superniceone | tfln overflow / open post

It's something Sophie used to do for him when he was ill or tired or a victim of his own anxiety. She always claimed that it was just because she liked to play with his mop of soft, fluffy hair, but they both quietly knew it was always more to soothe him than anything else.

"Robust," he muses, tipping in to rest his forehead lightly against Verso's, blunt nails gentle now against his scalp. "First you compare me to Monoco, and now to a solid red wine. Not sure how I should be taking all this."

This, finally, is an area where Gustave has significantly more experience. It's been decades since he felt tender human touch, the closest thing to it—embarrassingly—huddling with Monoco in the cold. It's horrific how readily he responds to it now, forehead leaning into Gustave's. He wants to stop himself, but he can't override the base human desire for closeness.

"Handsome," he says quietly, trying not to commit the feel of Gustave's breath on his face to memory. "I also said handsome."

"Mm. Yes, I did like that one." Gustave keeps his own voice low, like speaking too loudly might shatter a part of the moment they're sharing now. He lapses into silence after that, privately hoping that Verso will just allow this for a little while.

It's a different sort of intimacy than the sort they've shared already, but no less intimate all the same; it's deeply comforting, and he feels a little guilty for that, like he's taking advantage of Verso's vulnerability. Regardless, he won't stop what he's doing until there's some sort of indication that Verso wants him to.

It doesn't make it any more respectable, but Verso still feels pathetic the whole time. He closes his eyes and lets Gustave soothe him for several long seconds, the gentle scrape of his fingernails pacifying in some difficult to describe way. He has a sense-memory of being young and emotional and being consoled by people who loved him; maybe it isn't really his memory as much as it is one that he stole, but he leans into the nostalgia of it all the same.

"Putain de merde," he exhales in chagrin after an extended moment, hanging his head against Gustave's shoulder. "Don't tell the others I made such a fool of myself."

There's brief hesitation in Gustave's touch, before his hand settles firmly on Verso's neck again, his thumb carefully sweeping bare skin in a way that's meant to be consoling.

"How so?" He asks, nudging a kiss against Verso's temple through his hair. It's soft, casual, like he's done it a million times before, and not like his heart is hammering too hard in his chest. "You're foolish because you... have emotions? Because you asked me to undress? That's hurtful, Verso."

Because of all of those things, and because he's now making Gustave comfort someone seven decades his senior like a child. In a moment of weakness, he grasps at the back of Gustave's shirt with his hands, recalling the awkward embrace they'd had on the edge of camp after Maelle had reassembled Gustave from memory. He hadn't appreciated it enough then. Soon, he'll be alone again, and there'll be no one to comfort him.

He keeps his face buried against Gustave's shoulder, too mortified by his own vulnerability to show his face. Muffled in the fabric of Gustave's shirt: "At least tell me I look appealingly tortured."

"I happen to be into tortured guys," Gustave murmurs, affectionately and intentionally mimicking Verso's phrasing. The grip he can feel on his shirt breaks his heart. It's not shameful to love your family is what he wants to tell him; that he can't imagine the pain of watching his father and sister go from immortality to oblivion in front of his face without the room for so much as a genuine goodbye. The Gommage had been insidious partially because there was never any question about getting closure. There was always a chance.

Gustave shifts just enough to relieve some pressure from one of his legs, but he clutches Verso as he does, trying to telegraph that this isn't a hint to move. "You're going to be in trouble when you're feeling better, in fact. Might be that you start waking up with me attached to you like a bedbug."

There is no part of this that feels tortured and sexy; it feels pitiful and selfish and somewhat deranged, seeking comfort from somebody he's wronged more times than Gustave knows. Doing selfish and deranged things is hardly new to him, though, so he presses his face into the fabric of Gustave's shirt a moment longer, inhaling, before he forces himself to pull back.

Merde. The fantasy of being put down like a sick dog grows stronger.

"You're going to destroy those knees, old man."

