tfln overflow / open post

[superniceone]

(open / overflow)

Comments

too bad....

[superniceone]

Gustave won't object — he'll just tidily stack them outside his bedroom door for her, actually, if she's offering to take care of the trash. He's got big plans that mostly involve forgetting he agreed to meet with Verso and staring at the wall, and he's just going to get on those, thanks.

fuck my stupid baka life

[recreatable]

Good, honestly, because now Gustave won't notice that Verso is late. It isn't that he doesn't believe in Gustave, it's just that he doesn't, you know, have faith in Gustave. Hard to live this long and not come out the other side pessimistic. Things just never seem to work out the way he wishes they would.

As long as he doesn't actually ask Gustave what happened, he can't be disappointed, like Schrodinger's Maelle. So, despite promising to come back after breakfast, he avoids Gustave's place until well into the late afternoon, when he finally knocks on the door.

It's Emma who lets him in, not Maelle — thank god. He stands in the entryway with her for a few moments, and yes, maybe he flirts with her a teeny tiny bit out of habit, before she calls, "Gustave! —Honestly, I haven't seen him all day."

[superniceone]

There's a long stretch of silence. Gustave had been genuinely half dozing at that point, hadn't heard the knock on the door and — well, honestly, he isn't even fully sure what time it is. "I'm working, what is it?" He calls, still very much from bed where he's lying in his rumpled day clothes.

Emma just rolls her eyes and indicates Gustave's bedroom door. "He's home, then. I'll leave you to it."

[recreatable]

Auspicious.

Verso takes one step inside Gustave's room and raises an eyebrow. Working, is it? He stuffs his hands into his pockets, hovering in the doorway.

Flatly: "I can come back, if you're nearing a breakthrough."

[superniceone]

Gustave sits up quickly, like he's been caught doing something he shouldn't, and stares at Verso for a long second. "Fuck," he says after a second, and allows himself to fall back in the mattress again. "Shut the door."

[recreatable]

"Not exactly the warm welcome I was hoping for."

Having someone utter fuck at the very sight of him is not flattering. Still, he closes the door gently before perching at the foot of Gustave's bed, a polite distance between them.

"Want to talk about it?" It's not really necessary. Judging by Gustave's attitude right now, he already knows how the conversation with Maelle went.

[superniceone]

If it helps, it was more at the having forgotten plans than at the actual sight of Verso. "Getting her to leave is going to make her hate me, and it's going to hurt her, and I'm just— prematurely wallowing in self-loathing." He wants to reach out to Verso, but it feels like cheating to let himself seek comfort.

[recreatable]

That's pretty much where he's at, too, although it isn't at all relieving to know he isn't alone in his feelings. He wishes he'd never said anything to Gustave at all. All the truth ever does is make things painful and complicated.

"She could never hate you," he says, tone consoling. "She thinks you hung the stars in the sky."

It's Verso who did that, actually. The real one.

[superniceone]

"She won't by the time I've forced her to return to a family she doesn't want to see against her will," Gustave exhales, then shakes his head. "Sorry. I had hoped to— I wanted to cheer you up."

[recreatable]

Verso's pretty sure Maelle couldn't even hate Gustave then, either. He's had to listen to her yap about how great Gustave is for long enough that he can be certain of that. Clearly, though, Gustave is in the wallowing stage, and rational argument will do nothing to improve his mood. Verso's very familiar with this stage, because it's pretty much the stage he's in all the time.

"I'm cheery," he says, reaching out to rest a comforting hand on Gustave's calf. "Don't I look cheery?"

[superniceone]

Gustave squints a little at him, like he's almost offended that Verso is making light of the situation — but what else is he meant to do about it? He swears softly under his breath and flops onto his back, staring at the ceiling.

"Did I really smell that bad on the Expedition?" he asks, apropos of nothing (or, Maelle's comment.)

[recreatable]

Oh, my god!!! Gustave doesn't like when he's mopey, and he doesn't like when he makes light of things, either. There really is no pleasing this man.

Verso's still going to try, though, because it's what he does. "Compared to Monoco, you smelled like roses." They all smelled bad out there; he doesn't need to make Gustave feel self-conscious!

[superniceone]

Well, it hadn't prevented Verso from sleeping with him!! So he's going to choose to take that as confirmation that he was fine, actually.

"Okay." He pauses, still watching the ceiling. "Can I ask you to lay down for a few minutes, or was going dark meant to be an implied breakup?"

Gustave genuinely isn't being snarky; he's trying to figure out where the lines are and he's too drained to mince words.

[recreatable]

Verso doesn't need to breathe to live, so canon is that he just held his breath every time he got close to Gustave.

The call-out is a little rude despite Gustave's intentions, and he feels the urge to tell him that everything isn't about you, you know, but— "You can ask."

Which is not a 'no' to the implied breakup, actually. —Ah, damn. He was supposed to explicitly break up with Gustave today, save him from having his life, too, polluted by Verso. Tomorrow, definitely.

