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Weather eye
Verso is, against his will, used to taking care of others. He knows what it is, viscerally, to make their pain his own, to go without comfort so someone else can have the smallest drop of it.
He could make their wounds his own, wear blight for them like second skin, bleed out on the rocks so an expeditioner got that one hit of healing that might save their life, for whatever it was worth. Not only his immortality, his mother’s accursed gift, pulled him through it: it was the wild and bitter hope that maybe, this time, his borrowed pain might make a difference. It never did, at least, not in any way Verso could tell.
Now, though. Now.
Verso doesn’t bother knocking as he lets himself into Gustave’s workshop. He, the apprentices, Lune, Sciel, and Emma are the only ones allowed to bother Gustave when he's dans l’atelier with the door closed, as close to KEEP OUT as Gustave ever gets. It’s not a privilege Verso takes advantage of lightly, but the weather developing outside the Dome—weather that’s been brewing since before dawn—has him leaning on it now.
“Gustave,” he murmurs, slipping in. The door, well-tended, doesn’t creak.
He knows what he’s going to find as the strange silence of the workshop at midday closes around him. The workshop is dim-lit, only the greying light from the windows and a single lamp limning the edges of Gustave’s books and tools and models.
The light also limns the edges of Gustave himself, slumped at his desk. He’s dropped his pen, and his prosthetic fingers are pressed hard to the indent in his temple, where the bone is delicate and where (Verso knows) the pain likes to fester.
Gustave doesn’t answer. Verso doesn’t really expect him to.
His heart hurts, watching the line of Gustave’s back shake with tension. The pain is entirely his own now, nothing borrowed about it.
“Hey,” he says and then again, still careful to be soft, “hey.”
The pain in Gustave’s head is a wild animal, sometimes—the slightest movement, an unexpected sound, will spook it and set it off. Verso announces his presence as gently as he can, but he’s not a gentle thing himself; he's had to learn the sort of kindness that isn’t cruel, and he’s still stunned, sometimes, realizing Gustave’s letting Verso learn gentleness with him.
“Hey,” Gustave grits out. The one slit of eye he manages to open before shutting it again is dark and glassy. “It’s not—”
“Time to go home,” Verso interrupts.
He keeps back the I told you so in favor of collecting Gustave’s things and shoving them in his knapsack. That, too, is gentle, not reminding Gustave that at breakfast he’d said weather changes were expected today, the kind that wakes up the demon in Gustave’s head, and maybe he should consider working from home or coming back early.
He does allow himself a sigh as he slings the knapsack over one shoulder. “Did you manage to eat anything today? Drink?”
Gustave makes the mistake of shaking his head and groans.
“All right. We need to get you back home.” Well, he should have known the answer to that; the only person worse than him at taking care of himself is Gustave when he’s in a mood and wanting to be productive. Verso glances out the window, at the darkening clouds scudding across the surface of the Dome. “Do you have the lights this time?”
“No,” Gustave whispers. “I swear, it just started.”
Well, there’s that at least, though the ones that ambush Gustave are sometimes worse.
“All right.” Carefully Verso slides one arm around Gustave’s tense, unhappy back, under his arm. “Can you stand on three?”
“On three,” Gustave says, resigned. His eyes are still firmly shut.
He manages to stand on three, with a groan that breaks something vulnerable inside Verso’s chest and a stagger like a newborn foal. His skin goes ashy and for a terrible moment Verso thinks he’s going to lose his breakfast and coffee all over his desk. Just as he starts to look for a wastebasket Gustave tilts his head back and swallows thickly, a choky sound that makes Verso shudder a little himself.
“Okay, you're okay,” Verso says, not sure if he’s trying to convince Gustave or himself. “Come on, mon trésor, the sooner we get started the sooner this is over with.”
“Yeah,” Gustave whispers. He’s a heavy weight against Verso’s side, a welcome burden with his head nestled awkwardly on Verso’s shoulder.
“Hey, it could be worse,” Verso says as he shepherds Gustave down the stairs and past the collective and entirely too intrusive gaze of the rest of the engineering corps. “I could have gotten Monoco to carry you.”
Gustave smiles into Verso’s collar bone at that and Verso warms with pleasure.
The trip back to their townhouse is long. Verso’s tried his Canvas trick with Gustave before and had instantly regretted it (Gustave had puked his guts up that time, and Verso had almost lost his lunch as well), and that means the long, less painful way home for them now.
Verso warns away the curious passers-by with the ferocious glare that reminds them he’s still a scarred, half-wild madman from the Continent. They scatter politely and, more importantly, leave him alone. Gustave shuffles next to him, eyes open just enough to see the cobblestones underfoot. Every now and then he hisses or groans, soft pain-sounds he can’t keep back.
