Chapter Text
“Hi.”
Gustave turns around from his car towards the voice behind him, sultry and flirtatious even with a single syllable. When his eyes meet with the strangers he pauses, keys hanging from his hand awkwardly, mouth hanging open slightly before he figures out how to compose himself.
“Hi? Do I know you?” Gustave asks, wondering possibly if it was one of his students, he had several lectures that took over large halls, with dozens of students seated too far away for him to ever actually see and recognize their faces.
“I’m hoping you will soon,” The stranger replies with a smirk, standing in a way that exudes confidence.
Gustave chuckles back softly, it has been a very long time since someone had been so outwardly flirtatious with him, and he’s a bit taken aback. He stands still for a moment, letting his eyes track up and down the stranger's body, letting himself absorb every bit of information he can garner.
The man clearly has wealth. It was evident in every aspect of his outfit, the tailoring alone is enough of a clue, but Gustave also takes in the accessories donned by the man, name brands clear and easy to see, with jewelry to match. Not ostentatious in amounts or the types though, a few rings, a very nice watch, cufflinks that fit the aesthetic of his well tailored three piece black and gold suit.
What stands out the most to Gustave though was the gold nose piercing, a small ring on his left nostril, drawing Gustave’s gaze back to the man’s face, and he finds himself absentmindedly cataloguing the man’s facial scars.
The stranger’s eyebrows rise slightly and Gustave realizes he may have been staring just a bit too long without replying. A small flush rises to his cheeks and within seconds the stranger’s smirking, knowingly.
Gustave holds out his hand, switching his keys to his prosthetic, letting the stranger shake his hand.
“Gustave.”
“Nice to meet you, Gustave,” The stranger answers, returning Gustave’s handshake with a firm one of his own. When the stranger pulls his hand back, Gustave feels the man’s fingers brush against his wrist softly. It sends a shiver down his spine. He can’t decide immediately if it’s a good one or not.
Gustave squints at him slightly, a little miffed at the response. “Normally this is the moment people exchange names,” Gustave teases.
The stranger laughs. “There’s not very much about me that’s ‘normal’,” He replies, his face already back to that damn alluring smirk. “Let me buy you lunch, and maybe I’ll give you my name.”
Gustave laughs back at him, “And what makes you think I’d agree to that?”
The stranger grins, “Oh, c’mon. When was the last time you let someone indulge you in a good meal?”
Gustave looks taken aback again for a moment, surprised by the presumptuous attitude, “You don’t know me.”
The stranger leans in, “No, but I can take a guess as to what your planned lunch for the day was. Something small, bland, microwaveable.”
Gustave could tell immediately, not only was this stranger rich, and attractive, he was also an asshole.
Gustave glares a bit, but meets Verso’s gaze head on, a look of determination in his eyes. “Sure. I’ll let you buy me lunch.”
——
“Fucking hell, I’m gonna come, ah, aH, Putain, Putain, ahh fuuuck, harder,” Gustave moans loudly, meeting each of Verso’s thrusts with his own. The bed shakes beneath them, the headboard banging loudly into the wall behind it.
Gustave couldn’t be bothered to care about it at the moment, not with Verso pounding into him so roughly and perfectly.
All there was, was the feeling of Verso surrounding him, satisfying him, filling him. Nothing else in the world mattered in that moment.
It has been years since Gustave has gotten off with someone else, even longer since it had been good.
“Hah, fuck, you like it rough like this, yeah?” Verso asks, pulling back until just the tip of his cock remains nestled in Gustave’s body, before slamming back into him, over and over, his actions a pattern, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat.
Gustave nods his head aggressively, “Yeah, fuck. Don’t stop, close.”
Verso chuckles, leans forward and lets his lips caress Gustave’s ear for a moment, “Fucking slut for it aren’t you?”
‘Holy shit.’ Gustave thinks, and knows he’s going to have to take some time for introspection later as to why hearing that has him gasping and coming hands free and untouched on Verso’s cock.
Verso groans behind him, thrusting in a few more times slowly before plunging in as deep as he can and coming, letting his body sag forward against Gustave’s back.
Verso laughs quietly, pressing a kiss into the top of Gustave’s spine as he pulls out, quickly tying off the condom and throwing it into a waste bin Gustave keeps by his bed. Gustave turns his head slightly as Verso pulls back, only then realizing the other man had never actually fully undressed, having fucked Gustave without even removing his shirt.
“Well, this was fun,” Verso comments freely, running a hand through his hair as he stands from the bed.
Gustave flops onto his back, looking up at Verso already recomposing himself, tucking himself back into his pants. Verso glances over at Gustave with a small smile, the earlier cockiness gone from his expression.