"Payback for last week, isn't it? I'm fine." Verso pulls back and Gustave watches him - tries not to make it so obvious that he is, but there's only so many things you can look at sitting cowgirl on someone's lap.

He isn't sure what's going to come next, but he has a guess. "Hey," Gustave says, a little more seriously. "We don't have to talk about it. Or— anything. But let me be here. Physically, if nothing else."

Gustave has been conditioned to expect Verso to leave the moment things get uncomfortable, and he wouldn't be wrong that Verso is thinking about it now. It feels deeply wrong to have unmasked himself in this way, and he can feel himself scrambling to put it back on before Gustave sees something he doesn't like.

He's quiet for a moment, contemplative, eyes cast down from Gustave's face and resting on his collarbone instead. It is, objectively, a nice collarbone. He leans forward to press his mouth to the notch between collarbone and throat, then says, "You can tell me to stop."

The main problem here is that Gustave doesn't want him to stop, and it makes him feel a little bit monstrous. This is the most blatantly he's ever seen Verso hurt, and it's not like this Expedition has been easy on any of them so far. He's not sure if the mouth on his skin is because that's what he wants to do, it if he just thinks Gustave meant something else by physically.

"I'm easy," he says softly, then pulls a face at himself. "Easygoing, I mean. I mean— I definitely don't mind, just don't force yourself to do anything." Exasperated.

It's probably a bad sign that they're both giving each other outs. Verso hesitates—because Gustave did say he wanted to 'be there for him physically, and it's difficult to imagine what else that could mean—before letting his head rest against Gustave's shoulder again, somewhere between horrified and amused at the situation he's blundered his way into.

"You're supposed to take advantage of my compromised state," he chides. "Clearly, I underestimated your gallantry."

Gustave will firmly stand by the fact that he'd meant physical affection like this, not necessarily sex. He sighs, turning his face to press another idle kiss into Verso's hair. "Don't praise me too much," he says like he's telling a secret, just sheepishly scrambling to lighten the mood. "One or two moments I'll probably be revisiting in my head when I'm alone later."

Verso cannot think of a single moment that Gustave might want to replay. A wet kitten is sexier than Verso is right now. This whole thing has been a mess from start to finish, and it couldn't possibly get worse—

Maelle calls his name in the distance; understandably, since she probably thinks he's gone off to try to test the limits of his immortality. He doesn't mean to shove Gustave off, it's just that Gustave happens to be on his lap and his belt is undone and he really doesn't want to sear that image into poor Maelle's brain. Apparently, she has the same idea, because she calls, "Please don't be doing anything weird!"

Rudely jostled back into reality, he curses under his breath as he scrambles to do his belt up. "We should get back."

Okay, so there weren't many, but there was a moment or two that — if thought about in complete isolation from the events and emotions on either side of them — he would argue were fine.

Not that he has a chance to justify himself; instead, he's just making an undignified noise and shooting Verso an incredulous look when he lands in the wet grass. "You go," Gustave says finally, expression relaxing as he waves Verso on. "I'll catch up when the pins and needles stop in my leg." It's a transparent lie — Maelle is looking for Verso, and he doesn't want to stymie their conversation by being there.

Verso does up his belt and stands. He should probably say something, acknowledge in some way this strange sort of intimacy he feels as if he forced onto Gustave with his emotions, but he hasn't the first clue of what to say. He reaches down to swipe up Gustave's slightly damp jacket, holding it out for him to take.

"Thanks," is all he can think of to say. Then, he turns his head and calls, "I'm here, Maelle," taking off in the direction of her voice to lead her back to camp.

Fuck, Gustave thinks as he watches Verso go. Fuck, he's in trouble, and he cannot for the life of himself figure out why he thought willingly signing himself up for heartbreak again was the right play to make.

It's good for the both of them that Maelle is seeking him out. Over the next few days Gustave is careful to keep an eye out to make sure Verso isn't overtly spiraling, but Gustave also never seems to leave any openings to be approached alone. It's not a fully intentional thing; he's spooked himself a bit with the intensity of feelings that were never meant to exist.