In an attempt to make Gustave crack a smile, he says, "But I expect a pretty please at minimum."

[superniceone]

Gustave isn't vain enough to think that ending things between them would have been anything more than an incidental, bonus consequence of having just vanished for more than a week, but he's privately relieved that's not the case.

He's pretty sure he can sense the writing on the wall, anyway. Maybe it was absurd in the first place for Gustave to think either of them would ever be in the right place emotionally for a relationship, much less with each other. Still. He'll hold on to what he's got while he's got it.

"Pretty please?" he asks shamelessly, shifting to prop himself up on one elbow. He's trying to cash in his big spoon allotment.

[recreatable]

Aww, Gustave has no right to be this fucking easy. Verso shucks off his shoes and crawls up beside him, settling down on his side so that he can look at Gustave in all of his depression era glory. He gets it; wallowing in bed is a time-tested tradition, one he's personally verified the effectiveness of many times.

"I have to admit, you do smell better now." Another attempt to make Gustave smile. The clownery will continue until Gustave's morale improves.

[superniceone]

There's another pang of guilt caused by this insane feedback loop of regret they're constantly triggering in each other. Verso shouldn't need to be the one comforting him right then.

"I have," he starts, trying to maneuver Verso in a way that will let Gustave hold him in a position comfortable enough to linger in, "a very large bath."

[recreatable]

Except that Verso is under the impression he's supposed to be the one doing the holding here, so they end up doing a little unintentional light wrestling as Verso tries to maneuver himself the complete opposite way. "I can't tell if you're trying to invite me into your bath or—"

Halfway through, he finally realizes what Gustave is trying to do, and he gives up, genuinely laughing at the absurdity. This is so stupid.

"—if you're just bragging about your bathtub," he finishes after a moment, rubbing his face.

[superniceone]

Gustave is baffled at first by the amount of difficulty they're having arranging themselves for a cuddle, and he's beginning to wonder if that's just Verso declining the advance in a very clunky way— before he figures it out, too. Verso's laughter is contagious, it turns out, and Gustave is still chuckling to himself as he curls his arm around Verso's waist and gently squeezes.

"Do I seem like the type to brag about bathroom fixtures? You can be honest."

[recreatable]

If Gustave had felt out of his depth during sex, it can't be anything compared to how embarrassingly out of practice Verso feels now, not having cuddled another human being in 67 years. He shifts a few times, unsure if he's meant to be facing Gustave or facing away from him, before he finally decides that face-to-face is probably too intimate for baby's first cuddling session in seven decades.

It still feels strange. Not bad, but unusual. Like he doesn't really belong here, but that's probably because he doesn't; somehow, despite everything, he fell into having one good thing that he very much doesn't deserve.

Not that he says any of that. "Oh, definitely," he says instead, wry. "Total bathtub snob."

[superniceone]

"Yeah, I thought that's how I came across," Gustave muses, and he should probably be embarrassed by how much obvious comfort it brings him to wrap someone up in his arms and settle into his pillow. He presses a small kiss to the side of Verso's neck, just in reflexive affection instead of an attempt to be titillating.

"We'll save her," he promises then, and he's sad but convicted. "You don't have to do these things alone anymore."

[recreatable]

That's sweet and all, but he'd sort of had the opposite thought, that he should tell Gustave not to worry about it anymore and that he'd figure it out himself, somehow. Gustave was in Verso's shoes for exactly one day and spent the majority of it in bed feeling sorry for himself. Verso can't judge, of course, because that's the same thing he's been doing for the past week, but it really doesn't feel like they both need to experience that.

"That's a surprising amount of optimism, given your premature wallowing."

[superniceone]

"I'm allowed to wallow. I think I might be depressed? I'm not entirely certain." Gustave says this with the strange clinical composure of the scientist he is. The conversation with Maelle had the catalyst, not the cause. He hurtled along at breakneck speed his entire life and never spent much time recovering from the whiplash from the way he'd abruptly stopped. He wants to look at the city and see it as flourishing; instead it feels stagnant, like a scum-covered stone at the bottom of a pond.

It wasn't until halfway through the first Sakapatate doodle that he realized how little joy he was finding in the things he'd loved pre-Expedition. Maybe he had come back wrong. Or—

"Just everything catching up, I think. The people's hero is allowed to spend a few days being a useless lump in bed."

[recreatable]

"The people's hero, huh?"

Said with an audible eye roll. But he does turn to look at Gustave now, because he's depressed, apparently, and talking about it with a sort of scientific detachment that doesn't suggest he's anywhere near the healing stage.

"If the people's hero needs to talk, I'm a pretty good shoulder to cry on." Just saying!! "Very absorbent."

[superniceone]

"Hey, you're the one who kept trying to prepare me for these droves of persistent fans." He's not looking back at him, but only because his eyes are closed. To his credit, he does seem comfortable. "I haven't given up hope with Maelle. I'm just— picking my battles."