tfln overflow / open post

[superniceone]

(open / overflow)

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[recreatable]

"Well, you turned out all right." Lightening the mood, as best he can. "I'm sure Maelle will... use her judgment."

[superniceone]

"Is it weird that I worry that I didn't?" He glances at him again. "I feel like I didn't used to worry this much."

[recreatable]

Gustave has always worried like an old mémère, but that doesn't seem helpful to share right now. Verso is still smarting from being overly glib with Gustave before, so he veers on the side of caution instead.

"It's challenging to find out the world is..." How to put this in a way that won't send Gustave into an existential spiral? "Different than you thought." At least Gustave had sweet Maelle to explain it to him. Verso had to hear it from Clea. "You're still adjusting."

And he will adjust. Probably. Verso's not a good role model for that, though. "Does it bother you?"

[superniceone]

"Yes." Gustave doesn't need to think about it; he's spent a lot of time thinking about it already. They're disposable, their fates fully reliant upon the whimsy of gods who are either unhealthily invested or actively attempting their destruction. The world around them is a lie, yawning and blank.

But Verso knows all this, and complaining about it to him seems melodramatic at best and cruel at worst. At least he was just an accidental creation, incidental.

He takes an uncertain breath and realizes he's been quiet for too long.

"But I'll get over it."

[recreatable]

Well, he had a nice run of feeling good about himself for a few days, but he feels guilty all over again hearing Gustave express unhappiness with the way of things. Why wouldn't he be unhappy? He and everyone else in Lumiére were created to be background characters so that Aline's life with Verso felt more realistic.

"It helps," he says a little uselessly, grasping at straws to try to make Gustave feel better, "to throw yourself into something."

Like he'd done with expelling Aline from the Canvas. It had given him some sense of purpose, a feeling that the misery would come to an end at some point.

He nudges Gustave with a knee. "...Or to write anguished poetry."

[superniceone]

Gustave nudges his knee back, shaking his head apologetically. "I'll be fine. Really. It's hard to feel too artificial after waking up stiff after another night on the ground."

He smiles wryly at him. "I've really killed the mood, huh. I'm sorry, minou." The pet names are only ever in private and completely nonserious.

[recreatable]

Oh, my god!!! Verso rubs his face. "I was going to say that I'm into tortured guys, but clearly, you need to be knocked down a peg."

[superniceone]

"What, is minou no good? I've got others. I've been sitting on mon soleil chéri for a while now." Gustave laughs a little helplessly. "Or maybe I shouldn't torture you minutes after you agreed to be exclusive."

[recreatable]

"To which you only said okay, that's settled." And then immediately called him a brat. Very unromantic!!

[superniceone]

—okay, so maybe Verso has a point. A tiny, minor one. But Gustave is making active efforts to be less cheesy!!

He clears his throat. "I'm ready for you to sleep in touching distance. Even readier to wake up next to you after a long night. It's my favorite daydream right now."

[recreatable]

For a fleeting moment, he wonders if Gustave is right, and that he did come back changed, and that somehow Maelle accidentally made him like Verso more. He'll never know. Tough pill to swallow.

"...Careful. I get handsy in my sleep. Just ask Monoco."

[superniceone]

Verso seemed extremely underwhelmed by his practical and utilitarian answer of okay, that's good, so Gustave is laying the blame for his awkward oversharing fully on Verso's shoulders.

His face scrunches in amusement. "You've got plenty of time to think up a better excuse if you're trying to deter me," he says, gentle and lighthearted.

[recreatable]

"I'm not trying to deter you." Although he's self-aware enough to recognize that he probably should be. Gustave just expressed how much this world's fabricated nature bothers him, and that's really all Verso's fault, when you get down to it. "Just making sure you're all right with the little spoon."

[superniceone]

Gustave considers Verso a victim of this situation, someone who had asked to be a part of it as much as any of them did; it would be hypocritical to blame him and not Maelle, and blaming Maelle honestly just feels like a sin.

So he holds up on hand, sort of wobbling it back and forth. "We can't take turns?"

