Chapter Text
Gustave Auclair sits in his recliner, looking at the flier that his twin sister Emma practically forced into his hand the moment she walked through his door.
The flier itself is an aesthetic nightmare. The glossy matte paper is decorated in neon rainbow colors from top to bottom, but the words are written in an elegant, intricate cursive, and phrased like an Olde English crier. It demands that people "come one, come all! Join us on this fantastic night for the grand re-opening of Club 33!"
"Club 33?" presses Gustave, his brows arched in curiosity as he flicks his gaze up to glance at his sister. "Isn't that the nightclub that opened on the corner of Rue Minuit and Rue Matin?"
The thought of spending his evening in a nightclub, getting swallowed up in a sea of drunken, dancing bodies makes Gustave feel so viscerally uncomfortable that he can't help but shift in his seat. Valentine, his malamute-corgi mix, wuffs gently at the movement and vacates her spot on Gustave's lap. She hops down from the chair, opting instead to curl into a ball on her dog bed in the corner.
From there, she watches him with such an intense canine stare that Gustave is instantly ten times more aware of his own anxiety.
"Not just any nightclub," lilts Emma's fiancée Sophie from where she sits curled up on the couch, her ankles resting in Emma's lap. "Supposedly, Club 33 is supposed to be LGBT-friendly. A total safe space to just… relax and have fun for the night without aggressive hetero weirdos being weird."
Emma nods, leaning back in her seat and taking a sip from her coffee. "And if they do, they're in the minority for a change. Doesn't that sound nice?"
Beaming, Sophie builds, "It's the perfect place to let loose and get some of that tension out of your shoulders, Gustave!"
"I'm not tense—"
After letting out a soft, sharp laugh, Emma levels Gustave with the most deadpan stare he's ever seen in his life. "You're the textbook definition of tension, Gustave."
With a huff, Gustave pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose and counters, "Tension, noun. A state of latent hostility or opposition between two groups." He hums. "I guess, by that definition, I am in tense opposition—"
Emma holds up her index finger. "Tension, noun. Inner striving, unrest, or imbalance, often with the psychological indication of emotion—"
"I'm perfectly balanced!" counters Gustave.
This time, Sophie is the one who lets out a sharp laugh. "You're not."
Gustave's brows furrow. "I'm the most balanced one in this room!"
Waving the conversation away with a theatrical swish of her hand, Emma insists, "Anyway, back to the topic at hand." She gestures to the flyer in Gustave's hands. "I think it could be a good time. A place to cut loose and relax."
"Although, if you're relaxed at a nightclub, I think you're doing it very, very wrong," inputs Sophie, her tone far more serious than her joke should probably indicate.
Chuckling fondly, Emma gently pokes Sophie's forehead. "You're right, but that's not the point," she muses. "The point, my dear brother, is that this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."
Nodding emphatically, Sophie points at Gustave and announces, "And we're going tonight." She points between the three of them. "All three of us."
Brows rising, Gustave looks between them, incredulity increasing with each flick of his eyes. Finally, he shakes his head. "No, actually," he replies, offering the gaudy flier back to Emma. "You two are going. I'm sure you'll have an absolutely wonderful time. Relaxing or chaotic as you like it. I'm perfectly content to stay home. I have some things to work on before the next semester starts—"
A heavy, drawn-out sigh rings out from the couch, cutting Gustave's sentence off before he can finish. Sophie levels him with a look so deadpan that Gustave wonders if maybe she actually died in some kind of incident relating to a frying pan. She rolls her eyes and casts a sidelong glance at Emma, unabashedly asking, "Has he always been this boring?"
"People always used to think I was the boring one," Emma remarks, shrugging her head to the side and then flicking her eyes toward Gustave. "But it seems my darling younger twin has finally decided to take that crown from my head."
Sophie hums. "Or maybe he's still used to all the glamour of parties in Milan?" she questions. "I know it's been almost a decade since then, but after all those crazy parties we got invited to back then? A nightclub in Lumière sounds boring in comparison, doesn't it?"
It takes far too much effort for Gustave to hide his discomfort at the way they talk about him like he's not there.
No. That's not why he's uncomfortable. The real discomfort lies with the subject matter. A bone-deep discomfort that he can never shake off, no matter what he tries.
After all this time, Gustave should be able to deal with it when the conversations turn to the time he spent in Milan, but he can't really seem to get past it. He was a child prodigy in ballet. Despite the fact that his parents always really wished he'd do something more masculine, the moment they learned they could profit from his talents, they were more than happy to throw their objections aside.
