tfln overflow / open post

[superniceone]

(open / overflow)

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[superniceone]

Gustave cringes slightly when Verso rolls off of him like that, rolling to drape an arm lightly across his waist. "Sorry," he says, genuinely apologetic, "I didn't sleep well last night, and today was— a lot. Not you, but before I got here."

He dips his head, lightly kissing his shoulder. "Let me make it up to you in the morning?"

[recreatable]

"Nothing to make up." This wasn't some sort of glorified booty call, and he hadn't gone into it with the expectation of physicality. Hell, after waiting so long, he's just relieved that Gustave actually showed. The standards are sky high.

"...Just watch where you point that handsome lounging next time."

[superniceone]

"Shut up," Gustave says, and it's fully good-natured. Part of him feels like he shouldn't let any potentially intimate moments slip through his hands; that he'll regret any missed opportunities when Verso inevitably disappears on him for good.

For now, though, he's just letting himself settle in for actual sleep. "Mmm. Gonna be hard to get me to leave after this. Just a warning."

[recreatable]

Switching gears from 'sex is imminently happening' to 'sleep is imminently happening' is a little more challenging than he'd like, but Verso does his level best not to let it show, closing his eyes and pretending to be tired. He'll be awake for some time more, but lying here with someone who likes him there beside him isn't a bad way to pass the time. It allows plenty of options for self-pitying rumination.

"Oh, I'm not worried about that," he says, lightly. Getting Gustave to leave has never been the challenging part. Get to know the real Verso enough, and he'll do it himself.

[superniceone]

Gustave will shift enough to seek out Verso's hand with his own, confident in that motion in a way he still isn't with so many others. He wishes he were less tired, but the truth is he can feel himself fading again the moment that they both settle into stillness again.

After a long stretch of silence, he'll hum and murmur a few quiet words of adoration alongside his goodnight. He's banking a lot on their morning together remaining uninterrupted.

[recreatable]

Verso rarely sleeps well—even if you discount the rumination, it's not like it was easy to fall asleep on the 'floor' of his hut!!—but rest does come more easily with Gustave beside him, at least as long as he doesn't allow his mind to wander to anything greater than Gustave's hand in his. Naturally, the night involves a lot of beating off bad thoughts with a stick.

Still, he's awake before Gustave the next morning, having carefully extricated their hands so that he can sit up and perch his journal against his knees. By the time Gustave starts to stir, he has a pencil out, making long strokes against the page that suggest he's drawing for what is perhaps the first time in decades.

"Stay still," he says, frowning in concentration. And then, a moment after realizing how fucking rude that was, "...S'il vous plait."

soz.. always boomeranging....

[superniceone]

Verso catches Gustave early enough that he's still sleepily comfortable, able to go still without much fuss. There's no panic in Verso's voice, which means there's no alarm in Gustave's movements; mostly he just hums in confusion while he blinks himself awake.

"You're drawing me," he concludes a moment later, his voice husky and warm with sleep, and he laughs a little as he shuts his eyes again. "Couldn't let me put a shirt on first?"

He'll realise, shortly, he's never actually seen Verso drawing; his mind just hasn't caught up to its surroundings yet.

illegal

[recreatable]

"That would run counter to my vision," Verso says pleasantly, adding a few strands of hair to Gustave's comely bedhead with a few delicate flicks of his pencil. With all of the confidence of someone who has, in fact, discussed the artistic merit of nudity at length before: "All of the best art has an... appreciation for the human form."

Just ask Michelangelo.

A few more long moments of silence (save for the sound of lead on paper), and then he nudges Gustave. "All right, you can stop your life modeling."

goes to jail ig...

[superniceone]

Gustave squints at him, before he finally hauls himself up into a sitting position, trying to beckon for Verso to pass the journal over.

"Let me see." And then, muzzily, he'll rewind a little bit to add: "Good morning, chéri."

[recreatable]

"—Ah."

