Work Text:
It felt odd, coming home after being away for so long, like walking into a museum, a room that held its breath. He shut the door behind him with his foot, the lock clicking into place, and stood there in the hallway for a moment. He wasn’t sure where to go first, loaded down with a weekend bag full of clothes and toiletries from the hospital, and an armful of chocolates, teddies, and some of the less wilted bouquets. Gilles had offered to help him carry it up when he dropped him off, but he’d declined.
Honestly, he had just been eager to be alone for a while. He’d been in the hospital for a little more than a month, and while he had technically been unconscious for most of that, the last week and a half had been a draining circus of well-meaning well-wishers. There had been a veritable revolving door of visitors, and while he’d been genuinely touched by their concern and thoughtfulness, he could feel his polite smile getting thinner and thinner with each kind face until he was simply bad company.
The kitchen, he decided. He could dump the stuff on the table and figure it out from there. It was a struggle to hit the lightswitch without dropping anything, but he managed. With his bag tossed by the washing machine - laundry could wait until tomorrow - he was free to appraise the heap of gifts. The chocolates and flowers were fine, really, but the rest…
He poked a particularly saccharine teddy bear holding a heart stitched with Get well soon! in gold thread. It gave a wheezy squeak in response. He didn’t even know who it had came from, which was probably just as well. He supposed he could donate it to a charity shop, that way it could be regifted to the seven year old with a broken arm it had obviously been intended for.
Gustave sighed. He should have been grateful. He was grateful. He was also a forty year old man. Still, there were plenty of people out there who could spend a month in the hospital and not see a single friendly face. If questionable gifts were the worst of his problems, then he was doing fine.
Only, they weren’t the worst of his problems. The worst of his problems was much less cuddly than a teddy-bear.
He shrugged off his coat, hanging it on the back of a chair, and padded through the living room to his bedroom. He didn’t want to think about it. His shower was singing a siren song to him with its decent water pressure and, unlike the hospital showers, a thermostat that actually had a setting somewhere between ‘arctic waters’ and ‘fires of hell’.
He took his time, since he didn’t have any plans for tomorrow, or the day after that, and when he finally got out, he slipped straight into some pyjamas. He wasn’t ready to look in the mirror yet but it was obvious they were looser on him than when he left, brushed cotton check in muted burgundy and blue, paired with shearling slippers that might have better suited someone’s grandmother. They were comfortable enough, though, and it wasn’t like anyone was going to see them.
Once he was feeling a little more human, Gustave went back to the kitchen. He fetched some vases from under the sink for the flowers, and a bag for the bear and all its friends. There weren’t many of the chocolates left, all things considered; most had fallen prey to Julien’s boredom eating and Gilles’ criminally sweet tooth. The ones that remained did so for a reason, but Gustave couldn’t bring himself to throw them out. He shoved the half-empty boxes to the back of a random cupboard to be found and probably binned later when he didn’t feel as bad about it.
Aside from the chocolates, his cupboards were mostly bare. He was pleasantly surprised to find his fridge wasn’t, even though he’d cleared it out before the Svalbard sortie. Eggs, milk, cheese - the essentials, mostly. All fresh. That had to be Julien’s doing. The bottle of wine in the door beside the milk - that was Emmanuelle. He paused, pursed his lips; he opened the freezer. Ah yes, there was Gilles: a pint of vanilla ice cream. Not the cheap stuff either, it was the kind had the little black specks in it to make you think somewhere along the line a real vanilla pod was involved.
Gustave couldn’t help the smile that welled up and spilled out of him. It wasn’t unusual for operators to give copies of their house key to teammates or friends. It was a kind of insurance in case something happened, whether they had to collect a change of clothes and a toothbrush for a lengthy hospital stay, or pack things up for family members to collect. All three of the regular GIGN operators had a key to his apartment. All three of them had decided to use it to make sure he had a little something nice to come home to.
Gustave grabbed the ice cream, the wine, a glass, and a spoon. It wasn’t the most sensible dinner he’d ever had, but after several weeks of hospital food (even if it was delivered through a tube in his nose for most of that time), he felt like he had earned something not-sensible. He deposited himself on his overstuffed sofa in the living room and poured himself a glass - screw top bottle, thank you Emmanuelle - while he wedged the ice cream between his thighs, coaxing it to melt a little.
He sipped his wine and sighed to himself, quiet and nearly content. Odd or not, it was nice to be home. His apartment was small but neat, cozy almost, with dark furniture and pale walls. The decor was fairly simple: he had a fireplace (gas, not coal; the building was too new), several bookshelves, and more framed photos than he knew what to do with. No other ornaments, really, just the photos.
Most of them were from before he joined Rainbow. In fact, the only ones he had of other operators were a few of the GIGN, and one group-shot of a particularly memorable Christmas party at the base - he made a point of not having any in uniform. The rest were of his family - his mother, and father, and roughly a hundred million cousins and aunties that he only ever heard from at Eid. A couple from his years at medical school, with his hideous moustache his friends had assured him was very chic, very mature.
