superniceone | tfln overflow / open post

It's no weirder than placing a bedroll down next to someone else's with a super thin yet very deliberate gap between them. Not that Gustave is overthinking that or anything.

"Fine, fine. I'll just have to see if anything's survived in my old workshop."

"—Oof." If Gustave is ever going to bridge that super thin yet very deliberate gap between them, he's going to have to be more complimentary! "I'll admit, I was hoping you'd recant your accusations of shoddiness."

Gustave snorts softly, and his hand isn't actively fondling Verso's shirt. Even worse: it's just kind of resting there, in his space.

"I think we both know I was just saying that out of pettiness," he says. "Isn't teasing how I'm meant to flirt?"

"Ah," he says, shaking his head. "Common misunderstanding. I'm meant to flirt by teasing. You're meant to flirt by telling me how handsome and charming I am."

It's the way of things. Gustave gets made fun of, Verso gets a bigger head. A solid dynamic!

He leans in just a little, as if this next bit is a secret Gustave is lucky to be let in on. "Actually touching me instead of grazing my shirt is an option, too."

"Oh, sure. You can see why I was confused but I think I've got it now." His brows go up when Verso leans in, and then he laughs - quietly, not so loud that it becomes a joke for anyone else to listen to.

"I- this was an invitation," he says slowly, like he's sharing his own secret. "An offer. I was hoping you'd meet me halfway, but if you'd like me to do all the work again..."

"Oh, again," he echoes. Gustave calling him a brat is starting to look like the pot calling the kettle black. He settles on his back, linking his fingers over his torso, quite literally twiddling his thumbs. A sidelong glance Gustave's way, and— "Well, you know me. I hate work."

Gustave watches him for a moment, his expression fond, before he retrieves the book from beneath his flat little pillow and flips it back open. "You know," he says idly, "right before I left for the Expedition, a friend of mine said I was the most stubborn man she knew."

"We have so much in common. Mine said I was the most handsome man she knew."

What friend?? He has two friends, and they're 1) the family dog and 2) a childhood toy. Don't call him out on his blatant lie.

A moment passes, and he sets his hand down in the little sliver of space between their bedrolls. If Gustave gets to call what he did an invitation, then clearly, this gets to be called one as well.

"I wouldn't disagree with her," Gustave hums quietly. He's a stubborn man, but he's not a pointlessly obstinate one; he will turn the page and silently take that invitation, resting his hand on Verso's. He squeezes his fingers, appreciative, his eyes still on the book that he's no longer really paying any attention to.

Holding hands pancake-style is even more juvenile than Gustave calling him 'boyfriend', so Verso rectifies the situation by fumbling with his hand until he can intertwine their fingers. Gustave has nice fingers; rough in some spots from what he can only assume is tinkering with tools, but still soft in others. Warm.

He really likes this guy, and he instantly feels kind of like a piece of shit. Incapable of being normal, he gives Gustave one of his signature long, lingering looks Which Could Mean Nothing before closing his eyes. "Try to gasp quietly, if you can. I need my beauty sleep."

Unfortunately, Gustave cannot both hold his book and turn the pages with his mechanical hand. It's sophisticated, but that's difficult enough to do with an organic one, so he instead just folds it shut.

He squeezes Verso's fingers in his own, before he rolls onto his side; after a moment of contemplation, he lifts their joined hands to sort of half-drape across Verso's stomach. "Mmhmm. Silent as a mouse," he whispers.

Their hands are still joined when they wake, and it becomes the way Verso expects to sleep each night after on the Continent. It isn't holding each other so much as it is sleeping in a pile like a pair of kittens, but it's still more intimacy than Verso has experienced with another human being in nearly 70 years.

Things stagnate like that, because it's difficult to do much more than that with the return to real—for some measure of the word—life looming over them. And what a return to real life it is; Maelle doesn't expand on what transpired between them, but it must be fairly obvious that Verso intended to end it all and she stopped him. He doesn't expand on it, either. In fact, when they set foot back in Lumiére for the first time and Maelle begins the process of repainting everything she lost, Verso disappears without a word.

A day goes by, then two, then a week. He reaches out to no one, barely talks to Maelle. She creates him a living space, presumably in an attempt to make him happy here; there's a piano in the living room, but he spends most of his time lying in bed.

