[ He presses kisses, warm and deep and sweet, against Verso's mouth, uses the hand at Verso's cheek to coax the man into tilting his head, letting Gustave fit their mouths together more perfectly before he slowly trails his kisses over the corner of Verso's lips, along the line of his jaw, down over his scruff and beard to the warm skin of his throat. ]
I hoped so.
[ Is that cruel, to have wished on Verso the kind of pain he himself had felt, the endless longing that had sent him to the opera house night after night, listening to productions he barely heard while imagining a man with startling streaks of white in his hair and a mischievous glint in his eyes winking at him from the stage? He'd about driven Emma and Maelle mad with his sudden fervor for live music, which Maelle derided as endlessly boring while Emma would watch him with narrowed eyes as he sat and stared, morose, at a glass of wine he'd barely touch on their return.
And the garden... he'd been back so many times. At least once a week, for months, perhaps; at first with the excuse of helping to fix the damage wreaked upon it by some local ruffians, and then later just to lie there on the grass, watching the dappled light move over the empty spot where Verso had sprawled next to him. He certainly has plenty of embarrassing secrets of his own when it comes to the ways he'd tried to both seek out some way of seeing Verso again, of feeling him near, and of trying to keep from thinking about him at all.
He shifts, pressing himself into the hands Verso has on his body, shivering at the way they feel. His blood is heating again, slower and more completely this time, and his head is filled with a pleasant warm buzz. He presses his lips to Verso's throat, murmuring against his skin. ]
Would you like me to return it to you?
[ His own...
Verso can keep it, for however many times they see each other, for the months and weeks left before the Gommage. Sophie had carried the piece she'd kept along with her as she floated away, but some small part of her still lives on in him, in the piece she'd offered him in return. Perhaps this, too, can be some part of his legacy. If his mark on this world is restricted to his inventions, his apprentices, Emma and Maelle, and this one man, maybe he can be content that his life had meaning after all. ]
no subject
I hoped so.
[ Is that cruel, to have wished on Verso the kind of pain he himself had felt, the endless longing that had sent him to the opera house night after night, listening to productions he barely heard while imagining a man with startling streaks of white in his hair and a mischievous glint in his eyes winking at him from the stage? He'd about driven Emma and Maelle mad with his sudden fervor for live music, which Maelle derided as endlessly boring while Emma would watch him with narrowed eyes as he sat and stared, morose, at a glass of wine he'd barely touch on their return.
And the garden... he'd been back so many times. At least once a week, for months, perhaps; at first with the excuse of helping to fix the damage wreaked upon it by some local ruffians, and then later just to lie there on the grass, watching the dappled light move over the empty spot where Verso had sprawled next to him. He certainly has plenty of embarrassing secrets of his own when it comes to the ways he'd tried to both seek out some way of seeing Verso again, of feeling him near, and of trying to keep from thinking about him at all.
He shifts, pressing himself into the hands Verso has on his body, shivering at the way they feel. His blood is heating again, slower and more completely this time, and his head is filled with a pleasant warm buzz. He presses his lips to Verso's throat, murmuring against his skin. ]
Would you like me to return it to you?
[ His own...
Verso can keep it, for however many times they see each other, for the months and weeks left before the Gommage. Sophie had carried the piece she'd kept along with her as she floated away, but some small part of her still lives on in him, in the piece she'd offered him in return. Perhaps this, too, can be some part of his legacy. If his mark on this world is restricted to his inventions, his apprentices, Emma and Maelle, and this one man, maybe he can be content that his life had meaning after all. ]