tfln overflow / open post

[superniceone]

(open / overflow)

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[recreatable]

Verso remembers having very low expectations for Gustave, that night they'd drunk Esquie-stored wine and stumbled off into the woods. He'd found Gustave good-looking enough to shove his hand down his pants, but not interesting enough to occupy his thoughts in any meaningful way. He wonders now, though, what Gustave's bedroom looks like, what sort of books he reads, what knick-knacks are on his shelves.

He tugs his sleeve back down, arm un-dismembered for the moment. "I hope that's where you keep your jigsaw puzzles."

[superniceone]

"It is, actually." Little puzzles and games like that were one of the ways he'd bonded with Maelle when she'd first come to live with them. It was a way to commit time and attention without putting pressure on her to open up before she was ready; he'd won her over eventually in part because his patience for her simply never ran out.

He does grab something to snack on — bread and cheese and fruit — because he doesn't exactly trust Verso's assertion of having eaten, before he tilts his head to indicate that he follow. The house is comically too large for two people, or even three; if Gustave and Emma weren't both so chronically busy, they would have brought more than just Maelle into their home.

Gustave sets the plate down on the small drafting table in what looks like a little workspace he's arranged in the corner of his room. "I meant to make coffee. Or I could get some wine?" He's mostly trying to gauge if Verso is at all interested in either, some of that desperation to actually keep him here for a while back.

[recreatable]

Verso is less interested in Gustave's little French charcuterie than he is in the workspace that he sets it down on. He hovers by the table, both for lack of anywhere else to go and out of curiosity; it's a little like getting a peek into Gustave's mind, being in here. One can imagine him hunched over the drafting table for hours, working on blueprints until the sun rises.

There's no interest in coffee, but— "Wine. Wine would be good." Maybe it might take the edge off of how painful their interaction has been so far.

[superniceone]

"Sure," Gustave says softly, tipping his head toward the chair at the table. There's a stool nearby, the place where Maelle would perch to come keep Gustave company when he was holing himself away at home instead of the workshop.

He's not gone long, but there's plenty of time to see the unhidden pages of aborted plans and blueprints on his desk, clear signs of a man struggling with inventive block. One page near the top has abandoned its original notion of railway reconstruction and turned into a series of diagrams of the different types of Sakapatate, sketched fairly accurately from memory.

The nearby bookshelf is likely less interesting, crammed mostly with the driest nonfiction known to mankind. If Verso glances towards the bed, he'll see a few fiction paperbacks in a messy little stack.

"Uh," he says when he returns, nudging the door shut with his hip. "Wasn't sure if you wanted red or white, so— I just brought one of each."

[recreatable]

By the time Gustave returns, Verso is seated on the stool, peering over at Gustave's work with an amused smile tugging at the corner of his lips. Probably the first time he's smiled all week.

"You're sketching gestrals now?" he asks, instead of answering about red or white (because as long as it has alcohol content, it really doesn't matter). He's pleased that Gustave is drawing them — or, well, gestral inventions piloted by gestrals, which is really the same thing. "I knew you were pretending not to like them."

[superniceone]

Gustave realizes after a moment that he's forgotten glasses. After a moment's deliberation, he uncorks the bottle of wine and has a pull from it directly, before he drops into the seat at his desk and offers it out to Verso.

"I never said I hated them. They were just a bit— much. In large groups."

[recreatable]

"Oh, in small groups, too."

Verso recognizes that they're a bit much. Or a lot much. He holds an awful lot of affection for them regardless, the way you love an annoying cousin because despite everything, they're still family.

He takes the bottle of wine, taking what is probably an excessively long swig before returning it. It would just be nice to be a little tipsy for this, is all. The world would probably be a lot more tolerable if it were more fuzzy.

"As talented as you are at drawing Sakapatate, I can't help but notice you didn't finish your train blueprints."

[superniceone]

"Well," Gustave starts, drumming his fingers on the desktop and glancing at his papers. "You know how it is." Like this is a common problem, impulsively doodling gestral combat machines instead of trains.

He waves his hand dismissively, as if everything has been explained, and keeps busy by tearing off a piece of bread.

[recreatable]

"Creative block?" He shrugs. Obviously, his creative block doesn't take quite the same form as Gustave's, but it's all the same when you get down to it, isn't it? "I'm familiar with it, yes."

[superniceone]

Gustave shakes his head no, chases the bougie-ass little French charcuterie with another drink. It doesn't taste bad, but it's also clear he's not drinking for the taste.

"Not to sound like an angsty teenager, I'm just—" He hesitates. "Struggling to see the point, I guess. I'll get over it."

[recreatable]

Verso's really not the person to go to for 'finding the point of it all', but to his credit, he does try. He glances over at Gustave's aborted blueprints again, frowning.

"The point is... to create something beautiful. To find meaning in meaninglessness." That's the point of all art, he assumes, and this must be as much an art as a science. "To get respite where you can find it."

