Chapter Text
There’s a concert scheduled tomorrow. And tomorrow. And tomorrow.
The evening is hours away, and Gustave tries to keep his mind blank as he rattles a stolen set of keys in the door of the small apartment above New Lumière’s boulangerie. Finally, the door swings open. Inside, the air is warm and stale. Dust hangs in the air, undisturbed, as he enters.
“Hello?” he calls as he places the paper bag he’s carrying down on the kitchen table. “Verso?”
The apartment might be dark, but Gustave can hear the sound of uncertain footsteps from the bedroom.
Steeling himself for whatever is about to come, he wanders over to the curtains and pulls them aside to let the afternoon sunlight flow through the glass. The window frame itself seems to be stuck, unwilling to budge even when he tugs at it to try to get some fresh air into the place.
He glances over his shoulder as the bedroom door opens before he can fully throw his weight into the task. The door opens, and someone walks through.
Verso Dessendre.
Prior to now, Gustave can only remember what he looks like on stage during the concerts that Maelle loves so much: on stage, he’s put-together. His suits are perfect, his greying hair is combed into artful obedience, and the expression on his matured face always looks so focused, as if he’s lost somewhere that nobody else can follow.
But this version of Verso?
The version currently standing in the doorway of his own bedroom?
He looks as if a steam-train has just ran him through. His mouth hangs half-open as if he’s searching for words that refuse to be found. He’s fully dressed in a respectable suit, but judging from the aggressive creases in his shirt and pants he must have slept in the outfit overnight and has only just woken up.
Clearing his throat, Gustave returns to the paper bag on the kitchen table and starts to unpack its contents as he speaks, as if the stubborn rhythm of his own voice might cut off any objections before Verso can voice them.
“Maelle sent me. I brought lunch?” he explains, as he pulls free a selection of cheeses and soft bread and lays them out on the table. He glances up, but Verso hasn’t moved yet. “She said nobody had seen you for a few days. I thought I should check in.”
And it’s not untrue.
It’s not a lie. Not really.
Maelle had said that nobody had seen Verso outside of the opera house in days or even weeks - and Gustave had thought that he ought to check in on Verso and work out what’s going on.
But. Well. The part about Maelle sending him? That part might be a little bit less true.
All the same, Verso is still rooted in place. Unmoving. Staring.
Gustave clears his throat again and returns his attention to the paper bag as he draws out some cured meats and fresh fruit to join the small spread he’s already pulling together on the table.
Footsteps echo behind him, so heavy and slow Verso might as well be sleep-walking. He dumps himself into one of the kitchen chairs at Gustave’s side - and then he looks up at Gustave like he might be a nevron that’s wandered straight into his kitchen uninvited.
In the unnerving wake of Verso’s silence, Gustave forces himself to continue speaking.
“She’s worried about you, you know,” he says. That’s not a lie either. “I know I don’t understand everything that’s going on. In fact, I know I don’t understand most of what’s going on since I got back, but… She cares about you. If there’s something wrong, she wants to fix it.”
In all the unsettling chaos, in all the confusion, in all the upsetting mess, that’s the one life-raft that Gustave can cling to: even with the abilities of a Paintress at her fingertips, she’s still Maelle. He knows she wants the best for them, for her family.
And he knows that Verso counts as that now too. ‘Family’.
He falls silent and tries to breathe so he can give Verso time to respond, but for long, aching moments, all Verso does is shove his hand into his pocket and cling on tightly to something that’s hidden in there.
Okay, fine.
Maelle had told him that Verso was going ‘through a lot’. Gustave can’t say that any of this is unexpected, but - well. He had expected something.
“We’re going to need plates,” he mutters to himself, looking around at Verso’s unopened cupboards and trying to determine which one of them might have what he needs.
As he’s looking around, he’s startled when a cold hand suddenly clamps around his wrist: Verso holds onto him tightly from where he's still sitting at the kitchen table, his other hand still hidden in his pocket.
Gustave looks down into Verso’s eyes - and there it is again, tickling at the inside of his skull, the feeling he's had for days: there’s a sense of déjà vu, poisonous enough to steal the breath from his lungs.
“No,” Verso says quietly, tipping his unwilling words into the stiflingly cluttered air. “We’re not doing this. Not again.”