There were very few from the years between medical school and joining Rainbow - at least very few, until he met Marcel. Nothing had been worth recording before then, when he was only focused on the work and nothing else. Then, he spent a week’s wages on a half-broken Polaroid camera from a market in Bamako, just so he could have the box of photos he still kept under his bed, candid and sweet and never to be looked at again. He had dragged him in front of every camera pointed their way, from photo-journalists and aid workers and tourists alike - proof, in case it was one summer in a lifetime. Proof, so he’d never forget what it was like.
There was only one of Marcel he kept on the mantelpiece, half-hidden behind family portraits and Gilles’ birthday dinner - a tent somewhere in Mali, a stack of white boxes in the foreground. Marcel sitting with another open box on his lap, glass vial in hand, laughing; Gustave standing to the side, clipboard in gloved hands, supposed to be checking off the contents but watching him instead. It had been ten years before Mali since he’d last seen him, a vague acquaintance at medical school and a chance meeting abroad, and though neither had admitted it yet, he was already in love with him by the time the crates came: kind eyes and sun-warmed dark skin, a laugh he could feel in his chest.
They had been waiting weeks for the delivery to come, unsure if it ever would. They saved lives with it - food aid, vaccines, medicine - but the rush of relief, the joy of it all, was nothing compared to how he remembered feeling in that moment, watching Marcel’s face light up.
A noise pulled Gustave from his reverie, an angry buzzing from the kitchen; he’d left his phone in his jacket pocket, hung on the back of the chair. He considered going to answer it, but in the end he just let it ring out. The ice cream wasn’t melted yet but it was starting to make his thighs hurt, so he sat it on the cushions beside him instead.
He wanted to watch a movie, he decided: a classic. He knew exactly which one.
--
When he was a boy, his father had went through an odd but formative period of sitting him down once a week to show him the ‘golden oldies’, as he put it. He was of the opinion that cinema only got worse with the dawn of technicolour, and while Gustave was inclined to disagree, he still had a particular soft spot for black and white films. Casablanca had to be their shared favourite. He had seen it fifteen, twenty times in his life, and it still never failed to bring a tear to his eye.
It was never the romance, never the we’ll always have Paris or the here’s looking at you kid ; it was and always would be La Marseillaise scene, where the French refugees used the anthem to drown out cheerfully singing German soldiers. It was a powerful scene in a powerful movie, one filmed at the height of the World War II when Germany was at her strongest and France was crumbling under an occupation without an end in sight. Most of the refugees in the film were real French refugees, with real tears, real pain, real passion. It was a moment of pure distilled hope and defiance. It was beautiful.
It was also surprisingly hard to appreciate all that defiant beauty when his phone rang every ten minutes, ruining the mood. He was ignoring purely out of stubbornness by that point - he deserved an hour to himself, goddamnit, hadn’t everyone had enough of him already? - but any intention of preserving his peaceful, relaxing evening faded with the growing anxiety that maybe something was wrong.
Nothing was wrong - at least nothing that would be any of his business. He was off duty, on enforced sick leave for at least another week. None of the teams were even out on field deployment, and if anyone was stupid enough to get a boo-boo on base, they could damn well take themselves to the nearest A&E.
But still.
Still.
Tears shone in the eyes of the lovely Madeline Lebeau, and Gustave should have been weeping with her. Instead he frowned at the mostly-melted ice-cream at the bottom of the tub, jabbing it with the spoon like it had offended him. It wasn’t the ice cream, though; it wasn’t even really the phone. He felt restless and he didn’t really know why.
Well. He knew why, technically, or at least he could take an educated guess, but he didn’t like it so he was electing to feign ignorance about the whole situation until it came back to bite him in the ass. Which it would, of course. Deceiving oneself tended to never really work out, but until then, he was quite happy to pour himself another glass of wine and stew in it.
Even the wine tasted as sour as his mood.
He sighed and turned the TV off mid-lip quiver. It wasn’t especially late but he hoped he might feel better with a decent night’s sleep in his own bed. There was still some lingering phantom of the infection that left him permanently tired (and would for several more weeks, the doctor had assured him), and he never could sleep easily in hospital beds anyway.
His knees were stiff but he tried not to groan too much as he hauled himself off the sofa and shuffled back through to the kitchen. The wine went back in the fridge, and after a moment’s consideration, the sad leftover ice cream slurry went back in the freezer for when he really needed it. He rinsed his glass in the sink, and it was when he turned the tap off that he realised his phone had fallen silent - whether the battery had died or whoever had been trying to bother him had taken the hint, he didn’t know.
