superniceone | tfln overflow / open post

"Fair enough."

Honest conversations aren't really his thing. He should probably slow down, in fact, lest he accidentally blurt out something better left unsaid. But Verso is as wise as he is honest—which is to say, not at all—so instead, he raises his cup again.

"Bottoms up, then."

The temptation is there to drain his cup, but he tamps it down. Maybe this is good. Just enough to feel a buoyant brush of tipsiness, a little warmth in his ears. Gustave pulls another mouthful of drink, then seems to settle on an appropriate stone. He turns it around in his fingers, appraising, before winding up to send it skipping across the surface of the water.

It's satisfying.

After a few long moments of just dwelling in the quiet, he'll think to say: "Thanks, by the way."

Verso's good with draining his cup. Life sucks. Might as well be inebriated for it.

"For the wine?" he asks before finding a stone himself and skipping it. It sinks beneath the dark water afterward, and Verso finds himself a little jealous of its ability to simply disappear forever.

"Esquie can't keep a secret. You would have found it eventually."

"Yes, but also for the company. The quiet." It's not like they're sitting here in silence, but both the light and their voices are much softer than the snatches of conversation he's able to hear drifting over from the fire.

He swirls the wine in his own cup, just keeping his hand busy more than anything else.

"I was - suspicious of you when you showed up. That's not a secret. But I'm glad you've stuck around."

Verso could rib him for essentially saying thanks for being quiet, but he chooses not to. For now. He finishes off his cup, setting it on the ground beside him as the faint buzz of alcohol makes its way through his veins.

"You aren't the first to be suspicious," he admits. Of course he isn't. Verso is suspicious. His mere existence is enough to make people wary. Dryly, with a hint of— not bitterness, exactly, but maybe ruefulness: "Guess there's something about seeing someone survive bisection that doesn't inspire trust."

Gustave shakes his head no at that, but he'll nurse more of his own cup before he does - as if he thinks that might help him find the exact words he is so often searching for.

"Wasn't that. You were just..." He chews on it for a moment, before just lofting another pebble into the water with a solid plunk this time. "Too good to be true, I think. Hard to believe this expedition would give you to us without a catch."

Verso had saved both his and Maelle's lives, knew his way around this place like no one else did. Was an asset in a fight, and there was no chance Monoco would be with them without Verso. He felt like a lucky break.

Verso picks up his cup to take another big swig only to find it's already empty. Merde. He stares down into the empty bottom before turning back to look at Esquie again, as if he might be able to send a psychic request for more alcohol.

"Yeah, well." He shrugs. "I'm sure you'll think of a catch or two."

"I guess we'll see," Gustave says, watching Verso try to drink from an empty cup. He leans in, offering out his own - about a third left sitting in the bottom. "Here."

Verso takes the cup, but instead of drinking out of it, he stands up, both cups in hand. Maybe the first person to double-fist on the continent. "I'll be back," he says, stepping back. Then, tongue-in-cheek, "Wouldn't want to give you too much quiet."

When he returns to the campfire to seek more wine, Sciel makes a comment about all the guy talk they're doing. Verso smirks and says, "You wouldn't believe what he says when he isn't in mixed company."

Esquie catches him up in a conversation about why he wasn't invited to guy talk, but about five minutes later, Verso returns to the waterside with two full cups in hand. As he holds one out, he asks, "Dissociating yet?"

It's another night of extremely pleasant weather. It's one of those things that Gustave doesn't allow himself to actually appreciate often enough; there's just not enough time for it. There's time for so few things, it feels like. But Verso disappears to refill their cups, and Gustave can feel the warmth of what he's had to drink already - subtle, but enough to let him relax while he's alone.

The water sounds nice, smells nice. It's calming, and when Verso returns, Gustave is smiling a little more sincerely when he reaches a hand out to take the refilled cup.

"Nearly there. You can go join them if you want, you know. I'll be fine over here."

Verso doesn't sit back down, primarily because he knows the value of some time alone. He takes another sip, looking out at the water, the light of the moon reflecting on its surface. Pretty as a picture.

Deadpan, he says, "I am a party animal."

Drinking miserably by himself is more of his thing. Gustave barely knows him, so he's forgiven for being ignorant of this fact.

Gustave laughs wryly at that, leaning back on one arm to study Verso while he's observing the water.

"I'm not telling you to leave. Just that you're not obligated to stay." He isn't certain there's anyone with a pulse who'd blame Verso for wanting to drink with Sciel and Lune instead of him.