Again?
Gustave tries to erase it with a laugh - but his wrist is still captured in Verso’s grasp, and he’s not sure if he can think about anything but how gentle it feels to be caught by those elegant fingers. “It’s lunch,” he says. His voice is barely a breath. Why is that? “It’s just lunch.”
“You need to leave,” Verso says.
And there’s more to it than that.
There are words trapped on his tongue. Gustave can hear them in the silence. He can feel them in the delicate press of Verso’s fingerprints against the pulse-point of his wrist.
“I mean it,” Verso insists. His fingers brush against the inside of Gustave’s wrist, once, twice, before his crooked nose twitches and Verso seems to force himself to release him. He sits back in his seat, deliberately nonchalant. “Get out.”
“Verso-”
“Get. Out.”
The sound of the door slamming behind him, when it comes, seems to follow him all the way home.
*
Home.
The word is hollow.
Home lives somewhere before their Expedition, before the Continent, before the Cliffs. It exists in a foggy half-way place in Gustave’s mind: he can see his apartment clearly in his memories, the shared life he had lived with Maelle and Emma. He can remember making Sunday breakfast for them both during Maelle’s school years, and he remembers Maelle’s birthdays in their tiny kitchen, with a terrible birthday cake and wonky hats to celebrate.
But beyond that - beyond Maelle - the walls of his memory are hazy. They're loose shapes twice-removed, a story told third-hand.
That evening, he retreats to the apartment that he shares with Sophie: it has all the hollow trappings of somewhere he should belong.
On the sofa, the blanket he slept under last night is folded right where he left it, with a pillow piled on top. The apartment smells of Sophie’s cooking. She will have left a portion warm for him, just as he does for her when it’s his turn.
They’re not together - not any more - not for a long time - but here in this new life they’ve been playing the part. Keeping up appearances, until he can work out how to break the news to Maelle.
“Gustave,” Sophie sighs at the sight of him, her head tilting to the side where she’s sitting near the bookshelf. A new novel is spread open on her lap, but she closes it to lean forward as if she needs to take a closer look at him. “Are you alright?”
The answer to that question knots in his throat. He swallows it down and nods without words, dumping his satchel to the side and walking to their kitchen.
She follows along. “You look…” Whatever adjective is on the tip of her tongue, she seems to decide against it. “You look like you need a good night’s sleep.”
She’s not wrong. Gustave can’t remember the last time he rested properly - peacefully. The cramped quarters of the sofa don’t help, but that’s not it. It’s the prowling of his own thoughts, pushing against their confines.
“Why don’t I go and stay with Lune for a few nights?” Sophie suggests, softly. “We’ll have a sleepover. And you can sleep in the bed, get some rest.”
Their eyes meet as Gustave stands in the kitchen and Sophie leans against the doorway, arms crossed over her chest. The expression on her face is gentle enough to make his heart ache - because this should be perfect. They should be perfect, shouldn’t they?
But they broke up four years before the gommage.
And in all those awkward, painful years, they moved like drifting continents over millennia. There are edges that don’t quite fit, that never really fit - and without the gommage breathing down their necks, without the tantalising promise of ‘what if?’ there’s no hiding it. Not from themselves.
“We probably don’t want to, ah… Prompt any questions,” Gustave points out. “The sofa is fine. It’s comfortable. Don’t worry about me.”
“I always worry about you,” Sophie counters, soft enough to make him swoon even if there’s nothing behind it. No heat, no promises, just a shared lifetime of care and something that turned out to be friendship all along. “Come here.”
She steps forward instead of waiting for him, pushing herself away from the doorframe. She reaches out for him, brushing underneath his jaw with a thoughtful, confused hum.
“You’ve got paint on you,” she breathes as she pulls her hand away.
They can both see it on her fingertips. It’s a heavy smear of white-grey, something that Gustave hadn’t spotted in the mirror that morning.
The sight of it turns his blood watercolour-blue. Excuses ripple through his thoughts, wisps of a reason why something like that might be showing up, but there’s something on Sophie’s face that stops any of them from taking root.
The paint doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t have to mean anything.