Gustave sighs, “Leaving already?”
Verso’s smile falters. “Mmhm.”
“So, what? Is this what you do? Pick up random strangers, treat them to a meal that costs more than their weekly salary and then leave once you’ve gotten off?” Gustave asks, doing his best to keep his annoyance from his tone. It bleeds through anyways.
Verso smirks back at him, and just like that the earlier smugness has returned. “No, Gustave, this is not what I do. You, are an indulgence I should not have allowed myself. Unfortunately, I have a flight out of the country in a few hours that I need to get ready for, or I’d at least stick around long enough for another round,” He finishes with a wink.
Gustave wants to smack him.
He sighs instead, running a hand through his hair, mentally debating with himself whether he wants to shower and get dressed or if he wanted to just cancel his late afternoon lecture. He didn’t think he had the patience or mental space to deal with it right now.
“Take it I’ll never see you again?”
Verso pauses, hand mid tie adjustment in front of the mirror in Gustave’s room. He meets Gustave’s stare with his own in the reflection, and his eyes light with just a touch of mischief before smiling closer to something that seems genuine.
“Now that. That I haven’t decided yet. I’m back in town in a few weeks, hopefully. So I may be interested in indulging myself once more.”
Gustave scoffs, doesn’t reply.
“I’m sorry, were you expecting emotional attachment from a rich asshole who hit on you at work?” Verso questions with a raised eyebrow as he finishes adjusting his tie.
Gustave stares him down, holding back a sneer. “I don’t expect anything from you.”
Verso smirks, “Perfect. Then maybe I’ll see you next time I’m in town.”
Gustave grabs his phone off the nightstand, unlocks it and opens it up to create a new saved number before handing it to Verso.
Or at least he tried -
“Mmhm, no.” Verso states firmly with a shake of his head. Gustave stares back at him incredulously, holding his hands in a clear ‘What the fuck’ gesture that pulls a small chuckle out of Verso. “I can’t tell you why I can’t give you my phone number, but I can’t give it to you.”
Gustave rolls his eyes, locks his phone before letting it fall onto the bed with a small thump. “How the hell are you going to tell me you're back in town then?”
Verso shrugs, “I’ll figure it out when I get back. Besides, I know where you work, where you live, shouldn’t be too hard.”
“Where are you going anyways?”
“Mmhm,” Verso hums, looking as if he was considering his options with his response. Eventually he shrugs again, reaching to the bed for his suit jacket that he had laid there earlier. “Colombia.”
Gustave eyes him curiously, not expecting that answer at all. He’d expected Italy or the UK, not South America. “What are you doing there, anything fun?” Gustave asks, trying to shift the tone of conversation.
Verso laughs, sharp and sudden, “Oh, that I definitely can’t tell you.”
Gustave finds himself glaring again as Verso slips into his suit jacket smoothly, setting his sleeves, and as he buttons the jacket, an expression washes over his face of calm disinterest.
“Don’t let the door hit you on the way out,” Gustave mutters as he reaches for his underwear off the floor.
“Goodbye, Gustave.”
“Goodbye, Connard,” Gustave bites back, prickling at Verso’s tone.
Verso chuckles softly as he makes his way out of Gustave’s apartment.
——-
Gustave walks onto campus with a small smile on his face the next day, grateful that for the current semester his research days with Alan and Lune weren’t also filled with office hours or lectures, letting him actually get into a good rhythm instead of the constant starting and stopping he was forced into most years.
As he walks into the lab, Lune looks up, apprehension easy to read on her face. Alan rounds the corner quickly, immediately getting up in Gustave’s face.
“What the hell did you do?”
“What? Nothing. I just got here.”
“Nothing? So the funding we’ve been begging for even a fraction of the last four semesters, suddenly comes in anonymously on the same day you cancel class for the first time in years.”
Gustave’s eyes widen impossibly, his breath catching in his lungs. “What?”
Lune pushes forward past Alan and hands Gustave a letter, the university's board members' seal embossed into the cardstock.
His hands shake as he reads.
“We. We’ve been funded. We’ve actually been fund-“
Alan cuts back in, “Yeah, by more than double what we originally asked for. Which screams bullshit. So I’ll ask again, what the hell did you do?”
Gustave turns back up to Alan, “I didn’t have anything to do with this!”
‘But Verso could have done this.’
“Then why’d you cancel your class yesterday?”
“I wasn’t feeling well.”
‘I was too busy having the best sex I’ve had in a decade and spiraling about it afterwards.’
Alan’s eyes narrowed sharply, glaring holes back at Gustave. “You’re still a shit liar,” He grumbles and then turns and walks away.
