superniceone | tfln overflow / open post

"Yeah," is all Verso says to that, eyes drifting back down to his hands. He'd wanted her to dismiss it more than anything. "Well, she spoke to some of our friends." A beat. "Her friends." Obviously, they weren't his. "They abducted me, interrogated me. Accused me of being a traitor." Even all these years later, he's still resentful; his tone is more bitter than is strictly respectable. "They thought it was Renoir and I who committed the massacre at the Monolith. I said that the Paintress wasn't their enemy, but they didn't believe me."

Now comes the bad part, evident by the way he stumbles over his words. "I— I didn't know what to do. I was afraid that—" That things would turn out the way they did, with every citizen in Lumière hoping to slaughter his mother and, in turn, destroy everything. Once upon a time, everything being plunged into oblivion had seemed horrific.

Skipping over the gritty details: "And then Julie showed up, and she saw what I'd done." It's pretty obvious what happened from there, he thinks. He's quick to move on. "I was trying to protect them, but they wouldn't listen."

Gustave has the presence of mind to wonder how much differently he'd take this story if he weren't in love with the man telling it. He likes to think that he's listening with a mind that's as objective as possible, but when he hears that Verso had been abducted, interrogated — well. Something goes unpleasantly tight in his throat, and it's certainly not out of sympathy for Renoir.

He wishes suddenly he'd sat himself on Verso's other side; it feels a bit silly, somehow, offering a mechanical limb for comfort, but he removes it from Verso's back and gently places it instead over one of Verso's hands. (A quiet, guilty part of him wonders if Verso is... embellishing to make himself sound more sympathetic, but he'd been the one to suggest bringing Julie, the one person who could contradict any of these statements, back to life. Surely that had to suggest he was being honest this time.)

"Okay," Gustave says after a moment, eyes unfocused, clearly processing. "... okay," he repeats, and flexes his hand atop Verso's. "What about— the Expeditions that came after that?" They'd recovered so many journals; most of them seemed to have died fully without any help from the painted Dessendres, but still: he needs to ask.

"What?" Verso has no right to be offended after what he just said, yet it still prickles that Gustave would think that he was... what? Some Expedition executioner? He hadn't even wanted to do it the first time. "No. No, I never raised a blade against them." Although he wasn't exactly helpful in those days, either. He'd wanted their help to break the barrier around the Monolith, but he'd dreaded the thought of them actually getting there. Renoir had thought it wasn't worth the risk. In fact—

"That's why Renoir and I fought," he says, gesturing to his face, the scarring. "I didn't want to cross that line again, and he... did." With enthusiasm.

That's enough to puncture the worst of his anxiety about the situation. "Okay," Gustave says simply, and shifts to gently bump his shoulder to Verso's. "Thank you for answering my questions." He wants desperately to make some sort of joke, to break the tension, but he can't begin to imagine how. "I — does anyone else know?"

"—Yeah, I thought it'd make a good ice-breaker," he says somewhat incredulously. Be so fucking for real, Gustave. Obviously, he thought this was a secret he'd take to his nonexistent grave. He had given up hope on bringing Julie back a long time ago, so he'd never really thought even she would spill the beans.

To clarify: "No. Never." It's just been eating him up inside for nearly 70 years. He practically told Esquie that Julie went to live on a farm. "You're the first."

His gaze drifts to Gustave's hand. "You aren't— appalled?"

"No. I'm— I don't know what. I'll let you know when I figure it out." He's just going to ignore that sass, thank you very much!! Gustave clears his throat, proceeding to mostly just think out loud.

"It's not like you did it for fun, or— it'd be different, if you turned to murder in the face of inconvenience. If this was a— trending behavior. I wasn't there, and I can't... absolve you of your guilt for this. But I don't think that you're a monster, either, if that's what you're worried about."

Verso hadn't told anyone; he could have very easily just let sleeping dogs lie, but to invite discovery by bringing Julie back — this must have been weighing heavily on him for a long time.

"I can, uh— react differently. If there's something specific you're expecting from me."

Verso raises an eyebrow. "No, uh." It's just strange. All this time, he'd built it up in his head to be this horrible secret that would ruin everything once it got exposed. Rot underneath his foundation. He's a bit dumbfounded that Gustave can even look at him, much less accept this.

"—I just thought I would have to prostrate myself before you quite a bit more."

He'd expected a lot of begging and pleading, maybe some shouting. He would have put money on Gustave storming out by now. Maybe Gustave had a point about ruining things preemptively.

"You don't seem like the sort to prostrate yourself for forgiveness," Gustave says, nudging him gently again before he removes his hand. "And I don't know. Maybe I am underreacting. But in light of— everything..."

He trails off, scrubbing his fingers through his hair and making fluffing out what is already definitely a mess. "I want to assume the best intentions from the people that matter to me. And I want to think, based on the evidence I have, that you wouldn't have done it unless you had to. I have no idea how anyone else might feel about it, but..." Gustave shrugs listlessly.

