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The hour was indeterminate. Intermediate. Somewhere between late and early, dark and light. The air was far too still for midnight not to have arrived yet, and the room was far too dark for dawn to be on the horizon. Yet Maelle was awake.
She lay on her side, hunched and curled into as small a ball as her bones and ligaments would allow her. Her teeth threatened to pierce the flesh of her lips. Her nails left crescent marks on her arms. Little acts of self-punishment. Just enough to flirt with pain, but not enough to rupture the divide between mind and body.
Another nightmare. The fifth this week, on the fifth day of the week. Maelle was beyond tired. Closing her burning eyes, she fantasised about rest.
But the wood of her floorboards creaked under the weight of approaching footsteps, and Maelle’s eyes snapped open. Her body froze mid-inhale. She’d never gotten over the childish belief that being perfectly still made her invisible.
And still, her bedroom door opened, and the footsteps came nearer and nearer and… a weight settled on the edge of her bed, dipping it downwards.
Even with her back turned, she recognised Gustave. His presence was unmistakable. It warped the air around him in a very particular way. She imagined the air molecules, sedentary and peaceful in the lull of night, being gently nudged aside as he made his way through them. No dispersion. No break in calm. The very air favoured his existence.
Or perhaps she simply liked him enough not to feel violated by his witnessing her undoing.
His gaze was upon her. She knew it was warm, but she preferred to imagine it heavy with blame. It made it easier for her to let out a small, “Sorry.” No... too small. She cleared her throat and spoke more clearly, “Didn’t mean to wake you up.”
“Nonsense.” Gustave brushed off her concern with a wave of the hand. “You did no such thing. I wasn’t asleep to begin with.”
Gathering her courage along with whatever remained of her depleted energy, Maelle turned to level him with a glare. It was a good opportunity to assess him. He was wearing his usual smile; but his eyes, warm in depth, were bruised and bloodshot at the surface. He hadn’t slept, yes, but it didn’t seem like a deliberate choice he’d made.
“You’re very tired,” observed Maelle in a mumble, features relaxing.
Late nighttime had a pleasant quality to it. It imbued everything with a surreal hush. Dreamlike and ephemeral. It made it easier for her to speak, her spirit buoyed where reality was ethereal.
Gustave felt it, too. He let his shoulders hunch, let his visage betray loneliness.
“Yes…” he said. Then he nudged her knee with an elbow. “So are you.”
She shrugged, hugging a pillow to her chest, her cheek resting on its stiff edge. “Used to it.”
“Another nightmare?”
“Hm…”
“Want to tell me about it?”
“No…”
“Fair enough.”
Physical distance rendered her words scarce. He knew that, knew to offer her safety before asking her to turn the jagged end of her mind, so much like a knife in such moments, against herself.
And so, he opened his arms, one of thew and sinew, the other of brass and rivet, neither surpassing the other in kindness, not when it was Gustave they belonged to, and he waited.
Maelle held back for no longer than ten seconds. That was the length of time she needed to replace the thought of ‘I don’t deserve it’ with ‘I want it.’
Abandoning her pillow, she burrowed in his arms, head in his lap, face in his abdomen, whose plushness was slowly being lost as training hours lengthened and his desire to indulge decreased.
She missed the softness, as well as the chance to poke and tease him. It’d always banished the heavier moments, so quick he was to object to her prodding finger with, ‘What exactly is it you’re implying, ma petite mademoiselle?’
Now there was nothing to do but sit with the heavy moments.
With his mechanical fingers combing through her hair, Maelle mumbled into his shirt, breath shuddering, “Why do you keep me? Here, with you and Emma."
“Well, you’re brilliant company,” Gustave said simply, as though words had never cost him a thing. Only Maelle knew that when he overthought, words betrayed him. Was he underthinking now, or was it… truly so simple?
As she remained lost in her mind, he continued to count her virtues, “You listen to me jabber on about the most obscure topics with minimal teasing.” He spied her peeking at him with a suspicious look and said, brushing dry tears from her cheek, “I dare say you even enjoy my jabber. And I enjoy you enjoying it. Somehow you keep me humble and stroke my ego in the same breath.”
Maelle huffed a wet laugh and buried her face in his stomach again. “No,” she protested, voice lilting upwards, even though she liked the response he’d given her.
“No, you don’t enjoy my jabber?” he teased, trying to get her to look at him again, now stroking her hair out of her face. “Or no, you do enjoy my jabber, oh horror of horrors?”
She laughed again, so ridiculous he was, and hid her face more stubbornly. “No, this is not a good enough excuse.”
The silence that followed, though short-lived, made her count her breaths.
Then he mildly said, “Ah, I see. I need an excuse to keep you. Having you stay with us is, of course, a thesis I must defend.”
She nodded, still hidden, fist clutching the linen of his shirt.
“Are you the thesis committee?” he said.
“No,” she said. “You and Emma are.”
“Ah, well that makes it infinitely easier.” The glint in his eyes was indulgent. He pretended to think. “Mm, the argument I present to the committee is thus: I’m keeping Maelle because I love her. Committee ponders for one whole, laborious second and says: argument is sound; thesis gets a glittering stamp of approval.”
Maelle slowly removed her face from his stomach to lay her head on the expanse of his thighs. She looked up at him with round, wet eyes. In an almost inaudible voice, she said, “It’s not that simple.”
Gustave didn’t mind having this conversation with her over and over and over again. She always found new ways to ask for reassurance that she wasn’t a burden and that she was indeed loved. He treated each and every such incident as uniquely worthy of consideration.
“You object to the committee’s verdict?” he said, pleased that she wasn’t hiding anymore.
“It’s not a very good one…”
“Very well. Present me with your counterargument, mademoiselle.”
She hesitated. “You shouldn’t keep me because… I’m annoying. I always have these nightmares that aren’t very quiet. Who wants to hear screaming at midnight?”
“I suppose Emma’s response to that isn’t necessary, seeing as her room is too far from yours…” he said, faux-pondering, eyes raised to the ceiling, forefinger on his chin. He looked at her again. “As for me, well… I hardly sleep at night—”
“—yes, you doze at the breakfast table instead,” she interrupted in spite of herself, giggling.
He gave her a look, his smirk sheepish. “Yes, I doze at the breakfast table. So when I hear you at night, I think, ah, yes, life outside myself exists. I’m not alone. Maelle is there.” He cupped her cheek, and she held that hand to her face. “So—staving off my loneliness? Decidedly un-annoying.”
Maelle sighed and closed her eyes. She tried and failed to produce a worthy rebuttal. “I had other counterarguments…”
“Forgot them, have you?”
“Mm…”
“The committee is patient. It shall let you plead your case whenever you’re ready.”
Sighing, Maelle nuzzled closer to him, hugging him more than hiding. “You’re the silliest man ever, I swear…”
“I’m the smartest man in Lumiere.”
And although he was joking, Maelle was perfectly serious, if a bit sleepy, when she said, “You are.”
He chuckled fondly, dusted a kiss in her hair, and let her use him as a pillow. Soon, she was snoring lightly, warm and snuffling. Gustave’s lower back ached, but his smile wouldn’t go away.
Dawn saw him splayed on his back, his feet planted firmly to the ground, with Maelle sleeping perpendicular to him, her head pressing into his ribs. Both were snoring.