Gustave watches him go, his hand gripping onto the letter from the university’s research board. Lune lays a hand softly on his shoulder and he leans into it for a moment, grateful for the comfort even if it’s slightly abnormal coming from Lune. She was a wonderful friend to Gustave throughout the years but physical affection wasn’t her strong suit.
He turns to look her in the eyes with a smile on his face but she’s staring at him with an unreadable expression before digging her thumb down into a spot above his collarbone where Verso had left a fucking mark. He doesn’t know how Lune could tell it was even there.
Lune smiles as Gustave winces, breathing in sharply. “Want to try that again with just me?”
“Putain de merde.”
——
Verso looks out the window with a sigh as they touch down at Caucaya Airport, right on the border of Colombia and Peru.
Calling it an airport is generous, he thinks, looking over at the building they pass as the jet they’re on slowly comes to a stop. The building looks more like an abandoned bus terminal than a functioning airport, but it’s close to the compound he’s heading to, so for now it’ll do.
The jet finally comes to a stop, the attendants emerging from their seats to open the doors, just as a ladder is rolled up outside to meet them.
Verso steps down carefully, pulling his sunglasses down from where they’d been resting atop his head to shield his eyes from the morning sun.
The fact that it was also helping disguise his obvious hangover from drinking most of the flight instead of sleeping, was just a small added bonus.
As he steps down, a man follows him off the plane, wordlessly. He’s tall, taller than Verso even, broad shoulders with thick well defined arms to match and long dark hair tied up neatly in a large bun. If Verso remembers correctly, his name’s Simon, Clea hired him recently as extra muscle.
Not that Verso needs it.
He’s wearing a basic suit, one that seems ready to burst off his skin the way it’s pulled taut over his musculature, and as he follows behind Verso he dons a pair of black sunglasses himself.
He hadn’t said much on the plane, a simple introduction as he’d followed Verso on, and a paper explaining his qualifications, what languages he spoke, weapons knowledge, all information that had clearly been typed up for him by Clea. Verso had handed it back to him only to watch as the man set the paper ablaze before taking his seat and spending the rest of the flight wordlessly and calmly seated.
Verso wasn’t sure if the man had even used the bathroom at any point.
It had been an eleven hour flight.
Just as the two of them touch asphalt, a matte finished black car rounds the building in front of them, pulling up close before two men emerge from either side of the back, not even bothering to close the car doors before approaching Verso. The first man is followed softly behind by a larger, staunchier man, though not nearly as well dressed or as large as Simon behind him. As the first man approaches, Verso watches him lift his glasses from his face, a warmth in his eyes as they settle on Verso.
Verso pretends to smile back.
“¡Benny! ¡Hombre, cuánto tiempo! How have you been?” Verso greets, a warmth to his voice that obfuscates the tension in the air of his arrival, fake.
This was not a visit for pleasure.
“¡Verso! ¡Mi amigo, demasiado tiempo de hecho! I’m good, I’m good. What about you, you’re too skinny! Gotta get more meat on those bones,” Benny replies back with a grin, clapping Verso on the shoulder.
Simon stands straighter behind him, but doesn’t move otherwise.
“Ey, you know how it is with all this traveling. Maybe tu bella dama could cook us up something nice?” Verso suggests with a grin and a wink.
Benny narrows his eyes back before his face cracks into a loud laugh, and another clap lands on Verso’s shoulder.
“¡Still un diablo coqueto, I see! Come, come. I’ll show you to the house, you can rest up there tonight and tomorrow morning I can show you some of the progress we’ve been making,” Benny says with a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, wrapping an arm around Verso’s shoulders and guiding him forward as another car appears; identical in appearance to the one Benny and his guard arrived in.
Verso allows himself to be led to the vehicle without complaint, with Simon following close behind the two of them. Benny holds open the door for Verso to get in, as Simon slides into the back seat on the other side.
Once inside with the doors firmly closed, Benny moving back towards the other car, Verso looks over to Simon and has to bite his tongue to contain a laugh.
The man is absolutely too tall to be sitting back here, his head is forced at an awkward angle, as he attempts to shuffle back enough in the seat to avoid smacking his head into the roof of the car if they hit a bump on the drive over.
Verso turns back to look out the window, Benny’s car following immediately behind the one they're in, a partition separating them from their driver. Nothing soundproof for sure, but Verso finds himself speaking anyways, hoping only Simon picks up on it.
“Cet homme est un putain d’imbécile.”
Simon huffs out a laugh and a small smile remains on his face the rest of the ride over.
—-
“Gustave Duport?”
Gustave turns suddenly, hearing his name clearly from his right as he walks down the street towards a small coffee shop he frequented on his weekends off.