“C'mon,” Verso says encouragingly. “Almost there.”
He’d done this too, for decades: held hands, cajoled, ordered and forced when he had to. One more rise, one more battle, one more long march in the darkness, one more one more—and it had never worked. They’d all died in the end and the futility had made hope bitter when he’d offered it.
So it’s even stranger to lug Gustave along a busy, cheerful street with a thunderstorm beginning to grumble overhead, knowing there’s an end to the road with safety waiting.
Once they’re home (home, still a foreign word) it’s harder than he'd like to manage the door and the knapsack with one arm full of Gustave. Verso gets it done. He wrangles them awkwardly inside, remembers at the last second not to drop Gustave's knapsack on the floor, and pushes the door shut with one foot.
Their townhouse is quiet around them, and more than half-dark with the rainclouds sliding across the Dome. Close against him Gustave makes a quiet, relieved sound but doesn't completely relax.
“Almost there.” Verso turns the words into a series of kisses pressed to Gustave's curls. “C’mon, before you fall on your face.”
“Won’t let me,” Gustave mumbles. His head cants slightly forward so he’s talking into Verso’s collar bone. His breath is warm and damp.
“Don’t press your luck,” Verso tells him. It gets him a soft huff of laughter that Gustave clearly regrets, and before anything else can happen he gets them turned around and heading up the stairs.
Once they’re in their bedroom, things get easier. Verso pours Gustave into bed and convinces him to stay upright long enough to get off his jacket, vest, and shirt, then shoes and socks. Gustave watches dully, sucking in breath through his nostrils, as Verso puts his pocket watch on the table next to the bed, only muttering an objection when Verso tries to take the gold chain and its ring off from around his neck.
He doesn't object when Verso helps him lie down, or when Verso covers him in the duvet and an extra blanket, tugging it up so Gustave is almost engulfed in linen and cotton and down.
Another objection, though, when Gustave hears Verso padding for the door.
“I’ll be back,” Verso says softly.
An indistinct sound.
“Promise,” Verso adds.
Verso’s only slowly become used to keeping promises. They’re always strategic, to keep or break as he needs—break, more often, if it meant the barest chance of saving his not-family and ending everything. Gustavess disappointment when he’d failed had always been a palpable thing, sharper than any knife, or a bullet from that gun he's so good with.
Strange, a liar and traitor turned honest—Gustave's managed to do what Aline and Maelle never could and repainted him into a decent human being.
It’s only a matter of minutes to grab what he needs: water, a napkin of crackers, an icepack he’s had cooling in the box since he’d had the first premonition of the weather change this morning. After that he’s back upstairs and back in the quiet safety of their room, greeted by Gustave’s shakily relieved sigh.
“Let me guess,” he says as he helps Gustave turn over and sit up. “You worked through lunch today.”
Somehow Gustave manages to look mulish even when hurting. “Maybe.”
The I told you so Verso’s been saving finally escapes. The chagrined expression on Gustave’s face might be pain from the headache or possibly the pain of having to admit Verso was right all along.
“Felt fine this morning,” Gustave says once he’s swallowed half the glass of water and choked down a couple of crackers. “No lights, nothing. I swear.”
“Just, maybe listen next time, mon amour.” Verso’s not sure when he became more concerned about Gustave’s well-being than Gustave himself, but Gustave cares so little for his health and safety that it’s probably not a high bar to clear.
Still, Verso is desperately worried, in a way he's never been, and it’s enough for him to admit, “You know I hate seeing you like this.”
He hates it for a lot of reasons. The guilt that Gustave always tries to soothe away, the inability to remove this pain from Gustave because Verso can absorb damage from fire, blades, and chroma but not from whatever it is in Gustave’s head that chews at his skull and makes him cry with the pain of it. He can’t take that burden from Gustave however much he wants to; he can only, maybe, help Gustave shoulder it.
(And even if he could, Verso knows, Gustave would never forgive him if he did.)
“Sorry,” Gustave says softly. Verso kisses the apology away.
“Show me you’re sorry by lying down and sleeping until this thing blows over.”
No healing tint touches Gustave's migraines, there's no Picto to absorb the pain from them, though Gustave has tried. Nothing from the druggist seems to help, and sometimes only makes things worse. The only way over them is through them, hours spent with Gustave chasing sleep and shivering miserably under the covers while Verso keeps him company. Gustave says it helps; Verso doubts that, but is willing to take Gustave at his word.
