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1.
Renoir finds his baby boy in tears under the dining room table. An immediate culprit comes to mind - he heard his daughter's taunting laughter earlier, ringing through the Manor halls. He adores his eldest, fierce and fiery and unforgiving. But there are times when her intensity can cause unintentional hurts. His heart breaks at Verso's sniffling.
Gingerly, he moves a chair aside. "Verso? What's wrong?"
His son makes a stifled sound and swipes away his tears with his sleeve. "Nothing, Papa!"
"You're crying."
"I'm not."
Renoir scoffs. Such a childish impulse, to deny the obvious. "Come here, son."
Verso hesitates, then crawls out to see him. Renoir wastes no time in lifting him up into his arms, holding him close and swiping a thumb along his ruddy cheeks.
"Do you want to tell me about it?"
"It's fine."
"It's not fine. You're upset. Was it something Clea said?"
Renoir is doing his best to be gentle and unimposing, but something in his tone must imply punishment, because Verso tenses and shakes his head emphatically. "No, Papa! We were just playing. I'm fine, see?"
Renoir sighs. Sibling loyalty, he supposes. Still. "Sometimes Clea says things she doesn't mean. It's not alright for her to upset you, though. Do you understand?"
Verso holds to his denial. "No, she didn't do anything, honest!"
"Verso."
"I'm not a baby!" Verso insists stubbornly. Renoir sighs.
His son's face is bright and full of life again. At the very least, this conversation has distracted him from his tears. Still, he should perhaps keep the two children separate for the rest of the afternoon, and give them some space away from one another.
"No, you aren't a baby. You're growing up far too fast for my liking. Would you like to help me with my work this afternoon?"
Verso's eyes light up. "Can I?"
"Of course." Renoir kisses Verso on his dark curls, and Verso tucks his head under his chin in a hug. He's at such a sweet age, Renoir knows he should cherish every moment while it lasts.
2.
There's a broken vase and two suspects, lined up in the dining room for questioning.
Clea, barefoot and with paint up to her elbows, crosses her arms and raises an eyebrow. "Don't look at me, I was in my room."
Renoir turns his gaze to his son, who avoids his eyes. "...Verso?"
"I think the pedestal is unstable, Papa. It must have wobbled off on its own."
"You think the vase fell and broke... on its own?" His tone aims for neutral, but he fears it's impossible to completely muffle his incredulity.
His son gives a nonchalant shrug, still looking off to the side. "Our geology book says vibrations can travel through surfaces. You know we're always running through the upstairs hallways. Even the sound travelling from yelling could have moved the vase just the tiniest bit. Really, you should be careful raising your voice at us, you might cause even more damage."
Merde, the things no one warns you about when you have children. He looks off to his right and sees Aline lifting a hand to her mouth to mask her grin. Clea doesn't bother hiding her snicker, her eyes flashing to Verso in amusement - either in approval at his rebelliousness, or delight at his impending punishment, Renoir is unsure. Punishments are in order, though.
Using his most no-nonsense parenting voice, he orders Verso to clean up the pieces - and then to re-assemble them, using an adhesive cement they procured for one of Clea's projects. Verso whines and protests. It will take hours, of course. But Renoir says the punishment stands... unless Verso admits what actually happened to the vase.
Verso bites his tongue and suffers through the menial task.
Renoir thinks the matter settled and the lesson well learned, until a week later. Their young new dog, Monoco, starts playing too roughly with a toy and forgets his surroundings, slamming side-long into a pedestal and almost knocking a second sculpture to the floor. Renoir catches it, barely, and has a moment of sobering realization that his son took the fall for something he didn't do.
How foolish was he, he thinks, for not realizing his son has never been prone to wanton destruction? And how foolish was his son, for not realizing that forgiving a dog its nature was far easier than forgiving a son his deliberate lies?
If he had to pinpoint a moment when he first started to notice his son's impulse to hide, to mask, and to cloud the truth with smoke and mirrors... it was then.
If only Renoir had any idea what to do about it.
3.
It shouldn't surprise him as much as it does, when he's woken to the ethereal notes lilting through the Manor in the dead of night.