Verso presses the journal against his chest, contents hidden from view. If he were fully transparent, he would admit that he'd never planned to show it to Gustave, and that it's only because he happened to wake that he even knows about it. It had been meant as a selfish gesture, not a romantic one. A way to hold onto the feeling of having had something, even after it's inevitably gone.

"I'm a bit... rusty." It might not be any good, is his point, and he'd hate to show Gustave something that isn't good.

[superniceone]

Gustave fixes him with an amused and slightly incredulous look. "You've been my boyfriend—" Still an absolutely ridiculous word, but he's sleepy and warm and comfortable; he feels safe being a little ridiculous. "—for less than two days, so I'm obligated to like it. Please?"

He masks a yawn with his hand, shifting in a little closer. "You saw my Sakapatate. It's only fair."

[recreatable]

Two days does put into perspective that this is a little creepy of Verso to do, and he supposes he should just be grateful that Gustave doesn't point that out.

"I'll show you mine if you show me yours?" he asks, eyebrow raised. Sakapatate blueprints are not nearly as revealing as one's private art, but— he's finding it increasingly difficult to say 'no' to Gustave. A problem, certainly, but not one he would know how to solve even if he did have the motivation for it. He hands over the journal, watching for Gustave's reaction.

It's not a 1:1 recreation of reality. That had always been Aline's interest, not his; he had never seen the point, when art can never be an exact replica of real life. There will always be flaws, somewhere. Gustave probably looks a bit more serene in the picture than he really did lying there, his pose a bit more artful. It's obviously drawn through the lens of someone who feels affection for their subject's eccentricities and has pronounced them for it: his hair a little wilder, metal arm a little shinier.

[superniceone]

Gustave doesn't point it out mostly because he doesn't really find it creepy. It's been two days that they've mutually agreed to use that label for as long as it remains relevant, sure, but their relationship has been tangled to hell in its own complications for a lot longer than that.

He ignores Verso's glib little quip, expression neutral as he studies the sketch, before he hands the journal back. It takes a moment of calculation for him to figure out what it is he wants to say, before he settles on, sincere: "I like the way you see me. You sleep alright?"

[recreatable]

Verso hadn't really expected praise of his use of crosshatching, so Gustave's reaction is probably as good as it can get. He closes the journal, pleased at Gustave's approval, and places it on the nightstand beside him before sliding down onto his side, propped up on an elbow.

"Yeah." A moment passes in which he internally debates whether he's too insecure about morning breath to kiss Gustave. He does it anyway, leaning in to press their lips together, smiling faintly. "Difficult not to," he says, admittedly cranking up the charm for the sake of flirtation, "when I have such good company."

[superniceone]

The kiss is small and sweet and makes something ache just a little in Gustave's chest. This was all easier to reconcile when he was still able to tell himself that Verso was primarily just indulging him. He can handle his own heartbreak; the discomfort thinking that this might be bad for Verso, too, actually, is going to crawl under his skin and live there like a parasite.

"You're a ridiculous man," Gustave says, tone flat, in response to the flirtation, but he's grinning just slightly. "And I won't tell Monoco you said that."

[recreatable]

"I draw you and I compliment you, and all I get for it is called a 'ridiculous man'?"

It is ostensibly a grouse, although he doesn't sound particularly put out by it. Hard to mind being called a ridiculous man when it's accompanied by that grin. Besides, it's early enough that the vestiges of sleep still cling to him, awareness blunted enough that his ever-present dread has taken a backseat to more pleasant feelings.

He scrunches his nose. "Tough crowd."

[superniceone]

"Shh. I'm percolating," Gustave says in response to that, closing his eyes again even as he reaches out to lightly rest his hand on Verso's waist. He hums after a moment, thoughtful and drowsy and utterly sincere when he looks at him again. "I would be... overjoyed, if this was the only way I ever woke up again."

He squirms in just a little closer, expression clearly asking if that was adequate.

[recreatable]

Embarrassingly, Verso's heart flutters in his chest. He's old enough to be Gustave's grandfather—or maybe his great-grandfather, merde—and shouldn't still have this sort of reaction to romance, but so many of those years were spent terribly lonely and bereft of any real human attachment. Shallow friendships, if one can even call them friendships, and minute romances. It's been a long time since he's gotten this far.