He cracks eventually a few nights in, drops to a seat by Verso like he hasn't been acting uncomfortable and evasive since their last encounter. "Hey. How are you doing?"

Unintentional or not, being avoided for days after daring to show vulnerability makes Verso want to curl up and die. He physically can't, though, so— here he still is, warming his hands by the campfire when Gustave settles beside him. It's not a particularly welcome visit at this point, but he tries not to show it.

"I haven't made any more foolish advances," he says lightly, pleasantly, although he can't quite meet Gustave's eyes. If he just gets it out in the open, puts all the blame for any uncomfortableness on himself, then maybe he can still salvage the situation. "I'd like to consider that a win."

The entirety of their not-relationship is predicated on the idea that there are no feelings attached. Verso hadn't even agreed to let him approach again until that had been firmly established; he doesn't know what to do with the fact that he's violated that agreement. Certainly the way he'd been cradling Verso's head to him had to have made that obvious.

"I didn't think you were being foolish," Gustave says, and it probably says something for how distracted he is — and how much he regards his prosthesis as a genuine part of himself — that he holds it up in front of the fire. "Sorry. I just— got into my own head a bit, and you had more important things to worry about."

Verso watches as Gustave heats the metal of his prosthetic arm for a beat, then reaches out to lower it for Gustave. He doesn't have any idea how it works, but he can wager a guess that it's probably not supposed to be exposed to fire.

"Yeah," he agrees. More important things to worry about. Gustave says that quite a lot, like he's trying to convince himself, too. "I'm the one who should apologize. I shouldn't have put you into that position."

Verso gets a violent flashback of clinging to Gustave like a child. Horrible. "Sorry."

Gustave's arm is somehow, inexplicably, able to transmit lightning; a little radiant heat from a bonfire won't do it any damage, but he half-smiles and lowers it anyway when he realizes what it is he's done.

He remembers Verso clinging to him, too, and it makes his heart ache with the desire to protect him; he thinks Verso has probably done a lot more protecting than being looked after himself in his decades on this continent. It's probably an idiotic thing to think about a grown, competent man, but the memory of Verso's head on his shoulder weighs heavy on his mind.

Gustave hesitates, eyes back on the fire, then tries: "You haven't done anything wrong. I'm already dreading having to say goodbye to you. I don't... I've been a little afraid of making it weird." Because everything is so normal right now.

Verso speaks the narration into existence: "Makes sense. Everything else is so normal."

It's a relief in some ways; Verso had expected Gustave to be put off by his display of authentic emotion. In other ways, it's very much not a relief. He remembers Gustave scolding him for thinking that he needed to be protected from himself, and he swallows down the burgeoning urge to say I told you so. It wouldn't help, and besides, Verso is the one that should have kept things 'cordial'.

It is and always has been his job to make things better, so he rests a comforting hand on Gustave's shoulder. "Saying goodbye... it'll be easier than you think." For one of them, anyway. He'll forget all about you, Sciel had said, but Verso has a long memory.

Gustave makes an affronted little noise and, on impulse, reaches up to cover the hand on his shoulder. His eyes remain stubbornly ahead. "I was thinking I might stay on the Continent a while, actually. There's a lot of lost history here. And the Nevron population should probably be kept under control."

And it has nothing to do you, Verso, or how you're the only person who seems to understand why the change in his world has sent him crashing out.

Verso is still trying to be comforting, so he doesn't say you will fucking not, even if it's what he thinks. He does raise a skeptical brow, though, and say, "You're going to singlehandedly maintain the size of the Nevron population?"

Gustave gives him a wry sidelong smile. "I'm saying that it couldn't hurt. I'm not trying to solve the whole puzzle, Verso. Happy to just contribute a piece somewhere."

Gustave's hand tightens on his.

"Anyway, my point — I hope you'll forgive me. If I bruised your feelings."

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