“Maybe I should talk to Maelle,” Sophie suggests slowly. “It might… sound better, from me. It might be easier.”
He’s shaking his head before she’s even finished the suggestion - and he doesn’t want to think about what it means that he knows that’s a bad idea, any more than he wants to think about what the flaking paint means, or the empty, aching gaps in his memories.
He doesn’t like what it says about him if he’s too scared to let Sophie bring it up with her; he doesn’t like what it says about the world Maelle has built either.
With the walls closing in, he makes his dinner in hushed, worried silence, and he spends the night as he spends every night: crushed into a too-small space in a home that isn’t his home, his dreams sitting quiet in the hollows where his past used to be.
*
The emptiness only grows. It’s papered over by the flow of life in New Lumière - and there is so much life.
People crowd into the once-barren streets. There are festivals and parties: conversation and laughter is the ever-present soundtrack to city life. His friends are alive and vibrant: whenever he ventures outside, he’s bound to bump into one of the old Expeditioners, and there’s something about the way that they smile that makes him think his daily unease might be worth it after all. Perhaps a hollow life is an acceptable trade if it means his friends get a second chance. Perhaps it’s something he’ll learn to live with for as long as Maelle is willing to stay here to watch over them.
But then there are the concerts.
Those damn concerts.
Piano music drifts through the air nightly, with the entirety of Lumière summoned to listen to its flow. On the stage, Verso’s expression is impassive. A dignified performer, he’s a world away from the ragged man that Gustave had encountered in his apartment - this version of Verso is picture-perfect, every hair in place, every note deliberate.
He never looks into the audience when he plays. Gustave’s eyes can’t break away from him, but Verso’s head remains bowed: he’s focused on making it through the pieces and nothing else.
Night after night, when the performance ends the crowd stays behind in the opera house’s foyer to mingle and laugh together under the soft lighting of the chandeliers. Gustave sticks to Sophie’s side most evenings - and that’s no change from when they were a real couple. She was always the social one, the nice one. It’s so easy to fall back into remembered patterns, nothing but a passenger at a party, drifting in the wind until it’s finally time to go home.
Since he isn’t paying attention to the conversation in front of him, he has more than enough time to notice the set of eyes that’s settled on him from across the room.
Pale blue. Intensely focused. Framed by aggressively neat grey-white hair.
Verso is watching him.
It doesn’t take Gustave long to notice that Verso is always watching him.
The first few times he catches him at it, Verso’s gaze shifts away immediately - but soon, he doesn’t even bother with that. When Gustave glances towards him, Verso will simply hold his gaze.
It’s not something that Gustave knows how to read.
And after around a week of it, night after night, Gustave’s had more than enough.
“I’ll be right back,” he murmurs into Sophie’s ear, barely interrupting her story before he’s slipping away from her side, threading his way through the chattering crowd.
As soon as his direction is clear, Verso moves too - weaving in the opposite path.
Avoiding him?
Gustave frowns and refuses to pick up on that particular social cue. He dogs Verso’s footsteps as he slips through a service doorway, retreating into the disused backstage of the opera house.
It’s shadow-filled and gloomy back here, and crowded with unused props and racks of dusty costumes. Gustave hasn’t been here before. He knows that he hasn’t, but something whispers in the back of his mind like a breeze through the cracked window of an empty house.
All his attention is on the man standing backstage with him. The stage door swings slowly shut in their wake - and there’s no easy way out for Verso, not without pushing past Gustave, making a break for the back door or striding out onto the stage itself.
They stand there together, a few paces apart. Staring in the dark.
Breathing in sync.
And then Verso makes a break for it, rushing like a damned idiot for the back door.
Gustave reaches for him before he can think about it. His metal hand closes around Verso’s upper arm and he tugs hard: they’re built about the same, both of them lean and wiry, but at least Gustave has the element of surprise this time.
He grabs hold of Verso and shoves him hard against the nearest wall - and then he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do next. He doesn’t understand any of this, only the angry hammering of his heart that tells him this is wrong. This. All of it: standing in a room with Verso, and feeling frustrated and upset without even knowing why.
“Stop it,” he hisses, both hands tight around Verso’s upper arms as he holds him in place. The worst part is the way that Verso is watching him: drinking him in like he’s something worth studying, like he’s a new specimen under the microscope or a machine part that still needs testing. “Watching me? Running away? Stop it.”
