"Probably unnecessary," he says—it isn't like they aren't already leaving room for whatever the Lumièran equivalent of Jesus is already, so. "I'll just stand around and supervise."
You know, offer unwanted art criticism. He might not be as dedicated to painting as the rest of the family, but he still has lots of opinions.
"I'm not letting you turn this into a graded assignment," Gustave says, his tone long-suffering in a way that telegraphs that he, too, is trying really hard here. "Not without a rubric to review, first, at least."
But it does become clear pretty quickly that Gustave really does light up around the kids in the square, transitions seamlessly into a sort of fun uncle while they color in sections of flagstone together. He drops down to a seat next to Verso after a while, patting his arm with a hand covered in blue chalk. He's pretty much a complete mess himself already. "I'm expecting a masterpiece from you, you know."
Verso glances down at his sleeve, which has now been dusted with chalk; rude! Luckily, Gustave could quite literally get away with murder in his eyes, so he just responds with a shake of his head and a scoff-laugh. "Oh, good. I was worried you'd have high expectations."
It's fun. Even now, though, he finds himself critical of the very temporary art he creates. He's been going for a depiction of Esquie, but it keeps feeling like it lacks— something. Regardless— he turns his attention to Gustave for the moment, lifting his hand away by the pinky and shooting a pointed look at his blue fingers. "You've been having fun." Obviously. He's a mess. "—You're good with kids."
It's hard not to feel a little melancholy about Gustave's wasted paternal potential—wasted in large part because of him, if you get down to it—but he tries not to look too brooding about it. "I bet you would've been a father five times over by now if not for the Gommage."
"Five? Do you think I have unlimited energy?" Gustave echoes back, his tone both lighthearted and incredulous. It is something he'd felt melancholy about, and then summarily moved on from, if only because he didn't have a choice.
Legacy. Did legacy even have a meaning for fake people like them? He shakes it off.
"Two, probably," he concedes after a moment. "When I imagined— you know, the ideal?" Even now, his tone is wistful, but not exactly sad. Life is different than he'd hoped it to be in a lot of ways; not having children of his own running around his feet is really the least of it.
He leans over to add a little blue flourish to Esquie's mask.
Gustave always seems unbothered when talking about the things that he's had to give up—or, perhaps more accurately, the things that were forcefully taken from him. Stoic, accepting. It's hard to tell, though, how much of that is a mentally healthy tolerance of things that didn't turn out as expected versus a complete repression of any feelings of grief and disappointment. Like maybe Gustave thinks there's something wrong with feeling anything but grateful that he's still alive.
Verso doesn't want to push him into an unhappiness that he might not feel, though, so he treads carefully. Doesn't ask if it was hard not to get to experience 'the ideal'—not just the 2.5 kids and wife, but everything he had once hoped for his future.
Instead, he carefully outlines the flourish Gustave added, thin and clean. "Let me guess, a boy and a girl? Like you and Emma?"
If forced to an admission at gunpoint, Gustave would probably have to admit that he's not certain what the ratio of resignation to repression actually is - one of the myriad reasons why he avoids actually confronting that idea at seemingly all costs.
Almost idly, he starts a cartoonish doodle of Monoco next to Esquie. "Never really saw the point in hoping for one gender over the other." Look at Verso's family, with Clea the ruthless pragmatist, Verso the hopeless artist. "I-" Gustave's hand stalls, his expression pinching thoughtfully. "I suppose I thought it'd be nice if they had each other to rely on when we were gone. Two's a good number for that."
Verso can tell he doesn't even mean to, but somehow nearly everything Gustave says ends up crushingly depressing anyway. It's difficult to know how he's meant to respond to these comments, if he's even meant to respond to them at all. Gustave doesn't seem to enjoy too much sympathy, but it feels rather cruel not to acknowledge it when he says things like this.
"Incorrigibly thoughtful," he says, rubbing Gustave's shoulder.
"You could still—when you get back." Because, ideally, they won't be out there forever. Ideally, they'll eventually fix things and, he supposes, return. Even if things don't go ideally, there's a nonzero chance Gustave will get sick of being out there with him and come back to Lumière. "Adopt." He shrugs, reaches over and makes Monoco's mane a little bigger. "Or enlist one of the many women who'd be thrilled to take part in the creation of Gustave Jr."
This is just the way all of Lumière had become, at least by the Disaster Expedition. Quiet resignation of an unlucky fate, celebrating the people they were losing with wreaths of flowers and slow walks to the harbor.