If he'd been paying any attention at all to his son, it shouldn't have surprised him.
He should have seen the way Verso's eyes lit up at his first music lesson. The pride in the way he'd perform on the family piano at dinner. The sheer number of times he'd had to carry his son to bed after he fell asleep in the library, the dulcet tones of the phonograph lulling him to sleep.
But when he hears the melody late that night, his first thought, irrationally, is intruders. He grabs a fireplace poker and creeps down the hallway in his dressing gown, hushing Aline back to sleep. As he looks over the railing to see the small form of his son, practicing in the dead of night...
All he can think is, Oh.
I see.
I see you now.
There are tears in his eyes as he watches. He notices them belatedly, caught in the waves of shock and awe and wonder. His beautiful, cautious, duplicitous son. His son, who is his very heart, but who doesn't trust his father with his own.
How strange to have failed him so powerfully in ways he's never even known before now.
He thinks of his son's rigid spine during painting lessons, his strict obedience. He thinks of the sheer expectations placed on his young shoulders, the assumption that there was no other path than to continue their family's legacy.
And never a word of complaint. Only an insistence that it was fine. It was all fine.
As if it were a foregone conclusion.
Unforgivably, it is only now that he sees the lack of joy. The absence of relishing the act of creation, the way Clea does. The breathless wonder in the face of infinite possibilities he sees in Aline. He finds the shape of his son's suffering in the negative space, in stark contrast to the way his small fingers dance across piano keys, painting rivers of color with notes instead of a brush. Now, for the first time in his life, he truly hears his passion, his talent, and the contrast is staggering. He smiles proudly at the small flourishes his son adds, adaptations and improvisations that imbue his very soul into the chords.
He watches. Until Verso closes the piano and creeps back up to bed.
Were he a braver man, Renoir would confront him. Give him a fatherly talk filled with wisdom and understanding. The sort of talk he always wished his father would have given him. But Renoir is afraid. Afraid of what would happen if his apologies and his acceptance were too weak to get through. Afraid of what it would mean for their relationship if his understanding was only met with more denial. Renoir knows he can be a harsh man with an unforgiving temper, and seeing his son's distrust only brings the worst of his own self-doubt to the fore.
So he says nothing.
But he orders a second piano for his son's playroom. (And a second harp for Clea's, to help disguise his intent.) And if he starts to suggest music practice as an acceptable alternative to art time, well, only Aline ever has to know.
4.
Renoir loves his wife with all his heart, but every marriage has its rough patches. He's ashamed to admit one of their worst falls with the surprise of Aline's third pregnancy.
There's no excuse for his behavior. Renoir knows this.
Their home has plenty of space for another child. Between his and Aline's successful careers, and Aline's inherited wealth, a third child will want for nothing.
Still, the first emotion he feels when Aline tells him is cold dread.
Clea and Verso are closer to adulthood than infancy. Their lives have settled into something stable, something predictable. A baby would throw all that into chaos.
Aline's second pregnancy was miserable, her persistent nausea making it difficult for her to get out of bed for months. And enduring the sleepless nights of newborns not once but twice has not endeared Renoir to the experience in any way.
He and Aline aren't getting any younger, either. The energy they had to chase after toddlers has long-since waned. And what of this unborn child's future? Ten years is a large gap among siblings. They'll have none of the close, combative camaraderie that Clea and Verso share. The child will be fated only for an almost-empty nest, with two parents well into middle age and an oppressive silence filling the Manor halls.
He says words he regrets, at a volume he regrets further.
Such is the hold his emotions have over him that it's only after, in the silence following the slammed doors, that he remembers Verso.
Clea is away, at an art class at the Gallery until evening. But Verso is just down the hall. It isn't good for children to hear their parents fight.
As he approaches Verso's room, he hears a flurry of piano. He knocks gently and the music stops.
"Everything alright, son?"
Verso beams at him pleasantly. "Yes, Papa. I'm just practicing."
"You didn't hear...?" Renoir trails off, unsure of how to finish. What to admit.
"Hear what?" Verso asks innocently. "I was caught up in the music, Papa, sorry."
Renoir accepts that as his one fortune for the day and retreats to his study to wallow in his guilt. As the evening sun sets, however, his guilt has compounded and brought creeping doubt along with it.