Not to be too philosophical about Gustave's lack of interest in railways. "If trains don't do that for you, then—" Another shrug. "I'm sure the gestrals would take your Sakapatate designs."

[superniceone]

Gustave seems slightly taken aback by that; partially because he'd expected commiseration, if anything, and partly because he'd been speaking in a practical sense. They'd need teams to do land surveys, to figure out paths for the tracks, to say nothing of not really knowing what shape the internals of the trains were in. Or, he could just ask Maelle, pretty please, would you be able to paint something up? Wouldn't that be more efficient in every sense?

But Verso's encouragement makes him smile subtly, leaning forward to rest his forearms on the tops of his thighs.

"You really are the most beautiful man I've ever known," he says, simple and sincere.

[recreatable]

"Mm," is his initial response to that. Verso doesn't feel particularly beautiful in any sense. He feels like he might be uniquely awful, actually. He reaches out for the wine bottle, taking another large gulp before saying, "It's the hair. Good hair hides a multitude of sins."

[superniceone]

"I thought that's how I was meant to flirt with you," he says, indicating for Verso to just keep that bottle as he opens the white for himself. "I need to write these rules down."

[recreatable]

"No, that was good." If he felt even slightly less terrible about himself, he'd probably already be trying to make out with Gustave. But then again, that has little to do with the success of any flirting and more to do with his libido.

"I just—" Merde. He takes another drink. "Will you believe me if I say it's not you, it's me?"

[superniceone]

"Yes." It's just as matter-of-fact as before. Gustave hadn't been expecting any swooning, any sex or romance; it had mostly just been a clumsy attempt to coax another smile out of him. He leans back in his chair, picking at the label on the bottle in his own hands. "I don't think your - cautious optimism before was a lie. Obviously something is wrong."

[recreatable]

Verso stares into the mouth of the bottle for a moment, then:

"I need you to do something for me." Apropos of nothing, seemingly. He waffles for a moment, considering his next words carefully. There's a lot of things he could ask of Gustave, but one is probably most pertinent. "Maelle can't stay here. This place will kill her."

[superniceone]

Verso goes from 0 to 100 so fast that Gustave quite literally does not understand. He leans back slightly, glancing at the walls of the room before he looks back to Verso, struggling. "My- house?"

[recreatable]

"Your— what?" What is blud yapping about??? "Putain. The Canvas, Gustave."

There's an obvious mounting frustration that Gustave doesn't just get it right away, but he sighs and shoves that down. "She said she was going to use it responsibly, but—" But Maman couldn't do so, and his faith in Maelle to do the same has been steadily running out. "I need you to make sure that she does."

[superniceone]

To Gustave's credit, it does seem to snap into place with that. His eyes widen, then narrow, before he abruptly drains a sizeable portion of the bottle that he's clinging onto. That's it. That's the dropping shoe he's been waiting on for more than a week now.

"That's what the two of you fought about. That's why you wanted to-" Erase it. Erase them.

[recreatable]

Verso does feel guilty enough about it to hang his head like a shamed dog, but he still says, "This Canvas is poison. She'll always want to come back." He's not sure if he's talking about Maman or Maelle. The only difference is that Maman has been forcibly cut off, but that hardly matters. She'll still want to spend every waking moment trying to get back in as long as the Canvas exists.

"It would be better if it were all gone." Unfortunately, that isn't an option anymore. He tried, and he failed. "But maybe you can convince her to leave, before it eats away at her."

[superniceone]

Gustave swears under his breath, pinching at the bridge of his nose. "She's - that was the plan, wasn't it? That she'd go to see her family there, and then come back here. You think she's changed her mind."

[recreatable]

Not so much 'changed her mind' as 'never intended to follow through in the first place'. Maybe she told herself she would, deluded herself into believing she would be responsible, but— he can't shake the image of Maman, stumbling and coughing, but desperate to find her way back into the thing actively killing her. He couldn't bear watching Maelle do the same or, even worse, refusing to leave while continuing to deteriorate in this place.

"I think it's hard to resist." To say the least. "In here, things are... different for her."

The single worst moment of her life is undone, and therefore everything that came after is undone, too. The grief, the physical pain, her mother's resentment. She doesn't have to deal with any of that here.

"But it's not real."

[superniceone]

"It's not real," Gustave echoes, and his face shutters slightly at that. Fuck. It would have been better for her if it had just all ended. "Merde. Yes. Of course I'll talk to her. You should have come to me earlier."

[recreatable]

He's a little taken aback by the quick agreement. "I thought— I thought you might be afraid of what her father might do to the Canvas if she leaves." Because there's always a chance that he'll destroy it, as long as Maelle isn't in it; all of Lumiére gone in an instant. It's a sacrifice Verso is willing to make, one he's spent years deliberating, but he imagines the thought doesn't sit well with Gustave.