He competed in dance from the age of six to sixteen, when they finally saw fit to send him to audition for a proper ballet troupe.
The moment he was accepted, they packed their whole lives up and moved to Milan. Which is where he met Sophie. She was his partner onstage, his best friend offstage, and for a very brief moment in time, his girlfriend.
Of course, Sophie really isn't talking about the ballet company. She's referring to the time the pair of them spent as a fashion models, from when he was nineteen to when he was twenty-three.
Being discovered by a modeling agent who happened to go to one of their troupe's performances was such random happenstance. Such a strange turn of events, and he still doesn't quite comprehend how he managed to balance two demanding full-time jobs before he turned twenty-two. Sophie makes perfect sense. As cheerful and chipper as she is, she has a great head on her shoulders and can handle absolutely anything the world deigns to throw at her. It's what drew him to her back then, and what draws Emma to her now.
Gustave is nowhere near as together as she is. He wonders how he lasted so long before he fell apart.
(He casts his eyes down to the metal prosthetic in place of his left hand.
Fell apart. Both literally and figuratively.)
Valentine senses his spiral, as she's been known to do. She lifts her head from her dog bed to look at Gustave, her head cocked to one side in concern and her goofy little tongue lolling from one side of her mouth.
Gustave turns toward her while the others continue their back-and-forth, offering her a soothing smile. He raises his prosthesis in an 'OK' symbol to let her know that he's not, in fact, on the way to a panic attack. In the same movement, he pats his chair to invite her back onto his lap. When she immediately trots across the room to get to his chair and puts her paws on his lap to be picked up, he happily acquiesces.
She rests her perky-eared head on his leg, offering him a canine smile, and he can't help but smile back. He smooths his fingers through her fur, and realizes that maybe he did need her help all along.
"Doesn't it sound kind of fun, Gustave?" Sophie urges, her tone gentle and genuine now. "You're a dancer."
Gustave interjects, "I was a dancer." He gestures at the pile of paperwork on the table. "Now I'm a classical literature teacher, dispensing knowledge of books to legions of bored pre-teens who may or may not remember my words five minutes after they leave the classroom."
Expression sad, Emma looks from the paperwork to Gustave and hums. "But you still know how to dance."
"I honestly don't know if I do," confesses Gustave, his tone far more somber than he means it to be.
Sophie, in a gentle voice, urges, "There's one way to find out, Gustave."
Arching an eyebrow, Gustave asks, "And that is?"
"Come dancing with us, Gustave," Sophie continues, her smile kind.
Gustave shakes his head, then scratches his freshly-trimmed nails down Valentine's back. "I don't know."
"I think it would be good for you, Gus," presses Sophie. "To get out of this house for a little while, and to reconnect with your love for dancing."
With a somber smile, Emma gently nudges Sophie with her shoulder. "But we said we weren't going to push too hard, remember?"
Sophie hums, nodding slowly, then turns to Gustave curiously. "Does it count as pushing if I ask for a reason?" she asks, tucking a piece of her chin-length bob behind her ear. "Out of pure, honest, genuine concern for one of my best friends in the world?"
"No, because I was going to ask the same thing," admits Emma.
Just like that, both of them are staring at him. They're peeling back his skin and trying to see through it, into his mind, to root around and find out exactly why he's so broken that he can barely leave his house anymore. Gustave averts his eyes down to Valentine on his lap, and shakes some of her fur from where it's stuck between his fingers.
He pushes his glasses up his nose and shrugs, trying to meet the question as head-on as he possibly can with a quiet declaration of, "It's just not my scene."
In fact, it's hard to get much further than "Gustave's scene" than a nightclub like Club 33.
He's never been much of a partier. Even back when he did go to parties, it was mostly because Sophie dragged him to whatever parties they were on the guest list for that night. Sometimes, she'd go to clubs to celebrate big events like successful openings or cover photoshoots with big payouts, and Gustave would go along because he had no choice…
But those places were night and day different from a nightclub in Lumière.
Parties in Milan were much more formal and regimented, especially when they were events run by Teatre alla Scalla or the modeling agency he used to work for. They were still packed, of course, but there was a rhyme and a reason to how things were supposed to work. An unspoken etiquette that everyone had to follow, unless they were looking to be the next rumor mill superstar.
Some people often were.
Over Gustave's time in the spotlight, he witnessed so many scandals that it's hard to differentiate one from the next. For the most part, he was able to stay out of the tabloids, thanks in no small part to the 'stick in the mud' tendencies that Sophie and Emma are teasing him about now.