Hm. Another drink.

"Do you always assume people are only around because of obligation, or am I a special case?"

He exhales a half-laugh, surprised by the question. "Don't say it like that. I'm being realistic, not down on myself. Most people would pick a - lively bonfire over-" He gestures to the water and himself.

Verso does finally sit down again now that he thinks Gustave might actually be amenable to some companionable silence, setting his cup down beside him.

"Maybe I've already been to enough lively bonfires." This isn't his first, at any rate. He's watched 67 expeditions come and go. They'd fought together, laughed together, drank together. There's always an air of dread over these types of things, the knowledge that nothing good lasts forever. "Maybe I'm trying something different."

"But never quite enough brooding in the dark, is that right?" There's quiet gratitude that Verso has chosen to park there with him, even if Gustave himself doesn't quite realise.

He's apparently going to show gratitude that by lightly picking up Verso's cup as soon as he sets it down, giving it a swirl and taking a sip. "This was for me, right?" This would be outrageously flirtatious is he were any less awkward, especially considering how much of his own drink he still has left, but he's mostly just trying to be cheeky.

Gustave is so awkward, but he can admit that there's an endearing quality to it — now that he knows it isn't on purpose, anyway, some fabricated attempt to be adorably awkward in the hopes of impressing the women in their group. After all, Gustave has blown right past 'adorably awkward' and into 'awkwardly awkward'. Several times.

"You got me." Verso throws his hands up. "I thought two drinks would get you blisteringly drunk"—as Gustave had said—"even faster, and then we could skip right to the brooding."

It's safe to say that Gustave would have been mortified beyond all reasoning if he thought that was even a possibility that Verso was entertaining. As it is now, he's just chuckling softly at him instead of shrinking back into the grass.

"I realise you're a consummate gentleman, but you're welcome to start brooding without me," he says, offering Verso's cup back to him. "I might take notes." He pauses, then adds: "More notes."

On top of being awkward, it's also becoming abundantly clear that Gustave is a big old nerd. If the Gommage doesn't get him, it'll be death by notetaking.

"Oh, you will, will you?" he asks as he takes the cup back, swirling it the way Gustave had before using his free hand to write in the air with an imaginary pen. "Let history note that he was a devastatingly handsome brooder."

In Gustave's defense, he has never once even attempted to pretend that he isn't a big old nerd. He barks a soft laugh at Verso's impression of him. "You've got my voice down. I do find you infuriatingly good-looking. Happy to hire you as a ghostwriter if all this-" He gestures vaguely around them. "Don't work out."

That last comment is a bit depressing, and despite everything he's said tonight, Verso isn't actually trying to get Gustave to brood. He's a traitor in every way that counts, but betrayal doesn't point to malice. No need for Gustave to be miserable.

So: "If we don't make it to the Paintress," he says, slowly. If all of this has been yet again for nothing, and Verso has a hundred more years of living to dread. "I'll make sure your journals get read."

Gustave stares openly at Verso for a moment, uncomprehending, before he ducks his head. His shoulders are actually trembling slightly with suppressed laughter as he pulls another long drink, mostly just to stall.

"I wasn't being grim, Verso." The solemnity with which he'd spoken was both funny and genuinely touching. "I meant more - your expeditioner's tour guide business, if this doesn't pan out. You can come back and apprentice under me? Sorry, I did say I was going to be brooding, didn't I?"

It's just that, for the one moment, he wasn't.

Oh, my god, you try to be nice one time and get laughed at!!! This is why existence is suffering!!!

Verso stares at the water as if it's the most interesting thing in the world. Well, nothing to do now but gaslight. "Oh, yeah, I... also. Meant that."

"No, don't- I didn't mean to-" Gustave cuts himself and his own inability to finish sentences off, leaning over to push gently at Verso's arm. "I was bracing for the fallout of calling you infuriatingly good looking. The genuine sentiment just - caught me off guard, I'm sorry."

Of course he was going to tease Gustave for calling him infuriatingly good-looking, but then he'd thought that Gustave was being macabre and morbid about the possibility that his life's work may never bear fruit, and focusing on his ego after that would have been ridiculous, even for him. Obviously, though, he now has to recover his spot on the top of the totem pole after being humiliatingly knocked down several pegs, so—

"Right, infuriatingly good-looking. Let's circle back to that."

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