Another pang of...well, not guilt, exactly, not anxiety either. What if it wasn’t an emergency? What if it was just Julien or Emmanuelle making sure he was home alright? Six wishing him well? Timur--
Timur being Timur. Polite, almost shy. Soft, almost enticing. Maybe wanting to know how Gustave was feeling, when he’d be back on base, if he could come see him soon. He would probably want to apologise for not coming to see him in hospital more often, even though he’d came around every other day. Always with another Spetsnaz operator in tow, as though they were the ones who were dragging him along. Gustave bit his lip; he wanted to be alone, but he could stand a little company from the right person.
The wine glass caught the edge of the shelf he was sitting it on and slipped from his grasp. It shattered on the edge of the counter, showering the floor with sparkling shards. Gustave barely had time to react when a sudden loud knocking at his door split his attention. He frowned, hesitated; his first instinct was to ignore it and focus on cleaning the glass before pieces got lost or kicked under the counter to bite unsuspecting toes in the future.
There was more pounding at the door, violent enough to make the lock rattle. The urgency of it made the hair on the back of his neck rise. That was someone who wanted to come in. He crossed the kitchen to the hallway, glass crunching under his slippers. His fists were loose but his shoulders tense; he didn’t have a proper weapon in the apartment but he was no slouch at CQC, medic or not.
He held his breath and leaned closer to the door to carefully check the peephole - and suddenly felt very silly. It was Olivier - just Olivier, shifting foot to foot, distorted by the glass. He was wearing jeans and a white t-shirt, and some kind of khaki flak jacket Gustave didn’t recognise, but the flash of coppery-blond hair peeking out from under a hat was unmistakable. He raised his fist to knock again, so Gustave opened the door a few inches before he could.
“Is there a reason why you’re trying to break my door down in the middle of the night?” he said tartly, eager to cut across whatever Olivier was going to say. He savored catching him off-guard; there was a moment of silence with Olivier’s hand hanging in the air.
“It’s eight thirty.” he said.
Gustave raised his brows. Olivier stuffed his hand back into his jacket pocket.
“I tried calling you. You didn’t answer,” he amended, “I thought I’d come over to check. Heard glass breaking.”
“I didn’t answer because I’m exhausted and I was trying to watch a movie. The glass was literally just a glass. It’s still all over my kitchen floor, if you don’t believe me.” Gustave said.
Olivier’s expression shifted, caught on a hook between annoyed and relieved. Had he really thought something was wrong? Had he really thought Gustave would be happy to see him?
(And was he? Wasn’t he? He didn’t feel any less tense knowing it was Olivier and not an intruder. A hot stone in the pit of his stomach, low-volt buzz in the back of his head just to see him. He looked good. He felt dangerous.)
“I’m fine,” Gustave said, leaning against the doorframe when Olivier gave him nothing but a weighty frown, “Really. You didn’t need to come around.”
It wasn’t a thank you for checking in , and it wasn’t going to be - but Gustave still hadn’t went back inside and Olivier still hadn’t left. The silence twisted itself into all the wrong shape, uncomfortable and knotted. Olivier’s gaze dipped, dragging down the sliver of body he could see through the crack in the door.
“Nice slippers,” he said, and the wave of indignity that washed over Gustave had very little to do with his pom-poms.
“Actually, you know what--” he said, and he would have slammed the door if Olivier’s boot hadn’t stopped it.
“Wait, wait, hold on,” Olivier braced his hand against the wood, the edge of a wrist-brace peeking out. He didn’t force it any further open but Gustave was aware he could quite easily do that if he wanted, “Can I come in?”
Gustave knew that was obviously why Olivier was there, but it still gave him an unpleasant jolt. The desire to shut him out was visceral, to protect his safe and quiet place for just a little longer - but, he supposed Olivier was determined to talk, and this time there was no conveniently locked room to force them to do so. He took a sharp, sharp breath and stepped to the side, opening the door a little wider for Olivier to come in.
He didn’t sway into his passing heat, he didn’t , but he caught the tail end of whatever cologne he was wearing, enough to turn his head. It wasn’t one he’d known him to wear but then again, when did they ever see each other outside of work?
In the kitchen, Olivier pulled off his hat, wrist brace and jacket like he expected to stay a while. He sat his jacket over the top of Gustave’s on the chair and nudged some of the glass on the floor with his boot like he wasn’t sure it was real.
“I suppose you’ll be wanting your beads back,” Gustave said blithely, moving to pick up the bag he’d left in front of the washing machine. He’d put the rosary in his wash-bag for safe keeping. He’d kept them hanging from the IV stand for a little while, but he didn’t like the way the others looked when they noticed them: amused, disappointed, curious, like it was any of their business.
“You can keep them,” Olivier said, “If you want.”
Gustave looked at him sharply, the rosary left undisturbed in their pocket. Olivier wasn’t watching; he’d spotted the bag of gifts, and had picked the ugly teddy from the top of the pile. He squeezed it, and frowned at the weak squeak it gave, his thumb tracing the cheap embroidery on the heart. Gustave felt much the same about Olivier’s rosary as he did the teddy. A sweet gesture, one that was wildly misjudged and utterly unwanted - but still a gesture. Still something to be cherished, and to make him feel guilty if he didn’t.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. It should have been a simple question, but nothing ever felt very simple when Olivier was involved.