[recreatable]

Gustave is also delusional enough to still like Verso, so his opinion doesn't really have weight!! But Verso is trying this whole 'be a better person to deserve good things' strategy, so maybe he can swing this, as long as no one ever finds out anything he's ever done in his life prior. Or the fact that he's still lying about them now.

"Wow," he says, although there's a hint of amusement in his voice, a crinkle in his eye. "Are you trying to bargain with me right now?"

[superniceone]

Gustave snorts, reaching up to fix a piece of Verso's hair for no reason other than he knows he hates having it out of place. And in his defense, he's tried to reason himself out of liking Verso; it's just not worked very well.

"Sure, let's call it that." It's actually kind of strange to joke about holding each other; he's still weirdly certain they'll never make it to that stage of their relationship. It feels too — real, for lack of a better term.

[recreatable]

"We can split it 30-70."

Very magnanimous of him. He grabs the returned book, holding it to his chest as he glances back at the rest of camp. Monoco is in considerably higher spirits than he was after the Sacred River, as he allows Maelle to brush out his hair/fur/whatever it is. Verso can hear him grousing, and Maelle arguing, It's so tangled!

"I'm going to check on the others." Make his rounds, you know. "You should talk to Lune before it passes you by."

[superniceone]

Gustave is never entirely sure when Verso absconds because of discomfort versus when he does it because of a generally restless nature, and he watches him for a moment like he's trying to figure that out. He wonders briefly if he'll ever actually see him at all in the reconstructed Lumière, or if he'll find ways to keep himself so busy that he doesn't have time to deal with uncomfortable thoughts.

"Yeah, I'll go do that in just a minute," he promises after a beat, half-smiling at him, waving the fingers of one hand in a little goodbye.

[recreatable]

'Checking in' somehow ends up with him taking over Monoco hair duties, with Maelle offering (quite critical) supervision from the sidelines. It's fun, though. A nice reprieve from somberness. Monoco looks amazing after he's done, if he says so himself. Downright silky. He can tell that Monoco thinks the same, because he keeps touching his fur and preening when he thinks no one is looking.

After the evening has wound down, he unrolls his bedroll next to Gustave's, almost-but-not-quite touching. Still a sliver of space between them, a physical representation of his lingering hesitations about this relationship, but close enough that their arms could brush if someone were so inclined.

He doesn't point it out, though, just kicks off his shoes and crawls into bed.

[superniceone]

Gustave and Lune end up discussing the future much more than the past. She's not over it all by any means; no healing happens that quickly, and he knows that her history with her parents is something that she'll be grappling with for a long time. But it's clear that she's working on reframing some things, and it's no burden for him to chat with her for a while about their respective thoughts on the future of their home.

Verso's proximity at bedtime startles him slightly, but only because he's already engrossed in the second book he'd borrowed. Oh. Well. It's not as if he minds.

"I'm almost done with this chapter," he says, voice hushed.

[recreatable]

"All right," Verso says, waiting patiently for Gustave to reach a stopping point before trying to pull attention. When Gustave reaches the end of his chapter, then he finally says, "I would have loaned you more if I'd known you were going to go through them so fast."

[superniceone]

Gustave closes the book, tucking it beneath his pillow. He'd meant to say he'd be done reading soon, that Verso wouldn't have to worry about him making sounds and keeping him awake, but he's amused by the remark. "I didn't, either, to be fair. But they're good."

It's really nice getting lost in someone else's head.

[recreatable]

Let's all say thank you, Aline for uploading her ePubs to this Minecraft world.

When he says "Good," it's genuinely pleased that Gustave likes them. Then, teasingly, he adds, "I thought you might only be interested in reading blueprints."

[superniceone]

"Why?" Gustave's eyes go wide in feigned interest. "Do you have some of those to lend out, too?" Verso's bedroll hasn't moved that far, but this feels like a deliberate response to his earlier admission. He reaches out just far enough to let his hand sort of vaguely brush Verso's shirt.

[recreatable]

In full transparency, Verso never knows what to do when Gustave does weird shit like this. Cop a feel or don't. Commit!

But he's polite, so he lets Gustave fondle the fabric of his shirt regardless. "After you called my work 'shoddy'?" Tsk, tsk. "I'm even less inclined to show you any blueprints than I am to let you read my poetry."