Verso’s smile flickers on his face like its own form of decay. There’s nothing pleasant in that smile. Nothing warm. “You want me to keep my distance, Gustave,” he says. He leans back against the wall with all the perfect ease of someone putting on a performance. “Trust me on that.”
“What I want is-” The irritation dies on his lips before he can find the right words. It feels like there’s too much fighting to come out all at once. “What I want is…”
There’s a feeling in his throat that’s tight and aching all at the same time. It feels like being the last kid picked for sports at school, or the bitter sting after a failed experiment, or the hollowness of an empty apartment after a break-up.
His hands tighten on Verso’s arms, and all Verso does is watch him with shaded caution in his eyes.
“What I want…”
He gives up on words. When he leans in to kiss Verso, it’s with the painful slamming of their mouths together: it’s something sharp and ugly, and he tells himself that there’s only anger behind it. He tells himself that the sorrow singing in his blood might as well be rage.
Their mouths crash. Verso’s teeth clip accidentally against his lips, but it doesn’t slow them down, not with Verso’s hands reaching greedily for his hips and yanking him closer without another word.
It’s like drowning and being rescued all at once.
What is this?
Verso kisses him back for barely a few moments before his hands tighten on Gustave’s hips. They switch places; Gustave finds himself spun around and pressed back against the wall, pinned with sighing ease, with Verso’s leg slipping easily between his thighs.
One of Verso’s hands makes its way up Gustave’s body, fingers sliding into his hair and gripping on tight - little pin-pricks of pressure and pain light up his scalp, just on the wrong side of too-tight. Without realising it, Gustave hisses into their kiss.
He feels Verso’s smirk more than he sees it. “That’s it,” Verso breathes proudly. “Take what you need.”
Gustave wants to swear at him, or tell him to back off, but that breathless tone in Verso’s voice only has Gustave leaning his head away a little more - just to feel his hair tighten in Verso’s grasp. He holds eye contact as he does it, breathing the same air as Verso, watching Verso take in the faintest flinch as he leans too far and it hurts, truly hurts. That only makes him do it more.
With one hand in Gustave’s hair, Verso’s other hand reaches for his throat - it settles in like it belongs there, holding Gustave in place, a heavy, warm weight against his windpipe. All he can do is pant needily as Verso kisses him again, pinned in place between the firm hand on his throat and the sharp grip of the fingers in his hair.
“Putain,” Verso breathes against his lips, almost to himself - but then his grip relaxes abruptly. With a grunt, he shakes his head at himself, or at Gustave, or at them both, and forces himself to back off. His hands slip free, and he takes another step away. Two. He holds his hands up as if to show that he's innocent: unarmed. “No. No. We’re not doing this again.”
Again?
“Verso-”
“Stay away from me, Gustave. We can’t have this.” The words are as sharp as broken glass - but there’s a longing to it, isn’t there? Gustave doesn’t think he imagined that. “We can’t.”
Verso’s face is twisted, even if none of this makes sense. Standing in the hushed darkness of the back-stage gloom, Gustave doesn’t even think that his own feelings add up for himself - they feel like a foreign invader in his chest, a desperate longing that he doesn’t recognise.
He can remember the tightness of Verso’s hand in his hair just moments ago, sharp and painful - but it makes him want to reach out for Verso, soft hands on his arms, soft words in his ear, and a smirk on his lips just for Verso, just to prove he knows where to push. His hand starts to reach out, before his fingers curl back - he recoils, uncertain.
Verso shakes his head at an unspoken question. “Go back out front. Find Sophie. Find Maelle,” he urges. “Don’t look for me again.”
This time, when Verso tries to leave, Gustave doesn’t stop him.
He stands by himself in the darkness.
And he swears he can feel the ghost of something long-lost around his neck: a gentle, warm sense of belonging.
*
That should be it.
The line in the sand.
Verso has made it perfectly clear that he isn’t interested in whatever this is - and Gustave should respect that. He should attend the shows at the opera house and pretend that he doesn’t feel Verso’s eyes on him afterwards; he should pretend that he’s happy with the shell of a life that they’re all living, playing out roles in this perfect world.