Olivier squeaked the bear again, still not looking at Gustave.
“I came to see how you were doing,” he said. Squeak squeak.
“You would know if you’d came to see me in hospital while I was conscious ,” Gustave said, standing and reaching across the table to pull the bear from his hands, forcing him to look up, “Why are you really here?”
Olivier blinked at him, “You didn’t call me either.”
“What?” Gustave asked, though he knew exactly what Olivier meant.
“I was sick too. You could have called me any time after you woke up,” he said.
“Hardly,” Gustave said, though the excuse he was sure he had didn’t roll off the tip of his tongue. “I never got a moment’s peace. There was always someone there.”
“Exactly.”
Gustave bit his tongue. He didn’t know why he was arguing; Olivier was right. He leant against the kitchen table and scrubbed a hand through his hair, still a little damp from the shower, “...You are alright though, aren’t you?”
“I’m fine,” he said. “They didn’t have to put me in a coma, at least.”
“It wasn’t so bad, all things considered. I needed to catch up on my beauty sleep anyway,” Gustave said.
“You look--” Olivier began, then trailed off, “...good.”
“Pom poms and all?”
Olivier smiled - almost. A twitch of the lips, a mere suggestion of something other than a scowl, and then it was gone, taking the brief reprise from the tension with it. It was obvious he wanted to say something, but seemed to be waiting for Gustave to take him where he needed the conversation to go. He sighed, crossed his arms over his chest. He could only spin the wheels for so long.
“Look, Olivier, if this is about what happened--”
“The kiss,” Olivier said, bone-bare and to the point. Gustave blinked at him, bruised by the interruption and how he just tossed it out there like that.
“Yes, the-- that.” Gustave rubbed the bridge of his nose to give himself a second to think, “It doesn’t have to be a thing . It doesn’t have to mean anything. Just forget about it.”
Olivier didn’t react, at least not at first, then leaned back and crossed his arms, mirroring Gustave whether he meant to or not, pulling his t-shirt too-tight across his broad shoulders. He looked like a brawler, like he made trouble in dive bars just because he could; Gustave supposed there was enough broken glass on his floor to count as one. Olivier exhaled through his nose. He sounded weary.
“Why?” he asked.
Gustave blinked at him.
“Why--? Why what?” he said as his brain scrambled for a reasonable answer. “Why would this change anything? Why should it?”
There was no response to that, which somehow only rubbed Gustave even further the wrong way - God help him, wasn’t Olivier supposed to be the one with the temper? He couldn’t even blame the wine, he’d only had half a bottle. Olivier’s expression was guarded, bordering on unreadable. He had the uncanny ability to make Gustave feel like he was being unreasonable, no matter the conversation.
“Alright then. So, you came round to drop this horseshit in my lap. Now what?” he asked with a dry, bitter laugh. He didn’t want to have this conversation. It was unfair that Olivier would even try. “How did you see this playing out for you? Should I swoon? Do we fuck here or in the bedroom?”
It was cheap, but it worked, and Olivier tensed, his jaw set. His moderate expression cracked down the middle, flaking into something...not angry, like Gustave had expected. Wounded, maybe. It should have been satisfying.
“It’s not like that,” he said.
“What is it like then?”
Olivier’s made an odd motion with his hands, jerky like he wanted to reach out and grab him but stopped himself in time. Gustave didn’t know what he would do if he grabbed him - nothing, probably. The idea of Olivier’s hands on him didn’t make him sour with panic any more.
This was hard for him, Gustave realised. More than hard, it was hurting him.
“I want to make this right,” Olivier said, slowly, simply, like there wasn’t any other way he could say it. “I want to be good for you.”
There were a thousand and one glib dismissals Gustave could think of, but he was afraid of what might fall off his tongue instead if he dared to open his mouth. Svalbard felt like a lifetime ago, like a dream, something that happened to someone else. Had it really changed so much? An infection, an accusation, a kiss - and then what? Something had passed through them and he hadn’t even realised what had been left behind, when clearly Olivier felt it so keenly.
“I liked it better when you thought I was just a fucking liability,” he said eventually.
“This isn’t funny.” Olivier took a step forward. He was nearly in Gustave’s space, his shoulders tense, his hands unwilling to stay where he kept trying to put them at his sides.
“I’m not laughing, Olivier.” Gustave said, trying to keep a steady voice, “I just thought that-- I don’t know. Probably that you’d come round, bury the hatchet, shake hands, and we could go back to barely tolerating each other.”
“I’m sick of barely tolerating , I want-- I want to make this right,” Olivier said again, like if he repeated it enough times it would work on its own like a spell. Magic probably didn’t seem so far-fetched if he thought they were something that could be fixed.