"Me, too," he admits, quietly, like it's some horrible secret. "I wish that it could stay like this."

Abruptly, he feels as if he's unintentionally dumped ice water on the conversation with his yearning for things that can't be. To recover, he says, "Don't, uh, tell Monoco that I said that, either. He's already seething with jealousy."

[superniceone]

Gustave strokes Verso's side gently, casual affection that comes like second nature to him. He's trying to be soothing, even if he is aware that it's a poor attempt to paper over the worst of the cracks here. "Well, I am at your beck and call for the next four weeks," he murmurs, similarly quiet. "So Monoco may need to find a way to deal with it. I'll be kicking him out of bed as often as I'm allowed."

He's trying to make Verso laugh, over the top on purpose as he attempts to draw him a little closer in a way that's overtly possessive.

[recreatable]

"Three weeks," Verso corrects. "...But who's counting?"

He is, because he loves to be miserable. It feels both like it can't get here fast enough and like he never wants it to come. He hasn't even begun to broach the topic of leaving with Maelle, primarily because there's still simmering resentment and unbearable guilt between them, but also because he knows she won't like it. She just wants to be a family again; sometimes he thinks that he should suck it up and give it to her, that maybe time and familiarity will make her more willing to listen to reason.

What he should do is nearly all he thinks about these days, but of course it's not something he feels he can confide in Gustave without bringing the mood down. So:

"But in that time, you could find out all sorts of red flags about me." Heh. "You could find out that I snore."

[superniceone]

And similarly, Gustave knows that he should tell Verso to just go. That asking him to stay here when he doesn't want to be here is just going to lead to more suffering for them both. But Verso isn't the only one able to make deliberately poor decisions.

His expression falls at Verso's immediate correction, more at the fact that time is slipping away than at the reminder itself. "I'm all yours for approximately the next twenty-one days," he agrees, squeezing Verso's hip. "But it's cute that you think I don't already know about your snoring."

[recreatable]

Twenty-one days doesn't feel very long when you're over a hundred years old. It's an arbitrary number to begin with, though; there's nothing really keeping him here aside from some promise he made when he'd been foolishly hopeful about the future, and if he were really honest with himself (which he never is), he'd have to admit that he's only clinging to it because it's an excuse not to go just yet.

"Guess you know all of my dark secrets, then." He tries not to sound guilty delivering that line. "—But who's to say I won't find out that you snore?"

[superniceone]

"Mm. Dunno. Seems like you were up for a while before me - feel like you would've already complained about it." Though Sophie did tell him once that he did, on occasion, snore in a way she found cute somehow; it had left him both baffled and a little embarrassed.

Gustave bumps his leg against Verso's. "Maybe I'll just find out that your pillow talk needs some work."

[recreatable]

Verso would not have complained about it. He would have affectionately teased Gustave!! It's different!!!

Regardless, Gustave doesn't need the next three weeks to learn about his pitiful pillow talk. Obviously, he already knows it's next to nonexistent, given the fact that during the majority of their more amorous interactions, Verso got up and left him about five minutes after finishing.

Things are different now, of course, and therefore he will strive to have the best pillow talk anyone has ever had. "I would offer to prove myself, but—" An inexorable lean into Gustave's space, and he presses his mouth to Gustave's jaw. Even the depressing reminder of just how temporary this—and everything else—is can't turn him off, baby. "It's my understanding there's something else that comes before the pillow talk."

[superniceone]

Well, it's not like Verso can really be blamed — this is the first time they've been even partially undressed anywhere even slightly near a pillow. Gustave doesn't seem displeased in the slightest when Verso leans in; he lifts his hand to hold the back of his neck, stroking it with open fondness.

"I'm amenable," he murmurs, lighthearted, "but my feelings won't be hurt if you're—" Too melancholy? He hesitates, then lands on: "—not awake enough." So maybe a tiny part of him is worried Verso feels obligated to hanky-panky because of their aborted start last night. Can't hurt just to be sure.