But it bubbles, it festers, it screams, until Gustave finds himself standing in front of Verso’s door once more, key in hand. He breathes in harshly and debates, over and over, whether or not this is a good idea.
Gustave has always thought of himself as someone who is good at following rules - but the Continent put paid to that concept, crushing his sense of mission, his sense of protocol, his sense of self, and showing him how messily everyone scrambles to survive in the end. He doesn’t know if this is any different: standing here, key in hand, it feels like that same desperate need.
It feels like they’re all still fighting for survival - they’re still just planting flags to show how far they’ve come.
Refusing to let himself question it any more, he turns the key in the lock and walks in. The apartment still has the same stale, frozen air as it had over a week ago: it feels like it’s trapped in stasis, and Gustave itches with the wrongness of it all.
The place is a mess, almost deliberately so. It’s a message to the world, Gustave thinks. It’s Verso’s way of painting his own lack of care, a strange medium of uncleaned dishes and purposeful clutter. It’s a performance, just like everything else.
He closes the door behind himself as his eyes settle on Verso.
Verso is deeper in the apartment, in the living quarters. He’s sprawling low on his couch, one arm stretched along the back. His head tilts back to get a better look at Gustave as he slowly walks further into the apartment, every footstep judged and gentle. Gustave feels like he’s approaching a cornered animal: it feels like he’s poised half-way between appeasing and threatening.
“Was there something about ‘stay away from me’ that wasn’t clear?” Verso asks without even raising his head from the back of the couch. He watches Gustave from beneath half-closed eyes, a deliberate and desperate act of disinterest - but Gustave can read him better than that.
“You said we can’t do this,” Gustave says, heart racing, breath short, muscles tight.
“I did.”
“You didn’t say why.” Because he wants this, whatever that is. Verso does too. It was there in the way that they kissed.
Air huffs through Verso’s nose in some inadequate approximation of a laugh. “Because I’m not a part of your story, Gustave. You’ve already got your nicely sanctioned happy ending. That’s what you need. It's what you deserve.”
Gustave comes to a stop in front of Verso, only a couple of paces away. Daylight streams in through half-drawn blinds, leaving them in the dusky half-shade of a suffocating prison. Swallowing hard, Gustave looks down at the man sprawling in front of him. Verso is half-sitting and half-lying, but under Gustave’s attention he seems to try to pull himself a little bit more upright. He seems to be trying to pretend to be more presentable than he is, though his grey hair is still a mess and his clothes are freshly slept in.
“I’m not with Sophie,” Gustave throws abruptly into the silence that Verso has carved out. “I haven’t been. Not for a long time.”
“Just playing pretend,” Verso says - but it doesn’t sound like he’s surprised.
And it hurts. The pain isn’t emotional; it hurts like a scratching at the inside of his mind, something trying to claw its way out.
“You don’t know me,” Verso sighs. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“Does it matter? It’s not like I’m- I mean, I’m not asking for your hand in marriage.”
Verso finally leans forward, looking up at him with that evaluating blue gaze. Getting a better look at him now, Gustave can see the way that his pupils have blown, dark and wanting. “What are you asking for, then?”
This is the part where his thoughts run dry.
This is the part where want needs to turn into words and Gustave has nothing for him. Nothing at all.
His heart jumps into his throat at the thought of it: the pressure, the disappointment, the emptiness in his mind where he’s sure there should be something.
There should be Verso.
He can’t find the words, so he steps forward instead. One step, then two, then further until he's reached the couch. He climbs cautiously forward, working his way into Verso’s open lap, one knee planted on either side of his hips. They don’t break eye contact.
Neither of them breathe, not as he settles his weight. Not as he takes his place right where he wants to be, and holds Verso’s eyes in the desperate hope that at least one of them knows what this means. At every point of contact, Verso is warm and solid - he spreads his legs a little wider just to force Gustave to adjust. He's already breathless just from the feeling of the firm muscle of Verso's thighs beneath him.
Verso’s hands come to rest on his hips, and some part of Gustave feels like he’s starting to snap back into place, right where he’s supposed to be. His eyes close for a second to enjoy the weight and warmth of Verso’s hands - and when Verso draws him in a little closer, a little more snug, Gustave follows willingly.