It's on the evening of the eighth day that he finally sets foot outside, knocking on the door of Gustave's family home with the hangdog expression he loves to wear when he's done something wrong. "Hey," he says once the door opens, like he hasn't just spent the past week crashing out. "Is Maelle here?"

He's hoping she isn't, actually.

Things stagnate like that, but Gustave is fine with it, actually. It's real warmth, no showmanship or bravado; just a quiet tether he can rely upon at night. He doesn't know how things are going to shake out, but - it's comforting, and he's grateful for that.

He's as cautiously hopeful as everyone else is when they finally move to confront Renoir. It is, ostensibly, a victory, but somehow it feels like everything has gone to hell. Maelle refuses to talk about it, gently and lovingly ices him out of any conversation he tries to initiate about Verso and whatever it was that had happened just between the two of them.

She stays busy. Gustave should, or at least busier than he does, but dread settles in his stomach like a lead weight that he can't throw off. Sciel, Lune, and Maelle take the lead on the reunions with the once lost, with their reintegration into society; Gustave focuses more on paperwork, planning. The logistics of shelter and food for the exploding population of a city is complicated even with a practical deity amongst them.

Gustave looks startled when he opens the door and finds Verso on the other side. He seems to be just out of the shower, his hair damp and face freshly shaved at Emma's insistence. "Oh," he says, something clicking hard in his chest. He hasn't given himself much space to think about it, but he doesn't know if he'd actually expected to ever see Verso again. "No, she's not. I- you can wait here if you want me to go look for her-?"

His eyes flick down the length of Verso's body, as if checking for injury or damage, a ridiculous response that he's fully unaware of even doing himself.

Oh is not exactly what you want to hear when you show up at your not-boyfriend's house after ghosting him for a week, but beggars can't really be choosers. Gustave looks nice, comfortable; Verso's never seen him in anything but the Expedition uniform, but civilian attire suits him. His hair is dripping a little onto the shoulders of his shirt, but Verso doesn't point it out.

He probably doesn't look his best, besides. He's looked awful this whole week, and although he'd tried his best to improve his appearance before coming over here, there's not much to do about the dead eyes of someone who really doesn't want to be here anymore. His hair is combed, at least, and he put on a clean shirt. That's progress.

"No, that's all right."

Verso lingers in the doorway for a moment, uncharacteristically awkward and unsure. Then: "Sorry. You're busy." Verso has no proof of this, but— "I'll go."

"No—"

Verso apologizes and it seems to snap Gustave out of his surprise, and he's stepping forward, reaching out to try to stay him.

"I'm not. I mean, Emma's got— there are some people coming over later, so I thought that's what— maybe someone was here early. You surprised me." He swallows, his throat tight. "Come in? I was going to make dinner, let me— please? Don't go."

'People coming over later'. The notion surprises him, although it shouldn't. The world had stopped for him, but for everyone else in Lumiére, it had kept turning.

He steps inside without argument, although he hovers in the entryway waiting for Gustave to tell him where to go, taking in what he can of the space from where he's standing. Of course, he'd known Gustave had a home, had even walked by it and peered in the windows during the sixteen years Maelle spent in Lumiére, but it's still odd to see him in such cozy surroundings regardless. When he imagines Gustave, it's with grass in his hair from sleeping on the ground.

"Nice place," he says, for lack of knowing what else to say.

It is a nice home. Tidy, though Emma was the one in charge of home decor years ago, back before she held a job with real responsibility and had time to care about that kind of thing. It's been unchanged since then.

Gustave used to find it comforting and familiar. Now it just feels like set dressing. A toy castle in a fish tank.

"Okay," he whispers, hanging his head for a moment and taking a bracing breath. "I've been— worried fucking sick." It's neither anger nor criticism. Just relief, really, simple but loud.

"Sorry," he says, and he is, although he'd still do it again. He scratches his beard uncomfortably. There's a few stray hairs he hasn't gotten around to trimming. "I guess time, uh, got away from me."

Not an untruth. He actually isn't sure how long it's been. It all blurs together when you're lying around feeling sorry for yourself.

But he's not here to pull focus onto himself. He'd wanted to see Gustave, even though he'd known it was selfish. Wanted to see how he was doing. "You shaved," he says, like that's a normal place for this conversation to go. Even more selfishly, he'd like if he could just slide in here like nothing ever happened. "You look nice."