He wanted to tell him that - that there might be a way but this wasn’t it, this wasn’t how to mend the rift that Gustave had spent so long carving out with his bare hands, picking and picking until it couldn’t scar over even if he wanted it to.
It would be so easy to say no for the pleasure of saying no, so easy to lash out for the sake of drawing blood. So easy to shoot him down; Olivier always did make such a target out of himself.
Gustave paused, pressed his tongue to his teeth and wondered when self-preservation had become pointless cruelty, like he hadn’t spent those precious few hours he had to himself in the hospital with rosary in his hand, that hard mouth on his mind, wondering what it would be like. It would be a disaster, of course - but hadn’t he lived through a hundred already? None so kind as the hands that found his shoulders, none so warm as the body that curved over him as Olivier moved into his space.
It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fair that Olivier would come around and just leave this at his feet. He was just a man; a man that hurt, a man that wanted - they both were. He wasn’t all heart, he was teeth and ego too, an ego that sang at the thought of coaxing someone like Olivier to his side. He had said everyone wanted Gustave, tried to set himself apart from the others whether it was true or not, and yet--
There he was, slotted between his thighs with broken glass behind him, wanting to be forgiven something he never really did in the first place, wanting to be wanted .
“You’re making a mistake,” Gustave said, even as he ran his hands up the swell of Olivier’s chest, felt the sharp breath beneath his palms; we both are.
“Not every mistake is a regret.”
Gustave would have scoffed any other time, asked what gift shop he found that fridge magnet in, but the hands on his shoulder had moved to his neck, fingers curling in the short hair there, and suddenly he was back in Svalbard. A shiver wracked him from head to toe, a ghost of the cold, a memory of the touch. He wanted to hurt him. He wanted something else entirely.
Sometimes it was enough to want.
He didn’t stop Olivier when he tipped against him, catching him in a kiss - cautious at first, like he half expected to be bitten, bolder when fingers twisted in the worn cotton of his t-shirt. There wasn’t the same hunger this time, the same desperation, no crush of lips and teeth - just an earnestness that left him feeling stripped to the bone in seconds, too honest too soon.
Gustave spread his legs a little further, snaked his arms around Olivier’s shoulders to draw him closer. He wasn’t looking for honesty, wasn’t sure he could handle it yet, but he wasn’t afraid of fire if he was the one with the matches. He licked his way into Olivier’s mouth, his hand dipping below the back of his collar, blunt nails trailing a promise there because he seemed like the kind of man who liked a threat in his sweet-nothings.
Olivier broke the kiss by millimeters, chasing the line of his jaw, scraping his teeth over the thin skin below his ear and down again. Gustave turned his head and sighed; his neck had always been his weak spot and it was obvious. He kept his collars high and his scarfs too tight, touched it too much when he talked, telegraphing the vulnerability to everyone who was watching - to Olivier, apparently. Lips to pulse point, hot blood beneath a hotter tongue. He was proud but not too proud to smother the moan that leaked out of him.
“How long has it been?” he asked when Olivier leant back to work the buttons of his ugly pyjamas. He dragged his fingers through the hair on his chest with an expression that was so serious it should have been funny, “Before Svalbard?”
“I’ve always...admired you,” Olivier said and kissed his shoulder, his hand curving round Gustave’s waist to the small of his back.
“You’ve always wanted to fuck me,” Gustave corrected. He let his head fall back and smirked at the ceiling as Olivier slid down so far down his body he ended up on his knees. “It’s not the same.”
Olivier didn’t argue, though Gustave could tell he wanted to. There was too much hesitation in the way he reached for his waistband, thumbs hanging on the edge of the elastic long enough that he had to look down to check he hadn’t spooked. He was half-hard in his pyjamas, cock already starting to tent the material, and Olivier still hadn’t touched him, hands skirting everywhere but .
Gustave grabbed him by the wrist, pushed his hand where he needed it to be. The pinched look on Olivier’s face made him wonder if he’d ever been with a man, or if it had just been a while. Gustave hadn’t been with anyone since-- well, it didn’t matter. They were there now, together, and Olivier seemed to get the message. He stroked him through his pyjamas, fumbling but determined, his palm hot and his bottom lip worried between his teeth in a way Gustave shouldn’t have found so sweet. It was nice - really quite nice, actually - but it wasn’t enough, and maybe on another night with another body he would have taken his time, let them get a feel for each other, but it wasn’t enough.
He said Olivier’s name softly, once, twice, and lifted his hips, let him tug his pyjamas down around his thighs. He threaded one hand through his not-red hair, somewhere between pulling and guiding until Olivier parted his lips, swallowed him down too-much too-fast like he had something to prove - and maybe he did, but Gustave couldn’t care with that warm wet heat around him.
It took an unseemly amount of effort not to thrust up into his mouth like an untested teenager again but Gustave managed, letting go of Olivier’s hair to cover his own mouth. Nose to pelvis, hands digging in to the meat of Gustave’s hips, the way he sucked cock was both fumbling and determined in a manner that was so perfectly Olivier . He pulled back after a moment, stroking him instead while he learned how to breathe again with his forehead resting against his inner thigh.