When he opens his eyes again, Verso is still watching him: there’s a clouded intensity in his gaze beyond anything that Gustave has seen from him before, even on stage.
“Can you- ” He cuts himself off before he can say anything, the words shuddering to a stop like they shouldn’t cross his lips. Verso’s hands, gentle on his hips, give him a small nudge, even as he nods to urge Gustave onwards. “My hair. When we were kissing in the Opera House, you were pulling my hair.”
Verso gives a thoughtful hum - and it feels like acknowledgement more than anything else. “You want it to hurt,” he states.
It’s not a question.
Gustave can feel his cheeks flood: embarrassment, perhaps, from hearing it put so bluntly. He isn’t some faint, flushing virgin; he isn’t gentle or weak-willed; but hearing someone like Verso dissect him still gets under his skin.
Verso’s hands leave his hips and glide upwards instead, slowly climbing over Gustave’s torso like an explorer returning to familiar territory. Gustave finds himself breathing heavily under his touch as he waits to see what Verso is doing.
“You want me to take charge,” Verso continues as his hands change direction and start to travel south. He reaches the waistband of Gustave’s trousers again, finding Gustave’s belt - and just running a thumb along the edge of it. Nothing more. Verso’s voice only dips lower, and he tilts his head to ensure he catches Gustave’s gaze and holds that eye contact like a weapon. “Is that it?”
His hands don’t move any further.
His gaze doesn’t falter.
And there’s so damn much waiting in that gaze - it feels like there is layer upon layer of meaning and sub-meaning, so many complexities that Gustave can feel himself missing. It’s crawling like an absence over his skin.
But Verso’s gaze is there: calm, blue. Pleading.
That’s what hits him.
Verso is sitting here in his bitterly stuffy apartment, surrounded by the detritus of a life deliberately unlived, his clothes wrinkled and his hair unwashed, but there’s something in his eyes, now, that’s awake all over again. There’s something that’s woken up, just for this - just for him. It's like switching a machine on for the first time and hearing it purr.
Unsure what else to do, Gustave nods and hopes that might be enough. He wets his lips and wonders what it would be like to lean in and taste the faint mint of the toothpaste in Verso’s mouth, to kiss him like they had in the opera house, Verso’s hand in his hair and tongue claiming his attention.
Verso doesn’t give him what he wants.
Verso just holds eye contact while his hands move on Gustave’s belt, slowly unbuckling it then pulling it free. He takes his time unfastening Gustave’s trousers as well, and when he prompts Gustave to raise himself up and take them off the thought of baulking or refusing doesn’t even run through his mind.
He stands up and kicks his boots off as quickly as he can, painfully aware of Verso’s cool gaze on him. Cautiously he pulls his trousers off too, throwing them down on the couch. He hesitates, thumbs hooked in his underwear, his heart beating so hard he’s sure Verso must be able to hear it.
On the couch, Verso is watching him like he’s the only thing that exists in the entire canvas. Like he’s the only thing worth taking in.
Gustave doesn’t know if he’s ever been watched like this before - he doesn’t know if anyone has ever looked at him with the same unrestrained, unfiltered desire that’s currently on Verso’s face.
“And the rest,” Verso prompts quietly.
His briefs join his trousers, flung in a pile on the couch, and then Verso's patience seems to run out as he reaches for him before he even has a chance to think about removing his waistcoat or shirt - Verso’s hands snap to his bare hips, carefully drawing him in again. Gustave climbs back into Verso’s lap like he belongs there. He’s hard, he’s so hard, and it’s only the length of his shirt that protects any of him from view.
“Hands on the back of the couch, behind me,” Verso instructs softly. “You can hold on as tight as you need.”
Hands on the couch. Hands not on Verso.
Gustave wouldn’t have expected that restriction to burn as much as it does, but he can feel it getting under his skin. A needless boundary. A flex: is Verso asking him to do this just to see if he’ll actually play along? Is he drawing imaginary walls to see if they’ll both pretend they’re real?
Wetting his lips, Gustave tilts his head to the side. He reaches past Verso’s shoulders, one hand on either side of him, as he grips the back of the couch and holds on tight.