Gustave doesn't say what he thinks: it was a whole family he'd dreamed of, safety and domesticity. Instead, his face just scrunches up at the suggestion. "What is— are you trying to sell me, monsieur?"
"Sell you—" Verso shoves Gustave's shoulder, playful and exasperated all at once. "I'd rather put you in a museum and keep you all to myself."
But he recognizes that he can't actually do that, or that he at least shouldn't. If Gustave has dreams that are yet to be fulfilled, then he should chase them. And, admittedly, perhaps some of it is driven by the urge to assuage his own guilt at having in some way deprived Gustave of these things. Not willingly, not on purpose, but all the same—the reason Gustave didn't have 'the ideal', as he'd said, is because Verso existed.
"I'm just saying," he continues, "if that's something you wanted to do." A little Noco next to Monoco, next. Even gestrals dream of fatherhood, it seems. "I wouldn't stand in your way."
Gustave would've been stunned silent by that logic, so it's probably best that Verso didn't actually voice it aloud. If Verso wants to take the blame for Gustave's life not panning out the way he'd dreamed of when he was young, he also has to take responsibility for Gustave's sheer existence. He owed his life to him in that sense.
"Maybe," he says, but his tone is gently dismissive. "It's not really something that's been on my mind much these days, to be honest." He's barely got a nub of chalk left, but he's leaning over to trace out a stick figure with Verso's hair, standing at equal height next to Noco. "What about you? Back before you knew— everything, I mean. You never dreamed of raising the next generation of musical prodigies?"
Ha. No. He'd assumed it would happen at some point, because that's just the sort of thing people do—chase 'the ideal' whether or not it's something that actually appeals to them—but he'd certainly never had a longing for it like Gustave did. Besides, he'd already had someone to take care of.
"You think I should be responsible for an infant?" he asks. His hut didn't even have a door. "—I see you're taking artistic liberties with my height."
"Absolutely not," Gustave deadpans, but there's a twitch at the corner of his mouth as he focuses very hard on his stick figure. "But I've never known you to be a man who lets his capability stand in the way of his desires." That's not the case, of course that isn't the case, but the weather is nice and the sun is warm, and he's quietly hoping this will be the first time they're able to exist together out in public without it ending in complete disaster.
He taps the nub of chalk against the ground. "And I'm not sure what you mean. I just draw what I see."
Luckily, there is neither capability nor desire. Verso rolls his eyes, then adds a little Gustave next to him—even shorter, although the wild hair adds a little height. He even scribbles in Gustave's metal arm, because he is a true artiste.
"I've already got a little thing to take care of, clearly," he says, tapping the chalk against the drawing. Something something you can call him Papa anytime?? "Look how small he is."
Gustave leans in, reaching out to make a single edit by way of smudging the hair up a little more. "Look at that. I'm adorable."
He casts a sidelong glance at him then, doing his best to get an actual read on Verso's mood. (Briefly, too, he thinks that it's unfair that it's still so difficult sometimes.) "You doing alright?"
Wow, that's Verso's art he's editing without permission. But the smudged up hair is very cute, he must admit—just like Gustave's hair in reality—so he'll forgive the faux pas. As for the question, he does take a moment to contemplate how he'd like to respond—
It's weird, right now. A little awkward. He doesn't know how to act, how to feel. Getting to see Maelle this happy, making art with other kids her age, should be the greatest gift in the world, but it's all tempered by the knowledge of what it's doing to her. Even more by the knowledge that he's the reason these other kids her age had to watch their parents disappear into flower petals.
"I'm with my two favorite people," he lands on, pressing a hand to Gustave's arm. "How could I ever be anything but all right?"
Gustave turns more fully toward Verso at that answer; his expression is gently amused, fond, but he tilts his head like an inquisitive dog. The evasive non-answers are occasionally more concerning than anything else could be, and he doesn't bother hiding the fact that he's trying to search Verso's face for more insight into his answer.
"Well, I'm completely out of things to draw," he settles on. It's an unseasonably warm afternoon, less cloudy than Lumiere tends to be. It makes the sight of the kids playing and decorating the plaza extra heartwarming, but Gustave is fairly certain he can feel his face just starting to sunburn. "I'm a much bettere consumer than producer of art, anyway."
"I don't know," Verso offers, "those Sakapatate sketches were pretty good."
Sketching blueprints is a talent! Clearly, Gustave has an eye for detail, if nothing else. Or maybe he's just so delusional that he thinks anything Gustave creates is wonderful for the sole fact that Gustave created it. Either way—
"Stick around here for a bit and supervise for a few minutes, at least. I've got, uh, some things to talk to Maelle about." You know, privately. Family stuff. And: "Things not for the birthday boy's ears."