His eyes meet a woman, near his age if he had to guess, long brown hair with bangs that just barely touched over her eyebrows. She sits alone at a dining table, a small mug in front of her and nothing else. She has on a white blouse, with an open collar, well fitted, a smile sharp enough to cut glass.
She pushes the chair opposite her out with her foot towards Gustave as soon as he looks at her. Gustave doesn’t move towards it.
“Sit,” She requests, voice firm.
Just as he’s about to tell her no, continue on with his day, he gazes into her eyes, and while the sharpness there is stronger, no gentle emotions lingering underneath, he recognizes those eyes.
‘Same as his.’
It had been four days since he’d run into Verso and Gustave would be loath to admit how frequently over the past few days that Verso was on his mind.
Gustave sits.
“Can I help you with something?”
She laughs into her mug as she brings it to her lips. “No, I don’t think you can,” She replies matter of factly. There’s no hostility to her tone, just a calm indifference.
“Then what do you want? Seeing as I was attempting to enjoy my day off, if I’m no use to you, I think I’ll return back to it,” Gustave replies sternly, but before he can attempt to pull the chair back, her left foot has moved forward around the front leg, locking his chair in place.
“The man you met a few days ago, I need you to forget he exists,” She answers, leaning across the small table, her voice barely above a whisper.
Gustave chuckles at the obvious display of intimidation, goes for nonchalant in his response hoping to set the woman off, “Who, Verso?” Her eyes narrow as he says the name, and Gustave just barely keeps the grin off his face, he clearly wasn’t meant to know his real name. “It’s hard to pinpoint his exact age with all those scars but let me guess here, you’re his older sister?”
He relishes in her response as she leans back, assessing him with a small smile.
“You’re clever,” She finally settles on after a moment, ignoring his question entirely.
“Is that a good thing?”
“Terrible, actually. This would be a much easier conversation if you were an idiot.”
“And what conversation is that?”
“The one where you agree to never see Verso. Again.”
Gustave runs his hand through his hair with a long sigh, he knows it’s an obvious nervous gesture, and the woman across from him will clearly pick up on it, but considering he has absolutely no context as to why this conversation was even happening, he lets himself respond to it fairly normally.
“Well, luckily for you, Verso didn’t exactly give me much in the way to work off of in order to contact him, so whether or not I see him again, remains entirely up to him.”
The woman sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose, “As much as I wish that were enough it’s not. I need to make sure that if he tries to contact you, you don’t answer.”
Gustave scoffs, a grin on his face. “No.”
“No? And if I offered you a fairly large sum of cash? Would that change your answer?”
“Listen, this family drama you have happening isn’t my business. I don’t care. Truthfully, I would be more than happy to never run into him again, since he apparently has the ability to just throw money at whatever he deems a problem, and I’m not sure I’m entirely interested in dealing with that long term,” Gustave responds honestly.
Money, especially that kind, had a way of changing people and the longer Gustave was alive the worse it seemed to be getting.
“He is a romantic in that way, wanting to help you.” She responds and Gustave can’t help but laugh in her face.
“Romantic? We must be talking about a different person, your brother is an asshole. And if I could send the money he ‘anonymously’ donated back, I would,” Gustave replies. The moment he realized with certainty that Verso had been the one to fund his research project, he’d attempted to bring to the board a request to return the funds.
They’d laughed.
The woman across from him though looks genuinely surprised by his response, like Verso, she must be used to using money to get the results she wanted, to use its influence over people.
Gustave has never really been swayed by it before, he certainly wasn’t going to respond much to it now, with no context as to where their money even came from.
“You’re not what I expected, Gustave,” She eventually settles on, somehow saying his name exactly as Verso had before leaving. Gustave does his best not to bristle at it.
“I guess we’ll see if that ends up being to my detriment or not,” He replies and she finally relinquishes her hold on Gustave’s chair, who immediately pulls back from the table and stands.
“You will grow to resent meeting him,” She says finally as he turns around from her.
“You’re probably right,” He replies without looking at her and continues forward down the street.
He doesn’t bother stopping at the cafe he’d originally left the house for, instead heads straight back home.
He doesn’t notice the car that seems to travel back to his street with him.
——
“Ya know, I told your Papa he didn’t need to send you. We ran into a few problemas along the way, but we’re well into production now. We should be able to catch up to the oncoming demand,” Benny explains with a flourish of his hand.
Verso stands beside him on the catwalk over the main floor of production in the lab, both of them wearing respirators to protect from the chemical exposure of extraction.
Most of the workers below them are unmasked.
Verso almost cares enough to ask why.