“Good,” Verso murmurs, and Gustave hates himself a little for the way that that single word trickles down his spine. “That’s good. Now you stay quiet for me, okay? Quiet. Just like this. I’ll take care of you.”
Verso leans forward, chest-to-chest, mouth-to-mouth, not kissing him but letting him know that he could.
Gustave wants to lean in, wants to close the distance, wants to take instead of wait - but there’s something else he wants more.
Good, that’s what he wants. ‘Good,’ an approving whisper in the warm husk of Verso’s voice.
Verso keeps his mouth just out of reach, breathing him in and refusing to close the gap, but his hand finally reaches between them. He slips between the gentle fall of the cotton of Gustave’s white shirt and his hand finally, finally closes around Gustave’s hard cock. The shock of it - the relief - hits into him like a sharp punch to the gut, a rush of air spilling from his chest in desperation.
Verso’s palm is warm, so warm. His grip is firm enough to quake through the entirety of Gustave’s body from a single touch.
“There, that’s it,” Verso breathes. “Is that what you wanted? Is that what you came here for? Such a desperate thing.”
Gustave closes his eyes, nodding without thought, unable to even protest. Verso’s hand has barely moved but Gustave’s hips thrust of their own accord into his waiting grip.
When Gustave opens his eyes again, Verso gives him a small nod. Permission. Gustave bites his tongue around the part of him that wants to thank him for it.
He thrusts into Verso’s palm - it’s not quite enough, not quite what he wants, but, merde, at this point he’ll take anything. Anything at all. He doesn’t think he knows how to stop.
“You want something a little bit wrong, hm?” Verso continues. “That’s what you’re here for. That’s all I am.”
Gustave would argue - he really would - but that’s the moment that Verso pulls his hand away. Gustave finds a groan punching its way from his chest, but then Verso’s palm is in front of his mouth. Verso is still holding his gaze, still unflinching, still asking questions that Gustave doesn’t understand, as he nods towards his hand.
“Spit,” he instructs.
He could be talking about the weather.
With hesitation, Gustave leans in to do as he’s told, holding Verso’s gaze as he spits into his waiting hand and pretends that his flush doesn’t deepen. It doesn’t matter, not for a single moment, not when Verso reaches back between them and wraps his hand around Gustave’s cock again - and he’s moving it this time, jerking him off slick with Gustave’s own saliva, his other hand grasping tightly to Gustave’s hip then moving decisively up to his throat again, sinking into place, holding on tight enough that it almost hurts. Gustave pants against him: he can feel the firm press of Verso’s palm against his pulse-point like a twisted promise. What does it say about him if he wants it to bruise?
Verso’s hand on his cock moves fast, unrelenting; it’s all Gustave can do to grip on tightly to the back of the couch and ride it out.
“That’s all I can be, you know,” Verso murmurs. “Something wrong. Something dirty.”
He touches Gustave like he already knows him, like he’s already learned every inch of who Gustave is and how to undo him; he touches him like he already knows how to wind Gustave tight and leave him gasping for air against the firm grip around his throat. There’s something sharp hanging in the deliberate knowledge that Verso could easily hold him harder, could squeeze and make him work for every breath: the only reason he’s even panting now is because Verso allows it.
“Just something to play with in the shadows, hm,” Verso says - but it’s getting difficult to focus on the words with how easily Verso is playing him; it’s almost impossible to follow along with what he’s saying. Still jerking him off, the sound of it embedding in Gustave’s mind, Verso’s other hand releases his throat and finds his chin instead. Clear air rushes into Gustave's lungs as Verso crooks his fingers underneath his chin and roughly forces Gustave’s head upright again: he makes him return to that eye contact, unflinching, unyielding. “Look at me. This is it. This is all I can offer you. Do you understand that?”
Gustave’s breath is a lost, hiccupping mess. His hips twitch and flutter of their own accord and Verso’s hand is good, it’s so good. Gustave's metal hand clenches hard on the back of the couch, so hard that he can hear the complaint of the wood as his fingers dig deep imprints, and he needs to get control of himself - he knows that - he does - but he can barely keep his eyes open like Verso wants, fighting with the impulse to screw them shut and lose himself.