But after everything he saw, it's only fair that he became less of a fan of clubs overall.
"How can you be sure it's not your scene, Gustave?"
It's hard not to be irritated, despite the gentle tone in Emma's voice when she asks. Valentine senses his agitation. She nudges his hand and licks his fingertips in an attempt to calm him down, and he manages to even his breathing out before he turns to look at his twin sister.
"I've been to enough clubs to know that it's not."
Sophie builds sighs quietly. "So what is your scene?" she implores, her tone far less patient than Emma's. If anyone was going to push, Gustave knew it was going to be her. "Do you even have one anymore?"
"Sophie," Emma interjects. "Come on."
Sighing, Sophie runs a hand through her hair and turns to Gustave again. "Sorry, Gustave. I know I'm being really pushy about this," she admits with a solemn smile. "But it's just because I'm worried about you. You don't really go out anymore. You go to the grocery store. You go shopping at the mall. You visit us, but I can't remember the last time I've seen you actually socialize."
Now, Emma nods her agreement. "I don't think you've been on a date since before you left Milan," she adds worriedly. Before you lost your arm goes unspoken. "And that was more than nine years ago."
"You spend most of your time cooped up here when you're not working. The only new people you meet are your students' parents," Sophie adds.
"Exactly," Emma agrees, smiling apologetically. "Just because you're a teacher doesn't mean you have to be uptight in your off hours, especially not during vacations. You're allowed to have a social life. You're only thirty-two. Go out with us! Have a little fun."
That's the problem, though.
Emma and Sophie mean well, he's sure they do. They want him to loosen up and have fun, but he doesn't think it's possible for him to 'just have fun' if they drag him to a noisy club full of complete strangers. Maybe years ago it would have been, but Gustave isn't the same person he was when he was younger.
He still loves dancing. At least he thinks he does. It's one of the things he misses most about the time he spent in Italy.
Dancing on stage to regimented ballet routines, or losing himself in a beat and dancing at those crazy after parties he flew under the radar at. No one could ever find a flaw in his dancing. Even his critics stopped complaining when he started moving. Whether he was dancing or modeling, people always made comments about how well he knew his body. How and when to sway or twist to get the desired poses, or to get the exact reactions he wanted from a crowd.
Gustave was such a good dancer that, a lot of the time, their choreographers and trainers would use him to help train the company. Guide them through the steps and show them ways to make their movements more fluid.
He's sure Sophie remembers that, because it was during one of those one-on-one sessions that they hooked up for the first time, then dated for the short time they did.
Gustave shakes the thought away, looking down at Valentine's big heterochromatic blue and brown eyes as she watches him worriedly. He offers her a reassuring smile and scratches her back again. Sitting in his house with Sophie and Emma is an absolutely terrible time to think about their relationship.
Those feelings are long gone anyway. Sophie is more family and friend than a lover these days, and Emma is her perfect match. They're the sweetest, most secure couple he's ever known.
Emma is right about one thing, though. Gustave hasn't so much as been on a date in eight years. He hasn't had sex in almost nine years now.
Knowing how often his sister and his ex-girlfriend probably have sex is… frustrating. If there's one thing he can say about his relationship with Sophie Chastain, it's that the sex was always sensational when they were together. Even when they were falling out of love, the one thing he could always count on was a good time in bed to shut his head off.
He quickly forces that thought away before he has a chance to step on that landmine.
Emma and Sophie are both staring across the table at him with expectant expressions on their faces. He can tell their hearts are in the right place. It's clear that they just want him to let loose and find a way to have fun again. Also… he can't help but admit that they're right about some of it. It really has been a long time since he's taken a night for himself and just… gone out.
A long time since he felt like he could. He still isn't really sure if he can.
After his nervous breakdown, when both the dancing world and the modeling world deemed him undesirable because of the prosthetic on his right arm, he was lost for a while. That is, until his therapist suggest that he try to go back to college and find a new lease on life. Jumping into college turned into a four-year education degree, and when he got out, he immediately lucked into a job at Collège de Old Lumière.
He hasn't given himself time to think, much less to relax and have fun.
Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to try.
Maybe.
"I'm… not sure," admits Gustave.
Emma smiles gently. When she speaks again, her voice is much less exasperated, more akin to the gentle sister he knows and loves. "It's only half a mile away, Gus," she reminds him with a shrug. "Worst case scenario, you can just leave early."
(That's not the worst case scenario, but Gustave decides not to bring that up.)
With a warm smile, Sophie nods and gestures over her shoulder toward Gustave's bedroom. "If you come with us, I'll even help you pick an outfit that's easy to dance in and will knock everyone in that club on their ass," she declares enthusiastically.
