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- Gloves
It’s an accident at first.
There’s a rush to leave in the morning, and in the chaos of the campsite Gustave ends up grabbing a pair of gloves that don’t quite fit. He’s still half-asleep as he pulls the worn leather over one palm and then blinks blearily at the other, extra glove clutched in his metal hand. He doesn’t usually bother trying to wear one over the mechanical arm - so his sleep-addled mind is still trying to piece together the clues as his thoughts slowly revive, one-by-one.
Ah.
These aren’t his gloves, are they?
He looks down and flexes his hand: it’s a black glove, no cut-out in the back. If he hadn’t been in such a sleepy rush he would have noticed right away.
To the side, he hears the familiar huff of air that signals Verso’s amusement. “Bit of a mix-up?” Verso suggests. “Don’t worry about it.” He snatches Gustave’s actual glove from where it’s sitting on the ground. “We can swap for the day.”
Without further comment, he slips Gustave’s glove onto his hand and starts to walk off as if there’s nothing further to be done.
In the confusion, Gustave’s mind finishes waking up to find a stream of baffled question marks crawling around the inside of his skull.
Throughout the day, he finds Verso staring at his gloved hand whenever it moves. There’s something strange in his gaze, something thoughtful.
And Gustave finds himself staring right back.
- Arm Guard
The next time it happens, it’s not accidental at all.
His arm has been aching all day, the after-effects of the recoil on his gun: he’d held it wrong during a fight, and these are the consequences. It’ll fade. He tells himself to just put up with it. Don’t make a fuss.
“Give me your arm,” Verso sighs at him while they’re walking together. When Gustave hesitates, Verso sighs a second time - and Gustave wants to tell himself there’s something fond about it. “You’ve been rubbing it all day. It hurts, doesn’t it?”
“... A little.”
“So give me your arm.”
When he gives in, as cautiously as a dog with a burr in its paw, Verso doesn’t waste a moment. Like he's been waiting for the opportunity, he abruptly attaches his bracer to Gustave’s forearm, his hands firm but not rough.
The solid wood holds his arm steady as Verso carefully ties the bindings. The wooden pieces hold Gustave’s arm carefully in place: the red gestral markings scrawled on the outside looked natural on Verso, but look utterly wrong on Gustave instead.
“Verso- ”
“Don’t mention it,” Verso cuts him off before he can even voice the protest. “You need this more than I do right now.”
He finishes attaching it to Gustave’s arm, and his hands linger on the brace, soft and delicate. Checking the fit, Gustave tells himself stubbornly.
The pain doesn’t fade, not right away, but something else joins it.
It feels like warmth.
- Backpack
Gustave catches Verso again just outside camp, glaring down at the pile of their things with his arms crossed over his chest.
Gustave’s arm is feeling better, but the guard is still lashed tightly to it. Days have passed, but Verso hasn’t asked for it back; Gustave hasn’t offered. There’s something about the way that Verso watches him wearing it, something about the intensity of the way Verso stares at it.
It’s something Gustave isn’t ready to examine.
“Everything alri-”
“Can I use this?” Verso asks as soon as Gustave joins him.
Gustave has to look down to work out what ‘this’ is. Verso nudges it with his foot for good measure. ‘It’ is Gustave’s small black backpack, sitting harmlessly by a log near the fire. “My bag?” he checks.
It’s an old-fashioned quirk. With their pictos, he doesn’t really need to carry anything around like an old explorer - but he can’t help himself. It feels more real to carry his journal on his back, right beside him, not simply entrusted to their chroma.
“I want to go gathering supplies,” Verso clarifies. “This would be ideal.”
“Uh…”
“Call it a trade,” Verso suggests. There’s a smile starting to lick at the side of his mouth, and Gustave finds that he likes the sight of it more than he should. “Your bag for my bracer. You can get it back when you’re ready to swap.”
Gustave doesn’t mean to smile back, but it happens all the same. His metal fingers brush against the wooden back of the arm guard, tracing the gestral designs. It feels familiar on his arm already, like the ever-present warmth of a pair of hands.
“Fine,” he agrees. “A swap. A temporary swap.”