Gustave shoots Verso an unconvinced look at the phrase birthday boy, but he's never going to deter him from speaking with Maelle. Things might be stressful all around, especially where she and her long-term safety are concerned, but that doesn't mean he isn't hoping that they'll find some sort of mutual peace between them before it comes time to once again leave the city.
"Alright," he says slowly, and he reaches to pull him in for a quick kiss, unabashed. "I'll be here. Just let me know when you've wrapped up, alright?"
Gross!!! The public display of affection makes Verso duck his head, uncharacteristically shy. It isn't that he doesn't like it—the problem is more that he likes it a little too much, and that's embarrassing. He rubs Gustave's shoulder fondly before he stands and absconds to find Maelle.
Their conversation isn't enough to sour Maelle's mood. Some of that might be due to the fact that Verso is yet to be entirely truthful; she's been informed of the fact that he's making his peace with her presence in the Canvas, but not of the fact that he's taking her beloved foster-brother-slash-foster-father away to research how to mitigate the effects. If anything, the conversation goes great. She hugs him and everything, they discuss Gustave's impending birthday, and he does his best not to think about how disappointed she'll be the day after when he announces their departure.
"This is all I ever wanted for us," she tells him. "To be a family."
Maelle finds Gustave again before he does, presumably surrounded by a gaggle of children as he provides his thoughts on their chalk art. There's a swipe of yellow chalk on her nose that Verso purposefully avoided pointing out to her. "Did you even draw anything, Gustave?" she chides. "I've been hard at work while you slacked off."
Gustave will never admit out loud that he was so genuinely concerned about the direction their conversation was going, especially out of his sight, but there's no mistaking the relief that flickers across his face when he sees the two of them arrive in good spirits.
"I'm retired, you know," he complains, gesturing to the sunburn on his face. It is remains extremely mild. "I'm too delicate to be out here like this for so long." The way he gestures for her to approach so he can smudge away that chalk is entirely reflex, every picture of the doting brother-parentified-into-dad.
"Being a critic suits my skill level better, anyway." He tilts his head very slightly, before broaching: "Verso let you know he'll be there tomorrow?"
It's all very cute, this scene between Maelle and Gustave. Verso feels a pang of affection-fondness-jealousy-resentment-guilt-shame. So, he's being normal about it.
"He did," Maelle says, "although I told him he's going to give Emma a conniption by changing the guest list last minute." She doesn't sound particularly concerned about it, though. It's Emma's conniption to have!
"I won't even eat any cake," Verso says, defending himself. "It'll be like I'm not even there."
"You can't come to a birthday party and not eat cake," Gustave scoffs, earnest enough to make it almost seem like he actually believes a meal with the two sisters he cohabitates with and his boyfriend actually makes for a party. What is isn't going to say in front of Maelle is that desserts will once again be fully off the table soon, so he'd best enjoy while he can.
He glances between the two of them, eyebrows up. "But if I'm excused now— Verso, did you still want to see the schematics for the shield dome improvements I made? I need to head to the workshop, anyway."
It might be the smoothest lie he has ever in his life told, and maybe only because he's been sitting here practicing it for the last ten minutes in his head.
"Hm?" Verso asks, tilting his head. Shield dome improvements—? There's a blank look on his face for about half a second before he raises his eyebrows and nods. Wow, that was a really good lie, especially for Gustave. He would be proud, but he's still not entirely certain what the reasoning behind it was, so he chooses to withhold judgment until he knows for sure that it isn't because he's in trouble or something.
"—Yes." Not his best work, lie-wise. Still better than most lies Gustave has probably told in his life, though. "You know how I love to look at schematics."
Maelle gives them both a Look. "You're being weird," she says, but doesn't seem perturbed enough to do anything about it. Turning her gaze on Gustave: "I'll see you back at home, yeah?"
"Yeah, kiddo. I'll see you at home." Gustave gives Maelle's shoulder a little squeeze, and she's mollified for now. It's true that their... thing is still kind of weird, but they're both good men who mean the world to her— so, whatever, as long as they're happy.
And, privately, she wouldn't mind if they started spending more of their time at their house instead of Verso's. Having her whole family in arm's reach again was the ideal.
Gustave nods for Verso to follow him, his pace casual, and he won't elucidate until Maelle is way outside of any possible hearing distance. "I was hoping to get your opinion on how much it'd be practical to bring," he confesses. "I can't pack the whole thing up, as much as I'd like to."