Gustave brought his hand to Olivier’s cheek, let his thumb trail to his mouth. He pressed it against his spit-slick bottom lip - gently at first, until a pink tongue flicked out to meet it. He pressed firmer still, encouraging him to open up again and replaced his thumb with the head of his cock, feeding it to Olivier who watched him with wary eyes. There was more control this time, more deliberateness in the way he swallowed him down, stroking with one hand what he couldn’t fit into his mouth.
It was an awkward angle and the edge of the table was digging into him, but Olivier looked good on his knees. The irrational part of Gustave wanted to hook his legs over the slope of his broad shoulders, to wrap his thighs around his head and hold him there where he belonged. He was being good, so good, and he might have said that out loud because Olivier moaned belly-deep, his eyes closed, his cheeks flushed.
Maybe he really meant the things he had said. Maybe this was something else entirely.
“Stop.” Gustave said, though it was nearly painful to say it and mean it. Olivier was too quick to pull back, uncertainty in the downturn of his mouth like he thought he had done something wrong.
There was still time to end it. There was still time to send him away. A petty victory, a point made. He fixed his pyjama bottoms and drew his fingers along the hard edge of his jaw, bid him to get to his feet with the barest pressure under his chin. Even as Olivier towered over him, Gustave could see he was shivering, the tiniest tremor in his hands as he gripped the edges of his open shirt like he didn’t want to let go.
Gustave took him by the wrists, pulling his hands off him; he stood, chest to chest with Olivier and their fists trapped between them. Go, he imagined himself saying, get out of here. Get away from me.
Still holding on to him, he forced Olivier to take one step backwards then another, until he took the hint and let himself be ushered from the kitchen to the living room. Gustave let go of his wrists in the bedroom, pale skin striped red from the grip of his fingers; immediately Olivier reached for him again, touching his chest, his neck, cupping his face to tug him into another demanding kiss. He pushed Gustave’s shirt off his shoulders, pausing only to shrug his own off too, tossing it somewhere behind him.
If he had any brainpower to spare, Gustave might have felt inadequate beside Olivier’s chiseled form, but he didn’t. All he could think of was how warm his skin was beneath his wandering palms, how firm, how he suddenly and strikingly couldn’t get enough. It was a feeling he could get used to, he thought, and that was a dangerous thing.
“Bed,” he muttered, forcing himself to disengage, to pull away before he let himself get too swallowed up in it.
Olivier seemed only too happy to comply, crowding him until Gustave’s knees hit the edge of the bed and he folded onto it, crawling on top of him with the kind of spring-loaded grace only big cats had. His hands were everywhere, stripping both of them of their last scraps of clothing until at last there was nothing between them but the tension.
There was a hard set to Olivier’s kiss-bitten mouth, like he wanted to say something but was stopping himself. Gustave was grateful as he groped between his legs and leaned in to taste the way those closed lips parted; he didn’t want to hear anything else Olivier had to say. He didn’t want to think about it. He didn’t want to think about anything but the tongue in his mouth and the cock in his hand.
Olivier pulled back just enough to make a questioning sound, one Gustave answered by pointing to the bedside table. It had a shallow drawer with a few things in it, along with some lube and an unopened box of condoms, bought long enough ago that he had to wonder about their expiry date. If Olivier noticed, he had the good grace not to goad him about it; he tore open the box and ripped a foil square off the strip, tossing it down on Gustave’s stomach like some kind of silent dare.
Gustave picked up the condom, his fingers clumsy as he watched Olivier flick open the lube and reached behind himself. He kept one hand braced on Gustave chest to steady himself or maybe just to hold him in place; there was something unbearable in watching what he couldn’t see dance across Olivier’s face, pain and pleasure and a twist of impatience in his frown and the flush saddled high on his cheeks.
He was beautiful then, and maybe Gustave said that out loud again because Olivier made a sharp noise of annoyance as he snatched the condom from him and tore it open with his teeth. He reached down and rolled it onto Gustave’s cock in short, business-like movements that belied the way his gaze lingered on the shape of him with a kind of scalding hunger that made him shiver. He moved to straddle Gustave’s hips, his hand disappearing behind himself again to line them up, and then he--
He hesitated. Not for too long, no, but long enough for Gustave to notice.
“Olivier--” he said, because they didn’t have to do this and god, they probably shouldn’t, but then Olivier was sinking down onto him and suddenly he couldn’t think of a single reason why he couldn’t spend the rest of his life like that, buried in heat, half smothered under something lovely and blue-eyed.