He does, at least, know his son better than this.
Steeling himself for a direct discussion, he enters Verso's room... only to find it empty. Confused, he checks the library, the kitchen, and even the painting room only to find no sign of the boy. As he returns for a second look through Verso's room, anxiousness building in his gut, he catches Verso midway through climbing in his bedroom window.
Verso freezes, pale eyes wide and caught.
Renoir is incensed. Before he can utter an inevitable lie, Renoir cuts him off. "Sneaking out? From the second story? What were you thinking? No - this is unacceptable. Your mother will be furious. What on earth would be so important that you would-"
And then he stops.
Because, held in Verso's left hand, is a white rose.
Every time Renoir has upset Aline, he has gifted her a white rose.
Symbolic of the petals of her chroma, her elegant beauty, and of all their years painting side by side. It's become their secret language, an unspoken apology.
Apparently not-so-secret. What on earth is he to do with such sharp-eyed children.
Verso stays silent and still, frozen halfway in the window. His face is a blank mask, as if he's still gauging the best way to play the situation.
Renoir is at a loss. "You... you heard."
After a careful pause, Verso nods.
"And what were you planning to do?? If you gave it to-" ... if you gave it to me, you'd be caught, Renoir thinks. Oh. He'd planned to leave it for Aline. And Aline would assume it was from Renoir. An apology without his consent.
When did his son learn this manipulation? Indignation and confusion war within him. It's not his place to intercede in the affairs of grown ups. How many other times had he sought to control others like this? He's only a child.
Floundering at the feeling that his son has become a stranger to him, he retreats into the familiar comfort of his fury. "Have you any idea how dangerous it is for you to be sneaking off on your own!"
"... it was only to the market," Verso defends.
"You've gone to the market alone before?"
"No, of course not. Today was the first time."
He says it with such perfect sincerity. Merde, if only Renoir could believe him.
Renoir scrubs a hand over his face. "You'll stay in your room," he says. "No music. No piano. You may work on your studies only. I will check on you periodically and if you're not present there will be hell to pay, do you understand?"
"... Yes, Papa."
Renoir turns to leave, but Verso calls out-
"Papa, wait." He holds out the flower. There's a moment where Renoir thinks he sees a hint of fear and desperation in his son's eyes, but then it's gone. In its place is only a chastised nonchalance that cannot be anything other than wholly deliberate. "... Don't let it go to waste?" He leaves his arm outstretched for a long moment.
Heaven help him, Renoir takes the rose and leaves without a word.
Down the hall, he stops with a shaking breath. He has half a mind to crush the damned flower in his palm. The fear that his son was missing, the fear for Aline and his new unborn child, the fear that he has absolutely no idea what he's doing-
And the deep, intrinsic realization that his son will bear any suffering without complaint for those he loves. That his lies always, always come down to those he loves.
Is he meant to punish or reward that?
Renoir doesn't know.
5.
His son left the house almost every day for the past two weeks in his best clothes and with his hair painstakingly styled, and today he's been holed up in the library listening to the same morose phonograph for the better part of four hours.
It doesn't take a genius.
Renoir makes a big show of loudly calling to Aline that he'll be catching up on work in the library to give his son a moment to collect himself and preserve his dignity. But it seems he needn't have bothered.
"Good evening, Papa," Verso greets as Renoir enters. His son sits on the sofa with Monoco curled up at his side, appearing to casually turn the page in a book Renoir would have sworn he had no interest in yesterday.
"What are you reading?" Renoir asks.
"Oh, you know. Just something I picked up out of curiosity." Surely Verso would give himself away if he closed the cover to check the title.
"Enjoying it?" Renoir asks, because Clea has to get her contrariness from somewhere.
"It has its ups and downs."
Renoir is certain Verso could not list a single thing about this book if pressed.
He searches Verso's face. Nothing about him seems even the slightest bit perturbed. His mask is almost perfect. The only tells Renoir can find at all are the singular focus with which Verso follows the lines of text and the persistent way Monoco leans against him.