His bag is on Verso’s back almost before he’s finished speaking. Verso places it carefully and adjusts the straps - and, quietly, he looks delighted with himself for it, like a young boy who’s successfully negotiated for more sweets. He settles it onto his shoulders and tucks his thumbs against the straps to hold the bag in place.
“Temporary!” Gustave calls after him as Verso starts to depart.
All he receives is an absent-minded wave of acknowledgement.
He gets the strangest feeling he isn’t going to get that bag back after all.
He gets the even stranger feeling that he doesn’t really mind.
- Scarf
The fire flickers in front of them, but it’s a dying ember against the night’s cold. The wind rushes around their camp; the girls have wisely already slunk away to bed, sleeping under blanket after blanket after blanket, while Monoco and Esquie are curled together in a particularly peculiar pile for warmth. Gustave can’t say he blames them.
He should call it a night himself, really. He would, but Verso is still up: staring into the fire, watching the flames, seeking the warmth. There’s a distant, troubled look on his face, a kaleidoscope of horrors he won’t name. Gustave knows better than to ask, really, but there’s a problem about ignoring it entirely too: he can see Verso’s hands shaking from the cold.
Knowing it’ll be rejected, knowing he’s going to do it anyway, Gustave pulls the wrap from around his neck. Tendrils of cold reach for him instantly, but he ignores it all to reach out.
Before Verso can react, just as fast as Verso had been with his arm guard, Gustave manages to throw the scarf over the top of Verso’s head and pull it down: his residual warmth soaks through into Verso’s neck, the dark grey scarf almost blending in with the darkness of his hair.
“Gustave,” Verso protests with a laugh, startled out of his thoughts. “What- ”
“You looked cold,” Gustave says. Not a lie. “And I’m going to bed soon anyway.” Also not a lie. “So I thought you needed it more than me.”
Verso’s hand brushes against the soft fabric around his neck. It settles into place like it’s always been there.
Gustave’s heart jumps in his throat. “... And it looks better on you anyway,” he adds.
Also not a lie.
Also absolutely terrifying.
Verso looks up at him with eyes sharp enough to cut glass. He looks less like a man that’s just received a compliment, and more like someone contemplating a new and unexpected stab wound.
“Um,” Gustave adds. He swallows and feels the loss of his scarf more than ever. The night is cold but his face feels warm. “Well. I’d better go and get some sleep. Good night, Verso.”
As he retreats into the night, he only dares to look back once.
In the firelight, heat dancing over his face, he sees Verso burying deeper into the grey infinity scarf wrapped around his neck - he sees him breathing deeply, eyes closed, like the scent is warmer than the fire itself.
- Cape
The higher they go in the mountains the colder it gets. Before long, Gustave is left feeling the absence of the wrap around his neck and shoulders as the cold sinks in.
He hasn’t asked for it back from Verso.
And Verso hasn’t offered.
Still, as they’re trudging through the snow and Gustave’s hands are shoved deep into his pockets, there is a very, very small part of him that might be glaring at the back of Verso’s neck: the back of Verso’s very warm, very scarfed, very wrapped-up neck.
Gustave’s teeth want to start chattering. He clenches his jaw in a firm attempt to get that under control.
Up ahead, Lune floats effortlessly over the thickening snow, and Maelle and Sciel seem to be bounding through it like they hardly notice the cold. Just Gustave, then. Maybe they should have checked if the Manor had a secret stash of heavy, warm, abundant coats.
Verso glances over his shoulder at Gustave, a light in his eyes like he’s about to make a joke - but the joke dies on his lips before it makes it out. It transforms somewhere between thought and action into the roll of his eyes instead.
“You’re freezing,” he states.
And even if the fingers on Gustave’s remaining hand might be in danger of falling off, he makes an attempt at a shrug anyway. “It’s not too bad,” he promises. “You should see Lumière in winter.”
“I’ve lived in Lumière in winter,” Verso reminds him. “It’s nothing like this.”
Before they can argue any more, Verso drops back a few steps until they’re walking beside each other. His hands start to fiddle with the clothing clasps near his neck and shoulders.
“It’s fine - I don’t want the scarf back, Verso,” Gustave sighs at him. “It’s-”
But it isn’t the scarf that settles around his shoulders. Verso throws his short cape around Gustave instead, deftly starting to fasten the buckles before Gustave can raise an objection.
