tfln overflow / open post

[superniceone]

(open / overflow)

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[recreatable]

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."

[superniceone]

"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."

[recreatable]

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?"

[superniceone]

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."

[recreatable]

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.

[superniceone]

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.

[recreatable]

Hm. Another drink.

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

[superniceone]

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.

[recreatable]

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."

[superniceone]

"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.

[recreatable]

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."

[superniceone]

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."

[recreatable]

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."

[superniceone]

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."

[recreatable]

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."

[superniceone]

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.

[recreatable]

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."

[superniceone]

"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."

[recreatable]

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."

[superniceone]

Verso can't really be blamed for the mistake. This entire encounter was predicated upon the idea that Gustave would be getting drunk and melancholy; it's only natural he'd assumed it had been gallows humour instead of the normal, bad kind.

"Sure," he says, willing to indulge if only because he does feel a little bad for laughing at him like that. "But you've got a reflection, so this isn't news to you."

[recreatable]

Music isn't news to him, either, but it's still nice to hear. As (not-so-)secretly vain as he is, Verso appreciates a little positive feedback, thanks. Infuriatingly is actually a new one, though. 'Roguishly good-looking', sure. 'Effortlessly', maybe. Are these all descriptors he gave himself? Probably.

"I might have told you you weren't bad yourself, if you hadn't just laughed away my last shred of dignity."

Too bad, so sad.

[superniceone]

Gustave is aware that he isn't unattractive, really, but physical appearance has never ranked extremely high on the list of things that matter to him. He thinks back to the evening before the Expedition, the way he'd been derisively called scrawny to his face. It was exasperating, not hurtful.

"It's alright," he says with a sidelong smirk. "I've long come to terms with the fact that my role in this expedition is just to make the rest of you look even better."

[recreatable]

You don't really believe that might be his response if, again, he weren't just ridiculed for sincerity. Never doing that again, at least not until he can properly die of embarrassment afterward.

"Right." He gives Gustave an obvious up-and-down, appraising. "You're a hideous beast. The Nevrons actually run when they see you coming."

[superniceone]

"Hey, come on, now. I wasn't going that far. I look pretty good for an engineer with chronic sleep deprivation who almost never leaves his workshop and spends all of his time around literal children, actually."

Gustave finishing his third cup and deciding this is definitely, absolutely the last of it, because he doesn't actually want to take advantage of what Verso has ferreted away. Honestly, he's a bit shocked to find himself in warmer spirits than darker ones, but he's not going to question it too hard. There's still plenty of time for that to turn around.

"I've been told I clean up nice," he adds after a long pause, firmly.

[recreatable]

He probably does clean up nice, honestly. None of them are at their best right now, usually covered in blood, grime, and Nevron guts. Not that Gustave is bad to look at now; he'd only been joking at the absurdity of Gustave being there to 'make them look better', as if he were some sort of strange-looking creature (sorry, Monoco) and not a perfectly acceptable man.

"Looks like some people like engineers with chronic sleep deprivation who never leave their workshops."

He cants his head toward the campfire again, gaze on Sciel and Lune for a moment before it returns to Gustave, brow quirked pointedly. Verso's been around long enough to hear the way they speak to Gustave, with an amused little lilt to their voices when he hasn't said anything funny.