It strikes Renoir as ominous that soon he won't be able to read his son at all. He thinks bitterly of how endearing it had seemed when his son was just a babe, lying about whether he'd been crying under the dining room table. Apparently he is long past the days when his son would ever share his sadness with him. Or his joy. Or his anger, or his fears. Renoir's chest tightens.
But he lets out a slow breath. Being a parent isn't about what you need from your child. It's about what your child needs from you. His son may be mostly grown now, but he's still his little boy, and it's about time Renoir figures out a way to help him on his terms.
Renoir walks to the shelves and runs his fingers over the gold embossed titles on the spines before selecting one in particular.
"Did I ever tell you about this one?"
Verso looks up from studiously pretending to read. "No?"
"Tragic tale of two families warring over a shared estate. Absolutely harrowing."
Verso seems skeptical, but humors him. "Was it now?"
"Truly. It is, without doubt, the most dreadful...ly boring story I've ever had the misfortune to come across. I thought I would die trying to slog through it."
This startles a laugh out of his son. "... Why do you own it then?" he counters.
Renoir sits on the couch beside him. "Did I ever tell you the story behind it?"
"I think you know you haven't," Verso answers, but he turns to face him.
And so Renoir tells him a story. A story of a girl he chased in his youth, who was beautiful to the point of distraction but completely wrong for him. About how he'd read terrible novel after terrible novel in his attempts to impress her, only to culminate with the pinnacle of utter pointlessness he held in his hand. And how he'd unleashed his frustration about dull words, dull problems, and duller people to a complete stranger... who turned out to be the most vibrant woman he'd ever met.
"And let me guess, she taught you to paint," says Verso, though he looks quite charmed despite himself.
"I think the lesson here is that life has a way of undermining our expectations," Renoir answers.
"Or the lesson is that you shouldn't base all your hobbies on pursuing women," Verso quips.
Renoir laughs and ruffles his son's hair, just to annoy him. "I'm happy with how things worked out. Eventually you meet the right person and... you're exactly where you're meant to be. You'll understand when you're older. Just be patient."
Verso's smile sobers some, but the warmth remains. "Thank you for the story, Papa."
"My pleasure."
There's still a wall between them that Renoir wonders if he'll ever breach. Details he knows better than to ever ask for. But perhaps like this, in this dance of talking around their problems, he can meet his son where he's at and leave him with no doubt that he's loved.
Renoir gets the sense that, whatever fate throws at them, the two of them will be just fine.
+1.
Renoir had flown into a fury at the shopkeeper's words. The entire ride home was a blur, with only Verso's hand on his shoulder grounding him, his soft voice urging calm.
Before he can storm up to the Manor entrance, Verso holds him back with an insistence that shouldn't be so surprising. His children have always been equally stubborn, Verso's methods just usually employed more tact.
"He's clearly mistaken, Papa," Verso soothed. "He doesn't know her like we do. You think she could hide something this big?"
That... his son may have a point. His youngest daughter is quite easy to read, nowhere near as adept at hiding her emotions as Clea, let alone Verso. And despite Renoir's fears regarding the age discrepancy in his children, his son and his youngest daughter were thick as thieves. Verso adored his baby sister, never hesitating to spend time with her when asked. He took great interest in her hobbies, and she confided in him more closely than anyone else.
"You don't think she's been sneaking out?" Renoir clarifies.
Verso laughs. "Alicia? Hardly. I was the only one reckless enough to try scaling the rose trellises, I promise. The girls both have far too much common sense for that."
Renoir scoffs, though he can't help a small smile. Still, though... "...You have to admit, she's been very interested in stories."
"The Manor has a full library. Is there meant to be something incriminating in that as well?"
"Don't be cheeky, son."
Verso laughs easily, and his demeanor is contagious. Renoir can't help but relax a bit. "I'm not! I'll have you know I indulged in dark, broody poetry in my youth. We all try on hobbies to see what fits. Alicia's been borrowing clay to make maquettes like Clea, and practicing piano with me. She's just trying to find where she belongs, that's all."
"Still, you know how dangerous-"
"I know, I know. Trust me, Papa... Little Alicia would never be caught dead with the Writer's Guild."
And, heaven forgive him, Renoir does.