Gustave's hair sticks up in feathery tufts, physical evidence of the stress Verso is putting him through with this confession. He feels guilty for what he did to Julie, and he feels guilty for all the lies, and now he feels guilty for making Gustave have to deal with it all. He reaches out to—very carefully, very gently, in case they aren't in a place where he's allowed to initiate touch like this—replace Gustave's hand with his own, smoothing down the worst of the unruliness.

Not all of it. He happens to like it fluffy.

"Sorry for ruining lunch." They'd been doing so well. Out in public and everything. "I'll make it up to you." Somehow.

"I'm pretty sure my weird— panic attacks were well on the way to ruining it, don't take all the credit." Gustave doesn't seem bothered by the touch; the ship sailed on that when he was willing to keep hooking up after being quite literally Gommaged and brought back.

He laughs abruptly, a short and self-deprecating bark of it. "Putain. I was jealous for that first few minutes, you know. Humiliating." An absurd way to feel in light of the truth.

His hand stalls in Gustave's hair, overcome with incredulity again. "Of— Julie?"

Despite the awful conversation they just had, despite the hangover, his mouth twitches. It must be a moral failing to be pleased by this—Gustave experiencing jealousy over the ex-lover that Verso killed—but he can't quite smother down the satisfaction. Horrible, selfish asshole that he is, that wouldn't have ruined Verso's lunch at all.

"'Humiliating'," he echoes, hand dropping. "Do you have any idea how much time I've spent agonizing over your lost love?" A fucking lot. "That's humiliating."

"Well, it turns out that I'm no better. You were being eaten alive with guilt while I was sitting there thinking, 'he must have really loved her if he can't even bear to see her again after this long.' That— probably says more about me than I'd like, huh."

When he'd been so deeply in love with Sophie that he'd avoided her for years, had wasted his time on the rooftops staring out at the horizon while she said her goodbye to the rest of Lumière. Who knows how much more time he would have lost if Maelle hadn't interrupted him that day?

Gustave leans down to peel off his socks, trying to ease some of this choking tension as he glances up and over at Verso. "But I thought it was sweet, by the way. That you called this 'home', I mean." Because he's told himself that playing house for a little while is no more stupid than anything else they've done so far.

He gets the feeling that it was only found sweet in hindsight. It hadn't been enough to convince Gustave not to go, after all. "You didn't even know what I was talking about at first," is a little sheepish—that's a little humiliating, too. Turns out this whole relationship is just an elaborate humiliation ritual for the both of them.

"That's the first time I've called it that," he admits. Verso's not a 'home' kind of person, not since leaving the manor for good. You wouldn't be either, if you lived in that shitty hut. "It doesn't really feel like home. But it does when you're here."

Gustave leans up slowly, hand flexing as he resists the urge to make a mess of the hair that Verso so kindly just (mostly) fixed for him. "I get... a little in my own head sometimes," he starts awkwardly; it feels greedy, in a way, to be disclosing this at all when it's really not about him and his issues right now. "It gets hard to think. It's like my brain is—"

He cuts himself off, shakes his head. Recalibrates.

"What I mean to say is— I would have picked up on it immediately, most of the time. I'd like it if I could be home for you."

How quickly he sidesteps anything having to do with his own struggles. Gustave's insistence that he's had a good life despite the looming specter of the Gommage rings in his ears; Verso wonders now if he was telling the truth or only saying what he thinks he's supposed to say.

Backtracking: "Perils of being a genius, I'm sure." A mind in constant movement. It must be overwhelming at times. Particularly when Verso is there adding to his troubles.

Gustave had allowed the touch of his hair, so Verso reaches out for that mechanical hand, fingers wrapping around the cold metal. "You're the one bright light in the darkness," he says, humiliatingly sincere in a way that suggests he's definitely written poetry about this. "That's why I didn't want to tell you." Contrite: "I didn't want you to leave."

Gustave knows that this isn't right, the way he locks up, freezes entirely; but he isn't sure what choice he has other than to just push past it. He'd found himself again on the Stone Wave Cliffs, at least, when the ringing in his ears had only made it easier to step forward and accept his own swiftly approaching death. He doesn't mind talking about it in theory, but in practice - it feels awkward, attention-seeking. He hasn't been through it worse than anyone else.

Just easier to focus on the now, and on the way he can feel his face flushing hot at the remark like a smitten schoolboy. He ducks his head slightly, like he hopes he might actually hide some of the color on his face. After a moment, he leans with a tired playfulness into Verso's side. "I don't plan on it. If that helps at all."

Gustave's face flushes faintly red, and Verso experiences some cute aggression flow through him. If he weren't nursing a pounding hangover right now, he'd be inclined to shove Gustave down and kiss all over his warm face, but he's really not up for any sudden movements right now; instead, he lifts Gustave's prosthetic hand to press his mouth to the metallic triangles of his knuckles.