"I was just humoring Emma, she—" Had been needling him about it, and he simply didn't care enough to argue. "What happened to rioting? You could have prevented this if you'd been twenty minutes earlier."

Gustave swallows. He wants to ask about the day they'd forced Maelle's father out of the canvas, is desperate to know what had been the catalyst for the drastic change in his affect.

"Just hold still for a moment, yeah?" Quietly, a verbal and physical echo of the last time he'd closed the distance between them to pull Verso into an embrace.

He leans into the embrace despite himself, because he is a terrible, horrible, selfish person. "Hey," he says softly, palm rubbing between Gustave's shoulder blades comfortingly. It's an instinct more than anything else, some deep-seated need to make things better. "It's okay."

Attempting to inject some humor into his voice, he adds, "It'll grow back."

There's a flash of— not frustration, not exactly, but maybe a distant cousin of it when Verso rubs his back. He's not the one who needs looking after here is what he wants to say, but doesn't know how to communicate that without making things more awkward, more tense.

He keeps the metal arm around Verso's waist, pulling back just enough to use his other hand to catch Verso's jaw and to kiss him soundly. It's clumsy and a little messy for it, but he doesn't care right now.

"There's cassoulet simmering." Vegetarian, because there's no room in Lumière for massive amounts of livestock. "I was about to peel some potatoes— stay and eat something?"

The kiss is a surprise, because— well, he'd half-expected Gustave to get over him the second they got back to Lumiére. If not that, then he'd figured the sudden and unexplained distance would turn Gustave off. It isn't an unpleasant experience, being kissed by him, although Verso tries not to let himself enjoy it too much.

"Oh," he says to the invitation. There are people coming over, he'd said, and Verso's liable to ruin Gustave's nice little get-together. Even worse, if Maelle comes home, things could get tense. His stomach tightens at the thought of facing her; they've been at a distance since coming back, and he's not quite ready to change that.

He doesn't want to hurt Gustave's feelings, though, so he opts for a lie. "I appreciate the offer, but I just ate." A hand on his stomach, and he adds, "And I don't think 'round and jolly' fits me."

This is the part where he should probably excuse himself. He got what he wanted—to see if Gustave was doing all right, adapting back to Lumiére—and it would be inconsiderate to stick around for more. "—I could help you peel."

Verso really is fully unhinged if he thinks he's just going to be able to slip away after this; Gustave really is one of the most stubborn people around, and he's not going to let Emma's visiting councilors be the excuse Verso needs to evaporate again. He'll have to work a little harder than that.

Personal feelings aside (of which there were a lot, more than he was ready to admit to himself - spending his nights reliably clutching Verso's hand in his own had done a number on him those last few weeks), he really is worried. About Verso, about Maelle, the siblings who'd both come to him unwilling to be loved because they felt like they didn't deserve it. Gustave doesn't know the details, of course, but he knows enough for it to make his chest ache.

"Please," he says softly, eyes searching Verso's face, before he turns to lead him to the kitchen and scrub up some potatoes.

He probably shouldn't be trusted around knives right now, but oh, well. It's not like anything can actually hurt him. Verso follows, washing up at the kitchen sink before doing the same with a potato. He's by no means an expert at this sort of thing—he hadn't done the cooking at home, and food on the Continent was a lot more 'assorted sketchy mushrooms' than cassoulet—but he picks up a paring knife and gets to work regardless. It quickly becomes a sort of lumpy, oddly-shaped potato, but it's a peeled potato nonetheless.

"I didn't know you cooked," he finally says, because this is going to be painful if he doesn't try to keep up some sort of conversation. "What's the occasion?"

Who is it for, essentially, without sounding quite so nosy.

"Some of the other councilors are coming by. Unofficial meeting," Emma says from the doorway, and Gustave is so laser focused on Verso he startles; his own knife slips, but luckily just hits a metal finger. She tips her head, eyebrows raised. "It smells nice. This is Maelle's—?"

"We won't be joining," Gustave supplies quickly, shooting Verso a sidelong glance, apologetic, like he should have warned him that Emma was home. "But yes. Thank you. Verso, Emma. She's just passing by on her way to the study." The least subtle hint on the planet.

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idk when maelle makes him old so just imagine him as a senior citizen if you want

verso showing up with a walker

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