Instead he replies to Benny’s stupidity.
“Three months behind in production and that’s with my father acquiring medical grade fent for you? And you really think that kind of delay doesn’t warrant a visit?” Verso asks mockingly, following behind as Benny rolls his eyes and moves further down the catwalk towards a second floor office.
As they enter the office, Benny pulls down his mask, holds the door open for Verso and his own body guard.
Simon was down below, inspecting the warehouse floor, looking for details Benny didn’t want them to find. Verso was grateful for the trust shown in that moment, not from Simon per se, he still didn't know him, but that Clea had sent him with a fellow inspector and not just a babysitter.
The door closes behind them and only then does Verso pull off the respirator.
“Besides mi amigo, my father was not the one who tasked me to come down here,” Verso says with a smile, letting Benny pick up on the real person that had sent Verso down for an extensive look into production.
Benny’s an idiot, but he at least has enough sense to understand what Verso’s implying and looks over at him nervously.
“Well, as you can see, we’re well on our way to shipping out, so your presence here is just an insult to our trusting relationship, one that I can’t let slide without sending a message,” Benny replies, and with a small nod of his head the body guard that had been trailing behind them approaches Verso.
Verso lets his eyebrows raise, a small chuckle escaping his lips. As the guard's left hand comes up to grip Verso’s shoulder, Verso laughs again. He quickly dodges out of the way as the man rears back with his right hand to try and punch at Verso’s stomach, Verso subverting the energy back and with a grip to the back of the guards head slams him face first into the large metal door Verso had been standing in front of.
While the man is still dazed trying to balance himself, Verso pulls on the arm that had attempted to land a punch, using both hands and the other man’s slightly shorter height, Verso lowers it closer to the ground, one hand gripped near the guards wrist the other closer to shoulder and with a quickly raised boot, he kicks in at the man’s elbow, snapping the bone in his arm roughly.
Verso knows Simon will be there shortly, the guttural scream of the guard having his arm snapped like a twig surely drawing his attention. Luckily the man is silent now, most likely having passed out from the shock or pain, especially combined with the blow to his head.
Verso wonders for a moment if they bothered stopping production at the sudden noise.
‘Just another god damn delay,’
Benny sits at his desk, fear and anger in his eyes, a gun in his hand with the safety still on.
Verso laughs, deep and warm. He hears the sound of Simon’s heavy boots on the catwalk that leads to the office.
“Benny, Benny, Benny. So damn disappointing. You have to know, the only reason Maman didn’t just have me kill you as soon as I arrived, is because you’re one of the few people we’ve found that speak English, Spanish and French,” Verso approaches slowly, smiles deeper as Simon slips into the room. He doesn’t even bother acknowledging the gun pointed at him.
“But - But - You have to know you’re not irreplaceable. And these delays, just can’t keep happening. The product here has been expected in the hands of too many people for too long, and it’s beginning to look bad on our family,” Verso continues, coming around the desk to lean against it, hovering over Benny, who even with the weapon in his hand looks close to pissing himself in fear.
Verso plucks the gun from his hands with almost no effort, removing the ammo clip and single bullet already loaded from the pistol with practiced ease.
He sets the now empty gun on the table pointing it unsubtly at Benny while he pockets the ammunition.
“The Americans in particular are impatient fuckers,” Verso can’t even begin to hide the disdain in his voice, “And they have been up our ass for these drugs. So I am here, to make sure everything is running smoothly. If that’s a problem for you, I’m sure we can look into hiring new management.” Verso finishes his speech finally, using the back of his hand to tilt Benny’s face up to look him in the eye directly.
“Nod if you understand.”
Benny nods, his hands shaking where they hang awkwardly in the air since Verso took his gun.
“Perfecto. My associate and I will stick around for a few more days, just to make sure things stay on track. In the meantime, why not put a little work into making sure your employees,” Verso tilts his head towards the unconscious guard, “Are better protected.”
Verso pulls on the respirator with a final grin and follows Simon out of the office.
Once they make it outside the building, Verso pauses near the car provided to the pair of them for their trip. No driver, at Verso’s insistence, both he and Simon were more than capable of driving themselves.
Before opening the door he looks over to Simon, asks, “Find anything?”
Simon straightens, “He is as much a fool as you suspected.” Verso smirks, raises an eyebrow. “The fentanyl your father provided has been at least somewhat replaced with a weaker and less stable product.”
Verso laughs, deep and loud. “Double dealing on the side, fils de pute. I’ll bring you to town, find a secure line to report back to Clea, I’ll deal with Benny tomorrow after the party.” Simon nods, opening the car door and Verso follows suit, giving the lab behind him one last look.