Gustave could feel the drag and pull of it as Olivier gave a shallow roll of his hips; it must have hurt, he hadn’t taken long enough to ready himself nor used enough slick, but he didn’t let it show anywhere but the clench of his jaw. His neck and chest were almost as flushed as his cheeks, his back arched as he rode the knife-edge of pleasure and pain slowly, deliberately. He licked his lips, his breath catching on his teeth, and Gustave couldn’t help himself, he had to touch, he had to--
As soon as he moved his hands from Olivier’s hips to try and touch his face, his neck, to coax him down and close enough to breathe in, close enough to kiss, Olivier grabbed his wrists and pinned them to the mattress by his head. It was as though he’d snapped out of his haze, all uncertainty burned up in a sudden flare of heat. His pace went from cautious to punishing in a matter of a few strokes - punishing for who exactly, Gustave didn’t know.
Olivier kept his eyes open and on Gustave as he rode him, though he didn’t miss the way his lashes fluttered on every downstroke, his breath hitching until he couldn’t stop the moans he was forcing from himself. He never loosened his grip on his wrists but he couldn’t keep the same hold on his composure and fuck , Gustave would never be able to look his neighbours in the eye again - not that he was complaining because it was worth it just to hear Olivier let go, and of course his Lion would be loud.
A bead of sweat ran from the hollow of Olivier’s neck, down the center of his chest; Gustave wanted to chase it with his tongue, wanted more than anything to taste the salt and lust in him. He curled his fingers into fists and planted his feet on the bed, trying to get leverage so he could meet Olivier in his thrusts. Precum dripped onto his stomach, smeared between them as Olivier leant forward, close enough to Gustave that he could feel his breath with each shameless moan.
He wanted to kiss him, needed to be kissed, but he could barely move and maybe Olivier needed that more: the control, the bruises Gustave would wear like bracelets for days to come.
“How does it feel to always get what you want?” Gustave asked, ignoring the way his voice caught in his throat like it would choke him. “Does it feel good?”
Olivier bared his teeth like he wanted to growl, but didn’t answer.
“Does it feel good?”
He said it again, twice more after that until Olivier’s face was scarlet and his eyes were screwed shut. He was shaking, maybe from the effort, maybe from pleasure, or pain, or anger. It was hard to tell, but it was good; reminded Gustave there was more than one way to touch him.
“Answer me, Olivier,” he wet his lips, thighs straining, “Could you cum like this?”
“ Shut up. ”
Gustave could have laughed at such petulance, but Olivier was on him again, all teeth and tongue and the ragged desire to make him shut up. He was easy for it, easy for his brattiness, easy for the mutual punishment, easy for the way he was leaking all over his stomach, cock trapped between them, desperate for friction.
Gustave’s laughter melted into moans, soft, breathless things lost in the vacuum of their kiss. It was becoming harder to keep his eyes open when they broke away again, harder to watch Olivier and the curve of his neck as he swallowed around whatever wanted to spill out of his mouth.
He stopped trying to fight against it; if he wanted to use him, then he could. If he wanted to hurt himself, then he could. If he wanted to hiss and scratch and bite, nails digging into the soft flesh of his wrists, the strange warmth of broken skin--
Olivier’s fingers slackened for just a second, lost in his pleasure as he was, but that was all it took for Gustave to pull his hands free. He ghosted his touch over the planes of his back, the nape of his neck, coming to stop with a fist in his hair. He twisted-pulled-twisted ‘til Olivier gave in, curling over him with a gasp that let Gustave lick his way into his mouth. Olivier struggled, then began to tremble, shaking apart against the crush of Gustave’s lips as he came, hips twitching, thighs clenched.
He became pliant then, unwinding by inches. Gustave let him hide his face against his neck as he continued to rock into him, suddenly unhurried despite his own impending peak. He...wanted to savor it, he supposed; the heat between them, the arms that snaked around his shoulders, the wetness on his shoulder that could have been tears, could have been sweat, could have been spit.
He trailed a finger down the valley of Olivier’s back, down to the place they were joined; for a second he had the fleeting urge to push it in alongside his cock, or to catch the edge of the condom and roll it off, but it was enough just to feel the way Olivier tensed.
I think you’re a little bit in love with me, he said, but it came out as “You’d let me.”
“Gustave…”
A question, almost. Voice tremulous - it was tears, then. It shouldn’t have made Gustave shiver the way it did, shouldn’t have made Gustave smile against Olivier’s temple like that. Who had gotten what they wanted and who had gotten what they deserved? He came like that, a sigh crushed out of Olivier as he held him too close, too much like a lover, hand twisted in his hair again, salt on his tongue.
The silence that followed could have been carved with a knife, cut through only with the harshness of their breathing as they fought to control themselves again. Olivier pulled away, rolled to the side. He got up; Gustave didn’t stop him. A few seconds later the bathroom door shut with a click, the lock turning, the fan whirring into life.
Gustave ran a hand down his face. He was suddenly exhausted in a way he hadn’t been since those first few days of recovery. It was an odd feeling, one that left him as hollow as a beaten drum deep in the pit of his stomach, even as residual sparks of pleasure fizzed through him.
He had made a mistake.