Yeah, that would explain why Gustave didn't want Maelle around. Verso wonders for a moment if it's weighing on Gustave to have to keep this secret from her; for him, it's just another in one long line of secrets, but surely Gustave's relationship with her has been based in more authenticity. He feels guilty, but not guilty enough to come clean to Maelle before the last second.
"And here I thought you were so attracted to my art prowess that you needed to get me alone instantly," he remarks, dryly.
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superniceone) wrote2025-06-23 06:53 pm
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You know, offer unwanted art criticism. He might not be as dedicated to painting as the rest of the family, but he still has lots of opinions.
"I promise to be an unbiased judge."
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But it does become clear pretty quickly that Gustave really does light up around the kids in the square, transitions seamlessly into a sort of fun uncle while they color in sections of flagstone together. He drops down to a seat next to Verso after a while, patting his arm with a hand covered in blue chalk. He's pretty much a complete mess himself already. "I'm expecting a masterpiece from you, you know."
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It's fun. Even now, though, he finds himself critical of the very temporary art he creates. He's been going for a depiction of Esquie, but it keeps feeling like it lacks— something. Regardless— he turns his attention to Gustave for the moment, lifting his hand away by the pinky and shooting a pointed look at his blue fingers. "You've been having fun." Obviously. He's a mess. "—You're good with kids."
It's hard not to feel a little melancholy about Gustave's wasted paternal potential—wasted in large part because of him, if you get down to it—but he tries not to look too brooding about it. "I bet you would've been a father five times over by now if not for the Gommage."
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Legacy. Did legacy even have a meaning for fake people like them? He shakes it off.
"Two, probably," he concedes after a moment. "When I imagined— you know, the ideal?" Even now, his tone is wistful, but not exactly sad. Life is different than he'd hoped it to be in a lot of ways; not having children of his own running around his feet is really the least of it.
He leans over to add a little blue flourish to Esquie's mask.
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Verso doesn't want to push him into an unhappiness that he might not feel, though, so he treads carefully. Doesn't ask if it was hard not to get to experience 'the ideal'—not just the 2.5 kids and wife, but everything he had once hoped for his future.
Instead, he carefully outlines the flourish Gustave added, thin and clean. "Let me guess, a boy and a girl? Like you and Emma?"
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Almost idly, he starts a cartoonish doodle of Monoco next to Esquie. "Never really saw the point in hoping for one gender over the other." Look at Verso's family, with Clea the ruthless pragmatist, Verso the hopeless artist. "I-" Gustave's hand stalls, his expression pinching thoughtfully. "I suppose I thought it'd be nice if they had each other to rely on when we were gone. Two's a good number for that."
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"Incorrigibly thoughtful," he says, rubbing Gustave's shoulder.
"You could still—when you get back." Because, ideally, they won't be out there forever. Ideally, they'll eventually fix things and, he supposes, return. Even if things don't go ideally, there's a nonzero chance Gustave will get sick of being out there with him and come back to Lumière. "Adopt." He shrugs, reaches over and makes Monoco's mane a little bigger. "Or enlist one of the many women who'd be thrilled to take part in the creation of Gustave Jr."
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Gustave doesn't say what he thinks: it was a whole family he'd dreamed of, safety and domesticity. Instead, his face just scrunches up at the suggestion. "What is— are you trying to sell me, monsieur?"
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But he recognizes that he can't actually do that, or that he at least shouldn't. If Gustave has dreams that are yet to be fulfilled, then he should chase them. And, admittedly, perhaps some of it is driven by the urge to assuage his own guilt at having in some way deprived Gustave of these things. Not willingly, not on purpose, but all the same—the reason Gustave didn't have 'the ideal', as he'd said, is because Verso existed.
"I'm just saying," he continues, "if that's something you wanted to do." A little Noco next to Monoco, next. Even gestrals dream of fatherhood, it seems. "I wouldn't stand in your way."
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"Maybe," he says, but his tone is gently dismissive. "It's not really something that's been on my mind much these days, to be honest." He's barely got a nub of chalk left, but he's leaning over to trace out a stick figure with Verso's hair, standing at equal height next to Noco. "What about you? Back before you knew— everything, I mean. You never dreamed of raising the next generation of musical prodigies?"
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"You think I should be responsible for an infant?" he asks. His hut didn't even have a door. "—I see you're taking artistic liberties with my height."
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He taps the nub of chalk against the ground. "And I'm not sure what you mean. I just draw what I see."
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"I've already got a little thing to take care of, clearly," he says, tapping the chalk against the drawing. Something something you can call him Papa anytime?? "Look how small he is."
