughtfully tilted her head to one side, pausing in her unnecessarily
thorough wiping of the counter. “Not much of a looker myself, but my Nancy, she’s a real
fine woman. Nice blonde hair and green eyes. Coulda had anybody in the whole city she
wanted, but she chose me. Don’t suppose looks matter much, if you got love.”

Hastings let out another quiet wail, then, and dropped his head into his palms.

“You left without your coat or your hat.”

“Poirot, I really don’t think now is the time for—” Hastings started, leaning back against the
wall of the red phone box.

“Non, it is précisément the time for this. You left without your coat, without your hat, in
October—something has happened and still you insist on saying to Poirot, it is not the time to
discuss it!”

Hastings pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger to try in vain to hold
off the post-drinking headache. “No, listen here, Poirot, I’m calling to say that I…” He trailed
off.

“You…?”

“I must know, Poirot, have you been trying to court me?” Hasting said the words all at once,
quickly, before he could think the better of it.

Poirot was silent for a few seconds, but it felt like an eternity to Hastings. “Mon cher ami,”
Poirot said at last. “You were not courting me?”

“I say,” Hastings said, unable to think of any other words to say. “I say, Poirot. You thought
—you thought I was courting you?”

“You bring me the flowers, you take me to the theatre—mon Hastings, we live together.” A
hint of exasperation creeps into Poirot’s tone. “I am made quite the clown—”

“The fool,” Hastings corrected automatically, before he could think the better of it.

“—I am made quite the fool, you see, for thinking it is the English way, to not say the words
out loud. You allow me to introduce you as my partner, I take it as enough. Poirot is a
gentleman. He does not request words if they will not be said spontanément, sans demand.”

“Partners. Like business partners,” Hastings said, a bit despairingly.

“Partners, copain, compagne. Partners of affection. But… if that is the way of your heart…”
Poirot paused. “Then I am most sorry.” Two kilometres away from Hastings’ red phone box,
Poirot slumps a little from his normally perfect posture, leaning into his desk chair.

Hastings cleared his throat. “I never said that.”

“Non, it is what you meant, vraiment—”

“Don’t put words in my mouth. I quite like the opera. And your cooking. And living with
you.”

“Ah.” Poirot made a little noise, not quite a sigh. “You are…. not opposed, then?”

“Frankly, old thing, I don’t know who I’d be without you.” Hastings grinned and closed his
eyes. “Sort of a matched pair, aren’t we?”
A mechanical ding let Hastings know that he had thirty seconds to add more change or be
disconnected. He fumbled in his pocket for a few more coins to slip in the pay box, and slid
whatever he found in. “Sorry,” he said, awkwardly sandwiching the receiver between his chin
and shoulder. “Can’t say this is a terribly romantic setting for this discussion.”

“Ah, but c’est la vie.” Poirot chuckled.

“One thing, Poirot,” Hastings said. “If you’ve been courting me all this time, why haven’t
you ever kissed me?” He said in the same fashion he used when asking a question about
some minor detail at the end of a case: with mild petulance at his own inability to puzzle out
the problem, and general incredulity at Poirot’s mind.

“Is that what you English think is love? Merely the kissing? Pah. Ridiculous. Romance, she is
in the long walks, the quiet company at the fireside. I never ask what is not offered readily.
Moi, I would die a happy man without anything more than this.”

Hastings, if asked, would blame the flush across his face on the night chill. “You really are
quite the relic, you know.”

“Come home, mon Arthur.” There was a kind warmth in Poirot’s voice. “You are without
your coat, you will catch the dreadful chill.”

“Alright.” Hastings nodded, as though Poirot could see him through the black plastic of the
receiver. “Keep the fire burning, will you?”

“Always, mon cher.”

End Notes

Hercule "kiss the homie goodnight on the mouth" Poirot

Sorry to Agatha Christie.

I don't choose the hyperfixation or the rarepair.

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