“Oh, you look so good like this,” Verso murmurs. “Right on the edge. About to tip over. Fighting it for me. So good.”
There’s a sound that Gustave makes in response.
He’ll remember it, later, ashamed in his shower.
It’s not quite a groan. It’s not quite a whimper.
It’s something far more broken than that.
“There you go. Are you there? Do you want my permission?” Verso asks, sweet as syrup, soft as home, sharp as a blade. Gustave nods, frantically, Verso’s fingers still settled beneath his chin, but this time all he gets is a shake of Verso’s head. “No. Speak to me. If you want something, ask for it.”
Verso’s other hand is moving between them, messy and slick with spit and Gustave’s pre-cum, and Gustave is fighting back the twitching in his limbs so badly he feels like it might be a losing battle. He wants to be good.
Good.
Please.
The word bubbles out of him. “Please,” he whispers. Shaking. Is that broken thing really his voice? “Please. Verso. I just want to come. Let me - please. Let me come.”
The relief that floods through him when he says it is immeasurable. He’s done it; he’s said it; he’s there.
But then Verso’s fingers are pushing his head even further up, like he’s examining him. And his other hand, once tight around Gustave’s cock, loosens, slows, and stops - and Gustave feels the shock as that fevered edge is yanked desperately from his heated grasp.
Verso holds his gaze, considers his plea, and lets a knowing smile come to his lips.
The word that comes from him feels like a death sentence. “No,” he whispers, soft, gentle, and final. “No. You don’t get that here, do you understand?”
What?, is the correct response to that. No, I don’t understand.
Gustave’s breathing comes in heavy, confused pants. Still on the back of the couch, his grip tightens as he tries to will back the aching indignity, the part of him that would do anything, anything at all if Verso would just rewind the past few seconds and let him finish.
“If all you want is someone to help you get off, you won’t find that with me,” Verso states. “If that’s what you’re here for, there are a thousand better, safer places to go.”
The frustration boils - a couple of low, yellow sparks flash around his metal arm before Gustave gets a grip on that fast. Verso’s quick enough to spot it anyway, his eyes sparkling in delight - and there’s a challenge there too, like he wants Gustave to react, something Gustave knows he shouldn’t rise to.
He clenches his jaw. “You’re such an asshole,” he mutters between clenched teeth.
Through it all, through the frustration, he thinks there’s something on Verso’s face that’s not just triumphant: it’s fond. “I know,” Verso agrees, smoothing his hands down Gustave’s sides. “But you like me this way.”
Gustave relaxes his grip on the back of the couch and leans back, releasing himself from Verso's instructions as he, sits embarrassingly comfortably on top of Verso’s thighs. He’s still hard, achingly so - but the reality of it is as cold as a wet cloth to the face. “Putain,” he breathes, shaking his head as he gets back to his feet. “Putain.”
His joints protest after kneeling over Verso for so long, but it’s nothing compared to the red-faced humiliation of watching Verso sit back, lording over him, as Gustave grabs for his shed clothes and starts pulling them back on. “So what was this? A game? Some way to humiliate me, is that it?”
Verso leans back on the couch until his head hits the backrest and he’s doing nothing more than staring up at the dusty ceiling again. “You came here because you were looking for something. You want a purpose: you want something that wasn’t chosen for you. You want something that you chose instead. Something to serve that feels real,” he says - but his voice is flat, like he’s reciting a long-memorised poem.
The sound of it churns inside Gustave’s chest - and his head is aching again, a pounding in his temples, as he finishes yanking his clothes back on.
“Come back tomorrow,” Verso says without looking at him. “I’ll do the same thing.”
“And why would I want to do that?”
Verso lifts his head just slightly from the back of the couch, just enough to look at him again. “Because you want to see where this goes, where I’ll take you,” he suggests, but there’s that goddamn smirk on his face again, all hints of fondness deliberately washed away. “Because you want to be good.”
And Gustave’s heart is racing - thundering - but even now there’s a part of him that thinks Verso might be right.
“Fuck you, Verso,” he sighs, already one step towards the door.
Verso sinks back down onto his couch, ennui in action. “See you tomorrow,” he murmurs.
Gustave barely hears him beyond the slamming of the door.