"Good to know. Neither am I." It's weird to feel like this relationship isn't teetering on disaster. Weird, but not bad. "Did you sleep at all last night? You fell asleep sitting up like an old grand-père."

"An hour or two maybe," Gustave confesses, and the sweet way Verso kisses his knuckles makes his stomach flip in a pleasant little flutter. "I was anxious about clearing the air with you, I think."

There's still a stiff line of tension in his throat, a part of his mind stuck in a hypervigilant state of alert that he can't quite turn off — but it's easier when he's here.

"But I'll be fine after some coffee." In case Verso doesn't, actually, want to go back to sleep.

"You and coffee," he manages to laugh out softly, despite everything. There's still an underlying sense of anxiety, the fear that one day Gustave will wake up and feel differently about the horrible things Verso has done, but it's at least lessened now. A dull thrum of worry in the back of his mind, ignorable if he tries. "I'm afraid you have a dependency."

It's a gentle reminder that he still needs to figure out what they're going to do coffee-wise on the Continent. Perhaps, with Esquie's help, they could make a shopping trip every once in a while.

Setting Gustave's hand back in his lap, he says, "Personally, though, I could stand to sleep."

"Comes with being an engineer, I'm afraid." It's not like a vintage wine will help keep you bright eyed and bushy tailed when in the middle of a complex project. There's also a significant part of him that's content to just enjoy what he can while he can; rations are going to be sparse until he gets some sort of farming setup established.

The idea of sleep is appealing, though, and he makes an agreeable little noise, shifting around to scoot up the mattress. "Not good to drink alone, you know," he says like he's not a professional of doing exactly that, and he lifts an arm like he's offering Verso the space to cuddle up.

"I know. Esquie's been telling me that for decades."

There's nothing more sad than being on the receiving end of an Esquie intervention, honestly. He has very few other coping skills, though, and no one to really talk to about these things. Monoco couldn't understand, things with Lune have been awkward and tense since they confronted Renoir, Sciel is busy being deliriously happy with the love of her life, and even if he were in a better place with Maelle, he's absolutely not discussing the troubles in his relationship with her foster brother.

He settles down beside Gustave, pressed in next to him, too tired to come up with an excuse for it other than wanting to be close to somebody that he loves. "I promise I'll only do all of my excessive drinking with you from now on." Until the next time that they have an argument and he convinces himself that it's really over this time.

Mouth quirking up: "It worked to seduce you the first time." As if any part of that awkwardness counted as 'seduction'.

Gustave's limbs are heavy with his own tiredness, but comfortably so with Verso's warmth and weight pressed into his side. He touches a soft kiss to the side of his head, lingering there for just a second longer than necessary. The relief that he's not doing this alone hits him like a wave that breaks seconds before it crashes onto the shore, and he can feel just the littlest bit of that tension relax.

"I really don't know if the drinking worked in my favor that evening or not," he murmurs, eyes closed. "I seem to remember having to convince you that I was of sound mind."

Edited 2025-12-31 03:28 (UTC)

"Yeah, well, I was worried you might regret it," he says, taking the opportunity to trace the contours of Gustave's face with his eyes while he isn't looking. "That I was going to make things— weird. And I..."

Still felt guilty about what he nearly let happen on the Cliffs, doubly so after getting to know Gustave. Triply so after Gustave started doing strange-but-pleasant things like 'excessively kissing' him.

"I lied about my fraternization experience," he admits, laughing sheepishly. The truth comes out!! After everything he just confessed to Gustave, it feels silly to try to keep that bravado up. "It had been... a lot longer than I let on."

"What, seriously?" That gets his eyes to pop open again, because of every possible thing he thought Verso could have maybe embellished, that wasn't actually on the list. Gustave is trying so hard not to laugh, but it's such a stupid, inconsequential thing, absurd to the point of peak comedy after what was actually a very stressful night. "But you were so— confident."

Sure, there had been the occasional hiccup, but Gustave had imagined it to be a combination of less cumulative experience with other men and trying to safely manage fraternization in the woods like a pair of horny animals. "And I was the one you chose to end your dry spell with?" He's shaking a little with suppressed laughter, squeezing Verso with the organic arm wrapped around him. "Sorry, I just— You're such an appealing man, so I just assumed."

Verso can feel the little tremors of Gustave's poorly stifled laughter, and he can't decide whether to be flattered or offended. It's complimentary, he supposes, that Gustave thinks he's so attractive that he'd be that— active. After the disappointment and disillusionment of recent years, even the prevalence of speaking to another human being dropped significantly, much less anything else. For a while, he'd entirely given up on the Expeditions. If not for Maelle, he probably wouldn't have spared this one a second glance, either.

"Let me do it over. On the Continent." It kills him to think that that's Gustave's memory of their first time. Awkward and halting and probably not even very good. He definitely doesn't want to admit how long it had been since he kissed a person before that. "I'll ply you with wine, ensnare you with my charm. Blow your clever mind."

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject