[ He looks up into Verso's face, his eyes blown black with want and need and heat, and knows that if he asked right now, Verso would give him whatever he wanted, whatever he could offer of his body. He could tell him to take that fantasy and make it real, to strip the remaining clothes off both of them and slide into him, a key in a lock, until they're both gasping wrecks of themselves.

Maybe he even wants to ask for it. Maybe it's what he wants, needs: Verso everywhere, over him and inside him and around him. Maybe then he really would be fully believe this is real, that Verso is, that he's here and will stay and they finally have time.

Is it too much power to be offered? Verso, handing himself over without even a single hesitation, half-drunk on fantasies and daydreams he'd spun out of their too-short meetings. And yet he's already handed over his heart — it's yours, Gustave — as if it was the easiest thing in the world. What can he do except cherish it, him, these gifts he keeps holding out like the thought of doing anything else is impossible.

Gustave leans up to catch his mouth with his, settles back again with his hair mussed on the piled-up jacket, breath coming fast and almost panting. Verso squeezes and he moans, answers with a rippling squeeze of his own fingers, the rhythm beginning to stutter as pleasure builds and builds, knotting tightly low in his belly. ]

I want you like this. Here, with me, right now.

[ He watches Verso, that beautiful face above him, blue light glimmering off the streaks in his hair, the curve of his shoulders, the slope of his back. His voice is strained, rough with the effort of putting together words, but his eyes never leave Verso's face. ]

You can tell me more daydreams later. I want you here, now.

You came back.

[ And that is worth more than a hundred, a thousand feverish fantasies: the reality of him, right here, already in Gustave's arms. ]