Verso smooths Gustave’s hair back from his forehead and kisses the clammy sweat that’s formed there before turning his attention to the prosthetic. Gustave shivers as the housing pops open and the arm drops away. Verso sets it carefully to the side.
“A little better?” The prosthetic is a thing of beauty, and like all beautiful things it comes with its own curse. It never seems to work right, Gustave complains, when the headaches come; the chroma tastes wrong on the back of his tongue, metallic, toxic.
“Much,” Gustave says softly. He’s staring at his arm as if he's never seen it before. “Thank you.”
“Always. Here.” Verso helps Gustave back under the covers, and once certain he’s comfortable adds the pièce de résistance and slides the icepack into place. Gustave shivers, a thin, relieved sound as the cold sets in. Verso smiles, though Gustave can’t see it. “There.”
The only moving Verso does after that is to peel himself out of his street clothes and slide into his bathrobe—Gustave's bathrobe, technically, a little too small across the shoulders, but it smells like him and is worn-in and comfortable. Then it’s to climb into bed next to Gustave, though on top of the covers, and to take Gustave’s right hand in his, an anchor to hold him down. He thinks of the book he’d left across the room, the new score he's been working on, but getting them would require more movement, and that's impossible with Gustave slowly grafting himself to Verso's side. His head settles in the hinge of Verso’s lap.
Once he's fairly certain Gustave is comfortable, or as comfortable as he can be, Verso settles his hand back into Gustave's hair, the softness of it sticky with sweat now but still a delight to stroke and pet. Gustave murmurs blissfully. He slides his hand down the back of Gustave’s neck, across the pain-tense muscle there, along the ridge of his shoulder where it trembles a little, still. Gustave sighs brokenly, his fingers curling on Verso's thigh.
“There you go,” he murmurs. “Just relax.”
“Mon ange,” Gustave mumbles into Verso's hip.
“Yeah, I know.” Verso shakes his head. He’s never been angelic, either; his mother had called him that once, ages ago, and he'd thought it would chafe hearing the endearment in Gustave's mouth. He finds he likes it. “Go to sleep.”
He starts to hum, a soft buzz of sound wandering its way towards a tune. It flirts along the edges of songs Verso remembers from the outside world, ones he's heard played in the Opera House here, before winding its way to a song whose shape Verso doesn't quite know yet. In his head it’s just une berceuse pour Gustave, if only because of moments like this: when the last bit of tautness in Gustave unspools and the sharp edge to his breathing softens into a slow counterpoint.
His thoughts wander on the melody and with the slow rhythm of his strokes over Gustave's hair and shoulders.
That this is his life now is more remarkable than the knowledge he’s the copy of a dead young man, painted into a canvas by a grieving mother who might as well be a goddess. It’s the only thought that can shock him out of the spiral the truth of the Canvas and his own existence can pull him into: that there’s someone here, in this made-up place, who loves him so fiercely it’s realer than anything Verso’s ever experienced. It’s even more real than the world out there and the woman who created them and the girl who repainted them.
What he can do in return seems very small, compared to that.
He can make sure Gustave eats and goes to sleep at a reasonable hour, and agrees to do the same so Gustave doesn’t worry too much about him. He does in fact take care of himself, or tries his best to.
He’s learned how to help Gustave tune up his prosthetic. Gustave can do it on his own—Verso’s seen it for himself—but, he’d admitted shyly while piloting Verso through the adjustments, it was easier with help.
He can indulge the apprentices with the best of them, sneaking them sweets Gustave pretends not to see and idly commenting that he saw Esquie down at the docks when he wants some alone-time with Gustave in the workshop and thinks the apprentices (coincidentally) deserve the afternoon off.
He’s learned the strange things that are prophetic of a migraine: the weather shifts, the first long days of spring, too much coffee, the perfume Madame Delacoeur wears to the Opera on Sundays. He can tell from the worried line between Gustave’s brows if it’s mere concentration or Gustave trying to work through pain, and he knows what to do if it’s the latter. He knows what to do if “the lights” come.
Such small things. Next to what Gustave’s given him, they seem hopelessly inadequate to Verso. He does them anyway and hopes they make up some of the debt.
Next to him Gustave shifts again, burrowing closer. His sigh is a sweet counterpoint to Verso's song, and his fingers curl sleepily into Verso's thigh, snuggled up under his chin in a way that’s heartbreakingly endearing and turns Verso’s bones to mush. The lines in his forehead have gone smooth and the tight crease of his mouth has slackened into something like sleep. He’s even drooling a little, and Verso will have to tease him about that later.
For now he listens to Gustave’s breathing slow and even out and lets himself go with it, drifting, drifting, anchored down.