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He casts a sidelong glance at him then, doing his best to get an actual read on Verso's mood. (Briefly, too, he thinks that it's unfair that it's still so difficult sometimes.) "You doing alright?"
forgive me i died
It's weird, right now. A little awkward. He doesn't know how to act, how to feel. Getting to see Maelle this happy, making art with other kids her age, should be the greatest gift in the world, but it's all tempered by the knowledge of what it's doing to her. Even more by the knowledge that he's the reason these other kids her age had to watch their parents disappear into flower petals.
"I'm with my two favorite people," he lands on, pressing a hand to Gustave's arm. "How could I ever be anything but all right?"
lmao i didn't get a notif for this...
"Well, I'm completely out of things to draw," he settles on. It's an unseasonably warm afternoon, less cloudy than Lumiere tends to be. It makes the sight of the kids playing and decorating the plaza extra heartwarming, but Gustave is fairly certain he can feel his face just starting to sunburn. "I'm a much bettere consumer than producer of art, anyway."
my white man yaoi is being silenced
Sketching blueprints is a talent! Clearly, Gustave has an eye for detail, if nothing else. Or maybe he's just so delusional that he thinks anything Gustave creates is wonderful for the sole fact that Gustave created it. Either way—
"Stick around here for a bit and supervise for a few minutes, at least. I've got, uh, some things to talk to Maelle about." You know, privately. Family stuff. And: "Things not for the birthday boy's ears."
are they the first case of yaoi heads
"Alright," he says slowly, and he reaches to pull him in for a quick kiss, unabashed. "I'll be here. Just let me know when you've wrapped up, alright?"
stop i try to forget about their giant heads
Their conversation isn't enough to sour Maelle's mood. Some of that might be due to the fact that Verso is yet to be entirely truthful; she's been informed of the fact that he's making his peace with her presence in the Canvas, but not of the fact that he's taking her beloved foster-brother-slash-foster-father away to research how to mitigate the effects. If anything, the conversation goes great. She hugs him and everything, they discuss Gustave's impending birthday, and he does his best not to think about how disappointed she'll be the day after when he announces their departure.
"This is all I ever wanted for us," she tells him. "To be a family."
Maelle finds Gustave again before he does, presumably surrounded by a gaggle of children as he provides his thoughts on their chalk art. There's a swipe of yellow chalk on her nose that Verso purposefully avoided pointing out to her. "Did you even draw anything, Gustave?" she chides. "I've been hard at work while you slacked off."
"As have I," Verso pipes up.
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"I'm retired, you know," he complains, gesturing to the sunburn on his face. It is remains extremely mild. "I'm too delicate to be out here like this for so long." The way he gestures for her to approach so he can smudge away that chalk is entirely reflex, every picture of the doting brother-parentified-into-dad.
"Being a critic suits my skill level better, anyway." He tilts his head very slightly, before broaching: "Verso let you know he'll be there tomorrow?"
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"He did," Maelle says, "although I told him he's going to give Emma a conniption by changing the guest list last minute." She doesn't sound particularly concerned about it, though. It's Emma's conniption to have!
"I won't even eat any cake," Verso says, defending himself. "It'll be like I'm not even there."
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He glances between the two of them, eyebrows up. "But if I'm excused now— Verso, did you still want to see the schematics for the shield dome improvements I made? I need to head to the workshop, anyway."
It might be the smoothest lie he has ever in his life told, and maybe only because he's been sitting here practicing it for the last ten minutes in his head.
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"—Yes." Not his best work, lie-wise. Still better than most lies Gustave has probably told in his life, though. "You know how I love to look at schematics."
Maelle gives them both a Look. "You're being weird," she says, but doesn't seem perturbed enough to do anything about it. Turning her gaze on Gustave: "I'll see you back at home, yeah?"
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And, privately, she wouldn't mind if they started spending more of their time at their house instead of Verso's. Having her whole family in arm's reach again was the ideal.
Gustave nods for Verso to follow him, his pace casual, and he won't elucidate until Maelle is way outside of any possible hearing distance. "I was hoping to get your opinion on how much it'd be practical to bring," he confesses. "I can't pack the whole thing up, as much as I'd like to."
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Yeah, that would explain why Gustave didn't want Maelle around. Verso wonders for a moment if it's weighing on Gustave to have to keep this secret from her; for him, it's just another in one long line of secrets, but surely Gustave's relationship with her has been based in more authenticity. He feels guilty, but not guilty enough to come clean to Maelle before the last second.
"And here I thought you were so attracted to my art prowess that you needed to get me alone instantly," he remarks, dryly.
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