It’s warm.
The ragged, ripped fabric drapes down his freezing back, and the shoulders and collar are even warmer with some fur - or bristles? - that Gustave genuinely thinks might have come from Monoco. The cape still retains so much of Verso’s warmth that, for a brief moment, it feels like sinking into a steady, firm hug.
He swallows hard and breathes through his nose. The cloak smells of Verso too.
“No arguments,” Verso insists, too close, too warm, too sweet. His voice is low and there’s something in his eyes, a glint of something far more dangerous than mischief. “Besides,” he adds after he finishes closing the cloak’s buckles, and he brushes imaginary snow from the frozen line of Gustave’s cheekbone, “It looks better on you anyway.”
The echo of his own fumbled compliment sinks into the snow.
If Gustave is left struggling for words, if he’s left obsessing over the streak of heat left behind by Verso’s fingertips, if he’s left desperately wondering if Verso’s lips are as warm as the rest of him…
Well.
He’s going to blame it on the frostbite when he decides to seek out that warmth: a snow-dappled kiss in the low winter sun.
+1. Wardrobe
When the Continent is a distant memory and they’re back in Lumiere, Gustave tries to catch up on every second of missed sleep.
Lazy weekends and long lie-ins, he discovers the luxury of time now he actually has so much of it to waste: the Monolith no longer looms on the horizon, perilously counting down their days.
On a sleepy weekend, he’s lying on his front under crumpled white sheets. His body aches in all the most exquisite ways - it tells him whispering stories of their adventures the night before, a sweet memory of searching hands in every throb of his muscles.
But the other half of the bed is starting to go cold. Gustave reaches out for the heat, already knowing that it’s gone by the sound of rustling from the other side of the room.
“Gustave,” Verso calls, distracted. “Is this mine or yours?”
With a sleepy hum, Gustave pokes his head out from under the covers. He finds Verso standing in front of their shared wardrobe, contemplating a white shirt that’s still on its hanger.
As Verso hasn’t got dressed yet, that means that Gustave has a chance to stare at his boyfriend in the morning sun: shirtless, bare-skinned and fresh from the shower. The appreciative groan that tumbles out of him is entirely accidental.
The smirk that it gets from Verso is more than worth the embarrassment.
“Focus,” Verso reminds him. “We’re meeting Sciel and Lune in twenty minutes.”
“We are?” Gustave glances at the clock on the wall, and groans again. This groan is less appreciative. “We are.”
“So: is this shirt mine or yours?” Verso repeats gently. “I can’t remember.”
Gustave props his head up on his hand to take a proper look at the item. They’re roughly the same size, and a white shirt is a white shirt - and over the past few months they’ve been easing into one another’s lives, a slow and accidental sprawl. A few socks and a toothbrush at one another’s apartments, followed by an overnight bag, followed by the kind of blending sprawl that leaves distinctions like ‘mine’ and ‘yours’ feeling meaningless.
After all they’ve been through together, Gustave never quite got around to asking Verso to move in with him. It’s never felt necessary; when you’ve saved the world and your own messy family together, stressing about keys to a shared apartment never really makes it back onto the agenda.
“Gustave,” Verso calls again - but he’s crawling onto the end of the bed, white shirt in hand, and Gustave’s fairly sure that means he’s winning. “Wake up, mon chéri. The shirt. Yours or mine?”
Trying not to get distracted by the admittedly very distracting dip of Verso’s collarbone, Gustave sits up and reaches for the shirt instead. He pretends to evaluate it for a moment, taking in the soft fabric and well-made stitching, before he shrugs and slides one arm through a sleeve. He follows it up with the other and leaves the shirt draped open in the front, an accidental frame for his own bare torso.
Verso’s the one staring at his collarbones this time.
Gustave’s absolutely winning whatever this non-competition might be.
“Yours or mine,” he repeats thoughtfully, while Verso’s crawling closer up the bed to get a better look. “Is there a difference any more?”
He gets a distracted hum in return - and that’s his only warning before Verso pounces, apparently deciding that they can brawl it out to work out whose shirt it can be for the day.
They’re late to their coffee date with Sciel and Lune.
Their shared wardrobe might be the start of a whole new problem.
.fin