That much was obvious, from the second he’d let Olivier into his apartment. No, from the second he’d crawled into his bed in Svalbard, from the second he had showed him his unhealing scars. He had made a mistake.
It could cost him his job, he thought as he sat up, put his feet on the floor. He rolled the condom off, dropped it in the bin by his bedside table. It would, at the very least, cost him his peace of mind. He wasn’t going to be able to compartmentalise this, not as quickly or as neatly as he’d like. Six would notice, be surprised and disappointed. The GIGN would notice, unsurprised but still disappointed.
He didn’t really want to think what the others would say about Olivier. He was the only one with the right. He was the only one.
The bathroom door opened, cold light knifing through the darkness of the bedroom. Gustave stiffened, tried not to flinch outright until it was gone again. Olivier’s footsteps were firm, steady; it was hard to see him clearly but the slope of his shoulders was pulled back into something a little more upright. He had no cloth for Gustave, no water, not a smile or a word.
He bed behind him creaked, dipped. The blankets whispered as they were rearranged. Gustave waited, counted to five before he lay down again. He turned on his side and put his arm over Olivier’s waist. It was a long time before either of them slept.
--
Gustave didn’t realise he had fallen asleep until he woke up, thirsty and bleary eyed. He laid there for a moment, curled on his side with one arm tucked under the pillow, cataloging the pleasant aches in his body.
Olivier had gone, that much was obvious without having to check. There was cold at his back, and he’d pulled too much of the duvet around himself for anyone else to be comfortable, so used to sleeping alone in a bed meant for two. His lack of surprise did little to temper the sting of it, but above that he was...relieved, almost. It would be easier this way, coward that he was.
Eventually he sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed with a quiet groan, the small of his back giving an unpleasant twinge just to remind him he wasn’t twenty-two any more. He picked up and pulled on his abandoned pyjama bottoms before padding through to the en suite, not caring to turn on the lights. He washed his face, his stomach and cock, and tried not to look at the half-formed shape of himself in the mirror, tried not to think of the hands that had been all over him a couple of hours ago as he dried his own with a quiet-minded thoroughness.
It didn’t matter, he told himself. It was out of his system now, out of both their systems apparently, and he wouldn’t have to think about it again beyond awkward encounters in the locker room or at their routine check-ups. The ache in his stomach would go away with a proper breakfast, the tension in his jaw just needed a few more hours sleep, the hurt in his chest would ease when he finally got round to texting Timur first, and-- and it didn’t matter that Olivier had left him already.
Except his clothes were still in a heap on the floor at the foot of the bed.
Gustave stared at them for a long hard moment; the crisp white of the t-shirt looked sharper than the glass still lying on the kitchen floor, and he didn’t want to touch it. The bedroom door was slightly ajar but he couldn’t hear anyone moving around the rest of the flat. What he wanted more than anything at that moment was to shut the door and climb back into bed, and hope that Olivier would be gone for real by the time he woke up again.
Denial couldn’t stop him from opening the door a little wider, stepping out into the living room. Olivier was standing facing the fireplace, wearing only the orange glow from the streetlight that soaked through the blinds he forgot to close before they had tumbled into bed. Shadows cut valleys in the planes of his back; his legs were long, his shoulders broad, his waist lean but not slim. A constellation of moles, less so of freckles, and surprisingly few scars considering their line of work. Perfect in every way.
It was unfair, Gustave thought, not with envy but with a helplessness he could hardly stand. Olivier came so close to everything he’d spent half his young life aching for, gorgeous and bold and headstrong, but when he looked at him all he could see was a thousand new mistakes to make. His earlier bravado had fled with the last of the daylight, leaving the want behind like a raw scrape across his cheek.
Olivier half-turned to face him when he stepped forward. He had a photo frame in his hands, angled away from Gustave, and he didn’t need to see it to know exactly which one it was. His face was obscured by shadow, but he wouldn’t have been able to read his expression anyway. He never could; he spoke three, four languages and Olivier was not one of them.
Gustave came closer, stepping into the pool of light on the floor. The glint of his eyes told him he was watching him, glassy and tired. The late night sounds of the town filtered in from outside, the uneven drone of sparse traffic, sirens somewhere in the near distance.
“Is it too late?” Olivier asked, too loud even as he whispered. He dropped his head, not looking at the photo but somewhere much further away, “Or too soon?”
Gustave reached out and took the frame from his grasp, not unkindly. He sat it back on the mantelpiece without looking at it and caught his hand before he could pull away again. When he squeezed, Olivier was slow to squeeze back - but he did.
“Come back to bed,” Gustave said, soft and coaxing, false and hopeful. He meant it when he told himself it didn’t matter, and he still meant it then - but there was a part of himself he wasn’t able to convince.
Olivier didn’t say anything, but he let himself be guided back to the bedroom with no resistance. They could talk about it in the morning, if he was still there; he just wanted to pretend for a little while longer. They both did.