Rather than confirming or denying, Gustave decides to say, "The outfit has to be my style, though. Something I'll be comfortable in." He smiles nervously. "Okay?"
"Of course," promises Sophie.
Gustave turns to Emma. "And it won't be a big thing if I decide to leave early?" he beseeches his sister.
"And it won't be a big thing if you decide to leave early," Emma parrots, lifting one hand in the air in a playful scout salute and placing the other on her chest in a solemn oath. Gustave still doesn't wholly believe her at first… at least until she speaks again. "I get that we're pushing you past a boundary you might not be ready for, Gus. But you're my brother, and I love you, and I want you to be happy. You can't let your past own you."
Sophie smiles fondly. "Plus, who knows what will happen?" she muses as she climbs to her feet and heads for Gustave's bedroom. "A handsome guy like you? You'll have all the boys and girls in the room falling down at your feet."
Huffing quietly, Gustave gets up from his chair to follow Sophie. Valentine jumps down beside him, and they start toward the bedroom. "Soph, you're acting like I'm going to this club to have sex with a stranger."
"If it happens, it happens," Sophie declares as she digs through his dresser.
Emma shakes her head. "You know how she is, Gustave. Once she sets her mind on something, she'll talk about it all night." She pauses, then asks, "Besides, when was the last time you even had sex?"
"No. No-no-no. Shutting this conversation down before it has a chance to boot up," Gustave insists, shaking his head sharply. He watches as Valentine jumps up onto his bed and settles against the pillows. "I'm not talking about this with my sister."
Not that he's ever really had a problem talking about it with her before.
Right now, it has more to do with the fact that he knows how they'll react. Horror mixed with pity, mixed with an annoying amount of determination to make sure Gustave walks into that club with that specific purpose. He's not going to have sex tonight. No matter how long it's been. No matter how close his right hand is to filing a restraining order against his—
"I'm not going to this club to have sex!" he yelps, though he's not sure if he's talking to himself or to them.
"It's an innocent question, Gustave," insists Sophie as she opens the door to Gustave's walk-in closet. "When was the last time you had sex?"
"An innocent question that I'm choosing not to answer," counters Gustave.
"That long, huh?"
Emma stifles a chuckle behind her hand. "Soph, come on."
"He wouldn't answer!" exclaims Sophie as she shrugs her hands to the side. "What choice do I have but to extrapolate on my own? Which… coincidentally, I imagine Gustave does a lot of. Oof. A nine-year dry spell? That will never, ever be me. Ever."
This time, Emma doesn't even bother to hide her laughter. "I should hope not," she muses in reply. "Since that would mean I was in a nine-year dry spell, and as much as I love you, I really don't want to withhold intimacy for that long."
Sophie shakes her head sharply. "No, I absolutely do not blame you, Em," she insists. "Brr. Nine years?"
"I never confirmed that it was nine years!" counters Gustave.
"But you never denied it either," Sophie points out as she takes a pair of pants from Gustave's closet and brings them out to hold them in front of him. "Nope, too loose. We have to show off what you've got back there."
Emma laughs and pinches the bridge of her nose. "Should I be jealous that you're looking at Gustave's butt again?"
Grinning, Sophie shakes her head. "You Auclairs are blessed, that's all I'm saying."
With a heavy sigh, Gustave interjects, "Could you guys not talk about me like I'm not in the room?"
"That doesn't sound like us," lilts Sophie as she grabs a few different shirts from Gustave's closet to try.
"It could be," Gustave remarks. "All you have to do is try."
He opens the curtains and de-tints the skylights, bathing his entire bedroom in the dim, setting sunlight. It's the middle of summer, and he only has a few weeks to finalize next semester's curriculum, but he can do that quickly. Most of the work is already done, he just needs to put together a list of books for the first report of the season.
Maybe a night out just to dance won't be so bad. Especially not if it's with Emma and Sophie. As hard as they are on him, he knows that deep down they only have his best interests at heart.
Emma smiles and looks out Gustave's back window. "I always seem to forget how lovely the view is here, until I come back and see it again."
"Yeah, really," Sophie agrees. "Sometimes I find it hard to believe that this place was a firehouse. Especially with that in-ground pool you put in the backyard."
Gustave chuckles sheepishly. "That was Emma's idea, actually."
Nodding, Emma confirms, "It just felt like a waste to have all that backyard space with nothing in it."
Smiling softly, Gustave steps up beside Emma and looks out the window at the Olympic-sized pool in the backyard. They really don't use the pool much, even after all Emma's insistence that he put it in. It really does make the place look more like a home, though.
His house is custom-built into the former firehouse, which is shielded by a shroud of trees and a high fence that Gustave had installed to protect his privacy. The building was abandoned for at least two decades before he moved in. He knows that it's one of the nicest houses in both Lumière and Old Lumière, second to maybe the Dessendre Manor on the other side of the city.
Gustave doesn't know how he lucked into it. How someone didn't buy it before he had the chance.
Emma took his decoration suggestion of a modern-rustic mix to heart. The wall behind his bed is made of firehouse brick from floor to ceiling, taken from the original firehouse during the renovation. The entire room is decorated in shades of red and black, trimmed in dark red wood.
He loves his sister's mind, how she knew exactly how to decorate to his tastes without even having to ask him.
With a nervous laugh, he looks between them and gestures to the bathroom. "If you guys are dragging me out tonight, I should probably shower."
"Don't you worry, Gus! By the time you get out, I'll have an amazing outfit picked for you!" Sophie lilts as she keeps digging through his closet.
Gustave can only hope she's right.
His fashion sense is much more modest than most people who worked as male models. He wears a lot of button-down shirts, vests, ties—really, the wildest he gets is the occasional leather jacket or maybe some mild distress rips in his jeans. He's sure he still has some of the custom pieces from the various fashion shows he was in when he was younger, but he doesn't know if he'll fit into any of them anymore.
It's been years, after all.
Dressing "appropriately" is an old habit that never really died, back from when he had to present himself a certain way to be taken seriously as a dancer.
To this day, he doesn't know what his individual style is. He just wears what he can find that fits and he likes. But as enthusiastic and overzealous as Sophie can be sometimes, she knows Gustave pretty well. She won't make him wear anything that makes him uncomfortable.
So, he steps into the bathroom and closes the door behind him.
Completely unsurprisingly, Valentine beat him here. She can probably sense his rising anxiety. He lets out a soft chuckle and scratches behind her ear once she jumps into the dog bed that he set on a bathroom chair for her. Valentine curls up, but she doesn't go to sleep. She watches him vigilantly, with her head resting against her front paws.
It used to be disquieting, the way she watched his every move, but now he's used to it.
More disquieting is the echo that rings through his massive bathroom with every move he makes. He fishes his phone from his pocket and turns on some music to fill the emptiness.
By the time the water heats up, his mind is racing.
Did he really agree to go to a club tonight? It's been so long since he's been in a crowded room like that, other than visits to the mall or the grocery store. He doesn't have a problem with crowds—not really, anyway—but as he methodically cleans his body, his mind cycles through all the different things that can possibly go wrong.
What if he embarrasses himself? What if he completely forgot how to dance? It's been so long since he even tried—what if he gets on the floor and just… moves around like an idiot? Or even worse, forgets how to move at all?
What if he has a panic attack out there in the middle of all those people?
The thought makes his heart feel like it's going to thump out of his rib cage. He clenches his fists to stop his hands from shaking and decides to focus on showering instead.
Washing his hair is a multi-step process anyway. Shampoo, scalp exfoliator, foam scalp cleanser, and a deep conditioning mask; then when he's finished, he steps out of the shower and dries his hair. He puts his towel around his waist, then puts in his leave-in curl cream, and takes the time to trim and style his facial hair.
It won't be a disaster. It won't. Emma and Sophie would never walk him into danger.
Valentine whines, a quiet, canine question. Gustave turns to look at her, and smiles as her big eyes look at him like he's her entire world. He bends down to kiss her on the tip of the nose.
"I'm okay, Val. Promise."
She lets out a quiet canine sigh and rests her head on her paws again.
Gustave exhales heavily and heads to the mirror. The bags under his eyes are a glaring beacon to display his constant anxiety, but he knows they can be covered. He doesn't bother putting anything on his face yet, though. He knows Emma will want to put some eyeliner on, and probably cover the bags with some kind of concealer.
Instead, he gets into his medicine cabinet and takes out his bottle of anxiety pills. If he's going to push his boundaries… he needs the help.
He breaks a pill in half and downs it with a cup of water, then sets it back on the shelf.
Finally, he wipes the steam from the mirror and looks at his reflection as his drying hair starts to coil back into its natural waves. It's going to be okay. It's just a club. There's nothing to be nervous about. It's just a room full of people, with drinks and dancing. Nothing he hasn't handled before.
So calm down, he tells himself. Calm down. Putain, please calm down. You've done it before, you can do it again.